A Day In Jeopardy

Today I drove 8 hours so that I could subject myself to 2 hours of abject terror. Also, buy a shirt I don't need at Macy's, but that's all part of the story. I went & tried out for Jeopardy today. Did I make it? I don't know, although I seriously, seriously doubt it. I blew it, actually. I completely blew it, but oh well, what the hell?

I went and got a rental car this morning, which was a big enormous PITA as always: apparently by law, renting a car cannot be a simple, straightforward procedure. This morning's particular and unique problem was that they did not, in fact, have a car for me although I had reserved one. After we had discussed that for a while, they drove me to the airport to get a car, which put me about an hour behind schedule and screwed up my plans to take the back route to Atlanta whilst taking photographs on the way. I took the highway. The drive there was uneventful and I'm happy to report that the CD player worked like a charm (in order, there & back again: XTC, Neutral Milk Hotel, Counting Crows, John Hiatt, different XTC, Amadou & Merriam, the Ramones, lots and lots and lots of Ramones.) and the small gold rental car moved smoothly. Road trips always make me feel like my head is floating about three feet over my body. Which I'm still feeling now, just in case you're noticing a certain disconnected factor to tonights installment of deathless prose.

The hotel where the Jeopardy tryouts were held was a large and fancy one smack dab inside the Lenox Square Mall, which is an extremely ultra super fancy mall: it's the mall I was looking for the last time I was in Atlanta 2 1/2 years ago, actually. Not because I can afford anything in it, but because it makes me feel sophisticated and glamourous to walk around ogling incredibly high end merchandise - they have Betsey Johnson and Neiman Marcus and stuff like that. Not an Old Navy in sight. By the way, if you ever want to spend huge sums of money on something utterly impractical for me (and god, I hope you do, whoever you are) you could do worse than this. I was early to my Jeopardy appointment, which was unfortunate, because it gave me time to decide that the sweater I was wearing Would. Not. Do. and then buy a blouse (and put it on) at Macy's that only seemed cheap by comparison to Bloomingdales and the fact that I then had 15 minutes to make it back to the hotel and I was starting to panic.

Panic would be the keynote of the next two hours. Of course I was the last person to arrive and I had to fill out paperwork and have my picture taken - a truly attractive polaroid that showed each of my chins to its fullest advantage - and then we all traipsed into the room to sit facing a screen and meet our cheerful and perky hosts, who apparently do this for a living. They told us what was going to happen and asked us some general trivia questions and asked us where we watched Jeopardy, which was difficult for me to fudge, since I haven't watched it in many years, gulp, and then Alex Trebek came on in the form of a DVD and told us all how incredibly great we were to even have passed the online test and yay, us. Meanwhile, I edged into full blown panic, and looked around to see a room full of people so normal I suspect they were grown in vats. Nice people. People dressed like they had a job interview. For an accounts receivable position at Boring Corp.

Then we took a written test and I'm sorry to report that I bombed this utterly. And I still don't know, and may never know, which state flag has a badger on it and why this would be considered self evident enough that the question was phrased "Naturally, this state has a badger on its flag!" Nor do I know which flower vanilla comes from, who the 2003 winner of American Idol was, or, shamefully, the last name of Helen Keller's teacher. So I blew that test, and I was kind of happy (except I felt small, and dumb, and utterly outclassed by the nicely dressed grownup vat people,) because I thought, "Aha! Now they will flunk me and I can slink out of here and go back to the mall and get up to the mountains in time to take the back road and get some pictures of the sunset!" Alas, no. They don't do it like that anymore. Now they make everyone go through everything, which is why, I guess, that I still might have a shot of actually appearing on the show, although I think possibly hell might have to freeze over first, along with the appearance of the winged pigs.

The next step was the mock game. We were called up in groups of three to stand in front of everyone and play a mock game, complete with buzzers. My buzzer technique was not perfect, but they asked me a lot of questions. Those questions, I mostly got right, except for the Susquehanna, which does not in fact have four letters. All would have been well, except then everyone had to make a perky little speech about themselves.

Well. I was not prepared. Everyone else had this perfect Jeopardy speech prepared, but as I said, I haven't watched the damn show in ages, and when they said "interview," I foolishly thought they meant, you know, an interview. I was the 4th person up, too. And, I made the classic mistake: I forgot that the internet is not cool. I said I was a blogger and spent a lot of time on the internet, and they all moved away from me on the bench, and then I tried to redeem myself by mentioning political involvement (don't ask. Along with Drinking Liberally I've been roped into doing a volunteer stint for Move On) only to realize halfway through my sentence that politics was a No No. I should so totally have skipped the mall visit before the Spanish Inquisition and gone to the hotel bar for a bloody mary instead; I know, that would have been Wrong, but oh my lord, I bet if I had I would be feeling a lot more confident about my chances now.

Then they let me sit down again to watch everyone else and that was that, except for a long speech about how they only pick 400 contestants a year out of about 6000 qualified candidates and if we get picked they'll call us and if not don't be all bummed out, just reapply next year, because they only keep candidate files for one year. They also said we could keep the pens, and there at the top, as you see, is my Jeopardy pen to prove that actually did go and try out for Jeopardy. Yes. Yes I did. The drive back was utterly hairy and horrible and full of weird lightning storms and fog and shit and took five frickin' hours but I think it was worth it, if only for the fact that next year, I will so have a suit on and a little speech prepared.

And you never know. Pigs may grow wings yet and I may yet be called to California to panic on national television.