Last Saturday I had to get up early for something I haven't done in years. Probably since before the pandemic began. Our friend who does bar trivia? His team was going to semifinals and their normal fourth person couldn't make it. So could ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnyhugger or I, instead? bunnyhugger couldn't; she had pinball stuff to do. So I was tapped and got up early to drive out to someplace in the Flint area.
The format was the same as the regular trivia nights, six rounds of three questions each, plus a bonus halftime question. After a question's asked you get the length of a pop song to debate your team's answer and submit it on the sheet. To cut to the ending, our team won, coming in first place. This was a heck of an overperformance: we just had to finish in the top seven (of 13) teams to make it to finals. No prizes for coming in highly placed.
I think the most fun part of this, actually, was the final question, where teams can bet up to their entire score on their confidence in their answer. For this we got to seriously think about and work through the question and that was more fun than just remembering stuff. Nobody took the bet, or at least nobody bet and won, on the given final question. That question was (something like) ``although the phrase may be a double entendre, the surface meaning of the `it' in the title Some Like It Hot refers to what things?''
Reader, I couldn't think what the non-dirty meaning of ``it'' in Some Like It Hot was and, apparently, nobody else could either. After a bit of explaining to one person on the team just what a double entendre is (I don't know how they didn't know it) we ended up trying to run through the plot of the movie and figure what hot it there might be. Can you think of it? Answer behind the cut.
It's music, of course. Marilyn Monroe gets into the movie because she's with a women's band.
Anyway, besides that, I did help the team with a couple things, like my knowledge of stuff about the Artemis II mission, which was the halftime bonus question. (We ended up in a long debate about whether the question ``name of the capsule they splashed down in'' meant the model of spacecraft --- Orion --- or the mission callsign --- Integrity --- and it turns out they would have accepted either.) And I certainly helped with a longshot, identifying the name of the southern California city that got its name from having the Standard Oil company's second west coast refinery.
We also lost out on four points in the category of explorers. The question was which Sherpa was, with Edmund Hillary, the first people known to reach the summit of Mount Everest. It happened I had a few days before read an article mentioning his name so it was particularly fresh in mind: Tenzig Nor ... ay. I doubted my recollection of what consonant started the second syllable of his last name and finally went with 'g', which was correct. What was not correct, and apparently got several teams, was the first name, Tenzing with two n's. And, with Jeopardy!-like rules, a misspelling that changes the sound of the answer counts as an incorrect answer. If we had just given the last name we'd have gotten it and ironically that was the half I had no doubt about.
I was content to take it at that, especially since we won anyway. One of the teammates was upset about it, and a guy on another team that apparently made the same mistake was also upset and after the tournament gathered to complain about the unjustness of a ruling that, I think, was quite just. Especially for playoffs. Somehow they dragged the host over to complain while explicitly saying they accepted the ruling but thought it was clueless. Host said he spent time after the question finding 1953-era newsreels to listen to exactly how Norgay's name was said and the second n is not ignorable, so, yeah, absolutely fair.
With the win --- heck, just with coming in top half --- in semifinals our friend's team was positioned for finals at some place in Plymouth, Michigan, tomorrow. Our friend's had a major health crisis and can't make it, or much of anything for a good while if all goes well. I guess at least I'm relieved of the fear that I screw it up.
Well, next after the Jackson County Fair was visiting the Calhoun County Fair. Let's see how long until I get to (a) bunnies and (b) the Himalaya. (Don't spoil the secret twist!)
Establishing shot. We were there in a gorgeous evening but didn't have to park too far from anything.
One of the vendor booths was selling attic stuff, like, VHS editions of your basic furry starter set movies.
Old Tyme Photo was a new thing at the fair. It's a travelling booth but inside has all the clothes and backgrounds you need for a picture of yourself looking like a prospector or a Prohibition-era gangster. They don't travel so much anymore.
Hey, somebody swiped the Community Tent!
One of the prize-winning embroidering exhibits, a koi jar as seen from above.
And some other prize-winning projects, including a camera, which totally isn't about how the exhibit hall has been taken over by photography submissions.
Trivia: Orange and Newark, New Jersey, had a team --- the Tornadoes --- in the National Football League. Source: The Uncyclopedia, Gideon Haigh. The team played from 1887 to 1970, but was in the NFL only two seasons, one for each city.
Currently Reading: Lost Popeye Zines, Volume 90: Spinach Famine or Muscle Bound Jay Birds or Spinachovia vs. Creamatonia, Bud Sagendorf. Editor Stephanie Noelle. In an interesting coincidence the story sees Popeye named the general in charge of Spinachovia's useless army, just like the story going on in the Vintage Thimble Theater repeats on Comics Kingdom right now.
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Date: 2026-05-09 05:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2026-05-09 05:15 pm (UTC)