Who wants to be a game show contestant?
Behind the Scenes at Millionaire

Who hasn't fantasized about winning lots of money on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire"? It looks so easy, doesn't it, when you're sitting back on your couch, smirking as you watch folks sweating bullets over multiple-choice trivia questions like, "How many strings are on a violin"?

Well, it may look simple, but believe me, it's not. I didn't sit in the infamous hotseat myself, but my boyfriend, Joe, did. And even though I wasn't the one answering the questions, it turned out to be one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of my life. Fun, yes, but about as stressful as taking the SATs, going on a job interview and an IRS audit, all rolled into one. Did it pay off? Read on and find out.

To be honest, I ignored the WWTBAM phenomenon when the show first went on the air in August 1999. I wasn't watching when John Carpenter became the first million-dollar winner. I kept hearing about how dopey the questions were, stupid stuff like "Mary had a little what? Lamb, elephant, cow, or hobbit?" However, I was converted when my parents, diehard WWTBAM fans, came to visit at Thanksgiving. Granted, the first few questions were simple, but at the higher levels, they were often devilishly tricky. I enjoyed host Regis Philbin's humorous banter with the contestants, and loved rooting for the wannabe millionaires as their prize totals grew higher and higher. It wasn't long until I decided that, hey, I wanted to be a millionaire.

Qualifying for the show isn't easy, because, as you might imagine, there are several thousands of people vying for their chance to win big bucks. While the show is switching over to an audition format (probably to try to get a more diverse contestant base -- the hotseat has definitely been dominated by 30ish white males), this is the way it worked during the show's first 15 months on the air. First, you call an 800 number and answer three "fastest finger" style questions, using your touch-tone phone keypad ("Put these four musicians in order of their birth, starting with the oldest"). Everyone who answers all three correctly has a chance being selected in a random drawing to go onto Round 2. (Only about 2% make the cut, so competition is stiff.) In the second round, you have to answer five "fastest finger" questions. Ten of those who answer correctly are chosen at random to go to New York and vie for the megabucks.

I probably played Round 1 50 times before getting a callback for Round 2 in July 2000. Unfortunately, I blew it by not knowing where South Padre Island was ("Put these resort areas in geographic order, starting in the west"). I kept trying, but never again made it to the second round.

Eventually, I started urging Joe to try out for the show. I'd send him e-mails at work when the phone lines opened, reminding him to call. I'm good at trivia, but Joe is a master, somebody who's won every game of Trivial Pursuit he's ever played. I've never known anyone whose head is so full of useless facts. Finally, it seemed time to make that knowledge pay off.

Joe made it to Round 2 in September 2000. He took a telecommuting day so he could stay home and make the phone call with no distractions. A couple of hours after answering all five questions correctly, he got the call telling him we were on our way to New York.

I was incredibly excited, and only a little bit jealous, because I knew that the chances of Joe winning big on the show were greater than mine would be. However, I knew that if he was going to succeed, I would have to coach him. The truth is, he was at best a casual watcher of the show. For the most part, whenever I turned it on, he would usually disappear into the computer room for the duration. Now, though, I decreed that he was going to watch every single broadcast between Sept. 29, when he got the call, and Oct. 19, his tape date. There were plenty of opportunities, since the show airs three or four times a week. We discussed strategy -- how and when to use the various lifelines, when to take a risk and when to bow out (you can stop anytime and walk away with the money you've won so far). I even created a makeshift "fastest finger" console out of a foil-covered single-serve Kellogg's cereal box so he could practice putting things in order. I sat there with a stopwatch, timing him. We got excited whenever he beat the fastest contestant's time.

Several times during those three weeks, Joe spoke on the phone to Tracey, his producer. Every contestant on the show has his or her very own producer, whose job it is to ferret out those interesting factoids that "Reege" can use between questions. "So, I understand your hobby is collecting tropical fish," that sort of thing. Joe discussed his love of music, his Swedish lessons, and the fact that he planned to propose to me, making Tracey, someone he had never met, privy to something only one other person in the world (one of his coworkers) knew about.

By the time we flew to New York on Oct. 18, I had gotten the ring, accepted it, taken it back to the jewelry store to be resized, and learned that only two people knew he was going to do this, and one of them worked for ABC. I felt a little weird about that, to be honest. Would something so intimate and personal become fodder for the vast WWTBAM viewing audience?

