May 31, 2010

Recap: How did I miss that?

So Strippers for Stephen Hawking was unable to successfully defend their title at this evening's Big Quiz Thing at (Le) Poisson Rouge, but Greg of SFSH pointed out something amazing to me…

I was very proud this weekend when I uncovered the elusive trivia nexus of the two big celebrities to pass on these past few days, Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper (and I agree with one team's name: "Brittany Murphy's Husband Doesn't Count"). I spent a couple of hours scouring their respective IMDb entries, and I finally came up with this question…

What’s the common description: An actress who worked closely with Gary Coleman, and the nickname of a character in a famous 1955 movie that included Dennis Hopper?

A whole bunch of you knew the correct answer. But Greg told me that in fact, Coleman and Hopper did once appear in a movie together (you haven't seen it). Incredible—I always forget about IMDb's "credited alongside another name" function.

That was the big news at tonight's BQT, from my perspective, but it was fun all around back at (Le) Poisson Rouge. "Sayings of the Silver Screen" was challenging, but fun—Cher smacking Nicolas Cage in the face is always good for a laugh. And yes, the actual Groucho Marx quote is, "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know." (Though Groucho himself later mangled the quote in repetition.)

And the best Smart-Ass Point of the night was, justifiably, given to the team that crapped out on the audio round, failing to ID John Lennon but saying it was a "talentless fuck." Ah, yes: Stand by your unpopular opinion.

Finally, the Three-Way Finale pitted Incontinental Congress (under the guise of Lincoln Incontinental), against Gerard Depardouche, against seminewcomers the Glassholes. None of the gentlemen knew what Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives is, nor the link between a sitcom set in the Chicago ghetto and NYC City Hall in the '20s and '30s. But "Buck" of the Douche claimed victory with a good guess on "In 2009, the top five names for American female babies all ended with what letter?," and then confidently ringing in on "In the 1970s and 1980s, four Super Bowl halftime shows featured appearances by what performance organization?" And that's how it happens.

My camera ran out of juice; this is the iPhone at its least worst

The standings…

1. Gerard Depardouche: First No. 1 placement of 2010.
2. Lincoln Incontinental/The Glassholes
4. Jefferson Davis Starship: Farewell to Mike, moving on to the great trivia city of Cleveland
5. Strippers for Stephen Hawking: No two-peating, but they did know the real Coleman-Hopper connection.

NEXT: We're back at Crash Mansion in two weeks, June 14, with "The World's Ugliest Musicians." Then two weeks later, June 28, we return to Poisson Rouge; keep up with the calendar here. In the meantime, visit Yelp and tell the world how much you loved the BQT tonight. Karma is what makes the world go round, you know.

Tonight's NOT-SO-SECRET SECRET CLUE

See, this is what Memorial Day is all about: Remembering to check this blog to get your free clue. (Too much of a stretch?)

Tonight's Not-So-Secret Secret Clue is…

Think flags

And don't forget, we're back at (Le) Poisson Rouge, Bleecker Street at Thompson Street, 7:30pm. Try the grilled cheese.

May 28, 2010

Gary Coleman, 1968–2010


No, I am not a big fan of Gary Coleman—really, who is? Then again, perhaps I was back in the day, when Diff'rent Strokes was probably my favorite show on TV. But Coleman (not to be confused with former Vice President Bob Russell) was a trivially fascinating character, so I do a feel a tremor of…something, upon hearing about his death today at age 42.

Memories/observations of the G.Col…

— As I say, Diff'rent Strokes was my No. 1 show for some time in my childhood, though I'm having trouble putting my finger on why. Sure, Dana Plato was my kind of girl as an eight-year-old, but it had to have been the antics of Arnold Jackson. Remember when he poured water on his bed to fake a bed-wetting problem and attract attention? Or when he outsmarted the jewel thief who broke into their apartment? Or when he flushed his goldfish down the toilet? (Or was that The Cosby Show?) How about when he traveled to Earth-2 to team up with Ricky on Silver Spoons? Doesn't sound like high comedy, I know, but I got to give it up: Coleman was not only cute, he was a pretty fair actor, for a little kid on a cheesy sitcom. Enjoy this "minisode" in which the little scamp's monkeyshines finally catch up with him, courtesy of his future-murder-suspect older brother:



— I think I fantasized of being buddies with Gary Coleman when I was young. I'd live in a big mansion, and he'd come hang out; we'd eat cereal and read comic books. I can clearly recall when I first heard about the concept of segregation, learning that once, in this country, white kids and black kids couldn't go to school together. My reaction: "You mean I couldn't have been in the same class as Gary Coleman?"

