Trivia!!!

Man, this last weekend was a blast. Steven's Point hosts the world's largest trivia game every year, and Sassypants, Cara, Mike "Poo-Poo-Kah" Hansen, and a bunch of their friends formerly of UW Steven's Point, go every year. We got there Thursday night, drank at a bar and hung out, and slept in a cheap motel. Then Friday we got up, walked around campus, registered our team and got free candy bars. We then checked into the GOOD hotel (Comfort Suites), where we got one large suite for 9 or so people (the next night we got an extra room with two beds for the wusses who wanted to "sleep"). The trivia started at 6pm. See, the local college radio station asked a question, played one song, repeated the question, played another song, then gave the answer. You had to call in the answer with your team number before the answer came, obviously. Every hour there were about 8 questions, and at the end of every hour they'd give the point totals for the questions of the previous hour. It all depended on how many people answered. The lowest point value you could get is 5, the highest (like if only ONE team answered!) is 500. So, for questions like "what character could turn on jukeboxes by hitting them" you'd get 5 or 10 points, because everyone and their mother knows it's Fonzi. But most of the questions weren't easy. They were like, "Don Smith asks out Shelly for a date. On their date, they order fish. What does it say on the front of the menu." So... we'd all be at our laptops and desktop computers (there were 7 in the room, I believe, which was okay for 9 or 10 people because usually at least one was sleeping or out) trying to find out what movie has characters "Don Smith" and "Shelly", then searching that for the answer. A lot of the questions could NOT be found online. "What does the yellow sign on Napolean Dynamite's bedroom door say?" The answer is "Pegasus Crossing", but I had to IM a friend who'd JUST seen it to get the answer. Crazy shit, I tell ya. Along with the questions, there were 3 separate music snippet things you had to figure out, too. They'd play 1-2 second clips of 8 songs in a row pretty quickly, and you'd have to figure out what songs they were. It was tough, but not too bad. Not something you could look up online, but you could search for the song to confirm you were right if you had a guess. You had a few hours to do the music ones in between the other questions. Also, there were "trivia stone" searches. They'd give you clues and you'd drive around the city following the clues until you reached a destination, where you'd get a stamp in your trivia book (worth points in the end). Like, start at the pool by the church, turn right at the chicken (which might be like a KFC or something), left at the thing that's between medium and xtra large. (That last one was a real clue, and ended up being a sign at a hotel that said "LARGE pool"). PLUS, there were images in the trivia book that you had to recognize. One was of Scott Bakula in an obscure Quantum Leap photo. The rest were very hard to figure out.

So, Friday we started at 6pm and stayed up the whole night. Erika and I both finally took a "nap" after being awake around 30+ hours. I slept about 3 hours and woke up to do more trivia. I was up again until about 7am sunday. Then I slept until 1pm or so. Then we answered some more questions and left around 4pm. The whole weekend was fun, and hangover-free. We only drank Thursday night, but not too much because we didn't want to be hungover for Friday. I only had two or three beers the rest of the time, because being up for 30 hours makes you feel drunk enough. Caffeine was the drug of choice for most during trivia. Well, that and weed. I can't partake in that quite yet, since I might need to take a drug test for a job soon. Don't wanna take any chances!

It was an awesome weekend, and next year we're gonna get a bunch more people to come with. If it sounds fun, let me know, and we'll start planning now! All you need is about 100 bucks (hotel, registration, food, etc.) and Friday and Monday off! And really, you could just come up friday after work (only 2 hours from Madison) and leave Sunday afternoon. But it was REALLY nice to sleep in today (Monday)! I think Mike H, Dan H, and Dan C would especially like it. Everyone else would like it just about as much, since every one of my friends is a dork. Next year I'm bringing my own computer (with sound editing software for the music questions) and telling everyone I know to stay by their phones so they can be the "phone a friend". Also, we may set up a chatroom, or at least have everyone be available by instant messenger. And we put all the images we had to guess on a website, but didn't forward it to that many people. We'll change that next year. It's gonna be great. Promise.