Watch it. Watch it all the way to the end. Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww.

ODDLY SATISFYING: Team of vets pull AN ENTIRE BEACH TOWEL out of a python in Australia – with their bare hands. pic.twitter.com/rjzR2lrmEW

— CBS News (@CBSNews) February 27, 2020

We took a day trip though the “outback” and drove past this sheep station. How many acres of arid land like this would it take to support one sheep? How many acres do you need to make a living?

It looks like the primary crop is rocks. Trees? You gotta be kidding. And water? Maybe next year.

Yet with all these limitations, Australians were tough enough and smart enough and committed enough to build a nation that’s the envy of the world.

And they laughed while they did it.

Now that I’ve told you about the miserable failure I suffered while trying out for Jeopardy, there’s another game show tale that has grabbed me by the lapels and screamed that it wants to be told.

I was without a doubt the laziest young freelance advertising copywriter in Los Angeles. I worked very hard the first week or so of each month, doing just enough work to pay my rent and put a few bucks in the bank, and then I goofed off the rest of each month.

One morning I was sitting down at the corner coffee shop reading the classified ads in the LA Times when I stumbled across one that said, “The Joker’s Wild TV game show. Contestants wanted. Must be fun and know trivia.”

Now I wasn’t what you’d call an introspective young man, but I knew for sure that those were the only two traits that had thus far coalesced in the primordial depths of my personality.

I tuned into The Joker’s Wild later that morning just to find out what it was all about. I watched it again the next day. And the day after that. And then I thought to myself, Yeah, I think I can do this. The game featured two contestants who took turns pulling the lever on a huge slot machine-like device. The amount you could win for answering a question depended on what amounts showed on the wheels when they finally stopped spinning.

But most important to me was that fact that they gave away cash prizes. You could win more money with each game you won. The twist, however, was that you could walk away with your winnings at any time, but if you chose to continue playing and lost, you sacrificed all the money you had accumulated in previous wins. That money went into an ever-growing cash jackpot until someone was able to win three games in a row. Win three games, win all the losers’ lost jackpots. It was that simple.

I called and made an appointment to try out. When I arrived at the tryout, there was a roomful of would-be contestants there to take the test.

They started by giving us a written trivia test. If you failed the test you were told to leave immediately. Let’s say ten of us passed the test. A contestant coordinator then asked us one at a time to stand up, to introduce ourself, and then to tell some interesting story about ourself. She then asked each of us a few follow-up questions in an attempt to determine if any of us were outgoing enough and personable enough to be a good contestant.

After speaking to each of us, she thanked us for coming in and told us that they might invite us back to be contestants somewhere down the road. But she also said, “You may never hear from us. And if you don’t, you can try out again in six months. Thanks for coming. Good bye.”

We all begin shuffling out the door when she added, “Would Jim and Suzie please stay for a minute. Everyone else can go.”

Suzie and I had no idea what was going on, not a clue why we had been singled out.

”We really like both of you,” she informed us, “and we’d like you to play a practice game in front of the producer.”

Neither of us had any idea what that might mean nor what it portended, but it could only be good because we hadn’t been banished like the other contestants who were now heading home on Beverly Boulevard.

Suzie and I were ushered into an empty office. The producer came in a few minutes later with a big, toothy smile on his face.

“Hey, Jim and Suzie,” he enthused. “Thanks for staying. Welcome to The Joker’s Wild. We’re going to play a little practice game with the two of you. I’ll ask some questions and you just holler out if you know the answer. First one to answer five questions wins.”

Well, Suzie clobbered me. Creamed me. Crushed me. I may have known just as many answers as she did, but she was a lot faster than I was. We played a second practice game with the same embarrassing results.

Much to my surprise, the producer said, “You two are great. We’d like both of you to be on the show this week. Can you join us this Saturday morning?”

Hell, yes. No one else was offering me $10,000 for half a day’s work.

When I arrived at the production facility at CBS Television City, there were probably a couple dozen contestants waiting in the contestant lounge. Suzie and I were the only newbies. Some of the others had come back week after week without yet having been chosen to compete on the show.

They told us they would shoot five shows that day — an entire week’s worth of 30-minute episodes. Two in the morning followed by a lunch break followed by three more shows in the afternoon.

Suzie was chosen to challenge the reigning champion on the day’s second show. If you’ve ever seen a game show, you know the host always tries to draw some human interest story out of each contestant. In Suzie’s case, he said, “I heard that you have a very special reason for playing The Joker’s Wild, Suzie. Why don’t you tell our audience what it is.”

