A Canadian BQT flashback

Happy Canada Day! This day has somewhat special significance for your beloved quizmaster, since I am —technically—Canadian. My father was born in the bustling metropolis of Windsor, Ontario,  best known as the city where 19- and 20-year-old Detroit kids go on Friday nights in order to drink legally. When I was 15 years old, he was transferred to the considerably more bustling metropolis of Montreal, Quebec, where I spent the last three of my high school years (and by virtue of my dad's heritage, acquired a Canadian passport, which is pathetically out of date at the moment). Montreal was awesome, but by the time I was 20, back in the States for good, this adventure had retreated into the nostalgic recesses of my mind, and I was boring old American again. But I will always bristle when my countrymen express their characteristic ignorance of their northern neighbor (as when, yes, right-wing idiots declared they were moving to Canada to escape Obamacare). And to answer your question, yes, it was damn cold, but that doesn't sound so bad considering what it's like in NYC right now (good thing global warming is a myth, huh?).

Today is Canada Day, the anniversary of Canuck independence (1869), and I'm honoring it by tweeting my favorite Canadi-factoids all day. But twice in the BQT's history—2003 and 2008—I commemorated the holiday with a special audio round: "Keep on Rockin’ in the Land of Socialized Health Insurance" (well, the first time I didn't call it that, since I wasn't as imaginative back then). Songs by Canadian artists, of which there are many, many, because Canadians are awesome (and there ain't much else to do in Winnipeg but form a band). Digging through the archives, here's what I deemed quizworthy back in the day…

2003
1. "These Eyes" -- The Guess Who
2. "Fat Lip" -- Sum 41
3. "Never Surrender" -- Corey Hart
4. "Puppy Love" -- Paul Anka
5. "All For Swinging You Around" -- The New Pornographers
6. "Suzanne" -- Leonard Cohen
7. "Sk8er Boi" -- Avril Lavigne
8. "Southern Man" -- Neil Young
9. "Informer" -- Snow
10. "Carey" -- Joni Mitchell

A nice mix there: legends and flashes in the pan, great tunes ("These Eyes" is immortal) and conscious garbage ("Puppy Love"). I remember that hardly any teams could ID the New Pornographers song, but hey, I wanted to seem current (Avril Lavigne wasn't enough for me; BTW, in those days before easy song downloading, I acquired that song by purchasing a bootleg CD on Canal Street in Chinatown). I also seriously considered upping the list to 11 tracks, since I felt the desperate need to squeeze in Toronto's pride of the '90s, Barenaked Ladies. Laugh, if you want, but I was way into that band in high school, when they had yet to break through in the States, and they were a terrifically dorky live act. Granted, everything they've done in the past 15 years sucks, but hey, how good is your band?

 Circa 1992, I could really relate

Then, five years later…

2008
1. "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" -- Shania Twain
2. "Heat Of The Night" -- Bryan Adams
3. "Signs" -- Five Man Electrical Band
4. "Turn Me Loose" -- Loverboy
5. "Building a Mystery" -- Sarah McLachlan
6. "Closer To The Heart" -- Rush
7. "Money City Maniacs" -- Sloan
8. "1234" -- Feist
9. "Welcome To My Life" -- A Simple Plan
10. "If You Could Read My Mind" -- Gordon Lightfoot

Only time ever A Simple Plan opened for Gordon Lightfoot. It's strange, but I have a much less vivid memory of this round than the one from five years earlier, though clearly I was over Barenaked Ladies by then. And it looks like I was conscious of not reusing anyone from the first edition. BTW, when you're a geeky teen boy in Canada in the early '90s, it is a legal requirement that you become a Rush fan. And when you're a geeky Canadian indie-rock snob in the mid-'90s, it is mandatory you become a Sloan fan (best band ever from Halifax, Nova Scotia). Listen:

So seriously, who should've been in there? And what if I did a new edition now? (Well, a year from now.) Is Bieber too obvious? Time to finally give Bachman-Turner Overdrive some love?

Live from the Quiz Marathon!

Courtesy my good, good buddies at Time Out New York, a video of prime time from last weekend's Tenth Anniversary Quiz Show Marathon Spectacular. If you were there, relive the magic; if you weren't, pretend.

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.

Quiz Marathon strategy!

 

As I prepare for my massive undertaking of quizmastering for ten straight hours (dear God…), I'm fielding oodles of logistical questions about our Tenth Anniversary Quiz Marathon Spectacular: How does it work? Do I have to be there the whole time? How can I win the $1,000 grand prize?, etc. This FAQ should illuminate you, but let me break it down in terms of strategery, as a noted leader once didn't actually put it.

So the strategic question to ask yourself is: What kind of geek are you?

