hating ken jennings so much right now...

ladies and gents, despite your crossed fingers, animal sacrifices and burning incense, fredeeky did not make the cut in the jeopardy try out. here's how things happened. enjoy.

11.22: fredeeky arrives at the westin in times square (it's that hideous miami style building on 43rd and 8th). i went to the second floor where the prospective contestants were all waiting. one of the first guys i saw was a sort of shlubby looking guy with an enormous head. Seriously, a family of raccoons could have set up shop in this guy's cranium. right away i was terrified. i just knew that big head was going to dominate. anyway, it turns out the guy wasn't even waiting for jeopardy. he went right downstairs and out the door and i was a little calmer.

11.26: i was looking at the rest of the people trying out. lots of yentas (no real surprise i guess) -including one in particular with her arm in a sling, lots of sort of gawky nerdy types with glasses and feeble goatees, a suprising number of goomba looking types, some sort of hot younger women, a ghetto fab character in a crisp baseball hat, baggy jeans, north face jacket and some hot kicks, loads of average looking guys and a couple of older and waspy looking men as well.

11.30: a group of 100-150 of us are brought up to the eighth floor and we are all sat in a big room with tables running horizontally and paper and pens in front of all the chairs. (yes they were jeopardy pens, and yes we get to keep them.) there is a chipper jeopardy ex-champion (two time winner) who introduces herself and cracks a lot of terrible funnies. ("you look real calm" etc.) then they put up a practice board of jeopardy on a big screen at the front of the room and ex-champ has people pick a category and then as soon as the question has been read, the inner nerd in all of the potential contestants comes out and everyone yells the answer at the same time. brutal. fredeeky, all though he knew most of the answers, kept his mouth shut and tried to retain as much dignity is as possible when trying out for a game show. so we go though a board like that (real easy questions to show some of the word play style and quotation mark questions) and then they put up the king of the d-bags (alex trebek) on the screen and he wishes us luck and says he hopes to see us on the show. (f.y.i. answers on the test do not have to be given in the form of a question - that's the most asked question and it got a huge laugh in the testing room.) to be honest, i am actually really nervous at this point. not sure what's going to happen, not sure if my categories (sports, reef sandals all things monkey related) are going to come up or not, but i'm trying pretty hard to stay cool.

11.42: the test begins. they put up the category on the screen at the front and then the questions like they are on the show. the lady told us that a score of 70 percent is usually passing and i'm tearing it up from the start. i got o'henry's gift of the magi, william randolph herst, aretha franklin, a brave new world, rastafarian, might and right etc. (greg lougaines was the only sports question.) at the end i was pretty pleased. i left maybe four or five blank and missed another four or five.

12.01: so we pass our tests in and we wait for them to grade them i got a much needed marlboro outside.

12.08: i came back to find everyone getting real chummy and discussing their answers and also discussing a huge amount of jeopardy knowledge. the lady that beat ken jennings ("that bitch was never going to win again, you just knew it"), did ken jennings get all the questions right on his test, all kinds of terrible ken jennings shit. i read the paper and just tried to eavesdrop as much as possible ("my kid is going to watch so much jeopardy that it won't even be funny" and "i was on name that tune when kathy lee gifford was singing the songs" were a couple my personal faves). after a while it was just the same stuff and the vibe in the room was getting progressively more tight. everytime the door opened people freaked out and spun around in their chairs. finally the ex-champ and another lady came up to the front. the other lady did her little non-funny routine at the front, but people were seriously wanting to know who passed the test. not caring at all, she goes into a really stupid story about how her and ex-champ were in florida recently and they swam with sharks, and how brave they were etc. uncomfortably lame material by her. i think all people who work for jeopardy think that they are real smart by association and as a result are real cocky (just like trebek).

12.20: at the end of the day only six people pass the test. two yentas, the one with the arm sling and another who had changed her florida trip reservations to try out for jeopardy. she got a nice hand and that was pretty good. then a younger woman and three of the average looking guys. (didn't get a great look at the guys, the woman made much more of a show when their names were called, gasping and hugging and generally freaking out). the next part was a real highlight. i made for the exit pretty quick cause the elevator coming up was crowded, and there was a rush of people spitefully grabbing fistfulls of complimentary mints on the way out. it was like these nerds really thought they were sticking it to trebek by loading up on the free mints (which were not even that delicious looking as far as mints go). really weak revenge.

that's that. i think that the people that won got about every question right and god bless them. i hope to see one of them on the program. i think i am going to make the test an annual thing. lots of people who were there were there for a second or third time and ex-champ passed the test on her second try.

i'd like to thank andre the giant, who led my training regimen, which consisted of two state capital questions, lots of golf, reef sandals and bloody marys. couldn't have gotten as far as i did without you andre. also a shout to barry beck, who along with andre and myself hit up a round of golf in beautifoo newark new jersey. the highlight of the round was a woman blaring r&b music out of a mini van right behind the 8th tee.