Suzie spun a heartwarming tale about how her family had very little money and that her younger brother would be forced to drop out of college unless she could win enough to pay his tuition. She announced that she didn’t care about the giant jackpot that she could take home if she could win three games. “No,” she said, ”I can pay for a year of my brother’s education and walk away happy if I can win just two games.”

Everyone was touched. I’m sure the audience watching at home thought it was a lovely, endearing story and that she was a sweet, loving girl.

Well, Suzie defeated the champion and won her first game. Then she won a second game against another challenger and accomplished what she set out to do. Everyone — the other contestants, the producers, the contestant coordinator — expected her to walk away with her winnings.

Her second win came right at the end of the second show, so we broke for lunch and all the contestants were herded back to the contestant lounge. The contestant coordinator announced that I would be the next contestant up when production resumed. Since Suzie was voluntarily leaving the show, I was scheduled to vie against another new player.

While we were eating lunch Suzie called her husband. This is what she said:

“I know I said I’d walk away if I could win two games, but they just announced who I’ll play my third game against. He’s a moron. I’ve kicked his ass twice in practice games and I’ll kick it again and win the big jackpot.”

You’ve never seen a room turn on a person as quickly as this room turned on Suzie. The other contestants didn’t know anything about me, but they had just learned that Suzie was a bitch and understood that if she’d talk that way about me in front of everyone else, she’d do the same to them.

It was instantaneous hate. Laser death glares shot around the room. Suzie immediately became LA’s least popular person.

Lunch ended. Suzie went back on stage and announced that she had changed her mind and wanted to play a third game and win the big jackpot so she could pay for the rest of her brother’s college education.

They introduced me. I walked out on stage, took my position behind my giant slot machine lever. Jack Barry, the host, said, “We’ll see if Suzie can win her third game right after these commercial messages.”

Two minutes later, just seconds before the videotape began rolling again, Suzie turned to me with the sweetest smile on her face and said, “I’m going to kick your ass again.”

Unbelieveable. Anyone watching on TV would have assumed she said something innocent like, “Good luck.” But no. The bitch tried to intimidate me.

Well, to make an already long story as short as possible, she didn’t. The moment the game began, I could do no wrong. I cannot explain where some of my answers came from. It was like some trivia turbocharger had suddenly kicked in. One question was “Where is the Sargasso Sea?” All I knew about the Sargasso Sea was that it had been mentioned in a Crusader Rabbit cartoon I saw when I was about four years old. (In case you’re wondering, it’s a large, ill-defined, but extremely seaweedy area in the Atlantic Ocean.) Suzie’s luck turned as ice cold as her heart and couldn’t come up with any answers.

In other words, there was indeed an ass-kicking administered that day, but the ass that was kicked was not the one Suzie had predicted.

This is where it got really strange.

The defeated and now penniless Suzie had to take the walk of shame back behind the set to where all the other contestants sat awaiting their turns to play the game. When Suzie sashayed around that corner and came face-to-face with all the other contestants, they booed her. She broke down in tears and ran down the hallway to escape their jeers. The contestant coordinator later told me that she had never seen such a hostile reaction to one contestant by all the others.

Much like Suzie, I won my first two games, but eventually lost my third one. I had to walk backstage and turn the same corner. The other contestants stood up and applauded me, cheered for me so loudly that it interfered with the on-going taping of the next game of The Joker’s Wild. The contestant coordinator then told me that she’d never seen a losing contestant greeted so warmly by the other contestants.

What lessons can be learned from this experience?

1. Greed is an ugly thing.

2. Never embarrass one opponent in front of your other opponents for fear that they will join forces against you.

3. You never know when Crusader Rabbit will come in handy.

By the way, although I didn’t win any money, I did receive some lovely parting gifts (as they call them in the world of TV game shows).

What kind of parting gifts?

A king-sized mattress, which was too large for my tiny apartment, plus a year’s supply of “Dark Eyes,” some sort of mascara-ish goop. So not only did I win no money, I actually lost money because I had to pay for shipping of consolation prizes I couldn’t actually use.

Genius.

ONE ADDED NOTE: After I lost that third game the host of the show, Jack Berry, said, “Well, Jim, we know you’re unemployed so this loss must be terribly disappointing for you. Well, good night folks. See you tomorrow on The Joker’s Wild.” He gave me no opportunity to say, “No, Jack, I’m not unemployed. I’m a freelance advertising copywriter.” So not only did I make no money and have to pay for the shipping of my lovely parting gifts, but all my friends and relatives across the country were lead to believe that I was out of work and penniless.

