Okay, we've moved!

Since I lost my job a couple of weeks ago, I decided I'd do something constructive with that time, and the product of that toil is DSO Media, the new blogspace, record label and all-around attempt to expand the proverbial brand.

Before trivia, I used to spend my creative efforts putting out records and the like, and I really want to get back to that, both with my own projects and with others (where possible or convenient). So there's that. I also suspect that there will be more trivia-themed recordings, as well as other things that fit more cleanly into the way things are going to be done moving forward.

We can actually do podcasts now, as well as maybe the occasional online audio round or whatever else comes to mind. And the increased functionality of the new site means you can subscribe to RSS feeds in any combination, from any category, that you wish. I'm excited about this stuff, anyways.

Anyway, this space is going to fade away a little bit, so move your pointers over to

TriviaNYC.net

Okay. Finally, An Update On Dempsey's (& more)

So we had a kind of impromptu dry run last Wednesday (thanks to everyone who came by and played), and despite a few glitches, I think it went pretty well. They've really made the place a lot nicer, and though we'll not be able to split the place in two liike we used to anymore, I think it'll be a good thing anyway. What the hell, optimism is free.

I've been spending the last five days working on setting up a more permanent blogspace than this one, and I'm very close to being finished. It'll go live by tomorrow (I hope I hope I hope), and at that point I'll point you-all over that way. It's going to have a lot of things that this space just doesn't. Like a working podcast feed, extra audio rounds and regular questions, video and audio feeds, and um, me posting more regularly. It's just a wacky new thing I'm trying.

Good News, And A Sign Of Life

Hi.

I just spent a month crossing the country before getting fired from my job last week, and suddenly I'm getting all geeked up about starting up with our DSO night again. Some things:

1. We looked at some other places to run it in case Dempsey's doesn't work, and we found a couple of places that were quite interested. If we get a confirmation or any further developments come up, I'll let youse know.

2. I've heard from a couple of different sources that Dempsey's itself has actually opened. (I'm skeptical of this, given the state it was in last week, but unless they've just set up milk crates and have bus tubs full of ice and MGD or something, then this is a very good sign.) If they managed to convert a miracle and the place is inhabitable and has a working PA system again, then we're officially on for Wednesday, September 5, and unofficially on for next week (I'll bring some old trivia rounds and we'll have a check-the-new-digs-out party.

Details on both of these as they progress. Until then, I'm hitting temp ag3encies and trying to get my sense of discipline back after a month of sitting on planes and wallowing in the self-pity of having been fired. That kind of thing really takes a toll on you.

Details to follow.

Do you know who this is?

From Overheard in New York:

"You know me -- I always try to be a professional and a gentleman... until I'm in a trivia contest."

Aren't You Guys Paying Attention?

Allow me to correct my own typo: that should be "all your DOGS have rabies and scabies." That was kind of like the old joke about "dog is my co-pilot." Or something. See you all tomorrow.

We're Bow-Wowed by Four-legged Trivia Players

The Dog Days of Summer are here...not because it's sooo hot, but because a few teams have been bringing their pups to play trivia. Those dogs are adorable and smart! Some of last week's team names: "Woof Woof," "Both Your God Have Rabies & Scabies," (no!!) and "Baby Dog!" along with the non-canine "Cants" (there's an umlaut over the "a" in Cants, but I still haven't figured out how to do that fancy punctuation stuff), and "It Will Make You A Sexual Tyrannosaurus aka Dug in Deeper Than An Alabama Tick."

Having been to Alabama a lot in the past (and not planing to go again in the future) I will say that is pretty darn deep, y'all. As usual, we asked you a bunch of stuff that is not as deep as an Alabama tick. For "On this Date" I noted that Danny Aiello and Olympia Dukakis not only shared a birthday, they also both appeared in "Moonstruck," and that it was the birthday of playwright/prevaricator Lillian Hellman (regular players know my love for Mary McCarthy and her quote about LH that "every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" I asked a few questions about some Staten Island stuff (the ferry scene that opens "Working Girl," our local weather-predicting groundhog Staten Island Chuck, and Geraldo Rivera's TV reporting career before he became a big parody of himself) and Tony queried you on "Mirrors." (He thought I was gonna write a round called "Smoke." Sometimes it works out and sometimes it don't.)

BIG NEWS: We will be on hiatus July 4th and July 11th while Dempsey's gets some snazzy renovations. If it extends beyond that, we'll let you know ASAP, but for now, we will be playing on June 27th, back on July 18th. Tony may have a tan!

No Such Thing As A Valid Excuse, Only Reasons That Mean Nothing In The Larger Term

I'm fully aware that I've taken a couple of weeks off from the blog, and without notice, which I know makes me not only less of a hero in the eyes of the sweet, innocent little children who come out every Wednesday night and keep Kym busy running back & forth ordering pitchers of Shirley Temples & Hawaiian Punch and who keep Facebook's servers glowing with the latest gossip about Janet's hair or what exactly I was trying to say in my fractured pidgin Irish two hours after trivia was over and I was way past my bedtime, but also (for those of you who don't subscribe to the RSS feed and still come here every day hoping to read something here, like a recap or whatever) kind of a dork.

Well, guilty as charged. I am a dork. In fact, we are all a dork, a student, a journalist, a comedian, a human-rights worker, a wii enthusiast, and a drunken smartass. (Does that answer your question?)

What I can safely promise, though, is that tonight I will be giving away some excellent prizes, and all of them by, for, about or to the douchebag in your life whom you love the best. Amber waves of douchebaggery tonight! Long may they wave!

I have the recap material here, and I'll be getting them up once I get on top of this new job I got. (Oh yeah, I got hired, which is great, but I have to make sure I don't look like I'm conducting trivia business on company time. Much.)

See you tonight.

Hey, An Actual Excuse To Go Outside And Do Something Else On A Sunday Night

A few DSO people have put together a group for kickball in McCarren Park in Greenpoint on Sunday evenings. It's allegedly a little hipster-heavy, but fuggit, we could be the answer to that.

This seems to be only slightly competitive, if that (there will be beer, and while some teams seem to be going apeshit with the uniforms, we can work something appropriately, uh, trivial in our own time.) There are about six or seven of us, so we need another three or four people to make a full team.

It's kick baseball. With beer. In the park on a Sunday afternoon. Seriously, what's not to like.

Interested? Email me or leave a comment.


(Recap is coming later tonight. I had two job interviews this morning, and I have to catch up.)

Tonight @ the DSO: Drugs, Juice and other Intoxicants

Kind of a hint

I've been sitting on this amazing reference book for a little while, just for educational purposes, but tonight it goes into the prize pouch for one of you lucky people to use as your new favorite handy-dandy reference work.

Illegal Drugs is the first comprehensive reference to offer timely, pertinent information on every drug currently prohibited by law in the United States. It includes their histories, chemical properties and effects, medical uses and recreational abuses, and associated health problems, as well as addiction and treatment information.

Thanks to Karen for that prize.

Also going to one lucky team: Not just one, but two (yes, two) copies of Jose Canseco's dishy tell-all about steroids in baseball, Juiced. Even if you don't like baseball, it's still a fun read. Jose has clearly enjoyed his time at the top of the sporting world, and he no longer gives a shit. It's a lovely thing to see, really. There are parts where he's running off at the mouth like any other junkie, but it's remarkably coherent considering where it came from. And if you are a real baseball fan, then this is really a must read.

I said there are two copies of Juiced to give away. One of them is the Spanish version, El Hombre Quimico (!). Compare and contrast, and see what asides are in one that were tastefully omitted in the other!

Oh, and that's not all! We also have a DVD of Il Divo Live at the Greek Theater! (They're the opera version of 'N Sync! They're so dreeeeamy!) This could actually make someone you know very happy. (That's true of all these prizes, come to think of it.)

We'll see you tonight!

Tonight: Spelling Bee In Brooklyn

We are always down with spelling bees, and given how the last year-plus has gone, that will probably never change as long as there is breath in our lungs and twenty-six letters in our alphabet of choice.

To that end, they're throwing one tonight at Freddy's Backroom to benefit a new play, The Late Education of Sascha Wolff, which they're workshopping for some festival. Having thrown a few benefits like this in our time (and we will again, maybe soon, just to give you a heads-up), so you kids get on with yourselves.

Also, given the line of work we're in, we're always pretty much down with anything involving alcohol and "education" too, so there you go.

