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.

Ok, a couple of things you can do in case you are wondering how to see what’s going on at Geek Bowl in Denver. First of all, I will be tweeting all weekend, including live from the event. Follow me on twitter. That way you can get updates as they happen. I will also be posting photos here throughout the weekend, as well as on facebook. The Geek Bowl is going to be at 4:30 Mountain Time on Saturday, which means that it will take place at 6:30 p.m. Philly time, so be sure to check twitter then to see how we’re doing. Like I said, I will updating live via twitter and I will try to get video up on this site on Sunday of the whole scene. Wish us luck!

As you are all aware, I dropped some serious smack talk on Denver a week or two ago. Apparently they weren’t real thrilled about it, as the 54 comments under the story attest. Today, they return the favor with a bit of smacktalk of their own, courtesy of Russ Esposito, one of the members of a renowned Denver team known as the Slump Busters. Here is his report. He’s no JGT when it comes to smack talk, but it ain’t bad. -ed.

When I heard that the “originator” of American Pub Quiz Johnny Goodman was coming to Denver with some friends to try their hand at winning Geek Bowl IV I couldn’t help but get excited! I mean, the one and only John Goodman (I didn’t even know he was from Philly) coming to our quiz! I mean WOW!  But the more I thought about it, well, lets just say my shock and awe was replaced with more of a pity and loathing.  So much so that I want to extend a pre-apology to Mr. Johnny Goodfellow and his friends for flying out here only to lose  as early as round 4 or 5 at the latest.

But I’d like to also take this opportunity to tell Mr. Godspell and Co. about all of the wonderful things they can do in Denver and Colorado before and after they lose at Geek Bowl IV.

For instance, they can walk along historic Colfax Ave., the longest continuous street in the U.S.  It’s a lot like your South Street (Restaurants, Theaters, Shops etc.) except with fewer boards in the windows and alot less vomit to step over. However, I will say that they can both have a tendency to look like a Frank Miller NOVEL threw up on them.

Now I don’t know exactly how many people old Jonathan not-so-Swift is bringing along but whatever the number it’s okay by us, the more the merrier.  Besides, Denver’s used to taking people in from distressed areas like New Orleans, Haiti and Philly, so a few more won’t hurt.

Now Philly is of course a big metropolitan city with far reaching suburbs, towns and hamlets all fairly close by, just like Denver is…Well, not exactly, I mean we have Aurora which is a wonderful multi-cultural city exploding with life and vitality, whereas Philly has Camden NJ right across the Delaware and it’s just exploding.  Didn’t Ridley Scott film exteriors from Black Hawk Down there?  Either way it’ll be a nice change of pace I’m sure.

But don’t think it’s all sunshine and roses here either Mr. Goodspeed. We have crime in our fair city as well. Granted it’s a bit more respectable and takes some more planning to rob a bank here than it does to club an old man to death for a can of peaches in Philly, but we can’t all be the city of brotherly love then can we?

Now I saw that you, Johnny Goodfornothin said we always take Philly’s sloppy seconds when it comes to sports and that’s just not fair.  Sure we took A.I. but you took him back. You took him back after he’d been used more than a dumb, pretty girl who wanders into Fishtown, I wouldn’t even bring up sports if I were you. I mean it’s true we both have all 4 major sports playing right within our city limits, except our fans aren’t total assholes.

Speaking of assholes, we even have a better class of asshole than Philly.  We’ve got people making tractor tanks and destroying whole towns, Balloon Boys with cracked out parents, hell, we even had a gay-bashing preacher who turned out to be gay…and a meth addict! Philly just has some knucklehead in his mom’s basement working on his 8th remix that month of Schoolly D doin “King of New York” before he goes out walks right past Dinics roast pork and into Pat’s vat o’ cheez whiz.  But don’t worry Johnny, if you want a cheese steak as good as Philly, we have ’em here…at the Safeway…in the freezer section.

The point is Mr. Goodflop, you’re going to lose, probably pretty badly and I don’t want you and your crew leaving the MHC with just your sad 18th place finish as your only memory.  So get out there and enjoy our city! Walk around, get some fresh clean air, enjoy some fine unpretentious culture and food that hasn’t been fondled by some scrawny dude in a Hawaiian shirt with a not-beard two dozen times.  See a good local band (you have to buy a ticket here though, ours don’t stand around oil drum fires on the corner). Eat a cheeseburger (invented here) or try some of our great beer (we brew more here than anywhere else) but try not to get too many tears in it.  Besides, who knows, we may even come to Quizzo Bowl sometime in the future…if you don’t mind losing to a Denver team twice that is.   So long ya Bastards!

It’s getting closer to game time, and I gotta admit, I’m starting to feel some nerves. Four of us played at New Deck on Monday. We tied for first and then fell in overtime. Tough loss, drove home some of our weaknesses, though we have at least started to figure out what those weaknesses are. We’re going to struggle with fashion and perfumes. There is no getting around that, and I don’t know how much cramming is gonna help in that regard. We also are gonna struggle with cooking terms and country music, both of which I’ll be studying today. There will be 72 teams at this thing, and I’m gonna be honest: anything less than a Top 10 finish will be a disappointment.

As for Denver itself, I still have no idea what we’re going to do there. Any suggestions? I think that we want to do lunch at the Casa Bonita on the day of the event, provided we’re not too far away from it. I went to Casa Bonita once before (like 12 years ago,) and it was pretty spectacular. It’s an enormous Mexican restaurant which features cliff divers, gunfights, and Black Bart’s cave. I’m telling you, this place is insane. And the food is famously mediocre. And let’s face it, eating mediocre Mexican hours before the big event…what could go wrong?

Anyhow, this will be a rare weekend where it’s worth checking out the website. I’ll be taking video the whole time and posting it on the site, so be sure to stay turned to how this thing turns out. No matter what, it should be a lot of fun.