June 29, 2010

Let your voice be heard!


As mentioned at last night's BQT, we really want to come back to (Le) Poisson Rouge more often, and it sounds like most of you feel the same way. So let's make it happen, Cagney & Lacey–style: E-mail the club at info@lprnyc.com, and tell them that they should give us a regular berth there (though it looks like we'll be there August 30 for sure). Otherwise, we might be reduced to doing the show exclusively in the basement of a Chinese restaurant (you laugh, but it happened—a barn in rural Pennsylvania, too). Thank you: You're the best around, nothing's gonna ever bring you down.

Recap: Who are these people

Tonight's Big Quiz Thing was especially gratifying, because—and I don't have statistics to back this up—we seemed to have a lot of new people in the crowd. (Normally, the BQT player contingent is about two thirds regulars, an assertion I do have a little bit of evidence to support.) But tonight seemed suffused with newcomers, and not just because it was Rebecca Ikler's birthday and she seemed to have brought along everyone she ever met. It was most obvious during the Big Three-Way Finale, which featured two newish teams, Room with a Vuvuzela (last joke we'll get out of that for the time being) and Not Penny's Boat, alongside the eminently familiar Sugah Titz. And the Titz won, which just goes to show I slant things in my regular teams' favor (KIDDING!).

But I get ahead of myself. As expected, Round 2, "The Museum of Painting Mash-Ups," called upon a different set of knowledge than most BQT games, finally making use of that art history class you took sophomore year for no apparent reason. My favorite is above; I literally squealed when I had the idea (seriously). I liked this Goya–Grandma Moses mash-up a lot, too:


The audio round, "Never Break the Musical Chain," took a lot of work, more than you'd think and more than I'd planned (I kept messing with it to get the right mix of artists). Still, I considered jacking it up to 20 songs, just to prove that I could do it. Ah, maybe some other time—maybe the New York City Clash of the Trivia Champions! (More on that below.) And thank you for appreciating the four-part questions on LIRR stations ("The first person stumbles on a banana peel") and celebrity perfumes; the Big Quiz Thing, the Fragrance, is in the works. In return, do me a favor: E-mail (Le) Poisson Rouge and tell them to bring us back. Demand it!

The standings:

1. Sugah Titz: The Fantastic Fournicators might be the winningest team in BQT history, but I believe Chrissy of Sugah Titz is specifically the winningst woman in BQT history. Impressive.

2. Not Penny's Boat/Room with a Vuvuzela (tie)
4. Squirrels on Film
5. The Fantastic Fournicators: Very proud of this, I am:

6. Birds of Ill Omen/Gerard Depardouche (tie)
8. Jefferson Davis Starship
9. Kathleen Turner Overdrive
10. Strippers for Stephen Hawking

Amazingly, we had no Smart-Ass Points tonight! I was reduced to giving away sympathy pastries to the last-place team! What happened to the funny? Next time…

…speaking of which, the next show is in ONLY NINE DAYS!

Yes, we're doing the Summer Fun Spectacular on Wednesday, July 7, at 92YTribeca. Trivia Color War and lots more; don't forget, this will probably be your last dose of BQT till August. (Unless you want to follow us to Boston; c'mon, road trip!) And get ready for September 27, and the first ever New York City Clash of the Trivia Champions—teams of four, $100 per team, $1,000 grand prize, a cool trophy, tons of glory, at the Highline Ballroom. We make it happen for you.
more details and registration coming soon.

June 28, 2010

Tonight's NOT-SO-SECRET SECRET CLUE

Here you go, smarty. Use this clue tonight. And it is…


I like my salad with croutons.


What the hell am I talking about? You'll just have to wait till tonight, my friends. We're back at (Le) Poisson Rouge, 7:30pm. We got "The Museum of Painting Mash-Ups," "Never Break the Musical Chain," and myriad other delights. Par-tay.

June 27, 2010

Monday: The 39 Steps is back!


The briefest of notes to let you know about Monday's prize haul: The return of one of my favorite theatrical sponsors, The 39 Steps. The show's moved from Broadway to Off, playing at New World Stages, which has long been one of my favorite venues (that's where The Toxic Avenger played, and I remember when it was a sorely needed discount movie theater). The show is extremely well done, and a stupid amount of fun, and we got passes for this show and the next. A little video here:



Monday night, (Le) Poisson Rouge. Bring your brain.

Secrets of the mysteries of the unknown: The Max Headroom hijack incident

An interesting cultural artifact that I discovered the other day: Have you ever heard of "the Max Headroom broadcast signal intrusion incident"?

