July 26, 2009

"I got it! How about a guy who can eat anything?!?"

As I've mentioned too many times at the quiz, I am the proud uncle of identical twin boys (going on 5 1/2 years old). They're nuts, but in all the best ways. I am their favorite uncle, of course, and inevitably, I've gotten them hooked on one of my favorite interests from childhood, superheroes.

This makes it easy to buy them presents. For Hanukkah, I got them a couple of "personalized" story books—that gimmick where the company fills in a kid's name, hometown, best friend, etc., into a prewritten story, to fool children into thinking it was written especially for them. (One of my guys teamed up with the Justice League to defeat Gorilla Grodd; the other joined forces with a bunch of Marvel heroes to battle Dr. Doom and Magneto.) Lately, I've been buying them (and reading to them) issues of this series……which is well written and pitched at the perfect level for a five-year-old. That's shockingly rare in modern comic books: When they asked for a Captain America story, I bought them an issue of the kid-focused Marvel Adventures, which was way over their heads; it was a wordy, surreal tale of Cap being sucked into the Internet, where he fights literal trolls and firewalls. (They said they liked it, but it annoyed the crap out of me, since they asked for clarification about six times per page.)

Predictably, they dig Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, etc., but really, who doesn't? Oddly, though, they have become obsessed with a rather obscure hero, whom I only vaguely remember introducing them to: Matter Eater Lad.Matter Eater Lad was a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, a DC team of teenage adventurers from the 30th century, big sellers in the '60s and a background presence ever since then (and stars of a short-lived cartoon a couple years back). The gimmick with the LSH was that each hero had a different power, so after a while, writers needed to get really creative. One guy could inflate himself and bounce like a beach ball; another dude could turn himself to iron. And then, of course, Matter Eater Lad, who could chew, swallow and consume anything in the universe.
What a dumb-ass character. And no, we never did learn details about what happened to Matter Eater Lad in the bathroom. Yet at least the comics industry seemed to realize MEL's lameness, and treated him with the appropriate level of humor (he hailed from the planet "Bismol"—haw haw). And it is the kind of superpower that a five-year-old would be attracted to, since that's the age when you just discover the concept of eating-related comedy, whose fertility fades away by the time most of us reach adolescence. Nearly every time my nephews and I speak on the phone, they ask for more details about Matter Eater Lad: "Can he eat his own head?" "Does it hurt his stomach?" "Can he eat a dinosaur?" "Is he friends with the Flash?" Etc.

There are no Matter Eater Lad T-shirts or calendars, so it's hard to make him the centerpiece of a gift (although I did recently compile a bunch of MEL pictures I found online and sent them in an e-mail for their perusal). I think I'm doomed to perpetually try to explain the character for at least the next couple years—my guys are extremely inquisitive, which is good but can be hella annoying. Still, I am reaping what I've sown. Why couldn't I have been a baseball fan?

July 25, 2009

August 31: The BQT's 200th Episode Spectacular

As hyped at last Monday's quiz, we have big plans afoot…


One month away, give or take, on Monday, August 31, for one night only, the Big Quiz Thing will be at (Le) Poisson Rouge in the Village for The Big Quiz Thing's 200th Episode Spectacular. (The number isn't exact, but the trivia certainly is.) Plans are still taking shape, but we're aiming for a mondo night of the usual BQT shenanigans, including out most popular video round, The Bipolar Movie Challenge, and more audio fun with Sloooow Songs.

Plus, perhaps best of all, supersized prizes: First place will get $300, second will receive $100, and we're looking to score especially cool swag for other players. And this venue is ridiculously beautiful.

Text of the press release is pasted below. Two important details to note: The show will start at 7pm, and admission is $10, still a steal. You will be there…

THE BIG QUIZ THING, NEW YORK’S PREMIER TRIVIA SHOW, CELEBRATES ITS 200TH EPISODE AT (LE) POISSON ROUGE, AUGUST 31, WITH $400 IN CASH PRIZES.

“It might save us from the hell that is karaoke,” declared MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. He was talking about The Big Quiz Thing, New York’s No. 1 live trivia event, packing in hipster-nerd acolytes twice a month since 2002. And now, to celebrate their 200th "episode," the stars of the BQT bring the game to the lovely (Le) Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village for a super-sized live trivia blowout, with $400 in cash prizes at stake.

