Author: Johnny Goodtimes

It’s Official! Quizzo Bowl VI on March 20, 2010 at the TLA on South Street!

scrapplefest02That’s right, folks, it’s on. Quizzo Bowl VI will be brought to you at the Theatre of the Living Arts on Saturday, March 20th at 8 p.m. sharp. We will have many more details in the coming days and weeks, but for now save the date. Tickets should go on sale next week. If anyone is interested in helping to sponsor the event, please let me know. This is a sweet venue. This is gonna be fun.

It’s My Birthday and I’ll Cry if I Want To


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.

Popular Denver Blog Does Article on Philly Geek Bowl Team

gbphillyA Denver blog called the Westword found itself on the front page of Digg.com today, helped no doubt by the star power of a certain Philly quizzo team. Good article, and most importantly, all of the questions from Geek Bowl are posted. See how you do, and then tomorrow I’ll tell you which ones we got wrong. 

 The loudest, rudest, shit-talkingest team of all (Trust Us, We’re Doctors) came all the way from Philadelphia to prove their mettle — a long way to come just to show that you can outgeek the mountain west geeks.

And bragging rights were all the shit-talking Philly geeks were really gunning for — even if they took first place they’d be down $300, they admitted. So team leader and self-professed “hype man” Johnny Goodtimes put together an all-star team of Philly quiz kids (Goodtimes runs his own quiz company out East), started an epic flame war on the Geeks Who Drink blog and flew out to test his mettle in the Mile High City…By the end of the night, the quiz skills of Trust Us, We’re Doctors proved to beslightly less impressive than their shit-talking skills. Outdone by the lack of what Goodtimes called “traditional quiz classics” and the speed of the quiz, which left them unable to exercise their acknowledged team strength of talking out the answers, the final standing found them out of the money, barely. Fourth place was to be their legacy, a true “agony of defeat” sort of standing.

“That’s the worst possible finish,” Goodtimes said. “I’d rather finish 75th than fourth”

The JGT Quizzo Power Rankings

computer-fireA big week of upsets caused a JGTQPR computer meltdown, but we were able to salvage the rankings before the resulting fire destroyed everything. Here we go. 

1. L. Ron Hubbard’s Diabetics. Another week, another win at the Ugly American. The only team to escape the week unscathed. Last week: #4

2. Steak Em Up. They fall on Tuesday to a Quattro team that would be permanent if BMT and Kenney had a spine between them, then win on Thursday. We won’t speak of what happened on Saturday. I’m still bitter. Last week: #3

3. Ivan the Trivial. Domination finally ends with a 15 point loss to the Ear. Last week: #1

4. The Jams. Playing without Phil, they don’t crack the top 3 of an increasingly competitive ‘Vous. Last week #2

5. The Ear. After months after swimming in circles, they get off the schneid in a big way, crushing the #1 team in the land. Last week: NR

6. Catdog. In and out of the rankings the past few months, they come up big this week with a win at the Black Sheep. Can they maintain their top 10 status this time? Last week: NR

7. Magnus ver Magnusson. Get that elusive first ever win at the Vous on Wednesday. They’ve been the hunter for months, how will they react to being the hunted? Last week: NR.

8. Duane’s World. Two games, two 2nd place finishes. Last week: #5

9. 1022. A top 3 finish keeps them in the top 10…barely. Last week: #6

10. Claudia Kishi Fan Club. A week after their parents finish in the 10 spot, they finish 2nd at the Bards to claim a spot in the top 10. Last week: NR

Also receiving votes: Lambda, Narcotyzing Dysfunktion, Axis of Evil Knieval, Salsa! Seltzer!, Phillie RNs.

Follow Up Post to Geek Bowl

geekIn the airport, getting ready to board to head back to the Illadelph. I reread yesterdays post and I felt like I didn’t properly congratulate Dicker and the Geeks Who Drink gang for putting on such a great show. Please forgive me, Geeks, I wrote that first thing Sunday morning, when I was hungover and still a little bitter about the loss. 

The show was outstanding. It ran 4 hours, which is a little longer than they wanted it to run, but I’ll be honest, I was kinda bummed when their were no more questions to answer. I mean, I was a little quizzed out after 80 questions, but I could have taken 20 more.

I understand how difficult it is to put on Quizzo Bowl, so trust me, putting on a show as succesful as Geek Bowl was is no easy task. I should have written a bit more about that and been a little less petty about the questions in my original post. (That being said, I will never forgive Dicker for the Fruit Loops question. You hear me, Dicker? Never!)  

One thing I forgot to mention was the opening dance number, which was nothing short of spectacular. It was better than anything the Grammy’s put on last night. A choreographed dance number with like 30 quizzo hosts. I do have some video of it, which you’ll have to see to believe. (I wanted to post it today, but of course I lost my video charger, so it may be a couple of days.) Also, the music round was awesome. All of the songs were played live by a one man band. There is a very real possibility I could be shamelessly stealing this idea for Quizzo Bowl. 

All in all, I want to congratulate Dicker and the rest of the Denver crew for a job well done. I’m gonna work on the first half of the video on the flight home, so hopefully I’ll have something up by tomorrow.

Philly Team Finishes 4th out of 76

IMG_1453Our 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).

IMG_1454The 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.

Live from Englewood, CO


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.

The Deal for Denver

denver_1Ok, 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!