Tuesday is the best day of the week [Reprise]

As some of you may remember, way back in the day on my blog (see post here) I had claimed that Wednesday was the best day of the week. It had it all! New comics! Lost! Trivia Night! How could that be beat? Well, a number of things happened to bring down the quality a little bit. First off, Hooters closed which effectively killed trivia night. Second off, Lost moved to Thursday. Finally, it is still the standard comic day, but one in every five Wednesday's don't even bring my sweet, sweet comics into my grasp (like today).

So even though it is still very lustrous as comic days have only gotten better (seriously, combine becoming friends with Will and Jared from my comic shop with the major events that are happening right now - Secret Invasion AND Final Crisis - well, let's just say my visits are satisfiying) and Colver and I have picked up Wednesday as our official day to go play basketball and show off our mad hops and elite dunking skills. So it's still a great day.

However, last night Tuesday launched it's first salvo in what may become a very ferocious war for "best day of the week" (clearly weekends are exempted - they're weekends! they are obviously the best), as three fantastic events went down for the first time, with one being a weekly repeat for sure and the other two potentially standing up as weekly or bi-weekly events. What were they?

• Trivia Night v 2.0
• Foosball at Koots
• Rock Band at Koots

As we discovered last night, the Drunken Cowboys (back from the dead!) may have found a new home at one of the least likely of places - Eddie's Sports Bar. Arguably a bit of dive, Eddie's essentially has become the spiritual descendant of Hooters, except it may in fact be somewhat less classy (as unbelievable as that sounds). However, it does have a few things going for it.

• Fast paced
• Reasonable questions
• FREE!
• Cheap Taco Bar!
• Shuffleboard, Darts, and Pool
• Decent service

Of course, it misses a little somethin' somethin' that Hooters had going on, it was still really fun and very packed. Strangely enough, considering Humpy's is a far "cooler" bar, it seemingly is by far the worst of the three trivia nights. I personally can't wait for next week, as we almost won and the money is carrying over to next week ($400!! Bling bling!).

In addition, they have two man team Sports trivia on Thursday's, which Colver and I will start attending next week. This is where I will likely unleash my fury, as I have a rather encyclopedic knowledge of all things sports. Besides gymnastics. I know nothing about gymnastics.

After this, we were nearing the revelation of Rock Band supergroup Bitchface (as we've so colorfully named ourselves) starring the one time Hey Hermano and current Puma Town singer, guitarist, and drummer...aka Amy, myself, and Jason, and the shredding champion of Eagle River band Five Star Whammy...aka Jon. We went a while early to hang out and have a couple drinks (don't worry kids, I know it was a school night plus I had a blood test the next day - all water for me, so the night was cheap!) and play some Foosball.

As some may know, I've always despised Foosball. I generally don't like doing things I'm bad at, and I was terrible at Foosball. However, since getting involved with the crew, their overwhelming passion for the sport has rubbed off on me a bit, and after playing A LOT I've become not bad at the game. At times good, but I make a ton of dumb mistakes still. Regardless, the teams were Jason and myself (fresh off of a 4-0 evening at the Homestead Lounge two weekends previous) and the shooting stars that are Amy and Jon. Now if I was going to do a ranking on skills of us four, it'd likely go as follows.

1. Amy
2. Jon
3. Jason
4. Me

However, in true sporting fashion the most talent does not always win. No sir it does not. This time, the best team won. That team? The Slo Mo Rollers, starring Jason and myself. We took five of six games from the absolutely shocked Amy and Jon, as they simply could not handle Jason's staunch defense, my magical dribbling up front, and our perplexing off-speed shots.

It was about as much fun as I've ever had playing Foosball, and honestly, we may have taken five of six but every possession and game were close (besides one, where we shut them out). I'd say it was Foosball on steroids, but that be a bit cliche, although there was a lot of yelling and hooting and hollering. Mostly from yours truly.

After our six games, we were totally ready to rock. Sadly, Rock Band was not in the Swing Bar at Koots like we thought, with the wide open spaces of that bar but a dream as we had to go and play in the weird bar in the entry way of Koots. It's tight, confined spaces were not ideal for Bitchface's premiere, but in typical fashion for the band, we persevered if only in the name of rock.

Of course, the situation wasn't helped by the fact the first song we played Jason had to drum on lefty mode (as we didn't know how to switch) and myself and Jon were using sub-par house guitars. We're used to having room to move, kick, and dance with my wide open living room and our two cordless guitars. This was with a Guitar Hero 2 wired controller (bleh!) and a Rock Band wired controller (even worse than the first!).

