The tour this week consists of a couple Seattle events, so I get to be home! I guess I could go check myself into the Seattle Hyatt this week just for the nostalgia (and the HBO!) but I thought I’d give the fam a thrill and hang out with them instead. Caitlin says “sit” and “tooth” and “Banjo” now, and has two new teeth.

The big trivia night at the Schlafly Brewery (run by Phyllis Schlafly’s nephew, I discovered) was, indeed, a really big sheeww. The upstairs club room was filled almost to capacity–I’m guessing more than 150 people–and it wasn’t the traditional Jeopardy!-hardcores that I usually see at signings. St. Louis is, I was told repeatedly, a Big Trivia Town. I assumed this meant bar trivia nights, which is what makes, say, Boston or San Francisco a Big Trivia Town. Nope. In St. Louis, you have the Kiwanises or Calvary First Pentecostal, not O’Shaughnssey’s and O’Leprechaun’s, to blame for the trivia. Trivia nights there are fundraisers for local schools or organizations or whatever, and devotees can bring their teams to two or three a week if they like.

This blows my mind. Why didn’t I know about this? Trivia fundraisers like this are commonplace in the UK, but I know of only a handful of similar events in North America. If I’d known about you a couple years ago, St. Louis, there probably would have been another chapter in Brainiac.

Since Left Bank Books made every two guests buy a book, I got to sign a lot of Almanacs. One young lady remembered this blog post, which I in my post-Jeopardy! senile dotage had long ago forgotten, and wanted me to Wite-Out the cover of her Brainiac and write the original, non-lawyer-approved title (this required two passes through the line–these folks were determined).

Somebody else asked me to sign something deeply original on her copy of the Trivia Almanac–no pressure! “Something you’ve always wanted to write but never have!” The Almanac title page features a rather odd piece of clip art: some kind of stork in academic getup lecturing a lone fish, who sits in (well, hovers above) a stiff pedagogical-looking chair. I have often wondered about this pair. Why is the fish there? Is the stork going to eat it or teach it multiplication tables? So I added a speech balloon to her copy. The stork is now telling the fish, “Because you have left the ocean to attend this class, you cannot breathe and will soon die. AS WILL WE ALL!”

If this isn’t the kind of dedication you were imagining, do not blithely ask me to “sign something you’ve never signed before!” on your copy. Or: only do it when I’ve had more sleep.