Friday, August 20, 2010

Second Place Tastes So Good

Pub Quiz Night 5: Mad Dog in the Fog
Quiz Master: Peter
Result: SECOND out of ~10
Team Name: Dolf Lungrin's Kill Count [we know it's spelled wrong]
Team: Kenji, Minal, Angela, Alison, Joel, Seth, Jason, Martin, Koshi, Jess, very brief appearance by Aric

This was it: the last night of my ridiculous week-long mission and our last chance to win some free beer. If we didn't win anything, my week would otherwise have just looked like a thinly veiled attempt to justify drinking every night. My self-esteem couldn't handle it. Fortunately, we kicked ass, coming in second. Yes, second.

Second Place
The team


The team dynamic last night was pretty awesome. Maybe it's because several of the team members had come for at least one other night, many of them more. Maybe it's because I've been doing this all week and have finally hit my stride as team captain. Or maybe it was just luck. There was no talking people out of right answers; in fact, there were several times when one person's initial instinct led to the team building on it to come up with the right answer. For example, a question's answer started with "electron," grew into "radiation," and ultimately became "X-Ray," the correct answer.

Veteran Quizzer
Quiz master Peter


The first two rounds went swimmingly—16/16 points. Then came the theme round, fashion, which went surprisingly well (I think we got 2 wrong, one of which was something like "What fashion accessory is Junior Drake known for?" and none of us had a clue). Minskirt was popularized by Mary Quant, which Alison and Minal knew. But the real secret is that Kenji killed the fashion round thanks to all his trashy blog reading. Angela also pulled out some knowledge from the trash blogs. Who says trashy pop culture rags are worthless?

Pub Quiz Finale: Mad Dog in the Fog
You can almost see steam rising from their heads.


The picture round was not so good, and I'll blame it partly on Mad Dog's photocopied pictures. Well, except Netanyahu, who Seth swore was Sharon. Number 3 could have been Shannen Doherty, Evan Rachel Wood, or any other anorexic-looking woman with long hair who wears giant black sunglasses in public. Hollywood gives us so much to work with, why would we ever think it was a French woman? But alas, it was Carla Bruni. I just went through 54 pgs of Google Image results and I cannot find the exact picture, so use your imagination: she was looking over her shoulder, waving her unnaturally gigantic hand. I was able to find the picture of pitcher Tim Lincecum that we thought was a 16-year-old X-Games contestant:


From here. Naughty, Tim!


Music round was totally accessible, and we are just happy we put Four Tops instead of Temptations. I think we got 2 wrong. We then aced the last two rounds, thanks to the X-Ray question, Jason knowing that "Toronto" was originally called "York," a question about the first US summer games to which we learned the answer at 540 Club, and Alison insisting that the athletic injury known as epicondylosis was tennis elbow. Fuck YES.

This Sh1t is Hard
Kenji, thinking.


Even though we didn't win first place, we arguably got the better prize: first place was $30, which we would have then used to buy one pitcher ($20 with tip) and probably used the last $10 toward another pitcher, thereby keeping us at Mad Dog even later (quiz didn't start until like 9:30 so we didn't even leave until midnight). But second place was just a free pitcher of Bass, which was perfect! Let this be a lesson: aim for second place, first is just cash.

3 comments:

RSA Online said...

Free beer for the win!! And really when second = beer, does anyone want first? ;)

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Best Training said...

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