Team Travis: Persecuted, Reviled, Awesome

Now that we're at the penultimate round of the season, it appears our complete and total awesomeness is rubbing a few people the wrong way. PHDTS took a shot at us in a tagline (and poor Joel's coif suffered as well) and the geers were reeeally giving us the gears. Grill, despite an extremely generous and giving offer from yours truly to inherit a beautiful piece of retro music technology for free, was particularly testy. Guess we need to ply him with beer at our kegger.

Our wonderfully inevitable kegger.

Break it down:

Steve, Travis, Buchan, Kari in attendance. Steve put in some serious loner hours waiting for us to get there. This shall not be the case this coming Wednesday, though, because trivs will be starting at 9:00 sharp in order to accommodate super extra bonus rounds. For our part, we will both be in attendance to help ensure total trivia domination.

Round 1: Some hits; some misses. 2TB won. PHDTS gained 2.5 on us. Ooooh.

Round 2: Obscure 80s/90s music. Well, obscure to the normal human; a piece of cake to Travis. 2TB win again. They are becoming a threat, so it gets dirty: "Two Tall Broads? Yeah - horizontally tall." OUCH, SL.

Round 3: Our perennial favourite, the themed trivia round. We managed to get all the answers without figuring out the connection between them! We were pretty close, guessing military vehicles when in fact they were all tanks. Let me say that what began to tip me off to the militariness was the fact that panther was one of the answers, which I assume to translate to panzer in German, which I knew was part of the name of the panzerkampfwagen because of our friend Cam's excellent TV commercial. Yes, folks. That's why it's called trivia.

This is where Grill got a little testy. Buchan may potentially possibly might have theoretically challenged our points total, which caused Grill to take away our points, which removed us from the tiebreaker, which deprived us of the sweet taste of victory beer. Steve-know coined the following, which I will kindly censor for the more delicate among us:

c*nt: [kʌnːt] v. trans. To treat unfairly; screw over. "Grill totally cun*ed us that round."

Of course he didn't really take our points away, so I guess he can still have my record player. I guess.

Round 4: movie production company themes. Very challenging; lots of fun. 6 pts.

Round 5: a tough trivia round.

Question: What was Lady Penelope's licence plate on Thunderbird 5?

Answer : Who the hell cares?

(courtesy of T-rav)

Question: What is the fruit with the most calories?

Answer: Grill.

(courtesy of SL)

This caused Grill to threaten to take away ALL our points. Eventually he had mercy on us.

7pts.

6. Grill's testiness continues, but at least other teams are feeling the wrath as well. I am mesmerized by the PHDTS guy's hideous sleeveless grease monkey shirt and his copious pit hair so I take no note of the content of the round. 7.5 points.

Quote of the night: "It's not about us getting free beer; it's about other teams not getting free beer." Buchan, I presume?

Has anyone else noticed that we have kind of a legwear theme happening in the names of our team members? Please pardon the funnery here, but I just have to point it out. There's (apologies) Cindy Pantalon, and there's Tr...avis H...auser. Tr...auser. Trauser. Say it out loud.

What of the other members, you say? Well, I'm working on that. How about: Craig Scott pants on. Craigscott pants on. (This is another one best enjoyed aloud.) Just saying, is all. Just saying.

And down to the the nitly gritly:

for the night -

1. Bite the Pillow - 45.5

2. PHDTS - 45

3. T-Rav and the T-babes - 43.5

4. 2TB and Boner City, tied at 42

5. BSB - 41

6. BPB - 39

and the cumulatives -

1. Travisse - 441.5

2. PHDTS - 409

3. BSB - 392

4. BPB - 380

5. Ses and the Wexlies - 378.5

6. 2TB - 374.5

This is it - the homestretch! Cruisin' into a kegger. Nice work.

There's a reason why we're called Team Travis

... although apparently tonight we could also have been called Team James, or Team Where The Hell Is James?

Despite the fact that the questions were all very sweetly tailored towards an absent player, we still managed to pull out a decent showing. Also, the T-rav was home sick. Get better soon, Travis. Please.

Attendance: SL, SB, KO and Mr. Ben Freitag, special guest and hopefully core membership inductee.

Toques worn: Just me. That's okay, guys. I don't mind looking like an idiot, I swear.

Pitchers won: three.

Pitchers we were ill-advised to drink: the last one.

Where Buchan went at the end of the night: No one knows.

Round one. The theme? Things James would have known if he were here.

Zero Pastor's Wife points to me for the land east of Eden. James knew it was the Land of Nod. I only know how to make Land of Nod buns. They're delicious. Next trivia breakfast, they'll be on the menu and you will forgive me.

This round gave rise to the most controversial question of the night, which was the number of inner metal rings on a dart board. The Joel got pissed enough to pull out his cell phone, afterthe round was over, to be sure, to challenge the ruling. However, by the end of the night, we had all resigned ourselves to the fact that there are just a lot of double rings on a dart board and that's the end of that.

When reading the scores, Drew demanded to know who Bite the Pillow are. "They're here every week but they never win," he said. Hooray for perseverance.

8 pts

Round the second. Movie soundtrack question. This was a deceptively easy soundtrack to guess, but our song knowledge was severely lacking. Fortunately, thanks to Newfoundland Television playing this with trippy graphics back to back for an entire day, I managed to contribute a bit. I believe it was Ben who put together the fact that this was the Wayne's World soundtrack. Party on, Ben. Party on, Steves.

We completely sucked at this round, getting 3.5.

Tag line: Travis misses travis.

No one else did all that well, though, so not to worry. When PHDTS got a whopping 1.5 more points than us, there was some fist pumping and someone made a "narrowing the gap" motion. Them's figtin' gestures.

Round 3. This round was Jimmy's birthday present: the theme was books of the Old Testament. Well, the thought was nice.

Tag line: this round is better for Jews.

Ben treated us to 'chos. They were good. Welcome to the team.

Steven Leslie's comment on the decentness of the 'chos: "Whoever's working tonight is not totally useless. That's the kindest compliment I've ever paid to them."

I pulled Samuel Coleridge out of my ass for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. I am proud of this.

My Pastor's Wife chops were tested yet again during the tiebreaker, which featured us, BPBs, and Baby G and the G Babes who are pretty much all right kind of folks and share our anti-cheasting stance. Anyway, the first tiebreaker question was the meaning of "The Christ" which I shamefully didn't get. But the second question was my redemption, as I knew that the most common cause of death by crucifixion is asphyxiation. We poured a pitcher for Jesus after that one.

7 points.

Round 4 - Star Wars sound effects, and -- music to our ears -- "Not any of that new shit Star Wars." When asked to point to the table's biggest nerd, we dutifully did so, but revised our stance with another one of our excellent tag lines: "We all pointed at ourselves."

Steves were on the case for this one. Very impressive, gents. Once again, stuff James would know as well. This round, we learned that SL should go as this next halloween instead of a nipple-baring Wilma Flintstone, although I'm sure you two looked awesome. Also please note that next year James and I will be dressed as Dog the Bounty Hunter and Mrs. Dog as long as that is still culturally relevant.

There was a cruel, cruel bonus at the end of this round which was a Star Trek sound. Oooh, those sneaky bitches. This caused SL to wreck the entire bar with his nerd rage. Well, okay, it was just the railing on the stage, but still. It was epic.

"I will rape your nerd asses." --Drew. Too true.

The mystery team whose name had to do with chicken trussing won this round. We got 8.

Number 5 -- Pretty damn good one. Once again, James would have known one of the answers we got wrong, but we still did all right. Some Chemical Brothers playing between rounds got us discussing the fact that if you shove E up your butt you get high faster. Now that's news you can use.

Last round -- Just one shitty song after another, except "Two Princes," to which I'm still rocking out in my head. This was a very very painful round. My notes say "Sit down, drunken windbreaker man." I assume something like this was going on.

This round was won by elderly cell phone-cuddling men. They hemmed and hawed about whether to take their pitcher, which I think is a clear sign they were paralyzed by their guilty consciences. Bite the Pillow had an excellent tag line: "Next semester you will all fell."

4 big points.

Quotes of the night:

"This IS what a DD is in Saskatchewan." -- I believe it was Mr. Leslie. This of course refers to the fact that here, a DD is a drunk driver, naturally.

"I've spelled "if" wrong before." -- Buchan

"Any sport where you can chew something while you're playing is not a sport." -- KMO

"I might be the rookie on the team but I know what success is." -- Ben

"Go get your pitcher, muthafuckas." -- Grill

And now, what you've all been waiting for: confirmation that there is a keg party in our sweet, sweet future.

The night:

1. Rock N Rollas - 41

2. Sheldon - 40.5

3. PHDTS and Travis, together at last - 39.5

4. BPB - 37.5

5. Steely Dan? - 36

6. Bite the Pillow - 34.5

and overalls:

1. Travis - 349.5

2. PHDTS - 323

3. BSB and BPB - 306

4. RNRollas - 296.5

5. Ses and the Wexies - 296

6. 2TB - 286

Ta-da!

Also, to make up for the fact that there's no trivs next Wednesday -- some holiday to do with war or something -- we are offering to host trivia at our place on TUESDAY night. (That way we can stay in bed all day Wednesday.) If you're interested, let me know.