Facts About Fruits

I lead trivia nights in a few local bars. I double source my questions, but every now and again someone wants to argue a point.

Last night, a dude took me to task for calling an avocado a vegetable. But no, he insisted, it's a fruit! He had his smartphone out to prove his point, ready to educate me with the true facts. Yep, it's the fruit of the avocado tree, but culturally it's a vegetable, just like, oh, most of what we consider vegetables. He wasn't having it. Culturally? Culturally! But it's a fruit!

Packing up my gear, I didn't want to stand around and argue taxonomy. Plus, turns out this gent was throwing darts and just happened to hear me be wrong and felt the need to rectify that issue. He'd never played my trivia and told me that he never would, since I clearly did not care about the truth. I gave him a thumbs up, grabbed my bag, and got the fuck out. I wonder what outcome he was expecting from that encounter. I don't think he got whatever he was after.

12:04 and trivia is over.

At least until tomorrow, when I do it all over again at Corner Pocket. I've been running bar trivia nights for almost 2 and a half years now. I have to say, as a side job it sure beats digging ditches. Right now, though, my Monday night crowd is slowly fading away. Are they tired? Bored? Some come on another night now, at another time. Some just disappeared.

I have to come up with more of a crowd. If there's no competition, what fun is it? I should promote a little heavier, come up with fun new rounds. Somewhere there is an untapped crowd, and I need to entice them down to answer unimportant questions and drink more than they should on Monday.

Bar Trivia in Tallahassee

I think y'all already know this, but I figured I'd announce it again. Every week I lead two nights of pub trivia at local bars. Monday nights, 10:30 pm to a little after midnight, at Mockingbird Cafe on N. Monroe and Tuesday nights, 7:30 to 9:30 pm, at Corner Pocket on Apalachee Parkway. Each has its own flavor. Mockingbird is slightly drunker, slightly older, slightly more hipster, a little looser in feel. Corner Pocket involves a lot of grad students so it's a little less sloppy. Either way, the questions are much the same.

I do 5 rounds of ten questions each. They usually (although not always) break down like this:
1st: picture pages (10 themed pictures to be identified, everything from hood ornaments to iconic people)
2nd: current events, always
3rd: third round is the nerd round - straight up trivia (inventions, geography, religion, etc)
4th: pop culture (cult movies, cartoon theme songs, food in fiction, etc)
5th: oddball stuff (kids' games, before and after, slang, etc)

Highest scoring teams win bar tabs at the end of the night. I encourage funny guesses, dirty team names, plenty of drinking, and tipping the bartenders. In a town where you can find bar trivia any night of the week, I try to stand out with plenty of questions, simple rules, and fun information. No premade questions here - I put together all the rounds myself every week.

So, if you're in Tally and you like to think and drink, come check it out. You'll have fun. For a weekly hint and any updates, join the official FB page at:
http://www.facebook.com/bartriviawithhank

keep drinking, start thinking

Have I mentioned that I've started running a trivia night at the Rusty Bucket, a local dive/biker bar? I delight in trivia. I roll in it. I keep buckets of it under my bed. As they say, I don't know everything about anything, but I know a little something about everything.

As I've written about before, for years I met up with my team - go, Drinkin' 'Bout It! - once a week to down beers and test our knowledge base against other boozy brainiacs. I mean, it makes sense that this would be my main outside hobby - it combines two of my favorite things on Earth. If I could find a bar trivia night run by hot gals in small clothes, my life would be complete.

But when the trivia night I'd grown used to shut down late last year, I called it quits. I needed a break. Had to have some time off. Recently I felt the old pull, so I spoke to the owner of the Bucket, a bar my friends and I have made our smoky home. She loved the idea, we settled on Mondays from 8 to 10, I decided on my format, and we were off to the races.

It's only been a few weeks now, but I get a real kick out of being Trivia Master. Five rounds of ten questions each means I spend my Sunday evenings putting together 50 questions about everything from weird sports (chessboxing! wife carrying!) to marine biology. The folks who have been playing seem to enjoy it (I had some grumbles about my Salma Hayek round, in honor of the golden globes, ahem, but it was all in fun). The bar's making money. And I get to play with my brain and drink for free. What could be better?

Anyway, long story longer, if you're in the Tallahassee area you should think of coming by some Monday soon. Get a team (5 people or less, please) or fly solo. I'll be happy to see you. And if you mention that you saw this blog post, I'll give you an extra point the first time you play.