Quizmaster Noah Tarnow, joined by sidekick EDP and DJ GB, plus The B-Cuties, presents the ultimate high-tech, video-based test of meaningless information, for the glory of knowing that you possess more useless knowledge than your peers. For this special show, the BQT will be rolling out some of its most beloved signature games: The Bipolar Movie Challenge (video from one film juxtaposed with audio from a different one; name both films), Sloooow Songs (ID the pop songs at half speed), the famed Lightning Round, the big Four-Part Questions, clever banter and semantic arguments. Plus, a mega-sized slate of prizes, including $400 in cash (usually it's $250, but we're feeling generous). And even when players can’t hazard a guess, there’s hope: If a wrong answer makes the crowd laugh, it’s counted as correct and earns a Smart-Ass Point. Everyone gets to play, everyone gets to laugh.

Over the years, the Big Quiz Thing has established itself as New York's premier source of trivia entertainment. It's entertained in special events and corporate retreats throughout the country, and Quizmaster Noah has hosted stand-up comedy, variety, and burlesque shows in all five boroughs and along the East Coast.

Trivial times call for trivial trivia, and in a culture ruled by bite-size information and prepackaged wisdom, nothing is nobler than a live quiz show. Come see The Village Voice’s pick for “The Best Place to Show Off Your Inner Nerd.”

The Big Quiz Thing's 200th Episode Spectacular is at (Le) Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker St at Thompson Street, Monday, August 31 at 7pm. Admission is only $10, and there is $400 in cash prizes. For more info, visit bigquizthing.com, or contact quizmaster Noah Tarnow at noah@bigquizthing.com.

Quiz me this…
Q: What product has 20 answers: ten affirmative, five negative, and five noncommittal?
Q: Who’s the only past People’s Sexiest Man Alive who is no longer alive?
Q: Though unavailable in stores, what's the third bestselling cookie brand in the U.S.?
Q: Who were the two U.S. vice presidents who shot a man during their terms?

FOR MORE, VISIT BIGQUIZTHING.COM

July 21, 2009

Open the pod bay doors, HAL

It's an accepted fact among modern American society that someday, computers will destroy us all. Tonight was most likely the machines' initial volley in their attempt to conquer humanity—EDP's laptop refused to work, making implementation of the Big Quiz Thing's video format impossible, and as many a philosopher has said, as goes the Big Quiz Thing, so goes the world.

However, we human beings proved we're craftier than the machines give us credit for. Despite the lack of our Hot New Format, Team BQT pulled an awesome quiz show out of its collective heinie. (Sorry, no "Movies Go Kaboom," but I did manage to dig up some "TV Themes Retranslated," perhaps my most reliably amusing recurring gimmick.) Bravo for Homo sapiens; we may yet survive the technological apocalypse.

What's interesting, though, is that the format we ran with last night was basically the format for every Big Quiz Thing for its first several years. When we started at the Slipper Room, the venue had no screen, no projector. It was glorious when the theater upped its tech game and we could play DVDs, but even into the Crash Mansion days, we had no capacity for all of the text on the video screens (the Hot New Format, as we call it) until less than a year ago. But still, last night—despite our success in the maw of disaster—felt like a step backward. Standards have risen, my friends.

And you all raised the standard as an audience. Without a doubt, the best Smart-Ass Point–soliciting question of the night was A racehorse’s father is known as its sire. Its mother is its what? Two teams said "Sarah Jessica Parker" (nice), one team said "Elmer's Glue" (classy), but one team got a boffo response with "Never satisfied no matter how fucking fast I run…" Brav-o, comedians.

The standings. The usual group of nerds…

1. Gerard Depardouche -- A return to victory, thanks to the reappearance of Dan, the head Douche, newly married. Now all of his problems have been solved.
2. Strippers for Stephen Hawking/Fantastic Fournicators (tie)
4. Cash Cab for Cutie
5. Fat Kids Can't Be Astronauts

We're back in two weeks, August 3, but save the date for August 31, when we bust out the 200th Episode at a special venue, (Le) Poisson Rouge (Bleecker Street near Thompson). 7pm, and no, that's not Labor Day. More details soon, but expect some nutty shit.