Of course, I realized there was a big chance he wouldn't make it to the hotseat at all. ABC selects 10 contestants for each show, and of those 10, only two or three get to vie for the prize money. The rest go home with a T-shirt and a fake check made out of blue cardboard. Still, I felt he'd beaten the odds just by getting as far as he had. If he could beat them just one more time, he might wind up with a real check. Plus, he was doing pretty well at his Fastest Finger practice.

Our flight left Oakland at 7:15 AM. It was raining in New York, which caused us to arrive at LaGuardia about an hour and a half late. Just as Tracey had promised, a driver carrying a sign with Joe's name on it was waiting for us. We were whisked into Manhattan in a glamorous Town Car, courtesy of ABC. As someone who always tries to find the absolute cheapest way to get to and from any airport, I have to admit, I loved the opportunity to travel in style on someone else's dime. The driver said Joe was the sixth would-be millionaire he'd driven so far that day, and wished us luck as he dropped us off at the Empire Hotel, located right across the street from Lincoln Center.

Our room was about on par with what you'd find at any midprice motel anywhere in America. I noted with dismay that the towels were the same scratchy white kind you get at the gym (I believe you can almost always judge a hotel by its towels). There was also a minibar that dispensed pricey potables, cleverly engineered to charge you the moment you lift one out of its slot. Luckily, there's an all-night deli located right around the corner. I've long believed that the profusion of 24-hour delis is one of the best things about New York. No need to pay $4 for orange juice from the minibar when you can get it for a buck right downstairs.

Joe had been informed to call Susan, the production manager, upon our arrival at the hotel. She needed to check out the clothes we'd be wearing to make sure they'd look good on TV. Joe gave her a call, and she told us to come up at 8 PM (by this time, it was already 7:30). Of course, 8 is when WWTBAM airs. Our last opportunity to practice and to talk about strategy! When informed of this conflict, she hastily amended our appointment to 9.

After the show aired, we went up to Susan's suite on the 11th floor (as we later found out, she actually lives there full time). One of Joe's outfits was vetoed -- a gray shirt with a very discreet pattern. Patterns are out, as are pastels and the colors white and black. A dark blue Oxford made the grade, as did my deep pink sweater, which my Mom had purchased for me to wear on the program. After the fashion show, Joe and I, along with Linda, another contestant from California, and her husband, were read a long list of things we were not allowed to bring to the taping, including pagers, cell phones and reference materials, as well as playing cards, newspapers, novels and pads of paper. I'm one of those people who hates to go anywhere without a book to read, but Susan assured me I wouldn't be bored.

We were then given our per diem, $150 in cash (three $50 bills), plus a $20-off coupon for the ESPN Zone in Times Square. Well, that explained why so many contestants report having eaten there when Regis asks them what they've done during their time in New York. We also received a WWTBAM T-shirt, size extra-large, with the word CONTESTANT in block letters across the back.

Susan opened the floor to questions. We discussed contestants who have taken forever to answer (apparently the record for deliberation is close to an hour), and asked how the show is edited down to precisely one hour. (Somehow, the producers have this down to a science.) Why does Regis get to wear black, a no-no for contestants? (He gets extra-bright lighting, and "we want the focus to be on you.") Has a contestant ever fainted? (Not so far, but two have thrown up before their Fastest Finger rounds.) We were warned about the chilly 65-degree temperature in the studio and told to bring a jacket or sweater along. Joe was given several forms to fill out and sign, and we headed back to our room.

We decided to forego the ESPN Zone and went to a restaurant across the street called The Saloon for a late dinner. Afterwards, Joe talked to another Bay Area contestant, a guy named Stan Flouride, who, coincidentally enough, had chosen one of the same "phone-a-friends" as Joe (our downstairs neighbor, Stacey, who is the classical music buyer for Amoeba Records in San Francisco). Stan had made it onto the show at the last minute as the carryover contestant, then had to spend a week in New York waiting to tape his second episode, due to the eight episodes of celebrity and Olympic athlete Millionaires that had been shot in the meantime. They talked strategy for a while, and then Joe and I actually managed to get some sleep despite our nervousness and the constant traffic noise and honking horns.

The following morning, we had been instructed to gather in the lobby at 9:45 AM. It was easy to spot the other contestants, since they were all carrying their outfits on hangers. (The companions don't get a dressing room, so I was already wearing my pink sweater.) Paul, Susan's assistant, did a head count and herded us onto a minibus bound for the ABC studios, about three blocks away.

