Did you spot the lyrics of Stephen Stills’ song Love The One You’re With in this blog headline? Good! If you’re as much into ’70s music and its inspirations as I am, you probably already know that the Crosby, Stills and Nash song Judy Blue Eyes is about Stephen Stills’ brief affair with singer Judy Collins.

Stephen Stills and Judy Collins. LOVE that pimp coat, Stephen Stills!

Last Saturday, my husband and I had a rare opportunity to “sit in” with another trivia team in a final tournament. My own trivia team didn’t qualify for the MTL finals this season, so when I got a text from a trivia host two days earlier telling me that a player needed two players for finals, I immediately answered “We’re in!”

Here’s a photo from the MTL finals, and you can see our “hybrid” team in the photo. The team we played with is called We Concur, and they “barhop” all over the Canton and Plymouth areas. They used the name “We Conquer” at the tournament.

Our team is right behind the laptop screen farthest to the left. Interesting that there was one short-haired woman and a long-haired woman – and the guys were short-haired/long-haired. Just noticing that now!

 

The whole experience was kind of like a “blind date.” We’d never met these two players before. I was kind of “hoping” they would be older than us, which I believed would help balance out the team. And indeed they were, and we teamed up fairly well on most of the questions, though some of them left us all clueless (that’s going to happen in a tournament game, even to the very best of teams). If you haven’t already seen the questions from this game, click here. Highlights were my husband Mike coming up with the very, very obscure word “astrolabe” and the “Other Mike” coming up with the correct object shape for grenades in World War II (both for max six points). I was a big help on the James Bond halftime round but am still kicking myself a bit for not remembering You Only Live Twice. We put down Diamonds are Forever, which was released after You Only Live Twice. That was very frustrating to me because I could name EVERY SINGLE OTHER JAMES BOND MOVIE…in ORDER! Moments like that I’m going to call “trivichasms” from now on (which are the polar opposite of “triviagasms”).

About a week earlier, I “sat in” on a MTL semifinals game, and wound up “unofficially” teaming up with another player who was also “just visiting.” It was a very enjoyable experience! This player I “collaborated with” is – hands down – one of the best trivia players I’ve ever met, so it was a…privilege to be able to meld minds with the best! With this set of questions, we were able to fill each others’ knowledge gaps quite nicely. Tim Russert…indeed! Why did I forget about him?   I do love playing with my own team – though I’m not gonna lie…sometimes Brad can be a tad…annoying – it’s always good to mix things up with others!

Sounds better coming out of Stephen Stills –

If you can’t be with the trivia team you love…love the trivia team you’re with