July 19, 2009

NT's greatest hits, No. 17 (of 34)

More, more, more…

"Could You Be the One?" by Husker Du

I wasn't really into music at all until I was 13, when I discovered classic rock. I've written before about how I developed a knee-jerk disdain for most new rock & roll being made at the time, but in hindsight, this was mostly due to the fact that I had no idea what was going on in the rock underground. Scratch that—I didn't know what was going on anywhere but classic-rock radio.

An exception was Hüsker Dü, the pride of the Twin Cities postpunk scene, who came to my attention when I was 16 and never left it. I saw "Could You Be the One?" on MTV's 120 Minutes, which is appropriate, since I imagine 99% of "alt" music discoveries among people of my generation were made through this show. The video:


The headlong melody of this song, the palpable desperation of the lyrics—a seamless combination that hooked me instantly. I went out and bought the nearly perfect album Warehouse: Songs and Stories (which, I later learned, was the last record by the band, since broken up) and played it till my crappy Walkman ate the tape. I was edging into the alt scene, slowly, and part of what attracted me to Hüsker Dü was its inate understanding of the transcendence of classic rock & roll. It's no coincidence that around the same time, I was developing a passion for The Byrds; at its best, Hüsker was essentially a faster and louder reconfiguring of the Byrds' hook and jangle. (Similarly, I would later fall in love with the Buzzcocks, who did a similar trick with the Beatles' template.)

BTW, I still think Warehouse is Hüsker's best album, which is an unusual opinion, I know; I really don't care for most of the band's early, more hardcore material—no, Zen Arcade never did it for me— and I think Bob Mould needed more time to flower into a class-A songwriter. But by the time the band got to Flip Your Wig, they might have been the best rock band in America. No small honor, even in the mid-1980s.

More of NT's greatest hits:
"Summer in the City," "Teenage Kicks," "Strawberry Fields Forever, " "Tunnel of Love," "I Get Around," "Local Girls," "Don't Let's Start," "Suffragette City," "See-Saw," "My Name Is Jonas," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Reelin' in the Years," "Objects of My Affection" and "Crimson and Clover," "OK Apartment" and "Just What I Needed"

July 18, 2009

Your absurd video of the day

As reported in this space, last night I appeared at 92YTribeca, in advance of a screening of Dirty Dancing as part of the venue's "Swayze Days of Summer" event (morbid, but why not?). I presented a special round of all-Swayze trivia, with the winner receiving a Dirty Dancing talking pen. (I'm living the dream.) An example: What is the name of all of the following: A tourist speedboat in the New York Harbor, a member of the X-Men, and a recent TV show starring Patrick Swayze?

The film was also prefaced by a couple of Swayze-centric shorts, including this delightfully bizarre piece. God bless Patrick for agreeing to do this; somebody really loves his mother…

By the way, I love doing special events like this. You know how to find me: booking@bigquizthing.com.

July 15, 2009

Coastering and rollering, part two

More on my birthday trip to Six Flags. Yesterday I covered the three top coasters—all awesome—now I round up the rest, ranging from quite good to gruesomely pathetic…

4. Superman: Ultimate FlightThe gimmick here is that once riders are strapped in, the seats flip back so that they're in a "flying" position, à la the Man of Steel. You ascend a ridiculous high distance (115 feet off the ground), facing downward, stirring even the most latent fear of heights. Then, the ride spends down a serpentine steel track, including a cool pretzel loop (pictured above, though that's at the Georgia Six Flags). Fun, kind of soothing, but too short to really have an impact (and the design is ridiculously dated; there are faded signs along the line area with 15-year-old drawings of forgotten Superman characters).

5. The Great American Scream MachineAnother classic steel coaster, with a lot of corkscrew and batwing turns. A little jerkier than one would like—apparently, this ride results in a lot of whiplash injuries. Still, it provides the prototypical looping-coaster experience, and I wish we'd thought to go back for a second run. Also, it has an awesome name.

6. The Dark Knight
The new indoor coaster last year, and boy, is this thing lame. The experience begins by watching a useless short film (a tie-in with the movie, complete with an appearance by Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent), before you're led into the ride proper, which is a "Wild Mouse"–type deal; you travel in what's basically a cart along a looping horizontal track, nearly crashing into supposedly disturbing distractions. It's like Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disney World, which was my favorite ride as a gutless little kid (I didn't venture on anything serious till I was an adult).

