Stop Podcasting Yourself - Bonus Episode - Jeopardy! with Katie Sekelsky

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

Bumper and 3-time Jeopardy! champion Katie Sekelsky gives us the dirt on the answers and questions. Subscribe to all our bonus episodes for $5/month at maximumfun.org/join

You're about to hear a bonus episode of Stop Podcasting Yourself. If you support the show for $5 a month, you may not know that we're now putting out two bonus episodes a month on the Maximum Fun bonus content feed. So check your email for your most recent membership message from Maximum Fun so you can subscribe and not miss any bonus episodes. And if you're someone who hears our messages during MaxFunDrive, but you don't really care about coffee mugs and enamel pins and one bonus episode a year doesn't really do it for you, well, for $5 a month, you can now get two bonus episodes every

month by going to MaximumFun.org slash join. Now, here you go. All right. Well, Graham, are you ready to go? Yep. All right, so you go. All right. Well, Graham, are you ready to go? Yep. All right, so we can get going anytime. Whenever you're ready, I am also ready. And I'm,

I told you I'm ready, I guess. Did I tell you? Or is that off air? No, you told me, but I just want you to know that I'm also ready to start. And I get that. Don't ever ask me if I'm ready. I am. Who's that?

Who's that? Yeah. Who is that? It's that's our guest for today on this bonus bonus episode. It's Katie Sikelski. Did I say your name right? You did. Yeah.

Thank you. No, thank you. This is a fun. This is fun. It's a, we don't ever have, or we never have had a bumper,

a fan of the show on the show have we I guess Alison Dorr yeah sure John Cullen sure but someone that's not in the biz but you're partially in the biz Katie what biz are you in um

remembering trivia factoids on television Katie was on Jeopardy Katie won three times remembering trivia factoids on television. Katie was on Jeopardy. Katie won three times on Jeopardy. I won three times. That's awesome. Katie was on Jeopardy four times, right? That's how it works, yeah.

That's how it works. Then they kicked me off because I didn't know enough. I want to know everything about the process. Absolutely everything. Starting with the online. Where are you, by the way, where do you live? I'm in Kent, Ohio. Kent, Ohio.

Home of Kent State University? Home of Kent State University. I've lived here. Before I lived here, I lived in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I have a thing for living in towns most known for horrific disasters. Johnstown flood, Kent State massacre. Yeah, but we never would have gotten Devo without the university. Is that right?

So they Jeopardy, the Jeopardy wagon came to town. They said, we'll take the three smartest people. Yeah. I said, I volunteer as tribute. So like,

from what I've gathered that you have to take a home test where you pee on a stick if it if the blue question mark shows up uh it actually means it means you're in um you take a an internet test right internet test yes so to find out which friend you are how many times did you take the internet test uh one gazillion dave um no so they started doing the online test and i believe it was 2006 And you can take it once a year. And I took it every year. And they do not tell you if you pass or how many you need to get to pass. I am sure in the early years, I was not passing because I didn't know as much in 2006.

I'm pretty sure I passed it a few times. Is it true that if you fail the test they put you on wheel of fortune um dude so is there like an online community of people who are like i took the test this many times and i i uh like no days and i i'm sure i passed it but why aren't they calling me oh boy yes uh i mean it is known that uh you know that because if you pass the test the next step um at least pre uh pre-pandemic is an in-person uh test and audition and there's only so many people that they can handle seeing in person before they just kill themselves uh no i um so you have to travel to where they are to do this interview they travel around well

they used to travel around the country now it's all zoom auditions but um at the time yeah so you know however hundreds of thousands of people take the test and some percentage of them pass it but then there's only so many people that they can actually get to for the auditions um so i got my first audition in 2019. Okay. Oh, this was pre-pandy. Pre-pandy.

I had to travel all the way to Columbus, Ohio, like two hours away. To do the test? To do the in-person auditions. So at that point, they, they give you a written test that is very similar to the online test, except they can watch you to make sure you don't have a room full of friends and family shouting out the answers for you. Yes, that's how I would do it.

That's exactly how I would do it. And then they do a mock game in a hotel conference room to make sure, I mean, not to make sure, just to see what your to see, to see what your personality is, to see if you can answer. Has anyone ever, uh, been denied for having too much personality? Almost. There are certain people on it. When you see,

when they show the three people at the beginning of the episode, that'll, they'll do a wacky point at the camera. I did. I did the thumbs up every, every time. Thumbs up works. That's, every time thumbs up works that's that's uh that's approachable and uh it's nice low-key not overboard

um so you go uh you go into a conference room are there are the other people all lined up in a lobby or something yeah and uh just you know, from these online communities referenced earlier, I kind of knew that they start watching you as soon as you enter the building, basically. I mean, they don't have, like, you know, security cameras set up specifically for Jeopardy. She keeps going to the bathroom every two weeks. We do have a bathroom at the set, but we do need to be able to stay on the air for about 10. We could give her a bucket. we do need to be able to stay on the air for about 10.

