Around the Horn, Brought to You By the Birthday Boy!

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  • Getting ready to run out and check on a couple of venues. Wish me luck.
  • Trivia Art’s latest in the Metro. Sled Wrecker is a great name for a beer.
  • Gooch goes to San Diego. No biggie. We’ve still got Wes Helms coming off the bench to pinch hit. No worries
  • Did you know that Iran’s president has a blog.? Worth a browse.
  • Happy birthday, Oh Great One! Bob turns 84 today.

Some questions from Monday Night

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Here’s a few questions from the City vs.City Smackdown, in case you missed it. (Oh, and Denver and Colorado Springs had a bad turnout. I guess they just knew we were gonna kick their asses, so they didn’t bother showing. If you’d like to rub it in, just click here.):

  1. What feminist icon famously quipped, ‘A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle’, and then later married Christian Bale’s dad?
  2. In what book of the Old Testament would you find the story of the Tower of Babel?
  3. The first underwater car tunnel in the US was completed in 1927 in New York. What’s it called?
  4. Jupiter is the largest planet. What planet is 2nd largest?
  5. In what year did Seattle Slew win the Triple Crown?
  6. Who was the star of the Garbage Picking Field Goal Kicking Philadadelphia Phenomenon?
  7. What popular singer released a song called Albuquerque in 1975 and a song called Philadelphia in 1993?
  8. What 1983 movie starring Matthew Broderick took place in Colorado Springs?
  9. In Little Miss Sunshine, the family leaves from Albuequerque to attend a pageant in what california beach city?
  10. What parent company owns Juicy Couture, Kate Spade, and Lucky Brand Jeans?
  11. When George W. Bush graduated from Yale in 1968, he received a bachelor’s degree in what?
  12. Richard Henry Lee accused Thomas Jefferson of plagiarizing this philosophers 2nd treatise when writing the Declaration of Independence.
  13. Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is the first film in the Walt Disney Feature Animation canon. What was the 2nd?
  14. What two NBA teams each had two players on the 1992 Dream Team?
  15. What must the sustained speed be for an Atlantic storm to be labelled a hurricane (give you credit if you are within one either way)?

Continue reading “Some questions from Monday Night” →

Philadelphia Is Smarter Than Your City. Deal With It, America.

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Philly took home the gold on Monday night at the Urban Saloon, proving once again that while clueless tourists may think we’re dumb when they fill out useless polls, there is still not a single city out there that can hang with us in IQ when it is fairly measured. The Sofa Kingdom led the way, taking home the win with a 119. A team from Seattle, Marguaret Thatcher is the Dairy Queen, took home the silver with a 117. The story of the night in Philly, however, was the play of 3rd place overall (2nd place in Philly), Ron Paul UFO (below, right), who had no reason to hang their heads after finishing with a 115. Consisting of D-Mac, Smackdown, Trivia Art, Monie Love, and Fidge, this five person team gave the 8 person Kingdom (who had added Kenny and Renee from the Hurtin Bombs and Parsa from Omelette to an already star-studded lineup) all they could handle before falling by a single question. Overall, the city of Philly stood head and shoulders above the rest of the crowd. To determine city winners, we took the top five scores from each city and averaged them. The results were interesting, considering that in that recent Travel and Leisure poll, Seattle was supposedly the smartest city in the nation, Denver was 10th, and we were 14th. But what’s actual head to head competition when you have couples in matching pleated jean shorts and aloha shirts judging how smart you are while looking at the Liberty Bell? Here were the results:
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  1. PHILLY 109
  2. SEATTLE 99
  3. ALBUQUERQUE 93
  4. DENVER 77
  5. COLORADO SPRINGS 66

After the jump, the top 20 teams overall. No head count on teams, but between us and Seattle there were over 50, so I suspect there were about 100 total.

Continue reading “Philadelphia Is Smarter Than Your City. Deal With It, America.” →

Quick notes

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  • Scores are rolling in, slowly but surely. Geez, in this technological age, this is like waiting for the afternoon paper to find out what happened in yesterday’s baseball game in the 1920s. Looks like it’s tight between us and Seattle this time. Albuquerque did better than Denver. Still waiting on Colorado Springs. Will have scores up later this afternoon.
  • Gotta go to my dental appointment soon to get my gums lowered (they’ve been riding a little too high in my mouth, apparently.) In other words, the dentist could just stick a bunch of steel into my mouth for an hour, say “We’re all done. Now pay us $1100.” and there is no way I could ever tell in a million years if a single thing had been done other than cause me a lot of mouth pain. Oh well, my dentist’s name is “Painless Parker”, so I’m sure I’ll be fine.
  • You know that really nice old man who dresses in a suit and plays his flute at various spots around the city (I used to see him a lot on South Street)? A member of the Rittenhouse gestapo arrested him in March for playing at 18th and Chestnut, but the flutist struck back, and was recently awarded $27,500 in damages. Hooray freedom! Thanks Hunter for sending this in.

Oooh Boy

Fun night. Still waiting to hear from Denver and Seattle, and then will do a full writeup. In the meantime, I gotta get my Metro column done by noon and I still don’t know what the hell I’m gonna write about. Then I have another dental procedure at 2 p.m. (Phase 2 of the 3 phase process). So if you guys wanna help me find some fun stuff on the intranets to post today, please send me an email.

Around the Horn, brought to you by Me, Ol’ Blue Eyes, and The Truth

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If you are here looking for info on City vs. City Smackdown, click here.

-Anybody wondering why Darth Ern won’t be at his usual spot at the bar at the Vous tomorrow, here’s why: He’s gonna be at the Bill Clinton rally at the Electric Factory.

-On this date in 1935, Jay Berwanger was awarded the first ever Heisman Trophy. Guess what team selected him with the first pick in the 1936 draft? And guess who decided they’d rather be a foam rubber salesman than play for said team?

-It’s looking like we may be doing QBIV on February 15th at WCL. I’m hoping to look at the Hall of Flags and the Armory if I get a free minute later this week, but I asked about it at the Urban Outfitters headquarters down at the Shipyard, which is supposed to be an amazing space, and the lady said that it costs about $15,000 to run electricity in there. What????? Yeah, so that’s out. I also contacted the Diamond Club at the ballpark, and that ain’t big enough.

-Read this great short story by George Orwell having to do with imperialism called the Shooting an Elephant.