Arizona is on thin sand with me

I've got a little list. I call it the States We Can Do Without. You know me, I like to think of myself as Mr. America, I love this stupid, fucked-up country, but I do think we could stand to lose a couple of the 50 states. Specifically, two: Alaska, which is essentially a welfare state and isn't worth the wilderness (I'd take the central California coast over it any day); and South Carolina, which has some of the nuttiest politicians known to mankind and, as far as I can tell, has produced nothing of any value apart from Stephen Colbert. Sorry to any natives of these states, but that's my platform. I'll just have to win without their electoral votes.

But a third state is getting dangerously close to the list: Arizona. Yes, for the obvious reason, but a few others too. It's sad, because I've been there several times and had a certain fondness for the state: a wonderful teenage vacation to Phoenix, an appreciation for the magic of Circle K, and the only member of Congress I know personally. And I've never even been to the Grand Canyon.
But in the past few years, the bloom has come off the cactus. Mama and Papa Quizmaster spend a healthy amount of time each winter in AZ, and I rather adamantly advised them against purchasing a house there (first time they listened to me on something relating to money). There really shouldn't be a state there, or at least not a giant, moisture-sucking city like Phoenix (largest state capital in the country), and I shudder to think what life there will be in that region in 10, 20, 25 years, when global warming has reduced the area to a bunch of air-conditioning stores perched on a giant pile of sand. If they razed half the strip malls and replaced them with solar-reflector farms, they'd be on the right track, but I just don't see that happening in the Red State Riviera.

Then there's Uncle John:
Urgh. Call me cliché, but I used to think the guy was all right, and wonder how he resisted the urge to smack George W. Bush over the head with a meat tenderizer, but the '08 election revealed him to be pretty craven and soulless. Besides, it's probably his fault that I've already given up on Alaska.

And now this, Arizona SB1070. Look, I don't follow the issue of illegal immigration all that much, and despite being a lefty, I have a lot of sympathy for the "What part of illegal don't you understand?" argument. (I have an innate passion for following the rules.) But the whole concept of people being forced to show their papers to any cop who asks—brown people, let's not kid ourselves—makes me incredibly uncomfortable. It reminds me of when my parents took me to see Mel Brooks's To Be or Not to Be in 1983, and even in that mediocre comedy, I was terrified to confront the reality of life under the Third Reich. I knew about concentration camps, but to learn that any soldier could stop you and drag you away to your doom if they didn't like what they found—the capriciousness really freaked me out. Yes, yes, this law is nothing like Nazi Germany, and even deportation (which isn't even the penalty for a first offense) isn't Dachau. But as I say, it makes me uncomfortable.

So sorry, Arizona, but you're really starting to burn my hide . I still want to see the big hole someday, but for now, I'm going to lay off the Dial soap and feel bad that the bigquizthing.com URL is registered with Go Daddy. It's all I can do as a true American.

Recap: Philadelphia rocks, Philadelphia rolls

Philadelphia: Land of Mama Quizmaster's birth, but I hadn't set foot in the city in nearly 15 years. But last night, with EDP and door girl Sherry acting as B-Cutie, we cruised down to the City of Excessive Benjamin Franklin worship (thanks, Zipcar!) for a single evening to bring the city the magic that is the All-Music Edition of the Big Quiz Thing.
The venue, World Cafe Live, is gorgeous and equipped with very good food, and we had a great turnout for a new city. And what a crowd—stupidly intelligent, these music geeks. Several teams were rocking (literally) a nearly perfect score till round three—they picked up quickly on the Pop Music Thesaurus, and the '80s Music Video Mash-Up proved great fun but little challenge (though "Ca Plane Pour Moi" tripped up most). (NOTE: Yes, the song was originally released in 1977, but I inextricably associate with the '80s and is on several '80s compilations, and has previously provided the disclaimer that there was a strictly non-'80s selection among the weeds. Forgot this time, apologies.) Next time, it'll all be about 1940s Mongolian throat-singing, mark my words.

Thus, the Three-Way Finale pitted the best of the best against the best of the best against the best of the best. A big mano cornuta to winners Hot Breakfast—they took it on "What rock band, which peaked in popularity in the ‘90s, had two fewer members than its name suggested?" Though second-runner-up team Show Us Your Tits (and We Don't Mean the Bald Guys) argued postgame that the correct answer isn't really a rock band (no guitar). Yeah, that was the problem.

