Trivia Night!!!

Twenty - two years of Fall Sundays on the couch, staying up too late watching movies, and going through the “Useless Facts” app while on the toilet have let me to this moment – Trivia Night.

I have a new favorite bar in Cuenca. Well, I have another favorite bar in Cuenca. The Inca Lounge is a bar overlooking the river that borders downtown and sports the best burger I have had outside of Ted’s Montana Grill. The thing is massive. Some people have naturally smaller mouths than other people. This burger is off limits to them. Fortunately they do offer a smaller portion for the small-mouthed-burger-eaters. But it’s not the same experience.

The Inca Lounge arrived on my radar because the American owner wanted to have a place where he could watch football. Now every week, on the Sabbath, the gringos of Cuenca gather to get drunk and yell at TVs for the sake of their fantasy teams (Damn you Tom Brady!!!) and their doomed existence in their suicide pools.

However, in addition to football, beer, and burgers (They call that the Trifecta) the Inca Lounge also has Trivia Night.

Matt had gone before but this was my first time. Forming a trivia team is really all about variety. Obviously in a fantasy draft you don’t draft Tom Brady AND Drew Brees – they play the same position and fulfill the same function on a team. So Tuesday night we brought in the new Trifecta of Matt (Managed an NPO in the Vail Valley, Head of Town Counsel), Richard (Owned a Business Consulting Company, Wrote an Autobiography, Canadian) and me (Bartender, Reigning Fantasy Football Champion, 22). Our team featured smart people from different generations and a kid with enough time on his hands to actually play 6 Degrees of Kevin Bacon with IMDb.com (the “Ocean’s” movies made this game kind of a cakewalk and then Valentine’s Day crushed any hope for respectability for the next 15 years).

The game was six rounds and ten questions per round with each round having a category and each answer was worth a point, except the last which was worth two. Pretty basic.

Coming on September 13th, the first round was questions about events that happened on the date September 11th in any year.

Started off showing my value to the team – PETE ROSE broke the MLB all-time hits record on September 11th 1985. Sports fans out there get this one easily but this is Trivia Night in Cuenca, Ecuador. There are lots of, shall we say, “vegetarians.”

We got the question about the Camp David Accords and another about the 1979 Chilean coup d'état but otherwise got our butts kicked. We would have gotten one about breaking ground on the Lincoln Memorial in 1941 if it weren’t for some poor wording. Definitely not on us.

Good news was everyone else got their butts kicked that round too.

The next round was about Tennis. Done.

We got 8 points. Murdered everyone. Wouldn’t have thought the French could have come up with such a fun sport but I guess that’s why love means nothing. You think that was a dumb joke? Just wait.

Also I knew Steffi Graff and Andre Agassi are married and have a lot of combined singles titles but 31?!?!. I originally guessed 19 and then wimped out and ended up being off by about half with our final answer being 16. The group next to us got 3 and we were in the lead after this round so I forgave Mr. and Mrs. Agassi.

Terrorism. I’m kind of a peaceful guy. This wasn’t my category. Luckily Richard and Matt have a clue. The Brits lost the most people in the twin towers (I would have gotten that one). Carlos “The Jackel” was a bad man. The I.R.A. is considered a terrorist group by the English but not the U.S. or the E.U. – interesting.

NEXT!

We are still in the lead. We have 3 points on second place.

The next round was on Motown. Not my area but it ended up not being too hard. Somehow I was the only one in my group that knew that The Temptations sang “My Girl”. I feel like this may have been because it was featured in some of the TV shows I watched growing up. I don’t know. We got one point for both the song and the artist. Half for each. We ended up with 6.5 pts. It wasn’t too hard. There were some we should have had but little Michael, Stevie Wonder,

Marvin Gay and the Supremes made the entire round somewhat of a push.

But we gained a half of a point. We’re up 3.5.

Child Actors. Could have gone either way. Which actor was in Rebel Without a Cause and Miracle On 34th Street? The correct answer would be Natalie Wood. My eighth grade teacher was obsessed with James Dean. In Rebel Without a Cause, he starred with Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo. I will forever remember this. And it’s not a bad movie. Ron Howard and Jennifer Connolly were child actors that both won Oscars for the 2001 movie A Beautiful Mind. We got a couple others involving Jason Bateman, Shirley Temple, Elizabeth Taylor and Taxi Driver but when my team needed me most I failed.

The team didn’t even need me. Matt got the answer right. Name one of the three movies that Leonardo DiCaprio received an Oscar nod for? Matt initially said What’s Eating Gilbert Grape but I was positive that he received nominations for The Aviator and for both Blood Diamond

and The Departed in 2006.

I wasn’t WRONG. He did get Oscar nods for The Aviator and Blood Diamond. He also did get Golden Globe Award nominations for both films in 2006 but it just so happened that I convinced Matt and Richard that I am always right about Leo and of the three movies I thought were right – I picked the only one that wasn’t.

I KNEW he was nominated for the The Aviator and for Blood Diamond but the time crunch made me nervous and somehow I went with the one I was least sure about and we got it wrong. DAMN IT LEO! The Departed was a great movie! And Mark Wahlberg got a supporting actor nod and he is FROM Boston. Ughh…

Last round! Double points! Random questions!

How many of the top five highest grossing movies of 2011 are sequals? Pirates, Transformers, Harry Potter, Cars and Kung Fu Panda! Next!

World’s first Billionaire? Unfortunately not J.P. Morgan. It was Rockefeller. Should have gotten this one but not a bad answer. Bummer.

It takes THREE of today’s cigarettes to equal that of a 1950s cigarette. We guessed one. But seriously, depends on the cigarette right? I want a recount.

Ron Paul is the only Republican candidate that was a OBGYN. Thank you Richard. A jenny is a baby DONKEY. Damn it Matt.

LCD means Liquid Crystal Display. Tom Brady was the man in 2007. Darwin was alive in 1825 (I really had forgotten that one) and Babylonia was the ancient city located near what is now Bagdad. Should have gotten that last one. Decided on something that was close (I think). 12 points.

Not the 20 we were shooting for BUT… it was enough for the WIN!

First night out at trivia night and we came home winners. We won the grand prize of...

27 DOLLARS!

This paid for the tab and we got our 2 dollar entry fees back. This was my biggest mistake of the night. The winnings took care of the tab and I was drinking crappy $2 beer while the other gentlemen were drinking some nice rum, or “ron” as it is called here. I had two (20 ouncers) beers. So, of the $21 dollars worth of alcohol we won, I only drank $4 of it.

This was a wasted opportunity to have the house buy me some better booze, but such is life. There will be another Trivia Night and another tab up for grabs. And when the time comes, I dare them to ask another Leo question.