Johnny Goodtimes

I am at once overjoyed and a bit concerned about the new Pee Wee Herman movie. In case you haven’t heard the good news, Judd Apatow has signed on as producer of a new Pee Wee Herman flick. While I am thrilled that one of the most hilarious and remarkable characters ever in film history is returning to the big screen, I am also a bit concerned for a number of reasons. First and foremost is Judd Apatow. I am not really that crazy about his movies. Superbad, Talladega Nights, Anchorman are all way overrated, and Step Brothers is one of the stupidest movies I have ever seen.

Apatow is going to demand raunch, and that could turn this film into a dud. Now, I know that Pee-Wee’s original character on stage was a little crude, and it’s possible that it could translate to the big screen. But there was something sweet about Pee-Wee’s naivete in Big Adventure; when that was taken away we got Big-Top Pee Wee, which did for Pee Wee what Godfather 3 did for the Corleone’s.

However, I don’t want to sound like a negative Nellie. I am extremely excited about this project. Apatow does bring plenty of clout to the project, and it is going to be big time. Furthermore, Pee- Wee is going to be co-writing it. (I am thinking about sending in a spec script myself. Why not? I dare say that few people know the Big Adventure movie as well as I do.) Further, after Pee Wee showed him the scripts he already had and which were a little zany, Apatow pointed him in the right direction.

But after Mr. Apatow read these scripts, Mr. Reubens said, “He was more interested in something closer, in the same vein and the same genre, as ‘Big Adventure.’”

What Mr. Apatow wanted, Mr. Reubens said, was “a reality-based world and a linear road movie.”

This is great news. Pee Wee on the road is a proven formula. Now if we can only get Tim Burton to direct it…

The Invitational kicks off tonight at the Westbury, where a last place finish last week due to a Musical Theatre Round led to the round of my choice this week. Here’s the details, from quizmaster Mike Minion.

Once again, JGT put together a team to play my quizzo last week, and once again, the result was , shall we say, less than spectacular.  After all, last place is “less than spectacular”, is it not?  The upshot is that he and his cronies got to pick this week’s theme round. Being the highbrow intellectuals that they are, they chose a topic that virtually defines the literati -PRO WRESTING.  So put down your glass of merlot, pick up a PBR, and come on over to The Westbury tonight for a round of wrasslin’.   The steel-cage brain slam starts at 10:30.   For you wrestling fans, that’s when the little hand is between the 10 and the 11 and the big hand is straight down.  Oh, and make sure the sun is down, because the clock looks like that TWICE a day.  Anyway, prizes are $40 for first and $20 for second, and (as usual) there will be plenty of good beer specials.   Hope to see you there.  P.S. Don’t tell anyone, but I actually LOVE pro wrestling. But let’s just keep that between us, shall we?

The biggest Big Money Tuesday ever goes down tonight. We start at O’Neals at 8 p.m., where the winner walks with the biggest first place gift certificate on the circuit, $50. 2nd Place gets $25. Lots of parity at O’Neals, with three different winners in the last three weeks, so your team’s got just a good a shot as any to take the crown.

On to the Bards, where I have doubled the bounty on Steak Em Up. That’s right, anyone who can knock off Steak Em Up tonight walks with a $40 gift certificate and $40 cash. Action starts at 10:15 p.m. Oh, and I’d expect a beer question or two this week due to Beer Week.

As for last night, quizzo at the POPE was awesome. Packed house, fun quiz, and my first ever joker quiz. I’ll post some of the questions tomorrow. I would have done it today but I got a little too tipsy last night and had to sleep in. If you ever see me doing a shot of Jameson’s in the future, please advise me to put it down and just go the hell home. Your cooperation is appreciated in advance.

Now here is a holiday we can get behind. May 20th in Cambodia is their National Day of Hatred (also translated as “Day of Maintaining Rage”.) It makes total sense, as it is a day when intellectual Cambodians pretty much just hate on Pol Pot. However, we think that this holiday should extend to the United States. We want to kick off the celebration with a short list of things we hate, and ask that you please celebrate this holiday by posting things you hate in the comments. It’s kind of like the airing of grievances in Festivus. 