— Due to the success of Strokes, Coleman was cast in a series of TV movies that have some degree of cachet among weirdos like me. The Kid with the Broken Halo is the best remembered (it was spun off into the animated Gary Coleman Show), but I remember loving Jimmy the Kid, in which Coleman plays an unflappable genius who's held for ransom by a bunch of hapless crooks; they use a book called something like How to Commit a Kidnapping, and the twist (spoiler alert) is that Jimmy wrote the book himself and arranged the whole thing because he was bored. (Shit! I saw that movie once about 25 years ago and I wrote all that from memory!)

– In 2003, Coleman was one of the many, many lunatics who ran for governor of California in the state's recall election. Even though he'd already dropped out and endorsed the other Arnold, he came in eighth—just behind Larry Flynt, just ahead of the guy who attracted support only because his name looked like Schwarzenegger. He got 12,690 votes, which sounds like a whole hell of a lot to me, considering how many people like the BQT on Facebook.

– At the time of his death, he'd been living in Utah. Really?

—Finally, this might be the funniest, dumbest thing I've seen in a long time:


May 27, 2010

The rare Upper West Side phone booth species

Today, I walked by this:
This is one of the very last remaining outdoor telephone booths in Manhattan—if this website is to be believed, we've got a grand total of five (this one offers some more insight). And oddly, four are on West End Avenue, three of them not far from my White Harlem 'hood (a.k.a. Morningside Heights).

Despite the world-conquering ubiquity of mobile phones, there are still a whole bunch of payphones in NYC, even if you haven't used one since 1997. It's just that they're on exposed podiums, in open-air enclosures, sheltered by skimpy overhangs. The classic American telephone booth—with the accordion door, the battered White Pages hanging from a metal cord, the inconveniently ubiquitous homeless person—is nearing extinction. That tiny piece of conversational privacy on the frantic streets of Manhattan is virtually gone, and I wish I'd had the time (and real reason) to slip into that booth and dial someone's number.

But why are the tony residents of the UWS the only ones who've felt it necessary to keep a few of these on hand? Does Superman live in this neighborhood? Are a couple dozen 1950s college students trying to break records nearby? Is a pesky sniper hoping Colin Farrell will stop by? I just ask the questions, I don't necessarily answer them.

May 23, 2010

Youngster wrangling

A recap of the first ever BQT bar mitzvah. Hoo-boy. I was entertaining the kids only, BTW, no grown-ups, and it was a more deconstructed Big Quiz Thing format: wandering the room asking random questions, plus a finals round. A few observations…

— Boys like trivia more than girls, but that's hardly surprising. Also, it was something like an eight-to-two male-female ration, so the excess maleness was inevitable. The few girls who (briefly) participated went straight to the BlackBerries to google answers, which was more funny than anything, since they didn't even stop to think about whether their answers made any sense (no, Sex and the City 2 isn't the new movie based on a time-traveling video game).

— Children these days are very aggressive. Most of the kids were cool, but there was nothing I could say to keep a few hyperactive screamers from not yelling wrong answers in my ear and grabbing things from my pockets (who knows, maybe I have poor youngster-wrangling skills). One kid whipped me in the head with a lime, which was annoying, but not as annoying as the other kids who kept telling me to kick his ass. It wasn't stipulated in the contract, but I'm pretty sure I would've lost my fee if I'd beaten a child.

