Brad: So I can trust you with this, right?  I mean you're not gonna give away any trade secrets here.

Me: Of course not.  And if something slips, and you don't want it in, that's fine.  I'll be the only one who knows.  That could work to my advantage if we ever play each other.

Brad: So if I say something like [something completely unrepeatable] --

Me: [laughing] I can promise that won't be in the book.

Brad: Cool.  Y'know, when I heard you were writing this, I thought, "this is the perfect guy."

Me: I see.  So the tape goes on, and the flattery begins.  You'll go far in Los Angeles, my son.  

Brad: You're very kind.

Me: First question: that Ultimate Tournament final had to be a blast.  And with the closed set, it must have been a uniquely shared experience.  You stay in touch with your victims?

Brad: Sure.  Ken and I email back and forth, and I gave Jerome a call now that I'm in town.  But you know as well as anybody about how people stay in touch.  It's like almost the whole Masters group.  It's fun for us all to get together on the east coast for the regional dinners when I'm out there.  India puts those together, those are fun.  

Me: Speaking of Ken, we've emailed a few times.  He seems like a pretty cool guy.  Totally has his head on straight for somebody who pulled off what he did.

Brad: No question.  Although I don't know how he does that artistic stuff with the light pen.

Me: What's up with that?  Who wakes up thinking, "today I'll try out 24-point Helvetica?"

Brad: That's almost amazing as winning 70-odd games.

Me: Me, I just try to write "Bob," and it looks like I have some kind of disorder.

Brad: Well, that'll teach me to assume.  [Grins.]

Me: So.  [Pausing, finally catching the wicked glee in Brad’s last remark, acknowledging with a nod, and pressing onward.]  Three million bucks at your age.  Is one of the real puzzles right now figuring out what to do?

Brad: Yeah.  I'm spoiled for options.  I've got my whole life ahead of me, too.

[Brad stares into the middle distance, as if beginning a deep thought.  But no, he's just looking for the waitress.]

Me: Did you cram?

Brad: Well, that's sort of personal --

Me: Sorry.  I mean, did you study?

Brad: A little bit, yeah.  Just the stuff that comes up all the time.  There's no excuse for going on Jeopardy! without knowing all the capitals.  And Shakespeare, of course.  So I went back over the plots of the plays, and the characters.  I was looking over the First Ladies, too --

Me: {Feral lusting noise.] Rowwwwrrrrr…

Brad: -- just to make sure you have them all in order.  You can use the landmarks of the numbers -- Lincoln was the 16th, Reagan was the 40th...

Me: I do the same thing.  My mnemonic for Reagan is that he colored his hair with 40-weight motor oil.

Brad: [laughs]  If I hadn't studied, well -- that's how I came up with "Who is Crete Garfield?"

[Note: a key Final clue in Brad’s game against Mike Rooney and Steve Chernicoff in the Ultimate Tournament required the name of a Mediterranean island which was also the nickname of a U.S. First Lady.]

Brad (cont.): I wrote Malta down, and I knew it was wrong.  And then I started working across the Mediterranean: Corsica, Sardinia, Crete.  If you'd asked me Garfield's wife's name, you might have got me.  But suddenly I could see it almost as if it was on a piece of paper in front me, because I'd read that somewhere, and I wrote it down.  I had about three seconds left, too.

Me: Mike Rooney still has a sore spot there.

Brad: We all almost had sore spots on that one.

Me: He's not gonna be able to sit on Crete Garfield for weeks.

Brad: My point is, I think at the level that we've been at, everyone is equal at all the other stuff, so being able to think laterally is more important.

Me: Did you ever use mnemonics to glue stuff in?

Brad: I'll come up with my own sometimes, sure.  And the classics [reciting the fates of Henry VIII's six wives] -- Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived -- that sort of stuff is helpful.  Other than that, I think it's more important to have a curious mind.

Me: Y'know, I think you've just put your finger on why so many of us get along so well.  It's a bunch of people who are, I dunno, kind of interested in absolutely everything.