Great.

Just great.

I submit this map in answer to the question Where haven’t you been in Australia? We’ve driven almost every highway. The ones we haven’t driven are marked in red on the map below.

The places we haven’t been are literally few and far between. Very small towns, nothing more than wide spots in the road punctuating vast wastelands. It’s some of the ugliest, emptiest land in the world.

Dubbo, with 39,000 people, is the only significant town we haven’t visited. And it’s only significant by outback standards. The others? Mount Isa and Broken Hill are mining towns with populations of just 18,000 each. Longreach has just 2,900 hardy folks. Charleville has just 3,300. And Nyngan? Only 1,900 people.

Look at that inland highway on the left side of the map in Western Australia. There’s not a single town big enough to make the map.

In other words, a lot of other people haven’t been where we haven’t been.

Thanks to my buddy Ray for highlighting the roads less traveled in red.

I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I hate the host of the Australian version of the TV game show The Chase. Andrew O’Keefe somehow exudes both insincerity and buffoonishness.

Maybe I should go a little easier on poor Andrew. I know from personal experience that it’s easy to make a buffoon of yourself under the glaring studio lights of a TV game show.

Off on a brief tangent:

Back when I was in the ad agency business, I handled the creative end of the business. My partner Dan handled the business end. We often went about our jobs without seeing each all day long. So we got into the habit of calling each other almost every weeknight to discuss the day’s developments, to go over numbers, to make plans, and to coordinate our efforts for the next day.

Over a period of time we realized that we were calling each other at about 7:25 each evening. We were both Jeopardy fans and that was right about the time Alex Trebec asked the Final Jeopardy question. Dan and I are like brothers — we love each other but bicker constantly. We both desperately wanted to think we were the smarter half of the duo and could answer more of those Final Jeopardy questions than the other guy.

He claimed he was better at Jeopardy and I just as vehemently claimed I was. We probably had this argument several times a week for ten years. Maybe longer. Our employees were sick of hearing it. Our clients were sick of hearing it. Waitresses in our favorite restaurants were sick of hearing it. Strangers on the street were sick of hearing it.

We finally decided that the only possible way to settle this dispute was to try out for Jeopardy and see what happened. We made the appointment. We drove to Hollywood and joined a small auditorium full of other would-be contestants who each undoubtedly believed that they were the smartest person in the room.

The contestant coordinator stood on the stage in front of us and explained that we would be given a written test with fifty questions that had been asked on recent Jeopardy shows that had not yet aired. They handed out the questions, told us we had fifteen minutes and rang a bell. Fifteen minutes later they rang the bell again and collected our answers.

While a group of production flunkies scored all the tests, the contestant coordinator explained what would happen next. We had to score 80% or better to proceed to the next step. She said they would call out the names of the people who didn’t score 80% and if your name was called you were required to leave the room immediately.

They began calling out names. Dan and I looked at each other content in the knowledge that our Jeopardy skills were far superior to those of the lesser beings seated around us.

And then the unthinkable happened. They called out Dan’s name. He was shocked. Dumbfounded. Horrified. He sat next to me waiting for my name to be called so we could drive back to the office together.

But an amazing thing happened. They never called my name. I had passed the Jeopardy tryout test. I got to stay for the next round of tryouts and he didn’t. He stood just inside the door to wait for me, but the contestant coordinator saw him lingering and said, “Sorry, but you must leave the room if you didn’t pass the test.” It was the ultimate humiliation. He had to go outside and wait for me in the parking lot.

Let me just tell you that I was feeling pretty damn superior at that moment. Dan’s the smartest guy I know, so I figured that if I could beat him I could beat anyone.

The contestant coordinator then announced that the remaining contestants, those who had passed the test, would play a sample game in front of the show’s producers. Passing a written test is one thing, but answering questions aloud in front of a crowd is a completely different matter.

Of course, on the actual game show three contestants vie against each other and must be the first to buzz in with the correct answer. They did a half-hearted attempt to recreate that atmosphere by giving each of us one of those little bells you ding at the front desk of a hotel. First one to ring in gets to answer the question.

Piece of cake, I thought as I watched the first two trios play their practice games. The categories were current events, history, geography, science, everything right in my trivia wheelhouse.

Then it was my turn to play. The categories included opera, religion, and country music. I know nothing about any of them. Absolutely nothing.

