by A. J. Jacobs
I think I now know why I’ve had this thirst to beat my father. It’s not—sorry, Dr. Freud—fear of castration or desire to have sex with my mother. And it’s not that my dad is particularly competitive with me. You won’t find him bouncing a basketball off my forehead as Robert Duvall did to his son in The Great Santini. No, it probably stems from cognitive dissonance that started in my childhood. Namely, this dilemma: on the one hand, I believed quite firmly that I was the smartest boy in the world, but on the other, here was a person in the same apartment who was clearly far smarter than me. Here was a man who knew all the answers. Who knew why the fridge was cold and what made the Lexington Avenue subways run and how far dirt went down. Here was a man who made the smartest boy look dumb. This caused plenty of confusion and frustration in my prepubescent mind—which still lingers today. I needed some area where I could clearly reign supreme; I hoped Wall Ball was it. And if not, then maybe hockey or croquet or encyclopedia reading.
frigate birds
I find out my fellow Esquire editor Andy is looking for a writer to interview Alex Trebek, host of Jeopardy! I plead with him for the assignment. How could I not? I mean, Jeopardy!—the pot of gold at the end of my project. And Alex Trebek! The world’s most famous know-it-all.
“I’m a big Trebek fan,” I tell Andy. “Huge Trebek fan.” Andy—who eventually relents—is no moron. He knows I’m reading the encyclopedia and have an ulterior motive: me versus Trebek. A knowledge showdown.
Truth is, I have conflicted feelings about Trebek. On the one hand, I love Jeopardy! and respect the way he runs the show with stern colonel-like authority—not a moment wasted on buffoonery. On the other hand, I want to pop Trebek in his smug Canadian mouth. I mean, this is the man who pretends to know every potent potable and every presidential pet, who oozes faux sympathy for mistaken contestants with his famously condescending “sorry,” who pronounces “burrito” as if he went to kindergarten with Fidel Castro and “Volkswagen” as if he grew up on the banks of the Rhine. Plus, my friend who writes about TV says that in real life Trebek is kind of rude. All the better. This will be my chance to expose him for what he is: some guy with a ridiculous mustache who reads the answers off the cards. That’s right, folks: he has the answers already!
That was the plan, anyway. But if I was hoping to impress Trebek with my superior intelligence, things didn’t get off to the best start. The day after I flew to Los Angeles, I drove my rented compact to Trebek’s Beverly Hills mansion and rang the bell.
Trebek’s son answers, and tells me his dad is out back, waving vaguely in the direction of the yard. The yard in question is an elaborate landscape, with lots of trees and walls and bushes and paths, and after a brief walk, I run into a Mexican gardener. “I’m looking for Alex Trebek,” I say. He waves me back. I pass another Mexican gardener, who waves me even farther back. I get to a third Mexican gardener. He is on his knees, a look of intense concentration on his face as he digs a hole. By this time, I’m getting a little frustrated. “I’m looking for Alex Trebek,” I say, a bit too sharply. I am about to clarify with a “Donde esta Señor Trebek?” but I don’t have a chance.
“You found him,” says the gardener. He stands up, takes off his thick soiled glove, and comes to shake my hand.
This is not good. As an experienced journalist, I probably should have been able to pick out Alex Trebek inside the perimeter of Alex Trebek’s own property. But in my defense, Trebek is wearing a baseball cap, his hair is grayer than I thought—and where the hell is his mustache? Turns out he shaved it off a few years ago. Okay, a little more research might have been advisable. It’s about five seconds into my alleged know-it-all showdown, and I’m feeling about as clever as, say, Jennifer Love Hewitt on Celebrity Jeopardy.
I’m not sure what Trebek thinks of my lack of reporting skills, but he’s cordial enough not to dwell on my them. “Let’s go to my office,” he says. We enter the house, which has a blue-and-yellow Jeopardy! rug the size of a large surfboard in the entry hallway. His office walls, as you might imagine, are lined with books—Russian textbooks, Civil War tomes, the illustrious Encyclopaedia Britannica itself. As you also might imagine, the books are well organized into thematically linked sections. This is a man who, according to press reports, puts his dress shirts on light-colored hangers and his sport shirts on dark-colored ones.