We could give her a bucket. But yeah, they just want to, you know, make sure you're like a friendly person that, you know, knows how to act in public, I guess. Yeah.

You know, you don't get too nervous doing the mock. If you're too nervous to function, doing the mock game, you're probably not going to do well on a TV set. Were you more nervous on Jey or uh meeting us i mean meeting you because there's there's uh there's no pressure to be interesting on jeopardy that's true yeah and then okay so you go is there somebody playing the host on this in this conference room i mean, kind of. It's one of the contestant

coordinators. They're not doing the full host shtick. They're just reading the questions and asking you about yourself and your interesting They're actually reading the answers. Oh my god, you got me. I was warned. I was warned this was a gotcha journalism program.

There you go, we gotcha. I'm storming off right now you can't see me but i i'm storming off and that's you're in the hot seat she's getting further away from the microphone yeah she's whisper yelling at her how many people do you think were there um in my group maybe like 30 some uh but i i there were multiple sessions over the course of a couple days just in columbus so and was there any indication how many from those 30 would make it through no because i don't i don't have a quota like i don't think they have to like commit to having so many people from the the greater ohio area on the show. They should, though, to represent Ohio.

That makes a diverse cast. They should do it like the Electoral College, where you get as many contestants as your House and Senate seats combined. Register to be on Jeopardy from Ohio, so your vote counts more. And I think, now, I don't know if this is true, but I picked up on it during like the thick of the pandemic. Every contestant had to be. They were all from California.

They were. So they're all surfers. Yeah. And they were they would say originally from. Yeah, that's a big clue that they definitely live in San Diego. They are sick of saying san diego yeah is that where tapes is in san diego no i i just picked a california city uh it's in culver city culver city right next to wheel of fortune so i don't know if you know anything

about wheel of fortune but why do they say goodbye from a different state every time they say goodbye on the show? Oh, do they? Yeah. I've never noticed that. They change the format up a lot more in Wheel of Fortune. Like, they have, like, a lot more theme weeks. Yes. And, like, couples.

They'll have couples a lot. Also, I feel like you can win so much more money on you don't get to come back if you win wheel of fortune but you can win so much more money without being smart yes yeah exactly because all you have to do is like make that money up until there's only one letter left and then you solve and bada boom yeah the people get greedy yeah uh do you remember when they used to um katie take it take a take a walk well now when you you get to the bonus round they they give you rst lne oh right yeah uh but that's because before that people would just choose those letters oh that they were sure that that would have been like those were the most common ones and so they were just like uh you know just those are those are the five yeah and uh

you know not to body shame anybody but pat sajak has a giant head like one of the biggest heads in the biz i've looked at pictures of him from years ago and his head's only somehow gotten bigger or maybe his body got smaller but he's got quite a melon on those shoulders you didn't get a glimpse of him yeah you didn't see him oh i did not know uh uh however due to uh due to the the old pandy uh instead of the cramped green room uh our green room was the audience of the wheel of fortune set oh nice we got to hang out there all day who what uh of the two shows who has the bigger audience like in the studio um probably about the same it feels like the same number of seats i'm estimating feels like this the wheel of fortune studio is so much bigger. I would say not so much.

And the wheel itself, surprisingly small. Really? Yeah. Does it ever happen during the final Jeopardy that you guys are all being quiet, but you can hear the Wheel of Fortune going on in the background? Thinking, oh, they're having so much more fun. Everybody's clapping up a storm they get like people cheer for every letter yeah that's true they love it here's it so uh

as i recall the times in jeopardy when they cheer are when they're at the very beginning when they're going to commercial um if someone gets a double or gets a daily double right and if someone runs the category yes exactly correct and did you run any categories i did not did you come close um that's a good question i don't know maybe i was one of those people that jumped around a lot so i wasn't keeping track of how many times i uh you know how many of each of each category i got my favorite is when somebody picks a category and then they get the first question it's so hard that they switch to another category that's that's my favorite oh i thought this was something else this is about the old testament of the bible

uh yeah cars and bars for 200 places yeah so you you make it on the show uh you fly out are you do you fly out on your own dime i do and uh there was actually a a big step uh in between uh point a of the columbus audition and point b which was uh ye old pandemic because i was supposed to be on a year ago. Oh yeah. Of course I got, I got called to be on the show the first week of March, 2020, which is the worst week to be called for literally anything. So why, what happened? Oh, just, just, just some things. Um, ups and downs, peaks and valleys um so uh do they tell you what

your score is ever or you just left in the lurch about how well you scored oh for the tryouts for the tryouts yeah for the trials yeah no they they never they never share however um you know the internet being what it is uh people have like collaborated to figure out that 35 out of 50 is probably the passing score. And people will like take the online test and then post all the questions that they remember answering and, you know, try to, you know, collaborate to so people can try to figure out whether or not they passed. Real brainiac kind of stuff yeah for the online test at the audition at the audition i don't think there's as much pressure to pass as there is to you know just make it clear that you weren't cheating when you took the online test i took the online test and after i was done i thought i was like i think i got three questions graham i i i'm sorry that i have to be the one to break the news

but you probably didn't pass sorry no i know, I know for sure. Cause halfway through, I was like, I don't know any of these answers, uh, you know, uh, Bible thing or this date in American history. Yeah.

