QUIZ RECAP

Thank you again to everyone you came out to quiz with us. (And to those wondering why do I start every blog with “thank you”, it’s because without our amazing quizzers I’d be reading questions to an empty room….so basically like every other day of the week in my dining room as I eat dinner alone. <womp womp> But seriously, for me it’s just common courtesy during these uncommon times to express thanks and appreciation for all y’all [sic]. Even in my previous life as a QM I always thanked everyone personally for coming out when I took their photos, but I don’t think I did that enough during my blog….but if losing quiz, and worse, quizzers, to COVID taught me anything, it’s to never underestimate the privilege & blessing that being with and having fun with you guys & gals is.)

Anyway, even of the sappy stuff….but speaking “sic”, our quiz was. #SeeWhatIDidThere?

For starters, we had a great mix of teams. A couple of teams from Week 1 but were absent for Week 2 came back for Week 3. One team that came out for Week 2 also return. One team has been there all three weeks. And quite frankly the best part was that we got two brand new teams. (Now I don’t want my regulars to think I love them any less….it’s just it’s always great when we get fresh blood because it allows us, especially me, to make new friends, and it’s the only way we are going to grow our quiz - which of course we most definitely want to do. I’ve been lucky enough to have grown an brand new venue from a few teams to a packed house and that’s aways a special experience for the venue, the quizzers, and me.)

Quite frankly, there weren’t too many wrong answers (at least not as much as in past weeks). I know the scores might not necessarily reflect that, but frankly it’s because one team tried to double-or-nothing our round about princesses, brides, and The Princess Bride and they got “nothing” because they forgot that Padmé Amidala was a) a queen and not a princess; and 2) she was from Naboo and not Alderaan.

Another team knew that code name of “The Bride” in “Kill Bill” was “Black Mamba”, but didn’t know her first name was “Beatrix” (which is what I asked for). Frankly that’s a more forgivable mistake than confusing Queen Padmé Amidala with her daughter Princess Leia Organa (I mean, really people, we’re talking about everyone’s favourite space western by one of our most forward thinking & moralist filmmakers and not everyone’s favourite revenge westerns by one of our most self-indulgent & violent filmmakers).

Fewer wrong answers also means fewer opportunities for comedy, both on stage or here in the blog (and as always, when I tease about a wrong answer, I never call out any teams by name because the point isn’t to shame anyone, but to just have a collective laugh, including from the team that gave the funny wrong answer). But our funniest wrong answer of the night needs a little context. Since we’ve gone to a contactless/digital format for teams to provide their answers, there has been a challenge to correct typos (I don’t know if it’s a bug or a feature of the interface). In our picture round titled “Stay Frosty”, we asked quizzers to identify the headshots of Steve McQueen (aka, The King of Cool) and Ice Cube (aka, O’Shea Jackson). One team mistakenly type Ice Cube for the picture Steve McQueen…given the prowess of this team, I knew it was probably a slip of the finger (also given both how Steve McQueen & Ice Cube, shall we say, look NOTHING alike, it had to be a simple mistake)….however they also typed Ice Cube for the picture of Ice Cube. This left me perplexed. But after I gave out scores, they question when I had them with one less point than they expected. I told them it was because they gave Ice Cube as the answer for Steve McQueen. This team acknowledged their mistake and said they couldn’t correct it in the app, so that gave Steve McQueen as the answer for the picture of Ice Cube. Now as I’ve said from the beginning of this digital scoring error, if I can easily discern the intent of a team’s answer to be correct, even if they are grossly misspelled, I will count it correct….and if this team did in fact flip their answers for the two racially different celebrities, I would have counted both answers as correct. However the did not answer Steve McQueen for Ice Cube’s picture….I’m sure they wanted to, but instead they answered Ice Cube for Ice Cube’s picture (so yes, they had Ice Cube as the answer for two successive questions and thus I could not give them credit for their Steve McQueen mistake). 

Geez, that was a long walk just to say that this same team did not know that William Goldman wrote both the novel & the screenplay for The Princess Bride, so they instead gave the cute answer of “Steve McQueen featuring Ice Cube”. I chuckle and declared it as my fave wrong answer of the night and how I appreciate it when quizzers have a sense of humor about their mistakes (seriously, some quizzers take our friendly little bar trivia a little too seriously :-/ ).