5/9 Recap: This One's For My Momma

I'm actually wondering if Dempsey's has done some work in the last year that I didn't know about.

One of the reasons we took last July off was that the place would just get unbearably hot in the summertime, but with the temperature staying up around 80 last night, the extra ceiling fans really made a difference. The air was still a little funky, but it was a little cooler, and with the coming further renovations next month (if they involve Dempsey's being closed on a Wednesday, I'll let you know as soon as I know), this summer could be rather more pleasant than last year.

This week's rounds:

1. On This Day - In which Janet namedropped Rosario Dawson, the African National Congress, and Prince Rainier, as well as commemorating the publication of the de facto bible of a fruity little cult.

2. Audio Round: One Song Leads To Another - Okay, here's the deal. I could make up a story about how this round was exquisitely conceived out of whole cloth during a peyote binge inspired by the arrest of Paris Hilton and the retirement of Tony Blair, but the story is that my CD burner died, and so I frankensteined together an audio round out of duct tape and kleenex this week. I am a slave to technology, and every once in a while, Technology yanks the leash to let me know who's boss.

3. Because I Can - Cannery Row, the Cult Awareness Network, "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," and the number of cards in a full game of canasta.

4. Mothers - Because not only is this the week of Mother's Day, but two teams brought their parents to the game, thus winning these cool mesh hangy down container things from IKEA. (I recommend bringing one's parents to the DSO. Team trivia is a great bonding exercise, and they tend to know shit you don't.)

5. Name 3's - Between last night and today: a correction. James "Scotty" Doohan, Gene Roddenberry and Timothy Leary have all had their cremains launched into orbit, but it seems the Scotty has become the man who fell to Earth.


Team names this week:

• 1st Place: Xes For Eyes (This may be the name of my band, and I know the First Rule of the DSO is No attempt is made to make this game fair, but they won fair and square, no diggety.)


• 2nd Place: Please God, Don't Make Me Work For Rupert


• 3rd place: Coney Island Tenement
  
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):


• It's Not A Bald Spot, It's A Solar Panel For A Sex Machine


• I Love My Mom & Dad & Fan Boy


• No Talent Ass Clowns


• The Hilton Cell Block Inn


• ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA[Start]


• White Water Rupture


• The Wetbacks


• Awesome^{∞ ^ 2}


• Ups Syndrome


• Dana, Making It Work In '07 Without Sam!


• The Wall Hungarians!


• Table For Juan

I am looking forward next week to a batch of chili (enough for everyone, apparently) cooked using a recipe from the Canned Soup Cookbook we gave away this week. See, that's the kind of thing that makes this shit fun. Feed us, is what I'm saying here.

What did I miss?

Good News, Bad News

First, the good news: tonight's audio round will not have a theme. I know that completely changes the way you plan on studying for it, so I figured I'd give you a heads-up. (Actually, this is a crush week at the day gig, and while I put together a good round, I'm not going to be able to get home and collect it before tonight, so I've got next week's work mostly done already, which will be a welcome relief. For me, I mean. You guys are on your own.)

The bad news is that one lucky winner tonight will get the three movies in the Scream trilogy in splendiferous DVD format! (There's also a canned-goods cookbook and some extra trinkets courtesy of IKEA, as well as the usual bar tab prizes and whatnot.)

It's going to be a gorgeous evening. Come spend it indoors with us!

5/2 Recap: Smell The Love

Thanks to a nice mention in the Gothamist and on Freenyc.net, there was a nice influx of folks who hadn't come before yesterday, which was nice, because the rivalries between the warring factions were kindasorta heating up last night, and it would sure be nice to feel a little love between the tribes every once in a while. (Which was why I threw in those how-to-love books as prizes.)

This week's rounds:

1. On This Day - Big ups (or whatever size ups are appropriate) to Senator Russ Feingold, home run great Josh Gibson, the late Roscoe Lee Browne, and the cast of the upcoming film version of Mamma Mia.

2. Audio Round: Where The Streets Have No Clue - Songs about roads and streets, not including XTC's Respectable Street, Dire Straits' Telegraph Road, or anything by this guy.

3. May I? - A clever pun about May 1 and other Mays, including Elaine May and Rollo May, though nothing about Wilfred "Wop" May, who was reputed to have shot down Baron Manfred von Richtofen, who would have celebrated his 117th birthday today, and about whom I did not ask a question in Round One. Call it synchronicity by omission.

4. The Daily Show - Questions about days, though it only seemed like hours. (As a followup to the debate raised by the question about what was part of the new "Recommended Daily Allowance," the MyPyramid site contains details on the eight different pillars of healthy living, for those who were interested. Exercise is represented by the guy going up the stairs, and alcohol is the little white patch at the top of the triangle. (I am sure that Big Pharma would be thrilled to have medications count as a food group, but uh, yeah, no.)

5. Name 3's Inventors, puppeteers, and Bernard Malamud novels!


Team names this week:

• 1st Place: Pennsylvania 09-F9-11-02-9D-74-E3-5B-D8-41-56-C5-63-56-88-C0!


• 2nd Place: Lacking Alps, Goats Settle


• 3rd place: Where's Gibbons Now!
  
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):



• Taylor Hansen Has 3 Children


• Danny De Veto's My Timeline For Withdrawal


• Barbaro's Blue Suede Horseshoes


• Mendel Says "Peas Out Yo!"


• 646-413-6*** For A Good Time (digits redacted; not the first time someone's done this, and I'm saving someone a world of hurt)


• The Ladies! (And A Man)


• The BK Hawks


• Britney's Happy Backup Dancers (It's Been Three Years)


• Hancock, Take The Wheel


• The Millsted Boys


• Anna Nicole's Baby Daddies (Jenn, Dana & Sarah)


• I Really Hate My Girlfriend (who came in, played the last round, and left. Table for one, sir?)

Aside from the belowmentioned books and the usual bar tab prizes for the top three finishers, we also gave away a copy of Kinky Boots, a startling comedy about British footwear, which after looking at the reviews, actually doesn't look half-bad.

Tonight, We Show You How To Love

Tonight is going to be all about the love. Not just the normal we-love-you-do-you-love-us-mark-X-yes-or-no stuff that all us preteens go through until well into our seventies, but in terms of actual prizes.

A few months ago, we gave away a copy of the galley proofs of Make Love The Bruce Campbell Way, a how-to of the highest order, as could only have been written by the star of the way underrated Bubba Ho-tep himself. Well, now we have a fresh hardbound copy, with far fewer flyaway pages (and hopefully a few more rounds of proofreading)!

(I've heard that Mr. Campbell is a great guy, and if he should ever be interested in coming down to enjoy an evening of the trivial arts, he would find an appreciative and adoring group of fans at our little to-do.)

Oh, and we're also giving away a copy of Carmen Electra's How To Be Sexy. Question her skills in front of a camera or in any discipline that requires her to keep her clothes on, but really, the whole "being sexy for beginners" thing is the one arena in which she is a generally acknowledged master. (Personally, I think the coolest thing about her is that she's from Buffalo. After that, give me a chronic reader who hasn't schtupped Prince. I know that's not a large group to choose from, but I gotta be me.)

My point is, regardless of whether you prefer 'em with innies or outies, there's something on the table for you lucky people tonight.

There will also be Pocky and some excellent B-grade DVDs, the latter courtesy of a special friend at Miramax.

See you tonight.

Passing this along: The International Game Show Congress, June 2-3

I've become involved in this to a certain degree, and I can vouch for that the people behind this are not only very cool, but are the cream of the cream of the game show community. Not only will there be Jeopardy! and Who Wants To Be A Millionaire people at this thing, they'll also be trying out new game show ideas and showing people how best to get on these shows in the first place. If you want to get on teevee and answer questions far easier than the variety we offer on Wednesdays for much greater money, I'd say check this out.

THE USA TAKES ON THE WORLD IN TRIVIA

NEW YORK - On Saturday, June 2nd, game show contestants, trivia players, and other know-it-alls will gather at the New York Athletic Club to test their wits against others across the globe during the World Quizzing Championships. The event will be part of the Game Show Boot Camp, a training session for people interested in honing their skills towards participation on television and radio shows, internet contests, and local events such as pub quizzes.

The two-hour written test taken by individuals will cover popular and academic trivia in the areas of culture, entertainment, history, lifestyle, media, sport, science, and world topics. Questions included in the quiz have been submitted by Belgium, Estonia, India, Sri Lanka, the United Kingdom, and USA and voted upon by representatives from those countries plus Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway, Sri Lanka. Additional countries that will be participating in the quiz include Australia, Canada, Germany, Hungary, Liberia, Lithuania, and New Zealand, with more being added over the coming weeks.

