Trivial obssessions

Since it was invented by Chris Haney and Scott Abbott in 1979, Trivial Pursuit has sold over 70 million copies worldwide. Since 1984, Montreal journalist Juan Rodriquez has composed more than 50,000 questions for 20 editions of the game. Question: what has it done to his mind? Answer....

by JUAN RODRIGUEZ

I had to chuckle at the ad for Trivial Pursuit's Millennium Edition, the collectible in a tin box: "To prepare for the millennium, stock up on canned goods." See, I lived on canned tuna when I started writing that very game during the Ice Storm of the Century. Beginning any Trivial Pursuit edition, I like to come roarin' out of the chute--having done it for the past 16 annums, I know I'll be crawling towards the finish line--and some pesky ice storm wasn't gonna stop me. Besides, how else was I going to keep myself occupied?

So: stock up on tuna, mayonnaise, Kraft cheese product slices, bread, oatmeal cookies (for digestive purposes), bottles of cheap white wine (kept on ice on the balcony). Candles, batteries for CD player. Everything I need within a yard of my chair. Bill Laswell's Hallucination Engine imploding in my head, trivia exploding from my fingers, ice-snow coming down in little bullets, no contact with the outside world. Just 99.44 per cent trivia. I'm on Mao Zedong and Bill Gates. What was the preferred sexual status of the many young women Chairman Mao bedded? Virginity. (My frigid fiefdom for an experienced hooker!) What inventor was Bill Gates dubbed the "Information Age equivalent" of? Thomas Edison. (That's as close to Edison as this candlelit abode will get.)

Work-drink 'round the clock on days when time is frozen; once drunk enough, curl up for naps. Radio reports dosed with dire warnings about "hypothermia," dizzy spells and disorientation. (Hey, this could be a symptom of Trivial Pursuit overload, no big whup.) Am I dizzy? No. Am I sure? No. Do I know what condition my condition is in, or am I drinking too much vino to tell? Dunno. Keep writing questions, tough sledding penning with gloves on. Bunker mentality combines with candlelight and wine to make me think I'm doing something significant.

In true millennial mindset, I wonder whether this really is the "Storm of the Century," or just hype to delude captive listeners into thinking they're living through something historic? Mainly, will it last as Trivial Pursuit cannon fodder? (Why can't the storm have a catchy moniker like Hurricane Andrew or El Nino?)

Information overload

Once you finish a Trivial Pursuit edition, massive relief descends. You want to clear the deck--the desk, tables, floor of scribbled paper, print-outs, books, magazines, newspapers and photocopies. Purge the brain of factoids and start real life again, get with some real writing, read a real book. Exit TP mode. Fini! Never again! No mas! (What two Spanish words did Roberto Duran utter when he quit his second fight with Sugar Ray Leonard? There you go again, not so easy to junk this monkey off your back.) Having cleansed yourself of trivial detritus, something strange and perverse happens (like the hand rising from the grave in Carrie). You see something in a magazine or on TV and say, "That would make a good question." But you're finished, you mutter, you don't need another damned question. At least not now. But what about later? No, you say, let it go, there are oodles of questions where that one came from. Give it a rest. But, but... this might be the right one! You'll forget it, it might not pop up again six or eight months down the long and winding road. (Meanwhile, during this inner agonized Q&A, you fear the question is disappearing into vapour right there in your demented mind.)

There's no escape. Throwing out magazines is bad luck, you never know when you're gonna need 'em. And I can't stop buying them anyway. (I try, but I can't. I'm always "on" for trivia.) The piles grow silently, inexorably. And: Calista Flockhart sez: "I am not anorexic" (sorta like Nixon's "I am not a crook"). Is it tabloid fodder, or Trivial Pursuit grist? (Calista's skinny today, Jennifer Lopez's butt tomorrow.) There's Cameron Diaz: what organic substance gave Cameron's coif that "look" in There's Something About Mary? Heh-heh. Well, lookee here: George Michael fined $910 for performing one-man "lewd act" in public rest room in Will Rogers Park in Beverly Hills. Too good to be true. Think: who was arrested for wanting his own sex? Hmm... There's Leonard Di Caprio: whose club-crawling entourage was dubbed "The Pussy Posse"? Wish there was an X-Rated Edition.

