Quiz recap: Ten frickin' hours!

Good afternoon. Good God. Just so you know, my original idea was to do a full 24-hour quiz marathon, which would've meant I'd have just gotten off the stage about five ago. And that I'd be dead now.

Okay, so yesterday—our Tenth Anniversary Quiz Show Marathon—was pretty fucking incredible, if I do say so. I was stunned—stunned, I tell you—that so many of you stayed for the full ten hours. And I was stunned that I felt as good as I did, staying onstage and quizzing all you all for the whole time. Actually, I felt great; there's very little I enjoy more than quizmastering, and it was an absolute delight to get to do it for so long, and under such exciting circumstances. I love you crazy people.

Now I'm playing serious catch-up with other BQT business. But partially for the benefit of those who missed out on this once (?) in-a-lifetime experience, here's what happened…

—Nearly 100 people stayed the whole time. The. Whole. Frickin'. Time. Luckily, 92Tribeca was the ideal venue for this, incredibly supportive and with an exceedingly tasty café. If only every venue could be that way, you know?

—We had guest DJs (including the return of the queen of the BQT, DJ GB), guest performers (thank you, 5 Hour Energy thief/comedian Liam McEneaney, rape-whistling comedy/producer of the NY Funny Songs Fest Jessica Delfino, top-spinning blockhead Keith Bindlestiff, and master of mystery the Great Dubini), and for the first time anywhere, EDP and the World's Most Trivial Band! The Big Quiz Thing: the only live quiz show that literally rocks.

—The prize haul was truly amazing, thanks to our production partners at Second Bolt. Huge thank you to all of our fabulous sponsors: Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, Silence! The Musical, Old Jews Telling Jokes, Second Stage Theatre, The Actors Fund, Geek Treats, Thumbs Bakery, On Location Tours, Annie's Blue Ribbon General Store (hooray for candy mustaches!), Birch Coffee, Lionel Trains (a massive $250 model as the Endurance Award!), The Artifice Group's "Strange Things," The Bubble Lounge, Museum of Sex, St. Mark's Bookshop, A Jew Grows in Brooklyn, My Sinatra, Voca People, Sistas, The Solo Nova Arts Fest, 92YTribeca itself, and sadly, possibly someone else my addled brain is overlooking. Oh yeah, and the BQT's bank account, which provided the grand $1,000 prize for the winning team. It's so great to reward smart people for being smart people.

—I did the math: I asked a total of 259 questions yesterday. Plus five audio rounds, plus five Text Message Challenges (AT&T tells me I have exceeded my texting limit for the month), plus two of those wacky stand-up/sit-down 50/50 rounds (I always forget how fun those are; they're perfect, BTW, for private events where we have no access to A/V). Included in the bonanza were all your favorite BQT gimmicks: Proofread-O-Rama, the Movie Quote/Pop Music Thesaurus, Presidential Limericks, Three Degrees of Musical Separation, Sports Logo-a-Go-Go, Crisp Game Arena (a.k.a. Recipe Anagrams), Let's Play Boggle, and, naturally, the Plinko of the BQT, the Bipolar Movie Challenge. Lots of fun flashbacks to classic BQT material, including a reprise of our very first audio round from ten years ago, Music for Playing with Yourself, which inspired one of the day's best tweets: "We did ok on the 'onanism songs' portion of the #quizmarathon. But I suspect this room is full of experts."

—In case you're really curious, physically. I felt great almost the whole time (the adrenaline even gave me a little case of insomnia, but the exhaustion hit around 5am, and continues). Being on my feet gave me a stiff back halfway through, but the second wind kicked in and I recovered. I had almost no caffeine (a cup and a half of tea at 9am), none of the 5 Hour Energy I brought, 2/3 of a tuna fish sandwich and two Cliff Bars. I peed once. Prepping the material for the show was far, far more arduous than actually performing it.

—The Six Way Finale was the only time I felt that our plans of mice and men failed: We simply didn't account for how crowded it would get with the band there, so it was dodgy, but it worked out ultimately. And naturally, Incontinental Congress—now easily one our winnigest teams ever—won on a question about You Can't Do That on Television. Of course.

The standings; I'm guessing here, I'm a little disorganized today. Just know that the bulk of members of all of these teams were there from start to finish, so if you popped in for just ten minutes, sorry.

1. Incontinental Congress: For the first third, they had only three people. Three neeeeeeerds!
2. Cash Cab for Cutie: Won the Spider-Man tix, plus much more
3. Fat Kids Have Their Cake, and Your Cake, and His Cake…Starship: A supergroup that well earned the Team Spirit Award
4. The Fantastic Fournicators
5. Gerard Depardouche
6. Strippers for Stephen Hawking: Gave me a lovely tenth anniversary card. I am blesssed.
7. Taking the Mulligan
8. Money for Nothing and Quips for Free: Came down from Boston!
9. Monstrous Humanoids: Ditto!
10. I can't remember, let me check later.

Next: Summer is private party season, a.k.a. make money season. But you can catch us back at Littlefield in Brooklyn on July 17 and August 14; in Boston June 11, July 30 and August 27; and our satellite operation in L.A. June 17 and July 15. And hopefully, another Manhattan show soon. Get some rest, please; we're doing 11 hours next year.