I ease into the interview with some small talk—gardening, rental cars, that sort of thing. And when he’s feeling comfortable, I hit him with my real question: if he’s so damn smart, how would he do as a contestant on Jeopardy!
Well, Alex says, he’d do okay among senior citizens, but against someone my age, he’d get his butt whipped. Just doesn’t have the recall anymore. “I flew from New York to Los Angeles recently,” Trebek says, “and I entertained my first serious thoughts about coming down with Alzheimer’s. They brought out the food and I said, ‘Oh, this is my favorite vegetable.’ And I looked at it, and I looked at it, and I looked at it, and I could not come up with ‘broccoli’. And that’s when you realize that, hey, you’re starting to lose it. But so what? It’s not important. Knowing everything is not the most important thing.”
Alex Trebek showing signs of early senility? And he doesn’t even care? What kind of know-it-all nemesis is this?
As we talk, I’m confronted by a Trebek I never expected. No prissy milquetoast, he goes out of his way to swear like Uncle Junior on The Sopranos (“bullshit” and “asshole” are two favorites). No cold-blooded Spock, he tells me he’s an impulsive romantic—he left military college after four days to chase a girl.
I won’t say that Trebek is entirely without pretension. Occasionally the pompous side of him peeks through—he tells me that he speaks English, French, some Spanish, and that he can “fool around in other languages,” which strikes me as very annoying for some reason. He also uses the word “escarpment” in casual conversation. And he relates to me an elaborate pun he once made on the names of Edith Cavell and Enos Ca-bell, a moderately well-known British nurse and first baseman, respectively. But overall, he’s a decent guy.
About halfway into our interview, Trebek tells me the following story.
“I was at a college tournament in Ohio recently, and I was telling the audience about my trip to Africa, and I got teary-eyed. I started to cry. This is kinda dumb. I’m in front of three thousand people and I’m getting weepy talking about Africa.”
Alex Trebek crying? That is a hard image to conjure up. That’s like Henry Kissinger giggling or Vladimir Putin yodeling. Makes no sense.
“And what the hell’s Africa to me?” Trebek continues, asking the very question I was wondering. “Well, I go to Africa—to Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania—and I stand there and I am overwhelmed by the thought that this is where I’m from. I came from here. And I feel comfortable.”
Huh. I’m not sure how to respond to this. Is Alex Trebek black? He sure doesn’t look black. He looks pretty white to me. He looks like the quintessence, the very incarnation, of whiteness.
“You mean…because it’s the cradle of civilization?” I ask, taking a shot.
“Yeah. It’s like, hey, I’m home.”
It’s a strange story, and I’m not certain why he’d share it with a journalist, but it has an odd effect on me: it makes me like him more. That clinches it. Trebek isn’t a mustache-twirling villain, especially since he doesn’t have a mustache. He’s a guy who’s not afraid to look vulnerable, even a little ditzy. My plan for a showdown is in full meltdown.
If I’m not going to try to humiliate him, maybe I can bond a little. Here we are, two men who spend their days swimming in facts. I tell him that I’m reading the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He seems mildly impressed, if not blown away. He tells me that as soon as Jeopardy! goes off the air, he’s going to retire and try to read every book in his house, “even the ones I’ve read before, because I can’t remember them.”
I ask him, of the quarter million clues over the last thirteen years, what’s the favorit
e fact that he’s learned?
“Oh God,” he says. After a struggle, he comes up with one: You know how in nautical law, a country has jurisdiction over the first three miles from its coast? (Actually I don’t, but I’m not up the N’s.) Well, that came about because a cannon’s range was three nautical miles. “That’s fascinating,” I say, though it probably wouldn’t be my first pick.
My favorite line in our two hours together comes when I ask him for his philosophy of knowledge. Trebek thinks for a moment, then responds: “I’m curious about everything—even things that don’t interest me.” I love that sentiment. It’s totally contradictory, but I know what he means. And so, at the end of our talk, I climb in my rented compact and drive back to the hotel to read about friendly societies (the 17th-century forerunners of insurance) and frigate birds (they’ve got eight-foot wingspans and often catch fish in the air dropped by other panic-stricken birds) and other things that don’t interest me. At the very least, they could come in handy if I decide to return to L.A. in a suit and tie and become a beloved five-time champion of Alex Trebek’s quiz show.
