Sporcle Quiz of the Week

Just a brutal sports weekend. For starters, my Pick-of-the-Week Blue Hens blow a 19-0 lead and any chance of me creating "Ham'N'Chee"-shirts, which were guaranteed moneymakers. To cap it off, the Birds junk-tease me for 59 minutes and 16 seconds, only to lose a Wildcard game that was actually winnable even after the miscues (I can think of 2 big ones right meow).

But enough complaining. The joy of being a dejected sports fan is that "there's always next year", and more recently in Philly's case, "there's always the Phils". Don't get me wrong, I love the Flyers and they'll be right in the thick of it once the NHL postseason rolls around sometime in 2017. But I've had Feb. 26th & 27th circled on the old calendar for some time now, when Yours Truly will be heading down to sunny Florida to see the Phightins spank the Yankees two times in a row. There's just something about baseball in winter that makes me forget all about the accumulated pain I've endured for the past 17 weeks of football (not to say there weren't plenty of highlights).

To make this past weekend disappear from our collective short-term memory a little faster, I thought I'd turn to an old reliable friend: booze movies. Being able to sit in peace and not have to yell at the TV for no less than 2 hours has a calming, if not magical effect over me. Tonight is the BCS National Championship, so I thought I'd kick-start my mental diversion with this week's Sporcle Quiz of the Week: Can you name the movies (based on true stories) by the inaccuracies in their plot and/or characters? Let me just say that this one is right in my wheelhouse and should serve its purpose just fine.

Worst Miss: A 2008 Vegas movie about kids playing blackjack?! I could see this movie's trailer, cast, and fuggin prop boy in the back of my mind, yet could not for the life of me remember the name. To make matters worse, I remembered the name of the BOOK that the whole movie was based on (Breaking Vegas), yet no dice. Unacceptable.

Biggest Surprise: 25% (5 of 20) of the movies mentioned are sports-related, and I was able to nail all of them except the atrocity decribed above. Normally I would never consider a Blackjack movie a "sports movie" but when the WSOP is televised on ESPN, it gets pretty hard to draw the line.

Final Tally: 15 out of 20 (75%). For those keeping track, the old average has dipped to .818 on the season, but still going strong. The pain of the weekend is still fresh, but less acute.