A Bit Dickish

So I think I'm becoming that guy.

Twice today someone asked me how the City vs. City Smackdown went and instead of giving them the rundown of winners and losers, I told them to read my blog. What. A. Dick. Oy. I mean, I'm a bit of a dick in the first place, I recognize that. But to become that kind of a dick ... that's just sad. I promise to change instantly.

So speaking of the butt-kicking we took from Ottawa (ooh, I said I wasn't going to mention that agian didn't I?), let’s do a City vs.City post mortem shall we? What worked for you? What didn’t? Give me some feedback. Now, what I learned from this hootenanny is that just because nine people in as many major metropolises (metropoli?) call what they do "Quizzo" doesn't mean they're all the same thing. They ain't. My Quizzo finch is living on a different island of the Galapagos than their Quizzo finch. It was the same critter once but now theirs has a longer wingspan and ours has a sharp curved beak good for cracking seeds. Not saying one'sgood and one's bad. There's room for all God's chitlins. From CvC it just seems DC's audience digs that crazy pop culture while everyone else seems really enthusiastic about world geography. They also follow the fine traditions of Quiz Bowl style questions whilst I happily rip off You Don’t Know Jack with too many doouble entendres thrown in. Maybe if we do this again I’ll lobby to have a few more, um, entertaining questions put into the mix... Ouch. OK, in fairness the audio round was colossally, cosmically awesome and I feel like a tool for not giving the Pour House crowd such aural pleasures long, long ago; it's on my list of things to do. I swear. Aural pleasure coming your way.

But don’t just tell me what I want to hear. What did you guys think of the night? Did you mind shelling out money to play? Should it be longer? Harder? (Like anyone has ever lobbied for shorter and softer.) Dancing monkeys? What do you guys need? Help me help you.

City vs. City Smackdown Results, The Gym

Well kids, the City vs. City Smackdown has been completed across the continent and all the scores are in. Cities sent their top 5 or 3 or 2 scores in and I’ve placed them all in the chart below. All DC teams finished out of the money. And I'm only going to say this once: Ottawa mopped the floor with us. The Ottawa Fatwa is on.

But our teams should also be proud of their scores which more than held up against the majority of the cities and which, frankly, were a different format and style than we’re used to. But those freaks of nature in Philly clearly had an advantage with their superior knowledge of unimportant facts and they proved just too tough to beat. Then again, maybe it all comes down to diet; I understand scientists have yet to identify all of the nutritional benefits of Cheez Whiz. But Denver was not to be denied either, slipping into second place between Philly’s top two teams. Ladies and Gentlemen, we have got to play some serious catch up. Maybe in preparation of the next City vs. City Smackdown, I should start eliminating the fun questions from my games? Seriously though, this was a lot fun and I'm glad to be in contact with so many quizzomasters across our fair land. Looking forward to the next one already!

PHILADELPHIA Sofa Kingdom 142
DENVER Denver Misfits 138
PHILADELPHIA MAGMA 134
DENVER I Am Curious George 128
PHILADELPHIA Satan's World 124
PHILADELPHIA What's the Soup du Jour? 122
PHILADELPHIA Reservous Dogs 114

OTTAWA Plush Toy of the Apocalypse 112
SEATTLE Lactose Intolerant 110
DENVER Sex Panther On The Beach: Slaves To The Grind 109
DENVER DTC Combo 109
SEATTLE Pepperjack 105

OTTAWA Fielding Melish 104

OTTAWA Chariots on Fire 102
DC DC: The Only Capital City in North America 101









DC The Team at the Bar 99









SEATTLE The Neckbeards 98
Toronto The Single Team 97
DC The Clavins 95
DENVER Lawndarts for Mudshrimp 94
SEATTLE Mountaineers Heart $300 94
SEATTLE Par Four 94
CHICAGO Commuter Ninja's 91
ATLANTIC CITY The Mystery Machine 90
DC DC Stands for Duplicate Copy 88
DC Chocolate City with a Marshmallow Interior 86
ATLANTIC CITY The Shocker 82
CHICAGO Super Balls 80
BALTIMORE TKW 60
BALTIMORE GNOW + Bill 59

It is Ovah!

