So after recording GrodsThink last night (to be broadcast later this arvo — beer and work have got in the way, although sadly not at the same time) we headed to a nearby pub that was advertising trivia and $11 pot-and-parmas. During our meal the other trivia punters started to trickle in and it became increasingly clear that we were the odd demographic out. Us GrodsThinkers were all men in our early thirties wearing jean/t-shirt combos surrounded by couples in their fifties and sixties wearing ties and frocks.

The old dude running the trivia looked like he crawled out from under a shelf at the nearby university library and he announced three rounds of fifteen questions. By question five of the first round we knew that we were going to be totally pwned. This wasn’t your “name the title of Britney’s latest single” kind of pop trivia. This was all about European battles of the seventeenth century and obscure references to obscure literature. As Jeremy said at one point: “At least when I’m hopeless at pop trivia I can dismiss the questions as being irrelevant. When I’m hopeless at this trivia I feel dumb because I should know the answers.”

At the end of the first round MC Gerald announced that The; Fleshlight’s (sic) were actually coming second on six points! Problem was, the team coming first were nine points ahead on fifteen. While we weren’t being humiliated we were clearly not going to win. It was this moment that the pub chose to send a representative around the tables to collect the $5 participation fee from each punter.

What. The. Fuck? Who charges for trivia? And if you’re going to charge for trivia at least advertise the charge. And if you’re not going to advertise the charge collect the money before the trivia starts so we can choose not to take part.

“Is this money going towards the prizes?” Jeremy asked.
“Yes,” answered the money chick.
“Is there a second and third prize?” Jeremy asked.
“No,” answered the money chick.
“So what you’re saying,” we all noted in unison, “is that we’re essentially giving this money directly to that table that’s slaughtering us.”
“Um, yeah,” money chick conceded.

I won’t repeat the avalanche of swearing that followed, although I’m sure you can imagine it. I’ll simply note that Jeremy started preparing a law suit, Ant smashed a beer bottle on the table and looked menacingly around the room, Craig played Tetris on his iPhone with renewed frustration, The Happy Revolutionary started singing The Internationale, and I began preparing this angry blog post in my mind.

But we played on, taking satisfaction from the way that MC Gerald looked uncomfortable every time he had to say The; Fleshlight’s out loud when he called the scores, and alternating between writing “John Surname” (who’d pissed off early) and “;;;; ;;;;” every time we didn’t know the answer.

ps/- Here’s Jeremy’s take on the incident. What? Us groupthink?

I’d like to hear a round of applause for The; Fleshlight’s [sic] who came second in pub trivia last night. The combined talents of Craig, The Editor, Jeremy and myself weren’t quite good enough to stave off a table of New Idea reading women*. Also Jeremy spent the whole time complaining that he’s not down “wit da kids”.

Fo’ real.

*Tap

______________________
The Editor edits…

At the risk of attracting a beating from John for editing his post, I’d like to add that we missed out on first place by one point. One point that we gave away to the winning team in the first round.

Here’s how it happened.

The question was “what are the two superpowers that Hiro Nakamura from the TV show Heroes has?” Now, I’ve never seen the show but the other guys were across it. We wrote “time travel” and “teleportation”. When reading out the answers MC Jess (of Ausculture and Defamer fame) said that a team had written “space travel” instead of “teleportation” and she asked the floor if it should be marked correct. I argued — loudly and strenuously — that although space travel technically means moving from one place to another its common useage implies travel outside of Earth. After a few minutes of verbal slanging between me and the other table I conceded only to avoid the riot that was about to start. That point cost us the game.

So what do you think, GrodsReaders? Should I have conceded or should I have stuck to my guns?

A bunch of us from work went out last night to celebrate a colleague’s birthday. (When I say “went out” what I mean is “went to the shitty pub 100m down the road from the school”; when I say “celebrate” what I mean is “get horribly shitfaced”.) So we got there about 5pm after finishing work with the intention of just having a quick one before moving on to somewhere a bit nicer but despite all good intentions we were still there at midnight.

The biggest problem with going to the pub around the corner is that there are always people there from the school community who probably shouldn’t see the teachers making arses of themselves — and last night was no exception. At 8pm we signed up for the trivia quiz and you’ll all be proud to know that our team name was “The Fleshlights”. Two hours later we had disgraced ourselves by coming stone, motherless second last and by making the team who marked our answer sheets question our intelligence.

Question 23: How many millimetres in a kilometre?

The question should have been: How many plastered teachers does it take to answer such an easy question?

Anyway, after an uncomfortable minute of slurred arguments we wrote down 1 million. Or at least, we thought we wrote down 1 million. It turns out we left a zero off and wrote 100,000. So when the smug bastards on the other team returned our corrected answer sheet they said, “don’t worry — we won’t report you to the education department.”

Arseholes.

Went to pub trivia last night with McBec and the neighbours. We came last. No surprise with questions like these:

* Who was the last person to be evicted from Australian Idol?
* What song did they sing for their final performance?
* What is the name of Britney Spear’s new album?

We did, however, come through with the names of the four actors to have played Batman in the movie franchise, the special power of some character in Charmed (McBec’s secret shame), and the Hollywood actor whose dad directed him in an X-rated film at age nine (Robert Downey Jr.).

Pop culture pub trivia is for suckers. Bring on a bit of political trivia and we’d be swimming in free jugs of beer.