Fux, Johann
I’m proud of myself. When I saw the name Johann Fux—an 18th-century Austrian composer—I didn’t giggle. Sure, there was a faint smile, but I’m getting better, I tell you. I didn’t ask myself whether Johann Fux on the first date or whether Johann Fux while wearing proper protection. I didn’t secretly think that “Fux You” would make a cool T-shirt.
The more I progress in the alphabet, the more successful I am at stifling that eleven-year-old boy inside of me, the one that still thinks a good Beavis-and-Butt-
head-style scatological pun is cause for great joy.
It’s not easy. Just the number of asses alone will tempt even the most evolved mind. I’ve learned about The Golden Ass (a book by a Platonic philosopher) and the Wild Ass’ Skin (a novel by Balzac). I’ve read about the half ass (a type of mule in Asia) and Buridan’s ass (an animal in a philosophical parable). But it goes way beyond asses. Asses are just the start. You can also take a trip to the river Suck (in Ireland), where you could fish for crappies (a freshwater bass) while you drink some Brest milk (the town in Belarus is known for its dairies). If you’re bored, you can have a stroke-off (while playing bandy, a version of ice hockey) and fondle a bushtit (a small bird). If you’re feeling smart, you might want to argue the impact of Isaac Butt (an Irish leader), or debate the merits of the Four Wangs (Chinese landscape painters), who might have been collected by the Fuggers (an art-loving family). Or else, just take a flying Fokker (a German airplane).
I know this is wrong. This isn’t why I’m reading the Britannica. I’m reading it to get smarter, better, more enlightened, not to make dirty puns. Maybe it’s because I’ve read so many of them, or maybe it’s because the Britannica is actually making me more enlightened, but I’ve cut way down on these Beavis moments. The Four Wangs, though—that is kind of funny.
G
gagaku
At long last, the wait is over. If you recall, the word “a-ak,” the very first word of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, had no definition, only the recommendation that the reader “see gagaku.” I showed remarkable willpower and decided not to flip ahead, but to continue reading the As, figuring I’d get to “gagaku” in good time. Well, three months later, I am here. I have arrived.
That’s got to count for something. That is, without a doubt, an accomplishment. The mystery is about to be solved! Unfortunately, the actual definition of “gagaku” does not provide quite the huge payoff I was hoping for. Not exactly a shocking twist you might find in an O. Henry story or an M. Night Shamalan movie. “Gagaku” is the Japanese term for a type of East Asian music that rose to prominence during the 5th to 8th centuries (“a-ak” is its name in Korean). Gagaku involves flute, drum, and strings, and sometimes accompanying dances. The notations remain obscure, but some form of gagaku can still be heard in Japan. And that’s about it.
Huh. Well, there’s always “zywiec” to look forward to.
gal
It’s Valentine’s Day. We don’t make a big deal about this holiday in the Schoenberg-Jacobs household. We were both single for so many years that we have residual resentment from all of the date-free Valentine’s Days we suffered through. It’s a cruel concept, Valentine’s Day. It’s as if they had a holiday to celebrate rich people or attractive people. Miserable and alone? Sorry, this isn’t your day. So in mini protest, Julie and I spend the night at home. We order in Thai and watch some romantic TV—the scene of the coroner on CSI removing a pancreas was particularly enchanting.
Cards, however, are allowed. Julie gives me a lovely one about how these last five years with me have been the best in her life. In response, I give her my card, which I’d typed that day at work, hovering over the printer as the paper came out. Don’t want this one leaking out.
Julie reads it aloud.
“You make me suffer tachycardia,” she reads. She cocks her head.
“It’s when someone has an irregularly fast heartbeat,” I say. “I’m just saying you make my heart beat faster. Keep going.”
“I’m glad we practiced assortative mating together,” she says. She looks at me again.
“It’s when you pick a mate who’s similar to you. Like fat people mate with fat people. I’m saying we’re similar.”