The Dark Knight features only a few moderately surprising, short drops, a couple of tight turns, and underwhelming special effects. (This was the only coaster that the scaredy-cat in my party was willing to ride.) Yeah, the Dark Knight would be a great ride for a young kid, but The Dark Knight is an absolutely horrible movie for a child, so the whole endeavor makes zero sense.

7. Rolling Thunder
Lousy. A 30-year-old, piece-of-shit wooden coaster that is extremely bumpy, extremely boring, and probably extremely unsafe. It doesn't fill one with confidence to read that, in this age of silently efficient steel coasters, the major modern improvement of Rolling Thunder is the replacement of Douglas fir with Southern yellow pine. We waited an extra ten minutes on the loading platform while a drunk handyman fixed a malfunctioning restraining bar with a rusty screwdriver. That was enough to get our scaredy-cat headed for the exist, and I really should've followed.

Oh, and we also went on the Congo Rapids Ride and the Log Flume, both of which soaked me good on a sizzling day. Plus, I got a picture with members of the Justice League. Good times, great oldies.

Coastering and rollering, part one

Yesterday, for my birthday, I engaged in a little NT tradition: I journeyed down to the state of New Jersey, in the municipality of Jackson, to Six Flags Great Adventure. And I rode several examples of Russian culture's greatest gift to humanity, the roller coaster. And it was good.

As part of the nation's premier amusement-park chain, Great Adventure takes its thrill rides seriously, and has the budget to do so (or did). Among its roster is the world's tallest and fastest coaster (the Kingda Ka), the wooden coaster with the steepest drop (El Toro), the world's No. 7 rated coaster (Nitro), and several other grade-A rides. I had the absolute best time anyone ever had ever.

Sadly, the wonderfully intense Kingda Ka, which I'd ridden twice before, was closed for the day—when you shoot people up 456 feet in five seconds, safety demands annoyingly frequent maintenance (this video makes me smile, but does not do the experience justice). Also inexplicably unavailable was Bizarro (named for the Superman villain), this summer's new attraction, which is actually the old Medusa spiffed-up and rebranded; too bad, because the smooth, serpentine Medusa was always a favorite of mine.

But I rode the shit out of everything else (hooray for the Flash Pass; $20 is totally worth it to bypass the lines). My rankings:

1. El Toro
I took three trips on this massive wooden coaster, with an unbelievable 76-degree drop, and I still can't fully wrap my mind around it. This thing is just sick. My primary reaction was "the Cyclone on some serious crystal meth," which is fairly accurate. It has the kind of drops, banked turns, and headchopper effects of the Coney Island standby, but way faster and way, way more intense. It simply never lets up. After a disconcertingly fast ascent, there are two consecutive drops that make you feel like you're being pushed out of an airplane; throughout the ride, there's a nearly unrelenting feeling of air-time. You can tell it's great; everyone's smiling when they get off.

2. Batman: The RideA classic. This ride has been at several Six Flags locations since 1989, when Bat-hype infested the globe, and despite the pervasive reminder of a film better left forgotten, the ride is just terrific. It's a steel inverted coaster, which means the track runs above the riders' heads, with feet dangling (people need to leave their flip-flops in the station). A number of corkscrew loops and zero-gravity rolls result in a very smooth and graceful experience. A short ride, but marvelously well designed, packing a lot of excitement into its brief time.

3. NitroI previously wasn't keen on this ultramodern coaster. First off, the restraint—a large rubber arrow that basically pins your abdomen to the seat—always felt insufficient to a stringbean like me, and combined with the ride's minimalist steel track, it seemed unsafe (I know, I know, you're far more likely to get hurt driving to the park). It travels a relatively long distance—as you ascend, it looks like you're about to voyage into the wilds of Delaware—and incorporates a number of camelback drops that have the nasty habit of turning my stomach. But yesterday, at the insistence of my companions, I rode it three times, and learned to love the elegance and smoothness. Still not my favorite, but I'll never again vote to pass it up during a trip to the park. (Watch this if you're curious.)

