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homerhorizon.com news
the Homer Horizon | June 21, 2018 | 3
Homer Glen resident featured as contestant on ‘Jeopardy!’
Fassola answers 15
questions correctly
during appearance
on game show
Thomas Czaja, Editor
It was about a year before
he received the phone call.
When Homer Glen resident
John Fassola eventually
got the call out of the blue
that told him he was picked
and needed to be available on
a certain date for taping, he
was ecstatic and pleasantly
surprised.
Fassola, 51, an attorney and
trivia buff, had always wanted
to appear on “Jeopardy!,” having
watched it for many years.
Receiving word he himself
could compete on television
on his favorite game show
was a dream come true.
“It has been kind of a bucket
list item to be on it,” Fassola
said. “I watch it all the
time, and it was a great opportunity.”
Fassola’s episode aired
June 8. He was able to answer
a total of 15 questions
correctly, only missing two.
He got six right in the first
round, and nine right in the
second round.
Though he finished third,
winning $1,000, it was an
invaluable experience getting
to meet host Alex Trebek,
play through the different
categories and say he was a
contestant.
“It is something I always
wanted to do,” Fassola said.
“I would have regretted not
giving it a try. It was fun and
worth doing. I like the trivia
aspect and being able to do
trivia quickly.”
Getting on the show
The process of getting onto
“Jeopardy!” for Fassola was
a long one.
The game show offers an
online test once per year.
If an individual does well
enough on that — which
many do — they are invited
to a local audition site. Fassola
was invited to a Chicago
site, which had a number of
sessions over several days.
There, he played a mock
game with contestants where
they determined who was
best at standing up and playing
the game, as well as handling
the buzzer. He said he
did a quick interview there
as they tested to make sure
he would not be nervous
conversing with Trebek and
would be good on the show.
After that, it was a waiting
game. But he must have
showed them enough, as he
later ultimately got the call.
“They say they will call
you, or they won’t,” Fassola
said. “It turns out, they ended
up calling me.”
Family support and behind
the scenes
John’s wife of 28 years,
Arlene, said it was a really
good experience for her husband,
and that he looked relaxed
on the show and smiled.
She added that John was one
of those students in school
who read something in class
one time and got it, not needing
to study extensively, and
that he reads “a lot” and is an
intellectual person.
“He’s very intelligent,”
she said. “I always kid, of
course, ‘He’s smart. He married
me.’”
Arlene offered to accompany
John to Burbank, California
where the show films to
watch him from the audience
and be there for moral support,
but he decided he would
be better off and less nervous
if he went on his own and
didn’t have a loved one there
watching.
Since they tape multiple
shows a day, he first sat in the
audience for several tapings
— which he said made him a
Homer Glen resident John Fassola (right) buzzes in to answer
a question alongside fellow “Jeopardy!” contestants Mirza
Gluhic (left), a transcriber from Toronto, and David Kleinman,
a student from Massachusetts, during the episode that aired
June 8. Photo courtesy of Jeopardy! Productions Inc.
little more nervous — before
it was his time to go on.
Beforehand and afterward,
Fassola said Trebek chats
briefly with the contestants,
and though he didn’t get to
spend much time conversing
with him, said he “seemed
like a real nice guy.” Trebek
would also chat with the studio
audience during breaks.
“He has a quick with and
good sense of humor,” Fassola
said of Trebek. “And it
was cool to see how things
work backstage, how it is
produced.”
He added the studio seems
much bigger on television,
and that there was a relatively
small studio audience. However,
the most important audience
for Fassola was back
at home when the episode
aired, when he got to watch
it with Arlene, his mother and
mother-in-law.
He wanted a relatively
small watch party and didn’t
make much of it, partially
since he got third, he said, but
also because he was nervous
how he would look on television.
“In retrospect, it was not as
bad as I feared,” Fassola said.
“I thought I’d look silly, but it
was OK.”
