Breaths For Blake Trivia Night 2009

Last night, the Extended Trivia Dream Team (Bob, Jen, Katie, Larry, Pam, Tom, Debbie, and special guest Kate — filling in for Kim) went down to Assumption Greek Orthodox Church to partake in the Breaths For Blake Trivia Night, benefitting Blake Smith. Blake, the son of our friends Kirk and Rebecca Smith, was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis about a year and a half ago, and the proceeds from this and other fundraisers goes to defray the extreme medical costs. Regular readers may recall that we won last year’s edition so the pressure was on to put on a repeat performance.

The categories this year were a fun mix, with the overall theme of “That’s Entertainment”. We thought we would be in for a rough ride with Kim, our resident Pop Culture Guru, visiting relatives in Freeburg, but other than the fact she totally would have known that Berlin sings “Take My Breath Away”, our diverse ages and experiences helped to cover most of the bases.

We did well in the early categories, but were 3 points back of the lead after the first three rounds — Entertainers Born in Missouri, Books Adapted Into Movies, and Singers Who Later Became Actors (editor’s note: these are not the exact category names, rather brief descriptions of the category). Round 4 (Place-Names In The Titles Of Things) began our comeback as we had a perfect round with a bunch of us coming in with clutch answers under the gun: Katie with John Wayne’s “North to Alaska”, Larry with “WKRP in Cincinnati”, Debbie with “Chicago Hope” and myself with “Raising Arizona”. Round 5 was an audio category (TV Show Theme Songs) and we had a near perfect round, only to talk ourselves out of the very last one — The Greatest American Hero. Well, in all honesty, it was the older 4 members who did the most discussion on that one, since none of the 30 and under crowd had ever heard of that show. To be fair they did make up for it by knowing Dallas, Rockford Files, and Soap (who knew that was even a show?!?!).

Round 6 (Based On A True Story) was another sweep for us, which leads us to the real crown jewel of the night: Sink or Float. The premise is simple enough, given an item, will it sink or float? The truly genius twist on the Late Show staple was that they had Blake and his brother Ethan testing the actual items in a big fish tank on their front sidewalk to see if a particular item will, in fact, sink or float. Now, for those of you out there who were not at one time a little boy, you might not know that dropping shit into a body of water is one of the most fun things to do in the world. Watching these kids find out if something will sink or float at the same time that the audience does as the answers were revealed was really fun. It truly brought home the idea that these are just two boys doing what little boys like to do, CF or not. This category also prompted the most discussion at the table of any category, and some interesting revelations:

• Sunglasses sink (thanks, Brandon, we couldn’t have done that without you)
• Tom relayed a childhood story to prove that watermelons float
• Videotapes sink, but only after the water can get inside the cassette. It took a moment, but it did go down
• Candy bars float — a la Caddyshack, and the Holidome in Columbia during the Optimists Junior Golf Tournament
• A can of Crisco will float — sorry Dad — that was the only one we missed
• A 12 pound bowling ball will sink, but evidently, a 6 pound bowling ball will float

So after 7 rounds, we were at 71 out of a potential 77 points (each round had a bonus question about Cystic Fibrosis) and 4 points back from the leader, a table entirely composed of young people. We had our work cut out for us, to be sure, and the next round was the dreaded Dead or Alive category. I had checked that day, like I always do before trivia nights, to see if Abe Vigoda was still alive (click here to check for yourself), but sadly, that question did not come up. We missed Dear Abby (Alive — Ann Landers died) and John Mahoney from Frazier (Alive — my dad said either Mahoney had died or the dog Eddie had died: turns out, it was Eddie.) and we geeked on the CF bonus question to only score 8, but it pulled us closer to the lead.

Round 9 was the Sports in Entertainment category, and we scored 10 / 11 on that one, which pulled us into the lead by one point going into the final round. I checked out the scoreboard and noticed that the team one point back had a closer score guess on the tiebreaker, so we would have to win outright to repeat as champions. OH THE DRAMA!!!!!11!ONE!

Round 10 was Medical Music, an audio category where they played a snippet of the song and we needed to provide the medical-themed song title and the artist who recorded it. With the pressure on, Jen came up with The Corrs to pair with the song “Breathless”, Tom got Huey Lewis and The News’ “I Want A New Drug”, Dad got “Rocking’ Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Blues” by Johnny Rivers, Kate got “Like a Surgeon” by Weird Al and I got “Dr. Feelgood” by Mötley Crüe (yes, I had to löök up how to do the umlauts — the lengths I go to for proper blögging).

With the answers turned in, it was all over except for the waiting. Driven crazy with anticipation, Tom waltzed up to the front to check on the scores. We’re all holding our collective breaths for a sign, when Tom turns around and from across the hall flashes that classic Tom grin. We had won by one point again! For the second year in a row, we were victorious, and I can honestly say no other trivia victory is as sweet as this one.

Our thanks go out again to Carrie Spalding for putting on such a great event, and our thoughts go out to Blake, the Smiths and Tolberts, and all of the others out there dealing with CF. Last night, $10000 was raised to help Blake, but so much more needs to be done to make this disease a thing of the past. We look forward to doing our part next year as well!

Jen’s Note: I just wanted to say that the trivia night was a whole heck of a lot of fun. There were so many baskets that were raffled off (both Katie and Debbie won two baskets each!), a great silent auction, including a signed Albert Pujols bat, and jello shots! Really, you need jello shots at a trivia night, it really is what makes it awesome! It was a well executed trivia night and Carrie, you did an amazing job again! We will be there again next year to defend!