The 18th Annual Halloween Spectacular!

The longest running tradition in the JGT Quizzo canon continues, for one night only, next Friday night at Yards. Lots of questions about witches, ghosts, and goblins. And plenty of candy. To book your table, send $40 to @jgtquizzo on venmo with the note “Yards 10/30”. We had a blast at the one last week and look forward to this next one. $40 a head, and that buys you beer for two hours, an entree, and a donation to Beyond the Bars, who we’ve raised over $300 for through our first two quizzes. Hope to see ya Friday night!

Fundraiser for the Armenia Fund on Sunday Night!

Our good friend Steve O of Lambda is hosting a quizzo for Armenian relief this Sunday as part of our semi-regular Quizzo for the Cause series. It’ll be the same Sunday night quiz many of you played over the summer, just with a different host (J Michael will be helping out Steve). It’s $30 per team to play, and money goes towards the Armenia Fund.

No the questions will not be all about Armenia, but I’d expect a few. Wanna play? Just sign up here and send your $30 to @jgtquizzo on Venmo.

Virtual Music and Movie Quiz Saturday Night

Missing the music quiz Friday night at Yards? No problem, you can play it Saturday night online! We’ll be doing this one as a fundraiser for the Lansdowne Theatre, one of the last 1920s theatres in the area. The questions will be about music, with some movie questions sprinkled in. It’s just $30 a team to play, and it goes to a great cause. Action starts at 7 PM on Saturday, October 17th, and you can purchase tickets here. They’re just $30 a pop. Hope to see ya there!

Music Quiz on Friday!

WHO: You and up to 5 of your friends.

WHAT: The Ultimate Music Quiz

WHEN: Friday, October 16th at 6:30 PM

WHERE: Yards Brewery (5th and Spring Garden). We’ll be outdoors under the tent.

WHY: Because it’s a chance to have some socially distant fun at a great price and raise money for a terrific charity. 6 people max to a table, tables distanced from each other, masks whenever going to or from the table, and scoresheets will be online.

WHAT’S THE QUIZ ABOUT: We’re doing an all music quizzo, covering all forms of music.

WHAT’S THE COST: Just $40 a head, and that includes a 2-hour open beer bar, an entree, and a donation to Beyond the Bars, a terrific local music charity that my buddy Reef is heavily involved in.

HOW DO I RESERVE A TABLE: You can just have one team member pay to reserve a table by paying the $40 to @jgquizzo on venmo. Just put Yards and 10/16 in the note. The rest of your team can pay the night of.

WHAT IF IT RAINS? Not a problem, we’re holding the whole thing under a giant tent. Might wanna dress warmly though. Gonna be a little chilly tonight.

See ya tonight!

Before and After Week

We kick off Week 5 tonight, and our topic this week is Before and After. Lots of ways for us to take this, but most questions will be in the Jeopardy/Wheel of Fortune style, i.e. Q: Our third President who later became the head of the Confederacy. A: Thomas Jefferson Davis. Gonna be a fun quiz, this topic is always a favorite, as much of a riddle as trivia. See ya this week!

The Friday Five

Where I’m Eating This Week: I’ve told you before that we ride or die with Xiandu Thai, but we decided to broaden our horizons this past week with JJ Thai on 20th and Chestnut. It was a damn good call. Delicious dumplings, rockin’ red curry, and poppin’ Pad Thai. Yeah “poppin” was a bit of a stretch to make the alliteraion work. I KNOW. But seriously, these guys are great. Highly recommend.

What I’m Watching This Week: The Challenger exploding was, for people my age, the end of our innocence. It was a horrifying episode where our worlds turned upside down. Challenger: The Final Flight gives us the backstory of that ill-fated voyage. How NASA had recently gotten much more diverse, how they added a teacher because they needed to improve their PR, and most consequently, how a late night phone call sealed the shuttle’s fate. It’s a heartbreaking look at an American tragedy the impact of which can only be compared, in my mind, to 9/11. Well worth a watch.

What I’m Listening To: I really can’t get enough of Griselda these days. The Buffalo group of Bennie the Butcher, Conway the Machine, and Westside Gunn brings a 1990s Wu-Tang griminess to hip-hop that’s been missing. Conway recently did an NPR Tiny Desk Concert. The second song has a few bars about George Floyd that are particularly poignant:

I just saw a video on the news I couldn’t believe

Another racist cop kill a n***a and get to leave

He’s screaming “I can’t breath!” cop ignoring all his pleas

Hands in his pocket leaning on his neck with his knees

Cracker invent the laws that’s why the system is flawed

Cops kill black people on camera and don’t get charged

We ain’t taking no more and we ain’t just pressing record

Can’t watch you kill my brother, you gonna have to kill us all

What I’m Reading This Week: Did you realize that two members of ZZ Topp more or less started as members of a fake Zombies band? In other words, promoters acted as if the band was the Zombies, a British prog rock band. In fact it was a bogus band, a few kids from Texas that learned to play Zombies songs and then pretended they were British. Quizzo player Tiffany alerted me to this one. It’s a bizarre story.

What Interesting Person I Met This Week: This week I had the opportunity to chat with author Yaron Weitzman, who recently wrote a book about the Sixers “Process” called Tanking to the Top. Really fun to talk about the Process, because as we’re living through it there’s all these crazy things happening, but it’s really not until now that I think we can look back and say, “Holy shit! That was INSANE!” From Hinkie to Markelle Fultz to Burnergate, Yaron got the inside scoop on all of it, and Reef and I thoroughly enjoyed talking to him about it. Oh, and remember: shop Shibe, and take 15% off with checkout code “quizzo”.

Alright if you’ve got any suggestions for what I should eat, drink, listen to, or watch, shoot me a line on twitter (you can also see where I’ve been retweeting the funniest tweets like crazy after Trump got COVID). And be sure to join the JGT Quizzo page on Facebook as well. See ya soon!

Forty Dollar Fridays at Yards

I am REALLY psyched about this one. I think we’ve got an opportunity to really have some awesome Friday Happy Hours together. And the best part is, it’s all $40 per person…full stop. That covers quizzo, 2 hour open beer bar, an entree, a generous gratuity for your server AND a $4 donation to one of the best charities in Philadelphia, Beyond the Bars. I honestly don’t think you’ll find a deal this great anywhere.

And I’m psyched to work with Yards Brewery. I’m a big fan of Tom Kehoe. Legit good dude who literally built this business out of a garage. (You should listen to our interview with him from last year if you haven’t heard it yet). Three shows in October: the 2nd, 16th, and 30th. All outdoors under a tent, with social distancing, and max team size is 6. Hope to see ya there!

TO RESERVE A TABLE: Make your team’s payment ($40 each) to @jgtquizzo on venmo and put “Yards” in your note. It’s also possible to get a table night of if there are any available but this way you reserve one.