The Billiard Room!

Another round of trivia at Sip This has convinced me of one thing: I am really good at not coming in last. Trivia night consisted of movie trivia that we did not know, we being me and two of my office mates B and SD. I'd attempted to also get EA to join, but she was teaching a night class. Upon hearing that said class is Film & Lit, I'd attempted to get her to bring her class as a sort of field trip. She wisely declined.

Right before starting the night, I told B and SD, that the first question was usually something really simple. And then came this: what was the profession of the character Jason Segal plays in Pineapple Express?

And so began a very slow crawl to not-last-ness. Without even a glint of hope of winning, we scrappled to keep afloat as best we could. We were really good at envisioning actors and films in our heads without being able to name them. This does not work in trivia.

There was a written portion. We are teachers. We can work our way around a quiz, right? Wrong! Not even in written form could we get all the answers. We did get some, though. And some is more than none.

Most appallingly, B found out that neither SD nor I have read To Kill A Mockingbird. She found this out when writing the answer Atticus Finch and double checking with us that she was spelling it correctly. I was like, I don't know--I haven't read it. She gasped out loud and I responded with, I know, it's terrible. I mean, for an average person, it's not that terrible, but I teach literature at the college level. I should have read this book by now. I keenly distracted her from this distressful news by asking if she'd read Go Set a Watchman (she has not).

In the end, the team that won the past three trivia nights did not win, and there was a tie between two teams. The tie breaker was to list the Best Picture Oscar winners for the past five years. The team next to us got them all right and won the night. Proof that we did not cheat in any way. Because we're teachers and we aren't allowed to.

My own stellar moment came with the question: In what room was the maid murdered in Clue? I can't remember who killed poor Yvette, but I surely knew without hesitation that she was strangled in the billiard room. I spelled it right and everything. Spelling did not earn us any bonus points, nor should it considering, again, we are teachers of English and should know such things.

Meaning we should know about literature, like Harry Potter literature, and SD has listened to Harry Potter lots of times. So, folks, I need two more Harry Potter people. I'm putting together a crack trivia team....