11 posts tagged “drunken smartass olympics”

A few days late due to technical issues (my home computer in the the hospital with third-degree overuse), last week's trivia recap is finally up and in full effect.

We asked a question about banksy this week. Here's a wonderful piece from Channel 4 news showing him outting up the pieces on the Palestinian/Israeli dividing wall:

By the way, just because I don't always repost the recaps from the trivia night doesn't mean I don't still post them at the DSO site. Because I do, and I am, and here's the latest one.

Well, again, if you weren't there, you really missed something.

It was large group night, with two excellent and boisterous groups dominating the action and the scoresheet. That might have been because you would have needed to build a critical mass of people to want to brave the snowstorm, never mind that there was definitely a Fuck Valentine's Day vibe to the evening; even the people who were encoupleded really weren't interested in the corporate ooeygooeyness of the alleged "holiday."

We gave away more prizes per capita than ever before as well. I got down early, and went to the Jas Mart on St. Mark's and went a little apeshit with the Japanese snacks. If it had chocolate on or in it and was shaped like a bear, I picked up a couple of boxes. Chocolate because, hey, who doesn't like chocolate, and bears, because like Mister Colbert says, bears are godless killing machines hell-bent on our destruction. And who am I to contradict that. Exactly.

So yeah, this week's rounds:

1. On This Day

2. Audio Round: Now We Are One II - More songs with "one" in the title, including Howard Jones, the Scorpions, John Lee Hooker, Blondie, and the mighty, unstoppable sonic beatdown that is Air Supply. The mosh pit? Is open.

3. Hearts and Stuff - Questions about hearts, because, fuggit, 'twas the season. Purple hearts, Bret "The Hitman" Hart, The Tell-Tale Heart, Kitty Carlisle Hart, and the guy who came up with this logo.

4. Dogs - The name of the dog that won Best In Show at the Westminster Kennel Club show this week was...? (I am obsessed with that competition, by the way. I don't know what it is about it, but god damn, I can't stop watching. Often, by the end, I'm brought to tears. And I have no idea why.)

5. Name 3's - Three dudes who schtupped Ava Gardner, three of Anna Nicole Smith's best acting performances, three Hawaiian Islands, and Leilani Kai, Wendy Richter, and Joanie Laurer.

Like I said, big groups this week (we'll be enforcing that five-a-side rule again next week, aight? You've been warned), but the names were solid:

• 1st Place: Heartbreakers, Dream Makers, Love Takers, around with whom you ought not to mess.
  
• 2nd Place: ACLU & Friends
  
• 3rd place: Roy G & the Death Machine (They were Roy G. & the Bivs for a while, but I like the last-round amendment)
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):
  
• You Are Lonely If You Are Alone
  
• Anna Nicole Wordsmiths (They won Best Name, but they didn't get the Anna Nicole question in the name threes round! How soon you forget, you -- you capricious celebriphiles!)
  
• AXE Body Spray (Your name made me think of guys like this. No offense.)
  
• Pretty Pathetic (which, they hastened to add, was a song by the Smoking Popes. I figured the Smoking Popes would have been a better name, as team names that talk about how much you are going to suck are the only team names I can't stand. But I understand.)
  
• End All Carbon Subsidies and Find Life On Mars!
  

Prizes this week included a series of Valentine's themed books, including one on the history of prostitution and one on the trafficking of body parts. Both, I hope, will be enjoyed by their recipients and someone they love very, very deeply. Or at least wish to fuck.

At the risk of quoting John Edwards: I was wrong.

I thought there would be more team names involving crazed astronauts wearing diapers, but the trend went the other way, as thoughts strayed toward the freaky guy masturbating like Darling Nikki, behind a sheet, backlit thirty feet tall, in front of a screaming cheering live audience of sixty-five thousand and a viewing audience of a billion or so. Janet Jackson shows a nipple with a hat on it for a quarter of a second and society almost falls to its knees, and then Prince has himself a nice long lock-the-doors scream-all-you-want wank in the rain, and everyone breaks their fingers talking about it being the best live stadium show since Cheap Trick played Budokan. You puritans are so cute when you're being selective in your outrage!

This week's rounds:

1. On This Day - where we celebrated the birth of the Puerto Rican rapper Laura Ingalls Wilder, and mourned the death of the children's author known as Big Punisher.

