Trivia Recap: 5/25

The Players: Hannah (English teacher), Brock (creative marketing genius), Darren (math professor), Danielle (bartender), Kristy (assistant principal), and Steph (special education teacher)

Opening Category: British Invasion

Hint of the Day: A broken heart with a band-aid on top of it

Darren was the first to arrive at Fourscore last night (other than Danielle, that is, who works there) and he texted to let me know that the DJ was a lady! Adam had told us last week that he would be gone for a week --- it's all very mysterious --- but the lady did a nice job. She played all of the audio clues a minimum of THREE times and she didn't play music after the audio clues, thus giving contestants a chance to think without other music clogging our thoughts. I really appreciated that.

Round One:

I was pretty confident that I would do well with British Invasion and we therefore made it our bonus category. We did do well, but it was largely because of Steph, who really knows her bands! I grew up listening to 50s and 60s hits, but I admittedly always forget who sings "House of the Rising Sun." The answer is The Animals, but my instinct is always to say The Zombies first. Darren, Steph, and I all knew The Kinks, and Steph knew the third band, The Hollies, even though we only needed two. We didn't even get a bonus for knowing everything! Sad. MLB Hall of Famers was fine because Brock knew the answer was Babe Ruth (he fortunately corrected Darren, whose instinct was to say Hank Aaron), and then both men figured out the bonus (Boston) together. They said it was an easy question, but I didn't have any idea about any of it. Starts with GN was easy and we basically knew the answers going into it. I mean, how many words can you think of that begin with GN? I came up with gnu, gnat, and gnome. Gnat was the first answer and gnome was the second. The third ended up being gnarly, which earned us a two-point bonus, but since LITERALLY EVERY TEAM got all three answers, that didn't set us ahead at all. Concepts of Science was an oddly worded question, but Darren and Brock determined that the answer of friction was correct. I, however, only ever associate dynamic and static with types of characters. I am, after all, an English teacher. Get this, though: Even though I am an English teacher who doesn't watch many films, I did know the tagline for Erin Brockovich. How about that?! Granted, Darren knew it too, but it was a big event in Educated Friends experiences! Darren knew the director was Soderbergh, which earned us a bonus, and so Round One ended up being great for us because we didn't miss a single point! Go team!

Round Two:

Pour House Trivia really struggles with the definition of alliteration... but they did okay this time. The first category, another audio clue, was titled A Little Alliteration and we had to identify three songs with alliterative titles. "Heartbreak Hotel" was recognizable by most, Steph knew the the band for the second clue was Led Zeppelin, but not the song, and I knew MIA's song from many years ago is called "Paper Planes" because I once made a piece of art (paper airplanes flying across the canvas) based on that song and sold it at Garryowen at my second art show. Anyway... that category earned us fourteen points. Magazines was next. I went to the bar to get another beer at this point and a fairly phenomenal thing happened while I was there, but it has nothing to do with trivia and everything to do with Hannah History, so that's a story for another day. While I was away from the table, however, my team earned another seven points by knowing the answer to the question was Us Weekly. I think Darren said that either Steph or Kristy knew that one, but I'm not sure because I wasn't there. US Geography was okay. We honestly would have benefitted from Ben being there, because Ben is an expert on things like geography and presidents because of his job. He is not a doctor or a lawyer or a dog groomer or a dolphin trainer or an army general or a film director or an actor or a reality TV star and for that reason, he is very schooled in certain content. We got the points, but not the bonus, and then moved onto Ancient History... Ugh. Coincidentally, Kristy was once upon a time a history teacher, but her expertise falls within a twenty-year realm and none of the twenty years that she specialized in were asked about last night. Therefore, we did not know the empire that was required of us and lost a point as a result. SNL Hodgepodge was easy enough, though, because Darren was playing trivia at the college last week and had an identical question! He right away knew the youngest and oldest SNL hosts of all time: Drew Barrymore and Betty White.

