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.

3,000 hits and one right answer.

Last night my friend Fran and I went to meet some people she knew from work for Trivia Night at a local bar and grill. Ah, how it made me nostalgic for trivia at the Windber Hotel, when you weren't sure if the amazing dish you had last week would be awful the next week and Melis kept trying beers hoping to find one similar to what we drank at Oktoberfest and we crammed on current events and Eric became more and more infuriated that half the pink Christmas lights were burned out. I miss those days.

In the middle of round 2, they hit us with a sports question: “What baseball player had exactly 3,000 hits when his career was cut short?” Oh my stars and garters. I knew it. I knew a sports question. And not even, like, an Olympic question or a “sports question” that is actually a movie question like “Who did Lawrence Taylor play in Any Given Sunday?” This was a real, actual sports question. And the three men at the table didn't have a clue. But I had a clue. I had recently watched a documentary program on this man with Dad and Uncle Jimmy and I remembered Dad telling me about those 3,000 hits.

At first I couldn't remember his name, so I hissed at the self-declared “sports expert” at the table, “It’s that guy! That guy who has a bridge in Pittsburgh named after him! The bridge with the blue lights!” My teammate looked at me blankly. Undeterred, I went on. “That guy who was a Pittsburgh Pirate and he was Puerto Rican and he was taking humanitarian supplies to Nicaragua and his plane crashed.” More blank stares.

Now, I think if you can’t pull Clemente's name from that pile of info, you are no “sports expert,” but it seemed impolitic to point that out to a man I had only met 20 minutes ago. I like people to know me for a least a week before they realize I am insufferable.

I knew I was on my own, so I closed my eyes and thought about that beautiful bridge and Clemente's name finally came to me. Then I resolved to call everyone I know, especially my boy cousins, and tell them I had answered a sports question that had stumped three actual men, but I settled for posting it on Facebook because I am lazy and that is a lot of calls to make.

We had a good night, but the round that destroyed us was the pictorial quiz of obscure beer logos. Fran and I don’t really drink, but I thought the three guys would have this covered. Then they dropped it on me: all three were Mormons from Utah. They could tell me all about the show Sister Wives but not a lick about beer. Alas.

We ended up coming in third. Next time, Gadget. Next time.

The answer to that question would be: the people of Mozambique.

Overheard at our table on Trivia Night, after taking an early lead...

Travis: We're changing our name to Team Capone!
Ali: Why?
Travis: We're untouchable!
Ali: Umm, wouldn't it be Team Ness?
Travis: Oh. Yeah. Forget it.


20 minutes later, apropos of nothing...

Travis: I'm so bummed it's not Capone that was untouchable!

"Hey! I'm just as cool as Capone."

(BTW, that's Elliot Ness.)

Alas, we tied for second place and we lost the tie breaker, which bumped us down to third, but we were still pleased. Because the Cheater Team (my nemesis) did not place at all. Ha!

Hey, did you know that Mozambique has an AK-47 semi-automatic assault rifle on its flag? Neither did we. Actually, Eric thought so, but we disregarded him because we thought, "Who puts a machine gun on their flag?"

Sorry, Eric.

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.

I love the smell of pizza and wings in the evening. Smells like victory.

Tonight we squared off against the three other teams to make the Trivia Final and we came away victorious! It was a really nice evening. The Windber Hotel treated all of us to a delicious pizza and wing buffet (yum city) and all the other teams were gracious, polite opponents. Awesomely, no cheater teams made the final.

This was a competition where our whole team pulled together to bring the win. Some highlights of the night were Travis whipping out the answer "sublimation" for a science question (yeah, I have no idea) and Brian burying his pain over Carolina's loss to Kentucky to answer a Datsun car question.

And I may regret this, but let me just announce to the world that the name of the ocean liner in The Love Boat was the Pacific Princess. Remember that. That question gets asked a lot in trivia contests and board games, and it netted us our first point of the evening.

"Love, exciting and new... Come aboard, we're expecting yoooouuuuuuuu...."

Trivia Night!

Sorry to those of you who have been waiting with baited breath for a Trivia Night update. Here it is.

This past Monday was the final week of regular competition for the tournament. We didn't win but we ended the evening still in first place overall, thanks in part to a round on PA trivia which Jess rocked like a hurricane. When Jess realized it was an entire round of her favorite trivia, she gushed like an Oscar winner and shrieked, "I am so HAPPY!" It was, quite frankly, hilarious, and she got 9 out of 10 on that round.

The final for the tournament is this Sunday. The top four teams will convene for a pizza party and combat to the death. Or something like that. It should be epic.

Oh, so there's this annoying girl from another team who sometimes talks to my sisters. I can't remember her name, so I call her "the annoying girl." Anway, she asked us at the beginning of the night on Monday if we were going to make it to the final. Melis told her that unless we had a total meltdown we'd make it and she replied, "Oh, well if you guys will make it in then we should too." As though her team was far superior to ours, which, whatever. I politely told her she should be sure to check the standings list to see if her team would make it to the final. I didn't mention that when she did check the list she'd see that our team was in first place and hers was in eleventh. I thought I'd let her find that out on her own.