That's all like the left side of the board. I hate that. Although like it's all, you know, civil war and old Testament. Give me the right side. Give me those potent potables and before and afters. And just like,

yeah, yeah. The rhyme time, all that and just like. Yeah. Yeah. The rhyme time, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Rhymes with Al. Dog breeds. That whole category of dog breeds. That was the best.

What, so you, you get the pandemic is going on and at the end, when do they tell you you were having non Californians come in? Yeah. at the end when did they tell you you were having non-californians come in yeah so so they called said can you be on the show um and then they called back a week later and said hey sorry um pandemic happened uh and then i didn't hear anything for like a year no at one point they said like hey we're taping but we're not we're not flying people in yet. Did you keep texting them, like, you up? Did I move to California? Would that help? I know people who did that. It did not work out for them, yes.

Oh, because people did start getting dumber as the pool kind of thinned. I noticed that they were getting more and more wrong um so they must have been relieved to have people like you flying in thank you um yeah so then uh then eventually they're like all right uh you know come out in march when yeah i still wasn't still wasn't vaccinated but uh i wasn't vaccinated. I wasn't flying. Terrifying. Because I hadn't been vaccinated yet.

Numbers were down, so it wasn't that bad. In LA, everything was actually wonderful and very protective of COVID and everyone was wearing their masks. Chicago O'Hare Airport and the Akron Canton Airport, not so compliant. Well, in Chicago, they got to, you know, in Chicago,

they got to eat all that kielbasa or whatever. Can't wear this mask under my Blues Brothers hat. But they did. I had to get COVID tested before I got on the plane because of Jeopardy rules and tested at the studio before we actually taped too. Oh, wow.

I at least knew I didn't have COVID. And did you have to like wear a mask right up until they started taping kind of thing? Yep. Yeah. Anytime we were inside, we had to have a mask unless we were at the podium. Okay.

The only unmasked time. Now they've created for this pandemic, like three podiums that are apart it did from one another now that i've seen that it looks so much better than like if i saw three people on the regular things they'd be like oh they're too close together they can touch each other if they want yeah i think they even switched they might have even switched when they went to hd when the screen got wider yeah and now they just went even further yeah i think it's nice to have your own little space to you know put a magazine bottle of water my favorite part of the podiums is so i

knew that they adjusted for height so that you know if you've got you got a real short oh and a real tall oh uh they uh they even it. I assume they just put boxes back there. But there's like a pneumatic riser behind the podium. What? If you're short, it makes you taller. Love it. It was very, very awkward. You get to control that?

Because they didn't warn me about it. I just started getting taller while we were getting ready to go on. Oh, someone else controls it? Someone else controls it, yeah. They're not like, okay, you get two things to hold. In your right hand, your buzzer. In your left hand is the up and down. We beg you not to use the one in your right hand.

Because it ruins every time. Ruins the shot. Did you get to meet who you were competing against backstage? Or was it a crowd of people yeah we were so they taped five episodes in a day uh what really oh yeah yeah yeah they do a monday through friday um each day of recording wow same audience throughout all well no audience because of covid uh but i think normally uh i keep bringing up the stupid pandemic i thought we were done with it i apologize somebody's obsessed somebody's driving past pandemics house that's how pandemics do it

um the uh so you knew your point well you guess you didn't or you did did you know your opponents i mean i knew that they were going to be among the people uh that were there for the day uh but they you didn't know what episode you were going to be on until they drew your name unless you were the returning champion and i was on the friday episode as my first episode so i was just you know when they called the last two names for the thursday episode i was like okay well there's only one other guy here so i guess he's my my opponent along with whoever wins right you so they you sat there for the first day and watched four other games yes yeah we were led to the audience and then you um and then you got so yeah who was your host uh for the first episode it was by mb

alec really yes yeah i'm way behind on jeopardopardy, so it's still Ken Jennings time. I'm way behind. I'm still. Alex Trebek has a mustache. He went back and forth. He went back and forth. Yeah. R.I.P.

Oh, yeah. That was another thing. I was supposed to be on with Alex, then Andy. But Mayim Bialik, she seems like a nice uh woman yeah no she she was really cool was she cast because she was on big bang theory and they think she's a real but i guess in real life she is like a point yeah she's a literal neuroscientist wow that shows you how boring neuroscientist is that she was like, I want to be on the big bang theory. So that she was your first host.

And then, so you won your first day and then did you have a different host? Did. So you, how many weeks a year do they shoot? Do they just, or like, do they do five in a week?

Do they do 25 episodes and then take a month off? Uh, I think they, they usually do, um, five episodes in a day and they tape two days a week. So, Oh,

okay. Okay. Yeah. Uh, however, if I'm sorry, go ahead. No,

no, go ahead. I was the last, uh, since I was the last day of my NB Alec, that was the last day of taping for that week. So I flew home and then flew back one week later to tape the rest of the episodes. Oh.

