It doesn't pay to be a Gentile at trivia night

Thursday trivia was no fun - we didn't miss anything that made an interesting trivia question, and the final was another "guess a number and we'll tell you if you're close" question - so you get Saturday trivia, which I continue to insist is better anyway. There is a significant probability that there will not be trivia this week, in which case, I'll just make something up.

1. In which EU nation is the primary National Language spoken fluently by less than 10% of the population?
2. What is the only stadium to host consecutive Super Bowls?
3. Street lingo: What is "Adam's Ale?"
4. What are the capitals of a) Somalia b) Australia?
5. A Jewish boy has his Bar Mitzvah at 13. At what age does a girl have her Bat Mitzvah?
6. In the iconic photo, how many soldiers are raising the American flag at Iwo Jima?
7. What African nation is home to the militia known as the Janjaweed?

Back in the saddle again

The nasty throat/chest virus seems to be gone, so I was back at trivia this week. Things looked bad when we started blowing our five-pointers in the middle rounds, but then we wound up winning the thing at the end, by being the only team to correctly guess how many tons of jellybeans the White House purchased during the Reagan Administration. Seriously, I can't stand that type of question. They said to get within two, so we figured it couldn't be very high, but unless you happen to have just read 101 Completely Random Facts about Ronald Reagan, there's no further reasoning that can get you any closer to the correct answer; the question might just as well have been, "I'm thinking of a number between 2 and 30, what is it?"

The rest of our misses:
1. What television personality claimed that he was fired as a local weatherman after joking that a storm had hail stones "the size of canned hams?"
2. What is the name of Felix the Cat's girlfriend?
3. What was the name of Melissa Etheridge's first album after announcing her homosexuality?
4. Which country had a record turnout of 315 million voters during its 1991 elections?
5. Who wore a suit, instead of his standard military fatigues, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations?

Why there was no trivia this week

I have spent the last week waylaid by a virus, which started in my throat, moved to my chest once I started taking prednisone for the throat, then moved back into my throat once I ran out of prednisone and started taking cough syrup. Today, I feel well enough to move around, and can even talk for several minutes without straining my voice. But, obviously, I had to skip both Thursday and Saturday trivia this week. Maybe I'll get to alternate content (I do have a nice onion spaghetti recipe I could share), maybe not.

Why I prefer Saturday Trivia

As I have mentioned before, the hard-and-fast rule of Thursday trivia is, "Don't miss your five-point questions." So when we managed to blow a five-pointer on the very first question (mis-counting the number of molars in the human mouth - incidentally, I only have 25 teeth in my mouth, which is somewhat disconcerting), and then missed another five-pointer in the second round, we knew this would not be our night. We were dead last at halftime, made a big comeback in the second half, but would not have placed even if we had gotten the final question right. That's okay, because, as is too often the case, the trivia writers asked an ambiguous question with a difficult-to-verify answer, which a brief Google search would indicate they got wrong.

1. What is the more common name for the chemical compound epinephrine?
2. Which planet takes 84 Earth years to complete its orbit?
3. Which golfer bid a tearful farewell to fans after playing his last U.S. Open in 1994?
4. To whom did Herman Melville dedicate Moby Dick?
5. For which Biblical figure did the Sun and Moon stand still? (sorry if this one is worded badly)
6. Which country is home to the oldest active brewery (which has been running since 1040 A.D.)?
Final:
7. What is the average length of an African elephant's trunk?

Good luck.

Back from hiatus!

Like most schools, DPP has been taking a short break before starting summer classes. I was planning to go elsewhere with content today, but, due to a minor incident with the food processor, it's a little hard to type. As a result, you're just getting this week's trivia. Again. I hate being so one-note, but it turns out being a full-time researcher is significantly more time-consuming than taking classes ever was.

1. What is the hardest (on the Mohs scale, I assume) part of the human body?
2. Which successful pop duo was originally known as "Caesar and Cleo?"
3. Before Tokyo, which city was the capital of Japan?
4. Who was the oldest actress on The Golden Girls: Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McLanahan, or Betty White?
Final:
5. How many different shapes are currently in the Barnum's Animals (TM) cracker menagerie?

Theme Night!

