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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

Pub Quiz Week Team Photos

Dolf Lungrin's Kill Count (yes, we know)




UR MOM & I AR FACEBOOK FRIENDS W/BENEFITS


At Least the Beer is Cold


Delta's Burkas (for the Six Degrees of Dixie Carter)


FU OUTSIDE LANDS (winner: Best Team Name)

Dapper Dandy? Tapper Dandy? Dapper Tandy?

Pub Quiz Night 4: Napper Tandy
Quiz Master: Irish girl who says "tree" instead of "three" reading Brainstormer questions
Result: 4th out of ~10+
Team Name: UR Mom & I are Facebook Friends with Benefits
Team: Meg, Marc, Kenji, Kayan, Angela, Alex, Koshi, Jess

I really thought that Wednesday was going to be the night. We started out incredibly strong, and spent the first 5 rounds in the top 3. I don't know what happened.

But I digress. Napper Tandy's quiz is created by Brainstormer, a San Francisco-based company that creates quizzes for bars across the country. They do a number of the city's quizzes, including Elephant & Castle and Rogue Ale House, and run a trivia league. They also provide an official-looking official answer booklet, complete with perforated, tear-out answer sheets. Yes, I want to work there.

The team

But onto the quiz. Unlike every other quiz in the city, the quiz master did not take 15 minutes to explain the standard rules (no iPhone cheating, no yelling out answers, tip your server) I assume because Brainstormer prints them on the booklet. The first two rounds of general knowledge were admittedly pretty easy. Nobody talked anybody out of answers; we seemed to reach general consensus or somebody was absolutely certain an answer was correct. (It's interesting how the group can talk itself and individuals out of answers, which is I think how we lost this one.)

Context can be a curse, and in this case, it prevented us from getting a near-perfect on the picture round. For whatever reason, Marc was sure that the picture of the man was Orson Welles, and even that the photo is the one that appears on Orson's Wikipedia page. But it was on the sheet next to the photo of this woman (below) and numbered in such a way that they looked like they were meant to be considered together.




We obviously knew the woman was Gloria Steinem, but putting the man next to her made us start to think about why they were together. What does Orson Welles have to do with Gloria Steinem? But the picture also looks a little like a young Larry Flynt, and that relationship makes far more sense than the Steinem/Welles. Thus, we put down Larry Flynt.

It was Orson Welles, and, indeed, the photo on Orson Welles' Wikipedia page. Group think can be a bitch.

Instead of a name-that-tune music round, they did something with bands versus solo artists. Given a song name and solo artist, we had to write whether the song was made popular by the artist solo or by the related band. If band, we also had to name the band. We did really well on this, but one thing tripped us up: George Michael. The UK release of "Careless Whisper" was George Michael, solo. But this was a question about the US release, which we also thought was solo. Nope. It's billed as Wham! featuring George Michael. We also got an Eric Crapton question wrong because he was in so many bands—many of which sucked (not Cream)—that we can't be bothered to learn them all.

Quiz master

There were two other theme rounds: people named Charles (we did okay, but not stellar) and Third-Party Politics. We got HOSED in that round despite the fact that many of us actually know a lot about politics. Did you know that Taft is the only incumbent to come in 3rd in a presidential election? We guessed Cleveland. Koshi got a Hawaii question wrong, for which he will now be ridiculed for a year.

We also had some trouble understanding the quiz master because she had a bit of trouble pronouncing some words. To wit: "sovereignty" read as "severity" and "incumbent" read as "ink you bent."

The hooker hubbub

We did not officially *win* a free pitcher, but for some reason I asked for one and the waitress gave it to us! Victory! We also saw a hooker get arrested and put into an ambulance, although we don't get the ambulance part. There were at least 4 cop cars, too.

At Least the Beer Was Cold(ish)

Pub Quiz Night 3: Edinburgh Castle
Quiz Master: Carl
Result: no free beer, does anything else matter?
Team Name: At Least the Beer's Cold
Team: Kenji, Dave, Corey, Jason, Martin, Angela, Meghan, Dana, Jess, guest appearance by Koshi

Trivia at Edinburgh starts at 8:30. I thought it would be nice to grab some dinner and get there around 8, until Dana told me she'd been there once and it was full by 7:15. Wise. I got there at 7, claimed a booth, and watched as nerds snatched up all other booths and tables by 7:20.

Most of the team (we couldn't all squeeze into the booth)

Everyone says that Edinburgh is the city's hardest, but they are silly. It is no different than any other, although we performed horribly in the music round considering we are a bunch of music freaks. It was like a take-home CD from last year's Lilith Fair. Carl also plays the whole song, providing ample time for cheaters in the room to use Shazam. We didn't see anyone cheating, but I can't imagine how anybody knew all of the artists without a little help.

Koshi also found out a little more about the quiz world drama we heard about on Sunday night. The 540 Club's quiz master and his friends used to go to Edinburgh every week and demolish the competition. Apparently one night they argued with Carl (never ever argue with the quiz master) and he tossed them out. They came back again, and he threw them out again. Obviously there are two sides to this story, but are they even worth knowing in this case? DRAMA!!!!

Quiz master Carl

The music round also happens at the same time you're solving one theme round and the picture round. This theme round was actually awesome: biopics. I'm pretty sure we got them all, save Auto Focus, a film about former Hogan's Heroes star Bob Crane. This was also the second night in a row that serial killer Aileen Wuornos appeared as an answer (Monster is about her), and this blog post is the first time I've spelled it correctly. I think our two variations were Eileen Wardos and Eileen Varnos. Now I know.

