Gordon Pepper
reality editor

Viva Las Vegas! That was my thought when my plane landed in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada at 10am on Wednesday, July 9. The slot machines that were waiting for me only a few hundred feet from where I landed only solidified my notion that I was going to have one heck of a time.

Gambling, however, was not the reason why I took my vacation in Nevada this summer - the Second Annual Game Show Congress was. This report is the first of a three part series of my views of the convention, the TRASH tournament that I was a participant in, and what happened after the convention.

Connected by Differences

Although I landed in Vegas on Wednesday, the convention itself was a one day affair. The convention, created by Paul Bailey, was a wonderful collection of different aspects of the game show industry. The different presentations ranged from game companies to contests to the creation of game show questions and a game show itself. Many of the presentations were based on people's personal experiences on the shows.

In every presentation that I went to, there was one thing that almost every presenter had in common - they were not only regular people, they were down-to-Earth regular people who enjoyed opening themselves up to everyone there. The end of the evening felt less like a convention and more of an extended family reunion - a very close knit down home feeling between the people that were there. It sounds like a clich�', but you could truly 'feel the love' that was there and there was a true sorrow when the convention ended.

TRASH Talk

I felt some sorrow also - because I was involved in the TRASH tournament, which lasted on and off from 9am to 6:30 pm, I could not go to all of the presentations. I did manage to go to a bunch of them - and I also managed to go see some of the exhibits in the hallway outside the room which had the presentations.

The first part of the TRASH Tournament ended right before noon - which gave me enough time to get into the main hall and hear the opening speech from Paul Bailey. When I walked into the hall, it was semi-filled with people - but I knew some of those faces immediately. The was becoming a who's who of game show contestants - in addition to the Millionaire and Jeopardy players who were in the TRASH tournament, my eyes instantly gazed on a person who's name will forever be etched in the mind of Greed fans - Dan Avila! He was sitting by himself on the right corner, and he was more than gracious enough for me to take a picture of him. I wound up sitting next to Jason Block of Millionaire fame, and he was sitting next to Tim Sternberg (also of Millionaire fame) and Tim's girlfriend.

After the intro, the congress got under way with a presentation from NTN on its games. The heart of the discussion was on which game was liked demographically and how it correlated to when the games aired. It was a very fascinating presentation, if you were into statistics and demographics (like I am).

Do You Know Them?

The second presentation was on the nations longest radio marathon - a three day 54 hour affair which was presented by Jim 'Oz' Oliva. The seminar started with a 10 minute video on how the event worked. I was drawn into it until the video ended and Tim Sternberg walked back into the hall with an order from Jack in the Box. That reminded my brain to tell my stomach how hungry I was and it also reminded me that once 2pm hit, TRASH's lunch time was over and it would be time to moderate another 6 rounds of action.

I asked Tim, Jason and Dan if they wanted anything and they declined.

There were three people sitting behind me and I asked them if they wanted anything. A blond with short cropped hair said that she would like a diet Coke and the man next to her, a man with spiky brown hair with blue tips, wanted the same. The third person, who was shorter and a little rotund, didn't want anything. After collecting the orders, I went to Jack in the Box and I got everyone what they wanted. Unbeknownst to me, I would find out later that the woman that I got the drink for was Phyllis Harris (who won $800,000 on greed, the man was Leszek Pawlowicz (Game Show Guru) and the other guy was David Juliano (Phyllis's Teammate on Super Greed). I will also find out exactly how well they play when my team goes head-to-head against them - but that's for another installment.

After giving Phyllis and company their drinks, and not wanting to be rude by eating in front of the speaker, I went into the outside hall to see the exhibits while finishing my lunch. There wasn't much there in terms of 'exhibits' per se - there were tables with flyers and other papers on them, but there was only one booth. That booth was set up by NTN, and it had three different trivia contests where you could interactively play against the other spectators beside you. I wound up doing this during lunch and up until the presentation by Dr. Kevin Olmstead.

Kevin was a big winner in Millionaire - and his presentation was about the top ten questions asked to him about the Millionaire experience. The neat thing about the proximity of everything was that I could eat lunch, play NTN and hear Kevin's presentation at the same time. Kevin, who replayed his winning Millionaire moment during his seminar, is also one of the people behind the TRASH tournament, so the TRASH tournament didn't resume until he was done talking, which was around 2:30. I wanted Kevin to go on longer - Kevin was not only knowledgeable, he brought a passion that wasn't really felt until his section of the congress.

Since TRASH didn't start on time, we all knew that it wasn't going to end on time either - the 6 pm ending time turned into 6:30, which was enough time for me to go back to the Congress and see the second half of Mark Richards biography/seminar. Mark was a contestant turned host turned coordinator. It was fun to go through the eras and shows that he was involved with. My only quibble was that I would have liked to have heard some of his opinion in terms of how some commoner like me could be on a game show - but since most of these people have already been on game shows, the point would have been irrelevant to at least 80% of the people there.

"But Good Things DID Happen."

After Richards completed his seminar, the speaker that I was the most interested in hearing came on - Steve Beverly. For those of you who are not familiar with him, Steve Beverly has his own game show website, and he is the first ever game show site that I ever saw on the internet. That site got me interested enough in writing for a web site that I immediately applied to Game Show News Net and the rest, as they say, is history.

As I am from the East Coast, my only concern that I had entering his seminar was that his Southern conservative view of certain shows would throw a bias into his State of the Union as to how shows are faring today. I needn't have worried. Steve put on an excellent presentation as he got the audience applauding and booing on his every whim. One could tell that he has not only given these speeches many a time, but he is very used to doing it, as it seemed like he felt almost at home on the podium. The slides just accentuated the very entertaining seminar that he gave.

The last scheduled seminar featured big money winners from various shows. The panel not only included some of the aforementioned people above (Harris, Block and Olmstead, among others), but also David Legler Jr. and Sr. ("Twenty One"), Nancy Christy ("Millionaire") and Ed Toutant ("Millionaire"). The panel answered various questions ranging from their experiences to how many relatives came out of the woodwork once that person won.

What was fascinating was to see the Game Show Pedigree. Jason Block was on both Millionaire and Jeopardy (where he was a Final Jeopardy question away from being a 5 time undefeated champion there). Interestingly enough, he felt that he was on Jeopardy because the casting crew, who knew he was on Millionaire. The Pedigree wanted to bring him on to show how inferior the Millionaire players were to the Jeopardy contestants. That move royally backfired.

In addition to the people on the panel, you had an all-star group in the audience. Ben Tritle, located in the audience (though in my opinion he should have been in the panel) scored in both Jeopardy and 21. Also in the audience was James Dinan (a 64K winner on millionaire and one of the co-directors of the Trash Tournament), Sternberg, and various other people from TRASH that were either on Jeopardy or Millionaire.

Most of the panelists have been used as Phone-A-Friends at one point or another, and almost all of them would flip-flop to a current shows (Jeopardy, Millionaire, etc.) if there was another chance for a million dollars on any show that they wanted to be on. The lone dissenter? Beverly, who would want to be on a million dollar version of 'Name That Tune'.

Perhaps the most exciting part came once the closing statements were read. After that happened, Michael Burger came out and...well, you'll have to read later on what happened there, what happened at the TRASH tournament, and what happened when I had my shot at taking on the big money winners.