A Tale Of A Jerk And A Mike

Tuesday, September 05, 2006, 3:25 PM

Guy Smiley: You used to be cool, mang.

This story is proudly sponsored by my good blogging colleague Yvonne of nektros.com. Yvonne wrote a story of delicious revenge, something that has inspired me to share a story of my own.

I was bundled along to a charity trivia night some time ago, and it was hosted by the king of sleaze. I'm sure you can paint your own mental picture - a grotesque lovechild of Guy Smiley and a real estate agent. (Red blazer included.) You could smell his ego as you entered the room.

During one of those between-round minigames that are played at these events, I got down to the final two in a true-false game. Now, the other bloke and myself were both intelligent fellows (if I do say so myself) and it took us a few minutes to find a question we both didn't agree on.

The question was - "Did the Karma Sutra originate from Asia?". Tame questioning I know, but it was a charity event. I said yes, my counterpart said no. It's in the bag, I thought. But I was wrong. Apparently the Karma Sutra originates from India.

I hear you shout "India - but that's a part of Asia!" And that's pretty much what I shouted at him, along with a few kind audience members. But instead he awarded the prize - a two night stay in a hotel - to my opponent.

Now as you can imagine, I was mad as all hell. But I contained my rage, and asked him and my opponent politely for another question "in the interest of a fair game." It was obvious that our lovely host was not being paid by the hour, and had printed the questions straight off the internet. The confusion carried on for a minute or two, and was ended pretty abruptly when our smiling host lost his cool and very audibly spat into his microphone "I DON'T CARE!".

You could hear the air being sucked out of the room. You could hear a pin drop. And then, our gracious host sprung back into his usual demeanour. "Oh Of course I care, folks!" he said, with enough cheese to make a diary farmer sick.

I got my rematch. I lost. I was gracious about it. But I did get a prize that night - knowing that such an inconsiderate, unproffessional jerk will have a lot of trouble finding work in this town again.

Feel free to share your own stories of sweet revenge.