2. Audio Round: Now We Are One - Commemorating the one year anniversary on the DSO, we pulled out all the stops, ordering pizza and doing an audio round featuring One Song Each from Murray Head, the J. Geils Band, the Fixx, Madness, and Johnny Cash covering U2. We weren't going to make it too easy. Also, we'll be doing another One soon.

That's a hint.

3. Inside the Box - Lots of box questions, including a question each about Joyce Carol Oates and Salman Rushdie, both of whom, in case you haven't for some reason been sick to death of my namedropping in the last 52 weeks or before, I have spoken with. One I took a writing class with, the other one I think is the greatest living writer in the English language.

4. Super Excellent Round Of Super Superness! - In which talked about the city at the near end of Lake Superior, the editor of Superman's newspaper, the NHL team Super Mario owns, and the lyrics to Liz Phair's Supernova.

5. Name 3's

A few less teams this week (because of the cold - if you want to win some prizes, this is the slower season, so you've got a better chance than in a month or two when it picks back up), but the quality of names was high as usual:

• 1st Place: Houston, We Have A Problem -- And She's Wearing A Diaper!
  
• 2nd Place: Tony & Me (actually, a series of vaguely stalkery drawings that quite frankly creeped me out)
  
• 3rd place: Fox Force Five (none of whom looked like Mia Wallace, but considering what happened to her in the movie, that may have been not the worst thing)
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):
  
• 

  What is, sexytime?

  3 comments
  Nicky's Angels
• The Straight Guys Who Work In Cosmetics
• Alex Trebek Is My Bitch
• JD-4-2
• Jarvis Cocker Is Not Joe Cocker's Love Child
• 95 2nd
• Scooter's On Ice
• It's My Birthday Too, Biotch!
• Prince's Phallic Shadow
• Purple Reign Stick, by Dave Grohl
• Bess and Dana Say, "Summer Never Has To End If You Still Wear Sunscreen During The Winter!"

Prizes this week included a pair of Tanya Tucker self-help books and a special Thanksgiving holiday 5-pack of Jones Soda (Turkey & Gravy soda, Sweet Potato soda, Dinner Roll soda, Pea soda, and Antacid soda). And as well, every person received a special thank you postcard and a fridge magnet courtesy of the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, who we are happy to continue having sponsor us, if they're game.

Thanks, everyone who's come out even once (and especially those of you who've made it part of your social life), for making this thing into a fairly big deal. If you've had half as much fun playing as we've had making up the questions, then we've had twice as much fun making up the questions as you've had playing.

[mirrored from here.]

Yesterday started with Janet being a guest on Howard Stern, and ended with closest Scrabble Solution near-tie ever, in two wild guesses as to the distance from Uranus (2,735,555,035 km = 1,699,795,070 miles) that were less than 9,000 miles apart. Yow.

Last night's celebrity spotting: A man who used to make sure Warren Zevon's bottle was always full while on stage. And on Warren's birthday and everything! (More on that below.) Yes, the Charlie Hodge to Warren's Elvis Presley, his Vodka Fluffer, was in the hizzy last night. Right On.

That said. This week's rounds:

1. On This Day - Big ups to Yakov Smirnoff and Ray Stevens, as well as the Emperor Hadrian (who turns 1,931 today) and his childhood buddy, The Great Ernest Borgnine.

2. Audio Round: Warren Zevon's Collaborators - a compilation of acts with whom Warren has collaborated, from the Everly Brothers and the Turtles to Steve Winwood and REM. (And someone asked about this, and I wasn't sure, so I had to look it up: John Waite ["Missing You"] was a guest vocalist on Zevon's farewell LP, The Wind. It's not the closest connection, but it counts.)

3. Burn - You know who did well on this round? Your mom. She says hi. Burrrrrrn!

4. Earthquakes - Earthquake, the standup comic? He's not bad, actually.

5. Name 3's - Three soles, three vampire movies, three kinds of sleeves, and something about a dirndl.

I'm noticing the team names get better and worse like the stock market. Team name futures are way up this week, so sell high:

• 1st Place: The Harpo Marxists
  
• 2nd Place: The ACLU (personal to you guys: are you actually with the ACLU?)
  
• 3rd place: Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza! (Which always reminds me of the WKRP episode where the Russian defector communicates his forbidden love for Bailey Quarters through an Elton John song. Och, I'm tearing up.)
  
