Game-show winner cites skill
Luck not involved
with win, he says
By Shannon Uehling
Staff Reporter
Joe Ryan doesn’t have much faith in
luck.
Ryan, a senior political science stu
dent, competed and won on MTV’s
“Remote Control’’ game show in Decem
ber 1988.
Ryan only partially attributes getting
on the show to luck. But his success was
a product of skill and positive attitude, he
said.
“I don’t think I was lucky,” he said. “1
went out and expected to win.”
That attitude paid off, he said. Big.
Ryan won several expensive prizes,
such as a 1989 Mitsubishi Montero, a
stereo, a television, a Soloflex machine, a
Karaoke-type machine, a bike, a camera,
some compact discs and “some sort of
musical instrument," he said.
The odyssey to Orlando, Fla., began at
the University of Xebraska-Uncoln, where
Ryan competed against 100 potential
contestants.
He first had to take a written quiz,
identify nine rock videos and prove he
had “personality” before the group was
cut down to 20 and, eventually, to the
five contestants. MTV' flew those five to
Florida for the game show.
The trip itself was a quick one, Ryan
said. He spent one evening in Orlando
and was on his way back to Nebraska the
same day as the taping of the show.
Ryan said he wasn’t very nervous about
being on television. The people at MTV
look the lime to show the contestants
around the studio and let them practice
the game before the taping.
As soon as the practice was over, three
of the five contestants were put on the set
to begin the taping “and 22 minutes later
it was over,” Ryan said.
The best part of the experience, Ryan
said, was meeting the people on the
show and the other contestants.
Ryan said that show member Collin
Quinn was a pretty nice guy, even though
Quinn said something rude about Ryan.
“He ragged on me,” Ryan said.
Ryan said Quinn commented that Ryan
was the type of guy to be the first in a
crowd to point out a foul smell.
Another perk to being on “Remote
Control," Ryan said, was staying at
Orlando’s Peabody Hotel. MTV paid for
all the contestants’ expenses except food.
Although the “vacation” lasted only
one day, Ryan said it was nice to get
away. The weather in Florida was consid
erably warmer than in Nebraska.
Ryan said he also prepared for “Re
moteControl’’ through another game: the
old KSPN show, ‘Superbowl of Sports
Trivia.”
He said he was concerned that being
on the sports trivia show would disaual
ify him for “Remote Control.” But nothing
came of his apprehension.
Although Ryan had the good fortune
to be among the first 100 contestants and
the final three to be selected, he put more
of his faith in himself.
“The questions are easy and the people
you go against are pretty much idiots,” he
said.
“You go out and blow their socks off.
Or you don’t get any points at all."Jfe
And that is anything but luck.
Flash of fright
Lightning strikes too close to home
By Thomas Clouse
Senior Editor
Many people may be feeling lucky this St.
Patrick’s Day, but there are some who have
been struck by misfortune.
Struck by lightning, to be exact.
For those who are unfortunate enough to
be too close to where lightning strikes, the
consequences sometimes can be deadly.
But regardless of whether people are in
jured when lightning strikes, they will never
forget it.
One person who was unfortunate enough
to be too close to a lightning strike was
Gene McKenzie of I'remont.
About seven years ago, McKenzie was
sitting next to his fireplace, which had a
steel chimney, when lightning struck it, and
the electricity jumped onto his back.
“It didn’t burn my back, but I was worried
about my heart,” McKenzie said.
The surge did not hurl, he said, but he
suffered minor shock afterwards.
“I felt a little weak and a little drawn, like
all my energy waspulledoutofme,” he said.
Although getting struck by lightning would
seem very unlucky, McKenzie said he didn’t
see it that way.
“1 would say that I am lucky that I
survived and have had no side effects,"
McKenzie said.
The only way to have avoided the blast
would have been to sit farther away from
the fireplace, he said.
“Looking back, I guess that wasn’t the
smartest place to be sitting during a thun
derstorm,” McKenzie said.
Although lightning is said never to strike
in the same place twice, McKenzie said he
still respected lightning.
“I worry about not having lightning rods
on my house,” he said.
But lightning and thunder are cool. 1 hey
are like natural fireworks in reverse. 1 he
flash comes first, then comes the blast.
As children, my brothers and sisters used
to try to figure out what caused thunder and
lightning.
One educated theory was that lightning
came from clouds colliding with each other •
and thunder came from angels wrestling.
We wou Id sit arou nd, trying to scare each
other by telling stories: Thunder was God’s
way of saying that we had been bad.
Thunder storms can be scary if you are in
a dark, lonely room. But as children, your
parents always seemed to have enough
room in theirbig, warm bed to chase the evil
thunder away.
Then you became too old and too “big
to be scared of such wimpy things like
thunder, and you reached the stage of
challenging lightning to strike where you
are.
But as you grew older, you learned to
respect the power of nature and the danger
involved. We learned in junior-high science
class that lightning was actually a discharge
of atmospheric electricity from one cloud to
another or between a cloud and the earth.
We were also taught that the thunder
blast was caused by the sudden heating and
expansion of air by an electrical discharge.
Then after you found out what it was,
you reached the stage where lightning could
again frighten you — when you’re alone at
night and you awaken to that big flash Jk
of blue light.
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