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Oskar's Kitchen
621 1/2 Queen Anne Ave
Seattle, WA 98109
Tuesdays: 8:00 PM
View All Posts
Comment Now
1:38 PM, May 22, 2013
Scores
Oklahomeless 82
OOOO-Klahoma Where the Wind? Too Soon :( 76
And in First Place 74
Stupid Sexy Flanders 74
LHO's 70
Hand Solo 60
Kickass 59
GNC 51
Happy Birthday Jennifer/Freckles/Freks 51
Key Fact to Take from Tonight: John Elway was NOT a Raider
Stephen


Web

Quiz Schedule
Oskar's Kitchen (Uptown/Queen Anne), Tuesdays 8-10 pm 		Stephen ()

Oskar's Kitchen hosts the preeminent Tuesday night quiz in ALL of Queen Anne Avenue between Roy and Mercer Streets.  Bar none.

About the quizmaster:

Stephen spent the first 24 years of life in northern Colorado, when a little tech company called Microsoft convinced him to try living in the Pacific Northwest.  After four years, he returned to Denver; but at the end of 2009 another little startup named Amazon lured him back to Seattle, and, as it so happens, he moved into a little place across the street from a place with a Wednesday night pub quiz.

After being a team player for a year and a half, Stephen took the plunge and auditioned for quizmastery.  He currently resides in lower Queen Anne, in a deluxe apartment in the sky-y-y, with his lovely wife Laura and a psycho killer cocker spaniel from hell named Kuno.

As a quizmaster, my primary job is to read some questions and give you points for your responses.  By itself, this is a largely thankless task, so I find ways to make it more exciting.  I set myself some additional goals, some personal and private milestones to strive for every time we meet.  One of these goals is to try and build a flourishing quiz community, and by gaining your trust and respect, achieve a position in that community as overlord first among equals.

In this dictatorship community role, it behooves me to share some wisdom with you.  If my life experiences can in any way help those of you in my dominion Tuesday evening role at Oskar's, I have served my purpose.  So here are my lessons for the week.

Truth #1:  Having the most trivia knowledge of everyone in the room does not equate to having the most social sensitivity.  If the court of public opinion could have made a ruling tonight, our illustrious first- and second-place teams would have been found guilty of poor humor and sentenced to one, maybe two wags of the finger and an emphatically disappointed shake of the head.

The fact that we have to make a "too soon" judgment call just shows us how weird our society is.  We're fickle, we're borderline hypocritical, and we have a short attention span.  Why would we care about people in Oklahoma now, but be able to cast aspersions on their ancestry a year from now?  It's not like they become any less human when we stop paying attention to them.

Truth #2: Tragedy gets funnier when we aren't emotionally tied to the victims.  Our top two teams either have no direct emotional connection to Oklahoma, or they are blazingly efficient at stepping through the stages of grief.  And that's OK, pun fully intended.  Not everyone is required to have their heartstrings plucked by the images on television; nobody is forced to dive into a mental tar pit where they imagine what those forty minutes must have been like for the people in the middle of it.

Truth #3: If you want to be funny, know your audience.  If you're emotionally connected to any set of "victims," recognize that not everyone else is; and it's not your job to force everyone else to join you.  On the other hand, if you're detached, recognize that the people who are emotionally involved are well within their rights to get really pissed off at your team name.  From their vantage point, you're trying to start a tickle fight with them while they're bleeding.

SO .... When most of the people in society are "over it," joking becomes fair game.  Some people will never find an event funny; some early adopters will find it funny earlier; we're looking for that point where the whole balance shifts.  It's just so freaking hard to know how to tell if that line has been crossed.

What goes down well with ice? The Titanic!

More than fifteen hundred people died in that tragedy, not the least of which being Leonardo DiCaprio.  That's forty or fifty times the number of people taken out in Oklahoma.  Society has pretty much gotten over it, though.

"But apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

Only one guy died in this incident, Daniel Day-Lewis.  And it was nearly 50 years before the Titanic.  But there are certain people who will never find any humor in the situation:  patriots, many American historians, penny lovers.

Sometimes, the only way for humor and tragedy to touch is obliquely.  Take 9/11 as an example:

Say what you want about Osama Bin Laden, but at least he did his best to prevent Ted.

In the case of Oklahoma, I would like to toss one final thought out.  If you can be sensitive to the people you're joking with, humor is absolutely one of the best ways human beings vent stress.  If I just got my house blown down, I would welcome a chance to laugh.  Jokes for that reason should be welcomed.

OK, you've had enough pontification, now what about our quiz?  Here are your highlights:

  • Only one team, Stupid Sexy Flanders, got every answer right in our movie mayor visual round.  I confess, I was a stickler here, though.  The Grinch was not the name of that movie - you needed the full name for it to count.
  • Hand Solo had our only perfect score in Round 6, the round on ninjas.  I didn't see that coming.  But that's the whole POINT of ninjas.  Well played.
  • And in First Place continues our quiz's trend of having teams incorrectly calling their spot in the final standings.  Look, if you want to be in first place, you have to say you'll be in some other place.  Maybe try zeroth place.
  • In all my QMing time, I have never seen such active early use of jokers.  Out of nine teams, eight of you had jokered by Round 3.
  • LHOs got 14 points in our Light music round, and jokered to boot, propelling them to an early lead.
  • However, Oklahomeless jokered Round 3 after getting a perfect score and turning in their answers SOONER.  It is amazingly rare that Geeks Who Drink has a round in which the victor is determined by a round of sports knowledge.  You were a part of history tonight, my friends.

