Tonight we gathered up my parents, Tom and Debbie, and Jenny Galle and her boyfriend Ryan, and went to a Trivia Night to benefit Blake Smith. Blake, the son of our friends Kirk and Rebecca Smith, was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis six months ago and the costs for his care are astronomical. To help make ends meet, Rebecca’s sister Carrie put together this event, and it was a doozy! There were so many donations to be auctioned off, including a luxury box at Busch Stadium, which went for $3200! There were also over 30 raffle items, and we lucked into a gift certificate to Bristol’s and a gift certificate to WingHaven Spa. There were also over 30 tables crammed into the Knights of Columbus hall in Hazelwood, which made it a little hard to hear the moderator, but them’s the breaks.
But on to more important things: the trivia. My dad works with Carrie at Fireman’s Fund and he told her about the debacle that was the Oakville Baseball Team Trivia Night, she was terrified that she would get a scathing review as well. Fortunately for us, Carrie is not retarded. In fact, she put together a fun, creative, engaging trivia night that kept the competition close down to the wire and also taught us all a little bit about Cystic Fibrosis.
Throw in our TOTAL DOMINATION and you’ve got the ingredients for a fun evening.
But now, I ‘m getting ahead of myself. The categories were (take note, Oakvillers):
- Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
- St. Louis Slogans
- Food and Beverage
- Fun and Games
- Hollywood Cars
- Don’t Forget The Lyrics
- That’s a Winner – St. Louis Sports
- U.S. Government
- Women in History
- Original vs. Remake
In addition, each round had a bonus question about Cystic Fibrosis.
You see how that works? You mix in some riffs on currently popular gameshows (5th Grader and Lyrics (I don’t watch either one of these shows, but I can see why they are successful (Hint: Finishing lyrics is fun))), some regional questions (but broadly regional, not Oakville-specific), some general knowledge, some pop culture, and then you spread out the Hard-And-Specific Questions (what some would call Inside Baseball) over each round as a bonus. It’s not that hard, Oakville (I’m not still bitter or anything).
While we started off slowly, again, we were able to come back and take the lead by the 8th round and hold the lead by one slim point going into the 10th. We figured we’d need to sweep the 10th category, Originals and Remakes, and we did just that. It was a clutch performance, hinging on the 7th question:
Q: The original movie starred Jerry Lewis and Stella Stevens. The remake starred Eddie Murphy and Jada Pinkett Smith.
A: The Nutty Professor (thanks, Debbie)
Toss in Ryan’s game savers of Cape Fear and Gone In 60 Seconds, and we were able to take all the movies and the bonus question to win by 1 point over the table next to us. Boo. Yah. Boo-yah, I say!
All in all, a fun and successful evening. Our only complaint was that it was very hard to hear the people speaking. But when you consider that it was partly due to the sheer number of people in the room who came to support Blake (and the open bar might have something to do with that), we were happy to strain to hear in the name of a good cause.
