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

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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.