• Jose Reyes
• Celine Dion
• The movie “Step-Brothers”
• skinny jeans (on guys)
• House music
• The Fox and Hound (the bar, not the movie. We love the movie.)
• The Philadelphia Parking Authority
• Red Sox fans
• Scones
• Sean Hannity

For the past few days, there has been lots of talk about flash mobs. Some of it has been constructive, but most of it idiotic drivel. And my question is: is this thing being blown a bit out of proportion? As far as I can tell,  the end result of the flash mob on Saturday was one fight. Thousands of people descend on South Street, and the end result is one fight. There was almost a fight at Quizzo Bowl. And yet there are all these people posting on Philadelphiaspeaks that we need to call in the dogs, that the city is seized by fear, and that they are thinking about moving out of the city. 

A bunch of teens descended on South Street. I suspect that most of them were doing the exact same thing you did when you were 16:  looking for the party. The party was on South Street. They went. Yes, it was on a public street, and therefore it is a public nuisance, but it’s not exactly the biggest problem in Philly right now, only the latest fad in things to be horrified by. (H1N1, anybody?) 

Of course, when you have any large crowd, you’re going to have a few bad apples who were raised by wolves and they are going to spoil the fun for everyone else (ever been to an Eagles game, folks?) That is the problem with flash mobs, and I understand the fear that eventually someone is going to get shot. I’d be all for a return to mounted police on South Street for crowd control, and I hope that these things are broken up more quickly in the future. 

Yes, there have been big fights at previous flash mobs, and innocent people have gotten hurt. But again, there are numerous fights at every single Eagles game and it doesn’t seem to be a major cause for civic concern.  I suspect that 98% of the kids out on South Street on Saturday night were merely exercising their right to go where-ever all the members of the opposite sex were, not looking for trouble.

As for a simple act of civil disobediance such as holding up traffic on a street where everyone in their right mind knows not to drive on Saturday night anyway, well, it doesn’t really signal the apocalypse for me, especially since it broke up peacefully as soon as the cops showed up. 

Is it a bit scary when a large group of teenagers congregate without any sense of order? Sure. But I think that a couple of officers with a twitter account could nip these things in the bud pretty quick, and once the kids realize that their mobs will always be greeted by police, it’s going to be seen as a waste of time and get old quick. And then us old white folks can go back to complaining about the important things, like that dumbass Cliff Lee trade.

That’s right folks, following the success of I Heart the 80s Week in January, we’re busting out a decade later, with an I Heart the 90s Week. Expect questions about O.J., Monica, Jordan, and Right Said Fred. All 90s questions, all the time, with a few surprises to keep you honest. Should be a fun one. And you all lived through it, so no whining and no excuses! And if you don’t know the 90s, don’t sweat it: I went to the Dollar Store yesterday and stocked up on last place prizes.

UPDATE: Uh, whoops. Due to various substances I ingested in the 1990s, I seem to have lost my short term memory. We did do a 90s Round in January, not an 80s round. Oh well, what the hell, let’s do it again. And this time, it’s all the 90s. 1790s, 1890s, 1990s, etc. We’ll do an 80s round next month, after I finish the “80s Project” I am working on. Btw, I am still looking for props for the 80s project if you have any.

 
Had a good discussion with some members of one of the teams at the Vous yesterday about “kids today” and decided to do a little research today on whether “kids today” are smarter than ever or destined to lead the world on the highway to hell due to their sheer stupidity. There are, needless to say, various theories on this topic. One comes from a 2007 article in the San Francisco Gate. The friend the writer mentions is a teacher.

We are now at a point where we are essentially churning out ignorant teens who are becoming ignorant adults and society as a whole will pay dearly, very soon…It’s gotten so bad that, as my friend nears retirement, he says he is very seriously considering moving out of the country so as to escape what he sees will be the surefire collapse of functioning American society in the next handful of years due to the absolutely irrefutable destruction, the shocking — and nearly hopeless — dumb-ification of the American brain. It is just that bad.

However, a recent article in the New York Times seems to think that we are smarter than ever, though acknowledging that IQ is in a large part determined by our surroundings. 

Another indication of malleability is that I.Q. has risen sharply over time. Indeed, the average I.Q. of a person in 1917 would amount to only 73 on today’s I.Q. test. Half the population of 1917 would be considered mentally retarded by today’s measurements, Professor Nisbett says.

