Here ya go, folks. You’re split into two conferences (Nerd and Geeks) and each conference consists of 5 teams. The top team in each division will earn an invite to the playoffs…the top 4 teams will get a first round bye. After our 5 division winners, the next 6 teams (wild cards) will be determined by average points (your top 9 scores). Our final wild card team will be determined by scoring the most points among all non-playoff teams in Week 10. So everyone has got something to play for every week. Gonna be a fun season. You can click on “Weekly matchups” at the bottom of the above link to see who you’re up against each week as well. We’ll be unveiling all of the week’s scores each Saturday.
Place I’m Loving: We’ve been spending a lot of time at Fairmount Park this summer, and it’s been WONDERFUL. Diverse crowds, everyone in a good mood, plenty of room to socially distance and let our kid run and play, that weird wonderful Philly vibe (ie random horse rides next to pickup basketball games), and so many spots have great views of the city.
What I’m Reading: One of my favorite things in the world is the rivalry between Puma and Adidas. Long story short: two brothers in a German town ran a shoe company together, they fell out during WWII, and each started his own company, with a factory on opposite sides of a river in the same town. This from a great 2009 Guardian article on the story:
The enmity has divided the town ever since, determining which pubs its 23,000 citizens drank in, the butchers they frequented, who cut their gravestone and which football team they supported.
“There was a time when you’d have risked the wrath of colleagues and family if, as an employee of one company, you married the employee of the other,” says Klaus-Peter Gäbelein of the local Heritage Association. “Even religion and politics were part of the heady mix. Puma was seen as Catholic and politically conservative, Adidas as Protestant and Social Democratic.“
What I’m Listening To: Summer may be ending, but this song called Water Ice by Reef and Ethel Cee is hawwwwt. Love the piano loop. Also, if you want to support local artists by buying their music, do so on Bandcamp. They take really good care of indie artists, unlike pretty much all of the streaming platforms.
What I’m Drinking: Finally broke down and tried my first Frose on Thursday night. Went to Lou Bird’s for it. Really good. Another thing I’ve really grown to enjoy this summer: sitting under an umbrella, having a drink while it rains. Just really relaxing. Highly recommend.
Random Thing I Just Learned About: Chip turned me onto this last weekend…Bobby Darin (above) rapping about getting roughed up by cops in South Philly. Yeah it sounds insane but, but, well, that’s why I like it. The song is Me and Mr. Hohner, and it’s off the extremely funky album Songs from the Big Sur, which is a collection of songs from his two “hippie” albums, as they’re known. I did a little digging, and there’s a fascinating backstory:
“(Robert) Kennedy’s assassination left Darin deeply shaken, and combined with the emotional fallout from his divorce and the discovery that the woman he thought all his life was his sister was actually his mother — not to mention his looming anxiety over the permanent cardiac damage that had resulted from a childhood bout with rheumatic fever — it sent him into a deep existential crisis. He dealt with it by going into seclusion, moving into a 14-foot trailer in Big Sur and cutting off most lines of communication with the outside world. When he returned to Vegas, performing under the name “Bob Darin,” he’d traded in his tux and toupee for all-denim outfits and a mustache, playing a new batch of material that he was writing in Big Sur.”
The result was some great music (I encourage you to listen to the whole album) that went over poorly because crowds wanted to hear him play Splish Splash. Darin claimed to be happy and at peace, but he still needed to find work. So he called his friend Dick Clark and asked for advice. Clark told him he was going through an identity crisis. “Go back and put on the tuxedo and go to work,” Clark told him. “Do what the people expect of you. They don’t want to see a balding hippie sitting on a stage in Las Vegas.” And so Darin put the tux back on, started doing the classic material, and would remain in demand until his ongoing heart problems slowed him down and, sadly, killed him at age 37 in 1973.
Hello there, folks! Carl and I are pleased to announce our latest hare-brained virtual quizzo scheme: the FALL BRAWL. Here’s how it’s gonna work:
SEASON: 11 weeks (10-week regular season + 1 week of playoffs). 11 games guaranteed (see below), up to 13 games max.
GAME FORMAT: Why fix what ain’t broken? The 10-week regular season is 40 minute sessions, just your team and your virtual quizzo host. Once we get to the playoffs, we’ll activate breakout rooms.
LEAGUE FORMAT: 50 teams (ideally). Two conferences of 5 divisions, 5 teams per division. You “play against” your 4 division rivals twice, plus 2 non-division games.