When we arrived, we were all led to a dressing room so the contestants could hang up their clothes. A young woman collected photo IDs and Social Security cards from the contestants and whisked them away for verification, while another woman went around the room, checking purses and bags to ensure that no contraband items had been smuggled in.

We were then led off to a large room just off the employees' commissary for a continental breakfast and a meeting with our producers. The route was circuitous, and involved going down lots of hallways and up a narrow flight of stairs; it reminded me of the Winchester Mystery House. I grabbed some orange juice and a muffin; Joe was too nervous to eat. Tracey, an attractive young woman (Regis may be 67, but most of the people who work for the show appear to be in their 20s) dressed in black with her hair pulled into a ponytail, came over and greeted us warmly. She reviewed all of Joe's personal information -- the number of years we'd been dating, how long he'd been a computer programmer, how we met.

After half an hour or so, Tracey dashed off with a list of Joe's five lifelines and their phone numbers. She needed to call them all to verify that they'd be available during the 4-6 PM taping period. Another producer, P.J., an incredibly energetic young man, came over and chatted with us for a few minutes. The producers are all very friendly, adept at putting a nervous group at ease.

Between 11 AM and noon, the contestants began to talk to each other. You really do bond with the other people who are going through this adventure with you. We met Bruce, an affable schoolteacher from southern New Jersey who carried a cell phone to class with him for weeks as he waited for that magic callback; Alex, the father of four young children -- including triplets; Tracy, an anesthesiologist who travels around the world training doctors in developing countries; Stephen, who, it turns out, lives about 15 minutes away from Joe and me; and Mark, a computer programmer who named his child Grace after computing pioneer Grace Hopper. They all seemed frighteningly intelligent and deserving of the big prize.

Suddenly, I began to feel very sleepy, and wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and take a nap. Time seemed to be passing very, very slowly. Finally, noon rolled around and it was time to rehearse.

All 20 of us filed down to the studio, which looks a lot smaller than it does on TV. The contestants were given their seat assignments (Joe was placed in #7 -- lucky, I hoped), and the companions were seated in the bleacher-like structure where the studio audience sits. An authoritative producer named Wendy came out to do practice rounds with all 10 contestants. Starting with #1, everyone got a chance to answer two practice questions, taken from the British edition of WWTBAM, and rehearse some banter from the blue cards. The first contestant got $100 and $200 questions; #2 got $300 and $500, and so on. Each companion got to sit in the "relationship seat" as well. Two huge monitors off to our right showed everything on camera; we companions were instructed not to look at it, lest we appear to be staring off into space. Though it was hard to resist the temptation to at least glance up at an enormous close-up of our own faces.

Thanks to his seat position, Joe wound up with the $500,000 and $1 million questions in his practice round. Wendy chatted with him about the Swedish lessons he's been taking for three years, and asks me about my Swedish heritage. Then it was time for his question, about the number of arms a squid has. Joe 50-50'd it to two possible answers. Still unsure, he phoned a "friend" -- really a WWTBAM staffer who enjoyed torturing the contestants by waiting until the last possible second to blurt out the correct answer. The $1 million question was one I actually knew the answer to, though Joe was stumped -- how many miles separate the U.S. and Russia at their closest point? He polled the audience of companions. 2.7 miles had a narrow lead, but he opted for a greater distance. Wendy dissuaded him until he picked the right one, which was the audience's choice. Fortunately, in real life, he could have walked with the $500K.

After everyone had their chance to sit in the hotseat, which is surprisingly high off the ground and a little wobbly (a stepstool is provided for contestants who can't make it up on their own), there were six practice rounds of Fastest Finger. The contestants received a detailed explanation of how the controls worked -- the four buttons must be pushed in the correct order, followed by an "OK" button. The "OK" stops the clock and locks in your time. The most common mistake is pushing one button while another is still down; the second one won't register. Most of the contestants made this mistake in the first practice round. Computer programmer Mark won a couple of rounds, as did Bruce. Joe won one.