This leads us to another professor, a man in New Zealand named James Flynn, who wrote  a book in which he explains what is commonly called the Flynn effect:

Your IQ is likely to be higher than those of your parents, and your children’s IQs is likely to be higher than yours.

“Our advantage over our ancestors is relatively uniform at all ages from the cradle to the grave,” says Flynn. Nobody knows if the gains will persist, but “there is no doubt that they dominated the 20th century and that their existence and size were quite unexpected.”

So what do you think? Do you think that mankind is getting smarter or dumber? Do you think that the generation behind us is way dumber than we are or way smarter than we are? Or are public education and IQ completely unrelated, and that those who are raised by caring parents have IQs are rising exponentially from generation to generation while those who have uneducated, absentee parents have IQs that remain stagnant from generation to generation? Interested to see what you guys think.  

RELATED: A more detailed account of this debate was in a 2003 article in Skeptic Magazine. 

Best known for singing “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)”, Holmes turns 63 today. And let’s be honest: despite the fact that this is one of the cheesiest songs of all time…it’s actually a pretty well written song…and I kind of like it. There, I said it. Castigate me in the comments section as needed. Interesting side note: this was the last #1 hit of the 1970s, as it hit number one on the last week in December, 1979.Another interesting side note: Holmes doesn’t like Pina Coladas, which he once said taste like Kaopectate. This song was also turned into one of the worst covers in music history, by “Da Real One” in 1998.

There was a time in my life when I thought that Whitesnake was as cool as it got. In hindsight, nobody with hair like that should take a photo where they’re trying to look tough. Whatever, it’s time for your Monday Sweet Jam. I used to play this song and perform amazing dunks on my Nerf Hoop. Yeah, I was pretty cool.

Some of you might be wondering…what is the best day of the entire year to seduce sluts?According to our good friend Dimitri the Lover, today is the day: Bearing these keen observations in mind and integrating them with over 15 years of epidemiological slut seduction study data, Dimitri The Lover has found that THE DAY AFTER VALENTINE’S DAY is by far the best single day out of each year to seduce sluts …FORGET trying to pick up sluts  ON VALENTINE’S DAY, in that their expectations are WAY TOO UNREALISTICALLY HIGH.  However, every year on February 15th, Dimitri The Lover collects dozens of telephone numbers and books his lovemaking schedule well into the spring. And luckily this year the 15th falls on a MONDAY, so any slut that did not have herROMANTIC expectations fulfilled on the weekend will have the negative psychological effects greatly exacerbated by the impact of waking up to the dreaded MONDAY start to her work or school week, right in the middle of high season for SEASONAL AFFECTIVE DISORDER!

Often the most spiritually wounded of these ROMANTIC WALKING DEAD will mope around in a robotic state for weeks, exclaiming to their closest friends and co-workers that they have “given up on men”. This extended pathological rumination period makes them especially vulnerable to being systematically picked apart by whatDimitri The Lover sinisterly (yet lovingly) refers to as a“ROMANCE VULTURE”…Once the ROMANCE VULTURE has encircled the pre-qualified crowd, his talons armed with the most powerful set of seduction tools known to mankind, he can easily identify his prey by the stench of her ROTTING DEAD HEART. 

Of course, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that a documentary about Dimitri is coming out soon. A new trailer for the movie is out, and it is astounding (and NSFW). Porno snowmen, and romance vultures seducing sluts. What in the hell is happening to this once proud website?

A strangely captivating short 1963 film called snow.

Hey kids, sorry I’m running so late, but I decided to celebrate my birthday by sleeping in. I then went to Paesano’s for lunch. They just opened the new one in the Italian Market today, and I dare you to try it and not come away thinking that it’s one of the best sandwiches you’ve ever had.

I then went and talked to this mysterious Quizzo Bowl venue I’ve been talking about lately. We are very close to striking a deal. Basically, at this point, we are just waiting to hear how much tables will cost. If it’s nothing too outlandish, I hope to have an announcement in the next hour. As for quizzo tonight, we start off at the Locust Rendezvous at 6:15 p.m., then move on to the Black Sheep at 8 p.m. Hope to see ya tonight, and hopefully I’ll have a Quizzo Bowl update soon.

