DAMN YOU WEEMS!

In honor of the Jeopardy Greatest of All Time tournament, which is taking place this week on ABC, I thought that I would recall the story of how The Official Spouse of In Play Lose appeared on that show. She was selected for the show during a casting in San Francisco on Nov. 4 2010 – coincidentally, the same day that the San Francisco Giants were holding their World Series parade. We drove down to L.A. in Jan. 2011 for the taping, with the show airing later that year. I took down these notes at our hotel room in Culver City after the taping was over. I asked her permission before publishing this. She and I both are known to swear at the TV when Jeopardy comes on. Nah, we are not bitter or anything like that ...

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FUCK you Parson Weems. Seriously. Weems? What the fuck? Parson Fucking Weems? Are you fucking kidding me? Parson Fucking Weems? Get bent.

He is the original biographer of George Washington, the guy who spread that bullshit story about George Washington and the cherry tree. “i cannot tell a lie ...” blah blah blah. He was also one of America’s first literary agents, which means he must truly be scum.

Well, Parson Fucking Weems was the answer of the Final Jeopardy Question for all the marbles, and my girlfriend didn’t know it. Neither did anyone else. It was probably the hardest Final Jeopardy Question I can remember from the past few months, if not years, that we have been watching the show. It was just fucking brutal. No one knows who Parson Fucking Weems is. And with good reason: he is an asshat.

We all – that would be me, Doug, Sponge, and her parents – had to sit through three other tapings before she finally got to play. I was nervous as fuck. You know how they pan to the moms and the wives during football games, who are all nervous as hell, and some yokel in the broadcast booth says, “aw, yeah, lemme tell ya some-m, it’s all a lot harder on them than the folks on the field?” Yep, that’s pretty much true. I was nervous as fuck all day. I was nervous when hanging out with the associated other spouses in the hotel back in Century City, having seen our loved ones head out for battle at SONY studios. They were all, like, saying to me, “is it always so nice in L.A. in January?” and I said, “yes, in fact, it is.” Then I said, “my girlfriend is gonna kick your girlfriend’s ass.”

No, I didn’t say that. And it was a really nice day, like 71° or something. The hotel is filled with rhythmic gymnasts. Everyone speaks Russian. The Russians speak Russian, the Germans speak Russian, the Canadians and Americans speak Russian because their coaches speak Russian. There is apparently some big international meet going on at the Culver City Civic Auditorium. All of these prim and proper ballerinas are waging war with clubs and ribbons and hoopy things, whereas our significant others are going to war with SMARTS!

She was up vs. a film archivist who had won $30000 the game before and seemed unbeatable, and also some irrelevant guy from NYC, but she was not gun shy or intimidated. She played really well. She was faster on the buzzer consistently than those other two guys. She did, however, miss some questions she should’ve gotten, and there was one disputed answer where they determined she got the woman’s name wrong (which was, in my totally unbiased opinion, a sack of horseshit), but she also answered some questions that seemed to come out of nowhere – stuff like the Cable TV category. We don’t even have cable! Rizzoli and Isles? Where the fuck did that come from?

She came from behind to grab the lead after the 2nd Daily Double fell her way in the 2nd round, was OH SO CLOSE to clinching outright but got nudzhed out on the buzzer on the final two questions of the round. but she had the lead:

Sweetheart $11,200
NYC whoever $9,400
Film Guy $8,500

Game theory here dictates that she bets $7601 in Final Jeopardy. That way, a correct response on her part wins no matter what the others do. That is precisely what she bet.

But the category was Biographers, and the question was written to be extremely, deliberately vague. a badly-written question, in my opinion. A bad question about a bad person. I had NO IDEA what the answer was.

And neither did she. I just watched her go still up there at the podium. She didn’t write anything. Come on sweetheart, write something. Write something. I don’t know what the fuck to write, but surely you do.

She didn’t know Parson Fucking Weems. None of them did:

Film Guy $8,500 - $1,500 = $7,000
Sweetheart $11,200 - $7,601 = $3,599
NYC whoever $9,400 - $8,100 = $1,300

So she finished 2nd. She gets $2000 for that, which is great. She did great and I am so proud of her. She did everything correct there at the end, and then she got a bad luck-o’-the-draw Final Jeopardy question. It was the Jeopardy equivalent of the Q-stick.

“I never get to do this again,” she lamented afterwards, “and I go home from the show because I didn’t know Parson Fucking Weems.”

It’s hard for me not to think that my bad luck rubbed off on her, since that bad luck is inherent in my existence. I am the human cooler. I mean, there are plenty of those Final Jeopardy questions that are fucking goddamn layup-level EASY. If she gets a pitch to hit there, she has $19,000 and we get to come back again in a couple of weeks. instead, she gets Parson Fucking Weems.

I guess it wasn’t meant to be. It kind of sucks.

It is important that I remind her what we were saying all along about how just getting to this point was what mattered. And we are going to get out now, go to a nice Italian place and enjoy Santa Monica with her folks and with Sponge and Doug, who both came up from San Diego for the taping. All of them were as aghast by the Final Jeopardy question as I was. And with good reason, because it was a stupid question about a stupid person.

It’s all good, in the end, but i am still disappointed. Not in her. Not at all in her. She did great and I am so proud. I’m disappointed in how it finished.

Parsley Worms. Parsnip Weenie. Parson Fucking Weems, I curse you today, you puffpiece writing ratfink, you lying piece of sack of shit, you dirtbag trashcan asschapel. Piss on you.