Well earlier today I set out for Ft. Worth to take part in contestant tryouts for Who Wants to Be a Millionaire that were being held at the Bass Performance Hall. It's a beautiful building right in the downtown area and I'd never been there before. It was announced that they would be conducting the tryout sessions from 9am to 4pm. I started standing at the back of the line at 9:30, by which point the line wound all the way around the block. It was quite hot but the line soon moved enough that I was in the shade and a gentle breeze made it feel less hot than it was. In the line I was directly behind a guy who worked as an assistant principal in the Lewisville ISD, and in front of a woman from Palestine (Texas) who had been all over the world because her husband's job had made them to live in several different places. Behind her were 2 ladies from the Austin area who were both lawyers, and who had driven to Ft. Worth together the previous night just to try out for the show today. So most of my socializing while in the line was with those 4 people. Had some conversation with the guy about his job (I noticed that he was reading a book entitled "What Effective Principals Do Differently") and about how I'd done some subbing before at the middle school and high school level. The lawyer ladies talked a bit about their jobs and where they lived and how they worked mostly with cases involving power companies and property and stuff like that. The other woman had some interesting things to say about places she'd been, gave some travel tips for New York, and had a funny story about how she and a friend tried to shop for a mouse trap while in a desolate town in post-Cold War era Croatia, where they had to resort to some creative pantomimes at a store because they couldn't speak much of that country's language.

It was about 90 minutes or more after I got there that the first session let out and we began to advance in the line to the point that we were inside the building and not waiting outside in the heat. Once we were inside we were lead upstairs to an unoccupied area where our group had to wait for an hour or more, and then this huge group in front of us was moved ahead (they seemed to have us grouped in quadrants or something) and we were promptly moved up about 100 feet into the area they formerly occupied, after which we were joined in that area by a few hundred people right behind us in the line who had still been waiting outside up to that point (they'd stopped the line at the door after the 2 lawyers had entered). So after assuming our new spots and getting new neighbors in the serpentine line that formed next to us, we waited another hour. Finally we were moved downstairs to just outside the entrance after the next-to-last session was finished. After waiting for the foyer (or whatever they call it) to fill up with the lines behind us, they handed out "applications" for us to fill out. They asked for personal information, things relating to the show, interesting things about us, and why we would make good contestants. In addition to having tryouts for the regular "Millionaire" show, they were also having them for a movie week version of the show, so we had some questions about how many movies we watched in a year and what were our favorites and some other movie related questions. I made up most of the answers to these. My least favorite asked what movie had most changed my life; I put Saving Private Ryan for the heck of it. Other answers from our little group included "Witness" and "Young Frankenstein".

Finally, at around 3:15, we were given magnets with a specific number on the back and lead into the seating area at the Performance Hall. We were near the front of the line for what was to be the last session of the day so it took a long time for the hundreds of people in line behind us who were going to test to file into the room. We were passed scantrons and at 4 they explained the procedures for it all. The first test was on the movie trivia portion. There were 30 multiple choice questions and if you got a passing score on it (an unspecified number of correct answers) then you could advance to the interview portion in which a producer for the show would talk to you for 2 minutes, presumably to see if you were the type of person who would make a good contestant for the show. I felt pretty good about the movie questions, I was certain that I got 23 of the 30 right, and guessed on the other 7.

Some were fairly easy and others were ones that would require movie geek type of knowledge to know. Questions included "what was Neo's real name in The Matrix?" (answer: Thomas Anderson), "what type of ball was Wilson in Cast Away?" (answer: volleyball), and what company did Forrest Gump get rich by investing a lot of money in (answer: Apple Computers). Some harder ones that I felt proud of myself for knowing were "which of these cities does not appear in the title of a movie that won Best Picture?" (options: Chicago, Paris, Casablanca, Philadelphia; correct answer: Philadelphia), and "what 1960s three hour epic did not feature any female speaking parts?" (answer: Lawrence of Arabia).

So I felt good about that one, but not as much about the test for the regular show, which we took after the forms for the movie test had been given back. On the regular test I was only sure that I'd gotten 17 or 18 right and had guessed on the others. They graded the scantrons that we'd taken the tests on while some of the crew members threw dozens of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?" t-shirts into the crowd (I got one!) and reminded us that there was a certain number (which was not specified) of questions you had to get right to move to the next step. After they were done grading, they called out the contestant numbers of the people who had passed each section and mine was not called for either of them. I was disappointed at this, and guessed that moving on would have required me to score at least a 25. People scoring that high on either of them had to be either very smart people, or implausibly lucky at guessing, so they did a pretty good job at weeding out the ones who shouldn't be on the show. But at the same time I was glad to finally be out and on my way. I was very hungry too, since I left the Bass Performance Hall at about 5:15 and I hadn't eaten anything since breakfast, except for some stale saltine crackers that one of the lawyers covertly offered to me (we weren't supposed to eat in there). I started standing in line at around 9:30 and walked out of the place almost 8 hours later. I never thought it would take nearly that long, but it was kinda fun and I don't regret trying. Now I know to get there at least an hour before they start if I ever try again in the future.

So after getting my car from the valet parking garage next to the Bass Hall (they charged me $12!) I drove down 7th Street away from downtown Ft. Worth and onto Camp Bowie Blvd. to the best burger place in town, Kincaid's. That was very good. Took a while getting home, and I was tired and full of Dr. Pepper. I played a mixed CD that I burned last night, mostly of songs I've had for a long time and a couple I only recently bought. I ended up playing Keane's new song "Is It Any Wonder" at least 5 times I'm sure. Would have been nice to get to go on the show and possibly win something but it was not to be. Now hopefully I can get a good night's rest tonight and dream of getting on Jeopardy, which I fully plan on doing one day because I think that's easily the game show I would be best at and have the best chance of getting on.