
In case you missed it last week, I did a write up about Alex Trebek in the Inquirer and what a big influence he and Jeopardy were on quizzo.
In case you missed it last week, I did a write up about Alex Trebek in the Inquirer and what a big influence he and Jeopardy were on quizzo.
Well fam, it’s been a damn fun Fall Brawl season. We saw quite a bit of craziness go down. I mean, just look at Week 10:
Texas City Players Club, who did not make the playoffs, shocked Summer Slam Champs Smells Like Quarantine Spirit in an overtime win.
Narcotyzing Dysfunction, staggering in at 3-6 and coming off a pathetic 30 point performance, scored a 49 (didn’t hurt that several of them work at universities) to earn the final wild card bid in the Nerds Conference.
Del-COVID 19 cruised to a 40-33 win over the Drunk Parents in Week 10, earning them a perfect 10-0 record on the year.
Mad Princes, a week after having their dreams of an undefeated season crushed in a one point loss to the Zodiac Killer, returned the favor and knocked off Boyz II Menehune by a single point.
Together Alone, facing the prospect of an 0-10 season, pulled off their first of the season, 36-34, over Pop Fit Studio, who themselves had pulled off their first win of the season the week before.
Covid’s Metamorphoses needed a big Week 10 to get in as the final wild card team…and they did so, scoring an impressive 46. That dropped Little Kwings out of the playoffs…until they scored a 39 and got in as an at large. Which meant heartbreak for QuizYo, Meat Sweats, and Pearls of Wisdom, who all finished with a 38…one point out of the playoffs.
Underground Bard took the scoring title in the Geeks Conference (and overall) with a 49.89. Boyz II Menehune took the crown in the Nerds Conference with a 47.22.
And finally, a shout to There’s No I in Quizzo: they were our only team to finish the season 0-10. There’s gonna be some sort of prize for that.
Great week, great season, and a big week ahead of us. See you guys soon!
As some of you have noticed, I’ve started a newsletter that I send out (almost) every Friday. It’s the Friday Five, similar to what I used to do on the site but I loved the layout of this new email program so much (Flodesk) that I thought I’d move it to a newsletter. It’s a quick and easy read, just a couple of sentences about my favorite things I ate, drank, read and listened to over the previous week (most of it local). If you already signed up for it in the past and haven’t seen it yet, be sure to check your spam and promotional folders. If you haven’t signed up for it yet, what are you waiting for? Next one comes out this afternoon. SIGN UP HERE.
We didn’t have enough teams sign up for this weeks Yards quiz, so we’re gonna bag it. We’re working on another project at Yards we’re really excited about I’ll have details about soon. In the meantime if you wanna play outside I’ll be at Frankford Hall on Tuesday.
This week’s quizzo theme is colleges and universities. Gonna be a good one, and we’ve got a lot of playoff intrigue riding on this week. Looking forward to it!
Gonna be hosting a special quizzo at Frankford Hall, dedicated to Alex Trebek. Six rounds, five questions each, with point values going up each question. And all of it having to do in some way with the life of the trivia GOAT. Outdoors, up to 6 people per team, and masks required until you get to your table. Hope to see you Tuesday night!
We still don’t know who will win the Presidency yet, but we do know that people (OK, primarily white people) turned out in droves to vote for Donald Trump. More people voted for him this year than in 2016 which is…deflating. Heartbreaking. Infuriating. He has been a catastrophe for the country by any standard and now people want four more years of this madness? Why? It is too much, in an already brutal year, to contemplate.
So don’t. It’s time to give up on America. I certainly have, and it’s kept me mentally and emotionally sane these past few days, no matter what the eventual outcome is (though clearly I am rooting for Biden).
Over the last five years, I found myself expending so much energy angry at what some dipshit in Alabama thought that I wasn’t looking in my own backyard. A backyard that is almost entirely Democrat. A backyard that epically mismanaged, racist, and corrupt.
