2001-07-15 - 11:25 p.m.

I Don't Know Jack

Since Lily didn't have to work on Monday, she and I decided to do something a little different. We went to the nearest video rental place and looked for a game we could rent for our Playstation 2, something we could play together.

Oddly enough, most of the games for the PS2 seemed to be one player games. All the ones that weren't one-player looked to be road race games. We already have one of those, and we're not finding it very fun.

Then we ran across the quiz show game "You Don't Know Jack." It seemed like the ideal choice: it was multiple player, it wasn't a road race, and I'd always been a little a little curious about it.

When we got the game home, we decided to make a party of it. I made us a pitcher of grasshoppers (my favorite drink) and we settled down to play.

On the way back from the video store we discussed who was likely to win at "You Don't Know Jack." Lily said that I should win because I seem to be such a trivia magnet. Besides, I've had twenty more years to fill my head with useless information.

The results of the first game pretty much bore this out. I absolutely slammed Lily and got the record high score. Little did I know that this would STILL be the record high score at the end of the night.

The second game was much more touch and go. We were very close until I pulled ahead at the end.

I also noticed something annoying - when Lily was far behind the game would actually start favoring her. For instance if she was too far behind she would get a free bonus round just for her - just so she could catch up.

All the while we were quaffing grasshoppers. Neither one of us are really big drinkers, but Lily has a far greater tolerance to alcohol than I do. As a diabetic I'm not supposed to touch alcohol, but I drink so seldom, I don’t really feel that it's a problem. In fact I probably drank more tonight than I drank all last year!

As we started our second game I began to notice something annoying. While I clearly knew more trivia than Lily, she was much better at buzzing in than me. In a question where we both knew the answer, inevitable she would beat me to the punch.

One time I tried to counteract that advantage by buzzing in early on a question that I was sure I knew the answer on, and the game penalized me for being such an eager beaver. Bastards!

So I lost the third game by a fairly narrow margin. This made me determined to win the fourth game.

It was an unmitigated disaster - Lily absolutely crushed me. The main reason for the lopsided score was that I was taking foolish risks in order to win. As the game entered the last few question I wasn't that far behind, but some rash behavior hurt me badly.

The score now tied 2-2, we started the fifth game which was going to be the last because we both were getting tired, and we'd already nearly finished the second pitcher of grasshoppers.

We both were tipsy, but not really drunk. I was, however, having trouble focusing my eyes - a sign that I was very tired.

The game was very close, but I managed to win narrowly. However at one point Lily was helping me by reading out the clues to me that I was having trouble making out. I really think that renders my victory null, so the real total was 2{-2{.

That was actually a lot of fun, although I felt like crap the following day. We'll have to rent more two-player games in the future. I just have to remember not to get annoyed if I lose.