Lame Jeopardy Stories
Let’s talk about Jeopardy, the television show.
Right now it’s on TV. Alex Trebek is currently greeting the contestants. He asks each of them a question, which is a none-too-subtle prod for the contestants to share an amusing story about themselves.
I suspect the Jeopardy producers ask all contestants to come up with an interesting little story about themselves just to give them more personality. Maybe we’ll like them if they seem more interesting. Maybe we’ll root for them more if we know something weird or entertaining about their lives.
I think Jeopardy just wants us to like their players.
But tonight’s stories are lame.
Real lame.
They are unexciting stories about getting upgraded to first-class on an airline flight or being in a cross-word puzzle documentary. Good grief, people, if you don’t have an interesting life you need to make something up!
This is your thirty seconds of fame! Make the most of it, for God’s sake!
Weave a bold tale about the weekend you spent in a Tijuana Jail! This after an all night bender with a half dozen professional Mexican wrestlers who dared you to take the Donkey Show donkey out for a joy ride, and then you one-upped their dare by trying – and failing – to smuggle the donkey across the border!
Spin an even thicker yarn about the other time when you sailed solo from Australia to Hawaii, eating only what you could catch with a ball of yarn and a safety pin as you navigated using only a sextant and you recycled your own urine for drinking water! And it was a solo trip, for goodness sake! And since it was a solo trip, who the hell will know you’re lying? And throw this in for good measure – tell Alex you lost 197 pounds on that trip.
It’s all about creative lying.
So I dare you to tell Alex how you were almost gored while running with the bulls in Pamplona. Tell him about how you lost a shoe as you were racing into the Plaza de Toros and stumbled before the thundering herd, falling to one knee as the dangerous bovines bore down upon you. Tell him how the ground pulsed as the bulls pounded closer and you knew you were a breath away from a damned existence of horrific pain and disfigurement.
And in that last split second, as the hot breath from the lead bull blew into your face, a delicate hand suddenly appeared, reaching down from above like a heavenly angel. You grabbed it and hoisted yourself up onto a balcony, with only one shoe as the bulls trampled the other one in the dust. There, on that fateful balcony, you came face-to-face with the most beautiful Spaniard (male/female — depends on the gender of the liar) you’d ever seen.
Suddenly safe from harm, you decided to spend the rest of the day sipping mohitos with your savior and discussing the finer points of Spanish art. Who was better? Goya or Dali?
Then tell Alex how you married your beautiful Spaniard six days later and roasted the bull that almost gored you at the reception!
Doesn’t that sound cool?!
Or how about this: why not ask Alex a question, to change it up a bit?
Ask him if he thinks King Kong could take Godzilla in a fight? Or ask him if which dinosaur he thinks was the fiercest? Could a pack of Velociraptors kill a T-Rex? And who did he think was stronger, Superman or Hercules?
Of course, we all know there aren’t any real answers to these questions. They’re all just matters of opinion, so put that pompous know-it-all in his place!
Or at least try.
If nothing else, spare the rest of us from the woeful boredom that is your pathetic, dull existence. We already experience that kind of crap in our own daily lives. Criminy, if getting upgraded to first class on a plane flight is the only interesting thing to happen to you in the last ten years, then you need to get out more.
Maybe head to Spain and run with the bulls. Or hang with the wrestlers in Tijuana.
After all, the show’s called Jeopardy, so treat us all to an enthralling tale of precariousness and peril!
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