The Total Trivia Experience

I am pleased to report that our team took 2nd in the trivia competition last night. We were two points behind the leaders. If we hadn't screwed the pooch in the sports round, we coulda been a contender. A score of 4 out of 10 that round was our Achilles heel. Thank the Gummi Mary that we knew Lillehammer hosted the 1004 winter Olympics. And that Monica Seles got stabbed. That Nebraska was the only team to beat the Mizzou Tigers at football (at the time the question was asked). And that Peyton Manning is closing in on some quarterback record currently held by Brett Favre. Other than those golden nuggets, we were fresh out of sports smarts.

The only other category that gave us fits was Best Sellers. Who knew that Norman Vincent Peale did not write Power Thoughts: 12 Strategies to Win the Battle of the Mind? Not us. It might have something to do with him being dead for the past 16 years, d'ya think? And speaking well of the dead... we scored a perfect 10 in the Dead or Alive category. Though Ray Bradbury almost had us stumped. Luckily, our policy of declaring people alive if we could not remember the announcement of their death served us well.

Movie quotes required much teamwork, but we screwed the pooch on The Fugitive and Tommy Lee Jones, instead attributing the search every outhouse, etc. soliloquy to Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke. Somebody needs to watch more YouTube. I knew that the dude speech came from a cult bowling movie with Jeff Bridges and John Goodman, but it took a teammate to match that info up with The Big Lebowski. And I must pat myself on the back for being the only one to know that John Wayne won his Oscar for True Grit, not Rooster Cogburn. I knew my abnormal obsession with that movie would do me good one of these days. And I must add that something must be wrong with my crew, none of them besides me ever having watched or read The Right Stuff. What kind of unAmericans are they? They did not know that Gus Grissom was the second man in space, and declared to his dying day (in a flaming space capsule, no less) that "The hatch just blew!" In fact, I believe their precise words were, "Who's Gus Grissom?" and "Never heard of him." and "Are you sure?" and "I don't think it was him. No. I don't have another answer. But I don't think it was him." Of course I knew it was Gus Grissom. Gus screwed the pooch, you know. And he was a conspiracy theorist.

Our team had 10 members, ranging in age from 15 to mid-70s. I must say that old people have an advantage in the trivia business. The #1 son did provide two answers: The Blind Side and Inglorious Basterds. His crony was noted for picking up the giant jug of dorito/cheeto/pretzel mix and digging through it to pick out the cheeto parts. It reminded me of Vicki in National Lampoon's Vacation, when she was stirring the Kool-Aid with her arm up to the elbow, and Clark Griswold said, "Vicki, can I help you with that Kool-Aid? Please?"

On a side note, off to the side of our table, right next to us, sat a team with my gynecologist and his wife. The thyroid-stealing double-team, as I think of them. They did not speak to me. I did not speak to them. That would be just creepy. How ironic that I used a gynecologist as an example in last night's post. And to think that there I was, sitting on his livelihood, not 15 feet away. Perhaps he didn't recognize me from that angle.

Next on our agenda is the Newmentia band trivia fundraiser on the weekend before Thanksgiving. We will be an adults-only team that night. Please.