Trivial Pursuits (Cigar Smoke 4-3-08)

While you guys were working on a Wednesday afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I was, well, not working, so I went to see the “Jeopardy” king Ken Jennings at the Altadena Library. It was kind of cool. There were 79 other non-working lowlifes like myself. Some lower than others. But all of us were pretty damn low.

Yes, 80 of us were at an event that was held at one in the afternoon on a Wednesday. That’s pretty remarkable. It’s hard to get 80 people to show up on a Wednesday for gold ingot giveaways. I know, because usually it’s me and seven other losers attending an astronomy seminar or something. Hey, Uranus is fascinating, dammit.

I guess I went to see what Ken Jennings was really like and to see if he was going to dish some dirt on old Alex Trebek, the “Jeopardy” host. (By the way, I know that the title of the show “Jeopardy” has an exclamation point after it, but my spelling and grammar checker was getting so pissy on me that I’m leaving it out. I just wanted you to know that I am not so much of a Wednesday-event-attending loser that I didn’t know that there was an exclamation point there. I feel better now!!!!!!)

But Ken was disappointingly normal. He seemed to be a pretty good guy to me. He’s married and has a kid, and he bought a house with a part of his $2.5 million “Jeopardy” winnings. He was clean-cut and casually dressed and seemed pretty relaxed and regular to me. $2.5 million has a way of doing that I guess.

I had heard that he had dissed Alex on his Web site. He informed us that all of that him-not-liking-Alex hype was blown out of proportion because of a misunderstanding of something he posted on the site. He says Alex is a good guy … for a Canadian — much looser and funnier when not on the air. Says he’s a friendly, hard-working professional.

That was not what I was hoping to hear. I was hoping to hear that Alex was wearing that hand cast because he had backhanded his wife and when she cried, Alex backhanded his dog and when his dog yelped he backhanded his accountant, who was there to help him cheat on his taxes. But no. Ken likes Alex. He had nothing bad to say about him. I was shaken.

So I went to get a bottle of water at the back table and, as long as I was there, I picked up my second chocolate chip cookie. All Wednesday afternoon events have cookies — it’s the law. Then I went back to my seat. And the woman next to me saw my chocolate chip cookie and held up two fingers and shook her head in quiet disapproval. Bitch. That’s another word that could use an exclamation point!

I’m sorry. She was probably a nice lady. I was just feeling guilty for having the second cookie and even feeling guilty for even being there at all on a Wednesday while all of you were working and I was not working and enjoying life — and it was very stressful, if you like to be lied to.

Not much else went on. Ken gave us all a trivia quiz and then showed us his brand new book about trivia. (What a coincidence.) There were 25 questions. The three winners got 18 or 19 right. I got 12 right. I asked the nice lady next to me how many she got right. She showed me a finger that was not her thumb, forefinger, ring finger, or pinkie. “Only one right, huh?” I said.

Then they had a little “Jeopardy”-like game show and the winner got a copy of the book. And then Ken opened it up for questions. All the usual questions. What was Alex like? How did it feel to win so much money? I raised my hand, but Ken never called on me. I was going to ask, “Ken, since you won $2.5 million on ‘Jeopardy,’ why do you have to sell books that tell us that you won $2.5 million on ‘Jeopardy?’ Isn’t the $2.5 million enough, Ken? Ken, how about giving the book money to the starving children or cancer research or donating money to the Dodgers so we can get a decent third baseman?” Or I was thinking about asking him what the most materialistic thing was that he had bought with the money. A Corvette? A Fat Burger franchise? Elliot Spitzer’s Emperor’s Club Membership? But he never called on me. Maybe it was because my raised hand had a half-eaten cookie in it. I don’t know.

By the way, Ken’s answers were not in the form of a question — probably because the questions were in the form of a question, and that took the edge off things. As I was saying, after the questioning ended, Ken graciously sat up in the front of the room and graciously signed copies of his two books selling for a gracious total of $36. (Yes, I bought both of them.) Every time he would sign a book, he would graciously enter a number on his little calculator. If all 80 of us bought both books, he made $2,880 bucks. In one afternoon, for one hour on a Wednesday. Sheesh, that’s $2,880 an hour. Pretty good pay.

Alex: “Loser mid-week suckers.”

Ken: “Who buys two books about something they’ve already seen on Jeopardy!?”

So as I was walking out to my car, carrying both my books, and, because I am a what, I am a journalist, and I must tell the truth, except if it will help a Republican, I have to tell you that, yes, I was eating my third cookie. I know, I know. There were 80 of us there. I’m guessing they had four-dozen cookies laid out. That’s 48 cookies. And I ate three. That’s almost 4 percent of the cookies. Eaten by one person — me. That lady next to me was right. And not only was she right. She was right there, walking to her car with me.

I gave her a little toast-like gesture with my cookie. Just raised it up a little in good-natured pissiness, like a glass of wine. “Have a nice day,” I said. She gave me a second one-gun salute.

See what you’re missing on a Wednesday afternoon.