Portland P

Pub Quiz
Thursday, January 19
I read about Pub Quizzes on craigslist and thought it would be a great activity for tonight. Fortunately I had company: my friends Krishnee and Sebastian, and Joe (who works with Sebastian). We got to the Belmont Inn at 34th and Belmont a few minutes before seven and the place was pleasantly packed. There was one spot in the back behind the pool tables.

It started off hopefully enough when we got bonus points before it even started. As I was in line waiting to register our group ($3 per person), I heard the quizmaster announce that the theme tonight was weddings and marriage and that anyone bringing something wedding-related would get extra points. The people in front of me had a framed wedding photo. When I got to the head of the line I said: "I brought a married couple (Krishnee and Sebastian). Does that count?" The quiz-master conferred with his helper and decided, since they are newlyweds, yes, we would get the points.

It was mostly downhill from there. In addition to questions from the quiz-master, there are handouts that you work on at your leisure. One was on celebrity marriage. Krishnee and I looked at it, then looked at each other...we didn't know a single one! And we concluded that was not a bad thing, although some of the answers came to our group later on. Only a few of the live questions were actually about marriage. Some of the questions we got right:

The eyelid is the fastest moving muscle (Sebastian nailed that one.)
Lauren Bacall was not married to Frank Sinatra.
Terry Gilliam was the only non-Brit in Monty Python.

The pot we were playing for was $213, but we didn't even make the final round. Still it was great fun and the evening ended with a plethora of p's as we went to the Paragon in the Pearl District (parallel parking on the way) drinking pomegranate mojitos and discussing piloting, philosophy, and psychology while looking outside through plexiglass panels. Too bad that wasn't on the quiz!