I am about halfway through reading "Tibetan Peach Pie", a memoir by Tom Robbins. In my personal Pantheon of great writers, Tom Robbins is definitely in my Top 3, not only because of his wicked imagination and sense of humour, or because he is the undisputed King of Simile, but because his books and stories have actually been transformative, they have changed me and my way of thinking once I read them. The first book of his which I read was "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues", which literally turned my way of looking at the world inside-out; it showed me the power of the Female, the strength of the circular, and taught me that a wise writer can somehow weave actual Magick into the pages of a novel. After that, I was hooked.
Since then, I have hungrily scooped up each new book Robbins has written, and each one somehow got inside my mind and pushed outwards, expanding my consciousness, and in some way widened the opening in my mind which allows new thoughts to sneak in. I've always thought that while he is "just a writer", he is a writer who was placed here to somehow teach us something. Or some things.
From "Another Roadside Attraction" I learned that the Church (yes, that Church), is actually a huge, tax-free Multi-National Corporation which must be watched very closely, and that the easiest way to walk through the rain is not to fight it.
From "Still Life with Woodpecker" I learned of the power of Redheads, and the mysteries held within the Camel cigarette pack.
From "Jitterbug Perfume" I learned of the power of the beet, and that smell is 90% of love.
From "Skinny Legs and All" I learned the truth about Jezebel, that time is relative, and that a painted stick and a can o' beans can have a life and even a quest. I learned that a character called Turn Around Norman holds the key to understanding it all.
"Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas" taught me about the power of the Belt of Orion, and especially of Sirius the Dog Star.
Reading "Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates" showed me that curses are real, but they only have power if you allow them to.
And "Villa Incognito" taught me that you can read an entire novel, and ten years later have no earthly idea what the hell it was about.
So now, I am reading the author's own stories about his own life. And he is referring to himself as an "octogenarian". So, this Merry Prankster, this Trickster God of Novelists, the man who, in my mind, drops acid and holds drumming circles at Burning Man, has grown old, like my dad, like me, like any other ordinary mortal. I'm sure he's still got a few things he can teach me.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Friday, June 20, 2014
Extemporaneous Fiction - "OUT OF JEOPARDY"
first comment: a color : green
second comment: a type of animal : porcupine
third comment: a type of job : Summer cop in P’Town
fourth comment: a city in the world : Manila
fifth comment: a famous landmark or tourist attraction : Legoland
I was standing on a stage in Culver City, California. I stood behind a podium, atop a small platform which had been adjusted so that I was the same height as the two people next to me. I was under blaring lights, and my hair kept falling into my eyes, but I just sort of left it there because I didn’t want to come off as the sort of guy who keeps fussing with his hair like some flirtatious coed. Alex Trebek was standing just a few yards away, the “think music” was playing for Final Jeopardy, and I was staring at the clue, transfixed; and yet I had no earthly idea what the correct response was. Not only that, I was already a distant third-place. I had played miserably. I had $180 in my bank. The champion, who was winning, had $24,000.
When, after 15 seconds of paralysis, the correct answer to the clue did not mercifully materialize, I scrambled to write something- anything, down.
The category was “Cities of the World”. Great. That narrows it down to mere tens of thousands.
No idea. I figured I’d try to write down something funny, something to show that I’m really the type of guy who can just laugh off a crushing humiliation like this one. The kind of guy who can just write it all off as an amusing anecdote to tell gaily at all the cocktails parties I get invited to. So, I try to think of the least densely populated city I can imagine. I scribble down, “Fargo”.
The “think music” ends.
As the de facto loser on the stage, Alex comes to me first. He is looking at me with thinly veiled disdain. “Not your day today, Steven.” That was Alex’s polite way of saying that I should indeed be deeply ashamed of my performance.
“Let’s see what you wrote down.”
They unveiled my hastily scrawled response.
“What is…looks like “Frago”,” said Alex.
“It’s “Fargo”, Alex. Fargo,” I muttered.
“Fargo? No, that’s wrong. Not a lot of Tagalog spoken in that part of North Dakota.” He shook his head in a silent indictment of me as a complete idiot. “How much will it cost you? Everything. That leaves you with zero.”
Yes, yes it does.