  
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):
  
• The Remanders
• Hillary and Obama: Jungle Fever! Do The Right Thing!
• The Brain Machine
• The Resolvers
• Rob Torfleson's Armada Featuring Herman Menderchuck!
• Please Don't Call (845) 641-[last 4 digits redacted], that's (845) 641-[last 4 digits redacted]! (If he gets any actual phone calls, they're from someone at the party last night. I can't help you with that part, my friend.)
• The No-Tards! (a solo act for most of the night, she finished tied for 12th, which is pretty solid)
• Touched By An Uncle (who would have won best team name but they booked as the final scores were being read. Stay to the end, people. You'll win stuff.)
• The State Of The Onions
• Hokey Birds (whom I didn't mention the first time around, which was good, because they moved up four spots by the next reading round)
• The Fart Sandwiches (who drew the best doodles of the week; scans to come)
• The Twinsters
• Are You There, God? It's Me, Pirate.
• Wonder
• The Penis Mightier
• Nice & Thrifty!
• The Comeback Kids.
  

Prizes this week included a paddle with LEVITICUS 20 written on it, as well as a few different special items from TV Guide, including a commemorative Elvis interactive CD-ROM and a portable trivia gameboy-type thing.

Some new pictures taken by Vidiot have been added to the DSO Flickr group already, so have a look, and bring your camera next week!

Podcast and potential new sponsor information (!) coming up.

I know there was more. What did I miss?

[mirrored, as always, from the official DSO blog.]

 

I'm not sure if it was the sudden and way overdue explosion of cold, or the impending State Of The Union Address, or a collective hangover from watching the Golden Globes (I feel like I'm one of five people walking the Earth who didn't see them; I had no idea), but it seemed like a relatively chill room last night. Usually you rowdy freaks bring a mighty noise, but you were almost... well behaved.

That was unnerving. Please don't.

Also, I was thinking about changing the way I read the scores. It takes a lot of time to read the scores by rank, and we're running later and later these days, which is not the direction Janet & I want to go with this. Would it bother anyone if I took a page out of these recaps (and the Last Exit playbook) and gave the top three scorers in order and then just gave everyone else's team name and score? When it was a tiny, close-knit group back when we started this, it wasn't a big deal, but nowadays it's kind of become an issue.

Let me know what you think. If you like hearing the rankings in order, I'm fine with keeping on with it. It just feels unnecessarily long, is all.

That said. This week's rounds:

1. On This Day - Happy birthday to Vidal Sassoon, the late great Andy Kaufman, and fellow baldy Don Zimmer.

2. Audio Round: Pleased To Meet Me - I tried to balance off the Kenny Loggins clip with Sam Cooke and Death Cab For Cutie (a band I'm still warming to), but god, what a terrible song. That somehow many of you got anyway. Seriously, it's like I don't even know who you are sometimes.

3. Monkey Business - Not just the Marx Brothers movie and Gary Hart's yacht, but a question about marmosets. Marmosets! Who says we don't stretch your minds, even just a tiny bit!

4. Let's Talk About Chicks, Man. - Questions about Chickens, chicks, cocks, cock-a-leekie soup, and the album that hatched the single "You Never Met A Motherfucker Quite Like Me." (I don't even think of "motherfucker" as a cuss word anymore. To me, it's the new "golly.")

5. Name 3's - In which I gave you the three all-time best-selling Chick Tracts, three Beethoven symphonies, three Rockys, and something about the Pineapple Express.

Team names were better this week:

• 1st Place: Pluto Nash Won A Golden Globe? It Should Have Been A Grammy For "Party All The Time!"
• 2nd Place: Hurricane Brangelina
• 3rd place: π(RATE)ARRRGH² (I had to look up the right codes to get this to render right. You're welcome.
  
  Followed by (in no particular order):
  
• Googies
• How The Hotter Half Lives
• If It Wasn't For My Horse, I Wouldn't Have Spent Those Two Years In College
• Hamster Huey & The Gooey Kablooey
• MDIXM37UT* (they changed their name to "Please Count Our Score" after the first round)
• Kick Your Ass
• Norfolk & Chance (this name has been used before, both times by a team visiting from the UK. Is this some kind of British in-joke I don't know about? I mean, I get the pun, but is there any more than that to this?)
• Mango Chutney (good job on the scrabble solution question, guys)
• Sexual Chocolate VIII (don't assume there were seven before you, baby. You're the only Sexual Chocolate this party's ever seen, gurl, you know it's true.)
• Silver Fox
• Penguins Don't Surge!
• IOWA (where they were actually from. geographical shout-outs always rock)
• I'm Missing Top Chef For This?
• Run Obama Run! (later, Run Osama Run!)
• Schindler's Lisp
• Disheveled
• The Gordon Shumways (later, the Smashing Shumways)
• The Resolvers
• Army Of Brians (and Matt)

Prizes this week included a special prize pack from the show 24, consisting of a large photo-album book with an accompanying DVD.

