How I earned my 15 minutes of fame on Jeopardy!

SI.com's James Quintong recently appeared on Jeopardy! He shares the details -- from start to finish -- of his experience in this two-part feature. Click here to read Part I.

Pauly Shore can't save me from losing on Jeopardy!

	Sometimes it helps to have an abundance of Pauly Shore knowledge. Issac Baldizon/Getty Images
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After that grinder of a contest, the rest of us try not to talk about the game over lunch. In fact, I spent a lot of time analyzing the fantasy baseball team of one of the remaining contestants who happened to be one of the six who passed the test with me in February.

With lunch over, it's time for a quick wardrobe change -- it may just be the third game of the day, but it's "tomorrow" on TV -- as well as drawing my challengers. It's Michael, a law student who had appeared on The Weakest Link and was sharp on the buzzer during rehearsals, and LeeAundra, a communications coach/consultant from the L.A. area.

(For a thorough transcript of the game, click here.)

I'm now more relaxed up on stage. And once the game starts, things start becoming a lot of fun. Among the categories to come up is "The Pauly Shore File." And apparently not learning from the Barry Manilow debacle from the previous game, I go straight for the category. LeeAundra gets the first question, goes for another category, but I get the next question and it's back to Pauly Shore. I rattle off the next four questions in a row -- all that stored up pop culture knowledge is paying off. (However, my parents, who were in the audience, are still trying to figure out who Pauly Shore is.)

The rest of the questions before the first break are a blur, except for my blanking on the Billy Joel album 52nd Street.

The first break comes and goes, and it's story time again. This time Alex goes to the story I'm very comfortable talking about -- my job as a fantasy sports writer. I was happy to discuss it since that seems to be more "me." Back to the game, and it's a real shootout. Only a few hundred dollars separate all three of us at the end of round one.

Unlike the previous game, the second round here was fast-moving and exciting. I see a couple of categories I like -- Small Screen Critters and World Universities. Early on, I miss a question on Cambridge University (I ring in, mentally flip a coin in my head, and guess Oxford) and can't seem to get any rhythm with the buzzer. While I sneak in a couple of questions right, the other two each get on runs, and all of a sudden I'm down about $5,000 to LeeAundra. Then something clicks and now comes my comeback.

In the World Universities category, I see something about Luzon, the largest island of the Philippines, and I'm in.

"What is The Philippines?" Correct. I nearly mutter to myself, "I'd better have gotten that" (given my ancestry).