Oh, they must have paid for that. They did pay the second time, yeah. Because then they were like, well, we can't, she can't just not come back. Yeah, and also we're not putting her up in a fancy hotel for an entire week. So you go home and then we'll figure it out from there. So who hosted the next week? Savannah Guthrie from the Today Show. From the Today Show.

Jenna Von Oye, also from Blossom. It's Blossom Month here on Jeopardy. Joey Lawrence. Joey Lawrence, yeah. Arguably the dumbest character ever on TV. jay lawrence yeah arguably the dumbest character ever on tv but like wasn't there a week or something that dr oz was the host uh there was and that was actually i he was on in the like when i was done taping my episode of jeopardy i went back to the hotel and then watched dr oz that was oh man i'd be so pissed if he was my host i yeah was he

wearing scrubs was he wearing scrubs like he does on his own dumb show? That would have been great. Scrubs and a tie. And the gloves on, holding someone's colon. His whole show is, okay, this is how much fat looks like. You know, this person has 10 bricks, and then he brings out bricks on a trolley that are like chubby bricks. A frappuccino is actually not healthy a lot of you know you think it is you think because it's got chino on the end of it then it's fine

um so okay so and so you go for you're there for do you have to bring like changes of clothes to pretend it's different days you do yeah uh and you know if you're just going in to pretend that you're going to win because most people don't but you still have to bring three changes of clothes right right yeah what if you do what if you win the whole week do you have to like mix and match tops people end up doing that pretty much uh i mean it didn't happen during my week uh there's a lot of men with zip-up sweaters that then have a sports coat over it i recognize the zip-up sweater yeah that happens a lot i i i wore the same blazer uh three of my my four episodes i had other things but i also had a rotating collection of bolo ties that i wore those

nice tell me more about uh bolo ties are you wearing a bolo tie now those are earbuds no no yeah earbuds I do I I've got one I've got one here I could put on but it's with a t-shirt uh so I don't know maybe a year ago I just thought it would be kind of cool to get a bolo tie and then i did and then i didn't stop there baby i had a small collection of bolo ties with me uh to change in and out of on the job so can you only wear a bolo tie with a collared shirt or do you freestyle over a t-shirt kind of thing i mean in in casual you know civilian life i i will wear uh i will wear a bolo with a t-shirt. But on the show, I stuck with the button-ups. Is that going to be your signature thing, bolo tie?

I think it is. It's already part of my Twitter bio, so I think I'm stuck with it. Was there any... Proposals from lesbians online? Yes, there were. Oh, really? And then disappointment when I mentioned the husband.

Sorry, ladies. Was there any online brouhaha? Did Bolo Tai trend on Twitter? Oh, Dave. Bolo Tai did not trend on Twitter, but I'll tell you what did, which is a spoiler alert for both of you

since I realize you're not caught up yet. I was the reason Osmosis Jones was trending on Twitter on my last episode. The animated Chris Rock video? Yes, because it was my last game. It was Final Jeopardy. all i needed to do was get the question get the answer no wait no get the question correct i'm out i'm out of practice here uh and the category was movie characters they described actually you know what i'm just i'm

just going to give you guys the clue if you haven't watched it yet and see if you can figure it out. I bet it's osmosis, Joan. Okay, so it's movie characters. The original name of this character was going to be Lunar Larry, but they ended up changing it to reference a real-life person.

reference a real life person and I could not come up with the correct response yes it was Dave yes it was uh however instead of thinking of real life characters that might be might be or real life people that might you know have a have a character named after them I was like Lunar Larry that sounds like an astronaut let me try to think of kids it sounds like a kids movie let me try to think of kids movies set in space and then I couldn't think

of anything but WALL-E which I knew wasn't right and then in the last five seconds I thought to myself what's the silliest character name that I can come up with in these five seconds I I apparently did not make it clear enough that i knew it was a joke answer and yeah did not intend for that to be right um i mean of course people on the internet are idiots so i still got a lot of people being like how did you confuse those two i didn't't. I didn't. I won Jeopardy three times. I'm not stupid. I thought it was funny.

I realize that Jeopardy is not about being funny, so you didn't know that I was trying for that, but I was. I was, sir. Osmosis Jones. Imagine if that had been the answer. I confused Savannah Guthrie because she had no idea who Osmosis Jones was. Well, then why is she hosting the show she yeah come on she doesn't know the basics do you feel like the guest hosts are there uh auditioning or is it just

like a fun week i i think there's there's some some in each column and i think they have mostly made it clear in interviews outside of the set who is in what column. Savannah Guthrie basically just said she thought she thought it would be fun to try for a week, whereas Mayim Bialik said that she would love to have the job. So how are they going to string these people along for? I know. I mean, in a normal season, they be starting uh taping for the next season in the next few weeks so I I imagine they've decided but they have not announced it yet ah who do you think who's your favorite I actually I I liked uh Buzzy Cohen who was a a previous Jeopardy star who hosted the tournament of champions yeah he's uh he's like a he's kind of silly yeah yeah he's got he's got

like a clark big glasses yeah yeah i know i remember that guy who was the guy who used to you said you jumped from category to category who was like the first person who did it i mean back back in the 80s or 90s there was a guy named chuck forest uh who did that and it was actually that that move is actually referred to as the forest bounce now well inside of baseball i see so if you just jump from category to category that's i even forgot the guy's name all of a sudden it's uh uh yeah it's very a viewer, it's very jarring. Because I don't remember, like, I don't remember when they announced the six categories at the beginning of the round. I don't remember any of them.

