I went out last night to play trivia with a group of strangers who kindly invited me to trivia last night.
Got it?
And what started out as gung-ho excitement to be walking around at night, invited to hang out in Manhattan slowly turned into a slow, painful realization that I'm actually terrible at trivia. Really. We used to play all the time back in Georgia, and even then I was helpful in coming up with bull answers meant to amuse.
So as I sat at the bar with a new group of people, chatting nicely about what my possible strengths could be, I had to hide the fact that I have none and that I had a degree in journalism, less this heighten expectation. This made me a creepy enigma, I think. While my new friend would talk about how she sort of had pop culture down and would say a leading phrase like, "so we don't know what you would bring to the table...," where I had to clearly say something like, "oh biscuits! I'm a biscuit fiend!" I would just nod along politely, take a sip of my beer, then laugh it off and switch topics.
This only worked until someone would point something out on the various television screens up ahead, where various matters of sportsball were being played. Ice, field, and indoor types.
The next problem came when we realized that we had too many people there to be a team. Apparently, they capped teams off at six, and we had nine. To make matters fair, we pulled numbers, though many argued for a Queens vs. everyone else group. Those from Queens argued against this as apparently the most important players were not from Queens. This added to pressure, because again, wild card. Me. And I sat there as we drew numbers and those regulars in the group teasingly made signs to ensure that they got into the right team.
Apparently, everyone wanted this one guy (we'll call him Josh), because his team always won. Always. My new friend said that she'd never been on his team and lost. I didn't get to be on his team. I was on Team A with all of the others who drew from Team A, and immediately my group started to make A-Team jokes, which I couldn't join because the A-Team always slightly bored me and references to the Bradley Cooper version might be minus points in my integrity.
But it started nicely enough. The first round was a photo round, where we had to identify stars before they were famous, which I was totally on top of, pointing out Taylor Lautner, Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, and Leighton Meester properly. The latter being my proud answer as I am a not-so-closeted but sort-of ashamed Gossip Girl fan. We got a respectable amount actually.
Then there was a soccer round, where I only knew the answer to be Keira Knightley when they asked a Bend it Like Beckham question. Then there was a food round, where I only knew that Turkish Delight was Edmund's food choice from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
I was really stunned by my teammates actually. Granted, Mets trivia is understandable, but the other things they could summon up from French cheeses to comic books was really astounding. During the compound round, where you add the answers from two questions to get one, for instance Slim Jim Morrison, I told them that Emily Blunt was John Krasinski's wife, which got the other half for someone else (Jay and Silent Bob Comic), leading to the answer of Emily Bluntman.
But my lowest answer to get right, which I knew immediately was: "Seth Cohen from the O.C. and this non-Kardashian." Adam Brody Jenner.
Duh.
I slightly hate myself for knowing it.
"Don't be ashamed, if it gets us points," one of my teammates said, patting me on the back as I admitted to this with my face in my hands.
But it didn't stop there. No. We had a round of hits from 2012, and I cleaned it. None of my teammates knew any songs from 2012, and they joked about One Direction and Fun. but really knew nothing else. Guess who named eight of the ten songs the trivia guy played? And this included Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance with Somebody," which my team didn't know either.
There were lots of obvious radio songs, I've heard tons of times, like Katy Perry's "Wide Awake" or Taylor Swift's "22," which is still in debate if it should've been in that category anyway. But as the trivia guy went through the songs, the entire bar just groaned after each sample track, because (a) everyone hated each song and (b) I think no one knew these songs. Which was weird to me.
I even got that stupid Chris Brown song I hate.
But I was so ashamed at being able to summon up this knowledge as my teammates trashed today's hits, proclaiming that it would've been better if they did a 90's alternative round or maybe a 60's round. I could do those! But no, I had to be master of what everyone calls the crappy music round. I'm so not cool. I kept my love for Taylor Swift songs under wraps.
We won in the end. Apparently that song round creamed a lot of people, and it put our team ahead for a while. I got a lot of high-fives, a portion of a $40 bar tab, and an invite to come next time.
That was the first time, my friend told me, that she was on Josh's team and lost.
That had to be something, right?
I did get the Jane Eyre question right. I'm proud of that.