I have to make up questions on the fly this week, so here goes:

1. What song's copyright is held by the estates of Mildred J. Smith and Patty Hill Smith until 2030?
2. What is the street address of NBC's headquarters in Manhattan?
3. What 90s television show was the debut of twins Tia and Tamera Mowry?
4. What card game is usually begun by removing one queen from a 52-card deck, then dealing all the remaining cards to the players?

Trick Question! Tupac faked his death!

All of the calculus classes have their exams on Thursday night of exam week, so we missed Thursday trivia. However, rather than leave my readers in the lurch, I made the journey to Saturday trivia. Things did not look good early, when I could not convince anyone that a Reuben is made with pastrami (possibly because it is actually made with corned beef), and I was not up to snuff on my celebrity death locations. I placed by bidding zero points on the final question, and letting the other teams fall back to me.

1. Which actor played the Dark Knight for the only time in Batman Forever?
2. Which of the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) was written by a former tax collector?
3. Where were the following people killed?
a) Tupac Shakur
b) Martin Luther King, Jr.
4. What 1990 dance craze gave The Digital Underground its biggest hit?
5. Place the following movies in order of their 2005 DVD rentals, from most to least:
a) Meet The Fockers b) Hitch c) National Treasure d) The Notebook

My mom loves your shows, Shonda!

It's a good 24-hour period for me. We won trivia last night, I'll be receiving a Major University Award this afternoon, and when I snarked on Grey's Anatomy, Shonda Rhimes snarked right back. Plus, it's the last day of classes, which is always good.
Speaking of the last day of classes, non-trivia content has been light (to say the least), but I expect that to change now that my days are a little more free. In particular, OTH recaps should be back soon.

1. What country produces 2/3 of the world's vanilla?
2. What mollusk shares its name with the first waterproof watch?
3. Which Spaniard won two Masters titles in the 1980's?
4. What nation has the world's second-highest level of gold production, behind South Africa?
Final:
5. Which novel contains the longest sentence in literature?

What if it was a hiphopopotamus?

Thursday was Sports Trivia, and I didn't bother to write down our misses; if I remember any, I'll add them. Instead, you get Saturday's trivia, which has consistently been of higher quality than the Thursday night version this semester (and easier to win, as fewer teams show up). The downside, of course, is that it requires me to spend my Saturday night in this particular bar, which means the f has to be visiting me (as opposed to the other way around) and feel like going out for trivia (which usually is the case, as she is a fan of trivia, but sometimes we have Flight of the Conchords on DVD and don't feel like going out).
The f actually had to leave town early yesterday, so I was planning to go stag, but I ran into some friends, and our victory enabled us to pay most of our crippling bar tab. The misses:

1. On Scrubs, where did J.D. and Turk attend college?
2. Name the Major League pitchers with the five highest career strikeout totals.
3. Kevin Spacey has won Academy Awards for his work in which two films?
4. What is added to a martini to make it a gimlet?
5. Place the following animals in order of average life expectancy in the wild, from longest to shortest:
Kangaroo, hippopotamus, deer, rat.

No, I don't understand why the baseball questions were twelve years old

Last night was a great night for everyone as far as trivia is concerned. It was great for us, because we won. It's great for you, dear readers, because we still managed to miss a solid selection of questions. As usual, I cannot vouch for the veracity of the answers given to us, but we believed them.

1) What Arab nation has the highest percentage of Christian citizens?
2) Who hit a line-drive single in his first at-bat of the 1996 season, becoming the first Red Sox pitcher to get a base hit in 24 years?
3) Who was the winningest manager in Major League Baseball history winningest active manager in baseball when he retired in 1996?
4) What recording artist was the top-selling artist of the 1970's, according to Billboard?
5) Of flyweight, bantamweight, or featherweight, which is the heaviest weight class?
Final:
6) What mythical beast has the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail and feet of a dragon?

I took "Potpourri" for $100, and then my head started to spin

Last night's final question was: What is the maximum number of "answers" that can be read during a game of Jeopardy!?
I think a better question is this: What is the maximum number of possible "questions" (i.e., responses) during a game of Jeopardy!?


Apologies for any confusion caused by the awkward punctuation.

I doubt they actually said "adieu"

When trivia night pays three places, fourth is the most annoying place to be. The new question-writers are still finding their legs as far as difficulty, so it was another night where close to a dozen teams finished with over 70 points (the maximum is 78). The final question, about the number of answers on Jeopardy!, became more difficult when the announcer tried to clarify the difference between an "answer" and a "question." This led to great confusion, but apparently not enough confusion to slip us into the money.