The winning team bolted before I could get a nice photo, but here's an artist's depiction:
Will we be back? Perhaps. If you had fun, tell World Cafe Live, tell your friends, and stay tuned for information here. Rock!

Recap: Not just Jersey, but New Jersey

Just a quick recap here from tonight's Big Quiz Thing, our debut in that magical land across the Hudson River, Hoboken, NJ. (Did you know that it's the location of the world's first Blimpie? Incredible, right?) Black Bear Bar and Grill is a different venue from what we're used to in NYC: More a bar, but a nice, big one, and we had free rein over the top floor, with an obscene number of video screens surrounding the room. This is serious trivia, folks.

New Jersey, land of my birth, land where EDP lost his virginity. Thanks to the BQT regulars who made the trek to the Hobo: a splinter cell from reigning NYC champions Incontinental Congress/House of Lords, and a refugee from Jefferson Davis Starship. Plus, a mutated version of Natalie Portmanteaux (Jersey City residents) were there, under the guise of Hobo Ken and Bag Lady Barbie, claiming sweet victory. In fact, in the big Three-Way Finale, Incontinental Breakfast (as they were called) chimed in on "James Dean, the actor, is the only person mentioned by his full name in what very popular and long 1970 song?" with "The Day the Music Died." I knew what he meant, but incorrect, nonetheless, and Hobo Ken struck back with the correct answer and took the crown. "My life is complete," Adam of Hobo declared.

Should've used a flash, I know.

The top three:
1. Hobo Ken and Bag Lady Barbie
2. Touched by an Orphan
3. Incontinental Breakfast

Will we be back? Perhaps. Black Bear seemed happy, and the space was fun. Next time, though, we need to really pack the room, so if we do return, rest assured I will mercilessly harass you about it.

And hey, here's a funny picture I shot of something in the window of that first Blimpie: A handwritten sign reading "Try Our Great Salads" pointing to a sad-looking plant in the window…

Rock Band or Ben and Jerry's Flavor?

Hola! Those of you who've been with the BQT for a long time might recall a game format we don't do much anymore: Stand-Up for Trivia. We get all the players on their feet and play an either-or game; say, "Vice President or Serial Killer?" Hands on your head for VP, hands on your hips for killer, everyone who's wrong sits down, we continue until one player remains, Dick Cheney counted for both (naturally). The kids love it. It's a nifty option for smaller private parties, but a little unwieldy for the massive public-show crowds.

In advance of this Tuesday's big All-Music Edition of the BQT in Philadelphia, I was reminded of "Contemporary Rock Band or Ben & Jerry's Flavor?" (Contemporary, you should know, means a few years ago at this point, though I've updated it a teeny bit.) Answers at the bottom. Rock on/enjoy the sugar!

1. Granola Funk Express
2. From Russia with Buzz
3. Cat Power
4. Hot Chip
5. Brightblack Morning Light
6. Smoosh
7. Tuskegee Chunk
8. Previously on Lost
9. Makin Whoopie Pie
10. Oh Pear
11. Apollo Run
12. Urban Jumble
13. Capecodder
14. The Bird and the Bee
15. Miz Jelena’s Sweet Potato Pie
16. SNAFU
17. Dastardly Mash
18. Monkey Wrench
19. Explosions in the Sky
20. Mastodon
21. Peppermint Cow
22. Holy Cannoli
23. Bovinity Divinity
24. Great Big Sea
25. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum


ANSWERS: 1. Rock band. 2. Ben & Jerry's. 3. Band (actually, one woman, but you get the idea). 4. Band. 5. Band. 6. Band. 7. B&J's. 8. Band. 9. B&J's. 10. B&J's. 11. Band (managed by DJ GB's husband!). 12. B&J's. 13. B&J's. 14. Band. 15. B&J's. 16. B&J's. 17. B&J's. 18. B&J's. 19. Band. 20. Band. 21. B&J's. 22. B&J's. 23. B&J's. 24. Band. 25. Band.

This Monday: The BQT in Hoboken!

Last night, I took the PATH (which, oddly, explicitly bans food from its cars, unlike MTA trains) down to the state of my conception, N to the J. The BQT is making is debuting in Hoboken, Monday night, at Black Bear Bar & Grill. It's an experiment—a smaller venue than what we're used to in the big city, but still with video magic in full effect. And hey, only $5 cover, with a $100 grand prize (yeah, yeah).

