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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.