As far as things I think we all learned from quiz (or at least I learned), there were a couple of them. First, when one team said that Ebony wood comes from Ebony trees, I chose to look it up to be sure we were right and that they were not. Interestingly, Ebony wood come from various varieties of trees, not a single type of tree….thus I could not accept “tree” as a correct answer (but at least now we know, right?). Also there are hills in the Bohol province of the Philippines that turn brown during the dry season and are called the Chocolate Hills because of that. #TheMoreYouKnow

Being someone who loves to travel the world to see things that are unique, I’ve placed the Chocolate Hills of the Philippines as one of the places in the world to check out. And speaking of other cool places in the world to visit, our matching round gave us 10 such places that must be seen before we die. I’m happy to say I’ve been Machu Picchu in Peru and the Colosseum in Italy (and I’ve been to Teotihuacan in Mexico, so Chichen Itza isn’t high on my priority list give I need to see Christ the Redeemer in Brazi, the Great Wall of China, Petra in Jordan, the Taj Mahal in India, the Great Pyramid of Giza (which I plan to see when I go to Egypt for the 2027 total solar eclipse), the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. So all you ducking anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers/COVID-denials, get your chite together so that we can all start traveling the world again!!!!!

Standings were tight for most of quiz, but frankly that was only because no one had successfully doubled-or-nothing’d a round. However I knew (and predicted over the mic) that I expected one team to double at least one round toward the end of quiz because I have learned that’s what they are want to do….and sure enough, they successfully double the last three rounds to pull away from the pack like Lance Armstrong used to do in the Alps during this reign of terror over the peloton in the Tour de France. #TIOOYK (Now I’m not saying this teams is using PED to dominate quiz….I’m just saying they do tend to dominate quiz….I’ve leave it to someone else to collect their urine as I don’t get paid nearly enough to do that. #JustSaying)

But I am most happy to report is that The donkeys have move up from being below the Mendoza Line their first two weeks to coming in second place. This is just so awesome and I couldn’t be more proud that them for sticking with it. 

Sadly, on a personal note, I have to leave for Colorado for a couple of months to deal with some personal business. But don’t cry for me The End on Calle Mayor as I will never leave you. However there will be a sub coming in for the next 8 weeks….and if we’ve learned anything from recent events in Afghanistan, anyone leaving on a place for a “change of scenery” is running the risk of a coup where a substitute leader might take over. #TooSoon?

I do hope to be back with all you wonderful people, if not at The End, then someplace else in the South Bay.

Take care, Be well, and as always….

Stay curious, my friends!

Love,

~shadan “the long winded Persian”

QUIZ RECAP

Thank you to all who came out for our sophomore quiz. And a special thanks to my fave team of the night, Tits and Crass. This team of MILQs (Moms I’d Like to Quiz) read about how much fun people had from last week’s blog and came out for a good time…and from what I could hear from them as I was on stage, I was definitely showing them a good time (then again, it could have been the wine - whatever, as long as they were enjoying themselves and I was there to be a part of it, it was all good). And of course my fave part of the night was when the MILQs invited me over to sit with them after the quiz. They were so cute that they even brought glasses in order to appear smarter and intimidate their opponents. I hope they come back again to be quizzed (because who doesn’t love a good MILQ 😉 ).

As far as the quiz itself goes, it must have been tougher that normal as no one even attempted to double up their points (which was a good thing as no team got all the questions right in any one round). Frankly, that’s how I think it should be - given that teams can double-or-nothing as many times as they want, there should always be at least one question that would be in the realm of a $1800 or $2000 question on “Jeopardy!”

Speaking of J!…

SPOILER ALERT - Pat Sajak is still very much alive!!! So when we are asking about a RECENTLY departed game show host [whose children accepted his very last Daytime Emmy Award), Mr. “I’m still hosting Wheel of Fortune” is not the right answer.

Speaking of wrong answers that make no sense…

I can’t believe there are people out there who still haven’t see the movie “A League of Their Own” in the last 30 years…okay, I guess it’s not that unreasonable for there to be people who haven’t seen that movie since it hasn’t been on TNT or TBS in the last two weeks. Then again, it is on Amazon Prime and Hulu and Apple+ and pretty much every other streaming service…so while it may be reasonable people have not seen this rather well made movie with a really good story based on real events and real people, it is not reasonable for people to not know that this really good story was about the one time there was a women’s professional baseball league (the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League) during World War 2 while there while many Major League Baseball players were fighting the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan). Now to be fair all but one team got the right answer of Rosie O’Donnell…but to be unfair, the lone team that go it wrong guessed Jimmy Kimmel. Okay, fine, perhaps Jimmy Kimmel in drag looks like Rosie….but still, not cool to not at least guess some random female comedian who became a talk show host and has acted as well…yanno, like Ellen.