Get "serious"... but George magazine is already consigned to trivia by virtue of its masthead mission: "Not Just Politics As Usual." So there's... Calista, again ("On Food, Feminism & Fighting the Press"). What phobia does Mark McGwire suffer from? (Claustrophobia.) I can relate. Just editing down this list, dear reader, reminds me of the celebrity claustrophobia I endure in my pursuit of... what, exactly? Photo of Gwyneth Paltrow in People's "50 Most Beautiful People": Why does she look like Cameron (the forced smile)... or is my brain getting blurred? (And what's with them both turning brunette?)

Culling the cult of celebrity

So I often muse about the detritus 'n' effluvia of Our Era. (Hang with me: Howdy Doody connect-the-dots time.) Strip-mining pop journalism on media phenomena as recipe for trivia. Ink-stained wretch that I am, I wonder if it's the other way around--journalists framing their reportage in trivia--and whether Trivial Pursuit is the cause or effect. After all, Trivial Pursuit not only captured the zeitgeist of the last two decades of the 20th century, but affected the way North Americans view life and politics in terms of celebrity and gossip.

Consider: the first batch of Trivial Pursuit questions was concocted during the inauguration of Ronald Reagan, the first movie star president. Ronnie's tinseltown celebrity culture was dissed by so-called "serious" journalists as "trivial." Not! Staring down Congress, Reagan quoted not Lincoln but Dirty Harry: "Go ahead, make my day!" He was reported spending hours aboard Air Force One playing Trivial Pursuit. (Question excised from U.S. Genus Edition: "How many months pregnant was Nancy Reagan when she tied the knot with Ron?" Two and a half.) So it didn't take much for our planet to become a realm of Madonna and Wacko Jacko. As the "greed decade" wore on, fuelled by Monopoly money, and oneupmanship and winning at all costs became a lifestyle, journalism became a parlour game of "Gotcha!" ("What was the name of the boat Gary Hart was on when he was photographed with Donna Rice on his knee?" Monkey Business.) The New York Times's end-of-the-1980s round-up was titled "Full of Trivial Pursuits."

Trivial Pursuit was the first board game played by baby boomers as adults. Bill Clinton was the first boomer president. Clinton's favourite board game was Trivial Pursuit. Hillary told Diane Sawyer, as she packed up the Genus Edition for the trip to the White House, that they hoped to gather with friends on weekends to play Trivial Pursuit, as usual. Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Instead, Clinton became the first Trivial Pursuit president.

It's a piece of pie framing Clinton's life in Trivial Pursuit questions:

What word did Bill Clinton tell Don Imus was "just southern for mensch?" (Bubba.) What university was Bubba attending when he "didn't inhale?" (Oxford.) What relative did Governor Bill order busted for drugs? (Roger Clinton.) Who dubbed Bill Clinton "The Comeback Kid" in 1992? (Bill Clinton.) Whose absence sparked a surge in White House pizza orders? (Hillary Clinton's.) What Walt Whitman book did Bubba give both Hillary and Monica Lewinsky? (Leaves of Grass.) Which of Bill's babes had rhinoplasty? (Paula Jones.) What speech was Bubba preparing when Monicagate burst open? (The State of the Union.) What ancient Hindu sex manual did a prankster give Bubba at a 1998 global confab? (The Kama Sutra.) What evangelist said Clinton had "such a tremendous personality" that "the ladies just go wild over him"? (Billy Graham.)

