Wine Makes Me A Shitty Person

I don't drink a lot of wine.

No particular reason... it tastes fine, I don't find it "fruity" like some men do, and I generally think you could do a lot a worse for yourself if you're looking for a beverage to alter your consciousness (Smirnoff Ices come immediately to mind; those things taste like candied cat pee). Still, the fact remains: Wine and I tend to not enjoy the pleasure of each other's company. Unless I suddenly come into a bunch of free bottles of wine, as I did yesterday... then wine and I are like those two girls in High School who always hung out together, invented their own language during their every-weekend slumber parties, and who are currently planning together a commitment ceremony to be held out in the New Mexico desert during a full moon. Free wine and I are 24/7, BFF, like for real, OMG.

Anyway, my point is, last night I drank two bottles of red wine. And it turned me into a shitty person.

Here's what happened... Girlfriend and I got sucked into that World Series of Pop Culture show they've got going on over at VH1.

Side Note: I'm just so insanely good at that show, it's a crime on par with a presidential assassination that I'm not on it right now, dropping mad knowledge on the bunch of wiseasses they call contestants who think they're all clever because they know how to do "The Carlton." Next year, if they have the WSoPC again, I will be there... winning fat bags of cash and giving a clinic on how best to employ a vast array of useless trivia (and my clinics are free).

So, we're watching the WSoPC and I'm getting well into my wine and it comes up that, nightly, there's an online trivia competition after the show; first prize is 2500$. Girlfriend gets excited, says we should do it, and I grumble a response that's unintelligible because it's said down the neck of a bottle. Cut to: The show ends and the online competition is about to start. I've since turned my attention to Ace Of Cakes on the Food Network (I've got a pretty healthy crush on Mary Alice; on Chef Duff, too, actually) and have become uninterested in all things trivia-related, which only goes to show you how far astray the wine had led me.

Girlfriend, very sweetly, asks me to come play the trivia game with her. I balk. Again, she asks, reminding me that I'd already said I'd play and that it is for actual money. I point to the TV and say things that are rude. She asks again and, finally, I do that thing that 8-year-olds do when they're being forced to go to Church; I sigh exasperatedly, and I stomp over to the computer, shoulders-slumped, my shitty attitude stinking up the room like a garlic fart.

The first question is something easy (I don't remember what, exactly, but the answer was Pamela Anderson). And then we get the second question...

What was the artifact they were looking for in the the first Indiana Jones movie?

Well, obviously, it's the Ark of the Covenant. But Girlfriend doesn't know this off the top of her head because she hasn't seen that movie in a million years and, quite frankly, has other shit to worry about that's not pop culture facts (unlike myself, who has that kind of time). She turns to me for the answer and I, without hesitating say...

"The Holy Grail."

She clicks the corresponding button and we're immediately kicked out of the game. She looks at me, sad-faced, and I mutter guiltily, "Oh yeah, I was thinking of the third one sorry or whatever."

And then I realized that I'm the worst fucking person on the planet. There's low and then there's intentionally throwing an online trivia game because you're being a petulant child. Who's drunk on wine. Which is the real culprit here, ya know... were I drinking whiskey or beer or anything else, I'd have said, "Woooooo!!! Trivia!!!" and we'd now be 2500$ richer and I'd be Girlfriends hero. But no, I was drinking wine, which makes me moody and surly and basically a supporting character on My So-Called Life.

As penance, Girlfriend demanded that we play a couple of rounds of Halo (in which she beat me handily; it's our version of couples therapy) and give her a back rub, which frankly I think is letting me off a little light. I think I deserve, for the crime of Drunken Douchery, at least a good hard slap across the chops.

Although I do have a nasty, red-wine hangover at the moment, so I guess there is some form of justice in the world.