Mourir pour des ivrognes

Today I went with my parents to another bar where there's trivia, not the Sunday TriviaBar where W works. The prize at this new place is much more, and in cash. There are also only ten questions --- but those questions are truly trivial. Recondite, one might say.

My father is an extremely intelligent and educated man (though he does have his moments of disconnect). My mother, while not what you might call academically refined, is literally a human encyclopedia: she remembers every fact she learns. Friar, who was also there, is, like me, the product of many years of formal education. So we're all pretty erudite. We got two out of the ten questions. Two other teams tied with six.

To be fair, we don't know much about sports, and there were two sports questions. But it's pretty sad that the only thing we knew for sure was a Simpsons question.

***

Friar and I went to the Hangout. Then he and I, with Mr. Hangout and Paris (a very rich, idle playboy who for whatever reason his drink-addled brain concocts doesn't much like me) went to a different bar. I drove Mr. Hangout's big, expensive car. At the other place, we saw K briefly. She was, along with a bunch of hot hippie chicks and elderly-looking fellows who might have been original hippies, dancing to the not unpleasant sounds of a Grateful Dead cover band.

There was a weird flare-up which I can't really explain when Mr. Hangout paid the cover for the rest of us, Paris threw a hundred-dollar bill on the table, informed me he had been threatening me earlier in the car, and stormed out in a snit. He didn't come back. We didn't stay long.

Back at Hangout, a pall seemed to have been cast over the whole evening. Friar and I played video games and were joined by AL, a rather know-it-all guy, around 50 or so, who's nice enough but tends to mocking laughter when other people don't know things he does. Having been the object of his short, barking laugh more than a few times, this evening I rather piled on the sarcasm in return when he made mistakes. I later regretted doing that. Everybody's got their little idiosyncrasies and insecurities, and who am I to sneer back at a harmless old barfly just because he likes knowing stuff?