And it takes me like one or two clues for me to be like, oh, we're talking about, okay, we're talking about the Olympics. Yeah, or like every answer starts with B-A-R. Yeah, yeah, yeah you what was your favorite category in your four days um dog breeds for sure i don't know that i got the most right in that one i was just excited to get a dog breed category yeah did you ever get one of those where they do like a run of categories that are all related like oh see ya later alligator i kind of think i i don't know if there were any entire boards like that there was definitely in my first game a combo a category called ghost and then a category called busters nice what the hell was in the category Busters? The only one I recall was the Remington Sculpture Bronco Buster.

I do not remember. I think there's maybe something about like Union Busting somewhere in there. Oh, yeah. Peanut Buster Parfait. And then, of course, Ghostbusters is the Daily Double. the ghost category had one of my favorites because uh early on in my uh year-long wait to to get on i was like you know what i'm just going to listen to informational educational podcasts i'm going to get all this information in my brain uh and then i quickly gave up and i'm like ah screw that i'm just gonna do my normal comedy podcasts. And I ended up getting a question right

or an answer right. No, wait, question right. Question right. Good Lord. You had it the first time. Can you say you were on Jeopardy? Is that correct? Or response.

How about that? That's actually the correct term here. A response correct in the ghost category from something that was mentioned on the stay of podcast so nice i got to send paul and janie uh an email thanking them for letting me win not for helping me win two thousand dollars so day one you go in there uh it's not it's at miambiolac your first day yeah so first day you go in you're uh you're playing the game is like how were you ahead the whole time or did you you know kind of come up

and come down yeah so the the first thing i realized uh was that um i was really good at ringing in first on the buzzer, which was nice, except I was just trying to ring in on every answer, whether or not I knew it. Yeah. And so they do have our scores on a screen the whole time that we can glance over and see, and I was purposely ignoring it.

And in actually both of my first two games, I was just like ringing in with total guesses, many of which were extremely wrong. And then at some point in the first round, I glance over, think, shit, I'm negative a lot. I need to stop guessing. And then I did stop guessing. And it worked out for me, that strategy.

Actually, in the end of both of the first two games uh i would not have won if i was in first place going into final because there's a whole betting wager strategy on the final jeopardy clue where if you're in first place you want to bet big so that second place can't overtake you but if you're in second place you can just bet small and hope that first place doesn't get it uh and that worked out for me both the first two games i didn't get final jeopardy but neither did the first place person so what was the first final jeopardy um it wasn't it wasn't as fun as the buzz lightyear one it was chris rock movies it was uh geography terms uh And I don't know. There was just like the dictionary definition of enclave and I didn't get it.

The correct response was enclave. What is enclave? Yeah. What is an enclave? Please illuminate. Like Lesotho. Yes. The Vatican city was,

was referenced in the clue, but they went so hard on the, the referencing the vatican uh that i guessed the c s e e because it's also called the holy c um what uh graham do you know what an exclave is no i don't know i'm not even sure what an enclave is an enclave is a country that is surrounded by another country oh okay like fully by one other country and then an exclave is like point roberts it's part of a country that's not oh that's yeah yeah okay uh because i've been hearing a lot about x that exclave in the news lately right um so you got that one wrong but you still bet

strategically enough that you got through yeah and i i had done a lot of uh studying up on wager theory so i was prepared what's um tell us more about weight yeah tell us you actually want to know because it's very boring here's a question do you get a calculator no you get an index card and a sharpie okay so you can kind but you you all right you get to figure out what you're gonna wager how much time do you have you have the whole commercial break more or less and it's not like a there's not a countdown it's just do it and then is it true that during the um during final jeopardy in when you're in studio you actually get to hear the song with the lyrics yes it goes uh suicide is painless

hey there contestant time to bid hope you don't bid too much money if you get it wrong so it's what about the little screen that you have to write on like how do they get your name on the front and your wager on the front of the podium do you have a little screen that you write on it's a little device called a stylus uh tell me more it's uh it's attached by a wire just like you're signing your name on a credit card machine in the 90s were you ever worried they were going to steal your identity

no but I did I do pride myself in the fact that I spent the most time writing my name of all the contestants every time I was on there because I was I was you know they were about to announce me as a graphic designer so I had to uh I had to put art on the eye was there ever a question because