After rehearsal, it was time for lunch. We were again led through the twists and turns of the ABC corridors to the commissary adjoining the room where we'd eaten breakfast. There was a buffet featuring lots of incredibly starchy, heavy food -- breaded chicken stuffed with rice, macaroni and cheese, bread, steamed veggies. Joe and I sat by ourselves at lunch, close enough to Mark and his wife to converse a bit. I tried to "coach" Joe, who was, understandably, getting pretty nervous. I told him that the fact that he'd won a practice round was very promising. Listen to the question and visualize possible answers before they pop up. Tune out the distractions. Since I had tried so hard myself to get on the show, I suspect I took a more active role in "training" than most companions. In a way, I was living vicariously through him.

Finally, at around 2:30, the contestants and companions parted ways for the first time that day. The nine men and one woman were led down to makeup and wardrobe, while the companions stayed behind in our roped-off section of the commissary (to avoid the hint of impropriety, non-WWTBAM staffers are forbidden to communicate with contestants or companions while they're in the building; mindful of the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, ABC bends over backwards to keep things on the up and up). A producer took some of us to the ladies' room so we could touch up our hair and makeup, while others stayed behind under the watchful eye of a security guard stationed by the door. There is no roaming around in the building; even bathroom breaks were supervised.

About 20 minutes before the taping was due to start, the companions were taken to their seats in the top tier of the bleachers. The rest of the audience was already seated. A loud and lively pop soundtrack was playing, including Tori Amos' "Cornflake Girl," Ben Folds Five's "My Prerogative," and Fatboy Slim's "Praise You." A few minutes before 4 PM, a comedian who introduced himself as "Q" came out to entertain the crowd. He had a stack of WWTBAM T-shirts, and promised that anyone who could stump him on a TV theme song would win a shirt. He also tried to goad audience members into singing well-known themes, such as "The Jeffersons" and "The Brady Bunch." Sometimes he'd just start flinging shirts at random into the crowd, which caused people to practically risk life and limb diving after them. It's pretty amazing what folks will do for a free T-shirt.

Q was followed by a stage manager who instructed us to clap when we saw the "applause" sign light up -- "since the studio is so small, each one of you will have to play the part of 4.2 audience members." We got to see a video of WWTBAM highlights, including John Carpenter's million-dollar win as well as the guy who blew it on the $100 question (he thought Hannibal crossed the alps with the help of llamas, not elephants). Each of the 10 contestants was introduced, and they took their seats in the "Ring of Fire" around the hotseat. Then, finally, it was time to meet Regis. He walked around the small stage, telling us to "Take a good look -- I'm the man who saved the ABC television network. I would've done it earlier, if they'd asked me." He told an anecdote about a contestant with the last name of Doody, who had inspired him to say, "Who wants to be a millionaire? Doody do!" Then Regis went backstage again and it was showtime.

The carryover contestant was a Texas woman named Lore, who had only made it up to $200 on the previous show. She effortlessly answered the low-level questions, until Regis asked her which magazine featured a section called "Cheers and Jeers." She didn't hesitate before saying People. Bzzt -- wrong! It was TV Guide. Lore left with only $1,000, and after only a couple of minutes, it was already time to send one of our group of 10 to the hotseat.

The first Fastest Finger question involved putting female musicians in order of their birth. This was the kind of pop-culture trivia nugget Joe excelled at. Regis read the question twice (one of the readings is cut before the show airs), and then the four names popped up. After 20 seconds, Regis read them in the correct order, and said, "Let's see who got it right" -- Joe's name lit up, but he was a mere fraction of a second behind Alex, the guy with the triplets. Well, at least Alex seemed highly deserving of any money he might win, since he'd have a lot of college tuitions to pay someday. And his wife Sue had seemed very nice.

I thought I might root for anyone who got on before Joe to fall quickly, so as to leave time for more Fastest Fingers, but I found that I really did want Alex to do well. That whole bonding thing, I guess. It was fun to participate in the "ask the audience" (luckily, I knew the answer), and I was delighted when he wound up winning $125,000.

The second Fastest Finger was geography-related, not Joe's strong suit. He hadn't gotten the correct answer, so his name didn't light up this time. Tracy, the anesthesiologist, was the next contestant. Like Alex, he walked away $125,000 richer. And there was still time for a third contestant.

There was a lot of "dead time" between the actual show taping in which "Q" ran around singing and tossing T-shirts into the crowd. There are lots of 5-10 minute breaks. For instance, after Lore lost, there was a break; then Regis came out and said, "Too bad, she seemed so sure of the answer," and added that People has Picks and Pans while TV Guide has Cheers and Jeers. No, he didn't ad-lib that; someone wrote it for him during the break, and five minutes later, it appeared on his TelePrompTer. On TV, though, it appears seamless.

