This Hawaiian was a surfing pioneer, won gold medals in swimming at the 1912 and 1920 Olympics, and was the sheriff of Honolul for 29 years. Who was he?
And Now, For a Special Message From Fastball Pitcher Bob Gutierrez
The Home Stretch
We are headed down the home stretch before Quizzo Bowl XV, and as it stands I have 150 tickets sold and about 110 left. I will have tickets for sale on me at quizzo this week if you want to buy them from me, or you can buy them online here. They are $25 a pop for the rest of the week, $30 at the door. I will be selling them at the following locations this week (note that Sidecar is closed tonight for staff training):
TUESDAY
- Dilworth Plaza 6 pm
- O’Neals 8 pm
WEDNESDAY
- Locust Rendezvous 6:15 pm
- Founding Fathers 8:30 pm
THURSDAY
- Birra 8 pm
- Bards 9:15 pm
So this is it: if you want to play my best quiz of the year, listen to a great band, win your share of tons of giveaways, and have one of the best Saturday nights of your year, get your squad together and get your tickets this week!
Everything You Need to Know About Quizzo Bowl
WHO: Anybody who wants to get their posse together and have one of the most fun Saturday nights of their year.
WHAT: Quizzo Bowl XV, the longest running quizzo event of its kind in America.
WHEN: February 9th. Doors at 7, Event at 8.
WHERE: World Cafe Live, 3025 Walnut Street
WHY: Because you want to have an awesome night out with your friends dressing up and listening to Hawaiian music and playing trivia and winning prizes and engaging in downright tomfoolery.
HOW MUCH ARE TICKETS: $25, same as they’ve been for the past 10 years. ($30 if you wait until the day of).
WHERE CAN I BUY THEM: You can buy them online here. I will also have a few more left on me next week at my weekly quizzes.
WILL ALL THE QUESTIONS BE ABOUT HAWAII? No, Hawaii is the theme but this will be a general knowledge quiz: I’d expect a few Hawaii questions but not a ton.
HOW IS IT DIFFERENT THAN A REGULAR QUIZZO? In every way. We’ll have comedy, we’ll have live music, we’ll have vaudeville, we’ll have video rounds, music rounds, and even a round being drawn by one of my favorite local artists, we’ll have prizes to multiple bars in the area. And who knows what else? Past Quizzo Bowls have War Pigs on steel drums, 250 people singing Here I Go Again On My Own in unison, and even a freaking wedding engagement.
HOW MANY PLAYERS CAN I HAVE ON MY TEAM? You can have up to 8 players on a team. If you have fewer than 6, shoot me a line and I’ll see if I can team you up with another squad.
WHAT IF IT’S JUST ME AND A COUPLE OF FRIENDS? No problem, we’ll team you up with a larger team. Just shoot me a line at johnny at johnnygoodtimes dot com and I’ll see what I can do.
WHAT SHOULD I DO TO STAY UPDATED? Make sure you join us over on the Quizzo Bowl facebook page.
SO SHOULD WE GO? Yeah, you’re damn right you should go. What are you waiting for? Get the crew together, get your tickets, and let’s party on Saturday!
The Quizzo Bowl Documentary
Some of you youngsters may not be aware that there was actually a documentary crew covering Quizzo Bowl IV. Turned out to be a pretty good film and offered a lot of background on the sport of kings: quizzo. No documentary this year but there will be video of the festivities. Hope you join us! Tickets can be purchased here.
Quizzo Bowl XV: Hawaiian Style
PHILADELPHIA – Slowey and the Boats will provide the Aloha, and Johnny Goodtimes will supply the trivia, at the longest running trivia event of it’s kind in America. It’s the 15th edition of Quizzo Bowl, and the fifth straight one at the World Cafe Live.
The event is open to the public, and teams will be competing in teams of up to eight players for over $1200 worth of prizes. Taking home the title won’t be easy, however. Among the teams expected to compete are five time winners Sofa Kingdom, as well as the defending champs the Cracked Eggheads. There will be an extra $100 bonus prize to any team that can win their first title this year, knocking off all previous champions.
