Requiem for a Jihad

Yes, the rumors are true. The Trivia Jihad is no more.

A Report From The Field: Kitty O'Sheas

For a while now, we have been getting reports from readers on how trivia is going at other trivia venues throughout Boston. Usually these get buried in the comments section and, really, who actually takes the time to read the comments? So, now, when the spirit moves me I will post them here. Also, at some point in the near future, I am going to start a tally of the number and nature of reports we receive from our field operatives, so, if you happen to have visited a particular bar for trivia and feel like commenting on your experience, send it on in.

Just to lay some already known knowledge on the Jihad, I had the pleasure of battling an ever-blossoming crowd of North Shore witches, warlocks, and fishermen at Kitty's in Beverly. Needless to tell you the Whooping and Hollering takes on a whole new meaning. The crowd that was there was strictly there for the Trivia. In at 8 out by 11. We arrived around 7:45 and besides the Waitress and the Bartender and The Trivia Jockey we were the only ones in the place. We shuddered to think a trip to the North was going to be all for naught.

Also, the TJ mentioned a possible future time change. 6pm sometime after the Superbowl.

As far as the Easy First Round, I think he is straying from that format. Although there were some "Gimmie" Questions, most of the night you really had to see through the Alcohol haze and think. For some of those fishermen it might have been too difficult, even though the TJ was sneaky hint dropping fiend.

Outing #36: Buttnuggets

Pub/Bar: Thirsty Scholar (Somerville, MA)

Day/Date: Sunday, January 29th

Trivia Jockey: I think his name is Mike. This is yet again a different Mike from Razzy's Mike or Newfoundland Mike. This is the Mike that figures prominently in many TJ's stories of how they came to join the Stump! Trivia fold.

Crowd: Somewhat thinner than usual due to Harvard's between-semesters break. But they made up in aural volume what they lacked in corporeal volume, let me tell you. There is a whole lot of whooping and hollering going on at the Thirsty Scholar over relatively trivial trivia achievements. Seriously, the first round is EASY, folks. That's on purpose, to suck you in and build your confidence and hook you into drinking for the entire two hours of the trivia night. Anyway, there really is no need to scream at the top of your lungs over the fact that you can identify that Memphis is the city in which Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot.

Food/Drink: Not much to say. I had the chicken fingers, per usual, and there appeared to be significantly fewer of them than on my last visit. But, it has been a while. Perhaps I am in error.

Ambience: Again, I have commented on this before so I will spare you. On a positive note, The Insufferable One did not appear to be there. Perhaps she has finally given up on the possibility of running into Shawn, playing trivia on his team, and making him 'fall for her' all over again.

Notable Events: We went to trivia after a full day of skiing and a whirlwind early-evening homemade-chicken-pot-pie eating session. (For the record, those of you considering taking a trip to Attitash in the near future may want to change your plans. There is no mountain left now that we are through with it.) So, needless to say, we were a bit tired for the event. Still, with the prospect of a $30 gift certificate well within our reach, and the help and encouragement of a very nice bouncer and a very creepy bar patron, we found the strength to stick it out for the entire game.

Razzy's

My love knows no bounds
Now they have jumbo hot dogs
Draught beer still two bucks

Ruth, Nancy, Kelly
World's best proprietresses
Much too good to us.

Outing #35: Felix the Dog

Pub/Bar: Brendan Behan's (Jamaica Plain, MA)

Day/Date: Tuesday, January 24th

Trivia Jockey: Jennifer.

Crowd: Not much to say here. Pretty much the same as last week. The people there are quite nice, and the couple sitting next to us was a little chatty toward the end of the night. I like when people are chatty and neighborhoody at these places.

Food/Drink: The Chinese food from across the street was excellent. I went a little overboard on eggroll ordering, though. They were the largest eggrolls I've ever seen, and I ordered 6 of them. Tonight we used our gift certificate from the previous week. $25 bought us 2 glasses of shiraz, 4 Miller Lites and 2 Harpoon I.P.A.'s. Not bad.

Ambience: One thing that is nice about this place is that it is dog friendly. It is really quite adorable to see some of these dogs up sitting on the barstools next to their owners. The one thing I don't like about this place is the paucity of tables and table-like objects. Basically, a good portion of the bar is just benches, which means there's nowhere to put your drinks or food.

