I have been watching a lot of Cheers lately.
Like everyone else, this means binging for a few hours at a
time on Netflix*. I am old enough to
remember when you were only able to watch a TV show once a week and cable was a
novelty*. Sadly, this may be our
greatest achievement of my life time (aside from erectile dysfunction
medication, but, alas, that is a subject for another day): Instant
gratification. Virtually anything you want is available in seconds; we are
slowly eliminating patience as an actual characteristic. Yes, this paragraph
reads older than anything other than the Bible.
*Speaking of Netflix,
let me air one complaint. While their TV selection is fantastic (Mad Men,
Breaking Bad, etc.) the movie selection is a smelly armpit. Here are two
suggestions from me that you likely haven’t heard of and I cannot recommend
high enough: Goon and Croupier. Just watch them. This is assuming they will
still be streaming when you see this; what is available is less predictable
than Bigfoot sightings.
*I also distinctly
remember having three channels, four if you count PBS. Though if one of your
family was willing to wrap themselves in tin foil with a coat hanger in one
hand and the TV antennae in the other while thinking happy thoughts, you could
sometimes pick up a fifth from Joplin, MO. This channel showed the exact same
shows as another local channel, but it seemed more exotic somehow. This is the
first time in history someone has called Joplin exotic.
Any-who, Cheers.
For my money, this is the most underappreciated sitcom of all time. Everybody
talks about Seinfeld, the Simpsons, and Friends, and somehow this gem gets lost in the shuffle. Hell,
people talk more fondly about I Love Lucy
and that show has to be 90 years old by now, give or take 50 years. This was a
great character based show that managed to move from sublime to slapstick so
deftly it has lead to it being so underrated. There is no Parks and Rec or the Office
without it.
But I digress. What I really want to talk about are the
characters, and one in particular. Cheers
was made up of a group of people who spend most of their free time in a Boston
bar. (Do not underestimate this show’s power: it actually made people from
Boston seem likable.) If you have ever spent any regular time with a group of
people in a bar, sooner or later you try to figure out which Cheers character you are. Many people
want to be Sam, the lady killer bartender, or Diane the perky waitress. Most
people had someone they could relate to, a character who was funny, charming,
and relatable. But be sure of one thing: no one, and I mean no one, wanted to
be Cliff.
People are fine with Norm, the fat lovable drunk. I even had
a friend say they would be Paul, a wall flower who had maybe five lines in the
entire 10 year series. No one wants to be Cliff, to put it simply, because he
is a know it all. A blowhard. He was a fountain of useless, and often
incorrect, knowledge that washes across the bar to indifferent and often
annoyed ears. There was no subject too random, obscure, or pointless that Cliff
would not offer some trivial fact.
No matter how much I try and deny it, this is me. Just slightly more subtle.
I mean, I am not wearing a full postal uniform into a bar,
as entertaining as that sounds*. Cliff’s modus operandi is to show up in his
mail man uniform (short hand for someone who is maybe a little less important
than he thinks he is) and loudly hold court about a whole lot of unverifiable
stuff. The absence of uniform is not due to my own foresight. If not for
technology I feel I would have been just as over the top as a character from an
80’s sitcom. And that technology is a simple blue box.
*The only uniform I
have ever worn is a Cub Scout uniform, and I have the third grade photos to
prove it. I am discounting football and band because you couldn’t show up for
picture day in those uniforms and expect to get home with your humility intact.
Plus, the Cub Scout uniform had a neckerchief. Come on, how often do you get to
wear a neckerchief?!
I was first introduced to bar trivia about ten years ago.
I had just moved to St. Louis and my
girlfriend/fiancé/future ex-wife/crazy lady who would later threaten to kill me
really liked hanging out in bars. Like needs an intervention liked to hang out
in bars. At the time, I was a very light drinker*, and the bar could get a bit tedious. And that is when I stumbled
onto Buzztime.
*By light drinker, I
mean I had never had a drink until age 31ish. I blame Jesus. My first drunk experience
happened when I moved to St. Louis. Here is all you need to know about that
experience: Grape martinis, passed out in a bathroom stall, and puking on a
tree. I will let you fill in the blanks.