Finally, Alex, the robotic camera, and the focus thankfully moved to the contestant on my right, who was in second place. I hated her. I mostly hated her because her name was Melanie but she insisted on spelling it “Melany”; and when she wrote her name on the electronic display before the game began, she drew a little smiley-face after the offending ‘y’. Really, Melany? A smiley face?
They unveiled Melany’s response: “Where is MANILA?” she had written, without benefit of an emoticon.
Melany was correct, though, and she doubled her score to $18,400, still not enough to catch the champion.
Gunther, the champion, stood there inscrutably. This was his fourth game, and he had already won nearly $80,000. He could not be caught.
I imagined that people watching Gunther on TV might think he was a pretty cool guy. They might even admire him. He had the kind of casual good looks you would expect from someone named Gunther: dirty-blond, suntanned, and with an undetermined accent of some kind even though he was from Cleveland. They would all be wrong. There is nothing admirable about Gunther. He is a pompous, snotty know-it-all who drives a beat-up old Rav-4, and that unkempt hipster look is really because he hasn’t done laundry in a month. When the cameras weren’t rolling, he looked at Melany and me in a way that said, “I will crush you.” Melany didn’t seem to mind all that much. I kept finding myself wishing that a spotlight or something would fall from the space above him, crushing his Norwegian skull in a horrific accident which, while tragic, would nonetheless make for some great television. But no, he had survived through to Final Jeopardy.
“Now we come to Gunther, our champ,” said Alex, sounding for all the world like a proud papa at the Science Fair. “Let’s see what you wrote down.”
All I heard was the word “Manila” and a dollar figure of twenty-six thousand something-something-something. At that point I heard a comforting click as the electronic display on the front of my podium erased the word “Frago” , as well as my humiliating final score of $0, replacing them with the Aleve logo and my third-place prize of $1000, the “Jeopardy!” version of a Participant trophy.
At that point, the sounds around me all retreated into a kind of dull roar. I finally brushed the hair out of my face and found myself just sort of standing there numbly, just wishing and wanting the whole thing to be over.
Finally, the hot lights clicked off, jolting me back to the present. The stage manager, Phil or Bill or whatever his name was, was hurriedly moving us off of our platforms and pushing us to one corner of the stage. This is where we were to stand while the camera was to show us all chatting good-naturedly with Alex as the closing credits rolled. People around us were already putting away their headsets and clipboards and heading home for the day.
Alex came over. Without our adjustable platforms, it was now obvious that I was way shorter than both of my competitors. Alex shook my hand halfheartedly and after that, he didn’t look at me again. He stood there talking animatedly with Melany and Gunther about something lame and pretentious, like what huge Miles Davis fans they all were. I just stood there, trying to look serene and interested despite the fact that I really just wanted to go home, like that time I went to a Christmas party with my friend José and I was the only person there who didn’t speak Spanish.
Eventually, though, the last of the stage lights clicked off, the Miles Davis love fest came to a close, and Phil or Bill ushered us off the stage just seconds ahead of the guy with the broom. I was handed my belongings: my cell phone and an overcoat, which was all I had brought in with me, which somehow made me feel like I was being released from jail. I was told to stop by the cashier window near the exit to pick up my prize money.
“Nice job today,” said the cashier as she pushed an envelope towards me, without once looking up from her phone. Her name tag said that she was called Belinda and that she had been a “crew member” since 2009. I noticed that the TV behind her was tuned in to “The Bachelor.”
“Thank you, Belinda,” I said. She looked up when I said her name, wondering for an instant whether we knew one another. Her left hand brushed her name tag absent-mindedly.
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Umm, take it easy.” She looked back down at her phone.
I pushed open the exit door and the California sun came pouring in. It was kind of a shock, like it is when you walk out of a movie theater during the daytime. I struggled to remember where I had parked, or even what kind of car I was driving. It was a rental.
Then I remembered that it was a green Kia. A horribly ugly green Kia Forté or Kia Alanté or Spumanté or some other made-up word. It was a vehicle I would never have been caught dead in back in Delaware, but at the rental agency, when the girl behind the counter asked me what color car I wanted, all I could hear was my friend Gary’s voice, saying, “Green. Green is the color of money and success.” So I answered her, “Green.” She tilted her head and looked at me for a moment, smiling benignly, as if I had just said to her that I wanted to adopt the ugliest puppy in the shelter.
