Hey, hey, hey. WHAT is going ON here?!

As a child of the 90s, many of my formative years were spent watching re-runs of Saved by the Bell after school and on Saturday mornings. The outlandish characters fulfilling their high school stereotypes, the groan-worthy lines, the high energy laugh track, and Zack's constant breaking of the 4th wall all succeeded in keeping me watching the madcap adventures of the Bayside crew. The events that transpired each episode were never super surprising, so watching them over and over again was as reasonable as watching them the first time. Ten years ago, I had seen every episode (including the College Years and the Wedding in Vegas special, of course) and would have, for better or worse, considered myself very knowledgeable on all things Saved by the Bell. Last night, it was proved to me that 1) you forget a lot in ten years, and 2) there are people out there far dorkier than I.

A week or so ago, a friend at work asked if I wanted to be on her Saved by the Bell trivia team. She saw in me a kindred spirit who would be the appropriate completion to her team of Bayside afficiandos mostly composed of members of her bowling team. Naturally, I said yes, although with some trepidation after her team added me to a group email list and kept sending questions like "What was the name of the photographer who wanted to take Kelly to Paris on a modeling contract?"

Flash forward to last night: we'd breezed through (well...sort of) the preliminary rounds and were in the finals. The finals were held at the Upper East Side Big Daddy's which is a retro diner standing as a tribute to 70s and 80s pop culture. Also, good milkshakes. For the finals, we were requested to dress like our favorite Saved by the Bell characters. In my case, I chose to dress not as my favorite character, but as the character I thought I could best pull off with things I already owned. Interestingly, that ended up being Violet Bickerstaff, Screech's girlfriend played by Tori Spelling. Here she is with her boyfriend who lovingly calls her "my heart":

I'm not sure why she looks so sour here. Maybe its her hatred of basset hound heads. Or the fact that she's dating Screech.

And here's my approximation using only materials I had on hand (the dress is actually from my Halloween costume last year). Luckily the friend who recruited me went as Screech:Someone said I looked "better than Tori Spelling," which out of context I would find to be a compliment of dubious worth.

Here's the rest of my trivia team done up in their Bayside best:
That's Kelly in the foreground, two waitresses from The Max, and Bayside's finest wrestler A.C. Slater up top.

Sadly, we didn't win any of the fabulous prizes (mostly restaurant and bar parties), but it was a lot of fun! For those readers looking to test their Saved by the Bell trivia knowledge, here were some of the questions from the night (or at least the ones I remember):

During the Wedding in Vegas, what member of the crew opposes Zack and Kelly's marriage?

Who does Screech set Kelly up with when Zack says he wants to see other people?

When Screech's mom goes out of town to visit Graceland, she gives Screech a list of rules. What number on the list is the rule "no girls!"? (For the record, I can't believe people got this one.)

That's about all that I remember. Feel free to shout 'em out if you know 'em. On another note, I hope all my readers have a happy Halloween! I'll be dancing in the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade--so, given my experiences at previous dance parades, this should be excellent blog fodder.