My love of trivia. The chance to win a million dollars.
For those of you who don't know. I. Love. Trivia. I never miss an episode of Jeopardy! or Who Wants To Be A Millionaire (and a few others too) and I play bar trivia with a good friend of mine, who shares my love of trivia, every Wednesday night. Sometimes some of our other friends join us, but he and I never miss Wednesday night trivia.
I went to Vegas to audition for Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The auditions were held on Friday, July 29th at the Gold Coast casino. The instructions said to bring your completed application and to not arrive before 6am. No one will be allowed to line up before 6am. I arrived promptly at 6am only to find about 200 people in line in front of me. Figures. Luckily, I was one of the last people who made it in line inside the building. It was already well into the 90s, and I did not want to have to stand outside.
The first part of the audition process is a test. The test room held 500 people, so it did not matter that there were 200 people in line ahead of me. We all took the same test at the same time. There were tests held at 7am, 11am, 4:30pm and 5:30pm. I wanted to be in the first group, so I didn't have to stand in line all day. The test consisted of 30 multiple choice questions. We were each issued a shiny new Who Wants To Be a Millionaire #2 pencil to fill in our scantrons (sadly some people in the room had to ask what a scantron is). Each test had a number, and we were instructed to memorize our number as that is how we would be identified. I was 374. We were given 10 minutes to complete the test. It took them less than 10 minutes to score all of the tests, and then they announced the numbers of those who passed. The first number called was 374. I was so excited. Approximately 60-70 people passed the test. A guy two people behind me in line had taken the test before. He failed the last time, and he failed this time. I felt badly for him. To me, the test was pretty easy.
Luckily, I had followed the instructions and brought along my completed application. Most of the questions took some thought. Like - You'll never believe it, but I once.... Those who had not completed the application only had about 10 minutes to complete it.
Those who passed were all moved to the back of the room, and everyone else was ushered out the door. I was seated next to a man named David. The guy sitting behind me said, "David - were you on Jeopardy!?." David said yes and then continued to frantically fill out his application. The guy behind me proceeded to tell us that David was a one day champion. What a memory that guy has. They then started calling our names to interview us. I was called rather quickly - about 5th or 6th. They took a "mug shot" of us - holding a name card with the date and city. Then they started going over the application and asking questions. He circled the things on the application that were of interest - former lawyer, used to be a trick horseback rider and, of course, mother of triplets. The interview lasted about 3-5 minutes. He then told me that I would receive a postcard in the mail within 2 weeks letting me know whether I made it into the contestant pool.
Today I received my postcard. Sadly, I was not chosen to be a contestant. I thought my story was interesting, but I guess not interesting enough. Maybe next year.
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