sometimes they they do this like they introduce somebody as a geologist and then there's a rock question and then they say like you better get this or if you didn't get this you wouldn't be able to go home was there anything like that uh not directed towards me i wasn't really paying attention to uh the occupations of of everyone but uh no no design categories unfortunately yes the category did you ever do that thing did you ever do that thing where you answer a question with just the the last name and you're like who is roosevelt yeah who is woolery uh i i mean i i i definitely intended to always do that because you never know when you're going to accidentally like speak wrong and say the wrong person's first name uh so every every time i got a chance i i who is jones that actually uh i believe it was actually ken jennings very first episode uh the his very first

final jeopardy if it had gone a different way he would not be the ken jennings we know today uh just wrote who is j. And they actually like, there was like a debate on whether or not they could accept it. But. Oh yeah. Do you ever see the judges? Because sometimes they'll have a, like it'll come back from commercial and there'll be a scoring change.

Do you see the like judges in the corner of your eye panicking, pulling out a dictionary? Yeah. So they actually. Holding their gavel up in the air. If they need to make a change, they actually just pause the game if they need to make a change they actually just pause the game and they make us turn around go in the corner you guys i mean according to them

it's because while the the judges are in the process of reviewing it is plausible that a uh an as of yet unseen clue will show up on the board accidentally. Somehow I don't really know how that would happen, but they, they make us turn around so we can't see anything. We're not supposed to. Did you get a, did you get a daily double?

I did. I got a few. Did you do a true? No, I only, I don't, I didn't get any, I don't think I got any in the first round.

If I got it in the first round, I think I would have done True Daily Double no matter what. In the second round, there was too much money to lose. What were you at? How much are we talking in the second round? I do not recall. Your three-day total

was $35,000 something? Yeah. Plus $2,000 for second place on the last game all right what's the don't get to keep your second place money you don't get to keep your second place money hmm and why would they why would they dangle that in front of your face and then take it away it's uh it's so that you actually try to wager to win and make it interesting otherwise you're just gonna have like a lot of people betting zero because they are happy with what they've got they're like oh i don't need to win i'll just i'll just take this this 13 000 please thank you yeah and then once

once the final jeopardy like once the winners reveal the other two people's uh totals get erased and then you just see like a Benalyn or something. Backstage, were there pictures? Because a lot of times in TV studios, they'll have pictures of famous people who have been on the show. Were there photos of all the famous contestants? I think there were. We didn't have a whole lot of time to lounge the, the hallways because they were constantly making sure we were all six feet apart from each other. Oh yeah.

Right. But there, there was the most disconcerting thing was walking into the studio and there was just a life-size cardboard cutout of Alex Trebek. And like at first glance looked real. And then I remembered he is not alive. So I certainly hope it's not uh yeah you're certainly a life-size cardboard cut out determines my death size cardboard cut out

that's the thing um do uh did you uh when i watch the show i one thing i find so frustrating is when they don't finish all the clues if there's still some left on the board. Yeah. Because I'm like, oh, someone's story went long or they had to go to a video from the clue crew. Yeah, did you get to meet the clue crew? Did you get to meet the clue crew? Oh, I did, actually. Before each day's games we played

a warm up game to get used to like the buzzers and everything and it was hosted by Jimmy from the Clue Crew Sarah from the Clue Crew was the substitute for the voiceover master Johnny Gilbert who still does the voiceovers but he records

from home now so it's so funny that because like Saturday Night Live they would at least have I guess Jenny Gilbert says your contestants and then says the names right yeah so I love it that he has to be there all day to

say like a sentence it would be great if he had to go in every day and just be like promotional consideration provided by and then a 10 second ad for something to answer what i think was your question dave uh yeah we cleared the board all four games oh yes no missing clues do you hate it when you don't get all the clues too yeah it messes up my i mean before i was on i was like constantly keeping my own score and i would throw off the whole thing if there were what uh do you have you been so we did you watch it every night

your whole life much i mean i wouldn't necessarily i wouldn't cancel plans in order to stay home and watch jeopardy but if i was home at 7 30 i was watching every night you don't and you wouldn't record it or maybe you did i don't i i'm still in the whatever i was gonna say still in the 20th century but if i was then i would have a vcr to tape so i'm not even there um do you still watch it yeah okay you're not like you didn't have it like i needed to cross this off my list and then now i just don't have the thrill anymore. No, I need to, I need to root against all the other players so that I can get onto the tournament champions.

There's no chance of. But are you in the running for that? There has been three game winners on there before, but you have to, you pretty much have to be a three game winner who won a very large sum of money. And compared to other three day winners, I won a very large sum of money and compared to other three-day winners i won a very small sum of money which i'm still very happy with because sometimes alex or

ken jennings does it too where they come out at the beginning and they kind of shame somebody that's from the day before and they're like not a big win not a big win yesterday for so and so let's see if you can do better i feel like uh the the guest hosts i don't think we're aware enough of what is considered a big win in jeopardy you know you can make a lot more over on wheel of fortune maybe that'll be next and i'll come on and and you can shit on me about wheel of fortune yeah yeah yeah and then you by then it may not be hosted by pat's ajak it might be uh joey lawrence like you said before do you have any was jeopardy it for you do you have any like other game show goals i mean it it's kind well i don't want to say it's addictive because i

have done it once but uh it was very fun uh i i don't know that anything will will ever beat that experience of like getting to do the number one my number one favorite game show is my first game show but uh yeah i'm probably gonna try to get on some other probably probably stick to trivia based what other ones are there uh we got the the chase uh which is a British original, but it's been, not rebooted, but shipped over to America. On a ship. There's Millionaire. Yeah, every five years or so, they bring back Millionaire again. I don't think it's currently running, but it will again.

