Week 1 2009 Season 1

Start time: 9:59 p.m.
End Time: 12:50 'ish (a.m.)
Core Attendance: Cindy, Trivia Kari, Travis, Craig, Steve-Know.

Alright, this is my first posting of our trivia blog. There's a new sheriff in town (at least for one week). If you are easily offended, might I offer an appetizer www.maddox.xmission.com

Now that you are probably aghast, and know how to spot a pedophile from 20 paces, I will begin my story of tonight's trivia.

Round 1
Didn't go so great for team Travis, the actual score is lost to history, however we knew that distance under the sea is measured in fathoms, and that alone proves our awesomeness.

Also, Trivia Steve, A.K.A. Steve-Know (A.K.A. me), thought that a coelacanth was the same as a sea horse, it turns out I was wrong. Drew and Grill can pat themselves on the back....for now.

Round 2
Alleluia, Craig and Travis are here! We did ok, but we didn't win the music round. The mandatory drug testing policy I requested for trivia teams obviously didn't fly. Alcohol is the only safe drug.







Steve Know-2005- A texas mickey of rye and 4 friends.








Round 3
Okay so virtually everyone got 9 points. Whoopdeefuckindoo (sp?). Broad Street Brawlers won with 9.5 (see my mandatory drug testing policy mentioned above). They also hit Cindy in the head with ice (probably thrown at me for implying Grill started his engineering degree in 1982).

Also, there was a question like: "If you were ordering a Black Velvet in a bar, what type of drink would you be ordering". The answer given by our enginerring lords (who have yet to submit their urine tests I might add) was "some type of champagne". Oops.

Drew and Grill, I expect your pee in a cup on Monday. Here's my address:

Coalition for Gun Control
Toronto
P.O Box 90062, 1488 Queen St. W.
Toronto, ON M6K 3K3
Fax: (416) 604-0209

Craig T. Nelson and Steve-Know who are drunks, but pass the piss test, knew what the answer was (apparently Newfies use the casing as piggie banks).

But I digest.....

Round 4 The Music Theme Round!!!!

We were certain that we had nailed this round, then our engineering overlords gave away the answer to #10.

We were certain that #1 was from Bambi, where they are on the ice . It turns out that the song was from Fantasia oops, I thought that said fantasy.
Trivia-Cindy and Kari were pretty stellar in this round, but some other teams must have taken performance enhancing drugs to beat us.

Round 5 Tie

We tied some team who will remain unnamed because they are probably insignificant. (also, I have no idea what their name was). Craig battled them in a best of three rock paper scissors contest.

The end result had five ties in a row in it, which should only happen 1 in 243 games. In the end Craig decided that we had had enough to drink and played paper even though he knew that their representative was going to play scissors.

Craig was wrong. You can never have enough to drink (see above). However, he did let some team enjoy success, and perhaps this will spread the joy of trivia around the U of R.

Round 6

Finally our brilliance shone through. Travis scored a typical 10 points claiming the round. Heralds heralded and I probably said something, I bet Craig did too. Travis (the person) answered a lot of questions.

Some additional comments:

Craig caught shit tonight from the microphone. He should use his size (and possible superpowers) to destroy those who would make fun of Newfoundland. That or at least smother someone to death with the orange toque.

Speaking of our toques, the Bi-Polar Bears got their own uniforms! They cleverly chose baby blue shirts, baby blue being a gang colour in Regina. I may have dropped a note to my friend (who's a cop) that there has been an increase in gang activity around the university on Wednesday nights.

Anyways the final scores for the night, and for the season thus far are:

1st place 2 Tall Broads and Push Her Down the Stairs (tie) (who needs performance enhancing drugs when you can cheat with your cell phone?) 45 points.

2nd place WES (The Marijuana?) (Sorry I'm trying to read Cindy's writing) 44 points.

3rd place Travis 43.5

4th Bi-Polar Bears (gang) 42.5

5th Broad Street Brawlers 41

And as a final note, I propose that we keep track of points that we deserved this semester but were denied:

Denied: 1 (black-velvet)

Complete Trivia Domination

Well, we knew it would happen. All signs pointed to yes. We knew we'd have a spot in the kegger, but the question was, would the awesome and worthy competitors of the Bi-Polar Bears keep us out of top spot? Heck no! For the second season in a row, the juggernaut of Travis rolled right over Trivia. Here's some sweet recappin' for you.

