Your (former) Quizzomaster and Scorebabe: Ready for Action

Thursday, December 13, 2007

You Can't Handle the Truth

Last week I ran a Quizzo night for a group called called Everybody Wins. Literacy charities that encourage professionals to read once a week with kids? How can you not love that? This gig was specifically for the good people at Lawyers for Literacy to all get together, raise money, get snockered and debate the finer points of Star Wars and The Golden Girls. It was a magical evening.

The only problem with the evening was that, well, they're all lawyers. Now, I like some lawyers. Atticus Finch kicked ass. Ben Matlock was a mensch. And Lisa Nicole Carson's character on Ally McBeal was a stone cold fox who could litigate the pants off anyone (why, oh why was it never me?) But, let's just say most of the crowd didn't fit into those molds. They were more, um, opinionated.

The highlight of the evening was the anarchy at the end when I, and I'm not proud to admit it, when I botched a question. Well, actually the question kicked ass: (Daniel Craig recently became the 6th man to play James Bond on screen, and he's only the second English man to do it, who was the first?) but I mishandled the loophole finders. You see, obviously, from my question I'm referring to the 6 men who played Bond in official Bond movies: Connery, Lazenby, Moore, Dalton, Brosnan and Craig. You've spotted the loophole by now, yes? As we all know, David Niven played James Bond in the original parody version of Casino Royale. Here's where things went off the rails. What I should have done was contacted the three teams that had put down Niven and explained that I wanted to just consider the "official bond movies". I could have done this quietly, quickly, etc. they change their answers and we could have all moved on. Instead I revealed my soft pink underbelly to a room full of 100 lawyers and they laid into me. I was uncharacteristically and stupidly off my game. Then even more stupidly, I begin tap dancing. Poorly. I justified not accepting Niven by saying he didn't play Bond, he was in fact Dutch and a muppet and blah, blah, blah, anything I could think of and it doesn't matter, because it wouldn't have changed the final results anyway... except it would have ... and there was one guy who knew that. Let's call him Mike.

Mike was not upset. He was livid. He was so very, very, very upset that his team did not win first place. Picture the scene: the game was over. People had left or were leaving. Winners had had their photo taken. Mike was still arguing his point to me. Repeatedly. I pointed out that the game was over, this whole thing was for charity, and did he happen to notice that the difference between first place and second place was the different number printed on the plastic trophies that were handed out? Who knows, maybe he had a side bet of $50k riding on this thing, but all I could see were the plastic trophies. Mike said that wasn't the point and proved the strength of his argument by ending with"The point is, you're an idiot."

Oh poor Mike. Look, dude, I'm sorry I screwed up. It happens. But calling people names never solved anything. In hindsight I could have whipped out make up questions, tie breakers, a whole bunch of things, but in my eagerness to get out of there (and I really did think it wasn't going to change the winners of the game), I decided to let it go. I'm sorry you couldn't. But if you're ever near the Pour House on a Tuesday, stop in and I'll buy you a beer. I hope that helps.

And if that's not good enough? Well, Mike, the jerk store called and they're all out of you.

Cheers,
Neal

PS: The evening was written up here by a cool lady from Legal Times named Attila. Fellas, if you ever meet a woman named Attila, don't let her get away.

GAME ONE

$30 Heart Medicine for $500 Alex 29











$20 Clavins 26









$10 Inventors of the Accu-Jac 24










Sub Prime Suspect 21
I'll Take a Massive Coronary for $200 Alex 18
Hillary Clinton's Dirty Panties 19
What is Alex Trebec's Pacemaker? 15
3 Ladies and No Right Answers 10
I'll Take Cardiac Arrest for 1000 16
Iraq me, Dave Petreus 19
The Internet if for Porn 21
Poor O at the Quiz House 13
I'll Take Heart Attacks for $200 18
Chick-Fil-Atio 17
Colorado Christians are Holier Than Thou 23

GAME TWO - Hanukkah Porn

$30 Clavins









Sammy Davis Jr.'s Cock Part 2 31
(Yes, one man, alone beat many teams of many... if only he had friends.)