The USA is new to the World Quiz competition, but recently participated in a warm up event. In the inaugural Transatlantic Quiz Challenge on April 14th, trivia buffs on both sides of the Atlantic tested their grey matter to the limit. The top score was by Donna Jackson of Florida. Seven Brits and three Americans featured in the top 10, including Jeopardy legend Ken Jennings and World Quizzing Champion Kevin Ashman.

The USA event requires pre-registration at www.gameshowcongress.com for a fee of $30 and there is a limit of 100 participants at the Olympic Rooms of the New York Athletic Club, 180 Central Park South, New York, NY 10019.

For more information please see http://iqausa.googlepages.com.

4/25 Recap: Never Too Many Boobs

I'm not usually the kind to prepare overly much for anything. I procrastinate and put things off until ten seconds before go time, and then I run like a crazed banshee through the halls, leaping suitcases and screaming DON'T CLOSE THE PLANE DOORS with the tails of my jacket flailing behind me. It's why I learned to be a very fast eater, a fast walker, and a generally impatient person. It's not that other people are slow. It's that wherever I am, I usually am expected somewhere else.

Case in point: last week's recap. I know. They all used to be that late. But I'm trying to set a better example these days. Y'know, for the kids.

Case in point number two: last night's questions. I left the folder containing my two non-audio rounds on my desk at home, and did not realize it until Janet was well into her first round. Fortunately, I had saved the notes I had made on my phone, and so instead of having only three rounds and everyone has a drink on me, I was able to reconstruct my research for you people.

I do not wish to make a habit of this, though. I'm going to start emailing myself the finished questions as well, so they'll be reachable from anywhere, even if I putz out again. Clearly, I need a full-time Secretary. I'll accept applications in the comments. Base salary will begin at coffee and cake, with bonuses of, oh, I have an extra copy of this Beastie Boys album. Really, let's negotiate.

This week's rounds:

1. On This Day - During Janet reading the answers about which country exercised ownership of the Faroe Islands, someone yelled "Fuckin' Denmark!", which brought a good laugh, because really, the Danes have way too much influence on modern American culture. I mean, it's Kierkegaard this, and Hamlet that, and those huge dogs, I mean, it never ends. We get it. A thousand years of culture, the oldest flag still in use, and Hans Christian Andersen. It's enough to make a nation feel inferior, fergodsake.

2. Audio Round: Sign of the Times - Songs about Time, including selections from Bjork, the Zombies, Marshall Crenshaw, the Police, Leonard Cohen and XTC.

3. Billionaires - We could do another round on famous billionaires, there were so many excellent and colorful examples since the first modern one, J. Paul Getty, topped the first Forbes list a half-century ago. (There were billionaires before that, just not that I cared about.) (Unless Santa Claus counts.) (Which he does, Virginia. He so does.)

4. Lions & Tigers & Bears - I couldn't believe virtually no one got Bear Stearns as one of the answers. There aren't that many financial institutions named for predatory animals, even if they all claim to act like such beasts when it comes to managing your money.

5. Name 3's - What now-legendary record did Roger Connor once hold? Most of you knew that one, which was nice, but the fact that many of you couldn't name three of the US Attorneys currently involved in this Gonzalez scandal kind of saddened me. Oh well!


Team names this week:

• 1st Place: Every Day Is A Winding Rove (who, had they not won, should have won Best Team Name for their triple-argot of Karl Rove twisting away from Sheryl Crow's reedy leftist touch)


• 2nd Place: Keep Him On The Balls!


• 3rd place: Tony's Got 3 Boobs, But His Legs Ain't Cutting It! (I think this is unfair, as I work very hard on my legs; I did have three boobs to give away, though)
  
  
  
  
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):


• Lauren


• Alpha Male Shitheads, and the Women Who Love Them! (they won the copy of Leadership by Rudy Giuliani, which seemed entirely appropriate)


• Voyage Of The Mimi


• Dodge Darts


• Charter School's Is Edjukashun @ it's goodest!


• Parks Sucks!! (later they added: A Lot!!!)


• Girls Just Want To Have Rum! (welcome back!)


• The Rusty Gromets (who traveled all the way from Austin, TX to play, and dressed up for the occasion besides)


• The Baby Comes Out The Hinder


• The Jam


• Lubricators


• I Am The Walrus


• Please Kill Me!

We did, in fact, give away three eerily real-feeling breasts this week, and there are more where that came from. However many boobs you've got, you can never have too many. We also gave away a copy of National Lampoon's Sunday Newspaper Parody, which is still very funny, but oh so very 1978.

Thanks for coming out this week. It was rainy and cruddy and there was American Idol and hockey and basketball on, and it was really nice to see you guys.

There is news in the pipeline about a few special future events, so bookmark us or add our RSS feed to stay on top of such things.

4/18 Recap

Some weeks, I have to keep my day job people happier than other weeks. Apologies. Lots of events are coming up in the next few weeks, though, so I'd at least add this blog to your RSS feed so you can keep up. This is going to be a busy summer for trivia folk, and you guys could be making a few bucks if you're willing to stick with it. (Seriously.)

This recap will be comparatively bare-bones, but here you go:

1. On This Day - In which I dropped some small science about Heroes, the late great Kathy Acker, Clarence Darrow, Albert Einstein and Max Schmeling's greatest moment in the ring, even if it was a loss.

2. Audio Round: Devil Or Angel - Ten songs about Devils and/or Angels. INXS, Massive Attack, Juice friggin' Newton, the Charlie Daniels Band, Beck, Beth Orton and X made the cut.

3. Get Fuzzy - Not the sometimes-funny cartoon. Think Fuzzy Zoeller, Fuzzy Math, that sort of thing.

4. Spears - I tried for an hour to come up with a suitable question about Albert Speer, one of the architects of the Nazi regime, but I kept getting sidetracked into questions about Spearmint-flavored Altoids (which are definitely not vegan-friendly) and the "Big Four" beauty pageants.

5. Name 3's


Team names this week:

• 1st Place: The Don Imus Negro College Fund


• 2nd Place: Canadians Can't Skate (I must respectfully point out that as of this typing, Vancouver and Ottawa have advanced to the final eight in the NHL, you smartassed twerps.)


• 3rd place: Tiny Tim & the Dickensetters
  
  
  
  
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):


• Malaysian Ghost Fatwas


• Ginger Ale


• On This Day In...


• Dude, Where's My Team


• 5!


• 2 Man Luge


• Thrashers


• "Twas brillig, and the slithy toves/did gyre and gimble in the wabe/All mimsy were the Borogroves, and the Momraths outgrabe" (3 times fast)


• Larry Birkhead's Long Lost Cousins


• Check, Check, Sibilance...

See you guys tomorrow.

Joe Dimaggio, Juan Peron, Sally Ride & Santayana

Hard questions at Ken Jennings' blog today. My guesses inside. I know two, and have crap guesses on the others.

Baseball and Body Parts: We Know What Brings You Back

Today kicked my ass like I was wearing my special mankini with the big target on the back (which, that reminds me, I must get cleaned before the next time I head to the beach), but I'm looking forward to tomorrow more than normal. Not for any reason other than I'm happy to be doing something semi-meaningful with my week.

Prizes this week include some special squishy human body parts (it sounds gross, but it's actually kind of cool. Well, maybe a little bit gross), and for first place, actually an amazing book:

Baseball Between The Numbers: Why Everything You Know About The Game Is Wrong, by the nice people who do the Baseball Prospectus, is a really fun read that debunks much of the conventional wisdom about how the game is and should be played. It's big (450 pages) and stat-heavy and breezily written with lots of snark and goofy asides, and it belongs on the toilet tank of some Yankee hater somewhere.

(I used to be a baseball nerd until the 1994 strike, after which I swore I would never spend a dollar on a major league team again. I've kept my promise, but that doesn't mean I don't pay attention to what's going on.)

Anyway. They apparently showed the episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent that takes place in Dempsey's during trivia this week, so you might want to consider getting there a little earlier if you want the table of your choice. (That really feels like bragging. Sorry.)

Virtual Spelling Bee

You want to know how you'd have done in the 2005 Spelling Bee? If you've got five minutes, you can take the test yourself and find out. It's got pronunciations, definitions and sentence usage, and I still only got six out of fourteen right.