Place for the night. First.
Place overall. First. Kegger, pint-token party and so on.
Start time. Prompt. 9:33
End time. About two in the darn morning.
Attendees: Captain Craig, Trivia Cindy, Steve-Know, Andrea, Birthday Boy Travis, Workaholic Janelle, Orange Jews James, and Meghan Trenholm.
Absentees: Kari, Bruce, the Stanimal.
Pitchers of beer purchased: Two?
Pizzas purchased: One.
Pitchers of victory beer: three, I think.
Pitchers of beer given away as charity beer: One, to the bi-Polars, since they didn't win any last night.
Pitchers of birthday beer: One.

Some notes:

Lots of rounds, but they moved faster. The only drag was telling us that we had "five minutes to get drunker." we didn't need that at all.

Trivia James brought Trivia oranges, the perfect bite-sized food. He did so at the expense of his trivia hat. Rules of Travis dictate that if you forget your hat on the last day of the season, you have to make one (precedent was set by Craig's paper chapeau last year). So, that's why I ended up wearing an orange peel Yamulka on my head. Thus, Orange Jews.

The engineers gamely gave us a gimme with the theme music round - TV themes? Oh sure. Not a miss in the bunch.

Also, the "Big shiny tunes" round was kickin'. Total memories all up in this.

Total victory was assured later, but we pulled the usual Secreteriat move by expanding our lead every round. Going from being behind by one at the start to up by eight by the end. It was sweet. The Bi-Polar bears tried to convince us that they only lost because their history guy wasn't there.

Overall scores and such will be posted later. I'm writing this from a Honda dealership right now.


WOO!

Recap - the second-to-last week

Wednesday, Nov. 19 - the second-to-last trivia round for this semester. Sigh.
Attendance: Janelle, Craig, Natalie, Kari, Cindy, Steve, Andrea, Travis.

Victory beer won: One measly pitcher.
Charity beer: not even applicable. Sigh.
Weather: highly shitty.
Vehicle used by Craig: a car. That's how shitty the roads were. I mean, I guess you could have tried to ride a bike on them, but you would have looked like a quarterback warming up on the sidelines on his exer-cycle - not exactly travelling anywhere.
Round turnover speed: decent.
Trash talk: limited.
Tension: ramping up, baby!

This was a night of more lessons for the Travisites. Travisians? Travisoids? Anyway, we did rock the music theme round, which once again is the king of rounds. But themes got us in trouble: we assumed we had detected a theme in one of the trivia rounds, but sadly, there was none. So, influenced by our incorrect assumption that there was a Scotch theme to the answers, we did things like choose Sean Connery over Roger Moore as the most frequent Bond. Darnit. Consequently, we got absolutely murdered on that round - two big points. I think we did better handing in random song guesses and then leaving. In our defence, the winning score was only six, but still.

This does, though, lead me to remind everyone that there has been a theme throughout the trivia season: grade 3 astronomy, airplanes, and James Bond. My advice is to brush up on those topics before next week. Of course, I will be conspicuously absent...

Other lessons learned:
-Never let Cindy play with your phone, or she might accidentally dial your parents.
-Always vet the answers. If not, Kari will write down the wrong song title or artist every time.
-Always trust your instincts. If not, Craig will have a hunch about the correct answer but let us write something asinine instead.
- They don't always trick us with the last song of the last round; sometimes it is exactly what you think it is, and not a parody song. That said, Weird Al owes us some serious royalties if he ever makes a Village People parody titled "SPCA."
-When Craig says he's leaving, don't worry. He's coming back. I think his absence lasted exactly two questions.

My highlight of the night: Alexis' reaction when she beat the bar. There was some gleeful giggling, clapping, and running around with her arms waving overhead. I believe she told the bar to "buy your own drinks, muthafuckas." The joys of being a university bar manager!

So here are the standings, teetering dangerously close to us not winning. Remember, even though we're pretty much in for the keg party, it's all or nothing for the top spot. Frank place is not first place! Good luck out there!

For the night:

6. Lady Godiva - 47.5
5. Bi-Polar Bears - 48.5
4. Bite the pillow, etc. - 49
3. TEAM TRAVIS - 50
2. Plastered Bastards - 51.5
1. Team spousal abuse - 52

Overall:

6. Lady Godiva - 425
5. Broad Street Brawlers - 452
4. Plastered Bastards -462.5
3. Team feminism - 500
2. TEAM TRAVIS - 507
1. Bi-Polar Bears - 508

You know what this means, folks: we're in need of some usurpage. We need to pull out some serious trivia power next week to beat the always-strong Bi-Polars.

