We had to get up at the crack of dawn but both Kid Myach and I were too wired to be tired. We left the House of Skills in the purple dawn and headed to the subway in nearly empty streets. A yawn escaped my lips but it was drowned out in the thrill of knowing that I was on my way to make an appearance on Jeopardy.
I'd been on TV with Myachi before. We'd been on the CBS Early Show several times, we'd appeared on CNBC by then and had even made our appearance on Martha Stewart Living but this one was different. I was going to be on my mom's favorite TV show.
It would only be for a few seconds. They were filming a series of video clues for an FAO Shwarz category of questions (or "answers" if you want to be all Jeopardy about it) and one of the questions was about Myachi. The clue was "Myachi is said to be the evolution of this 1980s fad" and while the contestants were receiving the clue, they would watch Kid and I jamming out with a lovely young lady from the Jeopardy "Clue Crew".
When we arrived they were shooting some stuff on the famous Big Piano. They had the FAO Piano Dancers dancing out the Jeopardy theme and they had the Clue Crew doing dives and rolls on it for little pre-commercial outro shots.
We met up with one of the producers and he handed us both some paperwork. "Get this filled out so we can get you paid," he explained.
"Paid?" I said. I suppose that most people would insist on some sort of payment before they would get up at 4:30 in the morning to be on TV for 2 seconds but for us it was all about promoting the game. Kid and I weren't worried about getting paid, we wanted exposure. We wanted epic STWAKOJ. That being said, we were cool with taking a little money as well.
So we filled out our paperwork and watched as one of the models cozied up to the Lego Chewbacca to record a clue about the meaning of the word Lego (It's Danish for "Play Well", by the way). After a few more stops they finally made their way to the Myachigon.
The idea was that the Kid would pass the Myachi to the clue girl, she would do a Cold Fusion and then toss under the leg to me and I would jam out while she read the clue. It took a dozen or so takes. Most of them were because the Clue girl kept flubbing her lines, but Kid and I ruined our share of takes as well. I mean, we're professionals, but we'd also been up since 4:30 in the morning.
All in all it was a great experience, we had a lot of fun and we made $750 a piece. After we wrapped up we headed out to a little diner nearby for some breakfast before carrying on with the day. We were both pretty stoked but the early morning was catching up with us so not much was said.
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It would be months before the scheduled air date for that episode rolled around. They'd given us each a Jeopardy baseball cap as a memento and when the day arrived, both Kid and I were wearing them. We had called everyone to tell them to watch for us. I'd left it on my Facebook page and Tweeted about it. My mother had contacted everyone who had ever interacted with me for more than 15 seconds.
So the episode starts like any other ("This... Is... Jeopardy!) and we watched as they introduced the contestants and got the game going. I shouted out answers in the form of questions (not the right ones, but darn it, I was shouting out answers) through the first round, but the FAO Shwarz category wasn't slated to appear until the Double Jeopardy round.
We watched all the way through. When they finally got to the FAO category every clue got us excited. We figured that since our clue was pretty easy it would show up in the lower dollar amounts. They did them in order, of course. We weren't the $200 question and we weren't the $400 question either. We watched on through commercials for arthritis medication and floor wax. We weren't the $600 question or the $800 question either. We kept watching as people way smarter than me were made to feel stupid. There was only one question left in the category and we hadn't seen ourselves yet.
"Would they make us the toughest question?" I asked.
Kid shrugged, "I think we're worth $1000."
The final clue sat there forever while people picked all the other clues in the other categories and we started to fear that the round would run out without anyone going to that clue. Finally somebody picked it and both of us leaned forward in anticipation. And then the clue came and it had nothing to do with us. It was about overpriced stuffed animals.
Both of us were slack-jawed. We'd gotten up at 4:30 in the morning just to be snubbed from Jeopardy? We spent our whole morning dragging around like zombies and putting up with their extremely attractive yet bafflingly stupid Clue Crew just to not be on the program? Heck, I could have not been on Jeopardy and slept in.
Kid and I looked at each other as the show drew to a close and the Final Jeopardy category was revealed. We were disappointed then but we were also starting to realize just how many people we were going to have to explain this to. Everyone in my family had been watching that episode and everyone in the Myachi world was expecting to see us there as well.
"Well," Kid said, "at least we got $700 and a hat..."
And I consoled myself for that. If somebody had said, "Hey man, I'll give you $700 and a hat if you wake up at 4:30 in the morning," I'd have gone for it. It was disappointing but I've been disappointed before.
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One of these days we're going to have a TV show. It's almost a given. Any toy that reaches a certain level of popularity winds up with a cartoon show at some point and I'm sure Myachi will be no exception.
Now, I'm not bitter or anything, but when we get our TV show it's already been decided. We're gonna beg Alex Trebek to do a guest voice on it just so we can snub him. It's not that I have any ill-will toward him or his show, but the lesson has to be learned. There are consequences when you snub the Myachi Masters...
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