Kansas City News Blog

Editor's Note: Robert Bishop, a longtime Pitch freelance writer, recently competed in VH1's World Series of Pop Culture. Below is his account of the contest.

It was down to me for the championship round of VH1’s World Series of Pop Culture. I was the last man standing out of my team from Kansas City, Wocka Wocka. I faced the Twisted Misters, who still had all three of their players left.

My wife, Kelly, had been knocked out by Victor Lee in a tiebreaker. The category was Emmy-Winning Dramas Since 1981, and between them they exhausted 13 out of the 14 possible answers. With a correct answer, Kelly could’ve forced a second tiebreaker. But she couldn’t come up with Cagney & Lacey. Next down was my other teammate, Rachel Cahill. Rachel’s category was Spoiler Alert, calling for her to name the movie based on its ending. She offered the answer Trading Spaces II, thus inventing a sequel to a movie that doesn’t exist.

Now I was up, and a guy from Twisted Misters named Victor was back. We both got every question right in the category of Bite Me, all about movie foods. That forced a tiebreaker round. The category was based on the film Little Miss Sunshine: “Name the six actors that hit the road in the film’s iconic yellow VW bus.”

No problem, I thought.

Second only to the kickball team that Rachel and I play on, competing in the World Series of Pop Culture may be the most athletic thing I’ve ever done.

On the VH1 game show, 16 teams compete in a bracket-style tournament, and the winners score a cool $250,000. But more important, the winner would take home the biggest trophy I’d ever seen and the title of Pop Culture Champions. All for answering questions such as "What 1988 comedy features a scene in which John Candy’s character eats a mammoth 96-ounce steak called 'The Old 96er?'" And "In the famous 'Who Shot Mr. Burns?' episodes of The Simpsons, which parodied the show Dallas, it is revealed that which character actually shot Mr. Burns? And "Alec Baldwin earned an Academy Award nomination for his role as tough-guy casino manager Shelly Kaplow in what 2003 drama?"

Rachel, Kelly and I had tried out before for the World Series of Pop Culture. Rachel, a fifth-grade teacher, has been best friends with my wife since high school. Kelly is an account supervisor, and I’m a senior copywriter. In 2006, we road-tripped to Dallas for one of the five regionals. We passed the ridiculously difficult 50-question qualifying written test. But we ultimately weren’t selected for the regional tournament.

This time around, we decided to give it in a shot in Chicago the first weekend of February, and we earned a slot. In the second round, we were taken out by a team called 3 Men & a Little Lazy. But three weeks later, we found out we’d landed one of the wild-card spots to compete in the World Series of Pop Culture in March.

Our real life got put on hold. We held study sessions three times a week to quiz one another. We had recently found out that Kelly was pregnant, but all anybody wanted to know about was VH1.

At a contestant meeting in New York, we ran into the guys who had taken us out in Chicago. One of them, Gary, told Kelly that he knew they’d see us here because he could tell we knew our stuff. I was impressed by his sneaky mental game. Then I realized that 3 Men were really just three of the coolest guys I’d ever met.

As the teams were introduced, some kid from Twisted Misters named Victor Lee declared, “We’re the team that’s going to beat you all.” My team was just hoping to get some questions right, so I was impressed with his bold declaration.

In the first round, we faced the team They’re Real & They’re Spectacular, the winners of the Orlando regional.

It could have been worse.

We won 3-0 during a round in which the questions really went our way. With only first-round matches held that day, we headed back to the hotel bar. Rachel and I drank a couple of Lemon Drops, which, after being on special at some bar when we were in Dallas last year, had become the official shot of Wocka Wocka.

Our quarterfinal round was against Team Motherboy. It was the most brain-melting hour I’ve ever had. They had a couple of chances to send us home. Kelly got to a tiebreaker round requiring her to name all of M. Night Shyamalan’s movies. She was taken down when she failed to come up with Wide Awake, the 1998 film in which Rosie O’Donnell plays a nun who helps a fifth-grader find God.

Next up, I got the category of Pretty Fly for a White Guy, all about white “rappers.” (I put it in quotation marks because Kevin Federline was an answer.) Holly, from Motherboy, and I managed just two right answers each, and no matter how many times Holly or I wanted to guess Eminem, it was never right.

The tiebreaker was naming artists who participated in USA For Africa. I answered Bruce Springsteen. Holly confused the song with Band Aid’s “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and said Bono. She must’ve been thinking of his legendary delivery of the line Tonight, thank God it’s them instead of you. I was still in the game.

Rachel went out during a tiebreaker requiring her to name cast members of Melrose Place. That left just me onstage for Wocka Wocka. Motherboy’s Lizzie and I got a tiebreaker wherein we had to name all of the actors from the Big Chill. Here’s where the thrice-weekly study sessions we’d been having since January paid off. Rachel had quizzed us on that very movie the week before, and I was able to pull out Mary Kay Place. But then Lizzie broke out JoBeth Williams, and it was still on. In the end, it took a record-setting total of eight tiebreakers in that round before we were able to win. Yeah, brain-melting.

We'd talked with the members of Westerburg High, a team from Lawrence, about how phenomenal a Kansas vs. Kansas final matchup would be. Wasn’t going to happen -- 3 Men beat them. Now 3 Men faced Twisted Misters in the semifinals. We figured if we could just win this next one against Almost Perfect Strangers 2.0, we’d get the rematch we’d been craving and dreading since Chicago. However, we soon found out that 3 Men & a Little Lazy had become the latest victims of Twisted Misters.

Playing Almost Perfect Strangers, Kelly and Rachel rock-paper-scissored to see who would go up for a Dirty Dancing category. Meanwhile, I managed to break out some tricky quotes from Scorsese flicks in a category called Marty, and the semifinal was ours.

So it was us against Twisted Misters in the finals.

It came down to me and Victor in the Little Miss Sunshine tiebreaker. We went back and forth, but when it came to the final crucial answer – the one that would force a second tiebreaker – I couldn’t come up with Paul Dano.

Paul Dano, you will haunt me for the rest of my life. Would you like to come over and watch Wide Awake?

Sigh. Congrats again to Twisted Misters.

In case you’re wondering, second place gets nothing. Some of the guys backstage were kind enough to give us lammies so we’d have a souvenir.

We went back to the hotel bar to hang out with all our new friends from the show. Aside from Victor walking through the hotel lobby with the trophy, I didn’t see the Twisted Misters again. When the hotel bar closed, I tried unsuccessfully to charge a few drinks to Victor’s room. It wasn’t like he couldn’t afford it.

We’ve been keeping the secret of how we did for more than three months now. The day we got back to Kansas City, I was in a store, and a fellow shopper asked me if I knew who the song playing over the loudspeaker was by. It was all I could do not to answer, “Why, yes, I’m Robert Bishop from Wocka Wocka, finalists in the 2007 World Series of Pop Culture, and I’d love to help you.”

Next up for us is the Pop Culture Scramble at The Granada in Lawrence on August 18. So many of the teams are making the trip from all across the country to be part of it, and I can’t wait to see them again.

One catch: That’s also Kelly’s due date. We hope the baby can accommodate.

-- Robert Bishop