May 31, 2001

To the gang responsible for The Stranger's First Annual Know-It-All Movie Quiz:

First of all, I'm pretty sure I did not win the contest, so please don't consider this a plea to ignore my unfinished answer to the essay question but instead look at the outline on the back. I never should have written an outline to begin with, especially since I knew you were joking when you intimated that an outline was a good idea.

In fact, I'm pretty gullible all around, so it shouldn't surprise either of us that I fell for all of your dirty little tricks. But I love falling for tricks when they are good ones, and I must tell you, I really enjoyed this experience.

I just want you to know that there's someone who appreciates all the work that went into preparing and administering this contest. The construction of the cheatsheets and the accompanying test is, well, inspired. And I'm not talking about the trick no-answer questions (which I answered), or the long lists of extraneous information (which I memorized). I'm talking about how the test can only be passed by the true know-it-alls, by those that jibe with the attitude of the test. The true movie know-it-all knows that it's all about inside baseball, about loving all movies, and about loving that's it's all inside baseball. And that must be understood before the test is even worth attempting.

Head isn't obscure. It's awesome. I know that now.

Please do this again next year. And please promote it better: despite the fact that the odds are better with fewer players, I'd like to see all three classrooms filled to fire code capacity in 2002.

Thank you,
Dan S.

The winner of the contest scored 84 points, which makes me think that if I didn't botch the essay, I may very well have had a chance. Oh well.