It had been some time since the +16 Holy Avengers had assembled. That's the team I play on for trivia night at Brian Boru. If you get the nerdy reference, kudos to you! If you do not, then perhaps you are deserving of even more kudos.
Trivia night is held every Wednesday with a few exceptions: the night before Thanksgiving, and if a holiday falls on a Wednesday, like Christmas (and Christmas Eve I'm assuming) and St. Patrick's Day. There was a seven week tournament held from October until the first week of December. The Holy Avengers didn't fare so well: we rallied towards the end, but the rocky start was just too much for us to overcome. After the tournament, I was burned out, so I ended up skipping the last three trivia nights (though two of those nights I was busy doing something else (the Damnationland DVD premiere party and traveling to New York, I am confident I still would have skipped trivia those weeks).
But last night I was excited to go. I was in Portland, on vacation, and I had a burning desire to put my recollection skills to the test. There were only four teams altogether, but all of our opposition were trivia regulars and die hard, so we still had a fight on our hands. I tried to round up our tournament team to play, but only four out of the six, Scott, Krysta, Sofia, and myself, were available, but I found two worthy substitutes: Pook, who is plays occasionally, and Luke, a founding member of the Holy Avengers who hadn't played in months (sadly, neither Bethlynne nor Krister could join us).
It was a hard fought battle, and our scores for the rounds weren't particularly consistent: 8, 10, 7, 6, 7, 10 (out of a maximum score of 10 points per round). That last ten was enough for us to tie the game with Team PBR at 48 points apiece, forcing a tie-breaker.
Tie-breakers work as follows: each team sends up one person (this is usually a one-on-one situation, but I have been involved in two three-ways (and not the good kind)). Triviamaster Shawn then asks five questions, and whoever answers the most correctly is declared the winner. In the event of a tie, he asks one question, and the person who answers it correctly first wins. Pretty straight forward stuff.
I am the de facto tie-breaker guy for the Holy Avengers. PBR sent up their standard champion, a man so good he sometimes plays by himself and still places. What I am saying is that despite the fact that he comes to trivia with his shirt tucked into his sweatpants (an obvious sign of giving up on life), the fellow knows his shit. Shawn asks the five questions, and we each get a 4 out of 5 (we both got the same question wrong: "Where is the Wazoo River?"), forcing a sudden death situation. I was confident going in to that scenario because even though Sweatpants knows lots and lots of stuff, he thinks long and hard about his answers, while I'm the sort of person that, for the most part, if I know it I know it right away. The final question was this: "what song contains the lyric 'I've got blisters on my fingers'?" Answer: "Helter Skelter." It took me about two seconds to remember and blurt out the answer. And The +16 Holy Avengers were declared the winners!
The spoils of war were $50 in free alcohol, and I certainly had more than my share of the winnings. Some of us celebrated right up until closing time at one. That walk home was a bit of a pain, and I think I may have woken up today still drunk.
It feels pretty great being a +17 Holy Avenger.
(for the record: the Wazoo River is in Mississippi)
nicely done sir.. you are def the meat of our meat and potatoes crew!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to take that compliment a few ways. Thanks!
ReplyDelete