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  -- Avert your eyes, it's "The Italian Gerbil." Pointing like doofs: Charlie, Shawn, Chris and Cooch. July 12, 2003 - Viva TRASH Vegas, Day One "Some People Are Wayyyy Too Smart For Their Own Good." The impetus for this whole trip was Viva TRASH Vegas, an event piggybacking on the second-annual Game Show Congress. Both were held at the off-Strip Hampton Inn Tropicana, which would be a very nice hotel to stay at if you weren't a mile from the Las Vegas Strip.
Ignoring that the tournament was held in Las Vegas, Viva was exactly like every other college bowl event that's ever been held. There were scheduling problems, things ran a little late and tended to stray from what were the appointed plans. But the tournament was held in Las Vegas, and given the amount of planning that had to go into things just to get it off the ground, everyone who ran the thing ought to be commended.
With nine teams on our side, we'd play eight games on Saturday, with the top four from each nine-team division advancing to Sunday's playoff tournament. Powered by the buffet at the nearby Orleans, where I had a breakfast including, but not limited to, country fried steak, cantaloupe and a cheese blintz, we were off to play college bowl within view of the Bellagio.
Playing against Jason Block and Tim Sternberg, winners of a combined $141,000 on Millionaire, Charlie answers his only tossup of the entire tournament -- a question about the Brian Setzer Orchestra. Given this was the first time he'd ever even seen a college bowl game, and that his tossup came before I had even buzzed in once, it made for some juicy ridicule to wash down breakfast with.
I read the packet of questions we submitted for the event in this round, in a game that pitted Thick Ranch Dressing with Viva Las Ketchup. To put it lightly, our pack (mainly written by me and readable in its original form here) went over like Al Sharpton at a KKK meeting.
Among those we faced here were Ed Toutant, a $1.86 million Millionaire winner. All I really recall about this game is I had a rare run of kicking serious ass, and that our opponents took our picture before the game began ... so they could remember who assaulted them. I may also have answered a question on white Canadian rapper Snow, but we really don't need to get into that.
We didn't actually play the famed actor, but Christopher Walken Is The King Of New York New York Hotel & Casino, a team from Berkeley and past TRASHionals champions. To put it lightly, we had no business beating them ... guess we just have to thank the questions as appropriate.
And at that point, it was time to break for lunch. Which meant only one thing for me ...  -- [Cue holy hallelujah sound.] Admittedly, the romance of IN-N-OUT will die a little for me with the end of my relationship with Meg. But to just discount what is easily the best hamburger chain in America is to sell it short. I don't even like hamburgers all that much, yet an IN-N-OUT burger is on a level that just makes you enjoy it. You can taste the fact that the burger was made fresh and never frozen, taste how good the ingredients are and see that the people behind the counter actually care about doing a good job. Plus if you're there as long as we were, in the busy lunchtime rush, you can look in the back and watch them make the food ... right down to watching the peeled potatoes get cut to fries and then be immediately fried. It's such a great meal that before we even ate it, I had to go to New York New York to work up an appetite,  -- then went to the craps table to evacuate my wallet.
It's the power of the burgers, I tell you. And the amazing thing is I probably had about three other questions I could have gotten had Chris not decided he wanted to go all mercy rule.
It was not so much a matter of us losing, because we knew that was going to happen. This was the cosmic payback for us winning the Berkeley game, as this pack was essentially designed for us to suck at it. The only question we really had any shot at in about the first eight was about Strong Bad, and I got smoked on it. Any time I make all the buzzes for a team up until about the 16th of 20 tossups, you're just not going to win. Ever.
Having read our pack to the Dressing in Round Two, and having seen them fall flat on it, I didn't really expect much of a fight. And then we were down 165 points. One of the guys we played was named Mark Vincent. Sadly, he wasn't this Mark Vincent.
This was about the point I decided ostensibly spending $1,000 to go to this was a bad idea.
Then Shawn saved us and assured we'd return on Sunday morning. Must have been the ride he took on the room's stationary bike before the game began, because it certainly wasn't me ... to the point of where I just got up and went to the bathroom halfway through the game. And that was it. We managed to hang on to the final playoff spot in the Roy Bracket, having needed that last win to ensure we'd need to set the hotel room alarm clock for the second straight day. Given the event had run a little long, and that Shawn had a dinner with his wife and tickets to the night's Dennis Miller performance, we were very quickly back on the road and on our own for the evening, as we were not the winners of those Penn & Teller tickets straight from the stars themselves. Needing to eat, Charlie and I did quite well at NYNY's America, then retreated downstairs for what had to be the trip's most amazing accomplishment -- Charlie playing quarter video blackjack with a series of three dollars for more than an hour. Looking like Geoffrey Rush pounding the piano keys in Shine, he ran his first dollar up to more than $4 before losing it all, and his third to $5 before doing the same thing.
After a couple hours wandering, we retreated to the room in time to see the now-legendary news report on Hunting For Bambi, the men-shoot-naked-women-with-paintball-guns game which was partially explained by its creator saying, "The main goal is to be as true to nature as possible. I don't go deer hunting and see a deer with a football helmet on so I don't want to see one on my girl either." And here I'd thought the tournament would be the weirdest thing I'd see on Saturday. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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AOL IM: JonCoochBU |
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