I ate all the pizza. Sorry.

And pictures will be uploaded to the DSO Flickr group tonight, as soon as I can pull them out of my camera.

As a first-anniversary present (if you can call this a present; I feel a little like I'm buying you a bowling ball with my name on it, and then letting you know in advance, but still), I was thinking about putting together a weekly podcast, to try and, I don't know, spread the word or something. Anyway, to say I took advantage of the MLK holiday to work on the dream I have, a dream where every child, no matter their color, creed, sexual orientation, country of origin, proximity to New York, ability to hold their liquor or make friends, literacy level, current level of incarceration or severity of medication needed to function in society, every child could participate in Janet's and my stupid little trivia thing... to say that? That would be kinda messed up.

But here's the first pass at what I think I could do every week without going apeshit. I don't listen to podcasts barely at all, so especially those of you who do, if you could give this a listen and let me know what you think is missing or clunky, I'd be most grateful.

(UPDATE: It's back up, hopefully fixed. Give this one a go, and let me know what you think.)

I'm trying to keep the feel of it fairly clean, but I'm not above the occasional sound effect if it helps. And I know the reading is a little clunky. That will hopefully fix itself as I do a few more of these things.

Any ideas?

Mirrored, as always, at the actual trivia blog.

 

Now see, that's how it's supposed to work. A raucous night full of heckling nutcases, some new kids on the block who came and finished in the middle of the pack (every trivia host has their own style, and once you learn how we roll, you'll move up the boards just as a matter of course), the nice people at Samuel Adams came by and gave away a mess of beverages at the beginning of the night, the scores were high, and so was I. Oh, and no tiebreakers needed, which is always a relief.

I wore a bowling shirt that said DAN on the front, so people were calling me by that name, especially when I was giving them bad news. Which was rather less often than usual this week.

Rounds were as follows:

1. On This Day - Happy birthday to the second black major leaguer to break the color barrier, to Dick Van Dyke, the guy they call Deadly Tedly & Theodocious Atrocious, and the Salvation Army. And a fond farewell to Peter Boyle, who did the best version of 'Puttin On The Ritz' ever committed to celluloid.

2. Audio Round: There, There, There - Songs with "There" in the title, featuring hits by the Velvet Underground, Naked Eyes, the White Stripes, the Zombies, the La's, Eddie Holman, the Beatles, Steve Earle, the New York Dolls and (that's right) Bon Jovi. I have enough different versions of "There She Goes Again" and "There She Goes" that I might be able to make another round of just those songs up, but it would only work if you've heard of, oh let's say just as a litmus test, the Beat Farmers.

(I apologize for forgetting to ask the bonus question: Of what city was Gertrude Stein speaking when she said "There is no there there?")

3. Islands - in which Janet asked two questions about "Islands In The Stream," and worked in a gratuitous Scarlett Johanssen reference with no prodding from me whatsoever.

4. One Letter Words - What great punk band did Ray Manzarek produce? Which NYC Subway line is the newest? What is South Africa's currency? How well do you know the lyrics to "YMCA?"

5. Name Threes - including examples of father-son movies, famous cartoonists, among other things.

This week's team names:

• 1st Place: Mental Machine Muzak!
• 2nd Place: Nicole Richie Blew .23, Or At Least That's What She Thinks His Badge Said
• 3rd place: The Beerocracy
  
  Followed by, in no particular order:
  
• The Staten Island Beer Belt
• Matt's Late, So We're Suffering Matt's Here, And We're Still Suffering
• Get Your Dreidel On!
• Yuletide Yids! (these two teams were tied through each of the first two rounds. Six more and it would have been a miracle)
• Dan Sucks! (see above.)
• Shark Truck
• The Creationists
• Fighting Violets (first timers who did actually real well)
• Seek-Roy, or See-Kroy (winners of the longest-traveled, they came in from Cleveland to play with us. I'm sure that was the only reason they came to New York, and I'm grateful for their level of commitment.)