Surely, you've heard of Max Headroom, star of the self-named TV series, Coca-Cola pitchman and otherwise late-'80s pop icon. (Surprising tidbit: The image of Max wasn't at all computer-generated; actor Matt Frewer just slopped on a hella amount of latex and makeup.) In 1987, at the height of Max's cultural currency, something bizarre happened in the the Chicago area. Imagine, if you will, you're sitting in your parents' basement at 11:15pm in late November, Doritos bag on lap, watching a Doctor Who rerun on the local PBS station. See what happens…





Weird. In case you didn't put it together, someone hijacked the signal with their own (crude) 90-second film, depicting a babbling lunatic in a Max Headroom mask. It looks like that's some kind of aluminum sheeting being rotated in the background (to mimic Max's familiar Apple II–esque background) and, yes, it ends with "Max" being spanked with a flyswatter wielded by someone in a dress.

Interestingly, about two hours earlier, a similar incident had occurred on a different network in Chicago, featuring 30 seconds of the same sequence, albeit without sound. The event attracted considerable media attention:





More detail and a transcription of Max's babblings can be here. Other than the fact that this is just kind of cool, you have to wonder what was going on here—hacking a signal like this is apparently extremely difficult, and considering that the culprit was never found or punished, this is an impressive stunt.

But why? There are two obvious possibilities, art project or prank, but both are undermined by similar facts. If it's art, it's complete crap: It makes no sense, even in bizarro underground-art terms, clumsily stabbing at a puerile media criticism by way of an established icon of media criticism. Plus, the dude in the mask sounds like he's wacky on the junk, so clearly he hasn't invested much in the performance. True, completely sucking hasn't stopped literally gazillions of artists throughout history, but these guys clearly didn't suck when it came to the technological aspects of the project.

Ditto for the prank theory, which is a little more in line with the quality of the performance. They might have just a few idiots fucking around with a camera, but they certainly weren't fucking around when they managed to interrupt the signal, and managed to never get caught.

All in all, it's nice that they didn't get caught: no harm done, and now we have a nice little mystery on par with the fate of the Mary Celeste, the chupacabra and the popularity of Ashlee Simpson. It makes life richer.

June 25, 2010

Advertising American Express advertising

I've had an American Express card in my wallet for more than ten years now. I've never exactly been sure why—I'm more of a MasterCard guy, but I always figure it's smart to have a backup card, even with the annual fee. For some time, my system was to use the Amex for automatic monthly payments (gym membership, Netflix, Greenpeace donation), the MasterCard for everything else, but this system broke down, and now it's MasterCard for nearly everything (and I don't even belong to a gym anymore). I just opened my latest Amex statement, and I owe $0.00, just like last month. Whew—no problem paying it off in full.

But I've been thinking about American Express these past few days, since the Big Quiz Thing is doing not one but two summer-intern parties for that august organization next week, with oodles of customized material. I enjoy the process of writing customized company questions, though it can get rather dry (there are only so many wacky factoids to be gleaned from the typical law firm website—the best you can hope for is they handled some kind of insane celebrity lawsuit). But Amex is easier, since it's so well known and there's basically an infinite amount of material about it on the series of tubes. Specifically, I've been harvesting some current and classic American Express commercials, and some of this stuff is indeed wacky.

For example, in the '80s, Amex made a business of scaring people into using their travelers' checks:



Happy ending, right? (Though why do I want to throttle every child who has ever appeared in a TV commercial?). This one is just terrifying:



I have a soft spot for this one, partly because I think the woman is very appealing, but also because the slogan at the very end is hilarious:



When it comes to more modern advertising, I give Amex (or their ad firm) a lot of credit: Some of these commercials are true works of art. I'm continually impressed by the beauty of this:



This British "advert" is also lovely; bold move giving this guy an accent that most people associate with someone smashing a beer against the wall in a pub:



Well, I'm sold. Maybe I'll use that green card a little more (or move up to Gold or—perhaps!—the Black card).

Next time, I promise, I'll absolutely trash a multinational corporation.

June 20, 2010

Some bad music videos, part II

At the last BQT, I posed this query:

As suggested by its lyrics, what year did Asia release the song “Heat of the Moment”?


Slight caveat to this: Asia frontman John Wetton claims that the number in the lyrics does not refer to the year, it refers to some kind of place, and the accuracy is a coincidence. Oh, those wacky British prog rockers!