Anyone who knows me knows I do not handle stress well. And anyone watching that practice game would have immediately realized that I was stressed. Every time I couldn’t answer an opera question, a few more beads of sweat ran down my neck. Every time I came up blank on a religion question, my brow furrowed a little deeper. Every time I came up empty on a country music question, my muscles tensed just a little more.

But even a blind pig occasionally finds an acorn. They finally asked a question to which I knew the answer. I was so stressed out that I screamed out the answer without ringing my little bell.

“Sorry, Jim,” the contestant coordinator said. “You know the rules. You must ring in before you answer.”

Then they asked another question to which I knew the answer. Once again I screamed out the answer without ringing in.

The contestant coordinator shook her head in disappointment and said, “Remember, Jim, you must ring in.”

Then they asked a third consecutive question to which I knew the answer. Again I screamed out the answer.

The contestant coordinator looked at me like I was a complete moron. And she was right. I knew I was finished. They weren’t going to put me on that TV game show no matter how quickly or accurately I could finish a written test. They would never entrust their highly-rated, nationally-syndicated TV show to someone who was too damn dense to follow a few simple rules.

They dismissed me. Dismissed me dismissively, I guess you might say. I forlornly left the building in search of Dan who I found sitting equally forlornly in his car waiting for me. Of course, he expected me to lord my triumph over him. Instead I told him exactly what had happened and I’m pretty sure my miserable practice performance made him feel much better about his own abject failure on the written test.

Let me admit one thing here that I would never admit to Dan. And if we ever end up in court I will gladly perjure myself and deny that I ever admitted this: Dan may have failed that written test, but the man has never caved to stress in his life. Had they put him on the air he would have walked away with a wheelbarrow full of money and the satisfaction of being a Jeopardy champion.

But, of course, that is just the idlest of speculation. Mere supposition. Pure guesswork. And it doesn’t matter in the slightest.

Because on this world and in this life I will never let him forget that he failed the Jeopardy test, but I passed it.

Welcome to Australia, where the map is filled with very odd place names.

Just here in South Australia was have Foul Bay, Younghusband, Mount Misery, Stinky Bay, Bullshit Hill, Cream Puff Corner, Mount Buggery, the Boobs and Break Wind Reserve.

There are probably those who think it would be appropriate for me to live on Bullshit Hill, but almost no one would consider Younghusband to be appropriate.

When I was putting together yesterday’s story about the GeoCache jackpot hidden next to the Barossa Valley’s second biggest tree, I noticed that this photo highlights my absolutely dandy set of fingernails.

There’s a point to be made here and I swear I will get to it. Eventually. But not before we take a brief trip in time.

Many years ago we sold our little California ad agency to a behemoth New York ad agency. We were but a tiny cog in their immense machine.

Oddly enough, our business continued to thrive, but the mother company ran into financial problems and a couple years later sold itself (and us) to an even larger international ad agency.

Our new corporate masters didn’t really understand what they had purchased so they asked our agency’s top management — my partner Dan and me — to schedule a two-day orientation meeting in Manhattan. They arranged for us to meet with each of their department heads so we could figure out how to work together smoothly. We assumed they also wanted those department heads to report back with their assessments of the two new guys from California.

I can still clearly picture the moment Dan walked into my office clutching a single sheet of paper with both hands. It was a memo written to those department heads by the Chairman of the Board of our new corporate overlords. Dan was laughing.

“The people who bought us,” he cackled, ”know absolutely nothing about us.”

He then read from the memo.

“Next week we’re going to host two distinguished visitors from our new acquisition in California. Dan, the president of the agency, is a buttoned-down, street smart New York-style account service guy.” Dan did not dispute that part of the memo.

“But here’s the funny part,” he said as he continued reading. “‘Jim, the agency’s creative director, is a laid back California surfer type.’”

Dan resumed laughing, turned and walked out of my office, and probably continued chuckling all the way back to his office on the other side of the building. Although this happened more than 30 years ago, he can occasionally still be heard breaking out in a chortle and mumbling “Laid back California surfer type. That’s classic.”

The reason this was funny is that nothing in the chairman’s description of me was accurate except the word “Jim.”

First of all, I’ve never been on a surfboard in my life. The New Yorkers had apparently mistaken my slovenly T-shirt and shorts attire for some sort of non-existent athletic ability. But that’s not the mischaracterization that had Dan laughing.

Laid back? Yeah, that’s the one.

No matter how laid back I may have appeared on the outside, he knew I was a complete mess on the inside. He knew that that stress-related migraines kept me locked away in a dark room several days each month. That I had more tics than a Texas hound dog. That I found sleep as elusive as Sasquatch. That I had dozens of nervous mannerisms. That on the day we met my fingernails were bloody stubs that had been chewed and picked down to the quick.