Someone, beat me at this so I can confirm my suddenly low self-opinion on the spelling tip.

In Which Ken Jennings And A Bunch Of New Yorkers, Including A Small But Fervent DSO Posse, Beat The Intellectual Crap Out Of Some Belgians

The Transatlantic Quiz went down on Saturday morning, and it was a real treat. 240 questions (generally harder than our Wednesday variety) in eight categories, in a boardroom at the New York Athletic Club.

I don't think I had nearly enough coffee beforehand.

We got to the 10th floor boardroom, and they ran the thing kind of like an exam, with cover sheets and sixty-minute halves. I'll post some of the questions at some point (I got an extra sheet); since the test was going on simultaneously in a dozen or so American cities, as well as in Canada, across Europe (well, the UK, Norway and Belgium) and in India, the questions were pan-continental to reflect that. My Canadian-American upbringing finally served as a plus, as they asked questions about such cultural esoterica as defunct hairstyles of the rich and ethnic and the Crazy Canucks!

It was kind of a preliminary event, as less than 20 people were there (and only three women, including Kari (represent!)), a few of whom had flown in from other parts of the country to participate. And true to form, the New York chapter of this worldwide thing did pretty good; I haven't seen the truly final numbers yet, but it looks like we put a half-dozen people in the top 20 (possibly including your humble correspondent, which I'm kind of happy about if only because I don't get to actually answer questions all that much these days).

After two hours of answering questions, everyone was thirsty and exhausted. We left the palatial Central Park south opulence and wandered over to Kennedy's on West 57th street, where a bunch of Scots in kilts were running off some tunes on bagpipes (Oh, it was the Tartan Parade on Saturday, which is plumb unfortunate for everyone concerned, weatherwise.)


It was a gas, and these people are very cool. I hope some of them come out on Wednesdays and mingle with the rest of you fine people, and make it harder for us to do our jobs as quizmasters.

Oh, and they'll be doing it all over again on Saturday, June 2nd, this time with recruiters for game shows and other showbizzy types in the house. (I hope to rub shoulders with some of the greats.)

Oh, and I like Ken Jennings' idea of holding this stuff in Barbados next year. Sign my pasty self up for that action.


**** Update: The North American Results are up; I finished 11th, which I'm fine with. (Kari finished 3rd overall in the "Lifestyle" category. Yess!)

Knowing Esoteric Crap Is Its Own Reward

Ellen Barry of the New York Times did a nice piece on last weekend's Panorama quiz, as attended by our friend (and substitute host) Vidiot.

As a bonus, it seems he & Kevin Walsh of Forgotten NY are the central point of the story, and as the victors, they get a double-plus tribute from one of the other contestants:

The night in Queens — being near the true masters — had been thrilling, he said. Here was another lesson: “Living in New York, you have to get used to being around people smarter than you are.”

So this fine, glorious Springtimey Monday morning, I raise a glass of Kenya's finest with my sopping monsoon-wet arm to you, Vidiot, a true master of New York arcana.

4/11 Recap: Hello, Imus Be Going

I was expecting maybe a little more than a few allusions to Don Imus' troubles, as well as more allusions to Grindhouse, which was phenomenal and not only a bargain, but an edge-of-your-seat thing that cooked with gas, even in the draggy middle bit where Quentin Tarantino tried to foolishly write dialogue for women. Don't knock yourself out, Q. Stick to the wacky camera angles and the killer soundtracks underneath slam-bang holy-shit boyzoney funny stuff, and kids of all genders and ages will flock to your movies like conservative politicians to cranky old racists.

This week's rounds:

1. On This Day - Happy birthday to Ethel Kennedy, Joss Stone and everyone's favorite manwhore, Vincent Gallo!

2. Audio Round: Let's Talk About Our Feelings - In which I dropped pieces of Feely songs by Blue Swede, the Gorillas, Carole King, Samantha Fox, Foreigner and Chaka Khan. It was one of those rare rounds where I actually liked all the songs I used. (If you hear Rush or Zeppelin, you know that's not always the case.)

3. Famous Cultural Catchphrases - Where I asked about stinking badges, "Mission Accomplished, "By any means necessary," "Amandla," and "It's the economy, stupid."

4. Charlies - Janet asked about Charlie the tuna's hat choice, Charlie Chaplin, Charles Manson, Charlie Bucket, and Checkpoint Charlie (but not the perfume).

5. Name 3's - So many people thought that "Postmortem," "Body Of Evidence" and "From Potter’s Field" were all written by Sue Grafton. Or maybe they were all copying off each other. Tsk, tsk, tsk.


The team names this week veered between the topical and the slightly surreal, which is a trend I wholeheartedly endorse:

• 1st Place: DON'T


• 2nd Place: The Original Nappy-Headed Hoes


• 3rd place: Lisa Kudrow's Cask of Amontillado (I love this name)
  
  
  
  
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):


• Please Tell Me Where I Can Get Generic V1@gra Online.


• Santorini Deckhands (formerly, A-Rod's Steroid Source)


• Whole Foods Market, Bowery


• Fabulous Four


• B.A.R.K.


• Your Highness, Don Imus


• Larry Birkhead Of The Class (I was expecting more TWANS jokes, but I guess that's just so damned played out by now)


• !Fuck Foucault!


• Teenage Mutant Tina Turner


• Kym, Please Buy Those Two Gentlemen By The Fireplace A Pitcher On Me


• The Running Deer


• WACK'R (Wes, Annie, Chrissy, Katie, Rachel)


• Thinking With Our Mouths


• Sam I Am

Prizes this week, aside from the shiny future book and the bar tab goodies, included some Emergency Chocolate (it only looked Swiss) and some teeny mousepads courtesy of Yahoo!. There was more, but I can't remember. What else happened?

Tonight!

Tonight's prizes include:

• Where's My Jetpack? A Guide To The Amazing Science Fiction Future That Never Arrived, a book detailing the whereabouts of such eternally anticipated items as robot maids, underwater cities, mind-reading devices, space colonies, universal translators, and teleportation. And not only is it informative, it's very shiny!


• another prize pack from the now-defunct WB network, including a cap signed by Garcelle Beauvais, who is apparently quite attractive and was on NYPD Blue for a while, so yay her;


• and lots of other geegaws and doodads, including neat stuff from Yahoo!, as well as a mix CD containing tonight's audio round and the usual array of incredible edibles, courtesy of my secret Japanese connection.

See you tonight!

Queens Museum Panorama Challenge: Update

If you didn't go to the Panorama Challenge on Saturday (I had a last-minute hockey-related issue that could not be avoided), it sounds like it was a pretty cool time. Vidiot was there to recap the festivities, and what a shock, he did extremely well.

I seriously am looking forward to the next time they do this.

More On Banksy

In the Faces round last week, I asked about who defaced Paris Hilton's album by putting 500 copies of a remixed version into record stores, with new art and songs like "Why Am I Famous?" and "What Have I Done?".

It was, of course, this guy. Here's an excellent piece from Channel 4 about his graffiti campaign along the West Bank of Palestine (showing rare footage of him actually doing his thing):



[via Joey Skaggs]

4/4 Recap: Happy Ether For Everyone!

You know how some weeks it doesn't pay to get out of bed? Well.

After leaving all the results and scoresheets from last week at work over the long weekend, my laptop, on which all trivia everything is stored, shit the bed this weekend, and while I have almost everything backed up in places, for some reason I left my folder of emergency rounds on the hard drive. Which I can't get to at the moment. My sweet baby is in the hopefully capable hands of a bunch of Russian grad students who could be selling all my music porn impeccably researched writings and trivia notes to swarthy underground middlemen, thus unwittingly abetting the Global War On Terror.

I'm kidding, of course. I'm sure they're great guys. They came very highly recommended, and whatever it was I said about them on the Don Imus show, I totally didn't mean it. It was 6:30 in the morning, and I was still pretty ripped from the night before. You know how it is.

Right. Last week's rounds:

1. On This Day - Big ups to McKinley Morganfield, Kitty Kelley, Dave Mirra and Jamie Lynn Spears. (Imagine those four in a hot tub. Mwrowr.)

2. Audio Round: Money - Featuring the monetary monotony (and polyphony) of Rush, Biggie Smalls, Spinal Tap, The Pet Shop Boys, and Warren Zevon. And Eddie Money, because how could I have left him out? I ask you.

