Putting Myself in Jeopardy

Back when our by now almost four-year-old was brand-new—not even four days old—I went someplace in downtown Atlanta to audition, as it were, for the Jeopardy! game show. (Note to copyeditors: technically the title is rendered with the exclamation point, though I’ll drop that from here on—and incidentally, before I became interested in becoming a contestant, I didn’t even know for sure how to spell “jeapordy.”) The group I was with, which consisted of well over a hundred people, was just one among many taking the quiz in Atlanta and other magnet-type cities. I think they had about a dozen testing sessions scheduled for my own city, and probably a dozen other cities with testing locations during that spring of 2002 as Alex Trebek and Company sought to round up some new blood for the game show.

I ended up being one of two people in my group who passed. I felt pretty good about that, naturally, but I’d also done my homework. There are a lot of web pages out there, for instance, by people who’ve competed on the show and have chosen, for whatever reason, to pass on some of their wisdom. For example, with Jeopardy you should always think in terms of the most obvious, commonly known thing within a given category: if the question is about English writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for instance, it’s more likely to involve William Shakespeare than Ben Jonson or Edmund Spenser. That kind of thing—oh, and you don’t need to waste time saying Shakespeare’s full name, because last names are sufficient, provided of course that you’ve phrased the answer in the form of a question.

So with the help of that research, along with a few quiz books I’d bought in the weeks leading up the test, I managed to get enough answers right that they didn’t disqualify me. Actually, now that I think of it, even getting to take the test was a matter of winning some kind of lottery, because out of the thousands and thousands of people who’d answered their call for new contestants, the show’s producers could only get around to reviewing just a few. Some time earlier, Deidre—who was the one behind this whole thing, as anybody who knows her can imagine—had signed me up for the chance to take the test, but I hadn’t “won.”

Now I had not only won a slot in the testing room, to which people from as far away as North Carolina had traveled, but I had won a chance to go up front, along with the other winner out of that room, and compete in a mock Jeopardy game to test our skills with spoken responses. I thought I did okay, though I’m not sure. At one point there was a question to which the answer (or should I say the answer to which the question) was Babe Ruth, and I got it right, but the tester noted that I didn’t need to bother to say “George Herman Ruth,” as I had done.

***

Beyond the ordinary degree to which we humans are just frail little pieces of dust with a jumble of easily hurt or inflated feelings housed inside, I didn’t gloat too much over my triumph. Some people can juggle, some people (I was never one of them) are good at basketball, some have bodies that others would supposedly die for—and I have this great ability to retain information and call it up when needed. Not that I have anything like the truly photographic memory of such exceptional figures as Truman Capote, whose brain was basically like a Xerox machine.

Here I have to digress for a moment (what? Me? Digress?) to say that Capote was a spectacular movie, and that Philip Seymour Hoffman absolutely deserved the Oscar. Heath Ledger was fabulous in Brokeback Mountain, too, but he’ll have other chances, and D and I have loved PHS from the first time we laid eyes on him as the ultra-jerky snobby rich kid in Scent of a Woman. Don’t let the name Capote fool you, as it did us initially, into thinking that this is just a yawning biopic covering the man’s whole life (though now that I’m reading the book on which it’s based, I can tell you that such a film would have been fascinating); rather, it covers the period from the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, in 1959 until the execution of the killers, and the publication of Capote’s groundbreaking In Cold Blood, six years later.

But now where was I? Oh, yes, Alex, I’ll take “Killers from the Black-and-White Era, Which Made Everything Especially Scary Because the World Seemed So… Well, So Basic Back Then” for eight hundred dollars. The answer: “Of these two, Capote took an interest in the shorter, swarthier one, with whose painful past he developed an almost codependent sense of identification.” The question: “Who were Dick Hickok and Perry Smith?”

So about Jeopardy, the long and the short of it is that I passed the audition, or at least I supposed I did, but I never heard anything more from them. I suspected that this was in part because white males are the least attractive potential contestants, since they comprise the bulk of the pool from which those contestants are drawn. (And I’m not just a white male, but a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Male, who happens to be living in the first era in history when—thankfully—that doesn’t give me an instant advantage over everybody else.) But my theory about the contestant pool may be wrong anyway, because the other person who passed the test was a woman, and last I checked in with her—maybe nine months or a year after the test—they hadn’t called her either.

