watching expired appliances align

Sunday night I joined a friend and a few other folks for drinks in midtown. From there it was a short walk to Dave & Buster's. It's been years since I've been to one of the adult sized arcades. I enjoyed a meal of chickfingers (Goldfingers, officially) and mashed potatoes. Sufficiently filled with delicious foodstuffs, I spent the next 1/2 hour closing down the giant trivia machine.

As much as I'd like to pretend I'm good at first person shooter games or that I can really kick ass on fake jet ski 3-d simulations, I can't. Watching a giant screen that flashes a question and 3 multiple choice answers while rewarding you with tickets is something I can do, though. I kept swiping my power card (or something similarly named) and taking on anywhere from one to five other competitors. Five questions. The person who answers the most questions in the shortest amount of time wins. There are consolation tickets for second and third place. It was fun and I was smart in covering all three giant buttons (A, B, C) with both hands, ready to pounce upon seeing an easy answer. I even managed to recognize Lawrence Taylor as a linebacker!

This machine is the future of trivia, despite putting Arts/Sciences into one category! Did I mention that it's giant size? The buttons for the answers are each the size of dinner plates. And the monitor that displays the questions has to be 4 feet wide. It takes up a lot of space. But it's the future. And I was rewarded with an acrylic Dave & Busters highball glass. Can a Sunday night out get any better?