That being said, can somebody please contact the lunatic from the Trinity Broadcast Network because a freakin’ miracle has occurred on this trip.

For the first time in my life, I’ve stopped chewing on my fingernails and stopped picking at my cuticles. For the first time in my life, as you can see in the photo at the top of this story, my phalanges are perfect.

I have no idea why. I haven’t changed my routine. I haven’t changed my diet. I haven’t changed my outlook on life. If anything, the fact that the Australian government has closed its borders and stranded us here should have made me more nervous.

Believe it or not, I can actually remember the moment I began chewing my fingernails. I’d guess I was about five years old. My parents were trying to break me of the habit of sucking my thumb and my dad began yelling when he caught me with my opposable digit in my mouth.

“I wasn’t sucking my thumb,” I told him. “I was chewing my fingernails.”

He actually bought that preposterous story. And I guess he thought it was an acceptable trade-off. So I really had no choice. I had painted myself into the proverbial corner. That was the moment I had to stop sucking my thumb and begin biting my fingernails.

And before you ask, no, I have not reverted to sucking my thumb just to fool you like I fooled my father.

But my nails are pretty damn pretty, aren’t they?

(And a ten point pop culture bonus for any of you who understand the Fingertips, Part II reference in the headline.)

Rumor has it there’s a GeoCache box hidden somewhere near the Second Biggest Tree In the Barossa Valley. So Jamie and I decided to drive out and see if we could find it.

I headed left around the tree and Jamie went right. She took about two steps before hollering, “I found it.” It was hidden right at the base of the tree under a couple large pieces of bark and a big, flat stone.

 

 

Unlike what we had been told, there was no note inside announcing that this was the Barossa Valley’s biggest tree. Maybe someone read about the results of the world famous Barossa’s Biggest Tree competition and removed it.

But there was a wee notebook inside the plastic GeoCache box. Dozens and dozens of people had signed and dated it. Jamie and I didn’t have any secret code names, so we just wrote “Jim & Jamie, 11-5-20 (or 5-11-20 in America), Texas.”

Then we put the notebook back in the plastic container, covered it with the same bark and stone, and went on our merry way.

I guess we’re now GeoCachers.

We’ve been gone for eight months but we’re finally flying home on June 19. I don’t want to say a cancellation is probable, but after the last few weeks I certainly wouldn’t say it’s impossible.

Virgin Australia’s international flights are completely grounded and the airline has gone into receivership. Its billionaire founder Richard Branson may find himself a few billion dollars lighter.

American, with whom we were supposed to fly home on April 28, has suspended all its Australian flights until October. Yes. Freakin’ October.

Qantas began showing flights on its website, but then sent me an email saying that all its international flights are grounded until mid-July.

That leaves United Airlines. It initially grounded all its international flights but resumed some of them on June 6. Then its website began showing a daily non-stop from Sydney to Houston. When we tried to book that flight the phone rep said, “Sorry. All those flights have now been cancelled.”

Luckily, we were finally able to snatch up a Sydney-San Francisco non-stop followed by a cross country flight to Dallas. So far, so good. But they warned us to check in a few days before we’re scheduled to fly because they’re cancelling flights every day.

It could have been worse. A lot worse.

One possible route back home was Adelaide-Sydney-Tokyo-Frankfort-Dallas.

Another option was Adelaide-Sydney-Toronto-Chicago-Dallas.

How about Adelaide-Sydney-Tokyo-Washington DC (Dulles International)- take a taxi across town to Washington DC (Reagan)-Houston-Dallas.

Or try Adelaide-Sydney-San Francisco-Las Vegas-Houston-Dallas.

And yet another was Adelaide-Wellington-Auckland-Tahiti-Los Angeles-Dallas.

Crazy, huh?

Each of those routes would have taken more than 48 hours in the air and in airports. And there was no guarantee that we wouldn’t get grounded and quarantined in one of those far-off foreign ports.

So. June 19. That’s still five and a half weeks away, but we think it’s going to fly by. Non-stop.

Some of the Barossa’s earliest settlers were German immigrants and it’s still very German in a lot of ways.

I saw this handwritten sign in a local butcher shop and it baffled me. I had no idea what it meant so I asked the woman behind the counter if she could explain it to us. It is, of course, German and the literal translation is “laugh ham.”

It’s what Americans would call prosciutto. I’m not sure, but that might even be what it’s called by Australians who aren’t of German extraction.