Turd Ferguson

On Saturday, Karie and I attended a taping of Celebrity Jeopardy. The special, week-long event was taped in Radio City Music Hall. It was pretty fun, but I was amazed at how fast it went. When I went to the Daily Show, I spent more time waiting around than I spent actually watching the show. Jeopardy was much quicker and more efficient. We started waiting in line outside the theater around 9:30 and we were in our seats by 10:15. The show began minutes later.

The celebrities for our taping were Soledad O'Brien (CNN), Harry Shearer (Simpsons), and Isaac Mizrahi (Designer). Mizrahi was definitely the most entertaining as he was incredibly flamboyant and provided comedic relief.

Before the actual game, they ran through an entire practice round. Standing in for Alex during the practice round was some random guy. They played the entire game in the practice round and even included the "meet the contestants" part. I'm not sure if this is standard Jeopardy practice. (Eric?) The questions during this round were comedically easy. One category was called "stupid answers" and the clues contained the answers. For example, one clue was: (to paraphrase) In 1968, the Beatles released an album with a stark, white cover which gave it this name. Answer: What is the white album? (This clue was extra funny because they used almost the same question on an SNL Celebrity Jeopardy) During the actual taping, they used a category called "Stupid Answers: New York Edition." It was just like the practice round, but this time they were all easy questions about New York.

During the practice round, the people in the audience were answering out loud as if they were watching at home. Before the actual game began, Johnny Gilbert (the announcer) came out and told everyone to be sure not to call out the answers. Of course, no one heeded his request. After each question, you could hear murmurs of answers circulating through the crowd.

During commercial breaks, Alex Trebek took questions from the audience. Some were benign and boring, some were bizarre, and some were funny. One little kid asked which contestants Alex favored the most. One woman asked if he was a Yankees fan. (He answered that he was a Yankees fan, a Mets fan, a Redsocks fan...) One woman asked if his TV was working properly. This led to quite a few murmurs of WTF before Alex explained that his TV repair man had asked him if he could get a ticket for his mom. My favorite question was asked by a twenty-something guy. He asked Alex what year the Magna Carta was signed. Alex answered 1216 and the guy corrected him with 1215. This led to quite a bit of laughter in the crowd.

Each contestant got their own special category listing on the board. O'Brien's was C"NN", Shearer's was This category goes to 11, (he was in This is Spinal Tap) and Mizrachi's was Isaac-ly. One thing I want to note is that Soledad O'Brien went to Harvard and anchors CNN's morning news show, but failed to answer some key geographical and political clues. They didn't tell us anything about giving away show secrets, so I'll share. O'Brien got a daily double and said, "I don't normally take risks, but it's for charity, so $5,000." (Apparently she doesn't care about the charity getting money) Her question was this: "Name 2 of the 4 states with a double N in it's name. " She stared blankly at Alex until her time ran out. She didn't even get one.

Final Jeopardy was somewhat hard for the Celebrity edition. It was, "Of the 5 permanent members of the UN security council, which one is the smallest in area." I figured that O'Brien would be the only one to answer correctly. She didn't. She said France. A good guess, as it's the second smallest and is at least one of the 5. Mizrachi answered with "my apartment." and Shearer answered correctly with "United Kingdom." For what it's worth, I leaned over to Karie and whispered the right answer. I'm pretty sure that makes me smarter than the Harvard girl. (O'Brien is, after all, the woman who sent me an autograph that said, "To Koss.")

The episode will air on November 14th.