I had this song on the brain because…well, I often have it on the brain, I think it's a brilliant piece of songwriting and performance (though some people do like to mock it). I always seem to enjoy shifting time signatures in rock & roll, and Asia was blessed with some sterling musicianship. And recently, I went back and watched the video:




I want to love this: that whole flipping-squares thing is kind of cool, in an elegantly low-tech way, and there's some intriguing imagery. Plus, compare it with most music videos at the time, and the whole production is pretty slick (not unlike Asia's debut album). But here's the problem (apart from guitarist Steve Howe being a strong contender for the next "World's Ugliest Musicians" video round): It's so literal. We start with a spinning globe stopping on Asia, of course. Soon after: "A look from you" (woman looks to the side) "and I would fall from grace" (her hands are joined in prayer) "and that would wipe the small right from my face" (a smile is almost literally wiped from a man's face). Then the chorus: "It was the heat" (the word "heat" is branded into wood) "of the moment" (clocks) "telling me what my heart meant" (EKG monitor). It goes on like this.

MTV changed everything, and part of the problem is that musicians, who were accustomed to being audio performers and not visual ones, had to adjust, quickly and sometimes awkwardly. Many of them flailed around for the best ideas they could find, and I imagine the guys in Asia didn't have the graphic sense to think beyond the most basic idea for how to visualize this song. Some blame should also rest with the directors, Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, former members of 10cc, who went on to make a lot of the best music videos of the 1980s; clearly, they were only just starting to figure it out here. The result is an somewhat embarrassingly primitive clip that cuts against the polished musicianship of the song itself.

Another thing you see a lot in early music videos was a palpable discomfort on the part of the musicians themselves. I remember being nine years old, in school, and the teacher, for some reason, had a video camera and filmed a few minutes of fourth grade in action. We all had watched TV till our eyes had melted, but I bet most of us had never seen an actual video camera before, certainly hadn't been filmed. We were smiling nervously, laughing like idiots. We just didn't know how to act in front of a camera.

That effect is on display on a lot of early videos. Here's an artifact: One of the first videos to be shown on MTV, "Hold on to the Night," by Baltimore generic-rockers Bootcamp.





First, this is just a dreadful song (no, Mr. Perm, you cannot sing, and when I heard the line "Sometimes lonely but never along," I just knew the rhyme would be "danger zone"). But there is just no imagination in the video, and the band members are making complete asses of themselves goofing around like self-conscious nine-year-olds. I picture the director saying, "Okay, fellas, we've blocked off the street, sent all the hookers home: Here are your unplugged instruments, the camera's on: Do something!" They don't even give the drummer his kit, and the keytar guy puts it in his jacket when he's done playing it. I'd say it's good that at least they look like they're having fun, but I don't think they are—they look incredibly uncomfortable to me.


Enough crappy videos for now. I still plan to get back to my "Greatest Hits" blog series at some point, and I want to write up the recent, long-awaited DVD release of The T.A.M.I. Show. Better music is coming.

Some bad music videos, part I

I've had crappy music videos on the mind. Come join me, will you not?





Billy Ocean…that guy had a zillion hits during the '80s, sold an insane number of records, yet he's all but forgotten, minus the occasional appearance of "Caribbean Queen" on a compilation CD, slotted between "The Warrior" and "Goody Two Shoes." I just had an epic weekend of nerdiness, trading pop culture tidbits with a member of Team! The Musical, and "Caribbean Queen" came into the mix ("it's simply…awesome"). We talked about the B.Osh, what little we could recall—I remembered his real name (Leslie Charles, from Trinidad), but I got an intriguing trivia factoid wrong: I had believed he started as a touring bassist for Sting, but it was sort of the other way around; Sting considered ditching the Police early on for a job playing bass for the O-Man (makes sense, since Sting wasn't solo till after the O'ster hit it big).

And I mentioned CQ's follow-up single, "Loverboy." No one seems to remember this, even though it hit No. 2 in 1985. But I did recall the video. And I watched it again for the first time in decades. Errh…

What junk this is. I'm picturing Billy Ocean's handlers (a guy like that has lots of handlers), in the brainstorming session: "Listen, Billy, you're a star! We're gonna take you to the stars! Have you heard about this thing all the kids love, this Star Wars thing?" Never mind that Return of the Jedi was two years gone at this point, and the Cantina scene (which this video is clearly imitating) was going on a decade old.