Notable Events: There was this lady at Behan's that looked *exactly* like the character 'Superstar' from Saturday Night Live. She even *talked* like her. It was kind of creepy. Superstar's dog totally wanted to be on our team.

Although we didn't technically win a prize, the bartender was under the impression that we were part of the 2nd place team and were therefore entitled to a free round of drinks and promised us the same as we left the bar. So, I think the next time we go to Behan's we may be drinking for free, albeit somewhat underhandedly.

Outing #34: Candlepinheads

Pub/Bar: West on Centre (West Roxbury, MA) Tonight we attempted to return to the Publick House, but were thwarted once again by Trivia Jockey Ken's overwhelming popularity. Apparently, one needs to get there at 7:20 in order to secure a seat. Thank goodness West on Centre was just a quick drive away.

Day/date: Sunday, January 22nd

Outcome: 1st place, $40 gift certificate

Trivia Jockey: Mike. This is a different Mike from Charlie's/Razzy's Mike. This Mike does trivia at West on Centre and the Cityside (guess he's the guy that replaced Kitty O'Sheas/O'Neill's Chris, who used to TJ at the Cityside but, as one loyal reader informed us, no longer does so.) This Mike is also from Newfoundland. He did not like us very much. I'm sure those two facts are unrelated, but you never know with those crazy Canadians.

Crowd: It was a nice mixed crowd, all different ages. Not too townie, but definitely not a 'grad student' vibe either. There was this one guy off of whose ass I could not keep my eyes. His ass was absurdly small. Mind you, I'm not saying it was scrawny or skinny. It was...hmm, how do I say this...it clearly had a good deal of 'padding', it just happened to be only about 2" wide. Seriously, I think I've discovered some new type of dwarfism or midgetism or little people-dom. I'm going to call it midget-ass. (Or maybe he was an ass-dwarf?) Midget-ass dude was either on an extremely awkward date with or was randomly and ineffectively macking on this woman who looked like a total bitch. I commented to my teammate on her bitchiness and her complete non-responsiveness to midget-ass dude's flirtation and I think bitch-woman heard me because she turned around and gave me a real mean stare. But really, lady, you have to make up your mind. Either you talk to him and pretend to be having a good time, or you shut him down and move on.

Food/drink: The food here is really quite top notch. I had the Butternut Squash Soup and the Banana Bread Pudding for dessert. My teammate had the fish & chips. All were excellent. There was also a lamb burger on the menu that looked very tempting, too, but I was reined in by the physical limitations of my stomach. Also, I am happy to report that the bartenders at West on Centre are capable of making tasty and quite potent Carribbean Martinis. (They are also quite capable of pouring glasses of Shiraz, but that seems slightly less impressive.) Our wait service was unfortunately a bit slow, because our waitress was playing trivia with a group of her friends. I hate to be bitchy about this - about 85% of my friends have waited tables at some point and, trust me, I have realized by now that it's a shitty job and that most customers are dicks with unrealistic expectations of what you should be doing to earn your $2.75 an hour salary and I hate to fall into that category - but seriously, if you're the *only* waitress for the entire 15 teams that are playing trivia, perhaps it is not the best idea to spend 75% of your time socializing in plain sight of the 35 people who have empty glasses or are still waiting to place their food orders.

Ambience: Pretty nice. It has an urban/modern feel to it with a little bit of a contemporary country flair that you would not necessarily expect in the middle of West Roxbury. I was unduly fascinated by the color of the walls, sort of a sagey-goldeny-gray that looks modern and colonial-era at the same time. I'm already plotting to repaint my guestroom in said color. Apparently some members of my immediate circle of friends have issues with the artwork in this place, and I can see how this might be the case, since the 'artwork' is actually self-referential photographs of West on Centre on previous evenings. Only everything looks better in the photographs so you're left feeling let down that everyone appeared to be having a better time and eating much better food on some night other than tonight.

Notable Events: Not much to report here, although I think there was a team there that was working off of *very* recent 'life experience' to come up with the answers to the questions. They were just a *little* bit too enthusiastic when they heard they got each question right, like they were trying extra hard to prove that they didn't know whether they'd get the question right or not. Luckily, they came in 2nd place. It was close, though.

