Am I in a senior slide? I didn't finish that German essay last week, I didn't prepare (or do) my English presentation for today. I have excuses for both: an unprecedented lack of interest in the German book I was supposed to write on (the essay I did write was a hate letter to Romanticism, and needs to be rewritten) and Trivia Weekend.

I didn't set an alarm because I didn't think I was that tired, and I didn't think I was tired because I wasn't thinking (there are stories) because I was tired. I got four hours of sleep all weekend, which I think amply proves my trivia master mettle.

(I also wasn't thinking last week, when I decided that I could do Monday afternoon's homework the morning after the contest. Stupid.)

Ever since I missed video game hour last year, Trivia has reminded me of that one Modest Mouse lyric: the loud sound of fun when I'm trying to sleep.

And it was fun, naturally, though I did spend an unhealthy amount of time handling disputed point totals on the complaint line (a cell phone with spotty reception) and cloistered away in the computer room updating those same scores. Not to mention answering phones: there's a better way to run that system. Running the trivia blog wasn't that bad, and I felt like I was at my most useful when I posted scores and pictures there.

As I think I've said before, people like me might not be meant to be trivia masters. Probably good to have a few of me around as "inside" people, but the one thing the founder of Trivia and this year's Grand Master seemed to share was a casual approach to the whole crazy thing.

I can't see our Grand Master bothering to look up correct answers in our shoebox of notecards: he'd probably just give the points out. It seemed like he only bothered to investigate some allegations of cheating because he was bored, and even when it seemed likely that some foul play had occurred there was no question of his zeroing the point totals for any major team.

As for the founder, he gave away some answers himself, and didn't seem to worry much about whether his own questions were incredibly easy or impossibly hard. Now some of the old masters from way back, the ones who have an unhealthy fixation on the game, do seem a little more serious about Trivia. But there's even a Trivia Credo to tell everyone to relax: "Trivia is meant to be entertainment and should be perceived solely in that light."

So Trivia is fun. The geek in me can't help but go overboard (isn't that geekdom? an intensity of attention?) and worry about all the other things Trivia can be about, but I don't think anyone is supposed to care that much about any of this. A bit disillusioning to see the rusty nuts and bolts that hold the contest together, is all.

A few people told me a was overly brusque on the phone (I was under the false impression that jamming the phone lines was a serious problem this year), and quite a few teams seemed angry that they couldn't interrogate me and get the answer that way.

I had a lot more fun on the air, reading questions and entertaining the audience with another trivia master as co-host. I was on the air with trivia masters Jonas, Sean, Jinx, Sando, and Representative Man, and enjoyed my time with all of them. I was still getting the hang of Trivia when I went on with Jonas. Hosting the hour with Sean was a pleasant surprise; I've never spoken to him outside of Trivia but he turned out to be a "chill" (to use the common tongue) guy.

That hour was pretty low-key, but the tone of the broadcast varied widely. Representative Man and Our Bold Hero dug into each other passive-aggressively during our "Slightly Unnerving Hour" and it was great to work with someone so committed to conscious self-parody. He seems to have trouble reading me, but we had a brief chat during the break to confirm that I did not really secretly despise him, and after that everything was cool.

I'd like to think that the audience enjoyed our acting, but after one concerned contestant called in to find out what happened to trivia master Meara — who had ended "Death and Destruction" hour by claiming the police had arrived to take her to jail, presumably for causing death and destruction — I remembered that not everyone has the power to notice what seems obvious to me.

Sando and I hosted the infamous "Drunk Hour," with Representative Man acting as our token drunk. Yes, people called in, advising that we take the drunkard off the air immediately. I'll bite my tongue though, because as a contestant last year I fell for the same act. I just didn't call in and complain.

That was a great hour. I'd written a bunch of alcohol-related stuff so I had the added pleasure of reading and explaining my own well-researched questions on the air. We also played a few of the pre-recorded skits, or "carts" — I keep saying "cards" — that some of the other masters had made over the past few weeks. My respect for Representative Man was even higher after hearing the cart he made to herald midnight, that magical time when we could say almost anything on the radio, FCC or no FCC.

Jinx and I hosted an hour, but I can't remember us doing anything interesting. That might have been when I made a flippant comment about our university president's "hot dancer legs" (or something to that effect) only to realized later that she was in the room.

Sando and I didn't get a chance to do anything special because people were still performing their answers to the action question from "Blues Hour" for most of our time on the air.

Otherwise, since I didn't leave to watch any of the outdoor action questions (the "perform a play based on a livejournal entry" one looks hilarious on tape) my other favorite moments for the weekend are small things. Quips on the air, little luxuries from sponsors (I rarely think to buy chapstick, but it came in handy down in the studio), the camp-style camaraderie between masters, watching the horserace as I recorded the scores, good jam-team names…

My team from last year, rechristened the Nerds with Hooterphobia after the restaurant decided to sponsor them, called in with jam teams zinging Jonas and myself. A series of jam teams claiming that I'd missed an ever-increasing amount of errors in the latest issue of The Lawrentian were especially funny. Representative Man backed me up by parodying Ann of Stillwater's recent campus evangelical campaign: "I stand by Dan!" he shouted. There were jokes about posters and T-shirts.

Maybe I tired, but I thought it was hilarious. The Nerds placed second, by the way.

Would I rather be a contestant? Probably not. I'm too much of a control freak and I honestly believe that my questions were good, and that the contest was better with 30 questions from me than it would have been with 30 from some random student. And the excitement of the final questions, the Garudas and the Super Garuda — trivia master Adam was right to liken that event to a religious experience.

That last hour or so is also great because harder questions are finally worth more points. Meritocracy?

Waiting in near-silence while the Grand Master reads the questions on the air. Sitting at the phones, imagining the drama on the other side of the phone lines. No one got our hardest questions right, but they came tantalizingly close.

Time to sleep though. Past time. I need to get back into the swing of things and start doing some schoolwork.