Hosted by Meredith Vieira at one point. And also, maybe, who else? Strahan did it. Wasn't Jimmy... Jimmy Kimmel was doing a primetime one. Yeah, I think he maybe did the celebrity version. Oh, right. Why when celebrities are on Jeopardy, do they not get to keep the money? Because some of the people aren't

that big that they wouldn't want $40,000. So you can buy more dinosaur skulls? I feel like it's weird. People always thought Alex Trebek was so smart. And even though he didn't write these questions,

he doesn't have to know the answer. It's all in front of him. No one ever thought Regis was smart. No, that's true. But, you know, it's one of those things Alex doesn't talk about where he went to dinner at the top of the show. Where Regis and me enjoy. We had a lot of fun.

There was a jazz quartet. Yeah, you're right. Nobody thought Regis was smart. He was fun, though. He was a good host. Oh, yeah. Did you, before you started, did you like practice? Did you practice buzzing in when you would watch the show?

Did you have like a little clicker? I did. I actually don't have it within arm's reach. Not that this is a video podcast, but I have a USB buzzer that there's a guy named Fritz Holznagel who has built a buzzer app. named fritz holznagel who uh has built a buzzer app where you can time your reaction time with this usb buzzer oh okay based on like voice prompts uh so i actually uh use that quite a bit to and i realize this is the nerdiest thing possible uh but i did it to decide you know if i was going to buzz it if i was going to be a thumb buzzer or an index finger buzzer right hand holding it up resting it on the podium

because sometimes you see somebody who's really panicked and they're pressing that thing like like crazy and they it's is there like a timing thing that can you hit it too early and it doesn't count yeah so if you uh ring in before the clue is finished being read she coughed into her arm everybody she coughed into her arm, everybody. She coughed into her arm, Dracula style. Even though I am alone in this room. If you ring in too early before the clue is finished being read,

you're locked out for a quarter second. And they actually tell you once you start buzzing in, just keep pressing it because if you got locked out you want to be the first person in when you get unlocked so if you see people mashing the button it is because we're instructed to do that and like because the big thing on jeopardy when i'm watching it is i think i get a lot of clues but not in the right amount of time well that's what you were buzzing in and then just guessing

that i was getting in first and i wanted to do it as many times as possible without considering or in some cases without reading to the end of the clue because there was at least one where uh i i rang in with a baseball player from like the entire like wrong half century because I was like, okay, I'm going to say this guy's name and I'm going to ring in. And then I ignored the fact that they mentioned the year 2004. And it's not, it's not going to repeat the names,

but yeah. And you did something from the later half of the 21st century? I might as well have said Ty Cobb, honestly. Did you do any, did you ever write anything fun next to a clue or next to your name? Like, hi, you know, whoever. They also instruct you now,

no personal messages. Oh, really? I mean, I snuck that, I snuck that, my personal message for Osmosis Jones in there. Yeah, happy birthday, Osmosis. Go to there yeah happy birthday go to bed i mean sometimes people still do it if they know they've lost uh because what are they going to penalize them for yeah that's true but yeah would they take money away if you did one i mean no they i think they threaten

to mark it wrong even if you also have the right answer there i've never seen that actually happen oh no one's gonna do that think of the uproar did you ever an episode where uh one person didn't make it into final jeopardy uh no no everyone was in the positive going into the that's good that's good yeah it's always sad when it's when one person is missing i guess if two people were missing then you just automatically win right yeah i feel like i feel like that's maybe happened once or twice but i can't say for certain yeah but they still make you go through the motions of answering i mean i think just to see like you know here's your sharpie and your your note card i mean if it's a category you absolutely love you can still you know double your money yeah what would be your dream category other than dog

breeds i mean depends on like how how specific we want to get but yeah for me it would be potpourri there was a there was a category called uh just just called what was it i don't know there was a logo themed category last night and i knew all five so oh yeah logo category or maybe like 20th century art yeah what i don't even know what would be a logo mcdonald's i guess the nike swoosh bedx yeah there you go you guys know some logos yeah and then so were you like just alone this whole time or did your hubby go with you i went by myself since there there was no uh no one allowed in the studio but right i actually i i that kind of made me feel less nervous and you know got to to play my my warm-up music without being self-conscious about anyone

else being in the hotel yeah you only get one shot one opportunity opportunity. I did see, I saw one friend out in LA who delivered some food. What was your warmup music? I mean, it's kind of, it was kind of all over the place. Like, yeah. So like it started out with, you know, some, some higher energy, you know, anything from Little Richard to Andrew WK. And then it kind of went into some instrumental RJD2 uh like to get my my mind focused towards the end did you listen to the same mix before you came on the show oh I should have