***

Because I had put myself on Jeopardy’s emailing list back then, I got things periodically that I disposed of without reading them—until I learned about testing scheduled to take place at 8:00 p.m. Eastern this past Tuesday. So I signed up to take the test again.

It was nerve-wracking the way they had it set up on their web site, with usernames and passwords and warnings to turn off pop-up blockers and not to try to log in prior to 7:45. When I did sign in, it spawned a little tiny window with Alex Trebek’s face and a countdown to the test.

This time around, I hadn’t done anything to prepare, but while I was waiting for the countdown, I had to do something. I didn’t dare leave my desk—Deidre had ensured that no kids would be bursting in to show me a purse full of found objects or to get me to sharpen a pencil that had gone dull—but I had to have something to while away those excruciating minutes, so I did the first part of the Mensa workout. You’re supposed to time yourself on that one, and I had never found the opportunity to clear all the decks in order to do the test properly (mainly because to me its purpose is recreation and nothing more), but I managed to while away a few minutes trying to find number patterns and the like. If you peek at the test, I’ll tell you that I answered about half a dozen of the questions, but the one about months and numbers completely stumped me, whereas the ones asking to explain the meaning behind common sayings seemed ridiculously easy.

And then, finally, the clock counted down and the test was on, by which time I’d closed all other windows and focused myself entirely on the questions. Again there were fifty of them, and (again) unlike a regular Jeopardy game, there were fifty different topics, with fifteen seconds allotted for each answer. How did I do? I don’t know, really, because the test just flew by so quickly, though I do recall a few where I felt quite pleased to whip out the answer long before my fifteen seconds were up: The mentally imbalanced Roman emperor whose name meant “little boots”? Caligula. The branch of chemistry dealing with carbon-containing compounds? Organic. And the team Ray Lewis led to Superbowl victory? I said the Ravens, though with what I know about football, I could easily have been wrong; I just remembered an Atlanta scandal involving Lewis from ages ago.

But I know I missed plenty. Afterward, when I was telling Deidre about some of the stumpers, which I remembered better at that moment than I do now, it seemed like she had the answer to everything. It was almost comical: “And another one,” I said, “under the category ‘Ten-Letter Words’: an assembly of lawmakers, based on the French word for talk”: “Parliament,” she shot back, and I did one of those “I coulda had a V-8” gestures.

As for Jeopardy’s policy on letting you know how you did, they’ll only tell you if you passed, and then only after they’ve tabulated the results. Supposing I did pass, they’ve now chosen not to do testing in Atlanta anymore, so I’d have to go down to Orlando (on my own steam, of course), do another test, and then have a chance to compete in a mock game—which would put me back where I was four years ago, a little like a lovelorn highschooler waiting for the phone to ring.

Compared to that, actually working for a living seems easy!

Why We Fight

During World War II, Frank Capra made a series of films for the War Department--as they called the Department of Defense in those much more plainspoken times--called Why We Fight. The purpose was to remind Americans of what was at stake in Europe and the Pacific, and why the sacrifices of their sons and brothers and husbands were not in vain. More recently, in a film by the same name, documentarian Eugene Jarecki provides his own answer to the question implicit in the title. As Capra's answer was in keeping with his times and his war, so is Jarecki's.

Ours is a cynical age, and Jarecki's film fits right in. His vision, which ought to be familiar to anyone reasonably acquainted with the popular culture of the past three or four decades, goes like this: our country is run by corrupt ideologues in the service of greedy corporations, who together collude with a war-loving military to expand the American empire overseas. America's prosperity exists at the expense of other nations, as well as the disadvantaged on these shores, and America, while presenting itself as a beacon of freedom and preserver of the peace, is in fact the world's number-one aggressor and exploiter.

As I say, these are familiar sounds, a refrain heard in one way or another over the years from far and wide. No wonder such a view is a popular one, because it offers ready answers and instantaneous elevation to intellectual esteem in the eyes of others. It's a compelling and, even more important, a comforting way to view the world. And, for some celebrities and pundits, it's a nice way to make a tidy income while feeling very, very good about oneself.

Cynicism provides a razor to cut through the knots of facts, information, opinions, and statistics that circumscribe the modern consciousness. In place of foolish, unquestioning belief, absolute non-belief offers a form of transcendence, catapulting the proponent to a place beyond question or argument. Whatever anyone else asserts, one need only say, "Oh yeah? Prove it!" Or offer a counterexample, no matter how specific, as a means of refuting any attempt at generalization. Or simply chuckle--or sneer. Thus the argument is ended, at least for the cynic of the Internet age, who can walk away content that nothing has been proven.

