My Mister Magoo Moment

 My wife and I have been playing music trivia with a group of friends once a week for the past eight years.  We’re known as the Fried Mushrooms—‘FM’ for short’—and we’ve gotten to be quite competitive over the years.  For most of the members of our team, ‘competitive’ means we pretty much know our stuff.

But I’m not ‘most members.’ To me ’competitive’ means exactly what it implies: An aversion to losing.  Losing sucks, otherwise it wouldn’t be called losing.  Just win, baby.    

Now hold onto that thought because I’m about to tell you why tonight sucked.  And it wasn’t because we didn’t know our stuff.  Not even close.

Let me first explain the format for the music trivia competition: The official Rules of Engagement:

·      There are four rounds consisting of four songs each. 

·      Each round has a ‘theme.’ 

·      Three points each are awarded for correctly identifying the song title, the artist and the year of release (plus or minus one year) and if all three are correctly answered there is a bonus of one point.

·      There is also a halftime trivia question (worth 10 points and based on ‘Today in Music History’) and a final ‘Jeopardy-style’ question where you can wager at least one and up to all of your points. 

·      Prizes are awarded for first, second (or ‘first loser,’ as I call it) and third (or ‘third’ as the rest of my team calls it). 

Tonight’s competition was a little different: Five bonus points would be awarded if the year was identified exactly.  Do you know what happens when the reward is magnified?  It has the same effect on my competitive nature. 

The first round was my worst nightmare: Classic Country.  If I were to play music trivia by myself, my team name would be ‘No Country for Old Man’ because in all honesty, I hate that sh*t.  Let me rephrase it another way: I hate that sh*t. (Sorry, I tried.)  However, tonight’s country music round was different than normal: I actually knew some of the songs.  A Boy Named Sue (Johnny Cash, 1969), The Most Beautiful Girl in the World (Charlie Rich, 1973) and Mountain Music (Alabama, 1982); yep, nailed them all.  Even the fourth song I was able to correctly name the title (I guess listening to the song paid off): Silver Wings. Here’s the strangest part: If I were playing as ‘No Country for Old Man’ against the country experts on the Fried Mushrooms I would have been ahead of them after the first round.  Yes sir; I was el fuego.

The second round was right up my alley: Obscure Hits of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s.  Season of the Witch (the Donovan version, not the Vanilla Fudge remake), Mississippi Queen, Moondance and Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo.  With the exception of Moondance (The year of release was 1970; I said 1977 because that’s what displays on the ‘70’s channel every time it plays.  Thanks for nothing, XM radio.) we had a perfect round and took a commanding lead into halftime, especially after answering the halftime question correctly (something about a roadie for Def Leppard losing his life prior to a 1988 concert).

Halftime is a 10-minute break in the action after the second round that I normally use to eat my dinner that has been sitting in front of me for anywhere from five minutes to 30 minutes, depending on what I order, how busy the restaurant is and whether or not a country music round was played in the second round because if that’s the case I can spend the second round eating since I never have anything to contribute because I don’t know sh*t about country music.  Except tonight, because I was el fuego.

Speaking of being on fire, tonight was the first time I ordered the hottest chicken wing in the restaurant: Venom.  I asked the waitress if that meant they were ‘flavor hot’ or ‘hot-for-the-sake-of-being-hot hot.’  She said the former; it was the latter.  How did I feel after eating a single chicken wing?  Imagine coating your lips with a layer of lighter fluid—how are you doing so far?—and then pressing your lips against a lit match.  Like I said: El fuego.

The third round was sort of up my alley: One Hit Wonders of VH1.  Tarzan Boy (Baltimora, 1986—I missed this the first two times I ever heard it and I SWORE I would never miss it again.  So far so good.), 99 Luftballoons (Nena, 1984), Funky Town (Lipps Inc., 1980) and Hooked on a Feeling (Blue Swede, 1974—at first I wasn’t sure if I was making up the name of the group or if it was buried in the deep recesses of my mind.  Fortunately it was the latter.).  

With a huge lead going into the fourth round it was virtually impossible for us to reach the final Jeopardy-style question without being in first place.  That was a good thing for us because the fourth round was ‘90’s R & B.’ Remember how bad I said I was at country music?  Our entire team is that bad at ‘90’s R & B.  And boy did it show tonight.  We only named one song correctly (only because the singer said ‘This is how we do it’ over and over and over again) and two years of release correctly (we guessed on both of them). As for the artists, I’m pretty sure we were making some of them up and no--Blue Swede was not one of them.

The final question calls for a wager with only one stipulation: You have to bet at least one point.  In spite of our horrendous fourth round we were still in first place.  Comfortably.  The category—released on Facebook earlier in the day--for the final question was ‘Current Weird Al.’  An internet search revealed Weird Al Yankovic had just released a new album and a new song was being released on video for eight consecutive days.  Today happened to be the third day.

I meticulously looked over the point totals for each team.  As we often do when we have the lead at the end of the fourth round, we wagered just enough points to beat the second-place team by one point should we both answer the question correctly and the second-place team bet all of its points.  I double- and triple-checked my math and when I was comfortable with my calculation I turned in our wager. 

The final question asked for the names of the first three songs Weird Al had released.  We answered correctly, as did the second-place team.  As the host of the event always does, he read off the name of the third-place team first.  Next he read the name of the second-place (first loser) team: Fried Mushrooms.  Finally, in first place was the team I wagered enough points to beat by one point should we both answer the question correctly, which we did. 

Second place?  Not according to my math.  On two occasions over the years I’ve challenged our announced point totals when I thought the DJ made a mistake.  I was right on both occasions and I was all about to go el fuego on his a** when I realized the mistake was not his, but mine. 

You see, our total points after four rounds was 142.  Without my reading glasses on my ‘2’ looked an awful lot like an ‘8’ and I had based our final wager on our team having 148 points; not 142. 

Hey everybody, look!   Mister Magoo is playing music trivia tonight!

Tonight it would have helped if I had applied the ‘four eyes’ principle to my wager and had someone else on the team double check my math.

Next week I assure you I won’t make the same mistake, because next week the ‘four eyes’ will be all mine: I’ll be wearing my reading glasses. 

That way I’ll know the score… as well as be able to read the menu so I’m not at the mercy of the waitress to offer culinary suggestions that make my mouth el fuego.