Also, while we're on the topic of Candlepinheadism (see team name), I feel the need to point out that Dave Barber is #1. Just in case you were wondering. Or if in the future you get a trivia question that asks "Who is #1?", now you'll know the answer. I'd also like to point out that, according to CN8 $30K-candlepin-challenge-announcers-extraordinaire John & Dan, I am married to a ponytail-sporting Candlepin bowler named Ken Spacone and Shawn's friend (who happens to live, oh, about 2,000 miles away from New England) is a Candlepin Bowling *legend* in the area and has won the division title 7 times since 1987. Don't ask.

Razzy's Buffalo-Wings Expedition

On rare occasions, I will also use this blog to report on how the Trivia Jihad spends our hard-won trivia cash. As mentioned earlier, we won $25 by default at Razzy's on Wednesday, and last night we spent it on hot wings and booze. There was also karaoke. The hot wings were tasty, and pitchers of beer were only $7.




After Razzy's there was a little Calypso/striptease extravaganza at my place. The party involved has asked me to take down the racier photos, and I have obliged. But trust me, the ass shots (complete with $10 bill sticking out of half-pulled down pants) are priceless.




If impromptu coffee table stripteases aren't enough to entice you onto the trivia jihad / drinking for free scene, I don't know what is.

Outing #33

Pub/Bar: Razzy's

Outcome: 1st place by default, $25 gift certificate. No other teams showed up (see my plea below.) Since we only needed to invest ten minutes of our time to receive our cash prize, our compensation rate tonight worked out to approximately $100 per hour per person. Much better than our usual minimum wage. I'm pretty sure Nancy only gave us a prize because she knew, like moths drawn to a flame, we'd be back in the near future and spending more than the gift certificate's value. Indeed, plans are afoot to return to Razzy's on Friday for hot wings and karoake. I like that the gift certificate has an expiration date 12 months in the future though. As if it would take anyone that long to come back.

Trivia Jockey: Mike. I would like to clarify that my previous posting regarding Mike's musical taste and his choice to play "Piss Up A Rope" was intended to be a shout out to Mike's musical acumen, not a criticism thereof.

Crowd: Although the place pretty much cleared out by 10 PM, when we arrived there were a lot of people there. The front room was basically pretty well filled up. Unfortunately, the other bar patrons were more interested in hitting on girls than in playing trivia.

Food/Drink: Of course we stayed at Razzy's even though there was no trivia. Skating with the Stars was on TV. How could we resist? The apple pie vodka and chocolate cherry vodka were both in excellent form tonight. Nancy truly is the sorceress of alcohol, although how she manages to also make these fabulous beverages completely incapable of causing even the slightest hangover is beyond me. Also, Kelly was mixing some excellent Grey Goose cosmopolitans. On Friday a group of us will be sampling the hot wings with some degree of earnestness and I will report back on that. One member of our party had the Jalapeno poppers and pronounced them delicious.

Ambience: I believe I have spoken on this point many a time before.

Notable Events: OK, folks, listen up 'cause I'm about to land some knowledge on you: Razzy's is awesome. Why you are not forwarding this blog entry to all your Slummervillian friends RIGHT NOW and encouraging them not to miss trivia night on Wednesdays at 8:30 is beyond me. Even if you *lose*, with draught beer at only $2 you won't have invested much in the evening. Perhaps you do not know where Razzy's is located: it is on Somerville Ave, in the vicinity of Central St/Massive Video and the Gol!!!!!! Supermercado. Perhaps you have passed by Razzy's but think the bars on the windows and wall to wall neon signs make it look sketchy: make no mistake, this is the source of its charm. If you like the Sligo, you will like Razzy's. Perhaps you have passed Razzy's but don't realize it - indeed, the tiny 'Razzy's' is dwarfed by the glowing Bud Light promotional sign on which it is printed. Perhaps one Wednesday evening you intended to enter Razzy's but were distracted by intense existential contemplation over the source and meaning of the name: we have all been there, my friend. Shake it off. Perhaps you think that I am only going on and on about Razzy's because I am somehow financially invested in the business or related to one of the proprietresses: I wish this were the case, because it would help make me look like less of a dork for being so obsessed with this seemingly hole-in-the-wall neighborhood bar.

There. I've said my piece. Now get your ass down to Razzy's next Wednesday.