The contestants gripped buzzers in sweaty palms, poised and trigger-happy, waiting anxiously… The contestants gripped buzzers in sweaty palms, poised and trigger-happy, waiting anxiously for the question. “What, according to ‘G.I. Joe,’ was half the battle?” asked the MC. “Knowing,” was the answer.

For contestant Malachi Handler in last Thursday’s ’80s Trivia game show, knowing “useless knowledge” such as this won him a “Sony Progressive Scan DVD/VCR thing.”

Handler, a 20-year-old Film Studies major, when asked how he knew it all, said that he “built a time machine out of cardboard and old cigarettes to embarrass his competitors.”

His final score was 25, as compared to less impressive scores of 10 and 12. And to the victor went the spoils. Handler plans to donate his high-tech prize to the children of Somalia because, according to Handler, philanthropy is his biggest passion, wink, wink.

As part of Pitt Program Council’s “Pitt Loves the ’80s Week,” student Isabel Musial, who planned the event, labeled it a success, saying that more people showed up than expected.

The event featured different categories of questions in a format similar to a high school quiz show, with politics, pop-culture, music and television, to name a few.

Finals round contestant Dan Woods reminisced before the competition about the ’80s era: “I was a fan of the ‘Turtles,’ ‘The Smurfs,’ and sometimes ‘He-Man.'” He continued to say that nothing could beat Nintendo and the original Zelda, and while Woods, with his “abundance of ’80s wisdom” did not win, he finished in good spirits,

“I have two DVD players; I’m here for fun, but my Grandma could use one,” said Woods.

Although the evening was trouble-free, according to Musial, there was a discussion among the judges as to whether one contestant said “Azrael” or “Asmerial.”

Which one is the name of Gargamel’s cat on “The Smurfs”?