n a t h a n

Here’s what happened: my neighbor was speaking on the phone to his on-again-off-again girlfriend of three years earlier today in an effort to get her to take him back. (She broke up with him two weeks ago.)

Apparently in the past he’s threatened to hurt her but this time he threatened to hurt himself and then said, “I did it, I did it, I did it!” and stopped responding to her. She called the police, who came over to make sure he was okay.

He was fine physically but was obviously not pleased to see police officers at his door. I walked back a few minutes after they arrived to throw some trash in our dumpster and heard him yelling, “Loosen the cuffs! They’re hurting me!” After 45 minutes or so they ended up taking him to the West LA police station for a mental evaluation.

Last night my friend Ken was on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which was celebrating its tenth anniversary on American television with a series of shows in prime time hosted by Regis Philbin.

I watched the episode with Ken’s friends and family at a viewing party he hosted at his condo. He and his girlfriend — who had accompanied him to the taping three weeks ago in New York — knew the outcome, but the rest of us were all in the dark.

After the first contestant got his second question wrong, Ken won the Fastest Finger round and ended up in the hot seat. He started knocking questions out of the park and by the end of the show had won $500,000 and was playing for a million dollars.

It was quite interesting to see this all play out in front of his the people closest to him. Ken and his girlfriend sat on the floor, fully aware of what was about to happen but not saying a word. His parents were on the couch on the edge of their seat; in 1983 they had emigrated to the United States from the Soviet Union; now their son — who started college at 16, went on to Harvard Law School and at 24 was an attorney at one of LA’s top entertainment law firms — was on national television playing for a million dollars.

The million dollar question: For ordering his favorite beverages on demand, LBJ had four buttons installed in the Oval Office labeled “coffee,” “tea,” “Coke” and what?

A. Fresca
B. V8
C. Yoo-hoo
D. A&W

Ken had no idea. He used his final lifeline to ask the audience, which was composed mostly of former and future Millionaire? contestants. They said Yoo-Hoo.

No one in the history of the American version has gotten the final answer wrong. That’s because if they don’t know it, they take $500,000 and walk away.

But Ken came to win a million dollars, so he guessed Yoo-hoo.

It was Fresca.

The air went out of the room. We all thought he was a millionaire; instead he walked away with $25,000. Regis went to commercial and Ken paused his TiVo, stood up and addressed the room.

“I’m fine,” he said, but in the initial days after the taping, he hadn’t been. Lots of second-guessing and plenty of tears. He thanked his girlfriend for getting him through it.

Then he started explaining his thought process on the final question, rationalizing his decision to go for it instead of walking away. As he spoke, I realized that he was saying all this because he felt like he let his family down, convinced that they were disappointed in him. Remember, this is a guy who has been an overachiever his whole life, and now, for the first time, he had failed — failed on national TV, no less — and the stakes were half a million dollars.

“I told [my girlfriend] that I thought Mom would be okay with it but Dad would think I was an idiot,” he told us.

“I don’t think you’re an idiot,” his father replied in his thick Russian accent. “I would have taken the money because that’s the way I am. You know that. But you are different from me. You are a gambler. I understand.”