Prisoner of Trebekistan: A Decade in Jeopardy! Read Online Free PDF

fire. For an instant, I wondered if I would stop breathing completely.
    That was almost ten years ago now. I’m sitting here writing this in the same exact coffee shop you have in your neighborhood, drinking the same oversweet brownish goo, listening to the same music drowned out by high-speed blenders, and breathing the same aerosol fog of mocha, cleaning products, and sweat. (I do almost all of my writing here, so I don’t have to look at the boxes and garbage bags in the apartment.) Close your eyes, and you can imagine precisely the sensory input I’m experiencing right this second. But even here in this coffee shop, if I close my eyes, I can still feel one particular dab of makeup going up my left nostril almost a decade ago.
    A few feet to my left stood the returning champion. His name was Matt, although with his glasses, perfect hair, and square jaw, he looked a great deal like Clark Kent. Matt appeared smart and confident, as people from high-gravity planets often do. At that moment he was memorizing a set of tiny laser discs that had been placed in his crib when he was jettisoned from a dying world.
    It was late afternoon. I had already spent almost an entire day in the green room. As mentioned, Jeopardy! shoots five games at each taping, and you don’t know when you’ll play until your name is read aloud. I had already felt my adrenaline spike four times, as the players for the first four games were called out. Four times I had leaned forward in my chair, full-body clenching with nerves. Four times I had slumped down with both disappointment and relief, sinking back to watch another hour tick by.
    By the time Susanne Thurber began to call the last names for the day, I was already exhausted. And I still didn’t know if I’d play. An alternate player is kept on hand, usually a local like myself, just in case someone passes out, takes ill, or (this is not hard to imagine now) simply runs away. So my blood pressure surged once again.
    “…Bob Harris!” she said.
    Now there was no turning back. In seconds I was thrust into the makeup chair for a last-minute touch-up to freshen my flesh tone. I paid no attention. I was too busy trying hard not to do anything stupid.
    So, while a trained professional braved the sheen of my Irish skin (my entire family bears a strong resemblance to polished chrome), I silently recited a half-memorized list of 19th Century U.S. Presidents. I was trying to sort out, again, whether Pierce came before Buchanan.
    I have this habit of overthinking during stress, and I had convinced myself that I couldn’t possibly survive the upcoming game without getting this key point resolved: They always ask about presidents. I know the first and last bunches, but there’s this big hole in the middle with just Lincoln’s head sticking up. Buchanan had to be early, but not very early, and Pierce was, too. But who went when? And what about Millard goddam Fillmore…
    To my left, meanwhile, Matt had quietly moved on to reciting the entire K section of the Oxford English Dictionary (second edition) while crushing a lump of coal into a diamond with one fist. I tried not to notice. Jeopardy! requires every neuron you can spare, and I only had one shot at this. The nineteenth century needed my urgent attention.
    Gradually, however, I became aware that my skin stylist had gotten a teeny blob of flesh-colored goo on the inside of my nose. This was itchy, and I didn’t need the distraction. Especially since the issue was not yet sorted out: Was it Buchanan, then Pierce? Or Pierce, then Buchanan?
    That’s when the makeup lady accidentally gooped my nozzle a second time. This dab clung to the edge of my nostril, dangling precariously, attracting a large crowd of curious nerve endings. Three U.S. presidents were being upstaged. This had to stop.
    Being a Midwestern boy of squarish head, the only makeup I’d ever had on my face had rubbed off someone else’s. I wasn’t sure quite what to do. I didn’t