From the Stevens Point Journal April 23, 2007:

Participant says 'Trivia is better than Christmas'

Editor's note: This is the final in a series of three columns tracking a reporter's first look at Trivia.

Here's a tip: Don't plan a column around interviews taken from people while they are playing Trivia.

This is why:

"So what's so great about Trivia?"

(typing...typing...typing) "Huh?"

Photo: Gwyn Kawski, left, and Heidi McFadyen, members of Dad's Computers Trivia Royale in Plover, study a question Saturday during the University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point Trivia Contest. THOMAS KUJAWSKI/STEVENS POINT JOURNAL

"How long did you say your team had been around?"

(typing...rifling through book) "What? Gimme a second here."

"Are you going to eat that?"

(typing...yelling at teammates to turn up the radio) "What's that? No, go ahead."

"Your pants are on fire."

(typing...typing) "I said eat it!"

Such was my experience as I island-hopped between Trivia teams this weekend, trying to coax a few Trivia-heads into opening up mid-play. I might as well have been trying start a game of touch football with the guys at NASA ground control: They have bigger fish to fry.

Whether I was at the beehive of a team's playing hub, or running a slalom between slow-moving cars on a stone clue on my way back from a 1 a.m. Belt's ice cream, I continually encountered people who approached Trivia with a near-religious intensity.

Photo: Chad Laska and Vanessa Castrodes, with the team Dad’s Computers Trivia Royale, try to identify song segments for an answer to a question Saturday in the University of Wisconsin- Stevens Point Trivia contest. THOMAS KUJAWSKI/STEVENS POINT JOURNAL

"This weekend is a very holy experience for me," said Peter Munck, 17, of the team Lactation Nation, during a rare break. "You just kind of find peace, with the neurons working and the caffeine flowing through your veins. I can't even describe the awesomeness."

I thought I spotted his tongue nestled in-cheek, but he might have just been swallowing a candy bar whole.

I had more than one good conversation this weekend, often on topics that had nothing to do with Trivia. At the home base of Lactation Nation, more than 100 people filtered in and out of a house, only a fraction of them actually playing Trivia at any given time.

"It's really the only time when we get to see everyone," said Lisa Moore, 27, who, like many of the younger members of Lactation Nation, was weaned on Trivia. One member first met her in-laws at Trivia.

"When you can't come home to Stevens Point for Trivia, it's really depressing," said Rick Bamberg of Dad's Computers. "Trivia is better than Christmas."

Among all of Trivia's prominent features, in other words, trivia is far from the most important.

Perhaps this explains why I found most Trivia-heads to be so friendly. While I suspect most trivia contests are about using useless information to make other people feel bad about themselves, Trivia seems to involve large groups of friends and family feeling good about the vast amount of useless information they don't know. The sheer impossibility of many of the questions make elitism near-impossible.

And so in the spirit of Trivia, here's my own obscure reference:

"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that.

Like nothing else, Trivia, with all its stupefying weirdness, illustrates the immeasurable value of having old friends.