Brad: I think that's it.  Like at the Masters, you take those fifteen people and start a conversation about anything, there's not gonna be a lot of silence.  You were there -- we all agreed that anyone in that room could have won.

Me: Yeah, except you did.  I mean, if we're all so close to even, as you suggest and I for my own ego would like to believe, why do you think you're the one guy who never loses?  Seriously -- at this level -- I'm wondering if it's not psychological.

Brad: Maybe it's because I played football in high school.  And I wasn't one of the big guys.  So I got knocked on my ass by a guy who now plays fullback for the Pittsburgh Steelers, and I learned to hold onto the ball.  Like that.  Maybe it's a competitive toughness thing.

Me: Let's back up.  You mentioned high school.  When did you first decide you wanted to go on the show?

Brad: Oh, I've been watching since Alex came back on.  My parents were fans of the Art Fleming show.  I kinda grew up with it, and I did QuizBowl in high school.  I tried out in college and I didn't get on, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise.  But I passed the test, so I knew I could pass the test, so when I tried out for the adult show, I wasn't worried about that.  Not at all.

Me: [sip, choking noise]...

Brad: I think what helped me out was that I didn't get on the first day I was there.  I was so nervous the first day, so by the end of the afternoon, y'know...

Me: My first game was the fifth of the day.  I was already exhausted when they called on me.

Brad: You never want your first game to be the fourth or fifth game, so I was hoping not to get on.  And I didn't.  But then the next day, since I'd been there already, I was way more comfortable, and considering how close my first game was -- it took the last few questions before I got the lead.

Me: I didn't know that.

Brad: Yeah, I was in negative numbers at the first commercial break.  And the champion was good, I'd seen him win I think three games in a row.  I wasn't intimidated, but I knew I'd have to play pretty well to beat him.  But his experience of having already been under the lights was a huge advantage.  By the time I had the hang of the buzzer, we were already in Double Jeopardy.  The other player, someone named Regina -- she was really good, too.  But she missed both of the Daily Doubles in Double Jeopardy.  And if she'd gotten even one of them right, you never would have heard of me.

Me: No kidding.  Every good player I've spoken to has at least one story like that.

Brad: Makes you wonder how many great players lost just barely early on and disappeared.

Me: Yeah.  Mine was a guy named Wes Ulm.  [Story of my Tournament of Champions game with Grace Veach and Wes Ulm, told on pp. 144-60 in Trebekistan.]  Great people, both of them.  Grace and I are still in touch.  Do you have the sense that the Ultimate Tournament was where Jeopardy sort of turned into kind of a fraternity?

Brad: Oh, I think so, yeah.  Absolutely.  You never got the chance to meet all these people whom you'd see play.  I mean, you'd know people from your own year.  But this has been great, everybody --

Me: It's like being in a very well-informed religious cult.

Brad: Right, right.  With our own ceremonies and I guess Alex as the figurehead.

Me: And filled with people who consider themselves too smart to ever join a cult.  Speaking of which -- you ever feel so focused during a game that afterwards it takes a minute to get back to the real world?

Brad: Yeah.  It's like a different reality.  Onstage, you know what's expected of you, you have these very simple operations that you know how to accomplish.  And then afterward, it takes a few minutes before, OK, this is real life now.

Me: Do you have people over when your games are on?

Brad: Sometimes, if it's something special, like for the Ultimate finals, where we were all in New York.  Jerome's dad rented out a place, and a bunch of folks got together.  Rick Knutsen stopped by, and Fred Ramen, and some others.  Pretty cool.  

Me: What was your favorite moment?  Winning, or an instant when you knew you were going to, or maybe one particular question...?

Brad: Y'know, when the outcome was still in doubt in the Masters, and the Final about Jefferson came up [a clue seeking the only vice president to be elected to two full terms as president], I had just been reading the John Adams biography that was out then.  I was like, hey -- Jefferson!  I got that one so fast there was time to kill while the music's playing.  You ever have that?

