Recap: The BQT back in Boston—wicked awesome

The BQT returned to Oberon in Harvard Square last night, another excellent event (thanks again to Oberon for supplying tix to their ongoing disco spectacular, The Donkey Show). But first, let's get this out of the way: Due to a minor technical snafu, we had to juggle the rounds on the fly, playing the Lightning Round as round 4, and the Audio Round as round 5. It worked out, and I think I know the source of the problem (damn you, faulty iPod I found for free in a snowbank!). But perhaps this is the way to go. Perhaps the temporal frisson of the Lightning Round is better suited to the penultimate game, with the comparatively leisurely Audio Round serving as the final-round denouement. Maybe this is the Big Quiz Thing wave of the future. (Eh, probably not.)

Thanks to all the Cambridgians who came out last night—we had a healthy repeat business from out Oberon debut in January, and we're hoping to return in the relatively near future (I don't know—will all you grad-school folks soon be AWOL for the summer?). "Rebus-O-Rama" was a big hit (though my parents, playing the BQT for the first time in eons, complained that they'd never heard of Justin Bieber before), and "The Worst Songs Ever!" inspired a whole lot of un-self-conscious dancing (one woman complained that "I Kissed a Girl" is actually the best song ever, a contention that I would argue with ever last fiber of my being).

Also, lots of good Smart-Ass Points. Personally, I liked this response to "In the 1980s, three winners of the Best Picture Oscar had a three-word title with the word of in the middle: BLANK of BLANK. Name any two.": Breakfast of Club and Toot of Sie.

And hey, the Three-Way Finale! Our winners, Jackie Robinson Kicks Ass, were represented by a lady! Just like in January—the female gender has a perfect record at Boston-area Things of Big Quizzing. This is interesting, since it is very rare to have a woman onstage for the Finale in NYC—perhaps only because it's always a guy who screams and shouts enough to convince his team he's the best player. This is good—I've always like women, in a variety of contexts. Reason enough on its own to return to Boston.

The standings…

1. Jackie Robinson Kicks Ass: A narrow victory on "Winning an honorary Oscar in the process, hat 1968 sci-fi movie spent 17% of its budget on makeup?" Someone else guessed Night of the Living Dead (an Oscar?), and Lady JRKA took a wild guess. Well done.
2. Monstrous Humanoids/Acceptable Progeny Makers (tie)
4. Bombshell and the McGees
5. Ass to Ass
6. The Rosetta Stone Incident: Perfect score two rounds in, couldn't hang on.
7. Not Anne Hathaway/The Gay Oldies and Carol (tie)
9. Touched by an Uncle
10. Root Beer and Monterey: My parents' team. The fix was in.

And when will we return? Oh, I will definitely let you know.