You Shall Never Be Hungry Again!

Fantastic week at trivia this week. Not because we won - we didn't - but because trivia was actually hard. At least, we thought it was hard. We have a veritable smorgasbord of missed questions for you, my trivia-hungry readers. Dig in!

1. Who won ESPN's award for "Wide Receiver of the '80s?"
2. What was the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture?
3. What was the title of Alexandra Ripley's much-anticipated sequel to Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind?
4. What superstar lamely told Madonna that her show was "neat," during the documentary Truth or Dare?
5. Which hip-hop heroes collaborated with heavy metal band Anthrax to remake the hit "Bring the Noise?"
6. What fast food chain has begun selling Brazil nut chocolate chip cookies, in an effort to benefit rainforest communities?
7. What self-described "Architect of Rock and Roll" helped cut the ribbon at the opening ceremonies of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame?

Note - we actually missed eight questions, but I am unable to verify the answer to the eighth, or even to find a reference to the incident the question is about. So, out it goes.

Where'd you go?

Three reasons for last week's lack of posts:

1. My laptop died, thus depriving me of my usual entry to the Internets.
2. We missed zero questions at trivia. I could have taken some from the stash I save for just such an occasion, but those were on my laptop, in a folder I don't usually back up - see reason #1.
3. Heroes premiere + no TiVo = no more watching OTH on Mondays.

I hereby promise to miss trivia questions this week.

Trivia: Still More Fun Than Studying

This week did not go nearly as well for us as last week. But, as usual, our loss is your gain, because more misses for us is more questions for you. I know there's a subset of my tiny tiny readership that will have no trouble with the halftime question...

1. What does the "W" stand for on a WAP phone?
2. Who was the first African-American to grace the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue?
3. Halftime: Name the last seven films to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
4. In what year was the original Playstation released?
5. Which Peanuts character was dressed in clothes designed by over three hundred fashion designers in a 1990 retrospective at the Louvre?
Final:
6. Which English-speaking nation stopped minting one- and two-cent coins in 1991, when the cost to produce them exceeded their value?

Is "Oedipal" the word I'm looking for here?

Okay, so going into episode two, let's recap where everyone is:
Lucas is married... to Brooke! No wait, it's Peyton! Um, it's Lindsey? No, it's a dream sequence, and he's in the airport, waiting for... Peyton, which is exactly what we expected all along. They're in Vegas, getting married, or maybe they're not, I'm not entirely sure, because I spent a lot of the episode watching on mute because I was on the phone with the f.
Dan is not dead after he was hit by a car... but he's in the hospital. No, wait, he's in a room made up to look like a hospital room, and his fake nurse is - wait for it - Fran, the Nutjob Nanny! This is her elaborate revenge scheme to get Jamie back. I get the feeling that this week, she will make Dan re-write his last book so that her favorite character doesn't die.
Nathan's back hurts.
Haley is doing something.
Skills is sleeping with Nathan's mom. Yeah.
Mouth is leaving for Omaha, and wants Millie to go with him. Millie decides to go, but changes her mind, because Brooke is going to war with her mom for control of the company. How exciting! Brooke, ever the martyr, tells Millie to go, and the show's two "unattractive" people ride off into the sunset. Even more exciting, Brooke is attacked by a masked man as she locks up the store for the night. Is it an Oedipal plot? Find out in two minutes!

You Can Do What You Want to Do

I'm disappointed in the difficulty level of the trivia lately. It's one thing when a team gets a ridiculously high score for the week; any given set of questions could be right in one team's wheelhouse. But, and I know I've harped on this before, when the top three teams are within two points of a perfect score, that's just no leeway for teams to get anything outside their areas of expertise.
Anyway, on to a story of our only miss: Each round, we're given the categories for each question in advance. This, in theory, helps us decide how many points to bid on the first two questions. To pass the time between questions, our team usually tries to come up with possible questions for the later categories. On occasion, we have been able to come up with the exact question - last week, I correctly predicted that the Just Shoot Me question would ask for the name of the magazine (sadly, this clairvoyance did not help us correctly answer the question). On rarer occasions, the category is so obvious that we have come up with the correct answer without a question. Tonight, the category was "backup dancers," and we figured the answer simply had to be K-Fed. When it wasn't, we were so stuck that we were unable to come up with anything. So that's question one, question two is the only other question we really had to think about, and then there's two I made up. Please to enjoy.

1. What future superstar was a backup dancer in Janet Jackson's video for "That's the Way Love Goes?"
2. What rap star suavely blamed his teammates after he was cut from a tryout for the Toronto Raptors?
3. What is the oldest continuously used auto raceway in the U.S.?
4. In Calvin and Hobbes, what are Calvin's parents' names?

Or, you could watch the RNC

We're just over an hour from the premiere of One Tree Hill, and when we last saw the gang, Lucas was sitting in the airport with two tickets to Vegas, proposing to his phone. We also saw Brooke, Peyton, and Lindsey on their respective phones. Who is on the receiving end of the proposal? Well, if it's Brooke, that would just be weird. As for Lindsey, she just got done telling Lucas that, when she told him she was seeing someone else - thus causing him to flip out and assault a high-schooler, possibly costing him his coaching job - she was lying. "Hey, sorry I f%$@ed with your mind and screwed up your life" doesn't strike me as the sort of thing that would lead to a proposal. Seriously, if it's Lindsey, this is going to be a short season of recaps.
Also to be answered: Will Mouth really quit his job and move to Omaha? Will Millie the Absurdly Gorgeous Frumpy Girl go with him? Is Dan finally dead? Will everything this season be Nathan's fault? Will Skills have a meaningful plot line? Tune in tonight and see!