The game itself
The game show consists
of two rounds — Jeopardy!
and Double Jeopardy! — that
each have six categories of
five clues each. The dollar
values range from $200 to
$1,000 by denominations of
$200 in Jeopardy!, and from
$400 to $2,000 in Double
Jeopardy! There is then Final
Jeopardy!, which features a
single clue where contestants
can wager nothing to all of
their earnings to that point.
John had $2,200 after the
first Jeopardy! round, compared
to $4,000 for student
David Kleinman from Massachusetts
and $5,400 for
Mirza Gluhic, the returning
champion and a transcriber
from Toronto.
At the end of Double Jeopardy!,
Kleinman had $16,800,
Gluhic was at $13,000 and
John $8,600.
“[Kleinman and Gluhic]
were just quicker on the buzzer,”
John said of buzzing in to
answer questions. “A lot of
the answers I knew but was
not quick enough getting to it.
I didn’t know how tough the
buzzer would be to deal with.”
Despite having difficulty
with the buzzer, John did
have shining moments. Jeopardy!
categories consisted
of Italy before the Romans,
pop culture squirrels, this
category will blow you away,
state of the newspaper, sailing
lit and tongue-twister
protagonists. Double Jeopardy!
categories were O ye of
little faith, scrambled world
capitals, golfer in chief, song
time, psychology and “U”
know it.
John had a good run in
the “U” know it category,
getting three in a row right.
All answers in that category
started with the letter “u.” He
correctly guessed unction for
being the “extreme” final sacrament
for a Catholic, unitard
for the stretchy uniform for
dancers that leaves little to
the imagination and Utrecht
for the 1713 treaty of this
Dutch city granted large parts
of Canada to the Brits from
the French.
In accordance with “Jeopardy!”
style, each answer is
given as a question, meaning
he said, “What is unction?,”
“What is a unitard?” and
“What is Utrecht?”
“I did OK with some of
the categories,” John said.
“Scrambled world capitals I
did pretty well at. The Final
Jeopardy! clue about Winniethe-Pooh,
I never read the
books and watched the show.
I thought I did OK.”
John was able to buzz in
first to unscramble mock
sloth as Stockholm for the
$400 question and serious
bean as Buenos Aires for the
$1,200 question in the scrambled
world capitals category.
But the Final Jeopardy! question,
he wagered $8,300 and
got it wrong, whereas the other
two contestants got it right.
Its category was literary
settings, and the clue was
Ashdown Forest in Sussex
inspired this fictional setting
for a 1926 collection of stories
for children. The correct
answer was Hundred Acre
Wood, and John put Pooh
Forest, knowing at least the
stories it was from. Though
his earnings dropped to $300,
each third-place contestant
gets $1,000, and each secondplace
contestant gets $2,000.
Kleinman bet $14,800 on
the final question to finish
with $31,000 and the win.
“It’s the luck of the draw
for the categories you get,”
said John, who said the day
before they had a Civil War
category that would have
been perfect for him, and that
he would have liked to have
seen a sports category he felt
he could have done well on,
too.
Reaction back home
“Jeopardy!” will be an experience
not soon forgotten.
John is also the financial
secretary for the Knights of
Columbus Council 15022
out of Our Mother of Good
Counsel Parish in Homer
Glen. Ed Plebanek, the grand
knight of Council 15022, saw
John’s episode and spoke
with him afterward.
“I thought he was very
composed,” Plebanek said,
who described John as intelligent
and outgoing. “Me, personally,
I would have been
staring into the camera, nervous
as heck. He’s a lawyer,
so probably standing in front
of juries and everything, I
would think he’s a little more
at ease.”
Of course, John couldn’t
tell anyone how he did or
what happened in his episode,
though once it aired, he
said he was surprised at the
reaction, since he hadn’t told
many people.
“I got calls, texts, emails
from people I hadn’t expected,”
John said. “I thought it
was really cool.”
He said people made a
point to say they watched
the show or stumbled upon it
and were excited to see him
on there. His enthusiasm for
the game show was clearly
shared by many.
“I just think people appreciate
it as a cool, once-in-alifetime
thing,” he said.