3. Ians - Janet schooled you-all about Sir Ian McKellen, Ian Ziering, and Janis Ian, without having to resort to Ewans, Euans, Jans, or any other esoteric spelling with which new parents are surely ruining their precious newborns' schoolyard futures these days.

4. In Your Face - Some facey questions, in which I managed to ask about whiteface (just like blackface, except the other way around), the Steal Your Face logo (shown two posts down), and I got to mention my favorite unit of measurement (totally stolen from some old factbook; if I find it I'll post the link here later):

A millihelen is the amount of beauty it takes to launch one ship.

5. Name 3's


Team names this week:

• 1st Place: Urbina Machete & Gas Company (regarding this story)


• 2nd Place: Brian Wilson Pickett's Charge


• 3rd place: Muddy Waters Lives
  
  
  
  
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):


• Iran 15, Briatin 0!


• Everybody Loves Ramo (later, Ramo Needs To Step Up)


• NAMBLA (The National Aviation & Motor Boats League Association)


• S&M


• Steamboat Willie Randolph (whose shirt won best dressed, and quite spectacularly so)


• It's A Bellobration! (we're always looking for new sponsors, guys)


• Team Derrières Extraordinaires!


• The Drunken Inquisition


• Farfa Nouveaux


• Snakebirdz (who did quite well considering they missed the first two rounds)


• and last but certainly not least, ...Off In The Shower

Prizes this week, aside from the usual bar tab madness, included a nice hardcover volume of all of Opus the Penguin's Sunday appearances from Bloom County, Outland and Opus, as well as a DVD featuring an actress named Hussey playing Mother Theresa. Sacred, profane, lenten and perfect for the tone of the evening.

We'll see you Wednesday night, hopefully in warmer moments.

Good. Friday.

I am a pud.

I don't know what I was thinking yesterday. I took the scoresheets, questions and notes out of my bag and then left them at the office, so there shall be no recap until Monday. A thousand apologies to the various stock markets around the world who peg their indexes to the number of teams and quality of the puns in the team names (best team name this week was "...Off In The Shower," as they finished last, so on Wednesday last, everyone beat ...Off In The Shower.)

As a feeble replacement, here's a Seattle Times article with some background on the interview process to get on shows like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Deal Or No Deal and the Big J. The entry process is straightforward, but there are a lot of people looking to get on the teevee and get their asses kicked by midwestern College Professors. You might have guessed that.

[via the quite-relevant-to-this-blog Bob Harris]

Recap is on the way

It's open and in pieces, but I was out very late last night, thanks to you guys, and because it's a four-day week here at the day gig, everyone's having kittens about one thing or another.

Until I get it all put together, though, check out these non-performing clips from two of my musical heroes, Dick Dale and Frank Zappa.

Give me a couple more hours, chief. I won't let you down.

This Saturday Night: Beer and Purty Pitchers!

This Saturday at the Queens Museum of Art, the good people at Unique New York are hosting The Panorama Challenge, an evening of New York-themed visual trivia to benefit the City Reliquary, a museum in Williamsburg dedicated to memorabilia and artifacts of everyday city life through history. It's really a cool place, and now that they have an actual space to display things, it's time for them to start ramping up their notices.

Our museum collection displays thoughtfully arranged artifacts of New York City’s rich history, which entice viewers to learn more about the five boroughs. Some of the highlights of the collection include architectural remnants of city buildings, Statue of Liberty memorabilia, a geological display of New York’s underground composition, and a 1939 World’s Fair exhibit...

A central part of our mission is to plan and host public events, which provide neighbors and visitors with a place to meet, exchange ideas, and celebrate the diversity of our community. Some of our annual events include Bicycle Fetish Day, Collector’s Night, and The September Tribute to Our City. We maintain a commitment to neighborhood beautification and restoration at and around the City Reliquary Museum as a way to provide a pleasant and safe place for people to gather, relax, disseminate information, and enjoy the camaraderie provided by a city of over eight million people.

Basically, the amazing panorama of the city (which you should see anyways if you haven't yet; I know it's in Flushing, but the extra 20 minutes on the 7 train is good for you) will be the backdrop for a series of trivia questions about the city. Sounds pretty straightforward, actually.

It's $25 for tickets but that includes two free drinks (Brooklyn Brewery is also a sponsor), and hey, it's a Saturday Night. You were going to shell out that much for a good time anyway.

Details and ticket information at the Reliquary's website, or you can call them at 718-R U CIVIC.

Edit: [via vidiot]

Tonight's Festivities: A Preview

This is the first time I'm putting together the audio round at work (I'm working on getting that occasionally annoying skipping-disc issue out of the way, and just making sure it's not the burner at home), so if there's a round on Great Epistemologists or something where the audio round should be, you'll know the experiment was a failure.

Prizes this week, aside from the usual bar tab silliness ($25 for 1st place, $15 for second, $10 for 3rd, same as downtown; oh right, we kind of are downtown), include this gorgeous hardcover volume of every Sunday Comic featuring Opus, the original marching penguin. (There was a stretch in the 80's where Berkeley Breathed was the best newspaper cartoonist in the business.) It lists for 30 bucks, and it's now out of print, so this is kind of a big deal. Also we've got some swag from the now-defunct WB network, including a ball cap signed by Nick Von Esmarch. That's right. Nick. Von. Esmarch.

Don't say we don't take care of you.

For Advanced Trivia Folk, or Those About To Rock

Never let it be said that you don't have options for the upcoming weeks.

Item 1:

On April 14th, a worldwide competition called The Transatlantic Quiz is being held at the New York Aquatic Club, as well as a string of other places around the US, Canada and England, all at the same time. The sample questions are a little harder than ours (or for Jeopardy's, for that matter), and it doesn't look like there are any actual prizes past doing a big ole trivia test and bonding with fellow quiz dorks across the English-speaking world, but frankly, what more do you need? (If a few DSO folks wanna go in on this, we'll make a day of it. Email me or leave a comment with some kind of contact info.)

What's exciting about this (aside from the obvious) is that it apparently leads into a worldwide quiz on June 2, sponsored by a group called the Game Show Congress. It would seem the opportunities to geek out on quiz programming, in all its myriad forms, from East Village piss-ups to travelling the world as the bastard spawn of the Great Trebek and Ken Jennings, are virtually unlimited.

(** Update: Ken Jennings is apparently going to participate in this thing himself. Further details in the comments.)


Item 2:

In other (equally esoteric) news, the U.S. Air Guitar Championships will be at the Bowery Ballroom June 7, and they're still accepting entrants, if you wish to get your freak on beside the likes of William Ocean, the Rock Ness Monster and the (let's face it, totally sweet) Björn Turöque:

3/28 Recap: It's Not Fun Until Someone Loses An Eye

For this, Janet's birthday, and the first we-knew-it-in-advance nice day of the year, there seemed to be a little extra low-level drama in the room. The pirate people had to leave after three rounds because of some emergency (I hope everything's okay, guys), and then someone threw a dart over a crowded table (not even in anger, just because), and it was a pretty nice dart, too, not one of those cheap-crap here-take-these jobbies they pull out of the sink behind the bar that couldn't poke Marty Feldman's eye out at ten paces neither, a real nice one, with holographic whatnots and weight balance and, I don't know what I'm talking about. Even during the game, though, there was the rarity of the Scrabble Solution question deciding first place.

And y'know, give this Sanjaya kid a break. I understand the purists think he's a blight on what American Idol has come to represent, and he may be a little dim and a little flat most of the time, but fuggit, he's seventeen. Let him have his fun. Better him than William Hung, or Justin Guarini, far as I care. So everyone who's pissed about him, just take a deep breath, eat something, and enjoy the last few weeks of this thing before Paula Abdul's vicodin prescription runs out.

This week's rounds:

1. On This Day - Big ups to Reba McEntire, and her homies Ed Muskie, Dianne Wiest and Mario Vargas Llosa!

2. Audio Round: I Must Be King - If Janet is the Queen (not this Queen, but, you know), then these ten songs about Kings made sense in context. Featuring Kingly songs by Midnight Oil, Social Distortion, Steve Martin, Moxy Fruvous, Jawbreaker, Everclear and the mighty King Crimson.

3. -ULA - I'm kind of surprised there even were ten questions based on things that ended with those three letters (Kula Shaker, Count Chocula, Missoula, lunulas, Don Shula, End User License Agreements, and Spatula City, everyone's favorite tone-deaf teenage hula dancer, and the tragic American figure we now know as "Tom Dooley.")