"We came. We saw. We kicked it's ass!" So went up the mighty battle cry of the winning teams after the completion of the first ever City vs. City Smackdown: at least the DC leg of the event. There are still many a burg that will complete the event tomorrow (yes, we will try harder to get everyone to play on the same night in the future), so I can't go into too many details except to say I think DC did not embarrass itself in the least.

Were the questions tough? Surely. This is Quizzo. Were the teams up to the challenge? Hells, yes. Then again, we're kinda playing in avacuum here. Who knows how we'll compare with the others...? Only time will tell.

The evening began with a few gettin' ready for battle tunes (who doesn't get pumped up by "Lose Yourself?") and segueing into a lovely little tune by The Magnetic Fields called "Washington, DC." You could feel the city pride rising in the crowd. That pride carried through to the end of the evening where, when the winners were announced, something happened I'd never seen before at Quizzo: the losing teams cheered, yes, flat out cheered for the winners. Then again, maybe they were just happy it wasn't The Clavins?

I'm tired and I go to bed proud of my teams. Of course, tomorrow I'll wake to discover that we were blown away by Philly, but for tonight, we rest as champions. Sweet dreams.

(Winners' details to follow in a future post. )

Torturous Questions

"My main man. Tell me something, OK? What is the problem with Michael Jackson?"
Interrogator, Three Kings

So we're less than seven hours away from the first City vs City Quizzo and things, finally, are set. Things were actually much closer to set this morning when I received the questions for tonight, but decidedly far from set when, while loading the audio round onto my iPod, the indespensible little mother went kablooey and froze up on me. Oh, Crap.

But now a few hours later, hot tempers have had a chance to cool and after banging the iPod on my desk, depriving it of legal council and holding it under water for a few minutes (I learned so much from my stay in Guantanamo!) the little bugger is behaving. The audio round is all set. And actually, it's my favorite round.

I was a little nervous about using questions written by other quizzomasters, their tone is just a little drier than mine, but now I'm over it and looking forward to tonight. What the questions lack in pizzazz they make up for in variety of topic and ... what's the word I'm looking for? Ruthlessness? Let's just say, there's no grey area about what the questions are asking and what the answers are. Whereas my questions can be a little ornate leaving people asking themselves "Does he want the name of the song or the band or the shoe size of the lead singer?" These are all very straight forward. Tell me the name of the dog on Frasier ... or die. I think you'll enjoy them, if you survive. See you all tonight!

A Brief History of Scorebabes

Since the dawn of time, man has needed a special, curvy someone to stand next to him and point at things.

From Vanna to Barker's Beauties to Kari freaking Wuhrer on Remote Control, our culture has demanded that dorky game show hosts have someone really hot stand near them and perform menial tasks well beneath their intelligence level (okay, except Carmen Electra on Singled Out, whose total hottiness could not overcome her horrendous co-hosting. It has nothing to do with the fact that she was hired to replace the irreplaceable Jenny McCarthy, she was just so pretty and so very, very, very dumb). Basically, we love soft and pretty, but we really love soft, pretty and smart. I learned this many, many years ago when I started having a corresponding secretary type help me score all the rounds of Quizzo which could help make the game go faster and give me the chance for piss breaks. Originally a silent partner who worked for a free drink or two, the role has developed under Rebecca's watch to a non-silent partner who kills on the mic, is beloved by the crowd and works for a free drink or eight.

Until Rebecca finally succumbed to my ineffable charms and decided to move to DC, I had a variety of wonderful (that's code for curvy) friends and co-workers who helped out: Miss Joy, Sara, Faye... and I've had some awesome subs attempt to fill Becca's shoes when she can't make it: Jackie, Lindsay, Maddy, Ariel, Cherie, Olivia; all have leant their time and skills from time to time. There have also been some intrepid (that's code for curvy and drunk) volunteers from the audience who have abandoned their teams in order to come offer their talents on nights when the scorebabe was unexpectedly engaged elsewhere. And while I'm always appreciative, I usually prefer to send them back to their teams. It's nothing personal, I just don't like them, how they smell or what they're wearing.