1. For the lazy geek—hang out for a few hours and have an awesome time: The show runs noon to 10pm total at 92YTribeca. A single ticket (available here, and cheaper in advance, mind you) grants you all-day, come-and-go access. Any given two or three hours will give you all the quizzing delights you expect from the BQT: world-class multimedia trivia, video and audio puzzles, a Text-Message Challenge or two, the odd Lightning Round, etc. Plus prizes: We're not limiting the goodies to the end of the show, so there's always a chance of scoring something nice to bring home to Mama. (This blog has already covered Lionel Trains and Birch Coffee, and we've got old favorites Geek Treats, Thumbs and On Location Tours will represent, and way more are on the way.) And check it: Guest performers will include magicians, jugglers, comedians, etc., scattered throughout the day. That said, prime time (8–10pm) might be your best bet, since that's when the live band will be doing its thing, and you'll be able to firsthand see the effects that a nonstop quiz marathon have on the body of a man in his mid-thirties. True, you'll probably not make it into the big Six-Way Finale, and thus claim the grand prize, but considering this will pretty much going to be the greatest quiz event since the sinking of Atlantis, I think you'll leave happy.

2. For the tireless geek—stay the whole damn ten hours: Make no mistake, a passel of nerds are seriously planning on doing this—arriving around noon, grabbing a piping hot coffee from Cafe 92YTribeca (which will basically be my life-support system that day), and settling in for ten hours of butt-numbing quiz joy. Naturally, playing the whole time will considerably up your odds of your team making into the finale, so this is also a good strategy for the excessively greedy geek. (And yes, the cost is the same as just swinging by for an hour or two.)

3. For the crafty geek—organize!: This might, strictly speaking, be the smartest strategy, but it's also the one that requires the most advance planning. Form a team as you would for any other BQT event, perhaps drafting in a few more ringers than usual, and divvy up the hours of the Marathon into shifts. If you spread out the brain talent wisely, you can make sure to cover every round of the quiz, and receive points throughout the day (as long as we receive an answer sheet with your squad's name on it for a given round of the quiz, you'll receive the points). If you relay like this, bringing in fresh players every couple hours, you'll just rack up the score and be primed for a top showing come Finale time, and possible glorious victory. (Indeed, this strategy is not mutually exclusive with the lazy one above, so long as you're lucky enough to glom onto a team with some of the smarties.)

But really, all strategies are welcome and valid; I guarantee a good time no matter what. Get your tickets now and start figuring out which kind of geek you are. See you there, if I retain the ability to see.

Video: Training for our Tenth Anniversary Quiz Show Marathon!

Just one month to go, and I'm hitting the bag pretty hard, prepping myself for ten solid hours of quiz show excitement. But how am I prepping? The answer is below.

Extra-mega-special thanks to director William K. Scurry Jr. and guest stars Erik Seims and Ron Palais. I think I need to start eating more salad.

Ten Years, Ten Hours, Ten Hundred Dollar Grand Prize. Get your tickets now!

Annoucing…our Tenth Anniversary Marathon Quiz Spectacular!

What, you thought we were kidding?

You should know by now, we never, ever, never joke about quiz excitement: In honor of a full decade in the quiz business (um…wow), we're doing what is unarguably the biggest Big Quiz Thing in history, on Sunday, June 3, at 92YTribeca. The tagline is "Ten Years! Ten Hours! Ten Hundred Dollar Grand Prize!," and it's all true: We'll be presenting a full day of BQT delights, noon to 10pm. It'll culminate in prime time, as a live band joins the BQT for the first time, and we expand the usual Three-Way Finale to a grand Six-Way Finale, to determine which team goes home with the big $1K jackpot.

Multiply this by two. Then multiply it by awesome.

Press-ready details here, but let me use this space and time to A some FAQs…

What's the format?
Pretty familiar to you BQT regulars: We'll be doing somewhere north of 20 rounds of the Big Quiz Thing, in teams, with pads and everything. Multimedia puzzles, of course, along with our fun grab bag of gimmicks: Four-Part Questions, the Text Message Challenge (probably four or five times), Either/Or (haven't done that one at a public show in a while), and more.

I love Google Image Search

Do I have to be there the whole ten hours?
This is the most F A Q, and the answer is absolutely not. Stay for one hour or all ten, whatever makes it a lovely Sunday for you. Your ticket buys you completed unfettered access; come and go as you please. Moreover, you don't need to be there the whole time to win. As long as we receive an answer sheet with your team's name on it, we'll count those points for your team. So if you want to get really organized, give everyone a shift to make sure all ten hours are covered (we won't enforce a team limit). Divvying up the prizes among 72 people is your problem, however.

Mmm…kosher!

Does this place have food and/or comfortable chairs?
Yes, 92YTribeca is an excellent venue (location of our long-ago Summer Fun Spectacular and my stint as Movieoke host). Perhaps its best feature: an A-double-plus meat-free café, which will be offering scrumptious specials all day.

What else you got for me?
Plenty. The world's greatest quiz show, of course, with our biggest prize haul ever (the grand prize of a grand is only a good start), plus original short films, DJs, live comedians, maybe a magician, etc. (Want to be a sponsor? E-mail allison@secondbolt.com and let's discuss.)

Watch the smirk gradually melt from my face…

Are you, Quizmaster Noah, really going to be up there the whole time?
Pretty much, yeah (part of the idea with the guest performers is to give me a chance to visit the boys' room). But I plan to persevere through the whole event as your, and the world's, quizmaster. I will be accepting sandwiches. Come for the quiz, stay for the freak show.