The little blue box that greatly resembles a Timex home
computer from circa 1983. For anyone under the age of 30, or whose family could
afford a real computer, picture a really big, basic calculator/adding machine
encased in plastic. A Commodore 64 was the things dreams were made of in my
family. (Here is my only memory from
computers at that time: Running that program that made the entire screen fill
up with my name. State. Of. The. Art. Yet, according to the movies, people my
age were hacking the missile defense system. I feel like you lied to me Wargames!!) It contains a full keyboard,
which is never used. Essentially all you need are the 1-5 number keys to play
the game. How it works: The typical game is 15 questions long, multiple choice
with four choices. The longer it takes to get the answer, the less points you
receive. That’s it, that’s the list. It is the same basic process of any game
show, but with no spokesmodel or prizes. Except for “player plus points” which
you accumulate every game and have no value or meaning at all, other than to
show the rest of the world just how much time you spend in bars playing games.
Basically, you log on*
and see just how much useless knowledge is crammed down into the dark recesses
of your skull. It took me about 42 minutes to become absolutely and completely
hooked. It started innocently enough: Something to do while my significant
other got bombed on martinis. Win/win!
*Log in names, as you
can imagine, are an interesting time. What is it about entering fake names into
games that turns people into third graders? I am pretty sure there is a Pac Man
game from 1983 out there somewhere with a top score by “BOOBS.” My extremely
creative sign on name: Mike. I know, where do I come up with these things?
There is little more humiliating than playing under your real name and losing
to “Camltoh” and “Wang-ho”. It tends to keep the ego in check.
It was fun, for a while, basking in the glory of an
extensive knowledge of 70’s Oscar winners, capitols of Pacific Islands, and
bones of the inner ear. And by a while, I mean about 10 years. However, I
should have been taking notes during Cheers.
There are reasons Cliff is the most unpopular character. Among them:
-The isolation. It is a lonely world in the bar trivia
universe. One man, one machine, and one beer (at a time). Hawthorne can keep
his scarlet letter; that little blue box is much more of a pariah than some
mild adultery. There are many options of what may keep people away: the fact I
am hunched over what looks like a giant desk calculator, the fact I am staring
at a TV screen like it is the last minutes of a ball game I have gambled every
cent to my name on, or the constant muttering under my breath. (It is probably
the muttering. The self-loathing after missing a question can be intense.) The
one thing all of the reasons have in common is that they are self-generated. I
have become an expert at generating a force field of “leave me alone” energy.
The ways to communicate this are numerous; Batman’s utility belt has less
options. Refusal to make eye contact with whomever is speaking is usually first
off the deck, followed by grunting in response to any questions, and finally
turning my body at a precise 34.5% angle away from the speaker/person sitting
next to me/completely normal social person enjoying an adult beverage.* That tends to do the trick.
*This would be a good
point to introduce this statistic: The number of girls met/won over while
playing trivia is exactly 0.0. Here is what that pie chart looks like: 0.
-The disdain. I don’t know what it is about knowing stuff,
but it sure tends to annoy people. People like to voice their judgments of you
when you know ridiculous information about what state Mary Todd Lincoln was
born in. There are lots of cat calls like “Who knows this stuff?” and “Someone
needs to t a life.” Sadly, they are all accurate and true. The most typical
reactions are: “There is something wrong with you for knowing this,” “you play
so much you have these memorized,” and “I quit, I like talking to real people.”* The best way to avoid this is to sit
at the very end of the bar, make minimal requests, and wear a hat. People tend
to not notice you in hat. The good news is the end of the bar is near the
servers’ station. They will be friendly to anyone. It has just dawned on me how
many bar staff I have met playing trivia. Those people are the salt of the earth.
Or really bored.
-The liver damage. Listen, you can’t just sit there and play
sipping water. The beers tend to pile up after three to four hours staring at
the TV and plumbing the depths of my brain. I can’t imagine my liver is a big
fan of the game. Sadly, my scores seem to go up the more I imbibe. Did I
mention meeting a lot of bar staff while playing this game?
There are certainly are more social hobbies. But if you
watch your Cheers, Cliff managed to
make at least 4-5 friends. Or at least people who would tolerate him. Trivia
has led me to meet a handful of good people, a smattering of weirdos, and a
large number of people I will likely never see or speak to again. This sounds
remarkably similar to every other frivolous activity I have ever taken part in.
At the very worst, it gives me a valid excuse to read at an unreasonable rate
and in a random selection of topics.
Let me leave with this request: The next time
you seem so odd looking dude sitting at the end of the bar, bent over a tiny
game, and way into the random questions on the TV, take it easy on him. Don’t
assume he has a social disorder or strange body odor. In fact, feel free to
make some small talk or offer to buy him a beer. Just make sure it is between
games.