Subbed for fair Polly at the Bridgeport last night, and had a pretty interesting time of it. I received lots of great New Years resolutions from teams, but unfortunately I barely had time to mentally process any of them (though I seem to remember one being something like “Have less indiscriminate sex,” which I STRONGLY disagreed with), so busy was I dealing with some shit that went down.

Upon arriving at the venue, I encountered an upstairs room completely packed with rabid Oregon Ducks fans, watching the school’s bowl game against Oklahoma State on a giant erected movie screen. It was so packed there was barely room for me and Executive Assistant Renee and Pub Quiz Station XR2-34, let alone tables full of bloodthirsty trivia geeks. So, in a fit of ass-covering improvisation, Manager Dave shuffled all us pub quizzers downstairs to a side room about the size of my Honda Civic, replete with flickering florescent lights and no sound system. Into this tiny space, we still managed to somehow pack in 44 people across nine teams. With Renee scoring and correcting in the corner at revamped Pub Quiz Station XR2-34, I danced about the room on my ballerina toes, hollering out questions and Who Am I clues and collecting forms and Who Am I guesses at a dazzling rate—many teams couldn’t even get out of their chairs due to being stuffed in so tight, and I wasn’t about to have everyone bring every answer to the table and therefore cause log jams of epic proportions.

In the end we actually had a pretty fun quiz, and everyone was a delightful sport about the whole thing. It was energizing being up on my feet the whole time, and I think the experience helped everyone bond a little bit closer (literally.)

Kudos to the two servers working our room as well, who balanced huge trays of beer and food while navigating throughways about the width of a postage stamp, and spilled nary a drop! I hope they got tipped well, especially by Cattle Prodigy, who took home the big first place loot by guessing the official name of the classic film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Both Porkchop Express and Team Yahtzee had the right idea with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but when it comes to final round questions us quizmasters have to be tough, so I discounted the imperfect answers. But I love you guys anyway! (And I hope you still love me. Please say you do. Please? I couldn’t take it if we were through because of this. I just couldn’t. Not now. Not here. You know how much you mean to me. We can work it out. I know we can. Don’t do this. Don’t do this.)

Happy New Year from Willy and the Oompa Loompas!