Julie looks back at the printout.
“You are worth much more than twenty spears,” she says.
“That’s the traditional bride price among Africa’s Azande tribe.”
She finishes up: “You are my gal—and I don’t mean the unit of measurement.”
“Yeah, a gal is a change of rate in motion of one inch per second per second. Or one centimeter. That’s right, one centimeter. Anyway, you really are my gal. So what do you think?”
“A little show-offy,” she says, “but the sentiments are nice.”
I’m relieved. It could have backfired, but she seems to have enjoyed it. Which emboldens me to tell her that, though the encyclopedia is taking a bunch of my time and putting a little strain on our marriage, it’s made me realize how lucky I am. There just aren’t many happy marriages in the encyclopedia. Marriages in history are loveless obligations, something to suffer through in between affairs. The French, of course, raised out-of-wedlock sex to perfection, even creating an official position for mistress to the king. I knew kings had mistresses, but I didn’t know that they practically had business cards and an office.
A surprising number of marriages are unconsummated, and an even greater number end in bloodshed. Once in a while, maybe every couple of hundred pages, I read about a happy marriage. But even these are often tainted with oddness—as in the unlikely union of brilliant poet William Blake and an illiterate peasant woman. I hope they had amazing sex, because I can’t imagine the conversations were too lively. I tell Julie the Blake story, adding that I’m glad she’s not illiterate, which she takes in stride.
gall
Julie’s brothers are in town, their families in tow, and they’ve all congregated at our apartment in preparation for a visit to the Museum of Natural History. Doug has taken out the A volume, and is flipping through it. Doug is smart—he owns a software company, for one thing—but he’s not the information freak that Eric is, and he only mocks me half the time.
“You remember anything from the As?” he asks.
“Pretty much everything.”
He flips to a random page. “Ankh,” says Doug.
“Egyptian symbol of life,” I say. I didn’t mention that I actually knew that before reading the EB.
He flips some more. “How many Aleutian Islands are there?”
“Four hundred and twenty-three,” I say.
“No, fourteen large islands, fifty-five smaller ones,” he says.
I try to deflect with a lame joke about how I was counting in the Mayan base-twenty system.
“What is Archimedes’ screw?”
This I knew! It’s a circular pipe in the
shape of a helix, a piece of equipment used to lift water up in ancient times.
Doug seemed moderately impressed.
“And why did they want to lift up water?” he asks.
A low blow. I already got the definition—why is he pressing me for more details? I admitted I didn’t know.
“They used it to lift water out of the holds of ships,” Doug says.
“Let me see that,” says Eric. He grabs the volume from his brother and reads it quickly. “This is wrong. The Archimedes’ screw was first used for irrigation.”
I couldn’t believe it. First, Eric concluded that the Britannica omits key information (see Burke and Hare). Now, he says it’s just plain wrong. How am I supposed to deal with this blasphemy? He’s questioning the authority of the mighty Encyclopaedia Britannica. Like he’s an expert on the early uses of Archimedes’ screw? The unmitigated gall (“gall” is also the word for a plant swelling, by the way). I tell Eric to take it up with the editors.
I need a break, so I go into the office, where my nieces and nephew are playing a game of Sorry. Doug’s kids are adorable, no surprise there, and so are Eric’s—Gap-ad cute and sweet as butterscotch (named for scorched butter). Eric may treat me like roadkill, yet I have to admit, much as it pains me, that he’s a good, caring father and has done a remarkable job raising his kids.
“Who’s up for Simon Says?” I ask.
They seem up for it, and since I have seniority, I appoint myself Simon.
“Simon says, raise your right hand,” I say. We all raise our right hands.
“Simon says, touch your toes.” We all touch our toes.
“Simon says, turn around and around and around.”
My nieces and nephew and I start twirling. This wasn’t a spontaneous twirling, mind you. I had been planning this twirling for quite some time. I had plotted this twirling ever since I had read about the secret Blasis technique, invented by ballet teacher Carlo Blasis, in which a dancer prevents dizziness by snapping the head around more quickly than the body so as to maintain focus on one spot.