"You're smart, make us some money on TV"
That was my then-wife in 1984. We were broke. Our freelance design/pasteup clients had dried up. The TV was on all day, from 7am to 11pm at night. Which meant daytime television, and game shows. She thought since I knew a lot of stuff, having read books, I could ace it.
Sure. I was broke enough to think that. So I started making calls to find out how it worked. Which led to auditions for $20,000 Pyramid, and Wheel of Fortune.
$20,000 Pyramid
Oh shit. Now I was sweating.
My turn came, I stood up, and blathered something that was like a tire going flat on the roadside.
Now I got a master-class in Game Show Auditions.
First was a quietly elegant 50ish woman, emerald-green shirtwaist dress, hair pulled back in a French Twist.
"Hello, I'm [X]. I became fascinated by nouvelle cuisine, and I got so good at it, I gained 100lbs. Then I lost it all."
That was an attention getter.
On the other end of the spectrum, was an Army officer, possibly a major. Very nervous, combover, black-framed glasses.
"Hello, I'm [X], and I'm stationed at Ft Detrick MD, where I do CBW..."
Blank stares.
"Oh yeah, CBW-- chemical biological warfare"
Dead silence.
Television loves a man in uniform, provided they look Hollywood and are in artillery, armor, infantry; or are ship-drivers, pilots etc.
But not middle-management in anthrax.
Yes, I flunked that audition. Got back to stony looks from the wife. Next stop Wheel of Fortune.
Wheel of Fortune
The WOF audition was in Hollywood somewhere. I felt a faint hope as we both had worked on Wheel print ads for TV Guide at a tiny broadcast promo shop on Robertson Blvd, Beverly Hills-adjacent.
No elevator pitches at this point. We were seated, and given a timed quiz. It was Hangman. Another game I knew nothing about. My head hurt.
Time's up, and I knew I was fucked. Out the door I went. This was a hard sell to my wife, who'd spent a lot of time in the TV space.
CONCLUSION
I learned the hard way that there are many silos of knowledge. Game shows draw on the deep well American TV; shows, gags, plot lines I didn't know shit about. I stopped making fun of TV trivia experts. They were PhDs in a very different world.
So we went back to being broke and looking for work in that long hot summer. The LA Olympics came and went, Richard Ramirez started his crime spree which ended the following August.
The TV stayed on, and I slowly marinated in that. Good times.
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