Yarmulkum Shots: Volume 2 28










I Have a Little Dildo ... 23
Dick Cheese 19
The Bliss of the Mouth Bris 23
Debbie Does Moses25
The Wailing Balls 21
Deborah Does Jerusalem 25
Driedel Bangers and Donkey Punches 19
Long Dong Silverstein 21
Judah Maccabee and the Hanukkah Bush 18
2 Girls, 1 Yarmulke 16
Back Door Dreidels 9 19
Menoral Pleasures 27


Sunday, December 9, 2007

December 4th

Due to a deep holiday melancholy, I have nothing to offer here except the winners and losers. Enjoy (sigh) if you can.

GAME ONE

$30 WINNERS I Wish the Pour House Door Worked 35









$20 WINNERS Mohammed Ruxpin 32










$10 WINNERS So Tell Your Friend Veronica and Smoke your Marijuanica 31 (Tiebreak Winner)









The NIE Leaked Faster Than Ed Asner at a Scary Movie 31
Jason reads Judy Blume 31
Ironic Mustache Rides 50 cents 26
Steven Hawking's Karaoke Machine 26
Sexy Beasts 21
It's Colder Than Ann Coulter's Tit Outside 23
Clavins 28
Drink Your Gin and Tonica and Have a Happy Hanukkah 10
That's Not a Memorial in My Pocket, It's My Big Dreidel 23
Drink Your Gin and Tonica 21
Only 21 More Shopping Days until Alien vs. Predator II 30
Ramrod 7
Did You Know It's Hanukkah? 28
Pour O at the Quiz House 23

GAME TWO - NEW AMERICAN GLADIATOR NAME

$30 WINNERS Chlamydia 31









$20 WINNERS Jism 31










$10 WINNERS Macaca 30










Taint 30
Obama 22
Erection 29
Wintry Mix 24
The Santorum 29
2 Girls, 1 Cup 28
Nitrous Cockside 30
Snoogle Fleejer 28
Clavins 28
Toe Jam 29
Loopy 13
Sean Taylor 29

Monday, December 3, 2007

Dazed and Confused

Weird things are afoot in my neighborhood. Our neighbor's house got broken into, another neighbor was mugged, there was a collision at our corner this weekend (ok, so, this happens all the time...) and there was an unconscious woman on my sidewalk Saturday. Yeah, that was a little different. Our friends Michael and Abby were expected for dinner and when they showed up a little late we were ready to give them a hard time. Best excuse ever for tardiness: "There's an unconscious person on your street, we called 9-1-1." There's a what? Where? What they thought was a big black trash bag on the sidewalk turned out to be a lady and they couldn't wake her up.

My first aid instincts kicked in! [I'm the designated First Aid/Safety Monitor on my floor at work. In four years I've only been called upon twice; once for a bleeding finger which I totally valiantly saved and once for a guy who passed out which I botched horribly. OK, I got the call 911 part right, but that was about it.] So, forgetting my first aid failure at work: my first aid instincts kicked in! What to do? I grabbed a blanket off my daughter's bed (one good enough to warm someone, but kind of small so it will be easy to clean later! I actually thought this...) and rushed outside. The unconscious person was no longer unconscious. I remembered from my training: consciousness for a previously unconscious person is a good thing! But apparently Michael couldn't get her to talk or acknowledge him in any way.

