You think you’re a trivia buff dude? Well put your money where your mouth is hot shot and head to our favorite Gowanus, Brooklyn venue for an evening chock full of audience participation trivia! It’s “TrivWorks Live Trivia Entertainment” with special host NY1 morning news anchor and veteran game show host Pat Kiernan. On Wednesday night the LocalBozo.com crew made our way to The Bell House to join Mr. Kiernan and a completely sold out crowd where 1990s vs. 2000s trivia was the name of the game.

Shortly after 7:30pm, droves of trivia and nostalgia heads made their way into The Bell House’s main event space to form teams and grab tall beers. Due to the popularity of Wednesday night’s theme, the line for teams to sign up snaked almost entirely around the venue. Unlike the typical live events held here, the seating arrangement was altered to have teams facing each other as well as the stage. And once the final team was formed, TrivWorks leader David Jacobson took to the microphone to welcome the capacity crowd, give some background to the evening’s game and welcome the highly anticipated host. After his resume was run down, the clean cut looking yet hilarious Pat Kiernan took centerstage to a roaring applause.

Each team was given the opportunity to select questions pertaining to ’90s or ’00s trivia or both. Kiernan meanwhile wasted no time in launching into the first round. As he ran through each ’90s era question we could hear audience members whisper answers to each other and laugh as they reminisced about the often goofy decade that was. Since we recently came out of the ’00s, we were happily surprised to see how many of the questions made us mentally time travel back almost thirteen years. So much time has passed since 2000, providing a wealth of easy to difficult questions to sift through but the attendees knew their stuff and it showed. But it was the moments when Pat Kiernan pulled members of the crowd onstage for head to head trivia that really got us invested while sending us into fits of laughter. On several occasions, the questions would be music related and if the contestant was drawing a blank, we would have to hold our tongues if we knew the answer. Other times mini dance contests were held with teams busting out versions of the ’90s line dancing classic “The Electric Side.” This truly brought me back to Bar Mitzvah days.

Once the final question was pondered and the last challenge was doled out it was time to call it a night. TrivWorks events not only test your brain power and teamwork skills but they also know how to seriously tickle your funny bone. As host, Pat Kiernan proves why New Yorkers count on him to deliver the local news from “In The Papers.” His dry yet impeccable sense of humor kept us laughing and pumped to return for future trivia nights, regardless of the theme.

- Jay Rubin