And man, this is stupid looking. We have an expressionless two-legged tauntaun, eying a character from the Dark Crystal, who's apparently making time with a cross between a puffer fish and Joseph Merrick. Meanwhile, a bunch of extras are walking around aimlessly in lame costumes: there's TV Head, 1960s American Astronaut Stereotype, Crow T. Robot's prototype, Jabba the Hut's uglier cousin, and Octavo the clown from Scarface. Intermittently, we see Billy singing in an abandoned hookah bar, visible via floating pyramid. What's going on here? Tauntaun wants Dark Crystal, so he goes all Greedo on Puffer Merrick, forcibly grabs her, she puts up minimal resistance, then they escape to the beach from the end of Planet of the Apes as a trio of dollar-store Jawas sing along. What does this have to do with the song? What does this have to do with anything???

The Ocean-ographer, it turns out, still tours and records, a little more successful in the U.K. than here, and he seems to have cachet among a lot of R&B stars as a crossover-success elder statesman. Nearly every musician who was around in the '80s has something to be embarrassed about, but the "Loverboy" video is really the bottom of the barrel. And this from a guy who would later record "Get Out of My Dreams, Get Into My Car"! Sting made the right move.

Tomorrow: In the early days of MTV, musicians really didn't know how to make videos, how to deal with the camera being on. Stay tuned for the silly results.

June 17, 2010

The Summer Fun Spectacular is sunscreened up and on its way!

As mentioned at last Monday's show…the BQT schedule (easily viewable here) is getting a little wacky in the coming months. The fact is, we're busier with private parties, out-of-town events, and babies (for GB and EDP, none for me, I believe). So there will be only one Big Quiz Thing event in July, not counting private ones, not counting ones in other cities, and not counting the monologue I say to myself every morning in the bathroom mirror. Just one BQT, but it's a big'un…

Yes, our first ever Summer Fun Spectacular. What does that mean? All the Big Quiz Thing goodness you know and love, with a summery twist. Questions on beaches, BBQ, losing your virginity, and other July/August delights; EDP may even be grilling invisible meat, and we're trying to get DJ GB to wear a bikini. Plus, the video round will feature the world's first ever Trivia Color War! (Eh, sort of. I've adapted all the familiar Color War activities—Capture the Flag, archery, team cheer—into trivia questions. Lace up your Keds 'cause you'll love it.)

It's all happening at a new venue for us, 92YTribeca, in the gorgeous performance space there (I've done many a movie intro in the screening room, but I've been itching—from mosquito bites, it turns out—to get into the big room). The venue is putting up fabulous prizes, and they have a real excellent café—try to gourmet lemonade, it'll be ever so appropriate.

The nuts-and-bolts can be found here; I'm still working out some little details, but I will certainly plan to see you there. Miss it, and I'll ignore you back at school in September.

June 14, 2010

Recap: Somehow, it all comes together

Clearly, I was born under a lucky star, because against all odds (take a look at me now), everything came together at tonight's Big Quiz Thing at Crash Mansion. DJ GB wasn't there, the crowd was stupid large (haven't done the count yet, but I estimate eleventy billion), there was some annoyingly loud hip-hop concert blasting from upstairs, and the video system didn't work until the end of Round 1. We party Bowery style.

First of all, since most of Round 1 went unseen if not unheard, I need to show off my handiwork here. The graphic for returning champs Gerard Depardouche is above; really proud of that. Also worth displaying here: the intro graphic for the four-part question about TV sequels:
Thankfully, the system came together in time for Round 2, the video round, "The World's Ugliest Musicians," which, yes, was pretty easy, give or take a few people who just know him as "the ugly dude from the Pogues":
Shane MacGowan is his name, of course. And then Round 4, the audio round, was "Get High and Watch These Movies," featuring all your favorite stoner flicks. Nights like tonight are what I keep mind when I get that occasional e-mail asking if the Big Quiz Thing is appropriate for kids. (Even the private ones are tricky.)

And yes, there was some controversy surround the Lightning Round. First of all, none of you have heard of Rap Snacks (I'm sure the folks upstairs at Crash Mansion know all about it), and then there was the issue of a couple of teams not handing their answers sheets in before the buzzer. Yeah, okay, it was crowded, but my man Adam (charitably agreeing to forgo playing the game to help EDP and me in our time of crowded need) was definitely at the back of the room, collecting sheets. Live by the trivial sword and all that. If it's any consolation, Strippers for Stephen Hawking, had I counted your points, you would have tied for seventh place (even if you'd gotten a perfect score, you wouldn't have made it into the Finale). So you know, no harm, no foul, if that's what that saying means.

