It all happened pretty innocently. I was sitting at my Grandmother's house, reading the comics. My Aunt Alice came over to me with a news clipping. She does that a lot. "I'm sure you've seen this," she said, "but they're having tryouts for 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' in Cleveland on Tuesday."

I hadn't. I tried out for the show before, and got to the point that I was on the short list of contestants to appear on the show, but didn't go any farther than that. Open tryouts sounded promising, and one of the benefits of being a freelance artist is that my boss would let me take the afternoon off to go downtown for this.

Ah, I love not working for The Man.

So on a rainy, dreary Tuesday in May, I went to Downtown Cleveland and sat in a huge line for afternoon tryouts. What were all these people doing here, I wondered. Don't they have jobs?

I sat next to a man I can only describe as odd. Well, I can describe him as all sorts of things, but odd is probably the kindest. He was the kind of guy who thought shorts, a fedora, and a bushy Jeff Foxworthy moustache was a fashionable look, especially on his scrawny frame. During the wait, he'd amuse himself by singing "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park."

We talked. Well, he talked, and I nodded occasionally. He told me that he had flown out in the middle of the winter to Minneapolis to try out for Jeopardy. "They flew you out?" I asked.

"No, I flew out."

"On your dime?"

"Yeah." Okay, I'll do a lot of things, including fly out to San Diego every year to hope that DC Comics will hire me at the convention, but flying out to Minneapolis on the chance that I might be picked to go on a game show with no telling if I'd win. I don't think so.

Which is not to say everyone I met was so, um, touched. There were a lot of nice people. But more on them later.

Eventually, they ushered us in to a large ballroom and gave us a number two pencil and a Scantron-type computer test. You know, fill in these little bubbles. Like the SATs. One of the Millionaire Minions got up and said "This is for the syndicated version of 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire,' with Meredith Viera, not the one with Regis."

I wondered why they said this. I mean, who was going to get up and say "No, I will only take a million dollars if it comes directly from the hand of Regis!" Hell, give me a million and you don't even have to air the episode.

"Please turn your cell phones off," the lady continued. Why? What if I want to phone a friend.

I made friends with the people next to me. Hey, I'm a friendly guy. And we chatted and joked until the test began.

It was a fifty question test, and we had maybe twelve minutes to complete it. I thought I did well (don't get ahead of me now) and there were only three questions I thought I didn't know the answer to and guessed at.

It's amazing how much stuff you know, and where you know it from. One was a question about where the Vice-President's residence was. "U.S. Naval Observatory," I answered. Thank you Tom Clancy and "Clear and Present Danger."

They took our tests and made us wait as they processed and graded them. When the Millionaire People came back in, they called out the numbers of those who had made the cut. There were fifteen or so who made it and I was one of them.

They moved us to another room where we had to answer a bunch of personality questions. Game shows, heck, TV shows in general, want interesting, fun to watch people. Generally I'm pretty witty and charming, but I wanted to make sure I was especially so. Hey, I'm not just a pretty face.

We had to answer questions like "What's your dream job?"


A brief aside: This was a very poignant moment for me. No one had asked me since I had left the salt mines of the ad agency to go into the freefall that is freelancing. I thought about the question and realized I have my dream job. That's just cool. Not a lot of people get to say that.


So I said "I have my dream job, I'm a cartoonist." That wasn't going to be funny enough. "But, if I wasn't doing that, I'd love to be the guest villain on 'Buffy: The Vampire Slayer.'"


I interviewed in person after filling out my questionnaire. I told stories that many of you have heard. Me and the snake from when I did animal caricatures. Several jokes about my Mom.

"And you'd like to be a villain on 'Buffy?'"

"Absolutely. Thirteen episodes, my own action figure and the cover of 'Tiger Beat' magazine. That's all I want."

"They don't publish 'Tiger Beat' anymore, do they?"

I smiled and said "I don't know, I'm not a thirteen year-old girl." But what I wanted to say was "You're missing the point entirely." However, I'm smart enough to be politic and not tick off my interviewer.

"Would you say that on the air?"

"I dunno, would you like me to? 'Buffy' airs on UPN and your show is not necessarily on a UPN network since it's syndicated."

I'd like to think my grasp of network structures pushed me over the top.

While in line to be interviewed I was chatting with those around me and made a joke about spelling my name with a "H." The guy next to me said "Your name is Thom?"

"Yes," I responded wittily. Trust me, it's all in the delivery.

"Thom Zahler?"

For other people this would be an odd moment. For me it was a Tuesday. Turns out standing next to me was Tom Condosta, a fellow comics fan and we shared a mutual friend in the person of Star Trek novelist and Comics Buyers Guide columnist Bob Ingersoll.

It's a small world, especially so when you're as tall as I am, I guess.

A couple of months later I got a card in the mail saying I was in the talent pool. Now all I had to wait for was a random drawing and a call.


Then, in October of 2002, I got a call from Heather at 'Millionaire' asking if I wanted to be a millionaire. Oddly, I said "yes."

Coming in Part Two: I'm a leavin', in a Mitsubishi Eclipse...