Tattoo You

The pain of war cannot exceed the woe of aftermath
The drums will shake the castle walls - the Ringwraiths ride out in black
(Oh, sing as you raise your bow; shoot straighter than before)
~ Led Zeppelin, "The Battle of Evermore," ZOSO (generally known as IV*)

On my way home from the vet I stopped and got a tattoo.

Not in this reality, but in some reality somewhere. It was the first time I had ever noticed the Evermore Gallery was actually open when I was driving by, and I thought, hey! I could stop in and get a tattoo! Except I don't really WANT a tattoo. But I could SAY I got a tattoo. What shall my imaginary tattoo be?

Probably not this. (Yeah, I know. Discredited. Fake. Still funny.)

Evermore Gallery. The first several times I passed it, I thought it was a fine art gallery - which it may be, in its own way, but there isn't a lot of stuff hanging on the walls. Also I noted that the proprietor was probably a Led Zep head.  Tolkien. Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention.

Anyone who was able to follow that (fairly straightforward) train of thought will understand my dismay when the "Dinosaur Rock" (Classic Rock) category at the recent Trailnet trivia night turned out to be questions about Journey, Chicago and the Beatles. (Kelly the Hairdresser: "Did you ask what they're doing with all that candy-ass shit?!") The hardest one - and the only one we got wrong - was "In what order are the four Beatles walking, left to right, as they cross the road on a famous album cover?" No freaking idea, and I thought they were crossing from right to left, so I stepped out of that fray. 

There, I flipped it so I could be RIGHT, because that's really important to me.

In fact, I had expected Dinosaur Rock to be the only category at which I would excel. Other categories included Dinosaurs Rock (Paleontology), Health and Fitness, Vegetables, the St. Louis Cardinals ... "Nope," I said, as encouraging people tried to convince me I knew anything about, say, Health and Fitness. "Sex, drugs and rock & roll, that's about it." Ad Taglines, which I was sure would baffle me, turned out to be remarkably easy because they were OLD taglines - and I saved my team from turning in "FedEx" as the answer to "Your World. Delivered." 

And there was one bizarrely worded question about five paintings, stolen from a Paris museum, by Matisse, Braque, etc. We couldn't figure out what the question was asking: what museum? What school did the artists belong to? After my teammates settled on the latter and agreed it was Impressionists, the loudmouth jerk at our table said, "Where's the art history major?" I waved a friendly little hand. (I was actually an art major, not art history, but art history classes are a huge part of the required curriculum.) "Did we get it right?!" he demanded. I said yes, although privately wondering, weren't Matisse and Braque actually POST-Impressionists? Braque was a Cubist. Matisse was ... Matisse. 

The answer, it turned out, was "(John) Milton." Uproar ensued, until the officiating judge stepped up to the mike and said, "Everyone gets question 4 right. It's my fault. I thought the original question was too hard and substituted a different one, but we didn't get the answers synced up." 

The whole experience - my third Trivia Night this year, and the third in my lifetime - made it clear how hard it is to write trivia questions. Either your questions are so obscure ("Who is the female vocalist on Led Zeppelin's 'Battle of Evermore?'") that your players get frustrated, or they're so easy ("What is the name of the female villain in Disney's '101 Dalmations?'") that EVERYONE knows them, and we keepers of Truly Useless Infomation are forlorn because no one asked about the treasures we've been hoarding.

So Kelly the Hairdresser suggests that in my declining years, I just start blurting out random statements like "Sandy Denny was with Fairport Convention, and she sings the countermelody in 'Battle of Evermore.'" Not that I don't already do this, but it's funnier if you think of me at age 80, talking nonsense.  

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I think I've finally settled on a tiger for my imaginary tattoo. But head or full body? What color ink? Where on my skin, and how big? There are so many DECISIONS in bringing fantasy to life!

***

*Wasn't this in The Client, where the kid tests Susan Sarandon's fitness to be his lawyer by asking her the names of the first four Led Zeppelin albums? I can't find it on YouTube.

Comments

[Uncle Al]

That is a strange question...I didn't know Braque and Matisse were art thieves. Although that would explain much.

[WS]

Aha, A trivia I do know how to look up:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0109446/quotes