1. Which country bid adieu to the United Kingdom in 1921?
2. How many days can an ant survive underwater?

This week only: no Saved By The Bell questions!

It seems that I have, once again, mislaid last night's trivia misses. We had quite a few, so I'll see what I can reconstruct from my memory - which, incidentally, is greatly improved since I switched from scotch & soda to just plain soda.

1) What U.S. coin has a standard weight of five grams?
2) Name the three most commonly occuring chemical elements in the universe!
3) What is the most-consumed fish in the world?
4) Which part of the eye is obscured by cataracts?
5) Which fruit is present in Da Vinci's The Last Supper, despite the fact that it was not introduced to the Holy Land until long after Jesus's death?

Just Like Ross and Rachel

And It All Goes To Hell.
It's all a little hard to follow, actually, what with flashbacks and flash-forwards and dream sequences, but everything definitely goes wrong. Maybe.
Nathan comes home, but not really. Moira Kelly comes home, really. Then there's a wedding, but not really. Peyton speaks instead of holding her peace, but not really. Lucas says "I do," but he doesn't really mean it. Suddenly, two things happen:
1) Jamie goes to the bathroom. This seems unimportant when you read it here, but there are actually two more things that make this important:
a) Dan is parked outside.
b) Fran the Nutjob Nanny is hanging out upstairs.
This looks bad, doesn't it? But we'll leave that subplot for a second, because the second thing is:
2) Lindsey says, "I don't." Presumably, she does mean it.
See, Lindsey was reading Lucas's book, too - the one that Haley was reading last week - and she's figured out that, like the previous book, it's about Peyton. Lucas denies it, but what else is he going to do? She's already in the dress, for Pete's sake. Lindsey leaves, and she won't likely be back, leaving Lucas and Peyton to be this show's Pam & Jim, or Sam & Diane, or those two kids on that show about the six friends, what was it called again?
We have no time for awkward relationships, though, because we have to get back to thing one: Jamie is missing. Everybody panics, which, admittedly, is exactly what everybody should do. Haley mentions seeing Dan, and everybody panics again. Nathan jumps in front of a police car, and manages to avoid getting tasered long enough to get an APB out. Unfortunately, it's on the wrong person, because the Nanny-not-named-Fran has Jamie in a hotel room. Her plan to usurp the role of Mommy has hit a snag, though: she has forgotten hair dye. She runs out to get some, and when she gets back, Jamie is hiding. Fran seeks, and finds - Dan. Dan constructively expresses his displeasure with Fran. Okay, he actually pins her to a wall by the throat, but maybe he feels bad about using violence to solve his problems. Okay, probably not, but at least Jamie is waiting in the car. I think. He doesn't appear to be in the room.
Back at the Scott household, everybody blames themselves. I think everybody also blames Nathan, because this season has been about how everything that goes wrong is subtly Nathan's fault. There are a lot of police, but they must all have poor eyesight or keep turning their backs at exactly the right moments, because everybody misses Jamie walking right into the middle of the room. Not only that, Dan must be one heck of an evasive driver, because every cruiser in Tree Hill is looking specifically for him, and he managed to drive across town without being spotted. Anyway, he waits long enough for Jamie to be received, then makes his own dramatic entrance. We fade out before he is tackled by every officer in the room. New episodes start in a month.

Pain. Suffering. Johnny Carson

I know you've been missing the trivia. Well, Spring Break is over, the f was in town for the weekend, and we celebrated Easter Eve by rocking the Saturday night trivia. It was a tough one, and I'll skip a couple of our misses, because it was tough to follow the wording on some of them. Here's what I wrote down. Happy Easter.

1. What is the surgical knife known as an izmel used for?
2. What element is added to rubber to vulcanize it?
3. Which Christian feast celebrates tongues of fire descending on the apostles?
4. Who was the first female comic called to the couch by Johnny Carson?

Happy Hangover Day!

When I was in my 20's, the nice thing about having a birthday right after St. Patrick's Day was that, when midnight rolled around, we were already drinking. Nowadays, I usually stay away from the green beer, so today is just like any other day, except people give me presents. What did you get me?