Our team, Trust Us We’re Doctors, finished 4th out of 76 teams. At first glance, that’s pretty good, but the sad truth is that 4th place is first out of the money. 3rd Place won $750. We won nothing, and they beat us by one point. Needless to say, there were a number of points left on the table. We would not have won (the winners had 108, we had 100) but we should have finished 3rd. Our main problem was time. The quiz lasted 4 hours long, but only a fraction of that time was spent answering questions. Most was spent grading them. The people asking the questions were hauling ass, and once the round was done, you only had 30 seconds to hand in your paper. That meant no discussion amongst teammates. You either knew it or you didn’t, and you did not talk things through. I didn’t really like that part of it, because part of the fun is discussing things with your teammates. That being said, every team was dealing within the same parameters, so it is no excuse and no consolation.

As for the event itself, it was a lot of fun, but a lot different than Quizzo Bowl. There were 8 freaking rounds to this thing, and about 450 players. It was held in a venue that reminded me a lot of the Trocadero, an old theatre called the Gothic. Between some rounds there was entertainment, between some rounds there was none. The questions were extremely heavy on pop culture. Two music rounds, and two movie rounds. (The movie clips round was very cool, as they projected clips of films up on a huge screen on stage.) There was not a single history question, not a single geography question, and one television question (about a commercial). There were two sports questions (about the NBA and NFL logos at that) and one science question. There was a fair amount of minutia, such as what are two extra flavors of Fruit Loops (they are Marshmellow and Reduced Sugar, we got neither).

The hours of studying we did in the days leading up to the event? Totally worthless. Garbo memorized currencies, Nate memorized world capitals, I studied cooking terms, and so on, but nothing we studied came up. Oh well, we had fun quizzing each other everywhere we went. 

I was a hated man at this thing. My smacktalk on their site had really displeased the opposing teams, and numerous presenters called me out as the crowd booed, and at one point in the evening a comedian had the entire crowd yell in unison, “F*** Johnny Goodtimes!” Needless to say I loved it. As you all know, my dream has always been to be a bad guy wrestling manager, and blowing kisses to a crowd of 450 people while they booed me vociferously was a dream come true. 

We drank away our sorrows at the afterparty, and I think a lot of people who met me were surprised that I was not a monster. Garbo had to fly out the first thing this morning. The rest of us headed back to the hotel. Phil and Koob left this morning. Swanson, Nate, and I are gonna grab some brunch downtown. I got a ton of video from the event and am gonna put together a short movie on the whole experience which I think will be kind of funny. We had a pretty quotable team. 

Our congratulations to the winners, Jesus and Tequila. They were the better team on this night. But we will live to fight again. And when we fight the next time, we’ll know what to expect. We won’t finish out of the money again. I was proud of our team, but I think we all know in our heart of hearts that we can do better. And we know that next year we will. Special thanks to Denver for being such a good host, and special thanks to phillyphaithful for supplying our uniforms. Denver has not seen the last of these doctors.

Hey gang, It’s about 11 a.m. here, 1 p.m. your time, and we’re just starting to get motiviated. Ended up being a much later night last night than we planned, and we got to bed at around 2 a.m. While we should have been in our rooms popping gingko biloba, cod oil,  and quizzing each other, we instead went to Wynkoop and then on to some godawful bar on 16th street. We then got on the train, cause we’re about a 45 minute train ride from the city. The venue is closer to us here, that’s why Dicker stuck us out here in the boondocks. The good news is that the train runs nearby, and the hotel was dirt cheap. THe bad news is that we’re in the middle of freaking nowhere. Englewood is, how can I put this delicately, a s***ty town. Nothing but offices and chain restaurants. But like I said, we’re gonna just catch the train back into Denver today, so no worries. 

The doors open at the Gothic Theatre at 4:30 p.m. for the big event, 6:30 p.m. your time. If you want to get live updates during the event, follow me on twitter and look under the hash tag #geekbowl. Alright, well we’re off to debate whether we want good Mexican food or bad Mexican food with cliff divers. It’s kind of a hot button issue amongst the group right now.