— That said, I think a lot of the kids loved it. I was competing with a Ping-Pong table, one of those arcade basketball-shot things, and some pretty delicious nonalcoholic drinks, but I had a really eager crowd around me at all times. It dovetails with something I say a lot about the BQT public show: It's not for everyone, but the people who like it really like it. Sort of like licorice, or the Grateful Dead.

— The DJ company hosting the event seemed great, though I do question the music choice of "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy?" when the grandparents came up for the candle lighting.

Regardless, it was fun, and an extremely educational experience—I'm definitely using condoms for the time being.

The second BQT bar mitzvah is this Saturday, again in Westchester, but this time adults will be taking part, EDP will be joining me, and it'll be a more traditional format. And I'll be on alert for all flying citrus fruits.

May 21, 2010

In the thick of bar mitzvahness



Going to try to keep this quick, since I'm under the gun prepping for a private gig tomorrow—the first of two BQT bar mitzvahs in Westchester in a two-week period. No, I'm not being invited to shul, so no throwing candy for me.

Writing trivia for kids is a significantly different task than writing it for adults (and extremely easy to screw up), and as you'd imagine, I have more experience with the grown-ups. As I troll through my question archive, there's a degree of guesswork as to what the youngsters will pick up on or not (do they know who Ronald Reagan is? do they care about Star Wars? will I be scorned as four years behind the curve if I reference High School Musical?). But there's enough in there that I always find plenty of material with that special Big Quiz Thing better-than-averageness.

Still, many questions have to be tweaked for under-18 purposes. Take this one:

Q: In advertisements, the green one is the only anthropomorphic M&M that is what?

Good one; clever, kid-appealing subject matter, not impossible. But then there's that word: anthropomorphic. I have no idea when I learned the meaning of that one—I knew personification early on, but anthropomorphic might not have come to me till college, when I spent some of my earliest cybersurfing hours reading stoner commentary about the Krofft Brothers. So to be safe, the question is now…

Q: In advertisements, the green one is the only talking M&M that is what?
Yeah, yeah, none of them talk in print ads. But you get the idea, and so will the newly made men.

There's also the simple fact that crafting a game for kids forces me to look into some new cultural corners for fresh questions. This guy's dad tells me that he's a big fan of the Alex Rider books, which I had never heard of. A few minutes on the Interwebs tell me that Alex Rider is a teenage spy in a series of of novels by Anthony Horowitz, expertly fulfilling a very common young-male fantasy (apparently, there was also a 2006 movie that complete slipped under by radar).
A few more minutes, I have a nice question for these bar mitzvahgoers, one that can also be a prime entry some night for you seniors. Working efficiently over here.

Anyway, wish me luck; kids can be ball-breakers when it comes to competition. If they beat me with my own clipboard, you'll hear about it here.

May 17, 2010

Recap: The angst! The angst!

First of all, I am ready to go the Hell. The four-part question in round 3—on literary suicides—was perhaps in poor taste, but come on, it's not like any of you knew those people personally. Although I swear, Hunter S. Thompson once walked right past my desk, blowing one of those little small plastic whistles, and I smelled him smoking weed in my boss's office. I've lived an odd life.

It was an extra-challenging night at the BQT, but that's the way it shakes out sometimes. "Cryptic Geography NYC" tested your head, your brain and your mind too. The first part was a clue to the NYC landmark's location, the second part its name. My favorite: "In the far end of Handler: The fishing equipment, affected by THC." YouTube video soon.

Also tonight, we mentioned the forthcoming Fan-Generated Question of the Week (better name TBD). Visit our Facebook page and click on this discussion and submit your best trivia query; my favorite will show up at the next BQT. Free point for you!

And speaking of next BQT, we're returning to (Le) Poisson Rouge. But first…the THREE-WAY FINALE!

It was nerd-o-rama, as representatives from returning champs Incontinental Clown Posse, the Fantastic Fourincators, and Strippers for Stephen Hawking took the stage. Smart guys, but incredibly, nobody even hazarded an answer to "What movie featured a character whose final words were 'Corn nuts'?" (Oh, man, the audience was steamed on that one.) But John of the Strippers, back against the wall with zero points, pulled out victory on "What vegetable is a national emblem of Wales?" and, finally, "Several years ago, what annoying female celebrity was associated with the following word: kinkajou?" He's so Hollywood.

