First night of trivia at Revolution Hall

First off, there are some benefits for me when it comes to competitive team trivia in Troy on Monday nights, as opposed to Wednesday nights.  I can stop by the Photo Center of Troy (which was closed on Wednesday nights) and get some pointers on how to improve my shots.  I can also get a quick meal at Brown’s and see all my favorite hostesses and the like.

But this Monday night was the first of the new “Smart Ass Team Trivia” that was held at Revolution Hall, the performance venue on River Street in Troy.  Mark and Anthony, who were part of a competing team from Brown’s, are now the hosts of the game, and teams are seated throughout the two levels of Revolution Hall.

The game still follows the same Brown’s trivia format – 60 questions, 6 themed rounds with ten questions per round, the 5th round is a music round, the 6th round is voted on by teams the week before.  There are, however, some new variations – the team in dead last after five rounds gets to nominate a category of their own for next week, and during the trivia competition a jumbo screen behind the hosts kept everyone up to date on the Packers-Vikings game.

As for the questions – some of them were monstrously hard (what color is Homer Hippo in the Hungry Hungry Hippos game), some were devilishly easy (what former NBA player played the giant in the movie “My Giant”), and some just had people scratching their heads and saying “huh?”

Case in point – in a round devoted to questions about alcohol, of the ten questions asked, two stood out –

• What was the name of the Dude’s favorite drink in The Big Lebowski?
• What was the name of the brewery at which Laverne and Shirley were employed?

For the first question, if you said “Caucasian,” you were marked wrong (the hosts’ answer was “White Russian”).

However, if you said “Shotz Brewery” in the second question, you were correct – but you were also correct if you said “Hassenpfeffer Incorporated.”

That sound you hear is me banging my head against the table.

Eventually the hosts did accept “Caucasian” as a correct answer, but I don’t know how for the life of me they count the lyrics to the theme song of Laverne and Shirley as the name of the brewery they worked at.  I sure hope that doesn’t mean that the bosses were Mr. Schlemeil and Mr. Schlamazle.

No matter.  In the end, Street Academy finished in second place (thanks to an 8-out-of-10 showing on the final category, board games – if anyone asks you what country was Yahtzee invented in, say “Canada”), and my team – Jeremy, Alexis and I – each earned tickets to see Journey in concert at Rev Hall.  Actually, it’s “Evolution” – a Journey tribute band – at Rev Hall.  Because, let’s face it, the current lineup of Journey, with its interchangeable lead singers that neither sound nor look like Steve Perry, is a tribute band in and of itself.

We’ll see how the weeks progress, but it’s definitely a solid start for Monday Night Trivia at Rev Hall.  Plus, I understand that the prizes are scheduled to improve as the weeks progress, with concert tickets, drink specials, T-shirts and the like as this trivia progresses.