Tag Archives: Trivia Night

Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island

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Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island

Grand Hotel, Mackinac Island

Saturday night was trivia night. Trivia nights are a big deal here in Saint Louis. They are always done for charity. There is some gambling involved, but primarily they are tests of skill, much like the board game, Trivial Pursuit was, except that you can’t try to memorize the card’s answers. The charity was Saint James the Greater, a Catholic church in Dogtown. This Saint James was one of the original twelve apostles and his name makes me wonder was whether there was also a Saint James the Lesser? Bill & Mary generously treated us for the table. There is always a seat charge in these event. Also, at our table were Don & DJ and Chris & Sandi. These tables were smaller than they usually are at trivia events. We all brought snacks and wine to share.

It would be hard to exceed our performance at the last trivia night that we participated in, which was earlier this year. In that event, we were the winning table, plus Anne and I won five of the raffle baskets. It was downright embarrassing. Needless to say we didn’t come close to repeating that success. Although we did win one raffle basket, which was just right. Anne and I both lost our dollars at heads or tails and dead or alive. In heads and tails, you predict the coin toss by either putting your hands on your head or on your butt. In dead or alive they call out celebrity’s names and you have to predict their mortality.

We weren’t even close to winning that night. We were well down in the pack and still failing, when I gave up checking our score. The master of ceremonies had a rather musical bent, which did not play well to my skill set. One round involved listening to and then naming Michael Jackson songs. Sandi was the go to girl for this round. Another round involved naming bands given the reason for their names as clues. For example, what band was named after a 1915 truck? The answer was, REO Speedwagon. Sandi and Anne were the heavy lifters at our table, but by luck, I had one round to shine. The category for that round was the Tom Cruise movie “Top Gun”. I was nine for ten in that round. The one question that I didn’t even have a clue about was another music question, what band played the song, “Take My Breath Away”? The answer was Berlin.

Captain Renault: Is everything ready?
Rick: I have the letters right here.
Renault: Tell me, when we searched the place, where were they?
Rick: Sam’s piano.
Renault: Serves me right for not being musical.

Use of smart phones or hand brains as they are sometimes called is strictly prohibited at these events. So, you are forced to rely upon your old and fading analog brain, which can be at sometimes quite frustrating. The best teams seem to feature a wide age spread and interests. It was just not our night.

This Way

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This Way

This Way

Saturday night, at the behest of DJ and Captain Don we attended a trivia night. Trivia night is usually a large group event and this was the largest that I have ever attended, with about 50 tables, and is usually staged to benefit a charitable cause. This one was staged to raise money to pay the medical bills, of a 15 year-old boy who has leukemia. During this trivia night, there were ten rounds of ten questions each. The questions are answered by the different tables; a team typically consisted of eight people who have paid an admission fee to participate ($25 per head). I figure that they must have grossed $10,000 on admissions alone and probably double that what with all of the extras ($10 for Mulligans, which were priceless, $2 for heads and tails, which we both lost quickly in and $20 for the raffle baskets, more on the raffles later). At the end of each round, the teams turn in their answers and judges then calculate the scores. The teams compete against one another with the top teams receiving prizes. Trivia nights are held throughout the United States, but are particularly popular in the Saint Louis, where dozens of different trivia nights occur on any given weekend.

A good night was had by all. Free beer and wine probably helped with that. It probably also helped to loosen our wallets, which was its prime objective anyway. Anne and I have only done a handful of these trivia nights, but we usually do pretty well, generally finishing in the top 25%. This night was a little different. After a slow start, by halftime, we found ourselves in the lead. We spent the remainder of the contest beating back that pesky table #49 and eventually won it all. Anne was a major contributor to this victory, naturally, but DJ’s daughter, Angela, her husband Louis and their friends Eric and Mary were also major contributors too. I did a little bit more good than damage and not the other way around as is usual, but I couldn’t even define the acronym RADAR. In spite of me and not because of me, table #4 really was the home of the alpha geeks! We all received little medals, some gift certificates and were refunded our admission fees. Anne and I donated ours back again to the cause, because by then we were both feeling a bit chagrined. We had by then won five of the raffled gift baskets, not bad for $20. We re-gifted the spa themed basket to Angela, because she had done so much, what with setting up the table’s team and writing down all our correct answers. We kept the juicer and the movie, foodie, coffee and snack themed baskets and headed for home with all our loot.

Smarter Than A Sixth Grader?

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Autumn Colors Redux – More Reflected Tamaracks

Autumn Colors Redux – More Reflected Tamaracks

Are you smarter than a sixth grader? As it turns out we were. Trivia Night last night was a gala party, with over two-hundred in attendance. This year’s MRH sixth grade field trip to Chicago was the night’s charity cause and in this one event two-thirds of the trip’s funds were raised. In addition to ten rounds of trivia, there were also raffles and auctions, all of which helped to bump up the night’s haul.

The first round of trivia really did ask the question, “Are you smarter than a sixth grader?” Ten video recorded sixth graders asked the questions. I thought that that was a cute touch, but we only did so-so on this round. That is to say, we missed a couple. The second round was all about mixing drinks and here we were flawless, go figure. The third round was a visual one. We had to guess the musical group from a picture of the cover art from one of their albums. The trick was that the cover art was rendered in Lego. We were perfect in this round too. Where we really fell down though was in the category of children’s literary classics, but are embarrassment was exceeded by those who should have known all of the answers, but actually did worse than us. We were better with advertising slogans and TV show themes then we were with literature. Although, we did really well in guessing who painted that famous painting. In the end, we finished in a mass tie for second. Just like in elementary school, there were no losers.

Today was a particularly wet and dreary day. I’m glad that not only did we get in a bicycle ride yesterday, but we also got the leaves raked. Our first round of leaf pickup is this week. The only thing of note that we did today, was to do the grocery shopping for Thanksgiving. Today was so un-photogenic that I’m reaching back several weeks to that beautiful day that we spent at Shaw Nature Reserve. I’ve already published one line of tamarack trees here. Today’s photo shows a neighboring line of tamaracks.