Not to worry, the pics haven’t disappeared. But the problem is that I took them with my girlfriend’s camera and she has the cord to connect it to the computer in her purse, and her purse is with her at work. So I can’t post them yet. I will try to get them up tomorrow. In the meantime, several things to leave you with.

First of all, there were a bunch of colonial outfit pics, most of which were totally awesome. And one which was terrible, courtesy of Steve-O, trying shamelessly to earn Lambda points despite the fact that they haven’t played any quizzos yet. His shameless shenanigans have earned Lambda the first (-2) score in JGTSI history. Well, there are two new assignments that you can do to earn up to 5 points over the weekend.

Here is my letter of apology to Ruben Amaro. His deal to get Roy Oswalt was nothing short of brilliant.

There are rumors of a Philaguerilla comedy show this weekend. Want to be in the Most Exclusive Club in Town* and find out when Philly’s best comedians are going to be trying out all new material? Follow us on facebook to learn when the next show is. Spoiler alert: it’s soon.

*It’s not really, I just love writing “Most Exclusive Club in Town”

On Tuesday night the World Cafe Live was the site of an event billed as “The Big Quiz Thing“, straight from New York. In other words, New York stole quizzo, glammed it up a bit, and returned to Philly to show it off. I appreciate the pluck of those New Yorkers, and though I had to work Tuesday night when it went down, I would have liked to have seen it. Fortunately, Koob went, and was gracious enough to return with a special report. In addition, the BQT website filed a report of the proceedings which can be read here.

It was supposed to be an epic triumph. A supergroup of Quizzo players the likes of which had never before been assembled were supposed to stroll into the World Cafe Live on Tuesday night, lay waste to the competition in the New York City import “The Big Quiz Thing” and show everyone how it was supposed to be done. Alas, it was not meant to be as we were foiled by some guy who could do anagrams really fast and the Ben Folds Five.

This version of “The Big Quiz Thing” was an all music version so we assembled a team of players from throughout the Johnny Goodtimes Quizzo circuit with a vast array of musical knowledge; myself and Nate from the Sofa Kingdom, John Kenny of the Hurtin’ Bombs (who now frequently plays under the Sofa Kingdom spinoff Steak ‘Em Up), Phil from The Jams, Mike Minion (quizzo host at the Westbury and a member of Satan’s Minions), Dave & Lisa of Group W (who have played with Sofa Kingdom during the last two Quizzo Bowls and are frequent winners at any of Quiz Master Chris’ quizzes), and Steve O of Lambda Lambda Lambda, aka one of only five people to ever win the car on VH1’s short lived game show “Name That Video” (one of the other five is none other than Noah Tarnow, the host of “The Big Quiz Thing”).

We pretty much breezed through the five rounds of questions including getting all of the Pop Music Thesaurus questions which were four part questions in which the first line of a song was given using synonyms of the words that are actually in the lyric. These were pretty clever but were no match for us. We tripped up a little in the music video round because they threw us through a loop by playing a video with the audio from a completely different song playing over the video and we had to name both the video and the song playing on the audio track. We also did really well in the slow song round where they played ten songs slowed down to half speed, but we were not able to recognize Roxanne by The Police.

Basically, the general consensus was that the questions were too easy for the most part meaning that it would be hard to separate ourselves from the pack. Going into the last round, we were actually down a point and another team was tied with us. We pretty much cruised through the last round, only missing how many of every ten reggae albums sold in the U.S. are Bob Marley albums (the answer is five by the way*). However, the kicker was that it didn’t matter where you finished as long as you made the top three.

For the finale, the top three teams had to select one representative to go up to the stage and they would have to answer questions Jeopardy style by being the first to ring in on a little bell that they were provided with. The first player to get two correct answers would be the winner. Naturally, we selected Steve O to be our representative because of his vast wealth of musical knowledge and because he already had experience handling these types of pressure situations as illustrated by the aforementioned appearance on “Name That Video”. It started out great as the first question was, “What duo had a best selling album in 1989 only to have it be recalled?” and Steve O quickly rang in and answered Milli Vanilli. We were only one question away from victory. The next question was, “What 80’s band had an album titled Spring Session M which is an anagram of their name?”

The answer was Missing Persons and the guy from the team who had been leading us by one point rang in and got it right.

