The Era of An Ending/Life is Blurry

Two redbreast whiskeys and three lagunitas hop waters in I find myself unloading and reloading the dishwasher listening to the back half of the 2002 Heiruspecs album “Small Steps” after witnessing the second to last Sunday trivia at 331 Club ever. It’s Sunday August 27, 2023. I’m forty three years old. Eight hundred sixty six weeks ago I started a weekly trivia at the 331 Club with Chuck Terhark. Next week it’s cancelled. Tonight some of the old gang comes back out. Chuck, the CEO of Trivia Mafia, the company that was born out of Sunday at the 331, comes down tonight. My wife, who met me her husband and her best friends at the 331 comes down. The old gang is there, and we’re older. The big to-do was one year ago when Chuck and I called it quits. Couldn’t do the weekly trivia, didn’t want to drive to NE Minneapolis every Sunday to ask questions on the mic. But the real last call swan song one year later, it’s different. The whole day was sort of a reckoning on the business of trivia and of trivia mafia. Can a reckoning be good? Can it be neutral? Spent my dinner with Rachel talking about my relationship with my dad. And we talked about my relationship with career goals, with privilege, with the fact that I feel like a triumphant sexy God when I unload the dishwasher in my home but I feel like a nobody, a flat note, a footnote, when I’m around fancy coastals who use summer as a verb. FUN STUFF. Got the quesadilla at Maya.

But as these Heiruspecs songs that we worked so desperately hard on in 2002 come on now, I’m just reminded of the sweat, of the arguments, of the fact that Heiruspecs built this career and this command with a level of aspiration and ambition that actually proved to help. What do I hear in Small Steps? Effort, hunger and a desire to put it in a package. Also, why am I listening to music I made twenty plus years ago? Well, the barback at 331 put it on after trivia was over and it brought me such a ding of complicated joy. It felt like an awesome funeral. But he put it on cause he loves the jams, and the bass player from the band, who has been M.I.A. from the bar for a year is back there. It’s cool. But it’s weird. And the record is old. I can’t carry on a conversation, I’m listening to bass fills, I’m remembering what song is next, I’m listening to us rip off Thelonious Monk, and then rip off the Spin Doctors and then listening to P.O.S. being a full octave above where his voice would ultimately land.

And as the music plays I keep on thinking about what Trivia Mafia is and was. We are a company that wants to get it right? People always say “businesses exist to make shareholders money”. Fair, public companies, and maybe shitty companies. I’m glad to make money off of Trivia Mafia. And it is necessary to make money to keep going. But that’s not the center. That’s true of a lot of small companies. They want to do right and make some money doing right? Do you get that? We want to meet the moment with questions, with extra content, with joy. That started with how we did at the 331. There’s no doubt that the 331 Club is the bar I will have spent the most time in in my entire life. I couldn’t break that record if I slept in a bar every night for my entire fifties. We are talking five hours minimum a week for decades. And me and Chuck worked to make something so cool that it could broadcast further. We have 160 odd nights and some other trivia adventures as well. But it started on that stage 16 years ago and it ends for me tonight. I’ll never bundle those 331 cables, I’ll never make sure the mic works. I’m closing this chapter. Or rather, the bar is closing it. Now the trivia loyals sit around and we say our goodbyes to a soundtrack of an album I made at age 21.

I grew up wanting to be a writer. I am a writer. I love this blog. You do too. I want to celebrate these moments. You do too. I want to share my view of the world, my view of my world and my view of the scene I am a part of. I didn’t know trivia would become a big part of my life when me and Chuck dialed up a Myspace page in early 2007 and started promoting. I didn’t know I would meet my wife there. I didn’t know I would serendipitously get a start in my radio career through trivia. I knew it felt good to ask these questions, to invite my friends out, to drink pints of vodka diet cokes and party. To be at a bar scene where I wasn’t the weirdo. To be at a bar scene where we were all the weirdos. It was magic. Sitting out there correcting sheets, sometimes smoking a Camel Light, always talking and ribbing Chuck and talking with the players and the regulars. Working the bar on nights where it was packed to the gills and working on nights where we wondered if it was all over. It was magic, it was special. It’s a way I spent part of my life. It was time to be done. There was going to be more mundanity and less magic if we kept on going. We were going to start punching the clock. But a weekly event is a magical thing and I think the 331 Sunday trivias was a truly special one. It’s all wrapped up in Heiruspecs too. What is my mission? What have I contributed? Why am I concerned with that? Is there a dude just like me in Phoenix wondering what his life is all about? Does he have a blog? How does his record sound? Who has heard this record? Anyone super famous? Who has played his trivia? One time K.T. Tunstall played our trivia. What do you think of that Phoenix Sean? Does that count? One time Dave Chappelle sent his assistant to buy a couple copies of Small Steps from our merch table in Denver. Did he like it? Did you like the song Meters, Dave? Do you like vocal trumpet Dave? Do you play trivia Dave? Have you ever balanced your self-worth on a hot laptop on a Sunday night after saying goodbye to something you did for 16 years with a $30 gift certificate to a bar you’re not sure when you’ll come back to Dave? Is this how things end Dave? Jagged and smooth. Bitter and joyous, nostalgic and dry.