So last night, I tripped down there, spreading the word at a handful of Tuesday night bar trivia events. (Or trying to…an ornery bar-manager dude and a gaggle of loud NJ Devils fans made it a challenge.) But, it's clear that despite any postfrat stereotypes, the good people of the 'Ken appreciate having their useless-knowledge centers tested, and are primed for the mind-boggling trivia experience that is the Big Quiz Thing. And no, it won't all be sports questions. Or beer questions. And I won't be wearing a baseball cap (but EDP may be in a hoodie).

We coming correct with some of the quiz's marquee games—Rebus-O-Rama, Slooow Songs, many of our greatest trivia hits—along with the usual panoply of Smart-Ass Points, Lightning Round, Three-Way Finale, all that good stuff. Tell your Garden Stately friends, or cross the Hudson yourself and have an unfair advantage, having heard some of these questions before.

It's this Monday, April 26, at the Black Bear Bar & Grill, 205 Washington St (like, a six-minute walk from the PATH station), at 7pm. Admission is $5, and there is a $100 grand prize, and Black Bear's kicking in gift certificates and what not. Tell us you'll be there.

Slip, fall, laugh

So the next time I need to sue someone (almost happened twice last year: private-show client wouldn't pay up, scumbag pub quiz stole my logo), I might dial a 1-800 number. The seas have parted, and I just saw an actually funny TV commercial for a personal-injury law firm. Go:

Not bad. I mean, I rarely see any TV ad that makes me laugh, but this one did. Part of that, yes, was mild shock: I was watching the ad, wondering what the product in question was, and was genuinely surprised.

Well done, Trolman, Glaser & Lichtman. Next time I'm on trial for murder, I just might put my fate in your hands.

Recap: No flights, lots of trivia

All right, here it is. Sorry, busy wasting lots of time today.

First, I owe you all a sincere apology, since I didn't even try to pronounce the word "Eyjafjallajökull" at last night's Big Quiz Thing (when I asked you to tell me what the hell that word symbolizes). I realize the dreaded volcano/glacier is the reason we had such a big, beautiful crowd (you were all waiting for your flights to Belgium, right? Or was it this?), but I couldn't even wrap my gray matter around it; it sounds nothing like how it's written, and I'm not even sure that spelling could qualify as "written." (Listen to this. You try it, dammit!) Apologies to the millions of Icepeople I've offended.

Otherwise, last night's BQT was pretty much super-excellent. I was a little unsure how the "Mega-Ultimate Word Game" would go over, but despite a few minor technical hiccups (can you read 16 confusing words and ID the one misspelled one, and in 20 seconds?), and the fact that more than half the teams got a perfect score, I think it lived up to its billing. And the audio round, "Spring Is in Bloom," achieved my goal: Ten songs about flowers, none of them with "roses" in the title.

Best Smart-Ass Points of the night: "What common word does Webster’s define as 'used as a function word to indicate that a following noun or noun equivalent is definite or has been previously specified by context or by circumstance'”? A: Tru dat. And the song inspiring homicides at Philippines karaoke bars is this. (As if it's any less bizarre, the correct answer is this.)

Speaking of implausibly bizarre, I want to set the record straight: I was right, it's not Enron the Musical. Just Enron. You were thinking of AIG: The Sexually Suggestive Puppet Musical Spectacular.

Special thanks to our sponsors, the Off Broadway comedy 666—silly, crazy, dirty, very well-performed Spanish comedy. More tix next time.

And big ups to our winners, Incontinental House of Lords (né Congress). Team rep Matt savored victory during the Three-Way Finale, knowing that he had the correct answer to "A massive and massively stupid hit song from 1969 about the future was titled 'In the Year' what?" Sorry to Jonathan of Jefferson Davis Starship: You did not ring in first, and besides, I had a drink with your team afterward, I have to stay neutral. (And yes, a real buzzer system is in the works.)

All right, the top five.

1. Incontinental House of Lords: Their second victory EVAH!
2. Jefferson Davis Starship: With Jonathan Corbblah, the wild card of the BQT
3. The Fantastic Fournicators
4. Birds of Ill Omen/Strippers for Stephen Hawking (tie)

Lots coming up…

This Monday, 4/26: The BQT at Black Bear in Hoboken. Tell your postgraduate friends!

