Free Dave Barry Is from Mars and Venus by Dave Barry Page A

letters one at a time. (Vanna, a total professional, could smile radiantly while having her spleen removed by weasels.)
    The way I got on the show was, a
Wheel
staff person named Gary O’Brien, whose title is Talent Executive, sent me a letter asking me to participate in a special Award Winners’ Week, to be taped in March and broadcast in May.
    “Famous actors, actresses, directors, writers, singers, and sports stars will be spinning the famous Wheel for their favorite charities,” Gary wrote.
    I said I’d do it, and not just because I like to benefit charity by hanging around with famous actors and actresses. I also happen to be very good at word games, particularlythe part where you cheat. You should see me play Scrabble.
    Me (forming a word):
There!
    My Opponent:
“Doot?” There’s no such word as “doot.”
    Me (offended):
Of COURSE there is. It’s an infarctive gerund
.
    My Opponent (skeptically):
Use it in a sentence
.
    Me:
“Look! A doot!”
    My Opponent:
Oh, okay
.
    So I figured, how hard could
Wheel of Fortune
be? Whenever I’ve watched the show, the hidden phrase has always seemed pathetically easy to figure out. Some contestant will be staring at the big board, sweating bullets, trying to make sense of some letters and blanks arranged like this:
    - - N - - - - - -   - -   N - - R -   - - M-
    I’ll look at this for two seconds, then shout at the screen, “It’s OBVIOUS, you moron! HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME!”
    I bet you do the same thing. We all do. Each day 24 million people watch
Wheel of Fortune
, and every single one of them always figures out the hidden phrase before the actual contestants do.
    But after I agreed to be on the show, I began to have second thoughts. I realized that it’s probably WAY harder to solve the puzzle when you’re under the hot studio lights, in front of cameras and a live studio audience, with Pat Sajak standing right there and Vanna beaming high-intensity smile rays right at you from close range.
    So as the date of my taping approached, I worked on my
Wheel
strategy. I started asking everybody I talked to, including Directory Assistance, whether I should buy a vowel. Unfortunately, there was no consensus on this issue. Some people said yes, definitely; some said no, absolutely not, never buy a vowel. The only real expert I consulted was a United Airlines ticket agent named Rico, whom I met at Dulles airport when I was catching a flight to Los Angeles to be on the show. Rico told me that he had actually been a winning contestant on
Wheel of Fortune
.
    “Should I buy a vowel?” I asked him.
    “Not unless you really need it,” replied Rico helpfully.
    In Los Angeles I was taken to the
Wheel
TV studio by an Iranian limousine driver named Max, who was deeply impressed by my enormous fame and celebrity.
    “So, Mr. David,” he said. “You are a singer?”
    “No,” I said. “Should I buy a vowel?”
    “Yes,” said Max. “You have to.”
    At the studio I met some of the other famous celebrities participating in Award Winners’ Week, including rap artist and actor “L.L. Cool J.” (That is not his real name, of course. His real name is “L.L. Cool M.”) I also met the two celebrities I would be competing against, actresses Rita Moreno and Justine Miceli.
    Gary, the Talent Executive, gave us a briefing on how to play the game; this briefing consisted almost entirely of detailed instructions on how to spin the wheel.
    “Make sure your hand is dry,” Gary said. “Reach as far to the right as you can, get a good grip on the upper part of the spoke, and then pull.”
    We all practiced spinning the wheel and calling out consonants,although some celebrities, unfamiliar with the rules, tried to call out vowels.
    “You have to
buy
a vowel,” Gary said, several times. “Once you spin, you’re committed to calling a consonant.”
    When all of us celebrities were fairly confident that we didn’t have a clue what was going on, the live studio audience