Score 54, where are you?

So, I played trivia tonight with some friends at a local pub. One question, which will delight my fellow Whedonites, was this: "Aside from the series finale, how many Slayers appear in the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer?"

Whedonites, take a moment to count them up, then scroll down to see the answer.

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The correct answer is 6. (Buffy, Kendra, Faith, Nikki Wood, that Chinese Slayer that Spike killed during the Boxer Rebellion whose name I don't quite have right now, and The First Slayer, whose name I also don't have right now.) The correct answer is 6. We answered 6.

The MC announced that the answer was 3. Buffy, Faith, and Kendra.

I pounced on him like Garfield on a lasagna. (Or was that Heathcliff? I always confuse the two. What I don't confuse is my Slayers.)

He apologized profusely and said he had to take the official answer the trivia company had given him, flippety fling blang blah. That mistake cost us 5 points and gave countless other teams in the bar points they did not deserve for answering the incorrect answer of 3. I was thoroughly disgusted.

When the scores were read, we had an unfair 49 instead of our rightful 54. The first place team's score? 54. And who even knows if their 54 was padded by points unjustly awarded from that Slayer question!

I may sound like a raving lunatic to many of you right now, but you can't ask a question about something that has a rabid fandom, declare an incorrect answer, and not expect to have some explaining to do. You can't say Tattooine has three suns. You can't say the TARDIS is yellow. You can't say Faramir took the ring from Frodo. (Yes, Peter Jackson, you have some explaining to do.)

My teammate wrote the trivia company a strongly worded email, but she has yet to receive an answer. In the end, we were sidelined by a round in which you had to name the World Series champions of the past twenty years. I actually got five of them (someone get my sisters the smelling salts) but that pretty much took us out of the running.

Still, Tattooine has two suns, the TARDIS is blue, Faramir never took the ring, and there were 6 Slayers before the series finale. These things I know.

Stay classy, DC.

The emperor would like you to fix the broadcast. Immediately.

So, last night I headed downtown to the Shakespeare Theater to see a play beamed via satellite from London. About 15 minutes into the play, someone in the theater had a heart attack or something. They stopped the broadcast and about a dozen emergency personnel rushed in and took care of her, and then they announced they'd rewind the play's broadcast a few minutes and start it up again. Well, apparently they didn't know how to rewind it just a few minutes (something simulcast something something...) and they had to re-start it from the beginning. It was only 15 minutes. No big deal, right?

No.

People went nuts. It's amazing how quickly society can completely break down. Now let me just reiterate, this is the National Shakespeare Theater. People are dressed up. The median age is 63. The snack bar sells champagne in little fluted glasses. These are not rowdy people. Unless, of course, you make them sit through the first 15 minutes of a play twice. Then you better just hang on to your sugar-rimmed gingerbread cookies with the frosting portrait of William Shakespeare on the front because things are about to get sloppy.

Little old ladies started booing like spectators at the Roman Colosseum who want to see a gladiator beheaded. Middle aged gentlemen in bow-ties started yelling, "This is the wrong place!" and "Fix it! FIX IIIIIITTTTT!" It was like Lord of the Flies in there. I just kept quiet and scoped out the emergency exits.

That was until, about 10 minutes in, an actor entered wearing only a small pair of underwear. Then the elderly woman sitting behind me said, "Oh wait, this part we do want to see again."

It was pure class.

I love the British. I love the British so much.

"The pheasant, nicknamed Phil by Ms Hudson, lurks around from morning until night, and attacks her family as they go to and from their house, in Wentnor, Shropshire."

Yes, there is video.

"The unpleasant pheasant..." Marry me, England.

The hilarious "head in a trash can" photo you didn't know you wanted.

So, today's perusal of foreign newspapers has yielded solid gold. And, I just realized that my description in the post title sounds a bit macabre, but fear not! The head is indeed attached to a body. A man in Aberdeen, Scotland (currently my favorite man in all of Scotland) got himself wedged into a trash can, or "rubbish bin" if you speak British.