Money and success my ass. Lot of good it did me. As I slid into the car, baked in the California sun to a toasty 103°, I looked down at the green tie I had worn. I rolled my eyes at my own ridiculousness, took off the tie, and as I rolled down the window, I dropped the tie out onto the sizzling parking lot.
I sat there for a minute before I started the car. I sat there, sweating in the 103° heat, thinking about the past few hours, reliving it all in my mind as if I were trying to detox in a sauna.
Well, that certainly didn’t go like I had planned, I thought. In my imagination, I would be at a supper club in L.A. right now, being toasted with Dom Perignon and fêted by Alex’s minions and a host of Jeopardy groupies. I would be making excuses for an early night as I must retire and prepare to defend my championship tomorrow. I would be planning how to spend the record-breaking amount of money I had just won in front of a spellbound audience. Somehow my vision did not include sitting in a hideous Korean car, sweating like a whore in church, Mexican music blasting from the radio, and wondering what the hell I should do now.
What indeed? I just sort of let my body go slack for a moment. My shoulders slumped, my head bowed, tried to make my body as small and humble as I felt. I wallowed, just for a minute. Then, I sat up straight, slapped my hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, and said out loud to myself, “Well. First things first. Back to the hotel.”
I programmed the GPS for the slightly shabby Super 8 where I was staying in Burbank. I rolled up the window, cranked up the air conditioning, and rolled out of there, leaving Jeopardy behind forever. A dream I had had for 27 years turned out to be just that: a dream. Instead of finally proving to the world that I was smart and funny and that the camera loved me, I only proved that I was short and could be outplayed by a 26 year-old manicurist from Ann Arbor and the guy who dresses like Thor the Thunder God every single goddam Halloween.
Goodbye, Jeopardy.
So, I was not in a particularly good place, so to speak, as I allowed the slightly British voice on the GPS to guide me through the endless maze of off-ramps, cloverleaves and Mercedes convertibles that is Greater Los Angeles. “In one quarter mile,” she says impassively, “take the motorway.” Who the fuck says “motorway”?
Before long, the lady on the GPS, whom I had named Mrs. Peale, managed to get me back to my opulent Super 8 Motel in Burbank. I carefully removed the repulsive floral polyester bedspread from the bed and stuffed it into a corner. I then flopped down face-up on the bed and just lay there for a while, closing my eyes and just letting the whole day sort of wash over me.
I allowed myself to remember bits and pieces of my disgrace. Of how my heart sank as Alex revealed the categories for each round: US Presidents, Rivers, Sports, Sports Terms, Sports Teams, 16th Century French Literature- all topics I know almost nothing about. Of how I had risked everything on a Daily Double and then answered that the fifth President of the United States was George Jefferson.
I remembered the interview portion of the program. They had asked us to write down five things about ourselves that we might like to talk about or that people might find interesting. One of the things I had written down was that I had been a bartender for a number of years.
“Says here that you were a “mixologist” at one time,” said Alex, looking down at his index card.
“That’s right, Alex,” I answered. “I worked for a few years as a bartender in a wonderful little restaurant called “Mrs. Simpson’s”.”
“And what, would you say, is your favorite drink?” he asked me.
“I wouldn’t know, Alex. I actually don’t drink alcohol.”
Alex just sort of looked at me for an instant. The expression in his eyes told me that he did not like the way this was going. “Oh, I see,” he said. In an attempt to salvage the interview, he said, “I have always loved a good Harvey Wallbanger. Can you tell me your recipe for a good Harvey Wallbanger?”
“No, Alex. I don’t know how to make a Harvey Wallbanger.”
Alex didn’t even respond. He just moved on to the manicurist.
And all the while, while I was lying there, reliving the whole wretched day in my mind, I just kept thinking that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. One doesn’t harbor a dream for 27 years just to have it turn out to be one of the most horrible experiences of one’s life. It was supposed to be wonderful and transformative, like a bride’s long-awaited fairytale wedding. Instead it was just painful and embarrassing and I felt like cannon fodder for the bloodthirsty game show audience.
