The Big Day

Despite some disappointments, the day was a lot of fun, and most of the credit needs to go to the crew. I love this group of people. They take really good care of you.

The first few hours were a sort of organized chaos. Contestants have to do several things, and they are sort of happening all at once, so some of us were getting made up, some were going over final paperwork, some were practicing Hometown Howdies, and some were practicing interviews.

Remember those five interesting facts? The staff narrowed that down to three to give to Alex, and then Alex picks what to ask. I have seen at times he will pick kind of a common theme for all three contestants, if there is one. Richard told us what three were on there, and we could indicate if there was one we wanted to be asked about more, but it is still up to Alex. My three were the screenplays, the claw machine, and the greyhounds. I said I preferred the screenwriting thing, because honestly, I think the more people who know I do that, the better. Alex went for the greyhounds, which was fine because they are wonderful dogs, but not everyone thinks of them as pets, and the claw machine one would have been great too, because I am really proud of that. I just won a stuffed monkey Friday night!

Maggie worked with half the room on practicing the hometown howdies, while Richard worked with the rest of us on going through each of the interview questions. There was also a lot of instruction on things that people have found helpful, experiences that other people have had, what will count against you, what won't, and lots of random bursting into song. It was all very rapid-fire, but it served the purpose. When you are on stage and Alex asks the question, you are ready. When it is time to tape the Howdies, you are ready. And most of all, there was so much laughter and information that there was not a lot of time to shrink inside yourself and freak out.

That kept up as we went to the stage for our practice games. We were rotated in and out in a stream for the length of about two full games. That gave everyone a chance to practice with the buzzer and get in the habit of selecting categories. One of the things I had put down as wanting for my game was the chance to make it a true daily double. I got to do that three times during the practice games (getting up to $60000--probably more than I would have wagered during an actual game, but it worked out).

After the quiz show scandals in the 60's (for more on that, watch the movie Quiz Show--Rafe Fiennes is remarkably beautiful in it), several steps were put into place to prevent another such occurrence. One important part of this is that there is a compliance person who oversees everything. For every game, he is presented with six scripts, and he chooses one. For the contestants, you have the returning champion, of course, and everyone else has their name written on cards placed face down, and two are picked for each game. So when sometimes there is a category that one of the contestants just owns--that is pure luck. One of the reasons that I wanted to be on the Halloween show (which again, was pure luck), was that I was hoping for really fun categories. "Trick or Treat" and "Halloween Candy" were okay, but there may have been much cooler, spooky ones that did not get picked, and there is just no way of knowing.

Evan and I were picked for the first game, so we and Sunni got our make-up touched up, got miked up, and off we went. It's funny how excited I got when I saw Alex peeking around the corner. I mean, I knew he was going to show up--it wasn't a surprise--but I still felt like a total fangirl.

The show tapes pretty much like it airs. They do pause during the commercial breaks. In every break, they bring you water, and check to see if you need your makeup touched up, and how you are doing. While this is happening, Alex is fielding questions from the audience. I was pleased to learn that he gets irritated when people jump around the board, because I do too. I was very proud that we cleared out the board in both rounds. I hate it when there are questions left.

During the first break we took turns getting our picture with Alex. Right after our picture was taken I shook his hand and said it was nice to meet him. Alex looked surprised by this. It wasn't a freak-out like you would get with Howie Mandel, but I think people usually don't do that.

From my point of view, it was like when I had the picture taken with the koala, and everything happened so quickly, and they are trying to get you to look at the camera, and they grab it back, so that I have no memory of holding the koala, which I would have wanted to remember. I just didn't want Alex to be another koala.

One thing that was a little different for us, but will happen a lot, is that Alex stayed at his podium rather than coming to us during the interviews, as he was still injured. He was not wearing the boot on camera, but he was wearing it off-camera, and walking around too much wouldn't have been good.

The one thing I really found awkward was during daily doubles. It is traditional to put down your buzzer and clap, and that was my intention, but trying to put the buzzer down so I would not lose it, but could get it quickly again, and to get it down quickly enough to clap at the right time, was a little too much for my level of manual dexterity.

Something they are quick to instruct us on is that at the end of the game, do not jump up and down, or jump off to go congratulate the winner. The reason for this is that we are on raised platforms that go up and down to try and get everyone to a similar height. Since Evan was pretty tall, Sunni and I were both fairly high up. They do help you down, and all of those striped areas on the stage are steps actually, and they are also very careful with you coming around there. No one wants you to fall. We had no accidents while I was there.

After the game, and we had been unhooked from the mikes and lowered from our pedestals, we chatted with Alex at center-stage over the end credits. Mainly we talked about how it was a pretty good game and everyone did well. If you were watching and noticed a part where Alex looked surprised, that is probably when I made a reference to it being okay that Evan won because he had the growing family. He had mentioned that his wife was pregnant backstage, and so I let the cat out of the bag to the host.

Regarding Evan, I know many people on online forums and Facebook expressed some irritation with his mugging, and okay, he was pretty hammy, but he was a nice guy, and I didn’t have a problem with him. Honestly during the game you don’t even know what other people are doing—I just knew he was like that from the practice game. I did not notice how hard he worked the buzzer until I watched it at home. He may have been on to something though. Maybe I needed to flail more.

I went into the audience for the next game. It was interesting to watch from the audience side, and if you get a chance I recommend it. I was the only person who did not have any guests, but they seated me next to a pretty interesting group. Three of them were from England, and they met up with the fourth in Vancouver BC, and were on a road trip that was going to end up in New York. The question on Kate Middleton’s dress led to me finding out that one of them had gone to school with Prince Harry. How’s that for random? They were fun to chat with, and since they had just watched me they were very interested in what it was like, and I was able to answer a lot of their questions.

For other celebrity sightings, Jimmy from the Clue Crew was in the audience. I saw Johnny Gilbert, but did not talk to him or anything. Oh well, at least he announced my name and where I was from. How often does that happen?

I left after the second game. I sort of wished that I had stayed, especially when I found that after the second game aired they went straight to the Tournament of Champions, so I had to wait a long time to find out how the others did. At the time though, I started to think that maybe if I went to the airport right away, maybe I could get an earlier flight. Since you can potentially be at the studio until 6, the first flight I could trust was at 9:30, getting me in to Portland at 11:30. I was working the next day, and a few more hours of sleep would have been good. Sadly, I could not get an earlier flight.

Also, though, I needed some time to be sad, and feel the disappointment, and call my mom. So I spent a long time at the airport. I got some reading in, and I charged my phone, and I was amazed to see a Best Buy Express vending machine. Seriously, who would buy an iPod from a vending machine at an airport?