SCHEDULE: Regular season starts the week of September 7th. Playoffs (in breakout room format) take place the week of November 16th. The MOTHER OF ALL BRAWLS will take place on Sunday, November 22nd.
PLAYOFFS: 12 teams from each conference make the playoffs- the 5 division winners, plus 7 wild card teams. The first 6 wild card spots go to the non-division winners with the highest average scores, and then the 7th slot will be determined by the highest score in Week 10 among those who haven’t yet clinched. There will also be a special event for non-playoff teams (***see below).
“WHAT IF WE MISS A WEEK?”: No sweat, we’ll do our best to schedule a make-up quiz for you. Also we drop everyone’s lowest score, so at worst you’d lose a game with no hit to your average.
PRIZES: Assuming we fill both conferences, there will be $900 worth of cash prizes for top league finishers ($400 for 1st place, $200 for 2nd, $100 for 3rd, $100 for the highest scoring average teams in each conference’s regular season), plus some gift card packages as always. Most importantly, the overall winner will walk away with the BRAWLERS BELT to which monetary value cannot possibly be applied. Early estimates have it worth at least a chamillion.
PRICE: $450 per team, with $20 going to the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign for the tremendous work they do housing and feeding our city’s most vulnerable people. $225 is due by Labor Day (9/7), and the balance is due by October 1st.
***If you don’t make the playoffs, don’t worry, you still get to play in our FALL CRAWL , a battle royale in which everyone who didn’t make the playoffs plays, with prizes on the line. This will be your 11th game.
We had a great time with SUMMER SLAM! and we thank everyone who played. 35 teams, all of them trashing JGT in the chat room while praising Carl. Jerks. Our finals were an instant classic, as Smells Like Quarantine Spirit emerged with a thrilling overtime win over Boyz II Menehune. Lambda Lambda Lambda finished in 3rd, a single point behind the top two. Here are the final scores:
Instagram Account I’m Digging This Week: Suffer_Decay_Damnation. The pictures on here are some of my favorite in Philly. The skyline in the midst of lightning storms, ruins porn, Philly icons. It’s all there, such a great follow.
Favorite Person I Met This Week: Without question, it was Bamm Rose. A brilliant stripper/activist, she spoke with us on the Blunt on Wednesday night, and talked about the current conditions of strip clubs, and the changes she’d like to see when we emerge from the pandemic. She also discussed her events in which she turns the tables on colonialism by walking white men down the street on all fours like dogs (!) Trust me, this is a fascinating interview.
Who I’m Inspired By: I went to the PPEHRC Rally on Monday (you can read about it here on WHYY). Several mothers got up in front of the crowd and told their stories of losing their sons. It was heartbreaking, a reminder of the reality of our gun violence. These aren’t just names in the papers. They’re sons, they’re mothers getting the worst phone call of their lives, they’re communities being torn apart, they’re brothers and sisters facing a lifetime of PTSD. It’s a reminder of the strength of the human spirit that these mothers are willing to tell a story that must break their heart every time they tell it. And it’s a reminder that while we’re disgusted and outraged by what garbage Trump is, we live in a city that’s 90% Democrat and incapable of solving the very real problems that face our city. Follow PPEHRC here.
What I’m Listening To: The Speck in the Sea. This is the reading of a Times article from 2014, about a fisherman who fell into the sea, and miraculously kept himself alive while awaiting rescue. It’s a great listen.
What Mystery I’m Following: This one on reddit, about a guy who found an old blank cassette tape in a neighbors trash. He listened, and the band sounded really good. So he’s trying to find out if anyone knows anything about them. It would be really cool if he found out what band made the tape 35 years ago. Give them a listen and see if the lead singers voice rings any bells.
Well the SUMMER SLAM is over but the Summer is not, and so we’ve got some more quizzing to do. Hope you’ll join us over the next three weeks. You can sign up here. We’ll keep track of our highest scores each week and we’ll have some new official rankings along the way. Sign ups are still $35, with $5 of each one going to the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign. Hope to see ya again soon!
Our topic this week: True Crime. Famous crimes, crime podcasts, true crime on TV, you name it, we’ll have it. Hope to see you this week!
This week, to wrap up the JGT SUMMER SLAM, we honor those who ALMOST made it to the top. We honor those who won the pennant, but lost the World Series. People who won their primary, but lost the general election. Couldn’t quite pull off the win in some crappy reality show? We’ll see ya on this week’s quiz! Should be a fun quiz.
And then, on Sunday, we wrap it up with the SUMMER SLAM Main Event! We’ll have more details tomorrow.
