jeopardy! and you may ask yourself, where does that highway go?

i know, i know. i’ve been negligent in the whole jeopardy! department. life happened, y’hear?

remember i mentioned that BS gave me a world almanac? i never cracked that baby open in all the months i had it, which were a few, considering the taping didn’t happen until the end of august/beginning of september (to be aired in early december, no less.) i was working, i was exhausted, and i was not interested. pity i couldn’t have changed places with BS. he would have made a smarter contestant than i did.

anyway, BS and i made it out to sunny CA and realized merv griffin (and that clip is a must-see) had heaquartered his show in a sh**hole. hollywood is not exactly the garden spot of america. (at one point, when i was eating lunch with the crew, BS went for a walk outside. he heard gunshots. he came back inside. but i’m getting ahead of the story here…) we stayed elsewhere (north hollywood? who remembers) and crossed over on mulholland drive to get to the studio, which was then located in the middle of downtown hollywood. then, we separated. due to stringent studio rules, we were not allowed to see or talk to each other. off he went, and off i went.

i spent some time with the contestant coordinators and the other contestants, talking about how the day would go. they taped five games per day, two days per week. contestants would be picked at random. if i made it past the third game of the day, i would be fed at the canteen with the rest of the staff. and no one, not a soul, would see or talk to the great and powerful wizard of oz alex trebek until they were playing the game. we had a chance to try out our buzzers and write our names. we even played a few questions just to test out the buzzer. i was heartened by the fact that i was fastest on the buzzer. (yippee. i excel at something for once.)

we practiced our entrances, and i was then slightly disheartened to learn that i had to walk in on the slipperyshiny floor in my hells heels and step up onto a box! all contestants had to be at approximately the same level, and i come up short in the height department. crap. i’m a klutz, and this required concentration and coordination. i went from fear me, fastest buzzer girl to fear me, i may take you out when i try to enter the studio in these shoes in about 2 minutes. flat.

so i settled in to a nervous day. fortunately, i found a nice lady (unlike some of the nervous freaks who just made me sick to my stomach) to sit and chat with named linda, and we settled in in our little, dark, segregated corner of the audience and waited for our names to be called. they weren’t. not for game one. not for game two. not for game three. we ended up eating in the canteen, which i swear was outside, but memory fades and i’m probably delusional on that. i don’t even remember what i ate.

i lost my buddy linda to show four, when she became champion. and then, show five. i was called.

showtime…

3 thoughts on “jeopardy! and you may ask yourself, where does that highway go?

  1. Um, what highway? Ventura Highway? Santa Monica Blvd?

    The show is now taped at Sony’s studio in West Hoilywood, West Washington at Sepulveda. You’ll be pleased to know that canteen food has not improved but has greatly increased in price.

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