I can't name that many movies

After the demise of the various trivia games in the area, Jen is now running a Name That Movie game weekly. The timing is really inconvenient: Friday at 5pm, which would be pretty good if I worked at the office on Friday, but since I work from home, it cuts the day in half and forces me to get dressed and Siobhan to drive all the way home and then back into town. Plus the timing nudges us towards eating out.

Not very surprisingly, I turn out not to be very good at it. Out of twenty movies, I've gone from a low of being able to name three, to a high of eleven. But in all the times I've gone, there've been only two or three times I knew a movie but no one else did. (Ironically, the two of these I remember, in neither case was it a movie I'd actually seen.) That's even true when there's no one there but Siobhan and me.

It's still moderately fun, more so when other people come so it's a social thing. But it's a lot less so than trivia was. The game is so monolithic: there's only one thing, so either you're good at it or you're not. Trivia encouraged team playing because no one was good at all the categories, but generally, Siobhan alone will be able to get almost all the movies our team gets. Joe, when he comes, does the same, and between them, they're unstoppable. (The one time we had both of them we got a 19 out of 20, blowing away everyone else.) I already liked trivia far better when we had a team than when it was just Siobhan and me, but this factor is even more pronounced at Name That Movie because most of the time I have nothing to do.

I hope that we get a trivia game eventually, or something that affords a bit more spread of subject matter and skill base.