Here's a random little story that occurred around this time in the night. Danielle stopped by and commented on my Trampled By Turtles hoodie and asked if I was going to Del Fest. I was not, but I should have gone because Trampled By Turtles played there LAST NIGHT. While I was AT TRIVIA. I could have been at a show!!! And what's more, her friends MET TRAMPLED BY TURTLES IN THEIR HOTEL! I would like to meet Trampled By Turtles ANYWHERE. I want to tell Dave Simonet (whose middle name I know, thanks to the contract I have) that I love his lyrics and his writing in general and that he inspires me to make art. And I want to talk to Dave Carroll (whose middle name I also know) about his dog Truck.

Halftime

This week's bonus sheet was difficult. The top was fun because we had to match the actor/actress to the animated character that he/she voiced... but the bottom was not especially enjoyable. There were lists of things, with a thing missing from each list, and we not only needed to figure out the pattern of the list, but also the item that should have been included. We lost four points, giving us a score of 16/20, which is low for the Educated Friends. Despite this, we were in the lead going into Round Three.

Round Three:

As is common with Pour House Trivia, the third round was random and weird. Darren knew the answer to Name That Actress (Anna Paquin) and also had a humorous anecdote to share. It involved a friend of his (another professor) who had Anna in class, but wouldn't allow her to miss a day, and so Anna had to drop the class. When the professor friend shared this with Darren, though, Darren pointed out that Anna had to miss class that day because she was PRESENTING FOR THE GOLDEN GLOBE. Actually, now that I write that, I'm not positive it was the Golden Globe... I mix up all of those big award ceremonies. But it was something like the Golden Globe Award. Ask Darren if you see him; it's a good story. Next was Legendary Creatures and Brock got Chupacabra, which was helpful. The Third Question was the third category and we did figure that out. We missed 2022 Sports Champs, which asked us about the WNBA (which absolutely no one one the team follows), but earned points for Historical Islands because Darren knew where Napoleon was exiled. He did not know that Napoleon was also exiled to Saint Helena, so we missed the bonus, but we were still doing really well at this point!

6-4-2:

The six-point clue required us to know the name of the company in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Darren thought that answer (we knew it was a color) might be red. But then we waited for four-point clue and we learned that it was a reddish-brown color and also had something to do with Taylor Swift. Now, had Mary been in attendance, we would have known this, but Mary was not in attendance. Mary sometimes chatters on about her love for Taylor Swift, though, and sometimes I pay attention to these chatterings. I had a vague remembrance of "Maroon," and though I did say this to the group, Darren did not agree that the color maroon is brownish. Darren was wrong, however, and the answer was maroon and so we didn't get it until the two-point clue.

Round Four:

Musical Trios was alright. I forget who knew the first answer (Beyonce), but Danielle saved us with Mike D from the Beastie Boys... and I'm pretty sure Darren knew Neal Pert. Commercials and Products asked about a product called Tareyton that advertised with black eyes and people fighting not to switch. We had it narrowed down cigarettes or something else, and Darren was on the fence between the two, but then Danielle came over and said that she's pretty sure it was cigarettes and we went with that and got it right. From Page to Small Screen was easy enough: It asked about American Gods, I believe, and who wrote it. Both Darren and I knew it was Neil Gaiman.

Side Note: If you are in need of an audiobook, I recommend just about anything by Neil Gaiman because he reads his own stuff and has such a nice voice!

Insect Ecology sounded a little bit daunting, but Darren and I know our butterflies (apparently) and were confident with the answer of monarch. And then the last category was a bust --- Soft Drinks --- because we were all leaning toward ginger ale, but then Danielle came over and said, "I think it's Mountain Dew," and some people were opposed to that idea because they couldn't believe that Mountain Dew had been out as long as the clue suggested, so we didn't put in our answer early enough to earn the two-point bonus, but we did get it right and at the end of the fourth round, we were in the lead! Of everyone! We were in the lead by two points!

And then everything went to shit...

Final:

Sports Geography was the final category, which is absolutely zero fun, but we waged all of our points anyway.

Question: Other than New York and California, what is the only state with two teams in all four major leagues (baseball, basketball, hockey, and football)?

And then we narrowed down the answer to two possibilities, Texas and Florida, and even though we were this close to going with Florida, at the last second Darren changed it to Texas and that was the wrong answer and we came in fifth and that was that.