So Monday, during the City vs City Trivia Tussle, Rebecca has to work her day job at night. That's right, she will not be there. So I'm faced with the quandry of having potentially a really big crowd, lots of new faces and no kick-ass Scorebabe to help keep them all in line. I confess I haven't exactly been beating the bushes for a replacement. I mean, if I can't have the best Scorebabe of all time on such a big night, what's the point in having some stand-in who'll just be a pale substitute? Plus, I know it's killing her to miss such a big night and I think she'd be a little jealous of someone getting to be there in her place.

So, it's decided. I'm going solo. I've done it before. I'll do it again. It just isn't worth it without Rebecca there. Unless Jenny McCarthy's available. I'm not stupid.

City vs. City Quizzo

7 PM, Monday, May 14th at the Pour House.

It is on like the proverbial Donkey Kong.

Atlantic City, Baltimore, Chicago, DC, Denver,

Ottawa, Philadelphia, Seattle and Toronto

Nine cities. Over $600 in cash and prizes. Time for some fun.

I met Johnny Goodtimes when he came through town last year on a cross country blogging tour. He sat in for a round of Tuesday night Quizzo and served up some good, tough questions for DC's finest audience to tangle with. Oh, and he got heckled a lot too.

Well, that heckling must have stuck in his craw a bit because he came up with an idea to pit Philly against DC in a vicious no-holds barred trivia throwdown. Well, maybe he had the idea after he'd already gotten confirmations from Seattle and Denver, but the point is we are now one of nine (NINE!) cities participating in this behemoth of a thing. Each city's Quizzomaster is pitching in 50 bucks towards a $300 grand prize plus a $150 second place grand prize. Sounds good, huh? However, because not all cities could play on the same night, we will not know the winning cities until late Tuesday or possibly Wednesday. (Check this blog to learn the results!) And because I know you kids need instant gratification in your lives, the good folks down at the Pour House are kicking in bartabs and cash for the top three DC teams ($100, $50 and $20).

So how will it work? It will work thusly: There's a $10 buy-in per team and your team cannot exceed 8 members. The game is five rounds with each round getting increasingly harder for increasingly more points. And knowing the guys who are putting the questions together (and I don't) these are going to be some tasty, tough questions.

A few more things: There's no jokering, there will be one audio round (perhaps a disadvantage for DC since you people never shut up) and there will be special Delta Force level tie-breaker mechanisms in place for both DC team vs DC team tie breaking as well as city vs city tie breakage. Trust me. This is going to work.

If you have any questions about this, please feel free to ask me immediately after the game on Monday because I really do care.

Now I know you people are already spending your winnings in your heads on phone bills, Play Stations and heart felt Mother's Day cards, but let me remind you what the most important part of this little international trivia tourney is: Bragging Rights! Mine. Not yours. I don't know if you're aware, but DC is considered a bottom feeder in this thing. They think we're a joke. Odds are being laid on the side that we're going to lose to everyone, including Ottawa. I wish I were making this up. Please, kids, please. When you come to play on Monday (and I know you're coming) I need you to bring it. Bulk up on pasta, re-read A Separate Peace, spend the weekend watching reruns of Charles in Charge, memorize the complete biography of Jim Varney if you must, do whatever you have to do to ensure your team gets a win. Because when the dust settles on this bad boy we want to see the District of Columbia, the little district who could, standing above the battered, bloated carcases of the other laughably pathetic cities. Bring it, DC. I know you can do it.

Day One: I am eaten by sharks

OK, so I've been running Quizzo for over five years. I've barely missed a Tuesday. Rain or shine (has shine really ever delayed anything important? Just asking.), snow or sleet, Election Night or State of the Union (these things are big in this town I'm told), I am THERE. Yes, we usually take off between Christmas and New Years and yes, I have had subs when illness or alien abduction has interfered, but otherwise, I'm Mr. Reliable. With the insanely reliable players I have, really I have to be. Anyway, my point is, I'm not some bush league host who shows up and doesn't know his material. So why, why, why, have I never had a damn web-page to promote this thing that I've sunk a good chunk of my life into?

Basically, I was waiting to see if this internets thing took off or not.

The point is, this City vs. City Quizzo thing has come up and the other cities participating have really cool websites so I thought about freaking time I stepped up. So, my daughter pointed me in the right direction and now I'm typing. This will get better (it can only right?) I am sure.

OK: First lame post is done. I look forward to turning this into a blog worthy of you, the fine reader. See you later.