Your winners:
Yes, she's holding up a $20 bill. She won that, you know.

Your next show: Monday, May 31 (yes, Memorial Day), back at (Le) Poisson Rouge on Bleecker Street. Bookmark the calendar and never get lost, ever.

Tonight's NOT-SO-SECRET SECRET CLUE

Here we gooooooooooooo!!!!!!!


Not the Yellow ones, but…

Ah, what could it be? Use it when you hear the wacky theme, tonight, 7:30pm at Crash Mansion. See you there as vague, poorly lit outlines in the audience.

May 15, 2010

Settlers of Catan at Google: Geek-vana!

Yesterday, I had a truly geektastic evening. A couple friends generously invited me to join them for an evening of gaming—specifically, the German medieval-development sensation, The Settlers of Catan. I'd never played before, and while I'm definitely a board-game guy, I was never a D&D nerd, so wide-ranging strategy games like this usually aren't my cuppa cuppa. But I rather enjoyed myself once I got a feel for the rules.

In a nutshell, you're living in a Middle Ages agrarian civilization, acquiring and trading various resources (lumber, brick, wheat, ore and sheep) in order to build roads, settlements and towns, and gain economic advantage. It makes for a good time, especially by the point in the evening when everyone gets punchy and starts making stupid trades; my team acquired some much-needed ore when I stumped another duo with a prime music trivia question ("What new-wave band’s breakthrough 1982 album was titled Spring Session M, an anagram for the band’s name?
"). And there's always a good infantile laugh when, in the heat of trading, someone asks someone else, "Do you have wood for sheep?"

But the extra-geeky, and extra-exciting, thing was the location of our game: the New York City headquarters of a company you may have heard of, Google. (Yeah, that link was really necessary.) A friend and BQT regular (member of the team Natalie Portmanteaux) works for the Big G, and hosted the game in an office conference room.

Yes, the office is large. Yes, the office is beautiful. Yes, the office is high-tech. It was like I'd time-warped back to the go-go '90s, when every media company lavished its employees with the kind of perks that actually made going to work every day a non-soul-crushing experience. But what floored me the most was the outrageously large amount of food available.
Our conference room (labeled "Williamsburg"—all the rooms there have NYC-derived names, mostly neighborhoods, though I also spotted "Cloisters" and "Cotton Club") was mere steps from one of several areas termed a "Micro Kitchen." Kind of ironic, considering that it's larger than the average NYC apartment kitchen, but puny by Google's outsize standards. The Micro Kitchen was heartily stocked with beverages, chips, fruit, bulk nuts and candy, cereal, various other comfort snacks. All your favorites.
We went on a field trip to the main cafeteria, a cavernous room—easily the nicest cafeteria I've ever set foot in, although that's not a tough competition—with multiple stations: salad, hot dishes, a stupid wide variety of drinks, even a kosher and vegan station. I tucked an Olde Brooklyn cream soda into my pocket for later.

By the way, on the way back to "Williamsburg," I spotted some of the other office amenities—small rooms for private phone calls, game stations equipped with classic Ataris, and this:
A Razor scooter rack. This is a little silly, sure, and while it gave me opportunity to ride one of these things for the first time since the Clinton administration, it was even less fun than I remember. But I appreciate the spirit of whimsy.
Finally, we made a trip to still another floor, to another Micro Kitchen, this one specializing in ice cream. There was a freezer full of delights, a cavalcade of luscious toppings, and the kicker:
Good God. A whole freezer of It's-It ice cream sandwiches, the real San Francisco treat, specially imported from the Left Coast for Google. I'm a bit of an ice cream sandwich connoisseur, and I've enjoyed several of these during visits to my favorite California city—ice cream between oatmeal cookies, dipped in chocolate. Pretty clever, and I was steamed that I was too full on peanut M&M's to partake last night. But the thought of these being steps from one's desk day to day is too insane to put into words.