And here, as a special bonus, is the theme song to Quantum Leap, the (quite good, as I remember it) show starring Scott Bakula. (thanks, DSO person who wishes to remain anonymous! We are all better for your largesse!)

4. N.Y.C.J.A.N.E.T - In which Janet wondered aloud who Scott Stringer was, who Janet Weiss was, which NYC mayor had a musical created in his honor, and what's in the Frick collection that's so frickin great.

5. Name 3's - Three popes, three SAG Presidents, three Roots albums, three rum drinks, three state mottos, and an awful lot of people who knew who Jean Vander Pyl was, which made me very happy.


Team names this week:

• 1st Place: Drop The Restraining Order, Tony!


• 2nd Place: I Am Intrigued By Your Ideas And Wish To Subscribe To Your Newsletter


• 3rd place: Cash Money Daffadillionaires (It was you guys who brought Janet flowers, wasn't it?)
  
  
  
  
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):


• Millions of Lumpy Peaches: A Tribute To The Presidents Of The United States Of America


• Tom Selleck's Moustache


• 9th Inning Touchdown!


• Crabitat Attack!


• Yesterday's Losers (Who traveled here from England, and who have apparently done trivia contests on at least three continents; more on these two in a future post)


• Phantom Punch


• Esqueers


• Anna Nicole Baby Daddy


• Lunchbox


• Joakim Noah's Ark


• My Own Pirate Idaho

We had more candy than usual this week. It just worked out that way. Oceans of chocolate and cookie-based concoctions filled the room as we finished like it was pudding day at the rest home. (I love you guys.)

Aside from the belowmentioned DVD and coffee table book, Marty (your bartender) also brought out a VHS copy of So I Married An Axe Murderer, and I forgot to give away the second copy of the soundtrack to The Queen, so we'll have that for next week.

I know I missed a bunch of stuff this week, but that's what the comments are for.

Thanks as always for coming.

Tonight!

I know, we don't have special prizes every night. They can't all be fully-stocked aquariums or Sopranos DVDs or Corey Haim in a thong ready to clean your toilets for a place to stay and a chicken salad sandwich.

But this week? This week is going to rock. We have, on DVD, for your pleasure and perusal, the greatest multi-show promotional mashup since the Cosby Kids wound up on the USS Enterprise. The That's So Suite Life of Hannah Montana DVD will go to one lucky SOB.

If you're not an eleven-year-old girl at heart but rather a thirteen-yer-old boy, we also have a nifty coffee-table book on the life of John Belushi.

Between-rounds music will be by the Mooney Suzuki, because it's Spring, and it's time to make things nice & peppy.

I Don't Know What To Make Of This.

A few weeks ago, there was a team called "Tony Looks More Like Britney Spears Every Day." It seems they took that idea way, way too far one step further, and created avatars for both of us for the Wii:

 

Two things:

1. Janet is chopped liver?

2. I kind of think I look more like Britney Spears in reality than these two avatars do. I look completely guileless there (not to mention one puff of air short of having my head explode; this isn't some kind of voodoo thing, is it?), and "Britney's" looks kinda like Nicole Kidman in Bewitched.

As I told Bryan, I'm equal parts flattered and creeped out by this.

A Game Site For Friday

Guess The Place is one of the many games at the excellent site Games For The Brain. I just picked one at random out of the two-dozen-odd games they have on the site, and they're not all trivia-related (there is a chat room that throws out questions, and there's one or two others), but they all have some sort of low-level mental element to them.

While the questions are sometimes inconsistently hard or easy, the games themselves are simple and well-constructed, and the "IQ" system means you can play for as long or short as you'd like and still have something to work towards. The rewards and milestone tokens it occasionally spits out are links to high-res pictures of classic artworks, which given the fact that everything on the site is free and cheap is kind of nice.

It's a good way to spend a few minutes or to while away the time being on hold.

[ via JiG ]

3/21 Recap: Smell The Love (And The Sweet Air Of A New Waitress! *And* A New Sponsor!)

Funny, despite last week being St. Patrick's Day and openly hostile besides, this week was at least as loud as any other week. Just in a more positive way. It may have been that the temperature had just gone up, and was about to go up again, to the point where I'm now at my office gig in a sleeveless Scorpions t-shirt, and my 24-inch pythons are rippling with sweat as I type these words.

Trust me.

This week's rounds:

1. On This Day - Big ups to my boy Otto Von Bismarck (or as one team put it, "Auto Von Bismark," as if the old chancellor was the new keyboardist for Kraftwerk or something), and the professional babydaddy we all know and love as K-Fed. (It was pleasing to know how many of you had forgotten about the glory of Popozao.)

2. Audio Round: First Day Of Spring - A string of First-ish songs, including Barry White, Foreigner, Bright Eyes, XTC, and Gladys Knight and the Pips. I didn't realize how many people don't really like the Barenaked Ladies. I went to high school with them, people. I don't care how jokey-corny they are, you will like them.

3. Let It Fly - Janet's round about The Fly, I'll Fly Away, flies in ointments and elsewhere was very well balanced, unlike...

4. I Can't Tell You Y - where all the answers started with the 25th letter of the alphabet, which led to questions about Trisha Yearwood, Steve Yzerman, Yerba Mate, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and of course, Yiffing. (That link is safe for work, as is this one. If you want the naughty stuff, go nuts.)

5. Name 3's


Team names this week:

• 1st Place: I Love Parrots In The Springtime


• 2nd Place: The Un-Bushies


• 3rd place: Nancy Kerrigan's Revenge
  
  
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):


• Big Ass Bus (BABS)


• The Provisionally Unconfirmed Lesbians (would someone complete the research on this and report back? I don't want to have to start issuing subpoenas here, metaphorically speaking.)


• Ass of Bass (There are 968 different ways to pronounce this team name, all of them wrong.)


• We ♥ Barry! Pleather Pants Power!


• Global Warming Rules!


• Strangers In The Night (Literally)


• Stroopwafellers - Pick A Side, Kerry! (later, Stroopwaffle Iron!) (later, Strike While The Stroopwaffle is hot!)


• Mike's Bitches


• Billy No Mates (later, Billy Found Mates!)


• Drunk Cuban Cheetahs!


• Demie!


• We Love Kym, Too! (Kym is our newest waitress. We'll miss Christina, but Kym is very nice and more than equal to the task of keeping you nice people properly moistened for the evening)


• Ramsey!


• CC Carolyn (later Fuck You, We Heart Barry! CC Carolyn! God Damn You Whores! Hell Hath No Fury Like A Paralegal Scorned!)

We would like to welcome our newest sponsor, Centricity Vintage Clothing & Accessories (63 East 4th Street, between 2nd Avenue & Bowery in the East Village), who provided us with a $25 gift certificate for their fine shop. Go say hi to Christine, who owns the place. She's great, and her collection of 60's-era kitschwear is swingin' and ace. Check her store out.

Pirate Head Coconut

Pirate Head Coconut
Originally uploaded by Chico Bangs.

The recap will come later this afternoon, but a few pictures are up from last night.

If you haven't yet flipped through the DSO photo pool, have a look-see. There are some gems, and you might even be in there somewhere.

Tonight

Among the usual prizes ($25 for 1st, $15 for 2nd, $10 for 3rd, in glorious bar-tab dollars), we'll be celebrating Spring by giving away two special Crabtree & Evelyn Beauty Packs, as well as Woof, a gorgeous coffee-table book, and The Courage Of Our Convictions: A Manifesto for Democrats, by the appropriately virile Gary Hart.

Also, I've been hearing a lot of complaints about how easy the questions have been lately. We at the DSO hear your concerns, and we have decided to do something about it.

If I were you, I'd bone up on Balinese nose-harp music and twelfth-century farming techniques by tonight, or else, um... hm.

Let's see. What do I have to hold over your head? Nothing, really. My threats are toothless, my spite is low.

I will be bringing the greatest theme music ever composed tonight, though. Not that that'll be in any of the questions, neither. Gosh, I'm no help at all. I don't mean to be coy, I swear.

I can tell you that tonight there will be questions on world leaders, people with large breasts, and at least one modern musical auteur type.

If the questions seem easy, that's probably a good sign, Part 1

This isn't exactly trivia-related, but... while we Yanks are wrestling with the finer points of trying to mentally best your average nine-year-old at textbook trivia, in Canada they're taking it to a whole different level.

