OK, so this post is a long time coming, but it’s taken me this long to cool down so this wasn’t just a stream of profanity. Last Friday, we gathered a table and attended a fundraising trivia night for the Oakville Tigers Baseball Team. Sure, it was a long drive down to Oakville, but it was a good cause, and one of Yao’s friends invited Yao to put a table together. We like trivia. There was food promised and an open bar. What could go wrong? The evening started of auspiciously with under-trained parking attendants grilling people as they arrive as to their destinations. Once we miraculously found our way inside (thanks, parking attendants!) and found our table (next to the bar – sweet!) we were ready for some awesome trivia. Unfortunately, we are still waiting for awesome trivia.
In a nutshell, it seems that the categories and questions for the trivia night were put together by the wife of the coach of the Oakville Tigers Baseball team, who also happened to be the daughter of the mayor of Oakville and the granddaughter of the previous mayor of Oakville and the great-granddaughter of the founding mayor of Oakville. Now, I don’t know who actually wrote the questions, but my hypothesis was based on the fact that two of the categories were Oakville History (0/10 – Sample Question: What business stands on the original site of the first Dierbergs in Oakville?) and Oakville Baseball Team History (0/10 – Sample Question: How many times have the Oakville Tigers had 20-win seasons?). Now, I understand that there are bound to be some hard categories, but if you weren’t raised in Oakville or intimately involved with the baseball team, you have no shot at these questions! The worst thing about it was that the Baseball one was the last category and they had shut down the open bar by then. It’s like it never occurred to them that this was a fundraiser for the team and some people were just there because they had friends who were asked to put together a table. Not everyone was there to strut their knowledge of esoteric Oakville Bullshit.
Even then, this wouldn’t have been so outrageous if the other 8 categories weren’t so ridiculously lame. The question writer must have curled up with The Complete Idiot’s Guide To Trivia Nights and just read the first paragraph which might have gone something like this:
Make sure to include trivia that can be answered by a wide variety of age groups. Popular trivia topics include music, TV, and movies.
So, naturally, the topics were (and no, I’m not shitting you — these were the actual topics)
- The 50′s and 60′s
- The 70′s
- Movies
- 80′s Music
- The 90′s
- Famous TV couples
- Candy Bars
- Pictures of Celebrities
OK, so I’m not certain that those are the exact categories, but it’s hard to remember since all of the categories were so similar, so general, and so completely vapid.
Anyway, that Trivia Night suuuuuuucked. Not even an open bar could salvage it. Just remember, next time you are invited to go do something in Oakville, it’s a trap.
