Answers are in the comments section.

A ‘Pods duo paid a visit to McShane’s Pub in Ypsilanti, MI on a recent Tuesday evening to log a score for the new My Trivia Live season. We still haven’t quite decided what our level of commitment will be to playing here, because we know too well that life has its own way of…happening.

For now, we’re committed to giving the old college try for a month-ish or so to test the waters. We do like McShane’s competitive trivia scene, reasonable drink prices, good food (one of our frequent helpers raves about the mac and cheese and I like the steak fries) and like that it’s offered on two nights a week – and we do like having a trivia host we know and like!

If our game were an 80s song it would be “One Night in Bangkok” (with alternate lyrics, ahem:)

“One trivia night in Ypsi makes a Pods team humble…not much between despair and ecstasy.” All apologies to those Abba guys! 😂

Did I mention that it’s competitive here? I’m starting to think it’s becoming almost – but not quite as heated – as a chess match involving Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky (more about guys named Boris in this recap if you read on, lol)!

Sadly, we didn’t win any prizes on this night. We made a nice second half comeback, moving up from dead last to second place behind three teams tied for first going into the final. Had we wagered three points fewer than we did, we would’ve been in a tiebreaker for a third place prize. I think only one team wound up getting the final question correct about…Pokemon (and we were not that team)! We finished with 58 points going into the final.

Here were our abbreviated questions:

Round One

Nicknames – Which U.S. city is nicknamed “The Motor City?”

Animals – What wild animal is colloquially known as a “trash panda?”

English – What literary device compares two different things, typically with words such as “like” and “as?”

Round Two

Waterways – What man-made highway in New York is considered the nation’s first superhighway? Anyone else learn a song about this “superhighway” in elementary school?

Astronomy – Named for the Roman god of the sea, what planet in the solar system is furthest from the sun? My trivia pardner slash husband Mike was well on his way to earning game MVP for this game, starting with this one!

Cosmetics – What word sometimes used to describe cosmetics, translates to “red” in French?

The Body – The National Institute of Health defines “pulmonary” as having to do with what organs?

Hungry? What kind of business, whose name is derived from obsolete German, has a 12-letter name and typically sells cold cuts, sandwiches and cheeses?

Games – Released in 2013, what side scrolling mobile game developed by Dong Nguyen was the most downloaded game in January 2014? Our first miss of the game. I didn’t even have a smart phone until 2023, and I still don’t think I’m smart enough to use it properly! I certainly can’t type very well on the damn things!

Halftime – Planet Earth

Name four of the six metals that are the most abundant in the earth’s crust.

Dreadful…we only got one of the correct metals.

Halftime scores: Pods (us) in last with 28, Matty Platters/Dead Guys, 29; We’d Rather Be At/We Were Never Here, 30; Pants and Three, 31 and Spacecats in first with 32 points.

Round Four

Rivers – The Grand Coulee Dam is on what river in the United States? Neither of us knew for sure, but I liked my guess better than Mike’s and told him he could divorce me if we got it wrong (JK, JK). Thankfully my guess was right and we are still married! 💕

Athletes – Who was the first African American tennis player to be ranked number one in the world? Miss, we went way too late with our guess of Serena Williams. Other players incorrectly guessed Arthur Ashe, we also thought of him but didn’t know if he was #1.

Screen to Song – What movie monster’s name is in titles of songs by Enimem and Blue Oyster Cult? Mike just HAD to draw this movie monster on our answer slip!

Round Five

Religion – What 3,500 year-old pre-Islmaic religion is still practiced in India by Parsis?

Mythology – What Greek hero captured and rode the winged horse pegasus? All teams missed this. One of our friends (who was not present at this game) named one of this dogs after the correct guy, I’ll have to see if he might know the answer!

Martial Arts – What South American martial art is a combination of dance, acrobatics and spiritualism?

Round Six

Villains – What villain created in 1912 was created in 1912 and played by Boris Karloff and lends his name to a style of facial hair? Another hit for Mike’s weird knowledge wheelhouse! And yes, he had to draw a picture of the guy!

Broadway – What musical based on a classic TV show that was based on a comic strip debuted in 2010? I know I didn’t get all of the qualifiers for this one, but we used our “answer of the day” option to avoid having to answer this.
Animals – Clydesdale, Belgian and Perceron are all draft breeds of what animal?

Scores going into the final: Dead Guys, 49; Rather Be At, 50; Matty Platters, 55; We Were Never Here/Spacecats, 56; Pods (us), 58; and tied for first with 59, Pants, and Three.

Final Category – Lawsuits

Illusionist Uri Gellar sued Nintendo for creating what Pokemon character that he alleged was based on his likeness?

This is not exactly how the question was worded, but it’s…a reasonable facsimile.

Zero bets prevailed. One team (Pants) got it correct and took first, we hedged our bets a bit and bet…three points. That’s OK, we were not that concerned about missing out on a third place tiebreaker (though I really do love tiebreakers, I ain’t gonna lie)!

We’ll have to miss McShane’s Thursday trivia night this week since we’ll be heading out of town – and playing a MTL game in Big Rapids!

What? You don’t know where Big Rapids is? That’s OK, even if you do live in Michigan! It’s about 50 minutes north of another “Rapids” city you may have heard of called “Grand Rapids!” It’s going to be a family affair, my mother-in-law Willow will be joining us at a bar that she used to frequent as a Ferris State student!

We’ll be back in the music trivia saddle next Monday at Corner Brewery, and also return to McShane’s for trivia next week. As always, Go Pods, and stay classy, Dr. Fu Manchu! And Godzilla!