Game show lovers are people, too

By Cory Anotado
Collegian Staff
October 4, 2006

I’m an expert on game shows.

If I appeared on TV, they’d put “Senior Game Showologist” under my name. I have freakishly encyclopedic knowledge about all shows game: I know how to play most, if not all, pricing games on The Price is Right; I can name which NFL player hosted Wheel of Fortune (Rolf Benirschke of the San Diego Chargers) and I can list off the biggest champion in Tic Tac Dough history (Thom McKee, winning over $200,000 in cash and over $100,000 in prizes).

Beyond all that, I’ve actually been on two different game shows. I started my run on national television with Jep!, the kids version of Jeopardy!, airing on the Game Show Network. I won a CD player, a handheld video game, a free trip to Los Angeles and a couple roast beef sandwiches I stole from the green room. It made me the cream of the crop at my middle school.

In high school, I made my second appearance on the game show circuit by scoring a spot on Wheel of Fortune, during their “Teen Best Friends Week” in Philadelphia. Landing in second place at the end of game, my teammate and I won $12,000 and a couple more roast beef sandwiches from the green room. I was the buzz of my high school and, surprisingly, on the Internet, where someone randomly e-mailed me, offering congratulations and condolences for coming up short.

Recently, all my knowledge and experience has manifested itself with a mention in former Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings’ new book, Brainiac: Adventures in the Curious, Competitive, Compulsive World of Trivia Buffs, where he and I talk about, of all things, game shows, and people who have the same useless knowledge of game shows that I do. In the book, I discussed the Internet, noting that some fans were arguing about “the style of numbers on the Family Feud displays... the numbers [on the top of the board] that tell how you much money’s in the bank.” The extreme obsession of these fans amazes and frightens most people.

Is it really so wrong?

People obsess over many things, from baseball statistics to anime to science-fiction literature. Those obsessed are always looked down upon by those who are not obsessed. But these same people whittle their time away chasing hobbies that they don’t care about, not fulfilling any real needs.

It is true that sometimes people can take their hobbies too seriously. Kimveer Gill, the 25-year-old from Montreal, Canada who killed one and injured 19 before taking his own life last week, had very unhealthy obsessions: alcohol, death, the Columbine shootings and an unhealthy interest in weaponry. Those hobbies took Gill down a road toward infamy. When people take their hobbies out of a safe place and manifest themselves into something more troubling, it’s the job of the hobbyist and those around him or her to make sure that what obsessions he or she gets into isn’t something harmful.

But if a hobby is harmless, why should we pass judgment? A lot of times, those who express interest in off-the-wall hobbies are using them as a release of sorts. It’s a personal oasis; a place of comfort. As uncomfortable as classes are for me, I know I can escape to the world of big bucks and no whammies, and it all starts to feel a bit better.

anotadoc1@lasalle.edu