I returned from vacation to a real treat of a quizski right here! T’was the culmination of a rainy day in Cambridge, and although rainy days tend to deter people from quizzin’ sometimes, newcomers Tubbs Wants a Birdie were actually drawn to Spirit Bar because their nearby Ultimate Frisbee venue was somewhat flooded, so rain can create new quizzers just as easily as it can keep ‘em from leaving the house. So there!

                This week, some folks casted doubt on Tibet’s status as a nation. This, on the very same week in which we memorialized the late, great Beastie Boy MCA in our opening “Recently in Stuff” round? D’awwww, c’mon, the man devoted his life to freeing Tibet! Too soon, too soon! Let’s wait, like, a week or two to go back to filing it under “China”, please? Crack cocaine came up like 3 times and we had a whole category called “Ram It!”, and Mother’s Day receives merely a peep of a shoutout in one question. Not to mention that this week’s runners-up were dubbed  I Teabagged Your Mom. I hope they have less…hairy plans this Sunday for diligent matriarchs than their moniker suggests.

                When I last checked in on the Spirit Bar quiz delegation two weeks ago, we had a one-point throwdown between The Tank and Holographic Robohitler. However, this week, the former placed 7^th, and the latter, now known as Gersberms this week, were 8^th. What the heck, y’all? You’re gonna let ultimate Frisbee champs, mom teabaggers, and a bunch of other rascals steamroll ya? I was shocked, yet quite riveted by the sudden shakeup.

                Alex repeated her E-mail question victory from two weeks ago, playing this time with 3^rd placers Team Turtle Time. She seemed to think her prize of cupcake toothpaste was way cooler than that wretched french-fry lipgloss I gave her previously. Keep it up, Alex, and you may have a household famously known for a proliferation of oddly flavored daily necessities. Next week, maybe, it’ll be Krispy Kreme shampoo or car exhaust perfume. I get sick of things tasting and smelling normal too.

                So many teams this week apparently harbored some deep-seated, potentially venomous thoughts about menstruation that kept them from answering the most questions right. This lesson was learned far in advance by new champs The Team With A Good Attitude Towards Menstruation. They must hold both menstruation and fictional drug addicts in quite high accord, as their nasty 9-point round 7 they so savagely jokered pushed them to the front of the field for good. That round 7, a double-or-nothing TV and film audio round with a bunch of junkies (such as Rickety Cricket, Tyrone Biggums, Dicky Ecklund, and, uh, Jack Bauer?) inaudibly stuttering through profane rants, confused the living hell out of almost everyone except for our friends who slog through that time of the month without so much as a frown. What troopers! Tucked slyly at the other end of the bar from mission control, they seized themselves $30 for their next jaunt to have Kevin and Simon get them plastered at Spirit. Quite splendidly, the culmination of this 11-team gauntlet concurred almost exactly with the advancement of the Celtics to the next round of the NBA playoffs. Smiles, booze, victory, prime quizzage, all in the course of another great Thursday night in Porter Square!

Good day, chumps & chickens, how goes it?  Thanks for a grest cover quiz tonight, please do not hesitate to have me back sometime.  What a piece of ship, huh?  Oh, MAN I bet you wish you got that Goonies ship on R5 right.  Next time.  The only way you can prepare yourself to correctly answer questions about the Goonies is to watch the Goonies.  All the time.  Coincidentally, watching the Goonies all the time is the correct way to live a long, happy life.

Great, close quiz.  A good amount of lead changing going on throughout.  Cats Stress Meowt took an early lead and stayed in the top 3 all night, but were challenged halfway through for the top spot by The Mighty 2 and Champion America Trivia Fun Time Now.  In the end, though, it was 2 Soon that took home the nuts, by destroying (and jokering) R8.  If all quizzes were this exciting I wouldn't need a day job to keep my life interesting.

Great as the quiz was, the highlight of my night came shortly after R2.  I had noticed a middle-aged man and his 5-year-old son sitting at a table near the door.  Not playing, but listening and answering questions for each other all the same.  Before they left, just after I'd kicked on the musical timer for R3, Dad approaches me with THE quintessential proud father grin and tells me that his son nailed R2Q2 (both song AND artist) within the first 3 seconds of the clip.  "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone," by the Temptations.  I think I was just as proud of the kid as his dad was.  I gave him a fist bump and told him he has good taste.  I told dad that when kids listen to music from the 70's it reaffirms my faith in humanity.  I told the whole bar the story over the mic before giving the Q2 answer, and the room applauded fit to raise the roof.  Too bad the kid had already left.

