18 and 99, time of the red man and the marshal.

That subject has absolutely nothing to do with trivia.  I was really trying hard to come up with something creative and apropos for the subject line, but my mind has been steadily deteriorating into a soft sludge thanks to Video Hits 1 and their damned I Love 4.8 seconds ago.  They’re doing 2005!  How can you be nostalgic about two thousand freaking five?!  Still, much to my horror, it’s one my TV even now, and, to compound the horror, I’m not even changing it.  Such are the depths of teledepression. 

Anywhooooo, trivia ended with a bang!  Well, not so much a bang, but certainly with a quiet throat clearing and a lot of awkward confusion.  We didn’t win.  But we did win.  Try and follow.  We answered the bonus question incorrectly and wagered all of our points, but somehow we still were declared the winner and it wasn’t a mistake on Andy’s part.  Apparently, the only team that answered the question correctly was being followed by a cloud of cheat-spicion (like those mini-goombas that the big flying goomba poops out at you in Super Mario 3).  It was a 6-answer question, requiring 5 correct answers.  We got 4 of them right, and that was apparently more than any other team except for the cheating team, so we were named the winners.  However, Andy’s brilliant plan of revenge was derailed by our unfailing honesty.  We spoiled it by going up and being honest as one of the other teams was there waiting for their moneys.  Still, he gave us the third prize for our honesty, probably fuming inside that we uncovered his ruse. 

After all of that, our waitress insisted that one of the cards that should have had $26 on it only had $2 on it, so we had a big rigmarole about that.  And she was slow.  But really, what all of this is leading up to is that I left the question sheet at the restaurant accidentally.  Sorry.  But I can still remember at least some of the questions we got wrong (there were 5 of them, 2 20 pointers and 1 each of the others; it was a brutal week, even with all of those misses, we were still tied for first going into the bonus).  So, here are our misses, as far as I can remember them:

1.  What insurance company’s ad slogan is “Life comes at you fast”?  (It’s Nationwide, whose real ad slogan is “Nationwide is on your side.”  We said All-State, who’s ad slogan is “Hats for bats.  Keep bats warm.”)

2.  What film contains the following lines: “Number fifty-four million six hundred and one… Ferndoch.” and “I’m a graduate of the Harvard business school…I lived through the Black Plague and had a pretty good time during that.”  (It’s Beetlejuice.  Unfortunately, the only line I really remember from the film is “Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice!”  I guess that might have been a bit easy.  At the very least, he could have thrown out the lyrics to “Shake, Senora”.)

3.  According to the World Tourism Organization, which European country averages 43 vacation days annually?  (There were really only two options: the decadent French and the layabout Italians.  We chose the layabout French.  Unfortunately, it was those decadent Italians.  Salami!!!!!!!!11!!!1!1!!!11)

4.  What company introduced Mr. Potato Head in 1952?  (We said Milton Bradley, completely forgetting the decadent layabouts at Hasbro.  We really should have remembered that.)

5.  What movie contained the following: wind chimes, a greenhouse, and Julianne Moore? (We said Hannibal, banking on Hannibal Lecter murdering that one guy in the greenhouse with the windchimes.  That’s make for some great Clue…anyway, it was actually The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.)

Bonus!
Category: Fortune 500 Companies
Q: Name 5 of the 6 top U.S. companies in terms of revenue in 2007 according the Forbes Magazine.  (We got the following right: G.E., General Motors, Wal-Mart, and Exxon-Mobil.  The other right answers were Conoco-Phillips and Chevron.  We incorrectly guessed Microsoft and Coca-Cola.  It seems like we’ve had this question before, and I remarked that I thought that the answer was oil-heavy, but we were coming up empty aside from Exxon.  C’est dommage ca, je pense. )

So, that’s how it goes.  Sorry about not having the full rundown for you, but we had a fairly surreal ending.   Anyway, until next time, I’m Leonard Nimoy.  Keep watching the skis!  I mean skies.