Life, Love and Death in L.A.

Perhaps the title is a bit melodramatic. Forgive me...

There were 25 teams of three in the "Friday at 1 p.m LA Regional Qualifier" for the World Series of Pop Culture. Two teams passed the test to advance to the interview portion. One was a team called "3 M" that was made up of three individuals whose first names all started with "M" (Matt, Marni and Michelle, if I recall correctly). They wore matching sweaters with their first names stitched on the back, along with a fake flip-flop around their neck with "3 M" emblazoned on it.

The other team that advanced was my team.

The phone call letting us know if we would advance to the Sunday round of 8 (out of approximately 16 that passed the test overall) would come Saturday night between 5:00 and 10:00. So from Friday at 2:00 through Saturday at 7:00-ish (when the call finally came), we were stuck in limbo in LA. (If you need to know how to get around the LAX area, let me know - I'm way too familiar with it now...).

We were "unfortunately not one of the teams chosen" to advance. Weak sauce. We were (and still are) pissed. Apparently, we were either too "whitemaleish" or too "somethingelse" (based on the interview portion). I'm going to go ahead and hope it was the former.

In case you were wondering - the timed 15 minute test consists of the same 50 questions for all three members, totaling a possible 150 points. By our estimate (derived from remembering and cataloging [sp] the questions/answers) we scored 99 or 100 points. Your leader: who else? I scored 37 or 38 (depending on whether the scorers gave me credit for a first name only on a question where it was not stated if only first was good or both first and last were needed), and each of my teammates got 31.

I'm still pissed. Losing via not passing the test or getting beat at the pre-game on sunday I can live with (better, at least). Not getting a chance to lose? Frustrating as hell.

Maybe next year...