Speaking of which, another awesome Three-Way Finale, pitting Jefferson Davis Starship against Cash Cab for Cutie against the Fantastic Fournicators. JDSer Anthony knew last night's winners of the Best Play and Best Musical Tonys, but Fournicator Steve busted out two straight correct answers on "Although it was mentioned only a couple of times during its seven seasons on the air, what TV sitcom was about a family whose last name was Wilkerson?" and "In the 1920s, some fans spent $20 each for a vial of what sex symbol movie star’s bath water?" And thus, there they are, your winners:
Man, I look creepy there. The standings:

1. The Fantastic Fournicators: Really excited to make a returning-champs graphic for them. You can imagine.
2. Jefferson Davis Starship
3. Cash Cab for Cutie
4. Gerard Depardouche/Team! The Musical (tie)
6. Sugah Titz
7. Come on BP, Light My Fire
8. The Glassholes Redux
9. Incontinental Divide/Oh Noah You Didn't (tie)

And don't forget: We're back at (Le) Poisson Rouge next time, Monday, June 28. Then: The only public Big Quiz Thing of July (though we are in Boston) is the first ever BQT Summer Fun Spectacular, a special Wednesday night show, 7:30pm, at the lovely 92YTribeca. More details to come on the blog, which is where you are right now.

June 12, 2010

Tonight's NOT-SO-SECRET SECRET CLUE: Two points!

Really: I decided, for the very first time, to apply the Not-So-Secret Secret Clue to one of the game's two-point questions because…well, no real reason. Just that when I looked at the question lineup for tonight's quiz (back at Crash Mansion, don't forget), one of the two-pointers presented itself as the best candidate. If it further incentivizes the kids to tune in the BQT on their Facebooking and Twittering machines, so be it.

And the clue is…

There's an h in there.

An h? You mean the letter? Or a figure shaped like the letter? What does italicizing a letter indicate, according to the BQT Blog style guide (which, no, doesn't exist, even though I suppose that wouldn't be the strangest thing in the world, knowing myself).

Find out tonight, when you use this tidbit to earn that juicy two points. Plus, I've given you a fun maze there.

Recap: D.C. indeed

I'm going to keep this recap brief, partly because it's overdue and because I'm currently bussing it back from Washington, D.C., to NYC. It's shaky—I like our country's capital, but the traffic here can bite me. Gridlock on a Thursday afternoon at 3? What the fuck?

Now then: Thursday night, the first ever Big Quiz Thing in D.C., was an experiment. The venue was The Palace of Wonders, an intriguing sliver of a bar crammed with vintage sideshow posters, preserved exhibits behind Plexiglas, and burlesque dancers' leftover costuming in the dressing room (I thought about adding some plastic beads to the sparkly-jacket gestalt). There was a roving orange cat named Al who spent the preshow happily sleeping on the stage, scared off once I tested the Three-Way Finale bells. Cool place, but I wasn't sure it would work for the BQT: Small stage, no video setup, limited seating. So I downshifted the format into all-verbal, heavy on the audio sound effects. I crammed in a lot of the best BQT gimmicks: We had Movie Quote Thesaurus, plus Pop Music Thesaurus, plus Breakfast Cereal Haiku, plus Presidential Limericks (naturally), plus lots more. I bill the Big Quiz Thing as the World's Greatest Live Trivia, and I aimed to prove it.

And I did. The crowd was relatively light—out-of-town gigs often are, since people never know what to expect—but it was quantity over quality, with an overwhelming majority of smart people who actually have a life. We even had that rarest of rare birds, the Hot Girl in the Three-Way Finale.

(Photo by Helen Fields)
Hi, Sarah.

But the winners, represented by Joe, the fellow at left, were known as the Supersonics:
I knew these folks. I went to college with three of them. I swear, it was fair. Though a fellow from third-place team Revenge of Al the Cat had an understandable gripe: The question was "If you spelled out all the numbers, starting with one, you wouldn’t need to use the letter a until you reached what?" He rang in, stood there silently for a good ten seconds, I gave him the 3-2-1, and he blurted out the correct answer a millisecond too late. Sorry, Mike.

Regardless, I got doubleplusgood reaction from the audience, who urged me to come back. One British guy told me he's been to dozens of pub quizzes back in Ol' Blighty, and I was "far and away the best he's ever seen." That's going in my next press kit.

