Mohammed meets mountain
It only looks like a scene from “Polite Mormon meets Obnoxious Jew.”
The thesis of Ken’s short talk was that he doesn’t consider “trivia” to be trivial at all, and he made a case for trivia being a kind of glue holding society together. He also mentioned that he met his wife thanks to trivia (kinda like me — that’s eight!) when he knew what came next after some particular movie quote.
…Which reminds me of a story. At the beginning of my freshman year at college I didn’t know a soul and briefly contemplated pledging a fraternity. One night, one of the frats had a Repo Man rush party, but to get in you had to be a girl or invited — or so two frat brothers told me when I knocked on the frat-house door. As I was about to turn away, one of them added, “Unless you can complete this quote: ‘Find one in every car…’” I promptly supplied, “You’ll see,” and was admitted.
The party was kinda cool. Pine tree air fresheners were hung everywhere. There were cans of “FOOD” and (of course) “BEER.” The pool table in the basement had been converted into a phosphorescent Chevy Malibu. Quotes from the movie were plastered all over the walls. (One of them became the basis for the name of my next car, the “Plate-O-Shrimp” [or in the words of my sister Suzanne, the "Piece-O-Shit."]) But frat life clearly wasn’t for me and thereafter I went about making plenty of good friends all on my own.
Tags: kenjennings
November 2nd, 2006 at 8:35 pm
[...] I promised to pay Steve for a new transmission, but he didn’t get one for a long time. The Rabbit sat unused awaiting its repair. Then one night while playing the dice game Cosmic Wimpout, I won from him the cost of the repair! I subsequently bought the Rabbit from him for $25 and he bought me a new transmission. I christened my new car the Plate-O-Shrimp after a quote from the movie Repo Man. My sister Suzanne ever after referred to it (more accurately, it must be said) as the “Piece-O-Shit.” [...]
January 4th, 2007 at 2:20 pm
[...] It’s been over three months since way number eight, but there’s now a ninth way I’m like blogging-inspiration Ken Jennings: apparently I’m not the only one who has an odd compulsion to read car names backwards while I’m driving around town. Bookmark to: [...]