The picture round was another story. I wish I could remember the name of the toothy British fellow whose name we didn't know, or the woman we guessed was Jodi Watley (wrong), but I can't. I instead give you this awesome picture of Kurt Vonnegut, which we correctly identified as Vonnegut.



I am not up on my serial killers but Corey sure is, and we did pretty well in that round, with maybe two wrong. Actually, I don't really remember as this is the part of the night where I stopped paying full attention. Calling it "pub quiz" is misleading, as "quiz" doesn't adequately speak to the level of endurance required to stay fully engaged for one quiz, let alone many nights in a row.

We didn't win any free drinks, but some of us did go to Grubstake afterward, which is a prize unto itself.

Six Degrees of Dixie Carter

Pub Quiz Night 2: LookOut
Quiz Master: Pollo Del Ma
Result: 4th out of 6
Team Name: Delta's Burkas
Team: Peter, Corey, Laura, Kimra, Pete, Angela, Koshi, Jess

You know that bar on 16th and Market where, on a warmish night, it looks like Falling Water but with dudes in black clothing spilling over the balconies instead of water? As it turns out, they have pub quiz every Monday. This is where we spent Day 2.

As the title of this post suggests, the quiz theme was 6 Degrees of Dixie Carter. People talk about Edinburgh Castle being the city's hardest quiz (we'll get to that in the next post) but LookOut is something special. Even though there were only 6 teams, people really seemed to know their shit about all things related to Julia Sugarbaker. Of course, since drag queen quiz master Pollo Del Mar announces the theme a week ahead of time, and since she gathers questions by clicking from link-to-link on Wikipedia, you have seven days to study up and learn everything you can memorize about the next week's theme. Pollo told us after the quiz that everything she asked literally came from clicking through Wikipedia links, within 6 clicks of Dixie Carter's Wiki page. A few of us crammed earlier in the day but were totally out-Dixied.

Me, writing.

Let's talk for a second about Pollo Del Mar, the drag queen quiz master. I love drag queens, and I love Pollo. Although her stories sometimes veered off into long-winded land, she's otherwise witty and a great host. Unfortunately, as she pointed out in the beginning of the night, the cordless mic wasn't available so she was tethered to the DJ booth. I love a quiz master who isn't afraid to use the word retard repeatedly. And, yes, her name does mean "Chicken of the Sea."

The lovely Pollo Del Mar.

Quiz wise, it was a short one, but Pollo talks a lot so it took longer than necessary. There were only two real rounds, with a speed round as tiebreaker between 2nd and 3rd place. There was no music round.

The best team names in the room is kind of a toss up: "Dixie Carter? I thought you said 'Dick Me Harder'" or "Going Way Down South on Dixie." You decide.

No, Really, FUUUU Outside Lands

Pub Quiz Night 1: 540 Club
Quiz Master: Scott
Team Name: FUUUUUU Outside Lands
Team: Cas, Jason, Martin, Sean-Michael, Koshi, Jess

The Team

We meant to arrive at 9 but got there at 8:30, delayed by drinks at Elixir (don't ask). Trivia usually starts at 9 but apparently the owner asked the quiz master to start early because of Outside Lands, which makes little sense for a Richmond bar. But Scott was a merciful quiz master, and let us catch up on 2 of the 4 rounds we missed.

The theme questions in the round we were actually seated for were comic book heroes and Oscar somethings (not official name), which Cas and Sean-Michael killed, respectively. The otherwise merciful quiz master made fun of me mercilessly for putting Cal down as an answer to a college basketball question. I deserved it.

Cas, thinking.

The music round was not terribly hard, but I talked a friend out of Hank Williams, which turned out to be the right answer. The recording quality just seemed to be too good. I also learned that the same friend has a huge boner for jazz music, which I discovered when he was the only person at the table beside me who knew that Artie Shaw played clarinet.

Cas, writing.

There was also a theme round relating to somebody in the bar named Brian. I got the impression that Brian is the usual quiz master, but I'm not sure. We also found out about a little drama in the pub quiz community—yes, there is drama—when Scott told us that he and his friends used to go to Edinburgh on Tuesdays but had an issue with the quiz master and switched to Martin Mack's.

Quiz Master Scott

In the end, we won a free pitcher for the best team name, but really, I think it's because we trekked the hell out there only to miss half of it and Scott felt bad for us. Mercy pitchers still taste delicious. Jason also made us personalized glasses by tearing up the picture round images and sticking them to glasses.

Victory.

One Week of Pub Quiz

With the school year a week away, I decided to end the summer with a very nerdy bang. So, for the next week, SF Jukebox is SF Pub Quiz. We are doing a trivia night every weekday this week, beginning with last night's quiz at 540 Club in the Richmond.

The schedule looks like this:
Sun - 540 Club (Richmond) [Recap]
Mon - LookOut (Castro) [Recap]
Tues - Edinburgh Castle (Tenderloin) [Recap]
Wed - Napper Tandy (Mission) [Recap]
Thurs - Mad Dog (Lower Haight) [Recap]

We wanted to get a variety of neighborhoods and a variety of competitors, so different friends have signed up to join us on different nights throughout the week. We'll post pictures and summaries for every night.

Wish us luck! Especially with tonight's Dixie-Carter-themed, drag-queen-administered event at LookOut.