After a series of huge last-minute Jokers shuffled up the standings, it ended up kinda like WWII in space, with The Tank edging out Holographic Robohitler by just one point. Spirit Bar was packed for this one, and a hearty 14 teams showed up for my very first GWD quiz! If this first go-round is to be any indication, I look forward to a lot of real nail biters. We hopped on the Oregon Trail to the “country of Oregon”, only to find Chris Isaak and Helena Christensen rolling around on the sand, with witches and sandwitches in tow.

This week's E-mail question winner was Alex from Al Gore: Internet Hall of Famer, who received a lovely stick of French Fry flavored lipgloss. At first, it seemed cool to give someone the magical power to have their lips taste like processed potatoes all the time. Apparently, the stuff tastes sorta like sand caught in Chris Isaak's butt might. Maybe next time we'll try Falafel flavored lipgloss or something.

I shall certainly never let myself get hustled at Pictionary by anyone I met last night, as every team who submitted “Draw Something...Poorly”, the visual round, scored a perfect 8! I'm still squinting at the thing, and I swear I thought the “manicure” was “lie detector” or “acupuncture” before I even bothered to look at the letters. “Poorly”, indeed! Credit for the jugs on the “waitress”, though. Quick round by round:

Round 1: This Round Is Brought to You by the Number Three
Round MVP: Holographic Robohitler (7/8 points)
0 jokers
Question 1 had a lot of folks fooled. Sure, trichromatic human vision is responsible for people going “color blind”, as nearly every team answered. Curveball, though, as we were looking for basically the exact opposite: “Primary colors”. 10 of the 14 teams outscored the round's titular number 3, so “Maiden, Mother, and Crone” were smiling upon most at this point.

Round 2: Human Centipede's Revenge (Audio Round)
Round MVP: The Tank (11/16 points)
1 joker
We sewed these song titles together to create one big, nasty, symbiotic musical digestion machine. I apologize for having to inflict Boys Like Girls upon us as if we're drinking in a mall food court for 15 seconds, but they were in the “Sunshine” of Cream's “Love” before they went and got “Drunk Again” with Reel Big Fish. Most of you are likely Alanis Morrissette and Bob Seger fans judging by the many who correctly identified “Hand in my Pocket” and “Against the Wind”. That's a pretty killer duo.

Round 3: Say When: Board Games
Round MVP: Witty Pop Culture Reference (7/8 points)
0 jokers
Holographic Robohitler did everyone the kind service of cutting off Question 8 at only 2 clues: “Two players” and “Square board”. Sadly, they rolled the dice on “Checkers”, and lost a point when it was the incredibly random “Go”. Most stoppers did so quite early, you cocky lil' buggers! The tough, stop-happy crowd made this a tough round for a lot of the teams

Round 4: The End Is The Beginning
Round MVP:  TIE - The Racist Tweets; Low Lives (both 8/8 points with Joker)
4 jokers
This tricky-ass word game featured words that had the same letters at beginning and end, and each answer progressed alphabetically. You got the number of letters and a clue. Knowledge of counting and the alphabet, I've heard, are positive traits for a person to possess. When you put them together, apparently, it gets you  a perfect 16 points, into which two teams jokered their way.

Round 5: Draw Something...Poorly  (Visual Round)
Round MVP: TIE - Sofas Pull Out, We Don't; The Mighty 2; The Pube Quiz (all 8/8 points with Joker)
3 jokers
Someone's 8 year old nephew seemed to have wreacked some havoc all over our visual round. He must have shared some sort of cryptic secret with everyone to unlock the secrets of his ancient crackhouse heiroglyphics, as EVERYONE got EVERY SINGLE question right. Well done!

Round 6: Sand, Witches, & Sandwitches
Round MVP: TIE – The Tank; Witty Pop Culture Reference; Toad (all 7/8 points)
0 jokers
The weather's getting warmer, so it's nearly time to plan some weekend jaunts to the beach.  Protip: Remember to bring some of your closest, most culinary-inclined witch friends to bring plenty of sandwitches. In celebration of your next witch beach picnic, alas, a quiz round. I got to name-drop Chris Isaak, Cher, and Winona Ryder, quite clearly the anyone-living-or-dead fantasy dinner OF THE CENTURY.

Round 7: Stand Up or Get Out (Audio round)
Round MVP: Al Gore: Internet Hall of Famer (7/8 points with Joker)
1 joker
Lots of stand-up fans, as no teams scored less than an admirable 5 at naming famous wiseasses. Al Gore: Internet Hall of Famer jokered with their sharp 7/8 round to grab the most points, mistaking only Rita Rudner as Parker Posey. Rita had a lot of people duped, as she was mistaken as Sarah Silverman, Kristen Wiig, Chelsea Handler and Whitney Cummings as well. Perhaps the squeaky funny lady market is overloaded? Toad notched a perfect round of 8 pre-joker.

Round 8: General Knowledge
Round MVP: TIE – The Tank; Holographic Robohitler; U-N-I Sex (all 10/16 points with Joker)
5 jokers
Cricket?!?! Oregon Trail?!?!?! Scooters?!?!?!!? Rowdy Roddy Piper!!! Should've named this round BADASS knowledge. We made the fundamental mistake of talking about Anonymous, so apologies to those offended by the blatant Rule 2 violation. Perhaps if we took cues from Sofas Pull Out, We Don't and referred to it as “Insane Clown Party”, we'd have cleared that credo. Al Gore: Internet Hall of Famer shared with me the apparent fact that “VAGINASSS!” is the largest sub-glacial lake in the world, said to be rife with ancient, isolated lifeforms. Sorry, Lake Vostok; you did a fine job creating mysterious, undetectable ecosystems over several ancient eras but those vaginas have 3 S's and an exclamation point, so please, clear out your locker.

Although Small World...After All were ahead at the half after jokering 20 points out of Round 2, that last slew of jokers in Round 8 led to an unexpected tussle between the top two and a razor-thin one point margin of victory for champs The Tank, who got to take home the $30 gift certificate. I wish they could get a second gift certificate for top-notch rookie heckling as they were killin' the quiz and keeping my n00b ass in check all at the same time as my de-facto “cheer” section seated right behind me. I imagine the next time a 40 slips out of my hand in some parking lot and shatters on the pavement (don't ask), The Tank will pop up from behind a dumpster or or a tree or something with a hearty “OHHHHHHH!!!”

Until then, I'll expect to see them return to defend up against whoever else is mighty enough to take their 5-man wrecking crew on. We'll be on the lookout for Jetpack Laser Mussolini and Fireball Khadafidozer, I suppose.

• Bumsted's - Tucson 8:00 PM
• The Canyon's Crown Restaurant & Pub - Tucson 8:00 PM
• Redwing Bar & Grill - San Diego 8:00 PM
• D Note - Arvada 6:30 PM
• Noonan's Tavern - Aurora 8:00 PM
• Dad & Dude's Breweria - Centennial 8:00 PM
• Old Chicago (Tejon) - Colorado Springs 8:00 PM
• Casey's Bistro and Pub - Denver 9:00 PM
• Moe's BBQ (North) - Denver 8:00 PM
• Nicolo's Pizza - Denver 8:00 PM
• Old Chicago (Market Street) - Denver 8:00 PM
• Rooster & Moon - Denver 7:00 PM
• The HandleBar Tavern - Denver 8:00 PM
• The Rackhouse Pub - Denver 8:00 PM
• Zio Romolo's Alley Bar - Denver 8:00 PM
• The Tavern at St. Michael's Square - Greeley 8:00 PM
• Tomichi Tavern - Gunnison 8:00 PM
• Monroe's Lounge - Loveland 7:30 PM
• Piper Pub - Boise 8:00 PM
• The Spirit Bar - Cambridge 8:00 PM
• Shoppers Cafe - Waltham 8:00 PM
• Coaches Sports Grill - Albuquerque 9:00 PM
• Greenhouse Bar - Nashville 8:00 PM
• Nomad Bar - Austin 8:00 PM
• Strange Brew - Austin 7:30 PM
• Capital Bar - Fort Worth 7:00 PM
• Christian's Tailgate (Heights) - Houston 8:00 PM
• The Maple Leaf Pub - Houston 8:00 PM
• TRUELOVE - Waco 8:00 PM
• Lumpy's Downtown - Salt Lake City 8:00 PM
• Rapture - Charlottesville 8:00 PM
• Merchants Cafe and Saloon - Seattle 8:00 PM
• The Highliner Pub - Seattle 8:00 PM
• The Ram Restaurant & Brewery (Tacoma) - Tacoma 8:30 PM