Sunday, December 4, 2016

We Know Stuff When We Pay Attention To Stuff

Another glorious night of trivia at Sip This! So glorious because I put together a spectacular team (which, might I remind you, is my job--to put the team together), and this team did not come in last!

The topic: Marvel, mostly movies but some comic books

The plan: Read wikipedia daily to learn everything there is to know about Marvel. Look on YouTube to learn about Marvel (and then stop watching because it's just way too complicated). Read IMDB for everything about all Marvel movies. Look up all of Stan Lee's cameos. Go see Doctor Strange. Write as many words on the answer board as possible so that one word might be the right answer.

After a month and maybe twenty pages of notes, I was prepared! Eddie was prepared because he has the ability to watch a movie and remember a lot of stuff about it simply by watching it.

Sidenote: When I watch a movie, I don't know any of the characters' names, and I pretty much forget almost everything it was about except whether or not I enjoyed it. I need to start eating peanuts or whatever it is that makes your memory better.

Also on the team were D and F. D doesn't pay attention to pop culture anything, so this was not her forte. F said he knew some stuff. Some stuff is better than no stuff, so our team was solid!

When Eddie and I walked into Sip This, he told me we'd already lost. He saw someone wearing a Captain America jacket in the back. Maybe it's just a fashion choice. Maybe he doesn't even know it's Captain America. Plus, Captain America is on our side because that's the movie we watched on our honeymoon when the weather took a turn towards torrential downpours, so, you know, that matters.

Trivia started with a question that may as well have been in Japanese because I didn't understand anything it was asking. Then F said, It's Guardians of the Galaxy. I was like, oh, yeah, the one movie I decided not to pay attention to. And so the next two questions were also foreign because they were about the same movie.

Then it took a turn. There was a question and I knew I knew the answer. I wrote it down. We got it right. A point! We got a point!

And on it went. We got a few right in a row. Then we made up a really good answer for a bonus question: What does Jarvis stand for? I could tell you that Jarvis was in the Royal Air Force, but I couldn't tell you what it stood for, so I came up with Just for the J. And then we all added in words. Turns out, we got pretty close, as noted the trivia host. No points for close.

In an attempt to earn points on wrong answers, I took to waving my hand in front of the answers like one of Barker's Beauties. I also waved around the whole board, to which the host replied, That's not working but if you flip it around and do tricks, then maybe. I did not flip the board around for fear it would hit someone in the head.

I also tried smiling really hard and keeping the wrong answer up, which simply led to the host shaking his head "no."

Eddie completed his self-imposed task of getting one answer right. He knew the thingie the Hulk spoke to was called Blue. Then he exceeded expectations during the written portion.

Yes, there was a written portion! They gave us the super hero name and we had to fill in the real name and then the actor name. For any actor I didn't know, I wrote Zach Effron because, you know, why not. Also, I now know his name is spelled Zac Efron, so even that was wrong. There were two or three heroes we'd never even heard of. For those, I made up alliterative names like Bill Bobins and Ned Nevers because most real people names of superheros are alliterative i.e. Peter Parker and Wade Wilson (Spider-man and Deadpool).

The last round was about the comic books, and the final question was about the sinister six, and I knew I had the answer written down on one of my many pages of notes, and I knew that Doc Ock was one of them. So we wrote Doc Ock and then a bunch of other names that may or may not have been actual names of comic book characters.

When all the points were tallied, we came in fourth out of six. Actually, we tied, which according to the host meant there was no last place because no one came in sixth. Sure, I'll go with that. We got 22 points. The winning team got 77. Hooray for mediocrity!

The best part about throwing myself fully into the Marvel world was that it's going to be really helpful for my next poetry collection. The one coming out in March is Liberating The Astronauts, which leans towards sci-fi and science. The one I'm planning after is moving towards superheroes, at least in part. Geekery and poetry and trivia--it all falls into place.

Finally, whenever I start to put a team together, I get a lot of suggestions for trivia in the future, like, I'll be on the team if they have this kind of trivia. So, here are the suggestions even though I have no control over trivia topics:

1. Chinese History
2. History in general
3. War history
4. Cars, as in the automobiles, not the movie
5. Another Seinfeld
6. Another Disney
7. The Big Bang Theory
8. Music
9. Indiana Jones

My only suggestion is me winning.

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