Will I return to D.C.? We shall see. As neat as it was, I don't think the Palace of Wonders is my scene, so I'd love recommendations for venues in the Washington area. Besides, I need to go back; Charlie Rangel never responded to my request for a tour of the White House. Instead, the next day I toured the Capitol, which mostly involves seeing statues, and I spotted this:
That's Hannibal Hamlin of Maine, a standby of BQT game Vce-President or Serial Killer?, and my dad's favorite obscure 19th-century VP. The tour is a big ol' waste of time.

And hey, thanks to the Lovely Laura, my D.C. college pal who did fill-in duty as onstage sidekick. The Stevie Nicks vibe of the tablecloth-layering was her idea. I rely upon a network of genius.

June 9, 2010

Concert recap: The Futureheads

Heads-up: I wrote another concert review for Time Out New York, this one dashed off very quickly (busy week, just needed to justify the free ticket). The Futureheads, currently my favorite, not-past-their prime punk-pop band, sort of an amalgamation of Devo, the Undertones and XTC. (I know, the best thing ever, right?)

While we're at it, here's the video for their new single, "Heartbeat Song," which has convincingly staked a claim on my cerebral matter these past weeks. The game-show theme helps.


June 6, 2010

"Answer a trivia question, win candy!"

That was my refrain, again and again this morning. I journeyed to Union Square, with erstwhile B-Cutie Sweet Nicki and my man Bill Scurry (member of Team! The Musical) to record a short film that will be all over the Interwebs anon. Simple concept: I was wearing jacket and had a fake microphone, Nicki was in a BQT T-shirt, Bill had the video camera. And Nicki was holding this sign on a stick:
And yes, we had a bag of candy—Peppermint Patties, Twixes, Blow Pops. We wandered around for an hour or so, our clarion call reverberating through the sunny pathways of the venerable center of protest. We were a bit disappointed that almost no one seemed to flock to us—pretty much the only hyperenthusiastic folks were the core of junkies who hang out under the George Washington statue. They sucked at trivia, but with the exception of the dude who kept shouting at me to ask something about "Nazis!" or "Zyklon-B," they were plenty friendly (a woman offered me a rose made from duct tape). There were also a lot of infants in the park, and they (nor their parents) weren't much help.

We meet a bunch of people who run a Catholic quiz website. A British Shakespearean actor who didn't know any Shakespeare trivia. A couple of nurses with a McDonald's bag and a hankering for candy. Here's a guy who said he loved sci-fi movies but needed a lot of help finishing the title Planet of the BLANK.

We got a lot of bemused, silent stares, though I couldn't always tell if that was from people who wanted to play but couldn't summon the nerve, or from people who just thought we were nuts (it was pretty unconventional, but that's how I like to roll from time to time). Regardless, the footage is excellent, and it was a great way to show off both the BQT brand of trivia and my own quizmastering skills. Stay tuned for the video.

Finally, we encountered a dude who's a former Disney animator and third-place finisher in some kind of "fastest caricaturist" contest (appropriately, he was wearing a Flash T-shirt). He sketched me and Sweet Nicki in record time…
Really? My face is that pointy?

June 3, 2010

This weekend: Trivial obsessions

A brief note to remind you all (or, for those who weren't at last Monday's show, to initially inform you) that I'll be back at 92YTribeca this Saturday night, introducing the 10:30pm screening of Misery, the absolute best Stephen King adaptation ever (yeah, pretty much, though a quick IMDb check surprised me how many I do like). It's part of the movie house's very clever series, "Obsessed in the '90s," featuring all your favorite OJ Decade stories of stalking and insanity: In addition to Misery (this Friday and Saturday), you get To Die For (next Friday), Basic Instinct (Friday the 25th and Saturday the 26th), and Single White Female (July 9 and 10), all screening at 10:30pm. Wow, just noticed there all about nutso women. Huh.

Preshow Saturday, I'll be testing a few lucky audience members on their knowledge of these movies and similar from that magical decade of Candlebox and Foxy Brown, even tossing in a few comedic selections (being "obsessed" can mean a lot more than wanting to kill someone with a sledgehammer/icepick/stiletto heel/etc.). And yes, even some in which the obsessed person is a fucking man! Should be some neat prizes at stake, and hey, you can check out 92YTribeca in advance of our big Summer Fun Spectacular there in July, details of which are coming soon. See you there, Mr. Man!

(BTW, yes, I know the site needs to be updated; Web guy on vacation for another blessed weekend, lucky bastard.)