Go, team! See you at the kegger.

Third to last week - The one where we play catch up

Remember how I gave up Ketchup for lent? And Kari "gave up" drinking, smoking, sushi, coffee and running? Yeah, well this was the week where we did some catch up. As you know, we were so far ahead last year that there was no chance of catching us. And, as Jud's toilet will tell you, competition makes a horse-race. Having said that, we have us some competition on our hands, ladies and gentlemen. It's a two-way race between us and the Bi-Polar bears (we're guaranteed a spot at the party anyway, but we're not going to pull a team frank and say third is as good as first. It's still Frank place). So, let's get to the recap, folks, and see if we can't nail first place sooner or later.

Start time: Ten something.
End time: Oh, gosh. Late. Kudos to everyone who stayed until the end, but that time was bananas. I was very tired for my Bible Study the next day.
Pitchers of beer purchased: One.
Pitchers of charity beer consumed: One. We're not too proud. Thanks, Bi-Polars.
Pitchers of victory beer won: Two.
Of those, pitchers of charity beer given out: One. Right back atcha.

Everyone had some tough answers that night. Let's do them mathematically, shall we?

Ernest Hemmingway =/= Edgar Allen Poe.
The Telltale Heart =/= For whom the Bell tolls.
Jimmy =/= smart as he thinks he is.

Chilliwack =/= Nazareth.
That question =/= Dirty Harry, Craig.

String Quartet music =/= easy to figure out.

But the biggest goof of the night was from our question masters themselves, who asked the following question verbatim.

Question 10
6) Who wrote the poem "In Flanders Fields" John McCrae.

So, not only was the answer in the question, but it also was the wrong number. Yeesh.

Answer of the night: Whoever knew who any black miss Americas were. Oh, and how long you have to charge Green Lantern's ring. We didn't even know that one. We just had to figure it out through cartoons and action figure memories.

Other question weirdness of the night: Who knew that Isabel Person was a real Person? Oh, or was it Isabel Peron? Who knows.

Delicious Answer of the night: Craig, for thinking that the band was called Milli Vanilla. Mmmm. Ice Creamy.



Going into the final few rounds, here are the standings:

For the night.
Lady Godiva with 43
Urethra Franklins with 44.5
Plastered Bastards with 44.5
Push her down the stairs with 48.5
Bi-Polar Bears with 52
and
Travis with 52.5

A win is a win. We're creeping back up.

Overall for the season.
Lady Godiva with 377.5
Broad Street Brawlers with 405.5
Plastered Bastards with 411
Push her down the stairs with 448
Travis with 457.5
and
Bi-Polar Bears with 460.

It's ground to make up, but we can make it up. In the words of Pierre Trudeau, "Just watch us."

Rounds 1-4 - November 5 edition

Boy, it was great to be back at trivia the past couple of weeks, particularly with the whole family last week. Sorry, Alexis. We promise not to bring our illegal baby again.
Here's a quick rundown of this week.

Attendance: Travis, Cindy, Steve, Andrea, Stan, Craig, Kari, and Steve's buddy from way back... oh gosh, I totally forget his name. Sorry, Steve. And many leftover Halloween jell-o shooters.

Rounds won: Round one. Also tiebroke for round two, and even though Travis knew the answer, the girl from what we think was the cheaty table has the reflexes of an NHL goalie and got in just ahead of him. Not sure if we aced any after round 3 as I wimped out early. Mad props to those who toughed it out til the end.

Theme round: TV shows from our childhood/adolescent years (or in the case of Stan, the childhood of his children). Didn't win it, but boy it was fun.

Oops of the night: Should have trusted Craig's instinct that the massive statue at Olympia was of Zeus. Makes sense that the Athena statue would be in Athens. Oops.

Geer error of the night: We love you, engineers, we really do, and you do good work. But you were wrong wrong wrong about Where the Wild Things Are. The boy's name is Max, and he does say "No!," and he also says many other things, like "Let the wild rumpus start!" and "I'll eat you up!" This Pierre they were talking about appears to be a character in a Carole King song or something. Not sure if he was originally a Sendak creation - my cursory Googling didn't dig too deep. But I just have to say that I feel vindicated after they made fun of our answer. Tsk.

