Toughest Questions from Last Week

ppm

  1. What planet has a moon called Titan?
  2. Whose arch nemesis is the Peculiar Purple Pie man (above)?
  3. What 1991 chick flick’s tagline was: “The Secret of Life? The Secret of Life is in the Sauce.”
  4. Actor Jack Lord is best known for this one sentence phrase he employed regularly in the 70s.
  5. There are two eagles found in the US, bald eagles and what other kind of eagle?
  6. Within one either way, 100 kilometers equals how many miles?
  7. Who overthrew King Idris the First in 1969, and is still the leader of his country?
  8. What do boll weevils like to feed on?
  9. The Titans used to be known as the Oilers. What current AFC team used to be known as the Titans?
  10. Of the 13 original colonies, which one was settled as a penal colony?

Continue reading “Toughest Questions from Last Week” →

Foobooz Names Philly’s Top 50 Bars

top50
Trivia Art over at Foobooz just listed his Top 50 Bars in Philadelphia, with help from numerous contributers. You may remember that when Philadelphia Weekly posted their top 50 last year, I was one of the contributers. After all I am a man of leisure, one that is no stranger to dens of ill repute. So you’d think that I’d naturally be a contributer for this thing, since all Trivia Art had to do was yell down the hall, “Hey JGT, what are your favorite bars in the city?” But alas, no. We’ll see where his invite is when I decide to do my 50 Greatest Trivia Questions of All Time Piece.

But perhaps it’s just as well, since my top 50 experience didn’t turn out so well when PW stabbed me in the back. These top 50 bars things don’t seem to turn out so well for me, but nonetheless I am going to throw in my two cents on this.

  1. Standard Tap. A great bar, with the best Bloody Marys in the city. That said, it’s a little too hipsterish for my taste. Certainly top 5, but not sure it’s #1.
  2. POPE. Was there Friday. It has a nice tap list but nothing made me think it was the #2 bar in the city.
  3. Monks. Yeah, sure, it’s a perennial top 5 bar, though I think it’s a victim of the old Yogi Berra saying: “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
  4. Southwark. No disagreements here. Terrific drinks, thought the bar was better than the food when I went.
  5. Good Dog. Good bar, good food, good ambience, good people. Would maybe like to see them play around with the menu a little more, but hey, if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.
  6. Grace Tavern. This one was #1 in the PW piece. It’s a pretty good bar, with decent food, but is it #6 in the whole city? I got it in the 10-12 range.
  7. South Philadelphia Tap Room. It’s been very good every time I’ve been, both food and beer wise, but I’m not confident it’s a top 10.
  8. Sidecar. If I go out in my neighborhood, G-Ho, this is the place I go. This is top 3 in my book, perhaps #1. Great food, great beer, diverse crowd, great owner who does fun stuff like organize bus trips for Phils games, and lots of special events.
  9. Tria Washington Square West. It’s pretty nice, I guess. Have been to the one near Rittenhouse more. I don’t really know what to make of this ranking, almost makes it seem like there should be a separate list for beer and wine bars.
  10. Royal Tavern. No problem with this one. Some of the best bar food in the city and an interesting tap list.

Other notables: #21 Silk City should have been ranked higher. #17 Varga ranked too high. It’s fine, but not Top 20. #24 McGlinchey’s is ranked too high. I’ve had fun there, but Locust Rendezvous is much friendlier at the same price and Oscar’s is a much better dive bar with much better service. (I’m guessing the smoking kept people from ranking it higher). #25 North 3rd is a Top 10 bar, as is #33 Cantina. #44 Cherry Street Tavern should be ranked in the top 25. I think the bottom line is this, however: there are so many great bars in this city, I really don’t see much of a dropoff at all between number 1 and number 50 (#50 is the genesis of JGT quizzo, Nick’s Roast Beef.) Anyhow, check out the list and let me know what you think.

Midnight Express


The movie Midnight Express was on TV Monday night, and I got sucked in. It had probably been ten years since I had seen it last, and it certainly holds up. One thing I wondered: “How did the star Brad Davis not become a Hollywood superstar?” He looked like a young Brad Pitt and was a terrific actor. He had a bit part in Chariots of Fire, but that was pretty much it for his film career until he died of AIDS in 1991. (Another interesting fact: he was a descendant of Jefferson Davis.) Here is a good article written about his widow in the NY Times in 1997, which explains that his career was done in by drugs and alcohol.

Midnight Express was about a young American named Billy Hayes who made the bad decision to try to smuggle hash out of Turkey. He wrote a book, which was turned into the great 1978 film, thought there were some discrepancies. For instance, Billy Hayes never bit out anybody’s tongue, and the story is that that scene so horrified the cast they refused to shoot it, and the director and the two actors were the only two on set when that scene was shot. Another thing which upset both Hayes and critics was how horribly Turks were depicted in the film. All of the Turkish characters were borderline evil. Anyways, as I said before, it’s a great film, one I highly recommend, and I also recommend watching the interview with Billy Hayes above. Part two of that interview is right here.

Teabagging and Such


First: is all of this venom directed at Obama over health care particularly nasty because he’s black? I’m not sure I agree with this one, because Clinton got dragged through the mud on this too, but it’s an interesting thought.

Here’s a rather amusing look at some of the Great Americans who showed up at the teabagger rally on Saturday. (nod to Milo, whose facebook page I found this and the above thing on.)

Fiscal conservative Andrew Sullivan had this to say about teabaggers a few months ago: These are not tea-parties. They are tea-tantrums. And the adolescent, unserious hysteria is a function not of a movement regrouping and refinding itself. It’s a function of a movement’s intellectual collapse and a party’s fast-accelerating nervous breakdown.

On 9/11, Obama suggested a Day of Service to honor the dead. In response, Rush Limbaugh said “Community service is one of the baby steps towards fascism.” Wow, you can’t really argue with insanity.

On the other side of the coin, here’s something I don’t quite get: if Obama is doing this for all the right reasons, why won’t he even consider tort reform?