Just another “Just the two of us” trivia night on a recent rainy evening – on this night we battled questions about brooding vampires who aren’t actually real vampires, female Asian physicists, stupid laws that never should have existed, coffee and more.

Here were our questions:

Round One

1) Books – Forks, Washington, is the primary setting for what young adult series of novels that was adapted into a film series beginning in 2008?

2) TV Actors – Name one of the two TV series in which actor Matthew Fox is credited in over 100 episodes.

NERD POINT: Name both.

We got one, but not both. When we learned what the second series was, I thought to myself, “Wasn’t that the series with the teenage alcoholic clown? And why did nobody tell me about this when it was on – it sounds hilarious!” And I just got done watching a YouTube video of this scene and I know I shouldn’t have laughed, since this was presented as drama (welcome to my world), but come ON! You just KNOW that nice pretty birthday cake is going to get its ass kicked when it’s in the hands of a drunken person, and when Matthew Fox gets thrown by the drunken teenage clown into the fence, I just had to giggle (sorry Matthew Fox)! And the look of sheer horror/disgust Neve Campbell gets when this is happening – priceless. Nobody could do that look quite like her in the 1990s!

3) Physics – While working on the Manhattan Project, nuclear physicist Chien-Shiung Wu helped develop the process for separating what element into isotopes 235 and 238?

4) Laws – The law informally known as the Volstead Act, which became law in 1919, is also known by the initials NPA, where the “P” stands for what word? Such a horrible time in our history…

Mystery One

Give the first and last names of the people described in each of the following clues, all of whom have the initials B.B.

M1) First lady of the United States from 1989 to 1993

M2) The first and only player to date with at least 500 home runs and 500 stolen bases in his MLB career

3) The 14th chair of the Federal Reserve, from 2006 to 2014

4) TV host who regularly ended shows by “reminding you to help control the pet population—have your pets spayed or neutered”

Missed #2, though we did feel really dumb for not remembering his name – since he’s a famous sportsballer even to the two non-sportsball people playing this trivia game (d’oh)!

Round Two

5) Memes – An internet meme featuring the phrase “cash me outside, how bout dah” was spawned from an episode of what daytime talk show? A total 404 pop culture reference not found moment for both of us, big shoulder shrugs and blank stares happening in our basement at this moment.

6) Mountains – At 13,804 feet, Gannett Peak, part of the Wind River Range of the Rocky Mountains, is the highest point in which U.S. state? Thank you FB host clue for this lifeline, would not have known this otherwise.

7) Coffee – In 2018, what brand launched a premium brand of coffee named 1850, which is a reference to the year the original company was founded? Torn between two choices, picked the right one.

8) Olympians – The only Summer Olympic Games in which Michael Phelps competed but did NOT earn a medal took place in what year? We went way too late, miss.

Mystery Two (visual)

Missed #3 and #4.

We were in ninth going into the final with 43 points. We decided to go for the full wager on the category of book series.

Final Question:

Published in 1979, The Cave of Time is the first book in what series that is written from the second-person point of view?

The series featured multiple authors during its original run of 184 books.

Both of us Gen Xers quickly came up with the correct answer (though only one of us read these books avidly). This allowed us to move up to eighth (weak woot there).

As always, Go Pods, and stay classy, Bailey the alcoholic teenage clown! Would you even have existed as a character if not for the movie Shakes the Clown? And have clowns always been kind of scary even before John Wayne Gacy did his thing as a serial killer dressed as a clown? Questions abound!