Spring FPC Trivia Night 2011

Posted on April 10, 2011 by Jen

I do love FPC trivia nights because, not only are they fun, but the categories are creative. And plus, they always have a theme! This year’s theme was rules. The answer could be a rule or the question was a rule, they were rules. Now this year’s appearance was a bit different, we did not have our usual Dream Team. Bob and his dad were otherwise occupied and so we had to come up with a couple of fresh faces. After hearing about our past performances at this trivia night, the newbies were a bit intimidated and we expected a lot out of them.

Boy, did we perform! Even without two of our usual suspects, we still won! Woo-hoo! And this wasn’t an easy trivia night since I’m not really all about rules.

Rules of the Bible: We had to name all 10 Commandments. I sat back on this one because I only really knew the popular ones. There were enough churchgoers to answer this one.

Rules of the Game: The clue was a rule of a board game and you had to guess which board game it was. A fun category and made me want to go play some board games.

Baseball Rules: I sat back on this one and let Colin run with it.

Rules of the Road: I claimed the stereotype of female Asian drivers. But apparently, you wouldn’t want to drive with quite a few tables with some of their scores in this round.

Flag Rules: Did you know that Sarah Palin signed an American flag, a big no-no in the flag handbook. Freakin’ dumbass.

Composition: Oh, my. Grammar and sentence structure. Brings me back to elementary school.

TSA Carry-on Rules: This category was interesting. They stated something and you had to decide if you could carry them on the plane. And just a heads up, you cannot have gel inserts.

Government Rules: I was afraid these would be all questions on the amendments, thankfully, they were not.

TV & Movies: This category either had rule in the question or rule in the answer.

And for the life of me, I can’t remember the 10th category. Oh well, you get the gist. I’m excited to see what they come up with next and for the two that missed this night, you have a lot to live up to.

FPC Trivia Night 2010

Posted on October 16, 2010 by Bob

We penciled in this edition of the FPC Youth Group Trivia Night well ahead of time to avoid some of the scheduling conflicts that have plagued us in the past. Thankfully, we were able to get the Trivia Dream Team (Katie, Kim, Jen, myself and my parents) together to put together another run at the trivia title.

In addition to being an alumnus of the youth group, this trivia night is one of our favorites because of the time and creativity used in coming up with the theme and the question categories (plus we win it frequently). This year, the theme was all about movies. One category required you to name the movie when provided a famous quote. Another had us match the movie with the original book it was based upon. Movie theme songs and freeze-frames were popular categories as well.

Overall, our performance was solid, and the food we brought fit the bill nicely (mmm … bacon-wrapped potato bites) but we came up just short of total victory as my old friend Kara and her table beat us by a point. We settled for a respectable second place, and look forward to redeeming ourselves in the spring

Annie’s Angels Trivia Night

Posted on May 9, 2010 by Bob

Saturday night, the Trivia Dream Team (my parents and sister, the Galles, Katie, Jen and myself) went to a trivia night in St. Charles to benefit The March of Dimes. After our disappointing showing at Breaths for Blake 2010, we were looking to get back on the winning track and this was the perfect venue. We started out strong and never looked back, taking a small lead in the third round and hanging on to the end, only to be caught by table two in the tenth round. Our final score was 90 points (out of 100), but our tiebreaker guess was 86 points and table two guessed 84, so we won!

Yay! Seriously, it felt really good to win again. We were beginning to wonder if we had lost our touch. But onto the important stuff: Jen and I brought chocolate chip cookies and chicken parm bites. Tom and Debbie came in with their famous guacamole and a beer bread that was made with Sprite instead of beer. Cheese, crackers, salami, non-pareils, and mini-muffins rounded out the spread. Tasty!

The categories were a fun mix as well:

TV Threesomes (Given 3 characters, name the show)
Sports (a surprisingly diverse and challenging sports category)
“Baby,” I love this song! (Songs with the word “Baby”)
Questions and Manswers (Stereotypically manly questions)
Potpurri
Freeze Frame (Guess the animated movie by a single image)
Reality Check (Reality TV questions)
Who’s Bad? (Michael Jackson trivia — Jen has the “Free Wily” song on lockdown!)
Get your mind out of the gutter (Double entendres – Sample answer: Lake Titicaca. Of course we dominated this category.)
Bar exam (Mixology)

As you can see, the categories were diverse. And since there wasn’t a Presidents category, we had a chance to win. Of course, we did miss the one president-related question. Anyway. It was a fun night and a good cause. We win a trivia night and I got this posted in the same month. Things really are getting back to normal.

Breaths for Blake 2010

Posted on May 2, 2010 by Bob

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.

Trivia Night + Genealogy = Getting Your Ass Kicked By Old People!

Posted on March 15, 2010 by Bob

Friday night we gathered up a gang of peeps and hit the Maryland Heights Community Center for a trivia night in support of the St. Louis Genealogical Society. Katie’s mom is involved somehow, so it was a good thing to support, and my main man, Kevin Carbery was the MC, so we figured we’d go and have a good time. Of course, we did manage to have a good time, but it wasn’t due to our trivia skills. Carbery’s trivia skews a little bit older, question-wise, so we knew we’d face an uphill battle. In fact, I’m not sure if we’ve ever finished better than third in a Kevin Carbery event (if that doesn’t seem shocking, you had best educate yourself on our illustrious trivia history). Regardless, we went into this knowing it would be a challenge, and a challenge it was.

Somewhere along the way I lost the sheet with all of the categories, but I remember we did really well in Sports. The TV and Movie categories were heavily loaded with 70′s and 80′s answers and we got killed on Presidents yet again (always presidents. You’d think we’d learn — it’s not like there’s a dearth of presedential information out there. We should just read a friggin’ book). St. Louis History was a good category, but we didn’t do very well in that either. Makes me want to take a trip to the History Museum in Forest Park.

Perhaps the biggest shocker of the night was the Celebrity Couples category. We had Jen’s sister Chris (and her US Weekly addiction) as our secret weapon for that one, but it turns out that old celebrities can be couples too! Also, I think the concept of celebrity was stretched a wee bit when there were not one, but two questions about famous composers. Really?!?

Small gripes aside, when everything was said and done, we weren’t anywhere near the top. In fact, I’m not sure that anyone knows what our final score was because it got to the point where we were more focused on the food and drink than the competition at hand. In the end, everyone had a good time, but let this beatdown definitely proved the age old adage: if the oldest person on your team is 31, you better hope for lightning in a bottle if you want to compete in trivia against people who map their family tree for fun.