CBC's Test the Nation will be the biggest survey ever conducted to see just how smart Canadians are. In this live two-hour special, the whole country can participate in a real-time interactive IQ test. Viewers can take the test in the comfort of their own home, on the internet or with pen and paper, while our seven teams - Tattoo Artists, Millionaires, Fitness Instructors, Surgeons, Mayors, Talk Jocks and Celebrities - are exercising their grey matter in our Toronto studio.

It's more of a straight-up IQ-type thing, and if you've taken the SATs, well, it's a little easier than that, but they have a new test every week, and if you're close to the Canada-US border (or, heaven forbid, over it for some reason), you can play along for the next few weeks.

Thought I'd share.

3/14 Recap: Pie, Abe Lincoln, Antarctica, and the Poetry of Hooliganism

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Tonight: Florida, and Not-Bruce

Tonight’s going to be a doozy for my first night back from Florida, where there was no shortage whatsoever of sun and sand and whoop-whoop. Or so I hear.

I brought back a couple of prizes from my voyage to the Gulf Coast, including a most excellent coconut carved into the shape of a pirate (a pirate! How arrrre ye gonna beat that?). It’s got a chain attachment so you can hang it in a place of honor in your swingin’ pad. Maybe over the bed to ward off evil spirits.

Oh, and I found the Betty-Boop-in-a-neck-brace-Pez-dispenser store again. That last one was a hit, and so I procured another couple of those bad boys. They only had Betty, but she does wear various outfits (I know, they're stickers on a rectangular box, but this is showbiz. Work with me). You-all are gonna be so damn spoiled by the time I get through with youse. Hopefully.

Questions this week will be equally festive and topical. And I’ll give you one hint about the audio round: One song sounds like Springsteen, but isn’t. Another one is a cover of a Springsteen song. But there is no Bruce Springsteen anywhere in the answers to the audio round.

See you tonight, you sexy bastards. It’s good to be home.

3/07 Recap, Part II

Janet files this report:

Oh, if only Sam and I had huddled before the game, he could have written his round on Bridges and I would have countered with Tunnels. Oh, well.

Instead, I cooked up a round called "Mixed Fruit," where we explored ex-Warhol-not-quite-superstar Cherry Vanilla, Plum Sykes, the author of Bergdorf Blondes, Darryl Strawberry, and a fruit cocktail of other cultural touchstones such as the produce on the Fruit of the Loom tags.

For the round of "threes," the trios included neighborhoods in the Bronx, animal groups (pride, clowder, brace), pasta shapes, US poet Laureates, and the paramours of Michele Pfeiffer. We are nothing if not eclectic.

Geeking Out, A Little

If you can read this, then I can post from my handy dandy new mobile device thingy, perhaps even on a Wednesday night, if I can swing it.

Well, I'm excited.

3/07 Recap: [56] Weeks Without A Trivia-Related Injury

I hear the Pope and Stevie Wonder and Aquaman and Melissa Joan Hart and the cast of Laguna Beach and Nipsey Russell and the surviving Gallo brother and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and my mom and a pack of zombie clowns giving away winning lottery tickets all showed up last night. But Sam has the real story.

I'm thrilled that it went well. Thanks to him and to you guys for treating him nice. He'll be back. As will I, next week.

You guys be good while I'm gone, okay?

In case I'm unable to post to this blog with my phone (something I still haven't completely figured out), I want you guys to have fun tonight.

Janet will be there, and my most excellent replacement has done this dozens of times.

I wanna hear all about how it goes down.

Tonight!

If you're one of those squares who doesn't even have party plans for a snowy Monday night, our friends at Last Exit Bar in Brooklyn are having their High Roller night, where the winners get an awful lot of cash money, instead of the usual reasonable amount of cash money.

Everyone pays $20 to get in, and the winning teams split the pot. It's pretty sweet, and they're good people, even if they never come out to Dempsey's and see how many questions I brazenly steal from them. (I kid, I kid. Although the Scrabble Solution is an amped-up version of something I first saw there, and the Dead/Canadian/Both/Neither question last week is a straight lift from them, as I believe I mentioned at the time.)

I'd come out if I could (if a freak dusting of snow alone were to stop me, I'd have to turn in my Canadian Club Card), but I have to pack for the land of the sun-leathered republican retirees. Three thongs a day times three days equals... I'm going to have to pack a bigger suitcase.

3-09: 2/28 Recap: This Is The Spawning Of The Cage And Aquarium

It's been a while since we tinkered with the formula, and while I think the changes were mostly successful, it turned out the questions themselves this week were a bit on the easy side. (when three teams break fifty points, it's time to bring out the all-Indonesian Dub Poetry audio round and the "Bobsledding Legends of the 1930's" version of the Name Threes. Don't think I don't have that stuff on tap. I don't, but I could.) Seriously, if it weren't for the fact that people came from as far as Seattle to join us (impulse travel is one of the more wonderful irrational decisions one can make), I'd have been pissed at how smart you guys were.

Oh, the hell with it. I could never stay mad at you.

This week's rounds:

1. On This Day

2. Audio Round: Jose, Can You "C?" - Featuring Cream, Crowded House, Cinderella, the Commodores, and Irene Cara (the subject of my favorite scene from the movie DC Cab, when Tyrone (Charles Barnett) freaks out over her (a part of that scene starts off this video; that's all I got).

3. Do Submarines Dream of Electric Fish? - In the spirit of this week's aquarium prize, Janet & I did an aquatic-themed couple of rounds. in this one, I asked a question about the very non-Canadian Abe Vigoda, who is apparently still very much alive (and whom Janet runs into every once in a while; I'm guessing they go to the same raves & mudwrestling nights around town).

4. Waters - In which Janet asked questions about Ethel Waters (but not John Waters, Barry Goldwater or Sam Waterston) and which NYC river had a beaver dam built across it.

5. Name 3's - I was very proud of how few of you knew about the three hosts of Fox News Channel programs, especially since quite a few of you recognized the three Oscar-nominated animated shorts and knew (or at least guessed) what a snickerdoodle was.

Lots of teams this week, which was great, and it seemed like everyone came fairly early. We could have started a little after seven, and it would have been fine. (before trivia starts, it's happy hour, so if you get there early, most of the bar items are half price). This week, you were:

• 1st Place: We Are Eddie Murphy's Venting Spleen! (Winners of the aquarium by dint of getting a perfect 20 on the first two rounds, they took it and bolted without even collecting the carrying bag I brought for it. Tut, tut, tut.)


• 2nd Place: There Are Rats In My Kitchen Too, But You Don't See News Vans Outside My Apartment They Eat At Nobu


• 3rd place: Salmonella Fitzgerald Kennedy
  
  
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):


• Three Men & A Little Lady


• Stephen Hawking's Football Boots


• Jennifer Hudson's Cape


• We Need That Hermit Crabitat Desperately! (Sorry.)


• Making It Reign (I didn't realize until just as I typed that: Was this a double reference to Helen Mirren and Pacman Jones? Nice!)


• Drunken Cuban Cheetahs!


• Powerpuff Girls!


• Katastrophic Retardation! (Your guess is as good as mine.)


• The Good, The Bad, and the Helen Mirren


• Dung Monkey

Aside from the aquarium, We also gave away a big picture book of the life of Steve Irwin (including updated photos from his funeral!!), Richard Roeper's new book Sox And The City (which Janet repped, yay her), as well as the usual choco-dippy Japanese cookie contraptions and inexplicable Engrish packaging you've come to love so.

Next week, I will be out, but I leave my duties in the capable hands of Sam, who is a mental ninja, specializing in civics, indie rock and current affairs (none of which may wind up in his actual question set; homey knows a lot about a lot). Your free ride on the Tony's Easy Question Express is about to end, sweet babies! For a week, anyway. I'll be back March 14th. Play nice.

This Week: Fish! For Real This Time!

Tonight's Prize
Originally uploaded by Chico Bangs.

My skills are many, but being a prolonged and effective tease is not one of them. Some days I can withhold and entice pleasure with the best of them, and then others, well, I'm a big old suck who couldn't deny Marty Scorcese an Oscar, even if he didn't really deserve it.

(Note to those who are reading this via archive or google search: This metaphor may be not quite apt, but it is at least relatively current as of this typing.)

What I'm trying to say is, after a couple of weeks of back problems and carrying-too-much-crap-around issues, I will be bringing this special Discovery Kids! Exploration Aquarium ("great for goldfish, bettas and guppies!") as a prize for one special fishionista tonight.

