La Salle Debain

Right around the time I immigrated to the US Alex Trebek began a revival of a TV game show originally hosted by Art Fleming called Jeopardy. In fact I believe
I saw the first episode or one of the first ones anyway. And ever since I
began watching, people have said to me I ought to be a contestant. I've tried
to get on every now and again with little success—until this year. In
February I took the online entrance test not expecting any results as usual.
Indeed nothing happened at first then suddenly, a few weeks ago, I was
surprised to receive an email inviting me to an audition.

So today (or yesterday depending on when you read this. June 27th.) I went to a conference room in the New York Sheraton Towers hotel to show off my
telegenic looks, rapier wit and mastery of general knowledge to the Jeopardy
producers. I had to bring in a list of five fun facts about myself for the
between-round amusing banter. You'll have to wait until I actually appear on
the show (if in fact I do. See below.) but let me assure you my banter is
very amusing. My spirit flagged a bit when they took a photo of me for their
files. I managed to do a convincing impression of Tow Mater from Cars 2 which
is not quite the showbiz look I was going for. My morale rose again after the
next portion of the audition in which you had to answer 50 trivia questions in
about 8 minutes. They don't tell you your score but based on my conversations
with fellow auditionees (there were about 20 of us) I think I only got 1
wrong. The next part of the audition was a mock game with a real board and
buzzers etc. I was in the first group of three to play which further leads me
to believe I got a good score in the questions. Unfortunately I had a bit of
bad luck in the categories half of which were not in my strong subjects but I
did ok. More importantly I demonstrated a good speaking voice (a lot of
people mumble or speak too softly), good buzzer technique and as I may have
previously mentioned, amusing banter.

Does this mean I am actually going to be on TV? I don't know. Every year they select approximately 2,000 people for auditions and of those, around 400
are selected for the contestant pool. So I have a 1 in 5 chance of making it.
The consensus in the group was I had done pretty well for a first timer (Some
were making their second or third attempt.) so I am optimistic. All I know is
that sometime in the next 18 months I might receive the call to fly to Los
Angeles and fulfill my destiny.

Btw, in case you were wondering about the title.