
[Note: I'm not done writing about my time on the show, but this is a good starting point. Feel free to ask me anything about it. I'll answer what I can.]
Hello, good person reading this. I’m Jeopardy! Champion Tony Hightower.
That sounds pompous, I know, but I figure I get all of one week or so in which I get to gloat about what happened this last week, and this is it. Besides, it’s rare that my slacker ass gets off the couch for long enough to accomplish anything, and this was kind of a big deal. So, yeah, well, go me.
Couple of things about the time I spent on Jeopardy!.
First off: Alex Trebek is far nicer than he comes off on TV. I don’t know how they do it, but he manages to sound way more snarky and bad-cop on TV than in real life. There’s plenty of banter during the games, and he certainly plays to the audience and isn’t terribly patient to slow players and snippy people, but he really is on your side as a player. He loves watching people do well, and it shows.
For a little while, you can watch the video of my two appearances here and here.
And here are the question-by-question breakdowns of Game 1 and Game 2.
Secondly, and I was surprised how many people asked me this: No, we aren’t given any preparation beforehand. They’re rabid about protecting the contestants from the staff. There were two contestant wranglers we were allowed to talk with, and everyone else was basically completely off limits. Maggie and Glenn were our go-to people for everything, and they were fifty kinds of awesome. I love them both. They made the whole thing go so smoothly, you didn’t realize it was a show watched by 9 million people a day, or that you were playing for kind of large sums of money. I’ve never seen anyone better at their jobs than Maggie Speke and Glenn Kagan. Thanks, guys.
Thirdly, in answer to another inexplicably popular question: no, the buzzers weren’t rigged or otherwise favoring of one contestant over another. I don’t know what it was like before Ken Jennings’ big run in 2004, but the morning of my episodes, everyone got a full two hours to play on the buzzer system, on the actual stage, to get used to how the buzzers feel, and where to look for questions. Alex wasn’t there, but Glenn filled in, and he had a decent approximation of Alex’s cadence and rhythm. I know the pressures of TV change people’s buzzer fingers a little, and that can be enough to screw things up, but everyone had a chance to become proficient on the box.
Fourth: The people I played against were all awesome people. Julia Kozicki, the woman I beat, was great and sweet, and if I had lost to her it wouldn’t have been a shock or a disappointment. Jennifer Bernstein could have beaten either of us if the questions had fallen a little different. And on the second day, I lost to a good player in Will Castaneda, and Captain Dan Kull, well, even the people in the bar I was watching that game with were cheering for him. He was just so god damned good-looking.
Fifth: To clear things up: I wasn’t calling out for Alex’s job, like he thought I did. I was calling out Johnny Gilbert. I know he’s got another 30 years in his career, but still, I wanted to announce my candidacy. Gilbert has the best job of the whole show. He stands up, says “This! Is… Jeopardy!“, introduces the contestants, and then sits down and reads the paper for a half hour while the show plays out. It’s the best gig in show business, and I watched him do it once, and I thought, that’s my speed. (But if Alex decides he doesn’t want to do it anymore and they ask me? I’d be there before the end of the question was out of their mouths. Like I said, every dog gets his day. I’m fully aware that this is mine.)
Do I feel a little wistful about how it ended? Well, sure. I made a betting error that (had I had another 30 seconds or so to clear my mind and think it through) I wouldn’t have made. But honestly, I’m fine with how it panned out. I won on Jeopardy. How fucking cool is that?
Jeopardy! is the best-run television show I’ve ever seen, hands down, and I’m honored to have been a part of it. They have that thing down to a science, and I was allowed to go up there and clown around on their set for a day without anyone telling me to frigging stop it already. I’m grateful to them, and to everyone who came out for the viewing party on Wednesday. That was positively humbling. Now I owe you guys to keep doing better by trivia, both in New York and in Las Vegas, and Chicago, and San Francisco, and Fort Myers, Florida, and wherever you are. This was one of the better weeks of my life.
Thank you.
Oh, and the cocktail blog I was talking about on the show? That’d be Cocktailians, run primarily by my best mate, Sam. Get on it.
December 10th, 2011 by Tony H