Tuesday, 4/27: The BQT's All-Music edition in Philadelphia! Rock!

Monday, 5/3: Next BQT at Crash Mansion. We're bringing back the "Magazine Flashback Mind-Teaser" (the medium is not dead!) and the audio round: "'Wild' and 'Crazy' Music." You are there.

Tonight's NOT-SO-SECRET SECRET CLUE

Yes, it's really here (in addition to Facebook and Twitter); enjoy, people who work with crazy teenagers.

Tonight's NSSSC is…

A bunch of you live there.

What could it be? Straightforward or cleverly punning? You'll have to come to Crash Mansion tonight at 7:30pm to find out, and to use this clue when I give the word. Five rounds of trivial action, including "The Mega-Ultimate Word Game!," the "Spring Is in Bloom" audio round, and the Lightning Round, plus Smart-Ass Points and the Big Three-Way Finale, along with $250 in cash prizes and tix to the diabolically funny 666. Let's do it.

Cut loose like a deuce from God

Spotted tonight. So tell me, what other Springsteen song titles would make for good church sermons?

And to remind you of better days…

Nostalgia courtesy Sweet Pickles

My nostalgia buttons got pushed with sadistic force last night when my nephews (twins, age six, awesome) asked me to read them a bedtime story. I perused their comfortingly large collection of books and came upon this.
Ho-lee. This is an entry in a children's book series from the late '70s called Sweet Pickles—sweet 'cause they're nice, pickles 'cause they always get into minor problems. Twenty-six books, each about an anthropomorphic animal representing a particular letter of the alphabet and a corresponding characteristic (e.g., Accusing Alligator, Bashful Bear, through Loving Lion and finishing with Zany Zebra), all living together in a cozy small town. Lion, for instance, is sad because he has new roller skates and he can't share them with friends and blah blah blah. Let's pretend your heart has been warmed. Also, they were drawn in a surrealistic, Yellow Submarine–esque style that was both comforting and off-putting, like a less drugged-out Gahan Wilson drawing Aesop's Fables.

I loved these books when I was a child, as did my sister, which prompted her to buy a few for her kids off the Web (used—they went out of print about 20 years ago). It was one of those subscription deals—we accumulated most of the set, missing only Positive Pig and Unique Unicorn (how the hell do I remember that?). Also, each book had a super-cool map on the last two pages; I loved inspecting the stories themselves to find instances where they violated the map's logic, but I seem to recall the writers being unnecessarily careful about that, depriving me of self-righteous rule-following anger.

I literally hadn't thought of these books in decades, though they were awfully popular: There were toys, a record (getting a copy of that would be worth replacing the turntable I tossed ten years ago), a cartoon, sundry other junk. In hindsight, my favorite was X-Rating Xerus (star of Xerus Won't Allow It), a censorship-happy squirrel who looked a little like a cartoon bandit and was basically a mean motherfucker.

Not only do I give the writers props for digging up an African ground squirrel genus for an X animal, but within a series of books about caring and friendship and worrying and all that usual bullshit, censorship actually seems like a kinda edgy issue to tackle. I believe the tale ends with all the other animals roasting Xerus over a fire and Enormous Elephant claiming a leg. (Maybe not.)

Also, these books were full of lesbians. Anthropomorphic animal lesbians, but still. In an effort to be equitable (it was the '70s), half of the characters were boys, half girls, though the writers seemed to have a habit of making all the most obviously male-style characters female. Accusing Alligator—a big, angry reptile who worked as the super in the town's apartment complex—was a she. Clever Camel, the local fix-it genius, clad in a red jumpsuit—was also a she. Same with Fearless Fish, a motorcycle-riding daredevil with an aquarium perpetually mounted on her head. There was no Womynly Wolverine, but you get the idea.

Finally, enjoy this video of a stoner reading Fixed by Camel:

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.

America's most wanted (bachelor)

Whenever I put together a custom quiz party, as I'm procrastinating from doing at the moment, I find myself revisiting some of my greatest trivia hits, adapting them for the client's needs. Tonight, for example, I dug up a fun old game, "Vice President or Serial Killer?" (John Breckenridge? Henry Lee Lucas? Richard Cheney?), and reformated it into "Client [of the company I'm doing the party for] or Serial Killer?" And so, I've been researching psychopathic murderers, and I ran into the name Rodney Alcala, the "Dating Game Killer."

