Get Your Geek On

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm a fan of the series True Blood. It's a show that revels in its own cheesiness, and I dig that. The plotting-- whatever The A.V. Club reviewers might say-- tends to be more complex than that in the books that are the source material, and you've got a whole cast of ridiculously good-looking dudes who might take their shirts off at any moment. (There is some debate about the definitive rankings, but four out of five dentists agree the leading man is totally the weak link in this respect.) The crazy cat lady is not made of stone, people.

So what could possibly drag me away from such riches as these on a Sunday night?

Bar trivia. Obviously.

I don't mean to brag-- okay, I totally mean to brag-- but I am a beast at bar trivia. Not only do I know a lot of useless crap, but I am smart enough to surround myself with other people who know a lot of other kinds of useless crap.

When I worked summers at Nerd Camp in Durham, N.C., we used to assemble a dream team of graduate students and professors to take on the local rubes for Tuesday trivia night at the James Joyce. Guess what kind of bar that was.

And in Durham, the local rubes are mostly graduate students and professors, so the fact that we rarely paid for drinks at the Joyce attests to the group effort.

So I made my bones, trivially speaking, at an early age.

And so it happened that Sunday night I said a quick prayer to the TiVo gods-- I didn't have time to sacrifice a live chicken or anything, but you do NOT want to mess with the TiVo gods-- and hustled off to play with the three-dimensional people at a TGIFriday's in a strip mall in suburbia.

The drink special was something called a Hemingway Daiquiri. It tasted of citrus. It reminded us of the rain. We sipped our drinks and thought of Havana.

On the way over in the car, Mr. C. (who is the younger brother I never had), NayNay, and I started quoting from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Why? What's the significance? I DON'T KNOW!

No. Wait. I do know. We decided to name our team "The Alamo's Basement." Which you'll get if you know this movie. If you don't know this movie, then I'm just sad for you.

We thought this was a clever name-- and you get points for clever names-- until we heard the some of the names of the competition:
"No James, you can't have my daughter's number; she's 19."
"If my girlfriend gave it up as much as John Lackey did, I'd be a happy man."
"My girlfriend called me a pedophile. That's a big word for a five-year-old."

I'm not making this up, but I am worried about how that last team name is going to turn up in a Google search and if that means I'm going to end up in a file somewhere that I don't deserve to be in.

At any rate, we dominated the field of competitors with their stupid vaguely creepy team names. NayNay knew all the celebrities on Dancing With the Stars. Mr. C. breezed through the state flags competition. And I got us 8 points for knowing Zooey Deschanel played the main character's older sister in Almost Famous.

NayNay and I noticed that the musical selections playing between rounds were oddly familiar-- we think the trivia guy and our kickboxing sensei might be in league with one another. I had the oddest urge to try for 60 jumping jacks in 60 seconds when trivia guy played AC/DC, but NayNay talked me out of it. Doing jumping jacks in a bar attracts the wrong sort of attention.

Before the final round, though, trivia guy clearly parted ways with our sensei and played "Sweet Caroline." I hate this song. Always have, even before I broke up with the Red Sox (but we still talk from time to time).

NayNay agrees with me on this, and she has not broken up with the Red Sox. This validates all my beliefs.

"It was on the 'Do Not Play' list at my wedding... and my Bat Mitzvah," she said. "Along with 'Oh What a Night,' 'Old Time Rock n' Roll,' and 'Brown-Eyed Girl.'"

This is why NayNay and I are friends.

She can also do math and history at the same time, as she calculated that the Korean War began four score and seven years after the delivery of the Gettysburg Address.

We went into the final round with a commanding lead over the creepy, creepy competition.

And we blew it. We tossed around the correct answers (Manchester United and Tina Turner) but second guessed ourselves right into fourth place.

Fourth. Place.

Oh, the humanity.

And so, almighty TiVo, please safely record the season finale of True Blood next Sunday night, because clearly this insult cannot stand.