Jaw, Floor. Floor, Jaw.

It's stag party day in Tree Hill, and the fact that Nathan and Haley haven't spoken in over a week is on everybody's mind. No, seriously, that's all anyone talks about for the first five minutes. Lucas and Lindsey have a plan, though; they're going to secretly hold both of their parties in the same place. Those scamps!
Brooke sets Peyton up on with Woody's friend, so she won't have to go to this party alone. But wait! The friend turns out to be Chase, the former male leader of the Clean Teens, who lost his virginity to Brooke last season. The female head of the Clean Teens, by the way, slept with Mouth, which makes me think I'd have been more popular with the ladies in high school had I simply declared my virginity. Anyway, the situation is awkward for everyone, especially the writers, who have to explain how Woody and Chase have not put together that they both know a 22-year-old named Brooke from Tree Hill with a world famous clothing line.
Rachel plays the part of the Recovering Addict In A Television Show to a T. She looks healthy, has no needle marks whatsoever, and whiles away the hours at Brooke's house, happily discussing how she's sure she's done this time, and not trying to contact anyone, despite the fact that her phone is sitting right there on the table the whole episode. She even wants to go back to work! But then 1) Brooke won't let her be a model rightnowthisinstant, 2) Mouth won't sleep with her rightnowthisinstant, and 3) Brooke's mom tells her she sucks. Rachel skips town with a a conveniently placed envelope full of cash.
Nathan arrives at the party, which is at his own house, and Haley answers the door, and they both pretend to be surprised to see each other. "Pretend," because they both had a guess as to what Lucas and Lindsey were up to, because they've seen this show, too. They spend the evening having thirty-second awkward conversations, and resolve absolutely nothing, although by all indications Haley has backed way off the divorce talk.
Jamie spends the entire episode being disappointed that his parents won't play Rock Band with him. Jamie is an annoying child, though admittedly he'd be more annoying if he reacted to the various little disappointments of his day the way most four-year-olds react: with screaming tantrums. Instead, Jamie looks adorably sad. Fortunately, everyone in Tree Hill knows him, and they take turns feeding him cheery platitudes, especially Skills, who seems to like the kid a little too much, if you get my drift.
Oh yeah, Dan got his parole, and immediately manages to bed the cashier at a sporting-goods store. She is unfazed when he tells her, post-coitus, that he has recently been paroled and that he killed his brother. One would guess this is not the most shocking thing she has been told in bed.
Brooke finishes her evening by going to the store to... do something. She finds her mother, who has driven Rachel away and rescheduled some meeting and generally been a condescending pain in the ass. This is no different than her behavior for the past six episodes, and presumably the past two decades, but this is apparently the final straw. In our first surprise of the evening, Brooke fires her mother. Not as Mom, as president or CEO or whatever-she-was of the clothing company.
Okay, that was only mildly surprising, but we're just being setup for the big one. Haley is reading Lucas's latest book, and he's VO-ing something about Camus, and she picks up the phone. Lucas answers, and Haley says, "I needed to talk to-"
Nathan, right? She's ready for him to come home?
Nope- "you."
I might mention here that Haley is basically Lindsey's best friend in Town, and has been ready to smack both Lucas and Peyton for anything that might jeopardize Lucas's relationship with Lindsey. Why do I mention this? Well-
"You can't marry Lindsey."
OH SNAP!

Coming Tuesday: The wedding day! Will he? Will she? Will anyone hold their peace? Will Dan crash the party? It's the best birthday present EVER!

I'm not a day late for this one

Happy Pi Day!

Here's to 60 more!

I spent much of yesterday on the road, but I did want to take time out to wish my father a happy 60th birthday. I hope that someday, I am half the father he was - and is.

There isn't a literal connection

I lived in another country during the summer of 1998, and I was not particularly good with the language, so when a subtitled version of an English movie came to the local cinema, I saw it. I watched four movies that summer - Jackie Brown, Swingers, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, and The Big Lebowski - and, ten years later, I still feel some connection with all four. It helps, I think, that they were all very good movies, but to me, there's a nostalgia factor. When I watch them, I get to remember my summer abroad, and the good times I had, and the fact that those films kept me from feeling completely out of place in a foreign land.
So, what movies stick with you, not because they're necessarily great movies, but because of the place and time you saw them?