Ramblings 21 Aug 2007 11:27 am
Trivia-lization
I live trivia. It’s a good way to spend an hour or two and done with the right people it could be downright entertaining. Last night was no exception. A-man, K, MJG and I all found ourselves back at The Red Line in Harvard Sq for our third try at team trivia. Originally under the clever name of the Outside the Box-ers, we had racked up an 0-2 record. That was no good, so with the same cast we reinvented ourselves at the Student Loaners. In team trivia you MUST have a good team name or else the other teams won’t respect you. The more clever the name, the tougher the competition…. That’s just how it goes. Anyway. We started off at a rock star pace. Tv show with Thomas Hayden Church and Debra Messing? Ned and Stacey. Duh. Lake in MN that shares a name with a toy company and is Indian for “Great”? Tonka. Damn we are good. We are outta the gate with some serious points. We make a decent showing of the name the actor/movie bit picking up 15 out of 20. Then the wheels get a little wobbly. We wrap up the first half in 2nd place but know from past experience that we need to focus.
As the questions start to get harder in the 2nd half we all take notice to this one guy in particular. You’ve seen him. Sloppy, sporting a local sports team hat (backwards), a different local sports team t-shirt, probably a little more drunk than a guy should be on a Monday night, loud, borderline beligerent, but he doesn’t really know it. We all lived next to this guy at one point or another. Well, this guy starts to take a fancy to the trivia girl (who has NO inclination to deal with this jackal). It starts innocently enough. He comes up and asks her a few times to repeat the question for him. Then he starts mildly complaining about the difficulty of the questions. With each question he gets a little louder and a little more grating. Naturally, the four of us cannot stop watching. This is pure entertainment to us. By the end of the 3rd quarter her patience is gone with this guy and he is just plan offensive. He wants to know if his answers are right when he brings them up. He asks her why she can’t play better music. He complains about the music round and says that it would have been better is the songs were circa 1984. This guy is just embarassing now and he is getting Pissed that he is losing so badly. We feel really bad about whats goin on now, as I am SURE that this nice girl doesn’t get paid enough to put up with some fat, dumb slob’s BS. K decides to let the girl know that we see whats going on and offers some advice. On our answer sheet, in addition to our correct answer (expensive combs and a watch fob) we add that she should look into getting a taser for this dope. She appreciates our gesture and laughs with us, and we laugh at him. Trivia wise, we are still in the hunt. Some hard questions, but A-man came through with some good answers to keep us alive. Fat bastard was basically done, as he was getting nothing right. His prior advances on Trivia girl had been denied so he was trying another route. I am sure he heard somewhere that chicks like guys that are assholes, so he says to her… (Something to the effect of) “Well start askin’ some better questions, or at least show me your tits. I’m just sayin.” Who the hell thinks that will work?! I honestly cannot think of ANY guy that that line would work for. No super Hollywood hunk. No sports star, no business mogul, certainly not THIS drunk assclown. She’s pissed but just ignores him. The game comes down to the final questions. We are in 2nd place by 2 points (I calculated 81, but Trivia girl says 84, I will recalculate later). First place has an unbelieveable 20-point lead over us but we are determined to hold onto the 2nd place spot. First question. 8 points says that Egypt has the largest Muslim population outside of Asia. YES! Alright. Final question. Who won a Heisman before going on to win super bowl 6 over the Miami dolphins, winning an Superbowl MVP in between? Crap. We all look at MJG because the three of us have NO ideas. Eventually we come up with a guess, but there is no reassurance that we are on the right path. We put in our 2 points and hold our breath. We don’t get the answer, but it doesn’t seem like anyone else did either. The final tallies come back and we end with 2nd place, good enough for a $20 gift certificate. Awesome, that’s a pitcher of beer for next week. We pay our bill and head out to make our way home to our respective houses.
As we are leaving we see the slob outside smokin a cigarette and just as we pass, these two guys (bout 6’ tall, in shape and in shirts and ties) approach him and ask if he took their pack of cigarettes on the table. As we walk away we hear them asking him a few times and he is tryin to say it was all a misunderstanding. We know it probably isnt. Then K tells us that the Trivia girl gave us bonues points for the taser comment, assuring us the 2nd place position. Glad I didn’t say, “re-tally our points or show us your tits”, that would have been awkward. A-man celebrated our 2nd place and we agreed to kick some trivia butt next week. Maybe I will buy the trivia girl a drink if we need the points. Awesomeness.