She was sitting up, almost cross-legged with the most dazed expression on a person's face I've ever seen. She was a twenty or thirty-something latina(?), dressed nicely, like to go out, with a buttoned up black coat. With her black hair I could see how she may have looked like a trash bag in the dark. It was pretty cold out, low 40's, it's a really good thing Michael and Abby found her. I wrapped the blanket around her and sat down on the sidewalk facing her. I gripped the blanket on both sides so if she flopped backwards I could hold her up and keep her head from smacking on the bricks. Again, my first aid instincts kicked in! "What's your name?" I asked. "shfege skjd lrtysghssss," she replied. It was clear she thought she was answering me, but nothing remotely coherent came out. I tried to keep her talking even if I couldn't understand her. Consciousness is good! I remembered. "shjkowpj sjhdy akjdg dkjdw," she continued. Was she drunk? Stoned? Assaulted? Crime had been up in the neighborhood. Maybe someone hit her on the head with a tire-iron scrambling her poor little brain. Hm, no blood. Come to think of it, no bag. How often does a woman go out but not carry a bag? Now I'm in some crime drama trying to piece the clues together. The clues that are right in front of everyone, but only I can put them all together.

Finally I ask, "Having you been drinking?" And although I don't know what she says and I don't smell a whiff of alcohol on her, her "sshjdos ak dlkewi" reply clearly is meant to mean "No shit, Sherlock." At this point she indicates her contempt for Michael, who's diligently looking out for the ambulance, by saying "dfgfsoih" and flipping him the bird. She seems to think about it and decides to flip it at me too. Now I feel like we're getting somewhere.

"Hey, I know what that means!" I I laugh and tell her not to worry, we're there to help her and she's going to be okay. Last thing I tried before EMS got there was to ask simpler questions. My initial barrage had been what's your name? what day is it? where are you going? etc, but none of her answers made sense. I realized simpler communication was in order. "Do you live in Washington, DC?" "SYhessh," she told me. Cool. "Do you live on Capitol Hill?" "Yehm." "Do you live on 10th Street (where we were at the time)?" and that's when the professionals rolled up. Just in time because I was running out of questions.

As the sirens and flashing lights approached my befuddled patient grabbed me hard with both hands as if to say "don't let them take me." I was sort of touched that she'd gone from flipping me off to seeing me as some sort of protector. The EMS guys were putting on rubber gloves and asking her much of the same questions I had when Abby found a cell-phone in the pile of dry leaves on the sidewalk. I had one more burst of detective-think "Aha! Her phone! With 2 missed calls! Clearly someone is trying to reach our victim here! In moments we can call them back and get much needed information on her!" But then I looked around. An ambulance, a firetruck and 5 EMS guys had arrived on the scene in less than 6 minutes from the time Michael called 911. I closed the phone and gave it to one of the guys as they moved her to the ambulance. I got to be the First Aid/Safety Monitor for the night. Someone else would have to play detective.


GAME ONE
FIRST PLACE $30:
Old Fart's Heart Gets Jump Start 32









SECOND PLACE $20
A Lotta Resigna 30









THIRD PLACE $10
Hulk Hogan Loses Custody of Right Half of Tank Tops 29










I Shot Sean Taylor 16
Sean Taylor's a Little too Good at Intercepting Projectiles 17
I Heart Tranny Hookers 24
Come On Feel My Pulse 27
Sean Taylor Got Shot? Who Saw That Coming? 25
Arctic Cruise Captains 18
Bills and the Over 24
Clavins 27
The Young and the Breastless 17
Is It Too Early for a Sean Taylor joke? 23
Blowin' me in the Wind 26
Warm Pile of Leftovers 27
The Wide Stance 18
Sean Taylor's Body Guards 20
0 for 10 13

GAME ONE - Ethnically Offensive Magazines
FIRST PLACE $30:
Washington Redskins Weekly









SECOND PLACE $20
Macaca Illustrated










THIRD PLACE $10
Wopular Machanics 29










Pictures: Niggas Can't Read 19
Macaca 22
Round Eye Can't Drive 18
Jewsweek 25
Camel Jockey Racing Form 26
Wetback Weekly 18
Clavins 20
Spics with Sticks: Hispanic Baseball Weekly 14
NY Review of Gooks 14
Ranger Spic 20
Jap Fancy 18
SuckaMacaca 26
Family Circle Jerk 19