Me: A couple of times.

Brad: It's a weird feeling.  That's when doubt starts creeping in.  Your first instinct is almost always the right one, but paranoia starts in, and that's the worst part.  The clues are supposed to be hard, and when there's one that seems easy --

Me: I once only had to write down the letters "KGB," and I spent most of the thirty seconds making sure I'd spelled it right.  OK, now the most important questions -- the ones that matter most of all, the ones which may be truly pivotal in my book becoming an international bestseller --

Brad: And here I thought I knew how to respond under pressure.

Me: Thumb or index finger?

Brad: I'm a thumb guy.  I know a lot of people like yourself swear by the index, but I'm a thumb loyalist.

Me: The revolution will come soon enough.  OK.  And among players you haven't faced, who jumps out as a tough challenge?

Brad: Dan Melia.  Mike Dupee.  Michael Daunt.  Those are three off the top of my head.  Guys who are just legends, y'know, who I've never played.

Me: Well, I can vouch that at least two of those three are hell on wheels.

[Brad and I then spend a few minutes praising a long list of terrific Jeopardy! players.  It's shop talk, though, so let's skip ahead.]

Me: So speaking of personal Achilles heels, what are your strongest and weakest categories?

Brad: Strongest?  Sports make me really light up.

Me: Good Pennsylvania boy.

Brad: If it was like, the NHL Hall Of Fame as a category, that would be ideal.  And my worst nightmare would be, I dunno, Ballet, maybe.

Me: Well, there's not a lot of overlap between hockey and ballet.

Brad: I'd pay to see that, actually.

[Brad springs for the check, despite my protestations.  This is the second time he has bought me dinner; the first was when he took all fifteen of his fellow Masters players out on the night he won.]

Me: For a juggernaut, you're pretty unhateable.

Brad: Interesting compliment.  [Grins.]  Well, it is just a TV show.  I mean, don't get me wrong, it's fantastic, and it's a lot of fun, and the people are great.  But it would be real easy to take this all too seriously.

Me: What's your favorite Alex moment?

Brad: Right when we were getting ready to tape the final for the UToC, we were talking, and who knows how word got around [starts laughing], and somehow the idea got floated, hey, it's a closed set, we're behind the podiums -- so the joke went around among the three of us of playing the games in our underwear.  We were just kidding, of course.  Now, I don't know how Alex found out about it... [pauses for effect]

Me: Oh my.  Really?

Brad: But they're rolling tape, Johnny Gilbert does the introduction, and Alex proudly comes out with no pants on.

Me: [Applauding.]  Boxers or briefs?

Brad: Just a pair of boxers.  I think.  They might have been tightie-whities.  I dunno, actually.  I wasn't looking too close.

Me: [Laughter subsides.]  Um... he did put his pants back on, right?

Brad: Eventually, yeah.

Me: Good.  I mean, Ken's a Mormon and all.

Brad: Yeah.  You have to show respect.

Me: I wish people could see more of that part of Alex.

Brad: Not the lack of pants, specifically.  

Me: Not specifically.  But the sense of fun.  More like the theoretical lack of pants.

Brad: Yeah, I know.  People ask sometimes if he's, whatever, stiff or something, but I think he's actually glad to be silly when he has the chance.  He just has such a respect for the game, just taking it serious, just being a pro.  So people don’t see the playfulness.

Me: Plus he has to project authority, and keep these nervous players calm, and stay out of their way and let them think.

Brad: Exactly.

Me: And wear pants at the same time.

Brad: It's almost asking too much of one man.  He's only human.

[We get up to leave the restaurant.]

Me: Y'know, I admit I'd still like a shot at you myself someday.

Brad: I'd be surprised if that didn't happen at some point.

[A long, measuring silence ensues.  Santa Monica Boulevard empties.]

[A tumbleweed blows across the street.]