Submitted by Anne H. Oman
Reporter-at Large
It’s Thursday night and DJ, entertainer, computer guy and triviameister Dave Thrash is standing at the edge of the crowded downstairs dining room at Sliders ready with the first question: In what decade did the TV series “Dragnet” first air?
Teams with names like “Who Cares?”, “The Shrubs,” “The Seasiders,” “The Bridesmaids’” and ad hoc teams of random diners put down their wine glasses, set aside their platters of fried oysters and go into a whispering huddle. Sometimes there are spirited disagreements, but only one answer per team is allowed. And no Googling for answers.
“That’s why I walk around so much,” says Dave. “And also because I like watching people think — I love the competitive spirit.”
Unlike some trivia emcees, Dave eschews canned questions and makes up his own game, an experience he enjoys.
“I love learning stuff,” he says. “I love the research I do – it’s like studying.”
So where does he get his questions?
“A lot of stuff I just know,” he answers. “I watch nature channels and go to on-line encyclopedias. Sometimes 7 or 8 pages into an online encyclopedia, I’ve got a whole game.”(Dave stresses that if he gets information from Wikipedia, he verifies it from other sources.)
Categories range from Movies (“Two actos have played “The Nutty Professor.” One was Jerry Lewis. Who was the other?”) to Geography (“What’s the second longest mountain range in the world?”) to Food and Drink (“What fast-food chain had the first drive-thru?”) to Current Events, a category he skips if recent news is too grim.
“Like now with the bombing in Boston,” he says. He didn’t want to trivialize it (no pun intended.)
Actually, the original meaning of the word “trivia” had a very different connotation. It’s the plural of the Latin word “trivium” which means “a place where three ways meet.” In the Middle Ages, it came to mean the lower division of the liberal arts, namely grammar, rhetoric and logic, considered the building blocks of higher education. Only in the 20th century did it come to connote “trifling.”
According to Wikipedia (but berfied by other sources), college students started quizzing each other informally about popular culture in the 1960s. In 1965, two Columbia University students, Ed Goodgold and Dan Carlinsky organized the first known campus trivia bowl, asking such pop-culture nostalgia as “Who played the old gypsy woman in The Wolfman?”, a 1941 horror film. A year later, the two published a best-selling book, Trivia. The trivia pub quiz tradition started in Britain and eventually spread to the US, starting in pubs frequented by Irish-Americans.
Dave Thrash says he first heard about trivia some eighteen years ago, and added it to his entertainment repertoire.
“I’ve been doing entertainment since I was 18,” he says. He plays the guitar and the bass, which he learned as a child by listening to Eddie Van Halen, a rock guitarist. He also acts as a DJ and conducts karaoke sessions. He conducts trivia games at Sliders on Thursdays, and Friday nights it’s “Dave Live,” at the same venue (“jamming with people). His day job is as a computer guy, repairing PCs, removing viruses, designing websites. And he hires out for parties, meetings, and weddings – sometimes conducting trivia-themed wedding receptions. (Sample wedding question: “In what month do the most people in the US get engaged?”)
Dave grew up in Manchester, Connecticut and graduated from the University of Connecticut with a degree in emergency medicine and trauma nursing. He spent the five years after graduation working as a paramedic in New York City, an experience he describes as “insanity incarnate.” He would typically work three 16-hour shifts back to back and then have four days off to work as an entertainer. He moved to Fernandina in 1998, but kept his credentials as a Mass Casualty Disaster Specialist intact and up to date. A phone call from FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) on September 11, 2001 sent him barreling up I-95 to New York escorted by a Dade County Sheriff’s car with sirens blaring. He doesn’t like to talk about what he did at the World Trade Center site except to say he was “a guy with a job” and that he would respond to any similar call in the future.
“I’d be on my way before I hung up the phone,” he says.
Dave has also coordinated relief efforts in natural disasters, including Hurricane Charley in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
He is obviously proud of that work, and he’s also proud of his trivia game.
“In a lot of places, if you’re not ahead by the second round, you can’t win,” he explains. “In my game, the underdog can win.”
That happens because the last round includes in “all-in” question, in which teams bet all or a substantial part of their scores. And if there’s a tie or if interest is lagging, Dave will change the game but throwing in a more-obscure than usual question, like “What 10-story red brick building constructed in 1890 is considered the country’s first skyscraper?”
“I never know who’s going to win,” he says. “I’ve seen a five-way tie broken….Sometimes people challenge me – it keeps me on my toes.”
ANSWERS:
“Dragnet” was first seen on television in 1951.
Both Jerry Lewis and Eddie Murphy played the title role in “The Nutty Professor.”
The Rocky Mountains are second to the Andes in length, stretching 3,000 miles from British Columbia to New Mexico.
Wendy’s initiated the first fast-food chain drive-thru, in 1970.
Actress Maria Ouspenskaya played the old gypsy in the 1941 movie, “The Wolfman.”
According to “Brides” magazine, December is the most popular month for engagements.
The Wainwright Building in St. Louis designed in the Palazzo style by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan is considered America’s first skyscraper.
Editor’s Note: Anne H. Oman recently relocated to Fernandina Beach from Washington, D.C. Her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, The Washington Star, The Washington Times, Family Circle and other publications.
May 23, 2013 11:00 p.m.