Also, the cheater team I mentioned last week had NINE people at their table this week, when seven is maximum allowed. Travis is a math teacher and he's always hoping for a round of math-based questions that he can kill at. I was like, "Here's a math question for you: what's 7 plus 2?" Ooh, I was hoppin' mad. Yeah, that's right. Hoppin' mad.

Tonight!

Tonight is the final week of regular tournament competition at Trivia Night, in which the four teams that will advance to the final will be chosen. Barring a soap-operatic bout of amnesia hitting every single person on our team, we're a lock. But I'm intrigued to find out who our competition will be. Those three lucky teams will join us next weekend for a pizza party and the final showdown.

I'm excited, both because the WH's pizza is good, and because I haven't been to a pizza party since 5th grade.

Cheaters do prosper. They get free wing dings.

I certainly know how he'd handle this.

In our Trivia Night exploits we have encountered many delightful things. Camaraderie, delicious stromboli, the sweet taste of victory, and free appetizers purchased with the gift certificates we won. There is one thing, however, that we do not enjoy: The cheating. The blatant cheating.

There are various tournament rules applied to Trivia Night, the first one being that you shall only have seven members on your team. Several teams routinely break this rule (It’s rule #1, people.), having eight and sometimes nine people present. It’s obnoxious and, frankly, insulting. And the management has demonstrated a total inability to curb this activity.

Instead of getting angry about it, I have thus far chosen to adopt a Mr. Bennettish air of derisive detachment. For example, when they announced that our team got 9 points out of 10 in Round One and a cheater team got a mere 5, I snidely remarked, “Hmmm. Eight people and only 5 points. How disgraceful.” And this snide derision had been enough to sustain us. That is, until the top three teams tied for first place last night and we entered into a bonus tie-breaker round. A few extraneous people from other losing teams decided to shuffle over to one of the tiebreaker teams and join them for the tiebreaker round.

Yes, you read that correctly. Not only too many people, but ringers from other teams! (Although I don’t know if someone from a losing team could technically be called a “ringer”, but you get my point.) The brazenness of their cheating even upset Brian, and we had had just about all we could take, so Melis shouted across the bar, in the righteous voice of the enraged, “Hey! Guys! You’re not on their team!” And when the cheating cheaters didn’t respond, she shouted again, “Hey! Stop helping them. You’re not on their TEAM!”

Now, if you’re reading this and you’re a member of my family, you understand completely her reaction and can only wonder at her restraint in not flinging jalapeno poppers across the barroom. And you know that, at our family gatherings, game-playing infractions far inferior to this would get you tossed out into the dark Pennsylvania night, post-haste. Jessica, Kevin, and Travis, however, are not quite as hardcore as the rest of us. They were... shall we say mortified? Kevin pulled his hat down around his ears and I think Jessica actually retreated into her scarf. I’m not sure what Travis did because I was concentrating on trying to set the cheating team’s beers aflame with only the power of my furious gaze as Melis demanded for a third time that they STOP.

So imagine for a moment my disgust when the cheater team won the bonus round. Life is so unfair sometimes. My only comfort is that their dismal performance in the tournament overall will keep them out of the final round, and our hefty lead is still quite hefty.

Still, I can’t help hoping they choke on the appetizers they order with that first place gift certificate. Wretched, wretched cheaters.

CORRECTION: I've recently been informed that I was incorrect. Kevin was NOT mortified. In fact, he was screaming along with Melissa. Awesome.

Do you hear the popstars sing?

So, this week at Trivia (where we’re still womping the competition, BTW) Jess, Melis, and I discovered that we had all been watching the 25th Anniversary Les Miserables in concert that PBS was showing the night before. We all agreed it was delightful and the musical is amazing and we’re shocked it’s been 25 years since its debut. Then followed this conversation:

Melis: (incredulously) Did you see who Marius was? It was Nick Jonas.

Ali: You know what? I thought that. I thought, “The new Marius looks like one of those Jonas boys, but surely he can’t actually be one of those Jonas boys because, well, obviously.”

Melis: Well, he was. He’s Nick Jonas.

Ali: Are you certain about that? That doesn’t seem right.

Melis: Allison, it was Nick Jonas.

Ali: I’m just going to check to be sure.

(looks up article on Google)

Ali: Oh my, you’re right! It was. It was indeed Nick Jonas!

Melis: You didn’t believe me?

Ali: I wanted to check.

Melis: You didn’t believe me.

Ali: I thought perhaps you had a read an article in which someone said, “Gee, the new Marius looks a lot like Nick Jonas” and you, being tired and bleary-eyed, got confused.

Melis: No.

Ali: I thought that scenario was more plausible than Nick Jonas actually being the new Marius.

Melis: You didn’t believe me!

Ali: It’s Nick Jonas!

Melis: (gives me the hairy eyeball)

So, that went well. Also, after that conversation, I’m dangerously close to being able to tell the Jonas Brothers apart. I’m not sure what to do with that.