No wonder, then, that this distinctly modern and American brand of cynicism pervades not only among Hollywood's beautiful minds, few of whom had the time to finish college (or in some cases, even high school), but also in the most distinguished educational institutions, graduates of which go on to become our nation's opinion-makers in media, business, and government. In a world of uncertainty, here is certainty. The war in Iraq, for instance, need not be a complex struggle with mixed and uncertain results; a conflict that will require perhaps decades of perspective to fully analyze and understand; a quest whose reasons have never been sufficiently articulated by the nation's leaders, yet one for which a case can be made. Instead, it can simply be a war for Halliburton, a war for oil, a war to feed the military-industrial complex, a war to satisfy the darkest desires in the heart of George W. Bush.

And that brings me back to the comforting quality of fashionable cynicism, which is perhaps the best reason to subscribe to it. If the United States is the ultimate source of all the world's ills, the world is not so frightening, because the American system allows even its fiercest critics a voice. And if George W. Bush represents the cynosure of evil, then evil is not so powerful after all: in two years, he will again be a private citizen, and we can keep his kind out of Washington with our votes. If the Adolf Hitler of our time is George W. Bush, then we can all rest in the knowledge that the hardest international struggle took place in Frank Capra's time.

Many people would say that the stakes were more clearly defined in the 1940s than in the 2000s, and for this at least I would blame the president. He has never had a great talent for articulating his visions, nor has he done much since 9/11 to rally the citizenry to participate in a struggle against a form of barbarism that exceeds its Nazi or Communist forebears. One wishes for a John F. Kennedy, whose words could turn every aspect of public life into part of a larger adventure involving the entire nation. And even with his rhetorical shortcomings, President Bush has no excuse for his failure to deputize others to the task of providing the public with a rationale for this war and other efforts in the fight against terrorism. In true laissez-faire fashion, he left it up to the American public to figure out why we are fighting. For this shortcoming, I think he should be censured; in fact, I think he should not be reelected.

But if you're wondering "Why We Fight," since nobody else has stepped up to explain, I'll try. Three years ago, Washington sent out a nice, big, engraved invitation to all the world's sociopaths and political serial killers, saying in effect, "If you want to kill Americans, meet us in Iraq." And they have killed more than two thousand; in fact, by the end of the year, they will probably have killed as many as they did on a single day in 2001. Every single death is a loss of a precious life, but it is the life of someone who swore to defend the nation, and it's no accident that no further attacks have occurred on American soil. True, Osama bin Laden remains at large, but one would have to be pretty obtuse to miss the desparation in his latter-day utterances: like a cartoon character, he seems to be saying, "You just wait--we'll really get you next time!" As I recall, in the months leading up to 9/11, he issued no such warning.

More than a century ago, in a letter to Theodore Roosevelt, the U.S. ambassador to Britain characterized our short conflict with Spain as "a splendid little war," but no one in these times would characterize either this war or this president in any such terms. War is anything but splendid, yet sometimes it is necessary. And unless one is content to enjoy the easy cynicism I have described, it is incumbent on us all to live out the words of Kennedy himself, from his inaugural address: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

When There's Nothing Else to Do...

Somewhere around the age of nine or ten, I figured out that reading the Bible was one of the best ways to while away time in church. You could get in trouble for doodling, as I often did, or for acting up in one way or another, as I was especially likely to do when I was sitting in the balcony away from adult authority. But if I was sitting next to my mother and happened to open up the Bible and start reading, what was she really going to say? It was hardly a practice she'd want to discourage. And my Bible-reading wasn't entirely just an act: during those long hours in the sanctuary of Capital City Baptist Church in Manila (well, technically Quezon City), during the early 1970s, I discovered the "good parts" of the Bible. And the parts that interested me then remain the ones that interest me now, with just a few additions of books I couldn't really appreciate at eight or ten years old.

I always loved Genesis and the story of Moses, but it gets very, very boring after about the twentieth chapter of Exodus--almost as though you're going through the wilderness with the Israelites. I've since learned that other parts of the Pentateuch contain some really cool stories, but you have to pull these out from among a lot of mind-numbingly tedious passages.