I get it, the MAGA crowd is a bunch of assholes, and their politics are not only infuriating but are specifically attacks on our core beliefs about decency and humanity. It’s mentally and emotionally exhausting to see how filled with hate so many of our fellow Americans are. The point of this post is not in any way to let them off the hook for the hatred and heartlessness that drive their political beliefs. It’s simply giving up hope for them to ever change, and deciding to no longer waste our time trying to convince them to do so.
On the flip side, my boss at my first job had a saying: “When you point the finger, there are four more pointing back at you.” It’s something those of us who consider ourselves Democrats should seriously consider. Because not many greedy developers tearing apart Philly’s black communities to colonize neighborhoods are Republican. The reason some of our young people still don’t have access to wifi isn’t because of MAGA. The reason our schools are filled with asbestos has nothing to do with Donald Trump.
When COVID tore our world apart, I knew I’d go nuts if I didn’t try to to step up my level of activism. So I reached out to various community leaders to see if there was any small way I could help. That led to lots of Zoom meetings, to very frank discussions about race, about opportunity, about the future of Philadelphia. And after listening and soul searching (and trying to keep my own big mouth shut, to varying degrees of success), I came to the following conclusion: if we don’t transfer at least some of the energy we spend being angry about what some random dipshit on Facebook is screaming about “muh freedom” and instead direct it towards creating a better city for our citizens, then we’re wasting our fucking time. Even worse, we’re engaging in performative activism, wearing our “woke ideals” on our sleeves but not willing to put in any actual work.
This isn’t an accusation, and I’m not trying to sound preachy. I’ve done plenty of yelling into the void on twitter, and I’m sure to do plenty more. But I also realize that I need to expend more energy in the trenches. I realize that if we don’t change the way we look at the world (with more emphasis on Philly and less on America), we’re wasting valuable time.
And that time and energy needs to be utilized NOW. COVID is wiping our small businesses off the map. It’s making the gap between the haves and have nots larger than ever. It means more homeless, it means a spike in violent crime, it means an increase in mental health issues. The problems are massive for a city our size. And all the time we spend screaming into the void about the voters of Bedford County, with whom we’ll have essentially zero interaction with in our real lives, is time spent not focusing on our racist police union, our homeless, our 26% poverty rate…things that hundreds of thousands of people right here, in Philadelphia, our neighbors, are dealing with every day.
Look, America as a whole sucks. That became clear in 2016 and the exclamation point was just added on Tuesday. But Philadelphia doesn’t suck. It’s awesome. The people are amazing, there’s an energy here unlike anywhere else on earth, and if I learned anything since March it’s that there are a hell of a lot of AMAZING Philadelphians who are already putting in the real work to try to solve the problems facing our city. But they need help. This city has got a lot of freaking problems. Big problems. And We the People…not City Hall, not Joe Biden, not Comcast…need to step up our games to try to fix them. Therefore, no matter what the end result is of the election, I would encourage anyone reading this to resolve to spend more time in the next four years focusing on what’s happening in their own backyard, and less time worrying about what the MAGA crowd thinks about “muh freedom”. It’s time to give up on America, but it’s damn sure not time to give up on Philadelphia.
Hey guys, we’ve decided to postpone tomorrow’s in person quizzo at Yards. There are just so many things going on in the city right now and doing an in-person quizzo in the midst of all of it…just doesn’t feel right. But we still want to celebrate Halloween and we still want to raise money for our friends at Beyond the Bars. As we emerge to whatever our city is after this 2020 insanity, we will more than ever need to support organizations like this who give our city’s young people such a positive outlet.
So here’s the plan: we’re going to do a virtual quiz. It will be $30 a team. 50% of all money raised will go towards Beyond the Bars. It’s basically the same thing we did over the summer.
If you already paid here’s what we can do: I’ll be reaching out on venmo, and will send you your money back, though we’d still love to have you join us tmrw night.
If you wanna play virtually on Friday night, you can do so by signing up here. Only change from the previous quiz other than moving it online is that we’re bumping it back a half hour to 7 PM. If we get to 10 teams we’ll do the quiz. Hope to see ya tmrw night!
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