evenkeel falls short in the pop culture playoffs

VH1 and Entertainment Weekly are currently auditioning for the second season of their "World Series of Pop Culture." Last summer, my father stared at me in wonder from the couch, as we watched the show and I answered just about every question correctly. I had to convince him that I did, indeed, attend some classes in between my television viewing.

Rallying two of my hockey teammates, AJ and Jay, to join forces with me, we created the team "Phantom Menace" and applied for the new season. Between the three of us, our useless information quotient is off the charts, so we were feeling pretty confident.

After sending in some pretty hysterical applications online, we made the initial cut and were given an opportunity to take part in the Chicago auditions. We went down this past Friday to take the written test. Out of the 22 teams in our group, only five made the next cut. We were one of them.

We then went in and had an on-camera interview with the VH1 casting folks. That's where things went wrong.

Like fools, we failed to juggle, mime, strip or perform a stand-up comedy routine. Instead, we were mildly amusing and answered their oddly banal questions with minor amounts of sarcasm and humor. Like I said, fools.

The call came back in Saturday night that we had not made the next cut, and wouldn't get a chance to play a game against seven other Chicago trivia teams that had made the cut. *Sigh*

So there goes our chance to impress the world with our trivia knowledge and try to earn some serious coin for each of our children's college funds. The children, VH1/EW! Think of the children!

The sad part is that I know we could have totally won that thing. Oh well. Maybe someone else will appreciate that I can sing the G.I. Joe theme song and can say with certainty that Betty was the only Flintstone who wasn't a chewable vitamin.

See? This is serious knowledge going to waste here!