The books from Joshua to Job have long continued to fascinate. Still, I didn't then know how to find the really intriguing details beneath the surface of Nehemiah's deceptively bland-sounding account, or to appreciate the tenderness and sensitivity in the story of Ruth, which at the time I would have dismissed as being a little too girly for me. By contrast, the story of Esther always appealed to me, especially because I got to play the part of Haman, the bad guy, in a fifth-grade play. There was enough action there to offset any girly elements--a great concern for a ten-year-old boy, who hasn't yet become comfortable with confessing the fact that he actually likes girls, and everything about them, a great deal. As a boy, especially at a very young age, I was all about Samson. In fact, my mother used to con me into eating my vegetables because Samson had done so, or so she alleged, but she went too far when she told me that he had gotten strong by eating sayote (I'm not sure of the spelling here), which was sort of like a light-green hybrid of a turnip, parsnip, and squash.

Here I could go off on a tangent about all the fruits and vegetables from the Philippines that few people in North America have ever even heard of, but if I'm going to digress concerning the country where I lived for nine years as a missionary kid, it would be to mention how funny it is to think now that so few public buildings there at that time were air-conditioned. Instead of using air conditioners, the sanctuary was cooled by cross-drafts through windows low and high, the high ones very high to pull out the heated air that would otherwise have gathered along the ceiling. To my eyes then, as you can imagine, those windows up to God made the interior of the church seem as immense as Westminster Abbey. And after looking up at that high ceiling and becoming vaguely aware of words from the pulpit, I would finally go back to hiding myself in the Bible.

Oh, yeah. Back to the Bible, to quote the name of a show with a cheesy theme song that Mom used to listen to on DZAS, a radio station run by Moody Broadcasting. The six books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles contained an overall story that intrigued me endlessly. I especially loved David and his exploits--which, I became convinced years later when writing an ancient history reference series for middle-school kids, provided the substance for the tales of King Arthur. I identified with David, not just because his name is my middle name, but because he started out as a little runt and went on to do great things.

Despite this love for David, though, I couldn't get into the Psalms then, but of course later (especially during army basic training and immediately thereafter) , I found a great deal there. As for Proverbs, that's what I originally started out this post to discuss--how no book intrigued me more. Same with Ecclesiastes, though the interest there came a little later in life, in part because of reading Jack London's The Sea Wolf at age thirteen. Before I was a teenager, the only passage of "The Preacher," as Wolf Larson described the Solomon of Ecclesiastes, I could really wrap my mind around was the "To everything, there is a season" section, subsequently ingrained in popular culture as a result of adult classic radio stations overplaying the Byrds' "Turn! Turn! Turn!" Song of Solomon, of course, was too much for a ten-year-old, but once I was a little more mature....

As for the Prophets who make up the remainder of the Old Testament, I loved some of them then--especially Daniel--and discovered others later. The story of Jonah, as Herman Melville later helped me to appreciate, actually has even more meaning when you're an adult than it does in childhood. On the other hand, as a ten-year-old Jeremiah and his Lamentations appealed to me more than they do now. Maybe by the time you're in your forties, you're just sick of hearing people complain all the time....

I tended to stick to the Old Testament for the most part then, and when I did venture into the New Testament, I focused primarily on the beginning and the end: the Gospels and Revelation. The Gospels have remained a source of fascination, always yielding new wisdom, and as an adult I have come to appreciate the Book of Acts as a series of dramatic episodes that collectively tell a powerful tale. Then there's Revelation, which I read over and over and over, especially in church. Long before the "Left Behind" phenomenon, before the fiction series or any movies (unless of course you count a cheap, badly acted 16-mm film called Thief in the Night, usually shown during Sunday night services), I went through the whole rapture-obsession thing.

Back then, I'd skip over the letters to the seven churches, but now I think they're the best part of Revelation. But as for the other letters that make up the New Testament, for the most part I never could get into them as a kid, and I never have as an adult either, though I've acquired a lot more fondness for the more "spooky" Epistles (the letters of Peter, Jude, and John) that come toward the end. But considering the fact that the Pauline Epistles contain the blueprint for Christianity as a doctrine, some people would regard this as a major gap in my wisdom.

[As I mentioned above, I started out to write something else, but instead found myself discussing the Bible and my childhood reading of it. Fitting it should go this way, since I began this post during church prime time, 11 to 12 on a Sunday morning. Even in periods of my life when I haven't been inclined to observe the kinds of formalities with which I was raised, I've always tended to regard that as a sacred hour. A shout-out here, by the way, to my cousin Beth, who was also raised as a missionary kid in east Asia.]