(That is not a photo of the author).
Andy Warhol, the Nostradamus of Pittsburgh, correctly predicted that in the future (which is now) everyone would be famous for fifteen minutes.
On Jeopardy, most contestants are famous for about twenty-four minutes, splitting that time with two other contestants, so they really only get about eight minutes. Of those eight minutes, approximately one is devoted solely to telling host Alex Trebek an interesting story about themselves. You have one minute to make North America remember you.
Future contestants, listen up and listen good:
Start doing compelling things now or you’ll have to hire me to write your stories for you. And I ain’t cheap. I’m at least a couple bottom of the board questions, answered correctly in the form of a question.
The “Jeopardy Story” hit its nadir this week with a contestant who told Alex she had gone to a National Park. That’s it.
In 2018, 318 Million people visited National Parks.
Had I been that contestant’s Jeopardy Life Coach, I would have had them embellish the story thusly:
“Well, Alex, I spend weeks in Yellowstone National Park, observing the eruptions of Old Faithful and then recreating the eruptions as fully nude interpretive dance.”
As your newly appointed Jeopardy Life Coach, I’m giving you a few free, introductory hints:
One shot, people. You get one shot. America’s most beloved Canadian game show host is asking you to tell the world about yourself.
Do not use that precious minute to announce that you’re one of 318 million people.
Use it to inspire, to amuse, to get Googled by viewers with too much time on their hands.
Shit, if you play your narrative cards correctly, you could even get an agent.
Do not use your one minute to tell us your cat is cute. Everyone’s cat is cute. My cat is way cuter than yours. There are 94 million cats in the United States. Shut up about your cat.
The most prevalent boring, mundane, cringeworthy Jeopardy story is this theme: The Marriage Proposal.
This story flabbergasts me on a number of levels:
At the opening of the show, Johnny Gilbert introduced you as “An Environmental Law Advocate/Cancer Researcher from Moose Rutting, Maine.”
Tell us about a case you worked on.
Tell us about recent advancements in oncology.
Tell us about Moose rutting, as much as possible in the confines of a family show.
Your proposal? Why in Bob Eubanks’ name would you tell us about your marriage proposal?
I don’t care how romantic it was, you’re fifty-nine years old, you must have done something of note in the thirty-five-year interim!
Besides, if you’re telling the story of how you were proposed to, you were a spectator while a nervous person with ostensibly authentic precious gem jewelry got down on one knee. Not only did that happen to forty people while I typed this sentence, you didn’t do anything but sit there and nod, possibly weep. Obviously, you said yes. But you were a spectator more than a participant.
The only spectator story America wants to hear is that you were a spectator to the Kennedy Assassination and even then you have to jazz it up by saying that you ran into the book depository to help find the alleged gunman.
Or that you played squash in prep school with John Hinckley.
There are really no excuses for having a boring story.
It’s not like Jeopardy producers abduct you in the middle of the night and smuggle you to Culver City duct-taped in the back of a van.
You have time to prepare. If you have been a boring lout your whole life, memorizing encyclopedias but never actively doing anything, call me and I’ll write something for you.
Or take the time between the “Congratulations, Future James Holzhauer email” and the time you fly to California to actually participate in life.
Go spearfishing in the Andes for four-legged carp.
Build a hot air balloon in the likeness of Eddie Vedder.
Open a restaurant just so you can name a sandwich after yourself.
Live a little!
This is the author, center.
Think, people! You’re smart enough to be on Jeopardy, you should be smart enough not to take your Warholian one minute and use it to be conversational Ambien.
If you are mortified by your Jeopardy story and don’t have time to do something worth discussing because you are too busy memorizing the last seven hundred New York Times Sunday Crosswords, I am willing to be your Jeopardy Life Coach.
On second thought, telling TV Land that you memorized seven hundred New York Times Sunday Crosswords would be infinitely more interesting than some of the experiential pablum that contestants have talked about lately.