Intriguing, right? Just a couple weeks ago, Alcala was sentenced to death for four murders committed in the '70s. Alcala's been in and out of jail for 30 years, given the death penalty a few times, it's hard to keep track and the details are pretty sordid; this guy is about as evil as they come. The relevant point here is that in addition to being walking evil, in 1978 he was a contestant on, you guessed it, The Dating Game.



Doesn't seem like such a bad guy there, does he? If I had to guess solely from that clip, I'd figure it was the bachelorette who was the psycho. What's most disturbing, though, is that this was filmed after Alcala had committed at least a couple murders. Authorities at the time didn't know he was a killer, of course, though he had been convicted—and for a few years, incarcerated—for raping a child. It's weird enough that a guy got only three years for sexually assaulting a child, but think about that: Then he went on The Dating Game! Was it that hard to find a single man in L.A. in the '70s? I mean, jeez, I had to go through a rather detailed interview to get on Jeopardy!, and that show didn't end with me taking a tennis lesson with anyone.

I wonder what it must be like from the point of view this bachelorette, Cheryl. She had her big moment of romantic fame, getting to pick the man of her dreams in front of millions of viewers, and she selected the batshit-crazy serial killer. I suppose she should be thankful she wasn't a victim (how was the date, though?), but that can't work miracles on your self-esteem.

Video: A Quick Tour Through Game Show History

And here it is! Last week's video round, "A Quick Tour Through Game Show History." Name all 20 TV game shows of times past and present, sped up to double pace. (And yes, they're in chronological order.) Enjoy and marvel…

The boldly foolish taste of Cheeseburger Doritos

Yesterday, I sampled this food product:

I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, though I think it's fair to say that this is terrible, in multiple senses of that word. It materialized in the vending machine at work, and after enduring various office titterings and speculation about what it tastes like from people too timid to take the plunge, I boldly chose to gamble 55 cents on the experience.

First, though, a little background: It turns out that Dorito technology has advanced exponentially since the concept of a blue bag sent shockwaves through the snack world when Cool Ranch was introduced in 1986 (check out this early commercial starring Jay Leno; what would he sell today? adult diapers? flavorless gruel?). I knew about Blazing Buffalo, but there is now an array of Doritos flavors that no man should ever require: tacos, jalapeño poppers, "pizza cravers." Emphasis on the word flavors, since I doubt that anything else about these chips has any true relationship with an actual taco. (And note: The original Doritos variety, dating back to the 1960s, was labeled "taco," but those were merely the taste of your familiar taco shells. These newer chips—specifically labeled "Tacos at Midnight"—supposedly taste like the shell and the meat and the toppings and probably what comes back up an hour later.) I noticed wacky chips when I spent a summer in Great Britain 18 years ago—I made it my seasonal goal to try everything from prawn cocktail to T-bone steak—but meat-based chips took some time to catch on here.

But now there's cheeseburger flavor. Officially they're "DORITOS® Late Night All Nighter Cheeseburger Flavored Tortilla Chips," which makes me wonder what Early Morning In Bed By 10 Cheeseburger would taste like. Is the concept of a cheeseburger at 3am more appealing than one in the afternoon, from a tortilla-cheap-eating standpoint? Must be, because Frito-Lay surely hires more skilled ad wizards than I.

Anyway, the experience: I opened the bag, and I was immediately olfactorily transported back to middle school, when many a glorious weekend afternoon was spent eating a Whopper at the Livingston Mall. These chips smell intensely of Burger King—not McDonald's, not Wendy's (though a coworker said the scent reminded him of White Castle)—but that distinct ketchupy char aroma of the King.

The actual taste was far more complex. The BK similarity persisted, with the flavor seeming to come at me from all directions at once—a little ketchup here, some cheese there, a healthy dose of pickles. This is not unlike a good cheeseburger, come to think of it, where the joy is in the nearly overpowering conglomeration of varied but complementary tastes. However, one taste dominated above all: corn. That bland yet not unpleasant corniness at the root of Doritos, more familiarly drowned in a radioactive haze of tangy cheese. Miraculously, cheeseburger Doritos tasted exactly like what a snack-food neophyte would expect: a junky cheeseburger alchemically imbued into a corn chip. Fascinating. Disgusting.

In Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation (one of few books that I can legitimately claim changed my life), he makes a visit to a "flavor factory" in New Jersey, where familiar tastes are artificially synthesized, later to be added to way more foods than you expect (his initial focus is on french fries). He explains how science can conjure up almost any taste chemically, easily adding it to foods without altering their appearance. One compound can make something taste like marshmallow; another provides the taste of fresh-cut grass, if you wanted that. It's funny to laugh at this, but it's also somewhat disturbing; it's the kind of science that inspires apocalyptic fiction, when our souls are gone and only the synthetic remains. No more grass, just grass-reminiscent chemical formulae.

Despite my mild revulsion (and the sudden realization of just how salty all Doritos are), I made it through most of the bag. But I felt skanky afterward, perhaps more mentally than physically. I went down the block for a salad—fresh carrots, cherry tomatoes, bright green peas, all my favorite veggies. But somehow, it tasted bland, unalive, inert. I ate only half the bowl.

Recap: Pictures make nearly perfect

So it went unmentioned at tonight's mega-awesome Big Quiz Thing, but hey, tonight's eggcellent quiz was way more visual, with a picture on nearly every question slide. Did it work? Well, did the tech equipment at Crash Mansion work? Maybe I shouldn't answer that question.

"A Quick Tour Through Game Show History" was crazy funny, something I'd been meaning to do for a long time. From the legendary (You Bet Your Life, Family Feud) to the demented (Bowling for Dollars, Supermarket Sweep), we paraded through the history of TV game shows, speeding each clip up to double pace. Sassy! And the "Androgyny Rocks!" audio round visited those femme men and mannish women of popular music; seriously, Alison Moyet of Yaz really does have XX chromosomes (like Mexican beer and a London rock band).

Also, apologies for not featuring the Not-So-Secret Secret Clue on this blog; it was on Facebook and Twitter, but those of you being stalked by the crazy teenagers of social networking sites missed out (sorry, Cunning Stunts). I swear, I meant to; here's the picture I was going to use:

Also tonight: Black-and-white cookies as prizes during Passover, free tickets to the stupidly funny Off Broadway comedy 666, movie passes courtesy of Time Out New York, and the big Three-Way Finale! Returning champs Jefferson Davis Starship vs. Sugah Titz vs. Oh Noah You Didn't, which had never before placed above fourth following years of competition. This was thanks to new (ringer) member Chris, who pulled out ultimate victory on Q: What fruit is distilled to make the popular Balkan liquor Slivovitz? And thus, glory was had.

The standings:
1. Oh Noah You Didn't
2. Sugah Titz
3. Jefferson Davis Starship
4. Gerard Depardouche
5. Fantastic Fournicators/Big Green Cabbage (tie)
7. Strippers for Stephen Hawking
8. Incontinental Congress: This Time It's Personal/Deluxe Mixed Nuts (tie)
10. Cunning Stunts

NEXT: We're back at Crash in two weeks, April 19, with "The Mega-Ultimate Word Game" and for the audio round, "Spring Is in Bloom!" In the meantime, we're back in Boston on April 15, and stay tuned for Hoboken on April 26. More details at bigquizthing.com. It's all happening.

Unusable factoid of the week: The Gwen-Gaga connection

Like 10 zillion other people, I have a bit of a fascination with Lady Gaga at the moment. Oh, not for her music; I find it to be like mildly tacky aural wallpaper, though I'm hardly the target demographic. But I admire that the fact that Gaga has actual, veritable star power: You can't not pay attention to her. Sadly, this is shockingly rare in our current pop culture—take a "star" like Shia LaBeouf, about whom the most interesting thing is his name.

This is particularly remarkable considering that I really have no idea what Lady Gaga looks like—I recently saw her photo on a magazine cover and had no idea it was her till I caught a glance at the cover line. She's making hay off the whole "showbiz-chameleon" trope, but she's really, really good at it; she changes her look so often and so radically, she makes David Bowie look like Lawrence Welk. I'm really eager to see what will have become of her two, five, ten years down the road.