Put these television journalists in order of their birth... The names that flashed up on the monitors were Diane Sawyer, Ed Bradley, Matt Lauer and Dan Rather. I figured Matt was the youngest and Dan was the oldest, but I had no clue about Diane and Ed. I didn't even try to guess and I had no idea whether or not this was something Joe might know. I kept my eyes glued to the monitor -- I didn't want to look down at Joe. Regis read the correct answer; turns out Diane is a few years younger than Ed, despite the fact that Sawyer worked for stodgy old Nixon and Bradley sports a cool earring. "And the winner is--" Joe!!

After that, everything sort of becomes a blur. I had to make my way down from the top row of the bleachers to the "relationship seat," where a sound guy miked me -- or tried to, anyway (my hands were shaking so much that it took me a couple of minutes to thread the microphone up through my sweater. I would recommend that female companions wear blouses to avoid the problem). A makeup woman ran out to powder my face. Joe took his place in the hotseat as the cameras started rolling.

I don't remember many of the questions Joe was asked, except for the fact that they were all pretty easy. One of them was about the founder of the Mercury Theatre which presented "War of the Worlds" (Orson Welles), and one asked which of these states does not share a border with Canada (Wyoming). After he correctly answered the $8,000 question, the horn sounded to mark the end of the show. Joe would be returning on the next broadcast, with all of his lifelines intact. And, yes, our engagement was announced on national television!

Now, our tape date was Thursday, and the next show wouldn't be taped until Monday. Due to the fact that we live in California, ABC agreed to put us up for the duration (ordinarily, carryover contestants have to go home if their tape date isn't the following day). So, we got a vacation in New York at ABC's expense. Ordinarily, I would never choose to spend a week there -- it's too crowded, too noisy, too hectic. I prefer small, quaint California towns like Mendocino and Monterey. But, heck, I couldn't complain.

Afterwards, we both felt a little bit of "survivor's guilt." Why Joe, instead of, say, Bruce (who would have made a great contestant -- he was really outgoing and did a fabulous Bullwinkle Moose impression)? It struck me how lucky we were, and how seven people were going to fly home having had a fun experience, but with no winnings, no 15 minutes of TV fame. Had Lore not flubbed that TV Guide question, Joe and I might have been flying back the next day as scheduled, having "won" only a phony million-dollar check with Regis' autograph rubber-stamped on it. (No, contestants can't get Regis' "real" autograph -- one person asked. I guess now that they're taping four shows a week, he would get writers' cramp if he tried to sign stuff for everyone.)

We returned to the hotel around 6:15 PM and made tons of phone calls, telling everyone we were staying over and that Joe had actually made it to the hotseat. Then we went to a nearby CompUSA to buy a new charger for Joe's cell phone (he'd forgotten to bring his charger along). We bought pizza and fruit salad at a nearby deli and took it back to the room so we could watch Stan Flouride on that night's WWTBAM. Afterwards, we took the subway downtown to see one of our favorite musicians, Stew, who happened to be playing at the Knitting Factory that night. We got back to the hotel around 1:45 AM, amazed at how many people are out & about in New York on a late Thursday night.

On Friday, we decided to put our ESPN Zone coupon to good use -- we wouldn't get our per diem for the weekend until Monday, and hey, twenty bucks is twenty bucks. We were given a pager to wear until our table was ready; we tossed basketballs in their upstairs game area while we waited. After 15 minutes or so, we were seated in a huge atrium filled with TV screens, all showing different sporting events. It wasn't exactly a great place for a relaxing meal, but then again, "relaxing" isn't a word you would use to describe anything in Times Square.

When we ordered, I told the waiter that we had a $20 coupon, and he asked if we were from WWTBAM. Apparently they get a lot of business from contestants. He was very chatty and friendly, asking how Joe was doing on the show, and giving us suggestions of things to do in New York. Joe ordered the "two minute drill steak," and I had an apple and walnut salad. Afterwards, we went back to the hotel and took a nap, and then did some record shopping in the Village and met up with some friends who live in the area for dinner at a Thai restaurant called Lemongrass.

