This entry brought to you by caffeine fueled insomnia. That old familiar somatic state. It’s 12:34am. Dark. Quiet. The planets are aligned for a real throwback blog entry. So much of what’s written here has been forged under similar conditions. The only thing missing is an impending exam, the perfect trigger to procrastinate through inwardly focused writing. These college kids nowadays have no idea. There was no AI back in my day. I had to stumble through all my school shit with pure chemical fueled panic and moxy. I shake my metaphorical cane!

Last week my mom convinced me and Claw to go out for trivia at a local dive bar. This is a neighbourhood bar that I have always known existed, but never actually been to (I left for school far away from my hometown at 18 years old). It’s a place my parents would go to have a good time on Halloween (in costume). Meanwhile, I would be done trick or treating and settling into a rented horror movie on VHS and consuming a completely unreasonable amount of glorious 1980s candy.

The occasion for bar trivia was my mom’s birthday. We had a nice meal, cake and gift giving at her place, then headed to the bar. My dad, aunt, cousin and his girlfriend also came. My mom had three friends meet us at the bar, so we got a big table and settled in as a formidable group of ten. The bar had a good vibe. Completely unpretentious and come as you are. T.Bay is a blue collar city, and this was certainly a blue collar bar. When I wanted a beer, they didn’t have a stout or a cream ale (and I felt kind of like an ass asking for one). No fancy imported Guinness here. It felt like an American townie bar, but Canadian. So there was a unexpected friendliness. It’s probably not fair to generalize American bars like that. I’m likely tainted by living in Boston from 2005 to 2025. Walking into a Boston dive bar where your face isn’t known generally elicits an epic level of frosty indifference from the patronage. I’m sure there are many welcoming, positive vibe dive bars in the USA. You just have to leave Massachusetts to find them.

So we’re at the bar for trivia. My mom’s friends all work at a local catholic elementary school, either as teachers or administrators. They’re all 50-60ish ladies, and they all know exactly how many days until their respective retirement dates. Tough, no nonsense ladies all set to blow off some steam. Trivia is a regular weekly occurrence for them. They told me their goal was to get third place. They’ve never done that well, but thought they had a chance with us there. My guess is that my mom had hyped us up ahead of time. The trivia had apparently been dominated by two other teams for 5 weeks straight. The top team was from a well known suburb of the city, that has a funny sounding name. It made me legitimately laugh every time my mom’s friends complained about them, saying their ridiculous town name scornfully. These ladies clearly craved victory and could feel this might be the night with ringers in the house.

The trivia was a name-that-tune competition. The MC would play snippets of a song, 20 second or so, then we would write the artist and song name down if someone on the team knew it. No phones. Anyone caught using an app or even playing on their phone would result in disqualification.

We had a strong team for this. The 70s and 80s were covered well by the school ladies and my parents, young boomers. My aunt covered the old side of Gen X. Claw and I covered the young Gen X – old Millennial era. My younger cousin and his gf could cover garbage (sorry) Gen Z music. I would say my wheelhouse is music from ahhh about 1993 – 2010. That’s really where I was deep into exploring new music with a strong awareness of pop music. The evidence is all over old entries in this blog. I love music. Even outside of my wheelhouse, I’m not awful. Pretty sharp with new stuff, not too bad with pre-90s stuff.

Hoo boy, this post is meandering. You know I used to be clear and concise. WTF happened.

Let’s get to the crux…. I brought the heat. They Might Be Giants, Great Big Sea, Beyonce, Fountains of Wayne, Lonely Island, Fifth Harmony, Loverboy, the Offspring, Dropkick Murphys. I was killing it. Nailing the song titles. Round after round. My aunt picked off the few country jams. My mom got a John Lennon B-side that everyone else thought was Bob Dylan. My dad got Styx. The school ladies got Donna Summer and some 80s jams. Our Gen Z couple contributed nothing but silence and perplexed looks (shame!). Still, we absolutely crushed it. As final scores were being announced, we learned we finished at least top three. When we found out we beat the rival town, my mom’s elementary school friends were yelling out trash talk to the whole bar. They were so excited, “it’s like Miss America, and we’re in the final two!”. Then the MC announced we won. Pandemonium, cheering, taunting, celebration, wildly exceeding our expectations. We got a fun prize bag. The school ladies insisted I come back next Wednesday, and they buy food.

It was a really good time, but I don’t think that will be our new Wednesday night ritual. It’s more fun to have dropped in on a single occasion and won the game anyway. That’s how legends are made.