So it came down to one question for all the marbles. What rock band, who reached their peak during the mid-90’s actually had two fewer members than their name suggests? The guy from the other team rang in first and blurted out “Ben Folds Five” thus ending the game and giving us all a pretty big ego check. Of course, it wasn’t all bad. I got a pretty cool Velvet Underground book as part of the 2nd place prize and our team was so upset at our performance at this quiz that we decided to take out our frustrations at Johnny Goodtimes’ Bard’s quiz (minus Steve O and the Group W folks) and proceeded to get a perfect score.

*ed. note: this is a bad trivia question. a) It is total guesswork, with each team having a 1 in 10 chance b) When? Annually? Total over the last 30 years? Does Sean Paul count as “reggae”? Is Shaggy “pop” or “reggae”?

Wow, just got off the phone with Spoonie. Seeing as we’ve been a little quiet the last two weeks, I thought we might up the prize money a few bucks. Spoonie said the heck with a few bucks…the O’Neals quiz just became the biggest purse on the JGT circuit! $50 gift certificate for First Place, $25 for 2nd Place, starting tonight at O’Neals! Things have been a little quiet lately, so I think you’ll probably score a table. $50 buys a lot of $3.50 margaritas. ALSO TONIGHT: Bards starts at 10:15 p.m. Tuesdays have been a lot of fun with Team Friendship bringing some real fellowship and smacktalking into the mix. $2.50 Lagers and Miller Lites. The prize money ain’t too shabby either. $40 for first and $20 for 2nd. And needless to say, Philly’s best questions. Oh, and if you have any suggestions for a 50-50 or speed round, shoot it to me on facebook. Hope to see you tonight!

Fans of literature should not miss tonight’s quiz! In an effort to help promote the Free Library Festival that is going on this weekend, we’re going to be doing a literature quiz tonight. 3 of the 4 rounds will be all-literature related (with a non-literature WC round thrown in for good measure). Action starts at the at the Ugly American at 8 p.m., and moves to the Bards at 10:15 p.m. Hope to see ya tonight!

 
Every once in a while I use quizzo as a way to raise money for certain causes that I am a big fan of. This is one of those causes. It is called Shelter 2.0, and it’s original purpose was to give a roof over the head of the homeless. However, with recent tragedy in Haiti, it’s purpose has been somewhat moderated. I watched on the news Saturday night as they explained that with the rainy season coming to Haiti, the tent cities that have been created in immediate wake of the tragedy are going to be all but worthless. That is where Shelter 2.0 comes in (Fan it on facebook). Robert Bridges, a carpenter and a good friend of mine from high school, is one the men behind the idea. The goal of this week’s Quizzo for the Cause is not just to raise money (everyone playing this week will be asked to donate at least $1 to the cause) but to raise awareness of this project. The more money he can raise, the more of these units Robert can have shipped to Haiti. He is doing the handiwork free of charge, and the units can be shipped free of charge, but he needs money for materials. He has whittled down costs until now, so each shelter costs a mere $500 to build. I interviewed him to learn more about the project, and how we can help.

JGT: What inspired Shelter 2.0?

ROB: I was initially inspired by the amount of homeless people there are in the world as well as the growing tent cities around our country. According to a 2005 U.N. report there are 100 million homeless people in the world. To me this is a staggering number and if you live in terrible semipermanent places such as abandoned buildings, vehicles, hastily put together shelters or tents you weren’t even counted in this report.

About two years ago my friend Bill Young got me involved with a project that the MIT school of architecture was working on after Katrina and New Orleans, headed by Larry Sass. They were building a house that went together like a puzzle and could be put up quickly by volunteers with no tools. We cut one house that was on display at the MOMA in NYC and then did a couple of smaller buildings. The idea behind the first house to me was inspiring, it made me think of building in a way I had never thought of it before. Bill and I wanted that idea of helping others and making building more accessible to live on in our current Shelter 2.O project.

JGT: How does it differ from most current emergency shelters?