I tried to remember when I first wanted to be a contestant on Jeopardy. It was 1987. I was 25 years old, and I had just graduated from the Police Academy back in Delaware. The problem was, I had graduated second-to-last in my class, which sort of limited my opportunities, career-wise. I managed to get a job, though, as a summer hire for the police department in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Talk about dreams that don’t go as planned. When someone enters the Police Academy, they are envisioning what might lie ahead: taking down crackheads in a blaze of bullets, admiring looks from women when they see you in your sharp uniform, being treated with respect as a person of authority. Well, when I hit the streets of Provincetown, I weighed in at about 125 pounds, partly due to my limited stature but also due to the fact that I’ve always been kind of a bean pole. Well, the only uniform the Provincetown Police Department had for me that summer was a 38-Long, and when I put it on I looked like Barney Fife’s younger and scrawnier brother from Mayberry. They didn’t even allow me to have a gun, and when I walked the street or stood directing traffic, instead of the girls giving me the eye and flirting, they were giggling and calling me “Goober” behind my back.
At least it was an easy job and I was never in any real danger. The main crimes we dealt with were bicycle theft and drunk-and-disorderly. Provincetown is kind of a quirky town and the people who go there tend to be a little offbeat. You tend to see a lot of guys wearing women’s clothing and carrying on in the streets, and stuff like that, which I don’t really get, myself, but whatever. Anyway, I got into the habit that summer, of turning on Jeopardy when I got home to my crappy little apartment at the end of my watch. I surprised myself as time went on, because I knew a lot of the answers. It felt good, after a day standing in the hot sun, being called Goober and having drag queens ask me where my nightstick was, to feel like there was something I was pretty good at. I began to fantasize about going on that program, and showing everyone how wrong they were about me. That I could be clever and well-read and that I knew who invented the cotton gin. Believe me, though, it’s a lot easier to play Jeopardy in your own living room, with a nice cold Sprite and a Hot Pockets than it is in front of an audience of strangers, especially when Alex Trebek seems to think you’re the Antichrist.
Anyway, after lying there for a while, I decided to snap myself out of it. I went over to my laptop and decided to see if there were any messages for me. My email only had two messages: one from my friends at Citibank to remind me that a payment is due soon, and another one promising ink and toner at 85% off retail. I deleted them both.
I wasn’t really surprised about that. I’m not the most social person, which is why I made the trip out here to California all alone in the first place. It’s not that I don’t like people or anything, it’s just that I don’t seem able to keep anyone’s interest long enough to get a friendship going. I hadn’t really told a lot of people that I was going to be on Jeopardy to begin with, so I shouldn’t have been expecting a bunch of emails or messages. I had told the girl who works at the CVS, whose name is Margaret, about it. She sent me an e-card from JibJab that she had made, showing her and her girlfriend’s cutout faces dancing to “We are the Champions” with the words “congrads and good luck!!!!” followed by like fifteen exclamation points. But that was like six weeks ago, anyway.
So, I figured I’d log on to Facebook. I have like fifteen Facebook friends. I figured that was pretty good for someone who would have trouble putting together a dinner party for four. Then I met this girl named Jessica and she told me that she had like fifteen hundred friends on Facebook.
“Really?” I asked her. “How do you get 1,500 friends?”
She looked at me incredulously. “Duh,” she said. “I went to college!”
Anyway, I had left a status update last night that said, “Looking forward to winning big tomorrow on Jeopardy!” In response, I got an “lol” from a guy I went to junior high with, and a “you are beautiful” and six little hearts from this flaky woman I met in Provincetown. Oh well, I figured, at least nobody cares that I bombed.
I looked up and noticed the little red number on my Facebook page that tells you that somebody posted something to your wall. This girl Kelly had posted a link to some viral video entitled “Porcupine Thinks It’s a Puppy (cute!!)” I don’t really know Kelly but she sent me a friend request once, and she used to date a guy I went to school with, so I accepted it.
Anyway, I clicked on the link and watched the video. It was like two and a half minutes of two girls cooing over a porcupine they had named “Mr. Stinkers” while it squirmed around and they petted the damned thing wearing heavy-duty gardening gloves.
After the video was over, I thought to myself that that video had done absolutely nothing to make me feel better about my present circumstance. I also wondered why Kelly would have ever thought that this would be something I would be even remotely interested in. I un-friended her on the spot.
And that little move felt kind of good, kind of, well, liberating. I mean, did I really have to care about what these people thought of me? I looked down the list of my fourteen remaining Facebook friends. I deleted them all, except for Margaret from the CVS because I like the funny stuff she posts.