Prizes included some shirts & sweaters courtesy of VH1 Classic, two workout DVDs (one a gospel one, the other a bhangra-for-kids workout) and a trigger-loaded punching machine, but everyone left with something, because quite frankly I'm sick of these prizes piling up in my apartment, and some of you have secret santa packages you need filled, right?

Just let 'em know where you got your cool schwag.

[mirrored here, as always.]

So proud of you bastards last night. After two rounds, no one had less than 10½ points, and I thought the questions were pretty hard, but then what do I know. And the only reason the guy playing solo won the whole night was that he was really into documentaries, which is why I'm kind of wary to hew too close to one topic for ten questions. Still, it was nice & raucous regardless. I can't stand a quiet room.

NOTE: This recap, like all DSO recaps, is mirrored at the official DSO blogsite.

Our penultimate DSO before next week's great getaway party was another decent success. I'm starting to think we're getting the hang of this. Ah, who are we kidding. Pride before the fall. Still, it was a fairly upbeat night, and that's even filtered through a serious hangover after a few of us went to Punk Metal Karaoke afterward and, um, got kind of blasted.

Thanks to everyone who came, and who come (more or less) every week. It's a lot of work to put these questions & audio rounds together, but I for one (and Janet for two) are grateful that you guys seem to like how the night has grown into itself a little bit. We're always (always) open to suggestions. I'm not going too far afield next month, so email me personally or just leave a comment below. You can even do it anonymously if you feel self-conscious, I don't care. We have a chance to improve things for our big comeback on Wednesday, September 6 (mark your calendars; there will be a kickoff party to rival those of ancient Rome, or at least the one we're throwing next week).

Rounds were as follows:

    * On This Day: In which we celebrated the birthdays of Anthony Edwards, Ilie Nastase, George McGovern and the great Max Fleischer.

    * Audio Round: Sweets for my Sweet. All the songs were sweet ones, because who wants hate? Not even me. Not all the time, anyway. (Spoiler: We may do this round again next week!)

    * Perfect 10s: I understand there is a pornographic magazine with this title, but I didn't have any questions about that. (Maybe next time; we're certainly not afraid of occasionally "working blue.") There were, however, questions about the board game Perfection, the cruddy John Travolta/Rolling Stone magazine movie vehicle, Nadia Comeneci's current husband, and the present perfect tense of the phrase "I rock the house."

    * States of Mind: Janet brought up the Ohio Players, the two senators from Illinois, and a few places Billy Joel isn't allowed to drive to anymore.

    * True or False: I think I may have to correct something from last night. I mentioned that Mark Twain had a birthmark he called "Mr. Cantankerous." I checked it in a couple of places, and decided to go with it. But I'm looking at those sites again today in writing this recap, and it's starting to look like this was a prank item dropped into Wikipedia and picked up by a few other sites. Nowhere else, in different language, is any birthmark at all mentioned. I'm guessing Mister Cantankerous does not and did not exist.

I'm not changing the results from last night or anything, but don't ever say we don't follow through on our research.

The first Scrabble Solution Question involved the number of asteroids officially logged and registered (129,436; a couple of teams tanked this question, including our returning championship team. (Have you people no shame?)

The second tie-breaker question decided second place: How many states does Bruce Springsteen mention by name in all the songs of his recorded catalogue? This is not something you can google easily, so I'll let that one sit for those who weren't there last night.

The top three teams were: Rabinowitz, Rabionowitz & Rabinowitz (a two-person team, so I'm sure there's some explanation), You Would Totally Love This Drawing Of A Duck If You Could See It But You Cannot, who made that name longer and longer over the course of the evening, and Human Rights Watch Rocks My Socks, who took valuable time out from helping the planet and watching "Project Runway" to finish in the money for the first time under their new name. Good on youse!

The other teams were: Milk Us Till We Moo, Tonight's Winner, May The Sri Be With Us, 'Cause Pussy Too Tasty!, and The Drunken Inquisition (welcome back, you bastards!).

There was something else I mentioned I was going to post here, but I've forgotten what it was. But this recap is already too long by half, so I'm not too concerned. If anyone remembers what it was, I'll up it later.

Did I miss anything important?