It was super great to have folks like Stan and Steve around, as well as our regular hardcores. Sorry I had to run early, but there's a hungry little man here who needs me for a food source. The trivia questions were super fun as usual, and trivia is still the pinnacle of my week. You all look super hot in your orange toques. Also, I'm Cindy's favourite person, but don't tell Cindy I told you.

So, what else went down? Fill me in on rounds 4-6!

Trivia Recap - Season 2, Week 4

Four weeks: that's how long it takes to become officially the most reviled team in the trivia league. But we all know that underneath those barbs is an undercurrent of admiration and, yes, love. Such is the nature of jealousy.

Team core attendance: Cindy, Janelle, Kari, James, Craig, Andrea.

Peripheral attendance: Stanimal.

Core absentia: Travis himself, out on illness. Feel better next week!

Pitchers won: Four, I think? Three rounds and an overall.

Pitchers consumed: Two. Just right.

Shooters consumed: One - Andrea's nightcap.

Team name of the week: "Travis says it's cold outside; you should wear your tounge. And learn how to spell." (Sorry, Craig, but we'll never let you live that one down.)

Even dumber moment than that: Kari: "So there's John, Teddy, and Robert. What about Bobby Kennedy?" Thank you, thank you. I blame mommy brain.

Team name heckle of the week: Oh, there were so many. My personal favourites include "Travis is, like, 40" (which really brightened Stan's day) and "Travis' parasite is due." And I think we got a "Travis is very nice" from the Bi-Polars after we gave them a pitcher. Was that the Bi-Polars? I can never remember who's who.
The name of the night, though, was "Travis has never been laid," which allowed me to stand up and proudly show the entire bar the only concrete proof in the world that I have, in fact, been laid. Ahh, the benefits of pregnancy. Sadly, some dingus thought it would be funny to make an abortion joke in his or her team name. Two words: not cool.

Glory moment of the night: The hilariously-named Interracial Facial approached the table to express not only their hatred for us, but their desire for our autographs. Way to go, team, on coming up with funny variations on Travis to sign on their serviette.

Another awesome week in my opinion, featuring a good balance of knowledge contribution from all players. I believe we won the themed music round for a third time (though not consecutively, I don't think). I love the themed music round. The trivia rounds were delightfully challenging, and we had some great catches: Cindy and Andrea caught that 276 days is the gestational period of humans; Craig caught that the Titanic sunk off the coast of The Independent Nation and/or British Colony and/or Dominion of Newfoundland, and Stan whipped out Sirhan B. Sirhan, the assassin of Robert Kennedy. Impressive stuff.

Speaking of Stan, I would just like to mention what a good sport he is to come to the university bar on a work night and pull out the mad knowledge, not just of things scientific but also of music, sports, and general knowledge.

And good work, everyone, on finding, bringing, and wearing the orange toques. And good work Jimmy on wearing your awesome Spock sweater, which got genuine props and appreciation from the guys at the next table. I wonder if they managed to dig themselves out from under those exceedingly drunk and clothes-averse young ladies at the end of the night.

Basically, Trivia is my reason for living.

Well, Trivia and James.

Standings for the night:

6th place - Frank with 42 points (and some suckage).
5th place - Team Ramrod (who?) with 43 points.
4th place - The Bi-Polar Bears with 44 points and a pitcher of our beer.
3rd place - The Broad Street Brawlers with 44.5 pts.
2nd place - Push her down the stairs with 47 pts, but not enough to catch...
1st place - Travis with 50 big points, and the win.

Overall scores arrrrrr as follows:

6th place - Frank with 163 points and mad suckage.
5th place - Plastered Bastards with 166.5 points.
4th place - The Bi-Polar Bears with 174.5 points.
3rd place - The Broad Street Brawlers with 177.5 pts.
2nd place - Push her down the stairs with 179 points, but
1st place - was TRAVIS with 189 points.

Yes, folks, that's a 10 point lead, a decade, a dime-bag, and so on. Good for us.

Politics correction

Thanks to the aid of giant posters, I have been informed that the politics trivia business is from 3 to 4 pm on Wednesday, thus not interfering with our trivia time in the least. I do intend to go, not only for the fun of the candidates' debate but also in case they re-use some questions at real trivia. So it's basically a trivia warmup at 3:00.
We'll see you orange toquely on Wednesday, unless this kid actually shows up sometime soon.