And then I began to think a little differently about my debacle of a day. Suddenly it seemed like for all those years that I had been wanting to be on Jeopardy, maybe it had been for the wrong reasons. I had been wanting to do it to impress other people, people who, in the end, did not require impressing. I was trying to prove something to everyone else, instead of proving something to myself.
But I had, indeed, proven something to myself that day. I had proved that I could set a goal for myself and achieve it. I could leave my comfort zone and earn my place on a stage shared by no more than twelve people in the world in any given week. I could do something that other people only fantasize about doing. I could be proud to claim my fifteen minutes of cannon fodder fame.
So, I decided to break out of my funk, to stop feeling sorry for myself and start feeling proud and happy about the things I’ve done. I checked out of the Super 8 Motel and climbed into the front seat of my stylin’ green Kia Spumanté. I switched on the GPS.
“Mrs. Peale,” I said. “I have a thousand dollars to spend, and the rest of the week off. What do you suggest?”
Turns out there’s a Legoland about a hundred miles away from here in Carlsbad. I’m heading there now. And I’m feeling pretty good.
second comment: a type of animal : porcupine
third comment: a type of job : Summer cop in P’Town
fourth comment: a city in the world : Manila
fifth comment: a famous landmark or tourist attraction : Legoland
OUT OF JEOPARDY
Well, there I was, living a nightmare.I was standing on a stage in Culver City, California. I stood behind a podium, atop a small platform which had been adjusted so that I was the same height as the two people next to me. I was under blaring lights, and my hair kept falling into my eyes, but I just sort of left it there because I didn’t want to come off as the sort of guy who keeps fussing with his hair like some flirtatious coed. Alex Trebek was standing just a few yards away, the “think music” was playing for Final Jeopardy, and I was staring at the clue, transfixed; and yet I had no earthly idea what the correct response was. Not only that, I was already a distant third-place. I had played miserably. I had $180 in my bank. The champion, who was winning, had $24,000.
When, after 15 seconds of paralysis, the correct answer to the clue did not mercifully materialize, I scrambled to write something- anything, down.
The category was “Cities of the World”. Great. That narrows it down to mere tens of thousands.
YOU ARE LIKELY TO HEAR ENGLISH AND TAGALOG IN THIS CITY, THE WORLD’S MOST DENSELY POPULATED AT NEARLY 28,000 INHABITANTS PER SQUARE KILOMETER.
The “think music” ends.
As the de facto loser on the stage, Alex comes to me first. He is looking at me with thinly veiled disdain. “Not your day today, Steven.” That was Alex’s polite way of saying that I should indeed be deeply ashamed of my performance.
“Let’s see what you wrote down.”
They unveiled my hastily scrawled response.
“What is…looks like “Frago”,” said Alex.
“It’s “Fargo”, Alex. Fargo,” I muttered.
“Fargo? No, that’s wrong. Not a lot of Tagalog spoken in that part of North Dakota.” He shook his head in a silent indictment of me as a complete idiot. “How much will it cost you? Everything. That leaves you with zero.”
Yes, yes it does.
Finally, Alex, the robotic camera, and the focus thankfully moved to the contestant on my right, who was in second place. I hated her. I mostly hated her because her name was Melanie but she insisted on spelling it “Melany”; and when she wrote her name on the electronic display before the game began, she drew a little smiley-face after the offending ‘y’. Really, Melany? A smiley face?
They unveiled Melany’s response: “Where is MANILA?” she had written, without benefit of an emoticon.
Melany was correct, though, and she doubled her score to $18,400, still not enough to catch the champion.
Gunther, the champion, stood there inscrutably. This was his fourth game, and he had already won nearly $80,000. He could not be caught.
I imagined that people watching Gunther on TV might think he was a pretty cool guy. They might even admire him. He had the kind of casual good looks you would expect from someone named Gunther: dirty-blond, suntanned, and with an undetermined accent of some kind even though he was from Cleveland. They would all be wrong. There is nothing admirable about Gunther. He is a pompous, snotty know-it-all who drives a beat-up old Rav-4, and that unkempt hipster look is really because he hasn’t done laundry in a month. When the cameras weren’t rolling, he looked at Melany and me in a way that said, “I will crush you.” Melany didn’t seem to mind all that much. I kept finding myself wishing that a spotlight or something would fall from the space above him, crushing his Norwegian skull in a horrific accident which, while tragic, would nonetheless make for some great television. But no, he had survived through to Final Jeopardy.