I had a bad case of insomnia that night, worrying about the show. It took me until about 4 AM to get to sleep. What if...we waited around all weekend, and then Joe lost at the $16,000 level, going home with only $1,000? Oddly enough, the money wasn't really a motivating factor in getting on the show in the first place, but once Joe made it to the hotseat, the possibility of winning a lot of cash was hard to ignore. We aren't exactly burdened by debt -- we have no credit card debt, owe only a couple of thousand bucks on our car, and Joe has a student loan -- and neither of us are particularly materialistic. But an unexpected windfall of cash is always welcome.

On Saturday, we went to a trendy Swedish restaurant, Aquavit, for lunch. Joe had beef Rydberg, cubes of beef and potatoes topped with a raw egg yolk. I ordered the prix fixe lunch -- squash soup, a delicious salmon salad sandwich with housemade potato chips, and a chocolate ganache with bell pepper sorbet. Yes, it tasted exactly like bell pepper. I also had a glass of white wine. The total came to almost $70 with tax and tip! Of course, I'm sure there are plenty of restaurants that are as expensive in San Francisco...

Then we proceeded down to Macy's in Herald Square to buy outfits for Monday's taping. The store was incredibly crowded, with long lines for the women's fitting rooms. I wound up buying two silk blouses for a total of $100, and Joe purchased a nice maroon shirt and black pants (on sale) for $60. It took around two hours. We were very glad to get out of that place.

We took the subway back to the hotel and rested a bit, and at 7 PM decided to go down to Broadway to see if we could get last minute tickets for a play (it seemed like a good bet, with the Subway Series going on). We were able to purchase two seventh-row tickets for Proof starring Mary-Louise Parker. The tickets were $70 each, but it was definitely worth it. I thought it was one of the best plays I'd ever seen, and it was probably the only time all weekend when my mind was totally occupied by something other than WWTBAM! We grabbed some pizza afterwards, and Joe watched the World Series on TV -- it went into extra innings, and the Yankees finally won around 1:10 AM.

There wasn't much excitement on Sunday. We needed to do some laundry, so the doorman at the hotel pointed us toward a laundromat three blocks away. We had a good laugh at the prices the hotel charged to do wash -- $2.50 for a pair of socks, $4 for underwear, and a whopping $11 for trousers. Even if we'd already won a million dollars, I don't think I would ever be able to pay that much for laundry.

Afterwards, I thought it might be fun to go up to the top of the Empire State Building, so we took the subway downtown. Turns out there were huge crowds there (is there anyplace in New York where there aren't huge crowds?). We were told it would be an hour wait in a long line to ride up in the elevator, so we just looked around the lobby a bit and left.

I had the weird idea of getting on the subway, riding to a random stop, and finding a restaurant there. I selected 88th Street on the Upper West Side, since I seemed to recall that was near where several of the "Seinfeld" characters were supposed to reside. We wound up in a pleasant Irish pub style restaurant. I had fish and chips and Joe had bangers and mash. We decided to spend the evening reading the newspaper and resting up for the next day's adventures.

The nervousness of knowing you have a chance to make it into the hotseat is nothing like knowing that you are on your way to the studio to actually sit in that hotseat. Neither Joe nor I were able to eat much on Monday morning -- we went to a gourmet deli across the street from the hotel, where he ate about a third of a bowl of chicken soup, and I had some yogurt and granola.

Susan's assistant Paul met us in the lobby at 1:30 PM and asked us if we wanted to walk to the studios or take a cab. Since it was a pleasant day, we decided to walk the three blocks. Tracey met us at ABC, and led us up to the commissary. We decided to forego the starchy food this time.

I wished Joe good luck as he went to makeup. Afterwards, I chatted a little bit with some of the current day's crop of companions. One of them worked at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, and his wife, the contestant, was using the director of the Hall as one of her lifelines. (Unfortunately, she didn't make it into the hotseat, but she is definitely lucky, since she made it onto WWTBAM on her very first attempt to qualify!)

Shortly before 4, we were led into the studio. The companions went up to the top row of the bleachers, and I sat down in the Relationship Seat after I had been miked (much easier this time, since I was wearing a blouse). Talk about deja vu -- the stage manager and the annoying comedian said the exact same things (we even got to hear renditions of the same TV theme songs); Regis came out and told the "Doody do" story as well as using the line about saving ABC. We even got to hear "My Prerogative" and "Praise You." It was exactly like watching a bad rerun!

