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Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Brain cells

Blogger's playing tricks. I thought my original post (below) had disappeared so I rewrote it and, what do you know, they both appeared. The duplicate has since been deleted.

Last night I had a night out without the husband or the kids. It was a strange feeling. A friend asked me to be on her team for a trivia game hosted by a local history professor and his newspaper editor wife, being played publicly for the first time at a local sports bar instead of their living room. The turn out was not as great as they'd hoped, but it was only the inaugural. Two bucks per person to play, winner takes the pot. Sounded pretty good.

We came in third. Out of three teams.

Sad that we couldn't remember the big Olympic swimming hero Michael Phelps who brought home more medals than anyone else. This one had a semi-legitimate explanation at least. Hurricane Charley knocked out power for weeks during the games and when you could find a newspaper or listen to a radio broadcast, it was all about emergency services. There's no excuse though, for not having heard his name in connection with his recent DUI.

Sadder still that we didn't know China had a president, or weren't able to recognize his name, Hu Jintao, as the leader of one of the world's most powerful nations.

Saddest of all though, was surely the final bonus question, a twenty pointer that using our round's "double" option would have made it forty. A question that I, as the youngest participant by at least ten years, should have had no problem answering.

"What rock star followed his mother, Roxie Roker, who played the wife in the bi-racial couple on The Jeffersons, into show business?"

Oh! Oh! I know this one! It's, it's, what's-his-name! Okay, he's obviously black, and there's really only two big black rockers, Jimi Hendrix and this other guy! Trying to jar some memory from my teammates I encouraged them, "You know, he was married to Lisa Bonet... He did the Gap commercials..." Oh, man, we just listened to his album about 40,000 times... What the hell is his name?!

Um, can I phone a friend?

Given enough time, and beer, I would have eventually come up with his name. Like the night this past spring, sitting around my cousin's kitchen table in Boston discussing one-hit wonders with her and her brother. "Speaking of that, whatever happened to [our other cousin] Rich Cronin's band?"

"Don't know. Haven't heard anything about him since their last album."

"You never even heard their last album."

"I heard of it. The first one was pretty good."

"What was the name of his band again?"

"Uhhhhhhh..."

"Ummmmm..."

"Don't tell me you can't remember."

"Can you?"

"What was it?!"

"I can't remember!"

This went on for several minutes with the three of us laughing so hard there were tears in our eyes and alcoholic beverages shooting out of our noses. The other people in the room were not quite sure exactly what was so funny, which just made us laugh harder. The more we tried, the blanker we got. I was accused of being too drunk and was determined to prove otherwise. Out of the dark recesses of my short term memory popped, "I know! It's one of those alphabet names! ABC, XYZ?"

"UPS?"
"U2?"
"F.U.!"

"HBO?"
"H2O?"
"B&O?"
"L&O?"
"N.O.!"

"ELO?"
"UFO!"

I finally redeemed myself, "LFO! Ha! I am not wasted!"

We then lapsed into hysterics again as we tried to remember what LFO stood for. Next someone wanted to know what Rich's brother Michael had been up to lately.

"Last I heard he was managing that other boy band, uhhhh, what's it called?"

"P-town?"
"Beantown...?"
"Oh my God! What is it?!"

By that time people were leaving the room, shaking their heads and mumbling, "You people ah retahded."

Did I mention Alzheimer's runs in our family?

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