Last night, in the 90 minutes or so between when the nanny leaves and Jean comes home, I was playing with Sasha. That is, I was lying near-catatonic on the couch watching TV while Sasha ran around destroying things (she loves to tear apart New York Magazine, more than any other publication, for some reason).
All of a sudden, I heard something strange: Alex Trebek announcing a Jeopardy! category: “The New York Times Frugal Traveler”! My nap was over. In a heartbeat, I was 10 inches in front of the TV, fumbling with my iPhone to, first of all, call my mom, who was probably watching “Jeopardy!” as well, and then to videotape the moment, sure to happen seconds later, when the contestants—all college students—leapt all over themselves to select the category.
That, um, didn’t exactly happen. I think the producers must have thought that a budget-travel theme would entice these college kids, but instead the contestants shied away from it almost entirely until the very end of Double Jeopardy. At least they got most of the answers (questions?) right—they only missed one about the city that has Vélib—and at least I managed to capture the footage on my iPhone. The sound is pretty low, and obscured by Sasha’s attempts at plinky-piano-playing (at least one of my editors likes it better that way), but there it is—a weird, amazing, surprising, gasp-inducing minute or two of near-fame.
As my friend Richard Ziglar put it, I am now, “officially, a taken-for-granted cultural meme.” Enjoy:
Very cool. Congrats on the pop culture stardom!