(It comes with a special carrying bag, and it's not actually all that heavy. Certainly you can have your standard night out and bring it home without difficulty. I wouldn't bring anything you can't drop out of a moving cab while hammered at 2:30 in the morning on a school night. Promise.)

We also have some special books (including one about a movie star who left this world last year and yet didn't make the Oscars' grief reel at all, those ungrateful bastards).

See you tonight.

Podcast: Update

A couple of people have asked after I tried a couple of prototype broadcasts last month, so just FYI: I haven't abandoned the podcast idea.

In fact, I've run two prototype pods and feel pretty much ready to go. The sticking point right now is with setting up a stable hosting place, so y'all can subscribe and have it be there week in and week out.

Once I get that working (I have to get my domains in order; they're scattered across the four corners of the intertubes and are probably attracting moths or something), we will be up & running, and then, well, it's another something, anyway. And all these somethings add up. Or so I have read.

A Scoring Change For Make Glorious Nation Of Smartass Futures!

One of the things I occasionally mess up (I know, I know, I never make mistakes, but oh-crappertunities just sounds so damn corny) is that I will miss a team when reading the scores on the fly in order.

So to stop that from happening, I'm going to read out everyone's score, just not in order. I'm not going to stop doing the rankings, I'll just not go from bottom to top. Maybe I'll read the top three, and then everyone else, and certainly, everyone's name and score will be read aloud after rounds 2, 4 and 5, but yeah, there's no need for you guys to stare at me while I scratch my beer-addled head trying to figure out if there actually is an eighth place team that I just can't see on the page, or a three way tie for sixth.

It feels like it takes a lot of extra time, and the breaks are long enough as it is.

Does anyone have a problem with this?

3-08: 2/21 Recap - Betty Boop In A Neck Brace (or Where The Goys Are)

You guys keep surprising me. I was expecting a chill evening, hanging out, watching the Knicks lose and maybe ordering some pizza, throwing some questions around and wishing I could make it to the Ernest Borgnine night in the West Village (which I heard was kind of lame, which is kind of a bummer), and then it was like the bus from the Cool Institute stopped in front of the bar and let out a Parker Posey-like posse. There were a couple of groups who hadn't come in a long while, and a mess of new people too. (I hope some of you stick with us. The prizes are only going to get better.)

And to the team who named themselves after a serial killer with a brain fetish: I have to admit, I've never watched Heroes, and so I didn't know how to pronounce your name. I'm sorry. I try to know as much as I can about as much as I can. That's kind of my job. And this Sylar fellow sounds like my kind of guy. I'm not really the bulletproof cheerleader type anyways. (Keep those pictures coming, though.)


This week's rounds:

1. On This Day - Happy birthday to Anais Nin! And Nina Simone! And the Communist Manifesto! And Affirmed!

2. Audio Round: I'm So Lonesome I could Plotz - Since it was a week after Valentine's Day, I figured I'd do a round on songs about not being with someone. Can you guess which tracks I used from The Police, George Thorogood, Tiffany, Tommy James & the Shondells, or Roy Orbison? Unlike the Motels said, not only the lonely can play.

I'm trying over here. Work with me.

3. Happy - In which Janet dropped Samuel Johnson and Kander & Ebb, but not one of my favorite bands or the latest Will Smith Oscarbait, which I am sad to report was vastly overrated.

4. They died in '06 - I was having a discussion with a few friends this week about who was going to get the biggest round of applause during the Grief Reel at the Oscars. The consensus was that it was going to be Robert Altman, though Jack Palance and Don Knotts are going to get some love.

5. Name 3's - Not only is Zsa Zsa Gabor Hungarian, she was chosen as Miss Hungary for 1936! (Sure, she was later disqualified, but still.) And forgive me, but what has she done since? I mean, that's a hell of a long time to dine out on an accomplishment, girlfriend.

We totally didn't enforce the team size rule this week, and as a result, there were some teams that were, um, large. Not that it helped; the three podium teams all had five players or less:

• 1st Place: Tony Looks More and More Like Britney Every Day! (Shyeah, as if.)


• 2nd Place: The Knicks Are Down By (as the Knicks slowly fell further and further behind, their score increased. Kinda clever, actually.)


• 3rd place: Laissez-Fairgrounds
  
  
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):


• It's Never Too Late For An Astronaut Love Triangle!


• We Are All Dannielynn's Daddies!


• The Well-Dressed Man Disguise


• The Dancing Oysters of Greater Lebanon


• METS/Bill Kristol/GNYCE (Could someone explain what these three things have in common?)


• Tim Hardaway's Baby Daddies (A theme here, there is)


• RehabFab


• Miso-Horney


• Sylar


• Master of the Kennel


• John Solo


• The Little Way


• Writers Of Rohan


• Cheap Tricks(who would have finished dead last except they got the Scrabble solution about the number of survivors from the Titanic)
  

Among the prizes this week was a Pez dispenser knockoff of Betty Boop which looked rather like she had sustained a spinal injury, and had to be kept in a neck brace. The fetishists in the room were all over it. Also, as a gift, we gave away a copy of a novel called Goy Crazy, which seems like a pleasant enough read, if a little preteenish for our crowd. (I've forgotten who won that, but if someone could take an hour and read it and let us know how it was, I'd be grateful.)

Tara, the fill-in waitress, had her hands full all night, and performed admirably. We are kind of a hurry-up-and-wait kind of scene, and it's not the kind of thing every server can do. We've seen this shift drive otherwise good people out the door screaming in rage. Even though we miss Christina, Tara did a fine job.

I know I forgot to mention something.

TMI, and Next Week: Fish!

I wound up missing last night's sports trivia thing because of a delicate "manly" condition. (Some things are best not talked about in mixed company.) But it did afford me the opportunity to put together a quality audio round, which plays on the whole idea that Valentine's Day is over, which means you can either squirrel yourself back in your little love nests and trysteries, or get back to the business at hand, that of being alone again, naturally. Whichever your situation may be, or whether you're just in a once-a-year fling thing, well, I hope that works out for you.

And while the special grand goldfish bowl prize will not be making an appearance tonight, it certainly will next week, as Spring creeps ever closer to our collective doorsteps. I do, however, have a bondagey Pez dispenser-like contraption, news themed clothing, and a book by Dr. Phil's wife.

As well as all the regular bar tab and other pointless and occasionally edible prizes on the docket. Never let it be said we don't take care of you.

Attention Sports Trivia Nerds

Tonight (that's Tuesday, if Presidents' Week has messed with your delicate innards) at the King's Head Tavern (222 East 14th Street), an outfit called NYC Sports Trivia is hosting something called the Jeffrey Leonard Invitational, which sounds not unlike our little thing, but they've specialized, and they do have as a special guest quizmaster Will Leitch of Deadspin.com.

From the breakdown on their blog, their plans for the evening look kind of ... familiar. Anyone wanna come down and explore a little further?

(Oh, and I've added this to the ever-growing list of trivia night on the Google NYC Trivia Calendar. If you have Gmail, well, you know what to do.)

The Greatest Ever, Just Ask Her

In the Name Threes round this week, I mentioned Leilani Kai, Joanie Laurer and Wendi Richter as being three WWF/WWE Wrestling Champions, and of all the women who've held the title, I recognize maybe two more names (Trish Stratus was a model in Toronto, and Sable, well, I can categorically say I am not the father of her Dannielynn, her Bahamian love child, and I want the mainstream media to finally acknowledge this in print. Right, Prince Anhalt? Good).

But of course, the greatest women's wrestler ever, The Fabulous Moolah, held the "Women's World Wrestling Championship" belt for 28 years, which even for a showbiz thing in a discipline where there weren't all that many contenders until recently is still an impressive athletic achievement. I think of it the same way I think of an actor doing a role for that long, like Yul Brynner doing The King of Siam in film & on Broadway for thirty years, or Mary Martin doing Peter Pan until Cathy Rigby was old enough (I know lots of other gymnast types played Peter Pan over the last half-century, but this is a trivia blog, not a place for facts).

If you get a chance to see the documentary Lipstick & Dynamite, about the pre-glory days of women's wrestling, do it. It's funny and excellent to hear these women laugh about their horror stories of life on the road. It's making the rounds of the cable channels now.

Have a good President's Day weekend, y'all. In the words of Abraham Lincoln, "Don't dis my homies!"