I just finished the cover story in the new issue of New York magazine, about Gaga's dizzyingly rapid rise from upper-middle-class New Yorker with dreams of fame to the world's biggest pop star; she was still a nobody in 2007, still a dance-music curio only one year ago. It's well written and balanced, and it gives nice peek into Gaga's mind without being insufferable. But it reminded me of a factoid I recently stumbled upon that I've been unable to form into a usable BQT question. So here it is, our second ever Unusable Factoid of the Week:

Lady Gaga's real name is Stefani Germanotta (mean girls at her high school called her "the Germ," New York tells us). And while she pronounces it like Stephanie, it's interesting that her first name has the exact same spelling as the last name of another A-list pop-music starlet, Gwen Stefani.
Perhaps Gwen (who I was kind of into 15 years ago) is on her way down, as Gaga is on her way up, though one could imagine a Billboard-charts Dr. Frankenstein constructing a hideously squeaky-voiced hybrid, Gwen Stefani Germanotta, a.k.a. Lady DoubtDoubt.
A meaningless coincidence, to be sure, but that's the stuff trivia question dreams are made of, after all. It just felt like too much work to elegantly form into the BQT-caliber entry. So enjoy it here.

And hey, after our three-week break, the BQT is back tomorrow night, 7:30pm at Crash Mansion. Not-So-Secret Secret Clue tomorrow morning!

I'm having fun! Wiiiiiiii!

Recently, I played Nintendo Wii for the first time. I'm not much of a video game guy—Atari in the '80s, Game Boy in the '90s, that's it—but a recap here seemed in order. Count on the BQT for all your three-and-a-half-year-old-tech-product review needs.

First, a little Wii bowling.

I was very impressed by this. I remember playing bowling in the arcade aeons ago, with one of those big trackball things, slimy with the residue of thousands of spilled Icees. It was impressive for the time, but hard to ignore the fact that it was a poor simulacrum of the actual bowling process.

Wii bowling, on the other hand—most Wii games, to be honest—is remarkably faithful to the actual physical process of bowling. You move your body, and arm, with almost the exact same motions used when bowling for real (though the absence of the ball's weight was conspicuous). My only complaint from a realism standpoint was the ball's tendency to curve left in what I felt was an implausible way. Who knows, though, maybe it's just that I suck (100 is a spectacular score for me in a typical ten frames). But it was eerily realistic enough to make me realize that it might be getting hard to justify actually going to a skeevy bowling alley and spending the money to play a game in a pair of moldering two-tone shoes, when you can do almost exactly the same thing at home, sans the skeeve and shoes. America—future nation of complete shut-ins.

Then, Wii tennis.

This game is tailor-made for the lazy. I've played very little tennis in my life, almost all of it badly, and I'm an atrocious athlete in general, but even I was trying too hard here. I was running after the ball, dodging back and forth through my friend's living room, bouncing off ottomans, until my opponent helpfully informed me that the game places your avatar in proximity of the ball. You need only swing, pretty much. Once I grasped that, my game improved, and I got some nice long volleys in, but again, I had my ass handed to me.

Then, onto Dance Dance Revolution.
I've played this before, on Xbox and at the arcade, and I like it, but find it frustrating on several levels. In the real world, I have decent rhythm, and have been known to dance like a motherfucker, but the game's instructional arrows perpetually knock me out of my groove and into my head. It's the same problem I have playing drums in Rock Band—I need to let go and feel the rhythm. But therein lies the problem: While I like DDR, the music discourages me from playing. I've never been a dance-music guy, but the selections on this game are always among the worst thump-thump-thump, moronic-lyrics garbage I've ever heard. I like dancing to rock & roll (the Stones usually work), and shaking it to the Vengaboys (I know, way out of date) or whoever has almost zero appeal. This is why I can't feel the groove and leave my head; these grooves don't feel good to me.

Finally, we tried Wii trivia, a game call Smarty Pants.
This was the only game I actually won against my friend (shocker!). It had the problem of far too many trivia games: raging mediocrity. The system lets you spin a category wheel, which is neat, and it has an easy and elegant buzzer system, but that's about all I can say. There wasn't a single high-quality trivia question, and the inevitable multiple-choice format never makes me happy (though science still hasn't cracked the puzzle of making a high-quality non-multiple-choice trivia video game). One sports question asked me how may touchdowns a particular player scored in the Super Bowl ten years ago: two, three, four or five. You either know or you don't (I didn't), and when you discover the answer, you don't particularly care. And I can't get a job writing trivia for other people?

So I have mixed feelings about my first foray into the Wii world: great technology, but to what ends ultimately? Nevertheless, at least I now have this mass cultural experience under my belt. Next, I'm going to listen to a Justin Bieber song.