do you do pub trivia and stuff yeah yeah um were you have you have they done it is it happening in the pandemic um it i mean there's been a lot of online things uh and i've i've joined like there's a zoom trivia league that i do that's very fun um do you get a lot of like uh people you know congratulating you from the from those things yeah uh i mean specifically this is the zoom trivia thing uh i feel like up until i was on jeopardy i might have been in the minority of people that are that entrenched in trivia that you join a Zoom trivia league. Most people have been on game shows or gotten really close. OK, yeah. Do you keep in touch with the contestants that lost because of you?

I do. Actually, I messaged one of them over the weekend because I was recognized out on the street by an old guy who, after he determined the reason he knew me was from Jeopardy, asked if I saw that episode where the guy told the story about cow farts.

And I said, yes! I was standing right next to him and the guy told me that he had never written a complaint letter to Jeopardy before but he was so offended that the phrase cow farts was on television I'm all for farts I'm all for cows what a cow does in its own home is none of my business but I just don't want to see it on TV. He told me that he's always heard, he's always lived by the rule that you shouldn't say anything that would offend, or that you couldn't say in front of a room of grandmothers or a room of ministers. And I feel like both grandmothers and ministers can appreciate a good cow fart reference.

Yeah. can appreciate a good cow fart reference yeah yeah yeah but anyway that that cracked me up uh so much that i then messaged that guy that uh that his story uh was was angering rural white men everywhere or at least in one particular place what was one of your anecdotes uh my my first one and uh in order to not be one of the people that has no interesting stories, I actually had a running Google Doc of stories I might be able to tell on Jeopardy someday. Nice. Okay, that's not healthy. Well, it's been retired now, Dave.

It was useful. It paid off sure shut up my first story was that i have done a painting with a sea lion oh as a partner yes i was i was i was in more of an art director role uh telling a sea lion uh what what paint to use and in what order to use those paints pretty good that's pretty good anecdote and did they say back because sometimes at the end of an anecdote they go okay great and then just move on yeah yeah pretty much that's the that's the vibe that i got from from all of my stories really but i feel like i feel like they were all right

yeah okay good for you. Moving on. Oh yeah. The good for you from Alex is, is, is what you really want. Yeah. That's when you know, Alex thinks you're a huge nerd.

Um, yeah. Remember he like called somebody a loser or something because they're, yeah. Cause they were talking about nerd core rap. Yeah. And he goes, uh, yeah,

there's mostly losers. Uh, yeah. Oh no. Dave's gone silent oh yeah i was saying that this podcast is is 13 years of me uh uh of like this podcast is basically a google document of dumb anecdotes i would say you would have gone silent before you said that. No. Well, I think we're pretty much. Yeah. We've wasted enough of your time. Yeah, it's been really fun having you.

Thanks for sharing all that. Unless you have an overheard. Oh, yeah. Why, thank you, Dave. I do have an overheard. Okay, let's play the theme song. Overheards, it's the overheard. Now you have one, then you should say it because overheards

is the thing we do on the podcast now and then um go fire away let's let's hear this overheard all right this is an overheard that i called in several years ago, and it didn't make it past the censors. So someone doesn't want you to hear this. Is this Cal starts again? This was at a minor league hockey game in Cleveland a few years ago. there was um on the like the rotating text boards there was some kind of automated uh text or sorry speech to text uh content uh translating what was being said over the over the pa and what was being said was make some noise for your cleveland monsters and what came across the text board was make some noise for your clean room ulcers.

That's pretty good. That is pretty good. We gotta fire our intern. Yeah, it's Man-O-Man. He's living. What's his name again? Fritz Holsnegel? Yeah. Well, thank you so much for being on this

fun bonus episode of the podcast and yeah it was a treat to get to know all the ins and outs yeah thank you so much

for having me are there any little secret messages any personal messages you want to put on this I tell people to follow me on Instagram yes absolutely what's your handle

you can follow me my art account on Instagram is piper.valley piper.valley you got it you know it here first and go check that out everybody can I plug a trivia calendar thing that I do too? Yeah, yeah.

Plug it all. Okay. Because I can do a Jumbotron. I can pay you guys. No, no. I would like to just plug Osmosis Jones. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He does good work.

Osmosis Jones. Watch it. I never have. I'm going to watch it live at some point in the near future. Good idea. And also, I create an annual question a day trivia desk calendar that you can already pre-order for 2022 at trivia calendar.net. Love it.

Nice. Love it. Well, thanks again for being our guest and you know, we can end the podcast anytime you want Dave. I'm, you know, and that's always within our right.

Yeah. And let's let's consider it. Yeah. Let's i'm you know and that's always within our right yeah and uh let's uh let's consider it yeah let's well you know what let's think it over we'll we'll decide when we come back yeah we'll table it uh for next week yes absolutely thanks all bye