Four more coasters in my next post. Stay tuned…

July 12, 2009

NT's greatest hits, No. 16 (of 34)

Very, very intermittent blogging these days. Summer is the busy season for the BQT, and whaddaya know? The miserable economy hasn't put a dent in things. Thanks for wasting your hard-earned dollars on me. And speaking of summer, this entry in my favorite-songs series is…

"Summer in the City" by the Lovin' Spoonful



Most people know this song by sheer cultural osmosis, but the Lovin' Spoonful is an unjustly forgotten band in pop-music history. Especially New York pop music, because these guys were pure creatures of the 1960s NYC Greenwich Village counterculture scene, coffeehouse hippies who made good. Armed with sunny but not annoying dispostion, a good amount of genuine musical talent and a great sense of humor (the band's name is a reference to oral sex), the Spoonful racked up a lot of hits in the '60s, most of which never get old: "Daydream," "Do You Believe in Magic?," "Pow!" and a lot others you probably don't know or forgot. Before the warm season is out, do yourself a favor: Buy/download a compilation of these guys' hits and listen to it on your fire escape on a weekend afternoon.

"Summer in the City" was their biggest hit, their best song, and a bit of an anomaly in the catalog, since it has a far sharper edge than most of their other hits. I've written before about the "tension-release" song structure, bottled-up verses exploding into expansive choruses, and this might be the best example of them all; Spoonful frontman John Sebastian once described the song's chorus as "falling off a cliff."

And what evocative lyrics to fall off a cliff to. The verses believably establish the heat, grime and claustrophobia of the NYC streets in midday July, and then the chorus welcomes in the eternal optimism of a carefree summer's night, full of romance and celebration. Meanwhile, the song is just packed with great hooks: The brilliantly simple piano riff (Stevie Wonder has called it a major influence) and the rare dignified use of ambient sound effects (gotta love the jackhammer). My only major critique: I wish they'd come up with fresh lyrics for the third verse—I want to hear more about this world. Correction: I know all about this world, but I want to hear more of the Lovin' Spoonful's musical exploration of it.

More of NT's greatest hits:
"Teenage Kicks," "Strawberry Fields Forever, " "Tunnel of Love," "I Get Around," "Local Girls," "Don't Let's Start," "Suffragette City," "See-Saw," "My Name Is Jonas," "Mr. Tambourine Man," "Reelin' in the Years," "Objects of My Affection" and "Crimson and Clover," "OK Apartment" and "Just What I Needed"

July 6, 2009

Polk, Michael Jackson, The Twilight Zone: Together at last

Back from vacation, back to the Big Quiz Thing, and oh, what a show tonight. "An Entirely Presidented Quiz"—a barrel-of-fun American history quiz focusing on the Presidents—was a great success; you can't go wrong with James K. Polk.

Naturally, there was a lot of Michael Jackson tonight. Sad how his death already seems kind of like old news—the fitting appreciation for his musical achievements has already degraded into the same tabloid garbage that made that last decade of his life such a pathetic spectacle—but the BQT had to respond. Not out of some egomaniacal delusion that the world cares what I think, but because I've personally always viewed the quiz as an outlet for my own tremendous pop-cultural jones. If I let such a huge pop event go by without comment, I was failing in my own little personal trivia mission. I had to jam on the MJ tonight, for myself (though, yes, hopefully to entertain you as well).

As such, lots of Michael tonight. The audio round, "Maximum Michael Jackson," of course, but also…

Michael Jackson appeared in what 1986 film, which at the time was the most expensive film to produce on a per-minute basis?

When the Jackson 5 first won Amateur Night at the Apollo, Michael was only two weeks away from turning what age?

Michael Jackson had a total of BLANK brothers and BLANK sisters.

(Incidentally, in the past week and a half, I'd tweeted all of these.)

Also, lots of fun with the four-part questions tonight: "Gay or Jewish?" is always good for a laugh, and great job guessing/remembering the twist ending to Twilight Zone episodes, and making Smart-Ass Points out of them. I have no doubt that the episode "People Are Alike All Over" would've been a lot funnier if Roddy McDowall had discovered that the martians had given him a lovely apartment…in Bushwick.

The standings:

1. Strippers for Stephen Hawking: It was only a matter of time for them.
2. Fantastic Fournicators
3. Cash Cab 4 Cutie
4. Birds of Ill Omen 2.0
5. Ain't Nothin' but a Geek Thing

Next show July 20, but get ready: The 200th episode of the Big Quiz Thing, August 31. Details to come in this very space.