And lastly, while we learned which sad NBA teams have never won an NBA Championship, we also learned that there are few teams who won championships in the 1950s but no one remembers because they have moved since then. Teams like the Rochester Kings (who later became the Kansas City Kings and who we know today as the Sacramento Kings) and the St. Louis Hawks (who moved to Atlanta Hawks the year I was born). #TheMoreYouKnow

There were basically two competitions last night: two times vying for first and two teams vying for last. Queen Trivia & Mr.Poopybutthole kept it tight throughout the night, even trading spots a couple of times (as did Tits and Crass vs The Donkeys for last). In the end, QT & Mr.PBH tied and the 3-person team of Mr.PBH beat out the 6-person team of Queen Trivia - proving once again that it’s the quality of the players, not the quantity that matters.

Oh, before I forget…

There is some really cool art hanging up around The End. But the best thing about this art is that it’s for sale by the artists. The End makes zero money off the sale. The End is doing this as a way to help artists who have really struggled this past year due to the pandemic. And the artists have agreed to kick back 10% of the sale to the member of the wait staff who makes the sale. It’s a really awesome way to help two communities that had a harder 2020, financially speaking, than a lot of us.

I’ll share more pictures and info in future blogs.

I look forward to seeing everyone next Wednesday, 18 August, at 8pm.

Stay curious, my friends!

~shadan “the long-winded Persian”

QUIZ RECAP

Last night was the triumphant return of King Trivia at 4525 Calle Mayor, Torrance, CA 90505. However last time we were there (in the “before times”), the place was known as Hey 19. Unfortunately Hey 19 wasn’t able to survive the COVID-shutdown, but a new place has risen in its place: The End - and it is awesome!

Last night was also my triumphant return to hosting quiz after a 5-year hiatus. It was quite moving to see old friends/quizzers from my previous life and so great meet new quizzers/make new friends. I didn’t realize how much I missed hosting until I took the mic and started bantering with the quizzers. Hosting quiz is so much more than just reading questions and answers…for me it’s about getting to know each other and for our community to become better connected/related. 🙂

The restaurant was full with 8 amazing teams taking part in our relaunch. I was quiz impressed with how well the new contactless/digital scoring system work. And like with any good quiz, we all learned a little something (and laughed at some of the more ridiculous questions and answers).

It was really quite amusing to have a question in the very first round about the standard QWERTY keyboard given that everyone is now using that keyboard in order to answer all questions. That question was soooooo 2019… but I mean, I guess technically it’s not cheating given everyone was operating from the same level playing field. (It just would have been so embarrassing if any teams got it wrong - not just embarrassing, but after asking the question, I did declare that any teams who got the question wrong would not be allowed to win, even if they got every other question right - thankfully no teams got it wrong. 😉 )

My own intellectual curiosity was piqued by the question regarding the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery, which has also been adapted into a philosophy. I had never heard of Kintsugi (and apparently I wasn’t the only one). However one team came so close with their answer of Kintsokuri. The similarity in the words was just too coincidental to me, so I took a few extra moments researching both of them. Interestingly, both do mean “golden repair/joinery/mending”, but only Kintsugi has taking that act and built a philosophy around it. Being a spiritual person, I look forward to learning more about it.

The biggest controversy of the night came from our matching round. The online scoring system had “Panthera leo” listed being the genus for a panther even though it’s clearly for a lion (“leo” - DUH!!!). Btw, the genus for a panther is “Panthera pardus”. #TheMoreYouKnow

And lastly, my fave wrong answer of the night came from a team who couldn’t remember if Spiro Agnew or Nelson Rockefeller were among the last 10 Vice Presidents we’ve had - so they answered “Spiro Rockefeller”. <lol>

The competition for the top spots was fierce. Plush Monkey started off strong, especially with successfully doubling the first two rounds. But then they played it safe with the final round, getting the first and last names of all 10 VPOTUSes correct, but not doubling. This created an opening for We’re Not Here To Make Friends to go from 4th to 1st by doubling the last two rounds. Even though both teams doubled two rounds, doubling the first two rounds yielded 28 points and doubling the last two round yielded 40 points…and interestingly, those 12 points is the precise margin between 1st & 2nd. (I don’t think Plush Monkey will make that same strategic mistake again. 😉 )

I look forward to seeing everyone next Wednesday, 11 August, at 8pm.

Stay curious, my friends!

~shadan "aka, the long winded persian"