For JGT, the quiz will be a homecoming of sorts: he lived in Hawaii from 1998-2000, where he trained dolphins. For insurance reasons, there will be no dolphins at this event.
There will,however, be tons of prize giveaways, great live music, Hawaiian drink specials, Philly comedians, and plenty of surprises. In past years we’ve seen breakdancers, human pretzels, and even an engagement.
Tickets are on sale online now, and Goodtimes will also have them for sale at his weekly quizzes. To learn more about this unique Philly event and how you can participate, GO HERE. And for updates, be sure to follow our event FB page here.
Question of the Week
Who was the unlikely headline performer of the 1989 Super Bowl halftime show?
Quizzo This Week
No real theme this week, just a general quiz. Great opportunities to get a win at Dilworth, O’Neals, and Bards right now. Tickets available to Quizzo Bowl at all quizzes this week. Here’s the lineup:
TUESDAY
- Dilworth Cabin 6 pm
- O’Neals 8 pm
- Sidecar 8 pm
WEDNESDAY
- Locust Rendezvous 6:15 pm
- Founding Fathers 8:30
THURSDAY
- Birra 8 pm
- Bards 9:15 pm
List of Previous Quizzo Bowl Winners
Here’s a list of the previous 7 teams to win a Quizzo Bowl and become quizzo immortals. Is this your year?
I will have tickets for sale on me tonight at Dilworth at 6 pm and Sidecar at 8ish.
Meet Dr. Snow, Philly’s Former Cocaine Kingpin
On the latest edition of the Philly Blunt, we did a remarkable interview with Larry Lavin. In the mid 1970s, Lavin started dealing pot to his frat brothers. By 1981 he was the biggest coke dealer on the East Coast. I first came across his story 15-20 years ago, when I bought a random book at a used book store called Dr. Snow. I was riveted by this incredible true story, and when we started doing the podcast, I thought I’d take a random stab at doing an interview with him. I reached out to him, and incredibly he got back to me and said he’d be happy too, and he’d be willing to tell all. The end result was a remarkable interview. Here are a few highlights. Be sure to listen to the full thing on our site or on itunes. In this part of the interview, we talk about making the transition from selling pot to college campuses to selling coke.
JGT: How does that expand? Where suddenly you’ve got a guy talking to Cubans in Miami. Like, that’s a whole different ballgame than talking to college kids in Blacksburg.
LARRY: Right. Well everyone kind of has a connection somehow. And I was pretty, I’m a pretty easily friended person. I make contacts really well. And one of my friends that lived out on the Main Line, he was a little bit older, and he had a Cuban girlfriend, fiance I believe, and he had a couple of connections. And he was the one who told me we could do this. So we pooled our money and bought like a half key. Like the smallest buy, I’m surprised they even sold it to us.
GREG: What did that cost back then?
LARRY: Believe it or not, keys used to be $55,000. The price tumbles down over the years to like $14,000. But for the longest time, we would buy keys at like $55,000 and by the time we broke it up, and put whatever cut depending on which product people wanted, it sold for about $75,000.
GREG: What would you cut it with?
LARRY: Inositol. You know it’s a Vitamin B product. And, uh, lidocaine. But how you develop it is the fact that we had something all the time. So once a week you would come and pay what you could, and we’d give you more, so your business would grow. By me fronting all this. So if you came and wanted half pound, a pound, I’d say “Johnny, what the heck, why don’t you take two pounds this time, and see what happens.” And that’s what made these things grow. And unfortunately everyone’s debt to me grew, because a lot of times people wouldn’t pay them, they did too much product, whatever happened.
REEF: What would you do like the big debt was owed? You would just let it go?
LARRY: Yeah. What good does it do you to get in trouble by going after someone? You try to work with someone, decide if it’s worthwhile, if it’s not-
REEF: Then they lose the connect to you if they don’t pay.
LARRY: That’s exactly right. No one wants to do that because they’ve got, you know, the Golden Ticket.
Wanna hear more about Larry’s days as a cocaine kingpin, how the FBI caught him, and what life was like once he went on the lam? Be sure to listen to this absolutely incredible interview. And be sure to join us on Facebook, twitter, and instagram.