Breaths for Blake 2010

Blake is the son of a friend of mine who was diagnosed with Cystic Fibrosis a couple years back. In order to help cope with the costs of his medical care, Blake’s family has hosted the Breaths for Blake trivia night. The first two years went very well for us. Feel free to click through on those links and read about our winning exploits because there was no three-peat. Despite our poor performance, we had a great time, as always. Our team (Jen and I, my parents and sister, Tom & Debbie Galle, and Katie) came prepared with a huge spread — the spinach balls were my favorite — and we definitely took advantage of the open bar. Carrie Spalding was the MC again, and she did a great job, both with devising difficult and interesting trivia questions and with running the show. Of course, she also put a massive jinx on us by announcing us as the two-time champions and by placing the leader balloons on our table to start the night. Additionally, the evening was a success, with a crap ton of money being raised to help with Blake’s medical bills, and also a major donation being made to help find a cure for CF. All in all, we had a great time once again. But what trivia night would be complete without our patented, detailed, blow-by-blow review?

We should have known we were in trouble this year when the first category was American History, a sneaky-hard starter. We started with a measly five-spot and also began a troubling habit of talking ourselves out of correct answers. We always say that we’re going to bone up on history, but we never do. We rebounded with strong showings in the Phobias and James Bond categories, and ran off a string of three straight perfect tens (Movie Theme Songs, Stuff You Read in High School, and Sports Nicknames) but by then, the damage had been done.

One of the hallmarks of the BFBTN (You like what I did there? It’s like we’re being charged by the letter) is the round where Kirk and Rebecca film Blake and Ethan reading the answers. This year, it was round 7, Fruits and Vegetables, and watching the kids squish grapes while jumping on the trampoline was probably the highlight of the evening. Either that, or watching their dog looking mortified whilst displaying lettuce ears.

Riding high on a string of strong rounds, we ran into the monolith that was Almost Called It. This round was a diabolical multiple choice exercise in trying to figure out what well known products or services were almost called before the PR people were called in. In addition to not having any idea on half of the questions, I accidentally picked “Backrub” as the previous name for Yahoo!. Turns out that in fit of tricky and evil genius, Carrie wrote that question as a trap to ensnare geeks. Google was the one, of course, that was called Backrub. Damn. So that completely kaiboshed our chances to win again.

The trivia wrapped up with Wild Things (a musical category with animal-named songs) and St. Louis by the Numbers (an interesting category where every number 1-10 is used once). And while the end of the night did not bring victory for the Dream Team, we had a great time and were happy to help fight CF. Looking forward to redeeming ourselves next year for sure.