ROB: Shelter 2.0 is different from most emergency shelters in that it is completely open source. The files are available for download to anyone under a creative common license from our website. What this means is that anyone who wants to use it not for profit can have it for free. They can even make changes and improvements as long as they share their changes with us so that we can share them with the rest of the world. It’s not just it’s construction that sets it apart from typical emergency housing which are temporary only, where shelter 2.0 has the potential to be easily enlarged and made permanent but the ideology is different. The shelters are cut out by computerized routers which are all over the world. In the united states alone there are 6,000 of the brand that I have. We can send files for cutting shelters anywhere in the world they are needed or go into a disaster area with trailers loaded with machines and begin cutting. This whole thing is about teaching other people to do this so that they can then teach someone else and in ten years you can’t even recognize shelter 2.0’s design anymore, because instead of being owned by one person, it’s owned by the world and improved upon in real situations by the people who need it. It’s the people whose lives are turned upside down by tsunamis and earthquakes and economic hardship who know what they need, not some american sipping a latte in his cushy central air home. 

JGT: What do you need to get Shelter 2.0 out to the people who desperately need it in Haiti?

ROB: To be honest, the things we need now are money and raised awareness. We have volunteers willing to put the shelters together, and have people who will ship them to Haiti for free. 100% of the money we raise is going towards materials. The more of these we can ship, the more people in Haiti will have a roof over their heads and a floor to protect them from the upcoming rain. 
JGT: What are your hopes for Shelter 2.0?

ROB: My hopes for shelter 2.0 is that it helps people all over the world by not only giving them shelter but by helping us think outside the box about how we design, build and reach out to one another.

Been doing a lot of picture rounds lately. Finally got my printer fixed, so I felt like I had to make up for lost time. Anyways, wanna see what you guys think about the picture round. Some people say it’s too dark at the bars to see what the hell is on the sheets. At the same time, I get a lot of cheering every time I announce picture round. So what’s the verdict?

The Daily Beast did a recent ranking of the 55 smartest cities in the country, and the results were rather interesting. Raleigh Durham took home the top prize, while Denver was #5. Philadelphia just missed the top 10, finishing 11th. So according to the arbitrary measures that constitute this absurd measuring stick, Denver is a much smarter city than Philadelphia. Wouldn’t it be a shame if their 50 or so teams couldn’t beat our 1? The difference between Geek Bowl and this cockamamie ranking is simple: Geek Bowl is quantifiable, this ranking is not. And so, Daily Beast, you better hope we don’t win this thing. It would show your rankings to be nothing but a cheap sham to garner page views. Though that is already pretty evident. DC, Seattle, and Baltimore also finished ahead of Philly, and in past city vs. city smackdowns, we destroyed those cities.

 
A few months ago the city of Philly was challenged by John Dicker, the head of the corporate behemoth Geeks Who Drink. (Seriously, these guys are everywhere now.) But he’s based in Denver, and that’s where Geek Bowl IV will be held. Well, not surprisingly, the one local group that was interested in the offer was the Sofa Kingdom. The four main members of the Kingdom (Nate, Koob, Garbo, and Swanson) then added me and Phil from the Jams to round out the 6 person squad. We are headed out there in a couple of weeks to represent Philadelphia and bring home the thousands in cash and prizes. We’ve bought our plane tickets and gotten the hotel. Now it’s 2 1/2 weeks of intensive mental workouts. With the Eagles season done, the Flyers kinda so-so, and the Sixers stinking, this may be Philly’s best chance to come home with a trophy until October. We take representing this city very seriously, and will do our damndest to bring home that trophy.

Ok, gang, a big week this week at quizzo, as we are gonna honor the 1990s. I was inspired by playing the 90s edition of Trivial Pursuit last night. To be honest, the questions were pretty crappy. They were almost all either gimmes or completely impossible. So I figured I could come up with some better questions about a decade we all know and hate love, so this week all questions will be about the 90s. (And don’t worry, history buffs, to make sure that there are still a few questions from before the 90s, I will also ask a few about people who died in the 90s.) Should be a fun quiz. Study your 90s movies, music, trends, and important events. They’ll all be on the quiz this week.

An interesting week last week. Steak Em Up finally lost on a Tuesday, the Satan’s Minions were one away from perfection, and some new kids on the block took the Jams down to the wire. French Fry Thursday was a success-sort of. Kind of funny that when I arrived for our first ever French Fry Thursday, the kitchen at the Ugly American wasn’t working due to a gas problem. Oh well, we gave ate pizza and gave away beer, which certainly didn’t lead to any complaints. French Fry Thursday is back on this week. With French Fries!

As for holiday questions, there will be a few this week, but saving most of them for next week. I’ll keep you updated on holiday scheduling soon.