I don't really care to relive the show in detail, since it was among the most stressful experiences I've ever had, but anyone who happened to tune in that night knows that all of our carefully planned strategies went out the window as Joe burned up all three of his lifelines on the $16K question, and (thank goodness) wound up going against the audience to choose boxing over billiards as "the sweet science." (For the record, I picked boxing!) Of course, boxing was Joe's first instinct, and as Regis loves to say, first instincts are usually right.

Joe made it up to $125K and wound up walking away rather than guessing on the $250K question (about the baseball player admired by the old man in Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea -- the answer is Joe DiMaggio). It's weird to think that reading an old book could have been worth an extra $125,000. (I didn't know the answer myself, since I've never read it, either.) I was very relieved that he'd made it as far as he had considering that his lifelines were of absolutely no use; for a while there, I had been certain that he wouldn't feel confident enough to buck the audience and that he would wind up taking home only $1,000.

I was a little disappointed that he didn't go all the way to $1M, since it would have been so cool to have the confetti come raining down and see Joe immortalized as a winner of the Ultimate Prize. However, I think he did unbelievably well with a very difficult stack of questions and no help from his lifelines. It also made for an extremely suspenseful show!

Afterwards, we were led backstage to a special area for contestants who have made it out of the hotseat to watch the rest of the show on a monitor. As I was heading back, Regis, who was having his makeup touched up and going over his next lines on a miniature TelePrompTer, saw me and stopped me. He shook my hand and said he really wished Joe hadn't had to blow all of his lifelines on that one question. I could see in his expression that he really meant it. He does want people to win. I guess it's hard not to get swept up in the drama of these "real people" going for potentially life-changing money, even if you're already a millionaire many times over, like Regis (who reportedly earns over $20 million a year for hosting the show).

What if Joe hadn't used all of his lifelines at the $16K level? I think not having them caused him to rely on his own brain power to work out the answers to the $64K and $125K questions, instead of second-guessing himself (the $32K question, which required him to name the composer whose work David Helfgott played in the movie "Shine," was an easy one for a big movie fan like Joe). It's a good bet that Ask the Audience and 50/50 wouldn't have been of much use, since the audience generally isn't reliable on such high-dollar questions and 50/50 doesn't help much if you have no clue. Joe said afterwards that he would have called our friend Tim, a former Jeopardy! contestant, if he'd been able to phone one of his lifelines. We found out after the show aired that Tim didn't know the answer to the question either. So there was no way that $250K could have been ours.

Walking back to the hotel afterwards, someone who had been in the audience that day actually snapped a photo of us. We had a low-key dinner at a moderately-priced Italian restaurant near the hotel, and afterwards, splurged on seeing the legendary Les Paul and his trio at Iridium Jazz Club. The 85-year-old Les is somewhat hampered by arthritis, but he still plays remarkably well and he's quite a raconteur. Seeing Les Paul and "Proof" were definitely my favorite New York experiences. After the show, Les hung around in the lobby, greeting every fan who wanted to talk with him or get an autograph -- something very few artists one-third his age do! Joe and I had him sign our program. Several fans had brought along Les Paul guitars for him to sign.

It was around 1 by the time we got back to our room, and since we had an early flight, our car was coming at 4:30 AM. We got a few hours of sleep until our wake-up call came, and then we left New York behind and flew back to California.

We decided not to tell anyone the outcome of the show, so our friends and family would get caught up in the nail-biting suspense. (Joe did tell his mom, who has a heart condition!) We had 20 friends over to watch the second night's show with us on Nov. 1. It was great to hear everyone cheer when Joe got the right answers, and something of a relief to find out that in this highly educated crowd which included three former quiz-show contestants as well as lawyers, teachers and computer professionals, very few knew what the "sweet science" was, or the answer to the Ernest Hemingway question. So it wasn't just me, the questions were tough! But who said winning a million dollars should be easy?

At this writing, Joe doesn't have his check -- the money is sent to winners via overnight mail six business days after their show has aired. He plans to give $5,000 to his sister to help her buy a car, and of course, a lot of it will go for taxes (you're responsible for paying them yourself; there's no withholding), so he'll probably put most of it into a short-term CD.

As for me, I am not quite as eager now as I once was to become a contestant. I don't think I have the nerves of steel that are required to sit in the hotseat. Maybe after some time has passed, I'll decide I want to start trying again. Then Joe can find out what it's like to sit in the relationship seat!

Written by trow @ interbridge.com