40 years ago today: My 15 minutes of fame.
Forty years ago today—March 6, 1986—I was a contestant on Jeopardy! (A quick note to the Punctuation Police: I am not personally responsible for the aggressive excitement of that last sentence. The exclamation point is legally part of the show’s name.)
I recorded my appearance on our trusty Magnavox VCR, a machine that weighed as much as a small car. For years, I’d hold visiting friends and family hostage and force them to watch it. But when the VCR finally gave up the ghost in the nineties, the tape was stashed in a junk drawer where, for three decades, it cohabited with loose coins from long-forgotten foreign vacations, mystery keys and rubber bands that had lost their elastic. I finally had it digitized this past January. Future generations of my family may someday find it on a thumb drive but they’ll have no idea how to use it so they’ll toss it in the trash.
I’m one of the four "stars" of this episode—sharing top billing with the legendary Alex Trebek and my rivals, Lionel and Marion. However, since Sony Pictures owns the show, I had to get their blessing to post this video. (If you’re an intern in Sony’s legal department responsible for chasing down trademark violators, I have proof I obtained permission to post it on this blog and will be happy to send it to you.)
Why should you watch?
The Hair: If you didn’t know me back then and have wondered what color my hair was before it decided to transition into its "Silver Fox" phase, now’s your chance to find out.
The commercials. The video starts (and is interspersed) with 1986 commercials that are damn near as entertaining as the show itself.
The giant hickey in the middle of my forehead: Check out this article I wrote for Healthy Aging magazine and posted years ago on my blog. It explains why there was a giant hickey in the middle of my forehead and how Jeopardy’s clever makeup artists disguised it.
This… is Jeopardy! My fifteen minutes of fame, stretched into thirty minutes, exactly four decades ago today.
Enjoy.
