Trivia Recap: 3/7 State of the Educated Friends Address

Ladies and Gentleman, I am here this evening to tell you that the State of the Trivia Team is strong.  We live in difficult times, where it can be hard to feel like we are all working together towards a common goal.  But to quote Victoria Coren Mitchell, the host of my very favorite game show, “Every corner of the political spectrum is brought together by the love of good trivia.  And if you are sitting there annoyed that I referred to a spectrum as having corners then you are exactly my kind of person.”  I would like to thank the Speaker of the House for inviting me to come speak to you tonight.  By which I mean that I would like to thank Hannah for telling me that I have to do this or she will exile me to North Korea with certain medical professionals that she is still unhappy with. 

As your elected official, I would like to tell you that I believe that children are our future.  That we should teach them well and let them lead the way. And that is why I am excited to tell you that Adam did indeed have his baby a couple of weeks ago.  (Presumably his wife had the baby and this isn’t a whole Junior situation, but I will admit I did not actually confirm that so anything is possible).  It sounds like Baby Oliver is healthy, at least enough that Adam could return to his hosting duties and it was nice to have him back.

Children are great, but high schoolers are truly important, and I am saying that not because most of our team is made up of high school teachers or because I have a tenth grader who lives with me, but because of the greatest television program of all time, Beverly Hills 90210.  You may recall that we chose it as the opening category after last week’s victory, and so we were well-prepared for the opening question which was, to be frank, disappointingly easy: “What is the name of the diner where the characters hang out?”

The Peach Pit hasn’t been the same since Laverne left

The rest of the first round was also solid.  There are several people in the stands tonight that I would like to recognize.  We have with us America’s Favorite Actor Tom Hanks, who we all know has starred in two separate movies with the word “Saving” in the title.  I would like to recognize three separate celebrities with birds as part of their names – Jay Leno, Eagle Eye Cherry, and Robin Givens, who made an appearance in trivia for the second week in a row, which is a little strange when you think about it.  I would also like to recognize Muhammad Ali and the baseball bats that both have museums dedicated to them on the banks of the scenic Ohio River in Louisville.

While there are so many strengths, I also think it is important to recognize that there are some weaknesses.  For example, it may be tempting to choose ‘Dog Breeds’ as your bonus category in the second round because you have a veterinarian on your team as well as two women who regularly buy dog breed encyclopedias.  And you may do this even though you always choose the audio category as your bonus category and that you are in fact able to recognize both Tom Petty’s “American Girl” and the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s “Californication” from the karaoke versions of those songs.  And then it might come back to haunt you when nobody on the team knows what that the American name for the dog that British people call Alsatians is German Shepherds.  And it would be a shame to lose those points even though you also knew what sundials are, that Picasso had a blue period, and that the Mets are the baseball team that play in the stadium named after the company with the stock ticker symbol C.  But the most important thing that we can do as Americans is to get right back up and keep on fighting despite these setbacks.

This is supposed to be “A German Shepherd wearing a Mets cap in the style of Pablo Picasso.”

At this point, I will say that one way that we can get back up is to keep ourselves replenished with energy and one good way to do that is to take advantage of the CrabFest that Fourscore Brewing is having this week and eating some delicious cream of crab soup in a bread bowl, which is what Hannah, Mary, and I all did.  I recommend it highly for those of you who are local and have time this weekend, and I am asking Congress and the Leedys to send me more of it now and to put more bread bowl soups on the menu.  Perhaps due to our newfound energy, we aced the halftime sheet.  We had to match TV shows with their creators, and we quickly knew a lot of these but as the whitest white people team we did have to guess more or less at random between the creators of “The Chi” and “Blackish”, but we did so correctly.  The other half asked us to recognize some photos that represented words in the NATO Phonetic alphabet, such as OSCAR the Grouch, DELTA airlines, and the province of QUEBEC.  I think that as Americans it is important that we uphold the sanctity of the NATO alphabet, and while some of my political opposition has suggested we leave the NATO alphabet behind, I think it is important that we stand strong with our allies and not use weird words like ‘Dorito’ and ‘Quesadilla’ and ‘Pterodactyl’ to try to get letters across when talking to telemarketers.

We thought we had faced struggles before but often the third round brings challenges that you didn’t think were possible.  Sure, you might feel good about yourself for knowing that ‘Breakout’ was both an Atari game and a hockey term, or that Kingston and Kingstown are both capital cities in the Caribbean, or even that Rob Thomas is both the name of the creator of Veronica Mars and the lead singer of Matchbox 20.  But then you hit a wall and nobody on your team can name even a single Rob Thomas solo song, let alone the one Adam is asking you about.  And you have no idea which actress was nominated for an Oscar for Lincoln thirty years after winning one for Places in the Heart even though you live in Gettysburg of all places.  And then they ask about the battle that took place on St. Crispin's Day and the Shakespeare play that discusses it and you totally blank, and you worry that your team is circling the drain.

Here's a simple truth: you can’t love your trivia team only when you win!

It gets even worse on the 6-4-2 question when you are asked about the seven letter word that is both the name of a retail chain and the S in CS Lewis.  But no matter how bleak things look, you should not listen to your teammate who thinks that the S stood for SamClub or the one who suggested Starbuk.  No, you should think logically and wait to gather enough information to find out that it is actually Staples.  Even though Staples is a very strange middle name, when you think about it.

Despite all of these adversities, real Americans would never give up.  That’s not what we do – we get back up!  Instead, we buckle down and know that a ‘stan’ is a term for a superfan that comes from an Eminem song and we also remember that Dido contributed vocals to that song.  And we remember that the big novel last year was The Heaven and Earth Grocery Shop, and not just because we are avid followers of the Tournament of Books where it is about to compete but because we actually read the book.  And we know about the TV show Griselda even though none of us have ever seen it, as well as the character Echo from mythology.  Sure, you might not know that the Vikings are the NFL team that played in Metropolitan Stadium, but that will only cost you one point.  And because of all of these efforts we find ourselves in fourth place going into the final question, despite what had felt like a rough evening.

The final category was US Presidents, and this is when we really missed Ben’s presence, but the onset of baseball season means that his presence will be much more sporadic in the weeks to come.  You can see below that Hannah was very worried about the lack of Ben tonight.  You can also see some writings about her urine, but I honestly missed this conversation which is not something that I feel one moment of sadness about.

Hannah pees.

So we as Americans face one more challenge.  That challenge is simple: Who was the last US President that served in the Civil War?  Marc and Mary went back and forth and named a handful of presidents that seemed plausible and eventually settled on Harrison.  But just before we handed it in Mary said, “You know, my gut tells me that it's McKinley” so we switched answers and it turns out that Mary’s gut was absolutely correct!  You might think that she is just getting lucky or that her gut is getting unfair help from the aforementioned crab soup, but I want to assure you that it is because of Mary’s hard work and education that we succeeded at this point.  So we should thank the teachers for our success; mostly the ones on my team but also teachers in general! 

In the end, we came in second place.  That is why I think that the State of the Union Educated Friends is strong but could be stronger.  I would now like to hand over the stage to Smartacus, the team that actually won tonight, who has prepared the opposing team response.  Speaking on their behalf will be one of the pieces of cheesecake that they order every week that look so good and so big that we are always tempted even though we never get one.