I KNOW, right?

This was my favorite part: the curtain call where four Valjeans (including the original, Colm Wilkinson)
sang "Bring Him Home" together.

Pink and red and trivia and laziness

Happy Valentine's Day to all you people who are in love. And Happy Valentine's Day to people like me who love to see red and pink sparkly stuff, chocolates, and flowers all over the place.

In other news, Trivia was tonight and the two married couples in our group shunned V-Day in order to join us for trivia. Commitment! We came in third, just like last week, only two points behind first place, just like last week. But! We maintain a hefty lead overall in the tournament. We are so gonna win, I am certain.

Also, I just got back from Houston, visiting Amanda, where my trip went something like this:

Sushi, nap, sleep, kolaches*, nap, Bosnian food, massage, Mexican food, nap, movie, movie, sleep, kolaches, nap, Texas BBQ, movie, movie, Indian food, nap, sleep, kolaches, fly home. We pretty much could not have been lazier and it was awesome. And I got to see Biutiful, so my Oscar-readiness is chugging right along.

*Kolaches are little breakfast buns filled with stuff like egg and cheese and potato. Deliciousness abounds.

Goings on...

Trivia Night

We had such fun, but we ended up (I think) in 4th place. This means no gift certificate for delicious appetizers next week, but we maintain a five point lead in the overall tournament. This is a pretty sweet lead considering the top three teams each week are usually separated by a point each. Brian was sick this week and didn't go. Perhaps he's the magic that holds us together. But Eric sat in and was his usual melodramatic self.

Cake Night

Tomorrow I start my first cake decorating class. That is, if the weather holds. (This morning, when I left my garage, the alley glistened like a luge track. It was madness, but a fair price to pay for a two-hour delay.) Hopefully, I will learn to make roses out of frosting. That is my chief goal. Photos to follow.

Much Happiness

We recently learned that sweet Wes will be getting a little brother or sister. He's going to be such a good big brother. Kris and I are heading there this weekend for much fun and delightfulness and a total lack of Zack's famous mojitos in honor of this news.

We trailed clouds of victory, is all I'm saying.

Who is this dude? Read on...

So, we kicked major amounts of tail tonight in the Trivia Tournament and extended our small overall lead to a rather healthy one. Woohoo! We also took first prize in the night's competition and got a $25 gift certificate that will buy some delicious appetizers next week. Go Team Ramrod! Also, the turkey reuben on pretzel bread is delightful.

Now, for the shocking part. You may have seen Melis' Facebook status already, but if not, here goes: there was a Steelers Trivia round and I dominated. Yes, me. Me! I spent some time last night cramming sports trivia like it was finals week at football college. And it paid off. It was like I left my body and was possessed by the spirit of the Mehall boys and Melis. Madness. Some of the crazy questions I got (answers below):

Who was the Steelers #1 draft pick in 2005?
Who was the first Steeler to be inducted into the Hall of Fame?
In what year did Art Rooney found the Steelers?
How many interceptions did Mel Blount have in his best season?
Which Steeler set a record for receiving yards in a single game in November 2002?

Yes, I answered these. "Ali, surely you jest." No, I swear! Cramming. It works. It's how I got through college.

Answers:

Heath Miller (I think of him as the Sidney Crosby of the Steelers)

Johnny McNally (Pictured above)

1933

Eleven

Plaxico Burress (Melis later pointed out to me that I was actually at this game. Oops! I totally forgot.)

Jen also came through awesomely when we were asked what was the only Steelers number to have been retired (70) and Melis and Brian knew that Chuck Noll used to play for the Browns. Travis is big on the sports knowledge too, and Jess and Kevin kicked butt in the other rounds. (Do not try to go up against them on PA trivia. Did you know the state fish is the brook trout? Jess and Kevin do.)

I love Monday nights.

It's nice to look forward to Mondays...

...because Mondays are Trivia Night!

Just to keep you informed of our trivia exploits, Team Ramrod is currently in first place in the tournament and we expect to extend our lead tonight.

Also, I'm thinking about trying the stromboli. I'm keeping you fully informed.

Results

Well, we came in fourth, just one point behind third place. We plan to do better next week.

Also, the toasted cheese sandwich at The Windber Hotel is magnificent.

Trivia Night!

Last week, Amanda, Jess, Kevin, J, Jen T, and I went to the Windber Hotel for Trivia Night. We were already delighted enough to participate in the regular contest, but imagine our excitement when we found out it was the first night of a three-month tournament? With a face-off against the top four teams at the end? Yes, please!

Jess and I bounced up and down in our seats like little girls and poor Amanda lamented that her status as a Texas resident would keep her from participating. (Texas, messing up stuff again.) J and Jen T are not the trivia fiends that Jess and Kevin and I are, so we filled out our roster by adding Jen, Melis, and Brian, as well as Amanda and Jess' cousin Travis. Tonight is our first competition as Team Ramrod (Kevin named us--he's a fan of Super Troopers.) I shall keep you apprised of our exploits.