I do! I do!
Seriously, I do. And I might just get my shot. You see, from time to time Lisa and I would catch a couple episodes of the sometimes-irritating-but-still-fun game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Since I’m pretty good at trivia – my brain is filled with more useless facts than you can imagine – I had fun and often did as well as the best contestants. I even got all but one right during one guy’s run at a million bucks. Lisa – being far more ambitious than I – kept telling me I should audition. Sure. Whatever. That’s likely.
Well, what do you know, Lisa saw information for auditions and signed us both up. This past Monday night, we went into Manhattan and… passed. Wait, before you get all excited, it doesn’t mean a whole lot… yet. You start off taking a 30 question test with about 100 other people. Assuming you pass that (best guess I heard is that you need to get 26 correct), you then go on to be interviewed. In a couple weeks, you get a postcard telling you yes or no. If they like you, you’re put in a pool from which they select contestants. In other words, no matter how well you do in all of this, you aren’t on the show until you’re on the show.
I won’t go into much detail – as I’m sure they like to pretend it’s very secretive – but it was a fun experience. The test was pretty much what you would expect from the show – a lot of questions of varying degrees of ease, largely dependent upon whether or not you happen to know a subject. In case you haven’t seen thee show, what I mean is that the questions aren’t very in depth, so if you’re familiar with the subject you should know it. It’s much easier than Jeopardy, but can still throw lots of curveballs. I was in the 6:30 group, and was among maybe 15-20 that passed the test and moved on for interviews. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but while waiting to be called up I’d say most of these little get togethers with producers lasted about 3 or 4 minutes. I was up there for at least 10 or 15. I’m thinking they liked me. Lisa’s experience was almost exactly the same (she was in the 7:00 group), right down to having one of the longest interviews.
The only thing that bothers me now is that we could have signed up together for their special couples week, and almost would have been assured a spot on the show based on our performance (there are far fewer applicants, and even fewer that have both people pass). Instead, we’re going back in a couple weeks to try out again together – hey, we could use the money. But there’s no guarantee that we’ll do as well the second time around.
Anywho, I am excited about the prospect, but I’m also terrified that my first question will involve something stupidly easy that I often screw up – like trying to tell Renee Zellweger, Joey Lauren Adams, and Jewel apart…