The crowds! The heat!

It was appropriate that we began the video round, "More '80s Music-Video Mash-Ups," with the clip for "Hungry Like the Wolf" (juxtaposed with this song); it was filmed in the sweltering cities of Sri Lanka. And last night, Crash Mansion felt a little Sri Lanka–esque: very crowded and very steamy. And by steamy, I mean literally of an unpleasantly high temperature, not sexual (I've been doing the trivia thing long enough to know that element is rarely in the cards, despite last night's giveaway of this book).

But you were a large, happy, wonderful crowd, my friends; supportive of other teams' Smart-Ass Points, which I always like to see. Two delightfully tacky ones: Q: What's the very Irish name of the traditional wooden walking stick or cudgel, sure to be brandished aplenty at tomorrow’s parade? Someone said, "A bottle opener." Then of course, Q: In 1991, 3 Musketeers adopted its current shiny silver wrapper. What color was it before?, gave us: "Don't you know that all rappers are black?" Funny, but as EDP said, a little offensive, too. (But you can't have one without the other…)

"More '80s Music-Video Mash-Ups" was great, but I was particularly proud of the audio round, "It's Actually Rather Easy Being Green," in honor of St. Patrick's Day. I think I swerved a lot of you by forgoing musical clips (for the most part) and opting for "Green" entities in our culture of pop. Apologies to Strippers for Stephen Hawking for not including Natalie Green (from The Facts of Life), and yes, Alan Greenspan would have been a nice touch (no, that wasn't Alan Greenspan talking about Iraq; it was Rajiv Chandrasekaran, former Baghdad bureau chief for The Washington Post, and probably less than half the age of Greenspan; very interesting conversation here).

As for prizes…let me know how ROOMS a rock romance is, or the 92YTribeca comedy show, for that matter. We're planning (hoping?) to have ongoing relationships with both sets of marketing folks, bringing you a better prize experience.

And DJ GB was back! So wonderful to have her, too—the team is complete once again as we move boldly forward into our best year yet, I swear to fucking God!

Now, the standings. Lots of excitement last night…

1. Cash Cab for Cutie: First victory after many months of heated competition. Yes, yes, they had a lot of people; guess that rule has fallen by the wayside.
2. Sugah Titz: Only a half point away. I assume they will never forget that Mount Everest is on the border of China, not India.
3. Gerard Depardouche: A former dynasty, now perpetually a bridesmaid (if I may mix a metaphor)
4. Jefferson Davis Starship (augmented by returning door queen Sherry)
5. Fantastic Fournicators (a-HA!)

We're back on the 30th with "Soda Pop Haiku." Plenty more on this blog before then…