NYC quiz preview: Tuesday, Sept 3 (part I)

Yes! The next NYC BQT is less than two weeks away—we're talking the day after the Day of Labor, Tuesday, September 3 (tickets here). Join us at our new venue: SubCulture, conveniently located at 45 Bleecker Street, just off of Lafayette, steps from the B/D/F/M and 6 trains. New York, baby!

SubCulture is a fantastic new space; the BQT team has checked it out thoroughly, and we know it'll be excellent for our show. However, one warning: It has no tables. Chairs, of course, but no tables. I don't anticipate a problem, especially since there's no real food menu, just snacks and a full bar. Consider grabbing a bite pre- or postshow at one of the approximately 8 trillion restaurants within spitting distance.

Get your tickets now, because chance favors the well prepared. As always, we have hands-down NYC's best trivia on offer, featuring a new video puzzle that I'm having a heckload of fun with. Introducing…Meme-O-Rama. Watch this…

You very well might know, but that is a video popularly known as "Dramatic Chipmunk" (though the damn thing is actually a prairie dog). Since it was uploaded to YouTube, its various versions have been viewed in excess of 50 million times, making the mislabeled DC a viral video superstar. Perhaps more indicative of true fame in the Internet era, the Dramatic Chipmunk has been the subject of numerous parody videos, many of them viral successes in their own right. (The full story can be found at the eminently enlightening repository Know Your Meme.) A compilation…

September 3's video puzzle is a celebration of—and of course, a test about—viral videos, a world, I must confess, I have had little experience with (I tend to spend my YouTube hours listening to obscure new-wave singles from the late '70s, 'cause I'm that kind of dork; here). I've since become educated on all the viral stars of recent years, and this Weezer video finally makes sense to me. Mama is proud.

"Dramatic Chipmunk" will not be featured—too short—but we'll spotlight ten others, all of them emblematic of this thoroughly modern kind of fame. So yeah, if you're the kind of person who spends the bulk of the day watching stupid videos on your computer instead of, you know, living life, you're going to have a serious advantage.

This one actually freaks me out

More about September 3 in this space soon: Additional multimedia puzzles to preview, and of course, we need to crow about prizes. Buy your tickets, why don't you. And in the meantime, here's some more viral fun, the good kind: