Trivial Bits
I appreciate trivia and tidbits of knowledge that I most likely will never use in my lifetime. But I think I also have just a mediocre memory, so although I enjoy learning trivial facts, I mostly only remember them sporadically when I try to call them up again from the deep vault of my brain bank. That doesn’t really affect my aspiration to collect data, it just frustrates me while playing board games.
I think I’m a smart enough person, but being good at trivia is a different kind of animal. I know plenty of people who are smart but who are lousy at trivia, and even some people who seem to have a knack for hanging on to random facts but who otherwise don’t seem to be particularly intelligent. I see it sort of like the kids in your class who were good test takers versus the kids who were genuinely intelligent (and yes, I say that on behalf of academic underachievers everywhere). But my point is that success in the one arena doesn’t necessarily imply success in the other — granted, there’s definitely a necessary overlap, but you get what I’m saying. And on a personal note, I must add that it’s especially frustrating for me when I know that I know something but I can’t extract the answer from my head. With my less-than-stellar memory, this seems to happen to me a lot, and so if you happen to be hiding in my bushes while I’m watching Jeopardy! you’ll notice me yelling “daaaah!” at my TV a lot as answers are revealed.
And speaking of Jeopardy!, it’s hard to write a post about trivia and not mention what an enjoyable show that is. I hope it continues to be enough of a moneymaker to remain on the air for another 25 years, and only pray that when Alex Trebek passes the torch it won’t be to someone even more condescending. I do find it interesting though that other networks haven’t put more effort into stealing the idea and airing quality trivia programmes of their own. Sure, there have been other trivia shows — Who Wants to be a Millionaire was wildly popular for a while — but no fast-paced shows with lots of solid, intellectual questions. No need for fluff or heavy budgets, just well-researched questions and answers. This is why In the Know is entertaining despite having the production quality of a discarded junior high A/V project.
Trivial Pursuit is another example of a fun, fact-based success that doesn’t seem to be cloned well, but that exemplifies the simplicity that makes trivia work — it’s a deck of cards with questions that are mostly fairly difficult. And it retails for $30, so why don’t we have a bunch of games like this on the market? Are we short on facts to quiz each other on?
Apparently not. Some people make up their own for others to enjoy (or at least steal them from questionable online sources). For over a year now some friends and I have been doing the weekly trivia night at a pub in town. This has proven most enjoyable, and was an excellent suggestion by Scott. It’s also been fairly rewarding so far, resulting in lots of free food and drink (although I still hate to think about how much we’ve spent there during our weekly endeavors to win these gift certificate prizes). But it’s a good time. There are good questions, some bad questions, lots of chuckles, annoying music and greasy food, and coming up with fresh team names each week is good practice for naming that death metal/polka band I’ve been meaning to start up someday.
(Note: I went ahead and moved various Jeopardy! and general trivia-related comments to this thread.)
I’m fairly certain that whilst watching Celebrity Jeopardy the other day, one of the celebrities said that his charity was a private school that his child attends. I thought that was horrible. Also, it seemed as if there was a rule that on each episode, one of the celebrities had to be a flamboyant homosexual who was always making remarks after each question and slowing down the game.
Jeopardy! Archive!
Since I am a total Jeopardy nerd, I’ll point out a few links of note from Bill’s post:
http://www.j-archive.com/showgame.php?game_id=779
Iddoshe was one of Tom’s kids
http://www.j-archive.com/showplayer.php?player_id=2363
Jill is hands-down the best looker ever to appear on the show
http://www.j-archive.com/showplayer.php?player_id=3954
Roxanne apparently went to good ole MHS
For all you Jeopardy! fans, give it a try. It’s very fun and challenging.
http://www.jeopardy.com/onlinetests/national2009/index.php
Some of us have being doing the pub trivia thing over at Easton and I’m finding that the hardest part of trivia is coming up with a good team name each week. And then getting the guy to pronounce it right when reading out the scores is probably the second hardest part. This week we were Team Jacklepappy (which he pronounced “Jack-pappy”) and the week before we were Uncle Mose (which he repeatedly pronounced as “Uncle Moose”). My suggestion of Pol Pot was vetoed under the grounds that it just wasn’t funny to anyone else. The best name I’ve heard there though was Hobo Chili.
This week there was a team called “Women Be Shopping.” I don’t know who these people were but I thought that name was so funny. I prefer to assume that the name wasn’t meant to be humorous but instead simply expresses all this group of guys knows about women. In an ebonics kind of way. I also like that my spell check doesn’t know the word “ebonics.”
women be shoppin
Wow. Weird how none of us recognized the reference.
I’ve been watching through The Office season 4 and just came across the reference. It’s when Michael’s moonlighting b/c he can’t afford to support Jan.
Last night we were trying to compile a list of the various team names we’ve used/suggested for trivia. I’m sure we’ve missed a couple but here are ones we’ve used in the past:
The Superfriends
Team Jacklepappy
Uncle Mose
The Rural Juror
Astronaut Jones
Siz & Son Lawn Care
Deep V
Lil Snatcha
Cut Me Some Slacks
Murph and the Magic Tones
And for future reference in case we ever want to use them, here is a list of some of names I’ve thrown out there that were either rejected by my teammates or we didn’t use for some other reason. These are ones from last night:
Hobo Camp
Spaghetti Cat
Spiny Norman
Tuna Colada
Cherries Jubilee
Blackbeard’s Delight
2nd Codpiece
Gary Busey’s House of Orthodontia
Johnny Badtouch
Pol Pot Pie
well here is my work for the week…most of these go under the lame category but they amuse me and that was all i took into consideration
without further ado here is my list of team names
Team Names
manscapers
lonewolfs or lonewolves
squid flood
sons of liberty
joy tablets
monkey butter
it’s so cold in the D
drunken uncles
cooters garage
harry potter sucks
lord and lady douchebag
bet you $100 you can’t tell I have something on my teeth
blizzard men
robot voice
…and he passes to the man (boom goes the dynamite)
Brian Fellow’s Safari Planet
the sun is the hottyest planet
A murder-suicide with Punxsatowney Phil
turd burglars
rogue elephant
us and our fancy ketchup
keep it bowlin’ (creed quote)
billy goats in a pepper patch
staring at the sun
special people entering the world egg yolks (spewey from get a life)
we don’t wear the ribbon
Manufactured outrage
tolerance juice (really about anything with juice)
lesbros
the owl says hoot
the action all stars
you like-a the pepper?
gonads and strife
I’ve been working through last week’s eps of Jeopardy! and did a double take when I got to Friday, the season finale. And Scott also emailed me last night about this, so I’m guessing he was amused/annoyed as well.
This site has a decent write-up, but essentially the “middle” contestant was a real boob. Or wang, I suppose, as you can see by how he wrote his name. I won’t give him any more gratuitous search engine hits by mentioning his name or profession, but suffice to say that I’m glad he didn’t win. Now if the mimbo would lose we could get back to some sort of Jeopardy! normalcy.
Julie and I had an IM brainstorming session for team names earlier that resulted in the following:
Been Had Money
The Nightman Cometh
Gobias Industries
Who Dat Ninja?
Werewolf Bar Mitzvah
Bowie to Bowie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zuUJaCUMm10
Kareem forgetting his most famous line in Airplane
I think celeb Jeopardy! has been better so far this season. I’m actually looking forward to seeing Andy Richter play Michael McKean.
Kyle got me interested in sporcle.com. It’s a quiz website where you can submit your own quizzes. Here are the ones I’ve done:
http://www.sporcle.com/games/scottpairan/presidentialburialplaces
http://www.sporcle.com/games/scottpairan/sportsteamsrealhomes
http://www.sporcle.com/games/scottpairan/npsunit
Mental Floss has some interesting tidbits sometimes. Their site is a little cumbersome, I think, but their Twitter page seems a little easier to follow.
Here’s the list of possible team names from one week that I recently found under my bed:
Hail to the Chimp
Tacos, Tacos, Tacos!
High on Life and Skittles
I love my Paw-Paw
Congestive Baboon Heart
That’s Not Very Raven
St. Charles won this year’s In The Know competition. Which is good, because those kids needed something to go right for them for once.
the eigth one down
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080684/quotes
Emperor: The son of Skywalker must not become a Jedi.
Darth Vader: If he could be turned, he would be a powerful ally.
Emperor: Yes. Yes. He would be a great asset. Can it be done?
Darth Vader: He will join us or die, my master.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hyUYJO37Vk
about 3:10 that is from the empire strikes back
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPfK53HBORY
the story of “donka doball” not sure exactly how that is spelled
she doesn;t say the line til close to the end when she is in the car. it was funny on the soup where they cut a lot of the other stuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvvvIm6OhHc
http://www.imsdb.com/scripts/Star-Wars-The-Empire-Strikes-Back.html
Search (ctrl+F) for “join us or die” and you’ll see that it is indeed from Ep 5.
Classic SNL trivia show: Common Knowledge
Where did trivia man get his answers last night from the State capital populations? He was way off on several. Check out the omnipotent Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capitals_in_the_United_States