Needless to say, all of this was free. Google employees, and their guests, are given professionally catered breakfast, lunch, dinner and copious snacks every day, in addition to, you know, salary and health benefits. I don't get this at either of my jobs, although since I run the Big Quiz Thing and buy food for myself and cook for myself, maybe that sort of counts (scratch that—I don't cook). In my career in the publishing industry, the best I've had is an overpriced and understocked cafeteria down the hall, and another job that gave us free cans of Tab (the big boss was an addict). My current day job offers bitter coffee, hot chocolate packets, and a vending machine with 65¢ bags of obscenely flavored Doritos. I am officially in a state of covetousness.

But I'm going to get it—I'm going to work for Google. During my tour, I saw a room (damn, didn't take a picture) set up as a professional, high-tech theater, with a stage, podium, multiple video screens and seating. The perfect venue for a Big Quiz Thing event. And surprise surprise, the company is in the habit of staging entertainment for its employees. And hey, tech nerds love trivia! The employees I hung with last night vowed to give the hard sell to the higher-ups on bringing me in for a private company event. Ah, I can taste the granola bars already!

May 14, 2010

The Buzzcocks vs. the terrorists: I was there


Perhaps you heard, but last night, the NYPD closed off (and partially evacuated) several streets near Union Square, after an eagle-eyed (read: paranoid) citizen noticed several gasoline canisters in the back of a car parked outside the Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza. I was inside that concert venue at the time, enjoy the triannual visit of my all-time favorite British punk band, the Buzzcocks. As was the "terrorist." Click here to read my scintillating review (and see photos) for Time Out New York.

May 9, 2010

Fancy and weird

Through my multifarious media connections, I recently found this on my desk: a DVD from Fancy magazine, collecting two hours of rare and bizarre, largely music-related clips from the Jolly Roger DV Archive. Boiled down: Fancy is a zine of bizarre art and culture, and it was hyping a show/party at the Delancy a couple of weeks ago. They screen a lot of these bizarre videos at their events, and while I've never been to a Fancy gathering before, I've attended plenty of weird New York shit in my time, and there always seems to be a projector displaying something thought lost to the mists of time.

(BTW, Fancy is holding another event, Conquest of the Planet Fancy, on June 5, also at the Delancey. Download the monkey mask and get in free!)

Some highlights:

— The trailer for the 1968 sleazoid motorcycle movie She-Devils on Wheels, directed by cine-crap legend Herschell Gordon Lewis. This may be the single lowest-quality movie preview not by John Waters I've ever seen; the title card is a shaky video camera trained on a vinyl poster. As for the film's plot, the title gives you a good idea.



— The intro for the mid-'60s superhero Hanna-Barbera cartoon The Impossibles. I remember reruns of this when I was young, but seeing it as an adult makes me realize just how cutting-edge and weird Hanna-Barbera could be. The mainstream was only tepidly embracing young culture and style, but here, the leading kids'-cartoon merchants were throwing themselves in full force. Hard to believe they'd water things down to Smurfs level by the time I was their target demo:



—The preview for the legendary 1966 (camp) Batman rip-off film Rat Pfink a Boo Boo. I'd heard about this movie for decades, but never seen a clip before; it was from Ray Dennis Steckler, the decidedly nongenius behind the wonderfully awful The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? Apparently, Rat Pfink suffered from far more than the flaws obvious in this clip (couldn't find the trailer); easily the best Wikipedia entry I've read in days.



— A whole ton of early promo videos. Collections like this remind you that music videos did not begin with MTV; bands were doing promo clips decades before, and with some frequency by the mid-'70s. And back in those days, when camera-readiness was not considered a prerequisite of musical fame, it wasn't uncommon to see singers who were visibly uncomfortable being videotaped, and video concepts that were embarrassingly amateurish. But some acts got it; this clip from 1979—L.A. punk band the Dickies covering the Banana Splits theme—shows remarkable confidence:



The Vandellas (in the Supremes mold, but great in their own right), not so much; they're too self-conscious. But the clip's great nonetheless: clever, excellent song, and those girls are having so much fun:



— A really odd British Woolworth add from Christmas, circa 1985. Wait—that girl wants an Iggy Pop record? (Commercial starts at 0:32.)



