By GENE KEMMETER
of The Gazette
Signs of the infatuation with trivia in Portage County begin tonight, a week before 90FM's "Trivia 33: All in the Contest" starts.
Lines will begin forming outside Rogers Campus Cinema, 1601 Sixth Ave., several hours before the midnight showing of "Amelie," the trivia movie, on two screens. Saturday night similar lines will form as trivia participants, notepads in hand, wait to take notes.
Lines will begin forming again Monday outside the Communications Building on the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point as teams wait to begin registering at 3 p.m. to enter the contest.
At 4 p.m. Friday, two hours before the 6 p.m. start of the 54-hour conference, the annual Trivia Parade will begin from Lot Q, the parking lot on Illinois Avenue, north of Fourth Avenue.
The parade will proceed north on Illinois, turn left onto Maria Drive, proceed west and then turn left onto Isadore Street.
Parade units will travel south on Isadore, turn left onto Portage Street, then right onto Phillips Street to College Avenue, where units will turn left.
Proceeding east on College, the parade will turn left onto Reserve Street and proceed north on Reserve past the 90FM WWSP studios in the Communications Building.
Units will turn right onto High Street from Reserve, then right onto Fremont Street before making a left turn onto Sims Avenue and heading east on Sims to the P.J. Jacobs Junior High School parking lot.
The parade is expected to last about an hour, from beginning to end, giving teams members a chance to watch the parade and get back to their team headquarters.
Trivia participants will be poking their heads out of their headquarters periodically during the contest, following clues given every several hours to find "The Trivia Stone."
Large groups will emerge from headquarters again at 7 a.m. on both Saturday, April 13, and Sunday, April 14, when participants will gather at a specific location for the "Running Questions."
The Saturday gathering is traditionally held in downtown Stevens Point where sheets with questions are handed out and participants become pedestrians, walking and running around the area trying to find the answers, oftentimes carrying ladders to measure items above street level.
The Sunday gathering usually moves to various locations, from the Kmart store on the north side, the Copps Store on the south side and the Copps Store in Plover.
Jim "The Oz" Oliva, the chairperson of Trivia, usually provides some hints about the contest at the movies.
Before the 2001 contest, Oliva told the audience that the contest would be following trivia to the letter. The contest then proceeded to ask questions seeking answers that worked their way through the alphabet, from A to Z, with some hours devoted entirely to answers with the same letter.
Oliva also promised participants that at the end of each hour they would say "wow." The final question in each hour sought an answer beginning with the letter "W."
Just what the questions prepared by Oliva and John Eckendorf will be are a mystery, released only when the question is asked on 90FM WWSP. Their weekly "Saturday Morning Freak Show" on 90FM may provide some clues, similar to those the Riddler provided Batman.
Oliva has been saying he's putting "his pedal to the metal" and will be operating "full throttle all weekend long."
But then again, those clues may be misleading. The teams will have to decide.