“Now we come to Gunther, our champ,” said Alex, sounding for all the world like a proud papa at the Science Fair. “Let’s see what you wrote down.”
All I heard was the word “Manila” and a dollar figure of twenty-six thousand something-something-something. At that point I heard a comforting click as the electronic display on the front of my podium erased the word “Frago” , as well as my humiliating final score of $0, replacing them with the Aleve logo and my third-place prize of $1000, the “Jeopardy!” version of a Participant trophy.
At that point, the sounds around me all retreated into a kind of dull roar. I finally brushed the hair out of my face and found myself just sort of standing there numbly, just wishing and wanting the whole thing to be over.
Finally, the hot lights clicked off, jolting me back to the present. The stage manager, Phil or Bill or whatever his name was, was hurriedly moving us off of our platforms and pushing us to one corner of the stage. This is where we were to stand while the camera was to show us all chatting good-naturedly with Alex as the closing credits rolled. People around us were already putting away their headsets and clipboards and heading home for the day.
Alex came over. Without our adjustable platforms, it was now obvious that I was way shorter than both of my competitors. Alex shook my hand halfheartedly and after that, he didn’t look at me again. He stood there talking animatedly with Melany and Gunther about something lame and pretentious, like what huge Miles Davis fans they all were. I just stood there, trying to look serene and interested despite the fact that I really just wanted to go home, like that time I went to a Christmas party with my friend José and I was the only person there who didn’t speak Spanish.
Eventually, though, the last of the stage lights clicked off, the Miles Davis love fest came to a close, and Phil or Bill ushered us off the stage just seconds ahead of the guy with the broom. I was handed my belongings: my cell phone and an overcoat, which was all I had brought in with me, which somehow made me feel like I was being released from jail. I was told to stop by the cashier window near the exit to pick up my prize money.
“Nice job today,” said the cashier as she pushed an envelope towards me, without once looking up from her phone. Her name tag said that she was called Belinda and that she had been a “crew member” since 2009. I noticed that the TV behind her was tuned in to “The Bachelor.”
“Thank you, Belinda,” I said. She looked up when I said her name, wondering for an instant whether we knew one another. Her left hand brushed her name tag absent-mindedly.
“Yeah, sure,” she said. “Umm, take it easy.” She looked back down at her phone.
I pushed open the exit door and the California sun came pouring in. It was kind of a shock, like it is when you walk out of a movie theater during the daytime. I struggled to remember where I had parked, or even what kind of car I was driving. It was a rental.
Then I remembered that it was a green Kia. A horribly ugly green Kia Forté or Kia Alanté or Spumanté or some other made-up word. It was a vehicle I would never have been caught dead in back in Delaware, but at the rental agency, when the girl behind the counter asked me what color car I wanted, all I could hear was my friend Gary’s voice, saying, “Green. Green is the color of money and success.” So I answered her, “Green.” She tilted her head and looked at me for a moment, smiling benignly, as if I had just said to her that I wanted to adopt the ugliest puppy in the shelter.
Money and success my ass. Lot of good it did me. As I slid into the car, baked in the California sun to a toasty 103°, I looked down at the green tie I had worn. I rolled my eyes at my own ridiculousness, took off the tie, and as I rolled down the window, I dropped the tie out onto the sizzling parking lot.
I sat there for a minute before I started the car. I sat there, sweating in the 103° heat, thinking about the past few hours, reliving it all in my mind as if I were trying to detox in a sauna.
Well, that certainly didn’t go like I had planned, I thought. In my imagination, I would be at a supper club in L.A. right now, being toasted with Dom Perignon and fêted by Alex’s minions and a host of Jeopardy groupies. I would be making excuses for an early night as I must retire and prepare to defend my championship tomorrow. I would be planning how to spend the record-breaking amount of money I had just won in front of a spellbound audience. Somehow my vision did not include sitting in a hideous Korean car, sweating like a whore in church, Mexican music blasting from the radio, and wondering what the hell I should do now.
What indeed? I just sort of let my body go slack for a moment. My shoulders slumped, my head bowed, tried to make my body as small and humble as I felt. I wallowed, just for a minute. Then, I sat up straight, slapped my hands at 10 and 2 on the steering wheel, and said out loud to myself, “Well. First things first. Back to the hotel.”
