Author: Kelly Neukom
It is pretty much a rule that if an English person travels to a different country, they will just want to do English things there. I learned this when I went to Barcelona last year and saw English people all gathered in one establishment-a faux British pub in the city center. So when my English friend was coming to LA and wanted to go to a pub quiz, “Booze Clues,” with me at The Echo recently, I was not in the least bit surprised.
Most people outside of Great Britain have no idea what a pub quiz is. It entails a pub filled with teams of several people (at The Echo, it was up to six) who answer trivia questions read to them by a Master of Ceremonies. Although the trivia can be in any field, a lot of it tends to focus around British history and hobbies, so I never did too well on them when I was studying abroad. (Do you know what a sticky wicket in cricket is?)
At The Echo, however, they had a spring theme in the trivia game, which meant a person from any nationality could participate on equal grounds. My two friends and I were almost the smallest team there (beaten by a two-person team), and-determined to rock the huge groups of 30-something hipsters around us-we chose a kick-ass team name: Fat Kids Are Harder to Kidnap. The MC guffawed when we told him our choice.
The first question was easy enough: Who wrote “The Wasteland?” But then it got harder. What is the name of the new documentary about marijuana that just came out? What is the name of the cult in Texas that was busted for forcing minors to marry? What is the name of one of Mars’s moons named after the Greek god of fear? Though our combined credentials included a religious following of the New York Times and NPR, we were stumped.
The next level of the game was a handout that had pictures of flowers on it, which we had to name. I knew most of them (who doesn’t know what a hibiscus looks like?) and my friends were impressed at my knowledge. One of them was a picture of the Venus fly trap from Little Shop of Horrors, whose name I couldn’t remember despite my high school having put it on when I was a sophomore. I was disappointed with myself.
The last part was money-themed, since it was April 15 (Tax Day). The MC played 20-second sound bytes of popular songs with money in the lyrics and we had to name the title and artist. Although the ’80s-era ones were difficult, we definitely had a leg up on Generation X when he began playing Puff Daddy and Destiny’s Child. “I had never heard this song before today, but I really like it,” the MC said when he put on “Bills, Bills, Bills.” Never heard of it? How was this possible?!In the end, we were third to last (there were around 15 groups or so), but we ended up getting free drink tickets for the “most creative group name.” A free glass of cheap red wine is all I need to convince me to come back-that and an absence of cricket-related questions.
Booze Clues is held every two weeks at The Echo on Sunset Blvd. The next installment will be held May 13. For more information, go to attheecho.com.
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