Jason Luna Speaks (and it's About.com time!)
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross wrote about the five stages of grief in her book On Death and Dying. If my repeated reading of Snoopy comics has taught me anything, is that the only kind of grief is 'good grief.' Therefore, I will try to relate my experiences with 1 vs. 100 through the system that Kubler-Ross set up. By the way, her friends call her Elizabeth Ross-Kubler.
The list is:
- Denial
- Anger
- Bargaining
- (Good) Grief
- Accept it, Already!
1. Denial
This stage was longer than I would've liked. I mean, to have to wait 21 years to win is a bit ridiculous.
You may not know this, but I was on the show before I won the show, in early 2007. And I lost. So did:
- Ken Jennings
- Brad Rutter
- Annie Duke
We all lost to Larry Zerner, an entertainment lawyer and former actor. I was standing next to Larry the whole time, and so was Ken Jennings.
They called it the Last Man Standing. We were both standing, but while they celebrated Larry's ability to stand and gave him $250,000, I was standing under a dimmed mob light, with no money.
2. Anger
Was I angry that I lost? Not really. I have to admit, I was pretty angry about my screen time when the episode aired. Not a single close-up of me the whole time.
They invited me back to audition in September of 2007. I passed the test, and came back for a simulation of the game. I lost the simulation.
They interviewed me anyway, and said my prospects were good to come back on. After waiting for a while, they had me show up to tape the show.
I waited around forever. A whole 8 hour day. Cooped up, waiting to go on. I had to wait 8 hours, with nothing to do, nowhere to go. I would say I wanted to be sedated, but the environment was pretty sedate.
They told us it was a "Battle of the Sexes" themed episode. I didn't care either way, although I certainly didn't want to make some kind of broad statement that I was smarter than all of womankind. I would've much preferred to beat 100 men.
I came back to find out that my female counterpart couldn't beat 100 men, and that it was my turn to go on.
3. Bargaining
I bargained with the questions and they bargained back.
I get asked a lot about how stressful it was to be on TV. Being on TV is pretty simple. The set was bright and shiny, but it was pretty quiet (all those flashy noises are added in post production).
How was Bob Saget? A lot of very immature friends of mine referenced a certain line from Half Baked about what Bob's character did for some crack. You can ask him.
He was a polite host, and thanked me when I won. What'd you expect? A)America's Funniest Home Videos, B)Full House, or C) A re-enactment of oral sex and crack snorting on family television? Well, Bob, I liked America's Funniest Home Videos. But that's on ABC, not NBC. My house was full of Full House when it was on, but that's been over for years now. And C, well, it's very C. See? How about D) None of the above?
The game was pretty simple for me. Like I mentioned previously, I do play College Bowl at UC Irvine, which is composed of harder questions from all fields. So general knowledge questions come pretty easy to me. That being said, I hit some speed bumps.
First, the weightlifting question. My brother, Marcus, derided/chastised my ability to not determine what the Olympic weightlifting sport was. As I stated on the show, I do not particularly enjoy the Olympics, and especially not weightlifting. I used both my poll the mob and ask the mob helps, but trusted the Clean and Jerk, and Cleaned up on that question, and um, wasn't a Jerk.
Then, the last question. It was tough, and I really lucked out.
You see, it was defined in terms of Hallmark greeting cards. "According to Hallmark (tm), which of these holidays is the most popular?" I was thinking Christmas before the choices even came up. I got it right, and all of the 15 remaining women got it wrong.
My first inclination was that we were all wrong together. After all, these were the top 15 women in the mob, at least one of them had to think the same way as me.
It was a childish thought, but maybe their hope for a Mother's Day card made me $1,000,000 richer.
