I was flattered but naive when I accepted the invite to be a "local expert" at the sold-out, 400-guest, Young Zoo Friends "Trivia Gone Wild 2009" event held Saturday night. I had been told beforehand that the experts were to be bid on and "sold" to tables of 10 in return for our knowledge in their respective fields of expertise, thus giving that table an advantage in the competition. Experts were similarly asked to bring along some "goodies," something for the table as well as for the person at the table ponying up for their vaast knowledge.
The subject of "Food" was the 5th out of 10 rounds, so I had witnessed 4 fellow experts before me get paraded onto the stage, their bios and merits extolled in loud voice by members of 97.1 FM's Dave Glover Show, then get subsequently sold off for between $200 and $325 (amounts apparently far below what they had garnered in previous years).
Ah, but it was not yet my turn. I was gonna kick ass. Let's face it, everybody talks food. Who wouldn't want a dining editor at their table, I thought, a food guru, a guy who can recommend restaurants old and new in any category all over town, a guy armed with the facts as well as the gossip, a guy who, if pressed, could probably get them a 7:30 reservation at Niche on a Saturday night?
I was now onstage. And nervous for some reason, but smiling. And confident.The bidding began at $100. "One hundred it is, to the table in the back," the emcee began. It was the same table who had started all the bidding, the same table who had never followed through, the table who hadn't yet won one expert. The emcee joked that they were like the middle-ager who needed, uh, some enhancement to get motivated enough to complete the deal. Four hundred people laughed at the joke—by this time all boozed and loose—and oh so eager to bid. This'll be a snap, I thought, a bidding frenzy, a blowout. I shook my head and grinned.
"Who'll give $125?" barked emcee Dave Glover. Then the room got quiet. Eerily quiet. Laughing faces were now silent. The party had become a funeral. Did somebody just cue "Amazing Grace?" Glover continued: "We have $100, who wants to give $125?" Not a sound. You gotta be kidding me. I heard crickets chirping. He looked at me and I looked at him.
Fortunately, he had a Plan B:
"So George, you actually write the dining articles for St. Louis Magazine?"
'Uh, yes I do, some of them," I said, unimpressively.
"Are you the dining critic?" he countered, trying to give me the oomph I obviously needed.
"No, but I edit the critic, as well as all the articles in the dining section." That was all I had. I felt like a guy with a cool job that all of the sudden didn't seem very cool.
Glover was masterful: "You've got a food writer up here who happens to be the dining editor for our city magazine, your St. Louis magazine...who'll go $125?" Ssssilence. How can 400 people who have been drinking for 3 hours zip it like that? Glover kept hammering, now mentioning that I was armed with latest-issue magazines for the table as well as a free subscription for someone plus a cool new ball hat, the one with the new St. Louis Magazine logo. More silence. Jeez, did I just hear a polar bear yawn? Damn, I knew I should have brought along Cardinal tickets like $325 golden boy Rob Desir did.
Finally a woman at table 8, God bless her, raised her hand: "One twenty five," she spoke, soberly and quietly, so as not to wake the bears. But that was it. After my hour-long 3 minutes onstage, I was sold to table 8 for a take-pity-on-him $125. Defeated and deflated, I clenched my jaw and hustled myself and my magazines toward table 8.
On the way, I overheard this at another table: "Hey, everybody knows food...we need to hold out for that Science guy." Hmm. I smiled confidently as I took my seat at table 8, having just convinced myself that there were 38 other tables that no doubt had been thinking the same way. -- George Mahe
