Recap: The Square of the Times

So…Times Square. Midtown Theatre. Home of the sizzling Power Balladz. What do you think? It looks like we'll be coming back in two weeks, Tuesday, October 26; they were happy with us, and the space had its charms. As you know, we're in a strange venue limbo at the moment (venue limbo—where the Justice League banishes the evil venues from parallel earths), so tallying up the pros and cons, I think it's worth an encore. (Though we do hope to be back on Monday in the near future.)

Tonight's quiz really kicked into gear in the Three-Way Finale. (I'm cutting to the chase here.) Sugah Titz vs. Gerard Depardouche vs. Jefferson Davis Starship—returning champs Strippers for Stephen Hawking missed it by half a point (and the second best trivia team in the city, the Fat Kids, came in sixth). Two ladies on the stage—Jonathan, one quarter of NYC trivia champs Fuckface Murray Abraham, stepped aside for his JD Starship teammate for the evening Eileen. It's high-pressure up there—nobody knew who, unsurprisingly, was last in his class at West Point in 1861, nobody was aware of the game that, in 2008, Aerosmith became the first band to get its own edition of (I'm sorry, "Aerosmith Trivial Pursuit" is about the most tedious game I can imagine). I refused to give Douchemaster Buck full credit for his answer to the question of who has overtaken Mayor Bloomberg to be the richest New Yorker (he's got, like, five billionaire brothers), and after a long post-asking-the-question pause, JDSite Eileen came from behind with the correct response to "A Paulistano is a citizen of which of the ten largest cities on earth?
" (That question would probably be easier in print than verbally. Ah, the Three-Way Finale!)

That was the finale. Backtrack: The video round, "Rhymes with 'Trivial,'" was harder than I thought it would be—this gimmick is the essence of figureoutability, and I'm convinced you all would've gotten 18–20 points if you had a good long sit with those questions. But such is not the nature of the Big Quiz Thing. You got to be quick to come up with the rhyming couplet that equals "A noted British atheist’s rewritten version of a controversial children’s book about a naked boy and three bakers." Nonetheless, hats off to Gerard Depardouche for a daunting 19 points—that's why they're finalists, people.

Plus, hey—they scored the best Smart-Ass Point of the night! For "What character has been played on Mad Men by three different actors?" (yeah, yeah, that question has a couple problems), they wrote "Darrin Stephens." Ha!

And the audio round, "Buy Some Coke!," was about the drink, not the drug (though considering we were in Times Square, maybe the drug would've been more apropos). I thought that part from "Institutionalized" where he screams about Pepsi was a pretty clever addition.

Your winners:
The standings:
1. Jefferson Davis Starship
2. Gerard Depardouche/Sugah Titz (well-earned tie)
4. Strippers for Stephen Hawking
5. Incontinental Congress
6. Fat Kids Play Hide and Go Eat
7. Team! The Musical
8. Oh Noah You Didn't!: Victory, as far as they're concerned.
9. The Cunning Stunts
10. The Well-Enbrowed

Two weeks, back at Midtown Theatre. Come on down!