Six Categories

After re-reading the Jeopardy post below, and considering the categories that Rob would kick my ass at, I think everyone needs to fess up with their Ultimate Jeopardy Round. Remember Cliff Claven's round--Beer, Stamps, Bar Trivia, Mothers & Sons, etc..? He totally dominated.

So what are the six categories that you would totally kick ass at?

After careful consideration, here are mine:

Rum
Cigars
Sailboats
Poker
80's Music
Pizza

Oh, and since we can't leave out the harder Double Jeopardy round, I've got six more.

Caribbean Geography
World War II
Goes Well With Ranch Dressing
Politics
John Wayne Films
Vegas History


And speaking of everyone's favorite game show, back when I was in college, I got invited to the Jeopardy College Championship tryouts, which was a cool experience. I spent the day down at the studio with about 300 other college students, and we spent the whole afternoon auditioning for 15 spots--a week's worth of programming.

Because I'm smarter than everyone else (and humble too), I thought for *sure* I'd just roll through the competition, make the show, dominate for a week straight, win tons of cash to pay for college and get a new car, become a huge star with literally dozens of adoring fans, and live happily ever after with the hot redhead from my Honors Biology class.

As you may have already guessed, it didn't quite work out that way.

After a brief interview with producers, having our 'head shots' taken, and getting all the paperwork signed, they put us in the main studio, gave us each a clipboard, an answer sheet, and two pencils. The answer sheet was numbered 1 thru 100, and after each number was a blank. They'd give a random category, and then put up each question on the big monitors, while a producer would read it to us over the PA system. We then had five seconds to write down the answer. No repeats, no going back, no asking for clarification, nothing--write it down, move on. And each question, they told us, was part of the $800 and $1000 level questions from Double Jeopardy rounds.

No problemo, I thought, this should be easy!

But there were no repeating categories, and it was all subjects like--

Playwrights
Poetry
The Opera
Physics
African Capitals
Founding Fathers
Classical Music
The Renaissance
English Literature
Age of Discovery
House of Tudor
Astronomy
Mythology
World Religions
Botany
Ancient Egypt

etc, etc, etc....

Honestly, it was probably the toughest test I ever took in college, aside from a few Mathematics for Aviators finals. Aside from the fact that the subjects were tough and obscure, there were potentially thousands of dollars on the line, and for hungry college students, it was hard to keep from thinking about it, so it added an extra variable of stress to the equation.

So it wasn't much of a surprise that my name wasn't called to be included in the next round of tryouts once they tallied the scores. And they wouldn't tell us our scores either--what a 'passing grade' was, or anything. It was just pass or fail. If you passed, your name was called. If you failed, out the door you went.

Round two was to be a mock game with other contestants, right there on the set, and the winners would get slots on the show. I would've preferred that, instead of the early exit. And to make matters worse, once I got back to campus the next Monday and everyone found out, I heard nothing but endless shiat from a few jealous dorks who also applied, but never even got an invite.

So close, yet so far away--I was pretty disappointed. However, I didn't walk away empty-handed. The whole experience gave me about three good minutes of material a few months later when I did open-mike night at a Tempe comedy club. I had a great bit I called 'Jeopardy for Idiots' with categories like Vowels, Primary Colors, Brady Bunch Kids, 'Battleship' Gamepieces, Change for a Dollar, French Fry Toppings...

Oh yeah--I just killed 'em that night.

Anyhow... feel free to give the six (or 12) categories where you'd run the table and make thousands of $$$. Comments are open!

Mikey