It was almost 10 years ago that we first dipped our toes into the trivia waters at Powells Pub in Ypsilanti, MI in October, 2014. We played during what we didn’t know at the time was a “bye” week, which means in the My Trivia Live league, that it’s a “between seasons” week and scores do not count.

We would not play another MTL game until February, 2016, which is right around when we started going all in with league play, qualifying for tournaments, yada, yada, yada. We would continue in this fashion until the summer of 2018, and after that, we went into a brief “fly casual” mode. We felt we’d run our course playing a couple of consecutive seasons at Powells, and several seasons at Wurst Bar before that. Then both places stopped having trivia nights, so we said “Why not,” when trivia started up at Tower Inn sometime in 2019. We managed to qualify for two more tournaments by playing there, one of which we played in December, 2019 where we finished third. Then the pandemic put everything on hold for a bit in 2020, and when semifinals finally became an option, I gave away our spot to some other players, since me and my team were still hesitant about going out to crowded bars. As I recall, they didn’t make it out of semifinals.

Nearly ten years later, in July, 2024, we went out for trivia at Powells on a bye week again! This time, we wanted to use the opportunity as a make-up game since we couldn’t make it to our game a week earlier. Ugh, holiday weekend traffic!

When we finally got around to playing on this hot July night, it became quite apparent that our brains were still on vacation! I mean…we blew nearly every answer in round four (had to use our secret word to avoid answering one of them without penalty), blew two questions in round six, which is supposed to be easy – and darn us all for not knowing that “that” comedian – best known for being anything BUT “kid friendly” – had a morning kids show for one season in 1984. This was the second time that we remembered being skunked by a “comedians” final question at this bar. Anyone else remember that comedian known for his drag routine in which he played a sassy female character named Geraldine? We didn’t! Totally off our radar, which inspired me to make this silly meme:

Some trivia mistakes you just never, ever forget! 🙂

Despite all of our f— ups in the game’s second half, our first half went pretty well with zero misses!

Here were our very, very abbreviated questions (they were not presented to players in any visual format and all simply read by a host over the mic):

Round One

Games – The game “20 Q” is an intelligent take on what classic parlor game?

Holidays – Phone calls and greeting cards are commonly made/sent on what holiday every second Sunday in May?

The Body – What finger shaped pouch extends from the colon and can burst if inflamed?

Round Two

Science – While DNA is double- stranded, what counterpart to DNA is single-stranded?

Words – What word can describe the outer piece of an explosive or a shocking piece of information? It can also describe actresses such as Pamela Anderson, especially when she was in Barb Wire… (go ahead and look this up in Google images…you KNOW you want to)!

Animals – Reindeer go by what other name primarily in North America? Hint, it’s NOT Rudolph!

Round Three

Actresses – What actress received an Oscar nomination for playing Jo March in the 1994 film adaptation of Little Women? My silly husband drew little hearts over her name on our answer slip. I asked him if he wanted my red pen!

Mountains – What mountain range’s name means “abode of snow” in Sanskrit?

Whenever I hear the word Sanskrit I think of this scene in PCU which I hope y’all can link to (sorry this image has nothing to do with the scene but it’s cool anyway):

https://youtu.be/9JzSIgOY0q4?si=bCklZ3GGPyn_gCJJ

Halftime – Robot Time

Identify the following robots or robotic things – all inducted intonthe Carnegie Mellon Robot Hall of Fame – based on the following descriptions:

H1 – Autonomous vacuum

H2 – AI from 2001: A Space Odyssey

H3 – Forbidden Planet movie robot

H4 Synthetic lifeforms in Star Trek universe

Got all of these.

We were in first at the half with a perfect score of 37. Don’t worry, we’re the Pods – we know better than to ever, ever get too confident in a trivia game!

Don’t read on if you like happy endings!

Round Four

Elections – 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg won only one U.S. territory on Super Tuesday, name that territory.

Miss.

The Beatles – What silly 1967 Beatles song contains a reading about Edgar, a character from the Shakespeare play King Lear?

Picked wrong silly Beatles song. The only time I heard this song was while I was watching the HBO series Watchmen (at the end of episode 9, IMDB says it was a cover by Spooky Tooth and Mike Harrison). I don’t recall hearing the entire song.Where was my mom when I needed her? 🙂

Toys – What is the name for an individual bump on a Lego brick? To avoid blowing this entire round, we used our “word of the day.” Maybe when we were kids, we should’ve spent more time reading about Lego facts rather than simply building things out of them!

Round Five

Deserts – What desert’s name means “waterless place” in Mongolian?”

Volcanoes – What Sicilian volcano, which erupted earlier this month, is better known by its common name, but is called Mongibello by locals? There was a lot more to this one…

Monty Python – Which MP film includes a scene involving getting stoned for blasphemy?

Yay no misses this round! Wait…just wait (remember we can never be too confident).

Round Six

Flags – The flags of Bahamas and Sudan both contai. What symbols of strength?

Middle Ages – (Bear with me, I went a Googling to try recreating this question): What 1960s folk song popularized by a famous music duo has a title referencing a seaside town in England? There was also some mention of “seven week training event,” which I was not able to find any mention of online. We were utterly confused by this question – did we need to name a group, song, location? Honestly by this point, we’d pretty much thrown in the towel! Maybe one day “Fairport Convention” will be a correct guess! In this instance, being able to read the question might have helped! Though probably not much 🙂

Miss…

Musical Numbers – What girl’s name is in the title of a 1980s hit song by Tommy Tutone?

We were in second going into the final with 59 points. Total Recall jumped ahead and were in first with 66 points.

Final Category- Stand Up Comedians

What comedian, named by both Rolling Stone and Comedy Central as the best stand-up comedian of all time, starred in a “Sesame Street” style Saturday morning kid’s show for one season in 1984, which featured life in an urban neighborhood and…puppets? We discussed two possible people, but…wrote the wrong person on our answer slip. We chose the guy everyone thought was wholesome at the time, though we later found out that he was kind of a monster, and disregarded the guy who made absolutely NO attempts to appear wholesome. Except maybe on this kiddie show. Go. Figure!

We didn’t bet high on this, but of course two other teams knew this, so that put us in third at the end with a $10 prize. Any prize money better than none!

Clearly we need to brush up on our knowledge of silly Beatles songs, Lego facts and African American stand up comedians!

I don’t know when our next trivia outing will be. As always, Go Pods, and stay classy, Richard Pryor! Who’d a thought CBS would let this foul-mouthed guy do a kid’s show! And furthermore, was the STD puppet sketch on Chappelle’s Show inspired by this?