Any other questions? E-mail info@bigquizthing.com. Sold? Buy tickets now, and brace yourselves…

A consumer-product tour of Berlin

Guten tag! Actually, I haven't been in Germany in ten days (unless you count my airport layover in Munich six days ago, en route from Switzerland), but forgive me, your quizmaster is still in New Year's catch-up mode. 'Cause I rock just that hard, yo. (Also, I was busy listening to 2011's "best" music for the very first time.)

As I do every time I visit an exotic or semi-exotic place, I like to enter a supermarket and photographically take note of novel and/or bizarre products, from my Amero-Canadian POV. On this blog I've discussed shopping adventures in Puerto Rico, Switzerland, and London, and now we come to Berlin. A four-day post-Xmas visit with family was extremely historically educational; there was something exceedingly historically gratifying about lighting the Hanukkah candles and reading Superman comics in the heart of the former Third Reich (especially while my bedtime reading was The Man in the High Castle). I think I determined that the Germans aren't that bizarre, despite what porno-obsessed stand-up comics might tell you, But still, here's what I found (sorry for the lousy photos, but the grocer was eying me suspiciously)…
It seems appropriately German to me that the English names for these generic cereals are so clinically descriptive: "Cinnamon Flavored Squares" and "Fruit Rings." Maybe we should start calling Rice Krispies "Oblong Dun-Colored Pellets of Crisped Rice Grain."

I am almost literally the farthest thing from a beer expert, but I don't think I've ever seen this before: loose bottles of beer (and whatever that vodka drink is) on an unrefrigerated shelf. Something seems really, really low-rent about it; I mean, even a frat house finds room for a crappy fridge. Yet these are the Germans were talking about, the world's beer authorities, mandating the quality of the beverage by law. So who are we to question their shelving techniques?

Speaking of lack of refrigeration…

These are packages of German-farm-fresh eggs, just sitting out there on the shelf, ready to go rotten or worse. (I also saw what looked like frozen dinner entrées exposed to the temperate world.) This made me slightly queasy—don't eggs go, like, instantly bad if they're not treated with the utmost care? Aren't you courting digestive death via omelette? Yet when I mentioned this apparent anamoly to my sister (a Swiss resident), she looked at me like I was crazy. "Oh, sure," she said. "They never do that anywhere in this part of Europe. We've taken to not refrigerating our eggs at home; it makes a lot more sense." Great, one year as a European resident and she already hates our American way of life.

I'm convinced there's a huge vein of untapped humor in the topic of toothpaste. From the Cavity Creeps to Triple Protection Aqua Fresh, no general product category has inspired more hilariously overblown and bizarre TV commercials over the past 60 years. Thus, I really dig the names of these German brands: Odol-med 3, Aronal, Elmex. I'm guessing those were rejected names for members of the Three Musketeers.

This made my heart skip a beat (almost literally)…

The USA may be the greatest country ever in the history of all time since the beginning of the universe, but you know what we don't have enough of? Breakfast cereals adapted from candy bars. We have Reese's Puffs, but that's all that comes to mind. Yet in Germany, not only did I spot Nestlé Crunch cereal (I can't imagine the deliciousness), but this: Lion Cereal. For the uninitiated, Lion Bars are very popular and indescribably tasty candy bars found throughout Europe; I discovered them when I spent a teenage summer in the U.K. and ate them pretty much nonstop (you can find them in NYC if you put in a little effort). I'm fascinated by the concept of beginning my day consuming a variant on the product. Now you know what to get me for Valentine's Day.

Finally, German is an inherently funny language. So on a side trip to a department store, these gave me 20 minutes of serious amusement:
I was about to write that I really, really want to know what Don Corleone sounds like in German, but then I thought I also want to hear Luca Brasi. And Jack Woltz. And fuck it, Fredo too.

POTA is one of my absolute favorite movies ever, but the one logical flaw that has always stuck in my craw is the fact that the apes speak English. No, even that is fine: It's that they speak English and Taylor doesn't find that strange (though the twist ending provides a plausible enough explanation). But if the apes are speaking German…well, now we're playing a whole different ball game, aren't we?

I'm guessing that Dynasty, or its closest German equivalent, just doesn't fly in German as indicating jet-setting glamor and intrigue among the super-rich of the 1980s. But does Der Denver Clan ("the Denver clan") really solve the problem. I mean, Denver? Doesn't quite have the cachet of Dallas, does it?

"Murder is her h0bby." Oh, boy. There's that great stat that considering the small size of Cabot Cove, Maine, over the entire 12-year run of Murder, She Wrote, a full 2% of the residents were killed. And that maybe the secret behind the series is that Jessica Fletcher is a serial killer (with some powers of mind control, enabling her to hypnotize others into confessing to her crimes). I guarantee this all seems so much more believable in German.

Where to next? Australia…I'm hoping (by the time I'm 40, I've been saying). Care to join me?