It's all right, 'cause there's no Saved By The Bell!

This week was "90's sitcom trivia," and, despite having watched a great deal of television in that decade, I learned just how much I don't know about 90's sitcoms. For example, I did not know that JAG, Melrose Place, Dawson's Creek, and Beverly Hills, 90210 were sitcoms. I'm on the record as being against "theme nights," and the inability of the organizers to stay inside their announced themes is one reason. Having to type "On [show], [question]" over and over is another.

1. On The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, what is Will's father's occupation?
2. And where did Will and Carlton attend college?
3. On Full House, what was Jesse's original last name?
4. On Everybody Loves Raymond, what unusual quirk does Raymond's brother Robert have when he eats?
5. What is the name of the magazine where the cast of Just Shoot Me works?
Final:
6. On Seinfeld, what food caused Jerry to end his fourteen-year non-vomit streak?

Like the Ken Jennings Trivia Email, only easier. And not in email form.

The trivia team got the term off to a solid start, cruising to an easy victory at an easy trivia night. We only missed two questions (well, more, because we could only name six of the eight events that Michael Phelps won last week), so I picked out two extras.

1. Whose last words were reported as "I love you, Jesus," by a nun, and, "I can't breathe," by a doctor?
2. Which newspaper first received the tip that led to the man who admitted to killing Bill Cosby's son?
3. Which U.S. presidential candidate said, "The Internet is a great way to get on the 'Net?"
Final:
4. What international event prompted USA Today's first weekend edition, in 1996?

60 is the new 55

I'd like to take this opportunity to assure my mother that I did, indeed, send her a card for her birthday, and to thank her for making this all possible.

Back To School

School is back in session, and with it, new trivia. We only missed three this week, but missing three questions was enough to keep us out of the money. Especially galling was the fact that we probably would have gotten the first question if we had heard it correctly - it wasn't a question about the Pharaohs.

1. In what ancient Egyptian city did the Pharos reside?
2. What is the average lifespan of a human red blood cell?
3. Which automaker purchased Land Rover (at the time, the last major British-owned car company) in 1994?

Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

Including get in a fight at a basketball game, apparently.
The truly brilliant part of this? Bill Laimbeer and Rick Mahorn as the voices of reason.

Summertime, and the Livin's Lazy

We're on Summer Break again at the Preschool, so I'm spacing things out. We didn't go to trivia last week, and probably won't go next week, so this will have to tide you over for a while.

1. What product's advertising first used the catchphrase "Good to the Last Drop," in 1907?
2. Who was the first Playboy centerfold, in 1953?
3. What is the name of Smokey the Bear's mate?
4. What organization's motto is "Blood and Fire?"
5. How many days did the 1968 march from Selma to Montgomery take?
6. Which country is the world's largest producer of soybeans?
7. What breed of dog was Winston Churchill's favorite dog, Rufus?
Final:
8. How many grooves are on the edge of a quarter?

Link it up!

Today is Wine Library TV's 499th episode, and host Gary Vay...Ner...Chuk promises that this episode will "rock your face off." Tomorrow will be a "live" (they're taping it live, but it's happening today) broadcast from their 500th episode celebration in San Francisco.
Vaynerchuk's almost-daily podcast discusses wines from around the globe. Most days there's a theme - only 100% Petit Verdot, wines from Oklahoma (go find that one in the archives, it's worth it), even a two-buck-Chuck tasting. He tastes a few wines every show, and gives tasting notes and a score for each wine, but he stresses that these things - the score, in particular - are just his feelings about a wine, and that you need to trust your own palate. That, I think, is the reason for the popularity of the show - Vaynerchuk brings in varietals and regions that most casual wine drinkers have never heard of, and urges you to expand your tasting experience, because there's a lot of good wine out there, at all different price points, and it's a shame to always spend $12 on Yellow Tail just because you already know what it tastes like*.
Anyway, check out today's show, either at the link above, or by grabbing the podcast at the iTunes Store.

A Not-Necessarily-Musical Question

Pretend, for the moment, that you are a musical artist. Someone compares your work - at this point, you are free to imagine whether it is the song you just sang, your latest album, your entire ouvre - with someone else's work. Are you upset that someone has just suggested your work is derivative, or do you welcome the comparison to other artists? Discuss.

I'm thinking of a number between 20 and 50. What is it?

There actually was trivia this week, and it was actually good, except for what is now disturbing trend of "guess a number" final questions. It's one thing to ask about some obscure fact - that's trivia, after all - but I really feel like there should be some way to come up with an educated guess when you don't know the answer to a question, and in this case, I just don't see how one could reason out the answer.
Anywho:

1. What is Scarlett O'Hara's actual first name?
2. In which state was the Confederate flag first designed and flown?
3. What legendary baseball player was born in Mobile, Alabama, in 1934?
4. What university counts the greatest number of U.S. Presidents among its alumni?
5. How many laps in the Daytona 500?
Final:
6. How many restrooms are in the White House?

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?