Heaven bless whomever decided to memorialize this on film:

Head in a rubbish bin.

The best part of this photo is the person in the lower right corner, grasping his friend on the shoulder and pointing with great animation. That person is a kindred spirit to me.

I truly hope those are the kindest, most understanding firemen in Scotland. Happy Monday, everyone.

Documentaries

There's a lot to put up with in this city (traffic, hot weather, traffic...) so I'm concentrating on the good things like cool restaurants, good theater, and an abundance of independent movie houses. Recently I saw a couple of documentaries that had everything a good doc should: fascinating story, good film making, and people who are totally crazeballs.

First up: The Queen of Versailles

This was originally going to be the story of billionaire real estate mogul David Siegel and his trophy wife Jackie as they attempted to build the largest single-family home in America. Part way through construction, the housing bubble popped and the Siegels' had to, as Jane Austen put it in her magnificent novel Persuasion, "retrench."

Watch as they try to scale back their ostentatious lifestyle with their dream home sitting unfinished, languishing on the over-glutted housing market. The filmmaker was with the family for three years, so they became comfortable with her and they really let their guard down. It's a fascinating look inside their world.

And now, check this out: The Imposter

If someone pitched this story to you, you'd be like, "Oh please, even the Brothers Grimm would find that unrealistic," but it's actually completely, totally true. In the early 90s, 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay went missing in Texas. Three years later his family got a call from Interpol telling them Nicholas had been found in Spain. The family welcomed him back with open arms. The problem is, the man they welcomed back was not 16-year-old Nicholas. He was a 23-year-old Frenchman named Frederic Bourdin, who had different colored hair and eyes than Nicholas and spoke with a French accent.

Why did the family unquestioningly welcome Bourdin into their lives? Were they so grief stricken they wanted to believe? Or did they have their own sinister reasons for not exposing the lie?

This documentary is so amazing. I watched with my mouth hanging open, going "No way!" the whole time. The best part is that Bourdin participated in the doc, detailing exactly how he got into the situation and how he deceived everyone from the Spanish police to Nicholas' own mother.

Definitely put this on your Films to Watch list. I would not steer you wrong.

That's weird.

So, Julia is obsessed with the Lord of the Rings movies, and aside from being convinced that Legolas is a girl, she is all about the evil characters. She loves the orcs, the uruk hai, the cave troll, and especially the Balrog. She thinks the Nazgul are cool, too, especially when they're riding on the fell beasts.

She watches Fellowship and keeps rewinding to the orcs in Moria and the Balrog at the Bridge of Khazad Dum. She can't get enough of it. I keep trying to show her the Shire scenes and Merry and Pippin stealing fireworks from Gandalf's cart and ending up washing dishes, and she thinks it's funny for a second and then she wants to fast forward to an orc scene. She's four years old and she loves orcs.

This is the face my angelic little niece wants to see before she goes to bed.

She also had this to say, upon encountering the Ents: "Merry and Pippin ran away and the orc chased them and they ran up in a tree and guess what! The tree talks! The tree talks. That's weird."

There's weirdness to spare, my little pumpkin. Weirdness to spare.

Now serving complimentary crack rocks in the Super Bowl sky box.

"My husband cannot (bleeping) throw the ball and catch the ball at the same time. I can't believe they dropped the ball so many times."

-Giselle, apparently gunning for a spot on the SportsCenter team

  

[sarcasm] She is such a classy lady. [/sarcasm]

Our table's conversation at Trivia Night

Discussing Harold Camping...

Jen: He should just get a group of people and hide somewhere on an island so people think he was raptured! That's what I'd do.

Brian: I don't know who's crazier now.


Also, we won first place and are leading the competition in overall points, which pleases me to no end since we wrested the lead from that cheater team that I've mentioned in previous posts. Good times all around.