It’s legit unseemly.
Our being ‘gutted’ and whatnot by the deaths of people we don’t know.
Still, there is John Donne and there is continuity and there is in the end … us.
Well, there ought to be but we usually skip not to the end — that bell tollling for we.
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Also unseemly is hijacking an event to say something about ourselves.
But that’s the cynical read — like seeing condescension as a bad thing.
When one dies and another recalls it shd be seen as a hurrah for both.
It’s a try at connection, remembrance, soothing — tho p’raps too soon.
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So here’s mine.
I didn’t know him, nor he me, though he did come out and say hello to all of us taking the test to try out for the show.
I was in college. At the time the mode was a test, score high enough — 85%? I don’t recall. Maybe 95.
Then you actually do a test run with a show manager of some kind — I recall his name was Kirk — and you got to go to the actual stage and he said, literally pretty much exactly said,
Now, here’s the most important thing — if you think you’re right and Alex is wrong … don’t argue. We’re filming. There’s an audience. It’s live. Do not dispute an answer. If the judges make a mistake, they’ll get commercial break time to correct it. Do not argue with Alex.
You’re way ahead of me.
As I was of myself that day.
Kirk tested us with answers.
I gave a question to one —
Who are Abbott + Costello?
No, he said, it was —
Who are The Three Stooges?
I was positive. Certain. Mouthy.
Da and I had watched A+C religiously on Saturdays when I was a kid; he disliked the Stooges. For all I knew on that stage, both owned the bit … and now that YouTube exists, ’tis manifest they did.
Sigh.
But of course it wasn’t my father’s preference for words over actions — the punning and misdirection of Bud + Lou over the slapstick physicality of … the other guys.
It was that I cldnt shut up.
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The show — its ‘college’ competition — needed national geographic diversity with a smidge of rivalry.
Guy they chose from USC had driven his Corvette out from North Carolina.
They called and asked me to be an alternate. $250. Pretty good money in those days for doing nothing; only hadda go, sit, wait, if anyone got sick or dropped out, I’d be in.
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I went and nobody got sick, or decided not to make a lot of money.
Everyone onscreen got a thousand bucks, I think.
Top three winners kept their haul?
Nobody argued with Alex.
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Honestly thought we were just talking.
Friends chattering.
Robust converse.
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Not the first time.
Can’t be accidental he emphasized the ‘shut up’ rule with me.
Not the last time.
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Mr. Trebek was, is, seemed to this manifest outsider literally ignorant of the man himself, a good guy.
Kind, swell, calm.
Shared our times.
Brought pleasant.
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Requiescat in pace