I programmed the GPS for the slightly shabby Super 8 where I was staying in Burbank. I rolled up the window, cranked up the air conditioning, and rolled out of there, leaving Jeopardy behind forever. A dream I had had for 27 years turned out to be just that: a dream. Instead of finally proving to the world that I was smart and funny and that the camera loved me, I only proved that I was short and could be outplayed by a 26 year-old manicurist from Ann Arbor and the guy who dresses like Thor the Thunder God every single goddam Halloween.
Goodbye, Jeopardy.
So, I was not in a particularly good place, so to speak, as I allowed the slightly British voice on the GPS to guide me through the endless maze of off-ramps, cloverleaves and Mercedes convertibles that is Greater Los Angeles. “In one quarter mile,” she says impassively, “take the motorway.” Who the fuck says “motorway”?
Before long, the lady on the GPS, whom I had named Mrs. Peale, managed to get me back to my opulent Super 8 Motel in Burbank. I carefully removed the repulsive floral polyester bedspread from the bed and stuffed it into a corner. I then flopped down face-up on the bed and just lay there for a while, closing my eyes and just letting the whole day sort of wash over me.
I allowed myself to remember bits and pieces of my disgrace. Of how my heart sank as Alex revealed the categories for each round: US Presidents, Rivers, Sports, Sports Terms, Sports Teams, 16th Century French Literature- all topics I know almost nothing about. Of how I had risked everything on a Daily Double and then answered that the fifth President of the United States was George Jefferson.
I remembered the interview portion of the program. They had asked us to write down five things about ourselves that we might like to talk about or that people might find interesting. One of the things I had written down was that I had been a bartender for a number of years.
“Says here that you were a “mixologist” at one time,” said Alex, looking down at his index card.
“That’s right, Alex,” I answered. “I worked for a few years as a bartender in a wonderful little restaurant called “Mrs. Simpson’s”.”
“And what, would you say, is your favorite drink?” he asked me.
“I wouldn’t know, Alex. I actually don’t drink alcohol.”
Alex just sort of looked at me for an instant. The expression in his eyes told me that he did not like the way this was going. “Oh, I see,” he said. In an attempt to salvage the interview, he said, “I have always loved a good Harvey Wallbanger. Can you tell me your recipe for a good Harvey Wallbanger?”
“No, Alex. I don’t know how to make a Harvey Wallbanger.”
Alex didn’t even respond. He just moved on to the manicurist.
And all the while, while I was lying there, reliving the whole wretched day in my mind, I just kept thinking that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be. One doesn’t harbor a dream for 27 years just to have it turn out to be one of the most horrible experiences of one’s life. It was supposed to be wonderful and transformative, like a bride’s long-awaited fairytale wedding. Instead it was just painful and embarrassing and I felt like cannon fodder for the bloodthirsty game show audience.
I tried to remember when I first wanted to be a contestant on Jeopardy. It was 1987. I was 25 years old, and I had just graduated from the Police Academy back in Delaware. The problem was, I had graduated second-to-last in my class, which sort of limited my opportunities, career-wise. I managed to get a job, though, as a summer hire for the police department in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
Talk about dreams that don’t go as planned. When someone enters the Police Academy, they are envisioning what might lie ahead: taking down crackheads in a blaze of bullets, admiring looks from women when they see you in your sharp uniform, being treated with respect as a person of authority. Well, when I hit the streets of Provincetown, I weighed in at about 125 pounds, partly due to my limited stature but also due to the fact that I’ve always been kind of a bean pole. Well, the only uniform the Provincetown Police Department had for me that summer was a 38-Long, and when I put it on I looked like Barney Fife’s younger and scrawnier brother from Mayberry. They didn’t even allow me to have a gun, and when I walked the street or stood directing traffic, instead of the girls giving me the eye and flirting, they were giggling and calling me “Goober” behind my back.