If irony is a hallmark of Trivial Pursuit, try this: Clinton was coached by a TV producer, Harry Thomason, to jut his jaw when mouthing, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Ms. Lewinsky"--the most oft-repeated quote of his presidency. Thomason's big show? Designing Women.

These days you can't tell whether news comes from the New York Times or the National Enquirer. Journalists say they report gossip because it's "out there." With Cheshire cat smiles, they claim they're only the messengers. "Gossip displaces news," laments leftie social critic Todd Gitlin (author of The Sixties: Days of Rage). "Gossip unbounded has grown into a national--make that global--game of Trivial Pursuit." (Well, tut-tut Todd. I sorta feel I've had a hand in history.)

Thus the game invented by disaffected boomer journalists to escape being newsroom "lifers," inspired by random info and disconnected facts floating about any newsroom, is now the modus operandi for boomer journalists and pundits whose ultimate goal is celebrityhood by gossiping about the gossip that passes as reporting. And boomer Clinton's obsession with his "legacy" turns out to be nothing more than a Trivial Pursuit. "A game like this can't miss!" I can still hear former Gazette photo editor and TP co-creator Chris Haney blurt at the bar.

Breasts, blunts and bunkers

True confessions: I've never sat through It's a Wonderful Life. Jimmy Stewart always struck me as a bozo. I've never seen Star Wars, The Exorcist, The Wizard of Oz or Gone With the Wind (though I do know that "with" begins with a capital letter). Ditto for The Andy Griffith Show, The Love Boat, Dynasty. (Not that I'm sitting around watching Masterpiece Theatre.) I saw about 45 minutes of Jaws (including the scene where Roy Scheider cries out, "The boat's too small!"). Never saw Seinfeld, until I endured the grand finale to see what the fuss was about (not much). Never read a word of John Grisham or Stephen King (but I'm not up on Dickens or Dostoyevsky either).

Never seen The X-Files but I do know the truth is out there. Like: "Metaphor has left art and gone into current events," director Mike Nichols lamented. "Who in the fuck is going to compete? Where is there a hero who can fall from greater heights than Michael Jackson?"

The celebrity, Neil Gabler claims in his trivia-researched book Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, is a "self-contained entertainment... a member of a class of people who functioned to capture and hold the public's attention no matter what they did..." So: What thespian pulled up her sweater to expose her buxom breasts for David Letterman? (Drew Barrymore.) Who handed her panties to Letterman and told him to sniff them? (Madonna.)

My mission: track this stuff for trivia. Just the facts ma'am. "You are what you know," goes the new CNN slogan. (Yeah, tell me about it.) Fire up a blunt--Hugh Downs, after 50 years on TV, shows 20/20 vision by suggesting the decriminalization of pot--and take a trip to the Memory Motel. Driver, make that the Oval Office. Monica to Barbara on Bill: "He's a good kisser." Eeww! Oprah beats Roseanne two out of three at arm-wrestling. Wake me, shake me, when it's over. Woodstock '99: "Show us your tits!" Britney "insists they're real." Ooh baby one more time. Playboy runs nudies of Sable and the WWF sues for violating its "intellectual property." Bunker mentality? Writing Trivial Pursuit I'm Hitler in the final days with delusions of hiding in Jayne Mansfield's mammaries. Where are you tonight sweet Calista? Dawson's Creek hunk James Van Der Beek sez he really enjoyed A&E's Biography of the Millennium: "The No.1 was the guy who invented the printing press." Right, dude. Who wants to be a millionaire?

Last question to Czech playwright-prez Vaclav Havel, who drew heat for marrying perky TV journalist Dagmar Veskrnova shortly after his beloved wife's death. It bugged him, he told Talk magazine, that "of all the things [imported] from the West we have to go and choose one of the worst... Why is this... trivia we have to learn?" Whose Velvet Revolution turned to Blue Velvet? As "taboo-breaking" Mark Harmon said on Chicago Hope: "Shit happens." I'm on the case.