Lots, lots more. This is the kind of DVD you watch while eating Entenmann's Cookies, if you catch my drift.

May 8, 2010

Shill for us!


Inspired by a BQT newcomer who took the time to (very nicely) review the quiz on Crash Mansion's page on Yelp (thanks, Samantha L.!), I've finally registered an official Big Quiz Thing entry on the ubiquitous review site. But we need to fill it with copious amounts of praise, to spread the gospel.

So here's my offer to you: Post a review of the Big Quiz Thing, and the best five will get free admission to the next BQT they attend. Ridiculously simple, and by best, I mean the ones that make me happiest. (So yeah, better be nice to me.) Now, if you want to say horribly mean things about the BQT, go right ahead. But no free pass for you (then again, why would you want one?).

Click here to share your expert opinion with the masses. It's 2010—what kind of person are you if you don't tell the Internet what's on your mind?

May 3, 2010

Recap: We were happy to serve you

As reported at tonight's all-kinds-of-rocking Big Quiz Thing, this past week saw the demise of Leslie Buck, creator of the standard-issue Greek-style coffee cup. And to test your powers of recall, I asked you to tell me the exact wording on said cup. Here it is.

Most of you didn't get it. Sad. But then again, who's paying attention to anything during the time of day when you drink from these things?

Other highlights tonight…

—"The Magazine Flashback Mind-Teaser": I agree, the indie-rock bands on the cover of New York magazine's "Brooklyn's Sonic Boom" issue are not easy to identify (Grizzly Bear, the Dirty Projectors and MGMT, FYI; seriously, not They Might Be Giants). And I agree, it's easy and fun to call them annoying, painfully white hipster douchebags. Meanwhile, "Not to Scale" would be an ideal footnote to Saul Steinberg's famous "View of the World" New Yorker cover.

—In the audio round, "'Wild' and 'Crazy' Songs," I was shocked that at least two teams thought "Crazy for You" was by Cyndi Lauper, and several couldn't identify Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." This only proves that I am fucking old.

—EDP does a great Ross Perot impersonation. If he'd been running in 1992, he would've won more than Perot's zero states.

Nell Carter was a black Jewish lesbian (or at least bisexual) Republican. Kevin Kelly is Archie's new gay friend. Roy was the one mauled by the tiger, not Siegfried.

— There was a team called "Let Us Win—We're on Our Honeymoon." I don't think they were kidding. I can't decide if I'm filled with joy or feeling a little sorry for them (they didn't win, but I gave them a nice, juicy Smart-Ass Point).

And the big story, at least when all was said and done, was that Incontinental Congress (this week known as Incontinental Airlines)—usually the geeksmaid, rarely the geek—managed to successfully defend their crown. Matt of IA knew "Which Alfred Hitchcock film partially takes place in South Dakota?" and "For several years in the 1860s, what European country established an empire in Mexico?" (No one knew which two subway lines will be gone in late June, or what New York punk band took its name from its lead singer’s initials.) These are your rulers:

NEXT: We're back at Crash Mansion in two weeks, with the long-awaited return of "Cryptic NYC Geography" and an audio round titled "Do I Repeat Myself?" (Do I?) Then two weeks after that, May 31, we return to (Le) Poisson Rouge for some Memorial Day fun. (No BBQ, sorry.) And hey, June 10: Washington, D.C.! It never ends, folks.

Tonight's NOT-SO-SECRET SECRET CLUE

Here it is, what the world has been waiting for. (What?)

For tonight's Big Quiz Thing, at Crash Mansion, the Not-So-Secret Secret Clue is…

If you’re female, you know it’s true.

Now, does this represent an unfair advantage for lady quizgoers? Perhaps; one could say the frequent stream of superhero questions represents an unfair male advantage, and this is merely an effort toward balance. Or maybe gender has nothing to do with it. One way to find out, kids!

7:30pm tonight, Crash, Bowery at Spring. Party time, excellent.