Today is Wednesday, July 26, 2023. It’s late here, so I’ll just report on one thing that happened today. My friend “Jake” came over around 12:30 to supposedly take the second phase of the Jeopardy audition on my computer since he doesn’t have a computer or an email address. When Jake came over originally on the 15th of July, I helped him take the first 50-question test for becoming a contestant on the show. This has been a fervent wish for my friend for some time now and he recruited my assistance in getting him to the next phase of becoming a contestant.

So that first time, we generally took the test together, where I typed the answers on my keyboard as Jake fed me some of the answers. I was able to answer some questions myself. To our huge surprise, I received an email only four days later which stated that I had passed the first round of qualifying tests and that I had to schedule another second phase consisting of another 50-question test but this time via Zoom. Two dates were offered: Monday, July 24, at 10-11 and July 26 at 3-4 p.m. When I got an email confirmation that today’s session was indeed confirmed, I called Jake right away. He called back to say that he would come somewhat early to prepare for this second round of testing.

So this time, Jake was knocking on my door as early as 12:30. I was just returning from getting my beard trimmed at a barber on Austin Street when I saw my friend in the vestibule. I let him in and we both went upstairs. Elliot was home and greeted Jake before leaving to see a film at Kew Gardens Cinema.

The rest of the time Jake and I sat in the living room as we counted down the hours until 3. I made some coffee for the two of us and showed Jake some of the books I bought at the Pequot Library sale last weekend. He was interested in borrowing one of them, Subwayland, and I was all too glad to lend it to him.

Before we sat down to take the second test, I let Jake familiarize himself with the keyboard since he is not familiar with a computer’s keyboard. He informed me that he barely passed his typing class in high school.

Fast forward to 4 p.m. when we did not receive the invitation to join the Jeopardy audition. I went back to the original letter containing information about this audition and I saw now that the email said that the time to take the audition was Pacific time. So now it seems that I made an error in judgment. I wrote a note to the show’s administrator and she wrote back very quickly, confirming that the audition was indeed Pacific time; that would mean that I would now have to take the test at 6 p.m., not 3 p.m. When I told Jake this, he said he had to leave right after the audition hour elapsed. He was driving back to the Island to actually participate in his trivia group night contest.

To make a long story even longer, I decided to take the test myself since my name was the one that was sent to the show’s administrators. Even though I thought I uploaded a picture of Jake to the program on Saturday, July 15. But it was my email and personal info that the people at Jeopardy had, and the email was addressed to me, not Jake.

Thus I have to say that I did take the test – two hours later than when I thought it was originally scheduled. I clicked on the link to the Zoom meeting and entered the session around 5:56 p.m. The administrator whose name was Ellie introduced herself to the other people in the room. I erroneously thought I would be taking the test by myself, which was not true. There had to be more than 15 people in the room. Ellie asked everyone to say if they were present by calling the roll call.

Before you could say “Mayim Bialik,” we were in the game show mode where questions were thrown at us very rapidly. I must say without equivocation that I believe I performed terribly since some of the questions caused brain freeze, where the reply was frozen out of my head. One question still haunts me: the one about the author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and I couldn’t recall the writer’s name, which is Truman Capote, of course. This was an easy question, but I couldn’t answer it. I must have been so nervous, to say the least.

One thing I do recall from Ellie’s comments at the outset of the audition is that many contestants did not do well their first time. Many, she said, have had to take the test more than once. The time one can take the test over is a year. So that means we can’t take the test over until next July.

Also, Ellie said that if you didn’t hear from the show within a year, that means you didn’t do well. I don’t expect to hear a reply like the first time.

Now I have to call Jake to tell him how badly I think I did.

So that’s it for this day, which was a real “Comedy of Errors.” I never thought of myself as a contestant on this show – ever. I thought I was originally just helping a friend get on himself and it devolved into my becoming a reluctant contender on the show. Heck, I don’t even watch the show like my friend does. So it’s probably a working of fate that I fell flat on my face during this audition. I wasn’t meant to be a contestant, and my floundering performance just confirmed that. One could also say that it was quite nice that we even progressed to this stage. No one expected that, so we should be happy with succeeding in even doing that.

Stay safe and be well.