First thing, check out the following article http://www.suntimes.com/output/entertainment/cst-ftr-neville15.html. This is basically my worst fear brought to life. If Cyril Neville is giving up on New Orleans then I have to feel that the city that I know and love is lost. There is a strong possibility that it is simply going to become a Vegas on the Bayou with everything being a façade. That is a horrible fate for one of the last real places in America. I hope that someone has the foresight to create a city in which the original melting pot of citizens can return but in the end I fear that what we are going to be left with is not the place where I felt most at home but a movie set.
Ok, very fun story from tonight. Decided to play trivia tonight and made my way to the bar a few minutes ahead of gametime. Because I am someone who is in control and on time and prompt. Or at least I would be if I knew that they changed the start time from 8 to 7. Whoops. So, with the first round winding down I’m pissed that I showed up and can’t play. Grab a beer and see that no team has that many points and at the in between round break decide to enter the game, picking up teammates along the way. My new team name: Inanimate Carbon Rod.
(Which is one of my favorite Simpsons references ever. I know that switching from Cobra Kai is probably bad form but a) I probably used up all the luck associated with that team name in fantasy football and b) following Mr. Miyagi’s passing I felt that it was best to retire the name for the time being out of respect for our vaunted adversary. Of course, I still would like to use Dr. Wang and his Medical Staff as a name but I’m continually told that it’s too long. And let me tell ya, that happens in a lot of aspects of my life (insert rim shot here).)
So, we are down some pretty serious points to the other teams when the categories are revealed. “Classic Nintendo games”, that should be good. “20 Minutes of Fame” about minor celebrities, well that one is right up my alley. “Flashback” on questions from previous games, the photographic memory should be helpful there. And “Python Sings”
There are very few things that I am an expert on and all they have in common is a) I’ll never make any money from my knowledge and b) no girl will ever date me because of how much I know. These subjects are pro wrestling, Uncle Tupelo, and most specifically, Monty Python. I have all of the episodes on DVD. I have all of the movies on DVD. I have all of the specials. I have copies of the scripts of every episode. And I have compilation tapes of every song ever recorded. Yes, I know that this means I will never, ever have a girlfriend. But it also means I am damn well going to clean up this category.
Which I do, including nearly breaking into the “Eric a Half a Bee” song. I even argued, correctly I might add, that the answer to “What was the Lumberjack in the Lumberjack’s song profession” is barber and not weatherman. I checked the scripts and I’m right (I think in one of the stage versions it may be a weatherman). Running that category got us back into the game and the other categories allowed us to catch up so that at the end of the round we had actually taken the lead. This is kind of unheard of, not even playing the first round and leading at the end of the second. And what is our Final Jeopardy category? Literature.
At this point I thought that I was money. I mean, it’s literature, how the hell am I going to miss this question. If I knew who was the captain of the Exxon Valdez and that the brightest star in the night sky was Sirius I am certainly going to get this one right and take home a nice profit and enter trivia lore. This was a sure thing.
Until the question was what book had four characters that I had never heard of in it. And I knew that it was a children’s book that I hadn’t read and none of my teammates knew it so we threw out a wild guess and were wrong. It was Watership Down, which basically everyone else got right. I’ve never read Watership Down. You want to know why? Because it’s about friggin rabbits! That’s not literature, that’s agriculture or horticulture or one of those other ‘ures. You know, if it was about Ulysses I could have gotten it but no, it had to be on a book that kids are forced to read in school that I somehow avoided all my life.
So after starting out in last, fighting our way up to first, we end up back in last. If there is ever a metaphor for my life, that very well may be it. Oh well, I’m going back out to the bars to drown my misery (don’t worry, I’m not working tomorrow. It’s Friday, no one should ever have to work on a Friday). Have a good weekend everyone.
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