At least it was an easy job and I was never in any real danger. The main crimes we dealt with were bicycle theft and drunk-and-disorderly. Provincetown is kind of a quirky town and the people who go there tend to be a little offbeat. You tend to see a lot of guys wearing women’s clothing and carrying on in the streets, and stuff like that, which I don’t really get, myself, but whatever. Anyway, I got into the habit that summer, of turning on Jeopardy when I got home to my crappy little apartment at the end of my watch. I surprised myself as time went on, because I knew a lot of the answers. It felt good, after a day standing in the hot sun, being called Goober and having drag queens ask me where my nightstick was, to feel like there was something I was pretty good at. I began to fantasize about going on that program, and showing everyone how wrong they were about me. That I could be clever and well-read and that I knew who invented the cotton gin. Believe me, though, it’s a lot easier to play Jeopardy in your own living room, with a nice cold Sprite and a Hot Pockets than it is in front of an audience of strangers, especially when Alex Trebek seems to think you’re the Antichrist.
Anyway, after lying there for a while, I decided to snap myself out of it. I went over to my laptop and decided to see if there were any messages for me. My email only had two messages: one from my friends at Citibank to remind me that a payment is due soon, and another one promising ink and toner at 85% off retail. I deleted them both.
I wasn’t really surprised about that. I’m not the most social person, which is why I made the trip out here to California all alone in the first place. It’s not that I don’t like people or anything, it’s just that I don’t seem able to keep anyone’s interest long enough to get a friendship going. I hadn’t really told a lot of people that I was going to be on Jeopardy to begin with, so I shouldn’t have been expecting a bunch of emails or messages. I had told the girl who works at the CVS, whose name is Margaret, about it. She sent me an e-card from JibJab that she had made, showing her and her girlfriend’s cutout faces dancing to “We are the Champions” with the words “congrads and good luck!!!!” followed by like fifteen exclamation points. But that was like six weeks ago, anyway.
So, I figured I’d log on to Facebook. I have like fifteen Facebook friends. I figured that was pretty good for someone who would have trouble putting together a dinner party for four. Then I met this girl named Jessica and she told me that she had like fifteen hundred friends on Facebook.
“Really?” I asked her. “How do you get 1,500 friends?”
She looked at me incredulously. “Duh,” she said. “I went to college!”
Anyway, I had left a status update last night that said, “Looking forward to winning big tomorrow on Jeopardy!” In response, I got an “lol” from a guy I went to junior high with, and a “you are beautiful” and six little hearts from this flaky woman I met in Provincetown. Oh well, I figured, at least nobody cares that I bombed.
I looked up and noticed the little red number on my Facebook page that tells you that somebody posted something to your wall. This girl Kelly had posted a link to some viral video entitled “Porcupine Thinks It’s a Puppy (cute!!)” I don’t really know Kelly but she sent me a friend request once, and she used to date a guy I went to school with, so I accepted it.
Anyway, I clicked on the link and watched the video. It was like two and a half minutes of two girls cooing over a porcupine they had named “Mr. Stinkers” while it squirmed around and they petted the damned thing wearing heavy-duty gardening gloves.
After the video was over, I thought to myself that that video had done absolutely nothing to make me feel better about my present circumstance. I also wondered why Kelly would have ever thought that this would be something I would be even remotely interested in. I un-friended her on the spot.
And that little move felt kind of good, kind of, well, liberating. I mean, did I really have to care about what these people thought of me? I looked down the list of my fourteen remaining Facebook friends. I deleted them all, except for Margaret from the CVS because I like the funny stuff she posts.
And then I began to think a little differently about my debacle of a day. Suddenly it seemed like for all those years that I had been wanting to be on Jeopardy, maybe it had been for the wrong reasons. I had been wanting to do it to impress other people, people who, in the end, did not require impressing. I was trying to prove something to everyone else, instead of proving something to myself.
But I had, indeed, proven something to myself that day. I had proved that I could set a goal for myself and achieve it. I could leave my comfort zone and earn my place on a stage shared by no more than twelve people in the world in any given week. I could do something that other people only fantasize about doing. I could be proud to claim my fifteen minutes of cannon fodder fame.
So, I decided to break out of my funk, to stop feeling sorry for myself and start feeling proud and happy about the things I’ve done. I checked out of the Super 8 Motel and climbed into the front seat of my stylin’ green Kia Spumanté. I switched on the GPS.
“Mrs. Peale,” I said. “I have a thousand dollars to spend, and the rest of the week off. What do you suggest?”
Turns out there’s a Legoland about a hundred miles away from here in Carlsbad. I’m heading there now. And I’m feeling pretty good.
Friday, June 13, 2014
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