From left: Random stranger, Jason, and Amy rocking at Koots

But that's enough for excuses. We still totally rocked, starting off with old standby "Wanted Dead or Alive" by Bon Jovi, which I totally blew at to start (the intro always bugs me on expert) but picked it up and we manged to do OK. We followed it up with a far better run through on "War Pigs" by Black Sabbath and then an even better yet rendition of Oasis' classic ballad "Wonderwall," which we even had an audience member sing along to (thanks guy!!).

About that point a guy came over and bugged us to let him play, and I let him take my spot. He was not good, as he played on medium and forced crappy songs on the band, bringing our overall appeal down. Bad stranger!

However, after two songs he departed and Bitchface ended our inaugral performance with a rousing rendition of Weezer's classic track off the Blue Album, "Say It Ain't So." All four of us played expert, and we finished at 90% (Jason on drums, rock on!), 96% (myself on guitar), 97% (Jon on bass), and 98% for our showoff, diva of a lead singer Amy. Five stars, foooo shoooo.

All in all, it was a great experience. It won't necessarily be an every week thing, but it was definitely a lot of fun. I really hope someone puts on a Rock Band competition that we can participate in, as that was what we were really hoping for. However, we did the best with what we had and we had a great night. Even better, it was a ton of fun and I spent $1 (on Foosball) and all that I had to drink was about 10 glasses of water.

Oh Tuesdays...how I love thee.

Liars! You're making me unhappy!

The title of this post is of course in direct reference to the old slogan to Hooters - "It makes you happy." Well you know what Hooters...you most definitely did not make this guy happy.

Tragically, Hooters of Anchorage, Alaska is now closed for business (until supposedly the summer). This is terrible news, as it happened to fall on the very day we were to go to Trivia, and doubly terrible because Lacey's fiance Kevin was going to get his first foray into trivia himself. Robbed of trivia, we all still had a good time with a Taco Night mixed with Rock Band and partial viewings of Grease and Terminator 2, but it just was not the same.

That begs the question...will life be the same without trivia night? I previously had a post about Wednesday were my favorite days of the week because of the perfect combination - Comics and Trivia. Now we're down one part of the amazing day at least temporarily, my weeks have been downgraded a bit because of the lack of my precious trivia. I'm sure I will find something to fill the Trivial Pursuit shaped hole in my heart, but it will take time to heal that wound. All I know is that Hooters shutting down was definitely NOT what I wanted for my birthday.

Stupid Hooters not making me happy...

R.I.P. Drunken Cowboys (2005-2008)

Le Petite Escargot

So tonight is Wednesday, which of course means awesomeness if you have been paying attention to my blog. Today was definitely an exceptional Wednesday, which means exceptional awesomeness. First off, the day at work was solid and at lunch I had Benny's AND was allowed to get comics early by my good friends at Bosco's. Then I went back to work until 4ish, after which I went and saw Live Free or Die Hard at 4:15 and it was of course glorious and action packed. Immediately afterwards, I went to trivia to support my team...the Drunken Cowboys. As per usual, Colver and I were there, with Sam joining us as well. So we had 3 vs. a ton of different teams with a lot more, including our closest competitor which featured 6 cute girls and the next table over who were 3 guys, whom we only could assume were helping them. Not because they were girls, but because the guys kept routinely leaning over and whispering to them during questions.

It didn't matter that they were many and we were few. Tonight, we were on it, and we were destined for victory. Of course with a TINY bit of help from our waitress Chastity (our 4th teammate, who also gave me her number...yay!) but no less, we were trivia gods tonight. Sam, Colver, and I managed to win the first round, more or less take the third round, and got zero points in the second round (always has to be an off one). We needed the betting question in the third round to get it, and due to some help from Chastity and some clever listening skills from us, we got the answer to the question...which was "What keyboard symbol do french people refer to as le petite escargot?" The @ symbol. YES!

No less, it was enough to put us into the last question with us vs. ourselves. Tasha (the head Hooters girl if you will) comes over with her assortment of questions, and we decide Sam should pick because he's the least frequent at Trivia Night and kind of felt like our lucky charm because of how well we were doing. He reaches in, pulls out the question and it is labeled football questions! The question was "How tall is the field goal posts cross bar?" The options were 12 feet, 11 feet, 10 feet, and 9 feet. We immediately crossed off the odd numbers, and it was down to 12 and 10. Due to logical reasoning (Colver and I's ability to touch a crossbar) we chose 10. And we were right! $690 was ours! Can you really get a better evening than that? Tasty food, Live Free or Die Hard, comics, getting a great girls number (Irregardless Colver...irregardless!), and winning a ton of money in trivia? Needless to say, we're on cloud nine and this weekend we're going to live like fat cats. Hurrah Trivia!