Don't party TOO hard during the upcoming three-day weekend -- I want to see your shining faces back at quiz next week!  Have a good one.

Oskar's Kitchen
621 1/2 Queen Anne Ave
Seattle, WA 98109
Tuesdays: 8:00 PM
View All Posts
Comment Now
3:02 PM, May 15, 2013
Scores
Tricerapowerbottoms 81
Boob Raider (tiebreak winner) 79
Zombie Int'l Film Festival (ZIFF) 79
#IAteTheBones 75
Mountain Time 71
I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite quiz on the Citadel! 66
Trivia Newton-John 66
The Bearded Victors 63
The Amazons 62
Something about Nipples 61
System of a Downsyndrome 49
Team Wizard 9
I Remember Waking Up Saturday Mornings to Watch "Ass Penguins"
Stephen


Web

Quiz Schedule
Oskar's Kitchen (Uptown/Queen Anne), Tuesdays 8-10 pm 		Stephen ()

Oskar's Kitchen hosts the preeminent Tuesday night quiz in ALL of Queen Anne Avenue between Roy and Mercer Streets.  Bar none.

About the quizmaster:

Stephen spent the first 24 years of life in northern Colorado, when a little tech company called Microsoft convinced him to try living in the Pacific Northwest.  After four years, he returned to Denver; but at the end of 2009 another little startup named Amazon lured him back to Seattle, and, as it so happens, he moved into a little place across the street from a place with a Wednesday night pub quiz.

After being a team player for a year and a half, Stephen took the plunge and auditioned for quizmastery.  He currently resides in lower Queen Anne, in a deluxe apartment in the sky-y-y, with his lovely wife Laura and a psycho killer cocker spaniel from hell named Kuno.

For this blog entry, I'm not going to spend any time telling you about what actually happened in quiz, other than an obligatory quick highlight at the end.  (If you were there, you should remember it anyway.  If you weren't there, shame on you; this is your penance for not showing up.  We had your table waiting for you and everything, but you threw our quiz love away.)  Instead, I'm going to dig a little deeper, and share a little something about each team, some little factlets that they might be too humble or embarrassed to share about themselves.  It's time to grow a little closer as a quiz community.

So, in reverse order from our standings:

Team Wizard - He can lift a Buick over his head, and also loves horses.  Platonically.  She can use her tongue to tie a cherry stem into a knot, while simultaneously creating an origami swan using only her toes.

System of a Downsyndrome - These are lovely people, who simply misunderstand Johnny Cash.  The girl on the left once dyed a man in Reno.  The one on the right has a thing for Nicolas Cage in heavy makeup and other Ghost Riders in disguise.  And while the gentleman always leaves the beer out on the counter, he locks the wine.

Something about Nipples - These individuals are smooth, sensitive and well-rounded.  If you provoke them, they don't become angry but they will get firm with you.  You almost never see them at PG movies.

The Amazons - These fine ladies were simply camera-shy, possibly due to their being in the Witness Relocation Program.  In their spare time they raise money to research a cure for knitting apnea.

The Bearded Victors - She can leap tall buildings in a single bound, and rescues prairie dogs from Oklahoma animal shelters.  He can spit a watermelon seed with enough force to embed it into drywall.

Trivia Newton-John - After heavy exercise, this team's collective body odor smells faintly of lavender and saffron.  Their mother has a strong indiscriminate physical connection to many people.

I'm Commander Shepard, and This Is My Favorite Quiz on the Citadel - The scorekeeper on this team is currently in the hospital having his writing hand reconstructed.  The team is entirely clothed with apparel won through email bonus questions.

Mountain Time - Despite having only six people, this team regularly wins recreational softball tournaments.  The guy sitting back in the dark is their ace pitcher, who can knock a flea off a dog's back at 50 paces.  They have an inexplicable habit of showing up 20 minutes late to their friends' weddings.

#IAteTheBones - When Billy Ocean sang, "Get out of my dreams, get into my car," he was singing to this team.  The second one from the right scored 35 on his ACT and invented the timer that automatically shuts off coffeemakers.  The one on the left has an unreasoning fear of ducks.

Zombie International Film Festival (ZIFF) - Despite their last-second paper-scissors-rock debacle, this team is no stranger to victory.  Three weeks ago, they won the jackpot in the Nigerian Powerball drawing.  Unfortunately, a prince has transferred all of the money to the checking account of some lady in Iowa, so they haven't seen any of the winnings yet.  But it's only a matter of time.

Boob Raider - Currently working to grow the world's biggest rutabaga.  The gentleman in the back has a prophylactic memory; he retains 99.8% of everything he hears or reads, and then forgets it all at once and goes to sleep.

Tricerapowerbottoms - Descendants of the first settlers of Boca Raton.  The team has an obsessive-compulsive tendency to walk or sit so that their favorite colors are in the order of the flags of Mexico and Ireland. 

OK, the quick news-at-11 highlight from quiz:  We had five teams break 70, which is powerful by any measure.  In the end, Tricerapowerbottoms took the top award, due to their well-rounded knowledge base; they shared the lead in five out of the eight rounds.  The real endgame excitement came with the second-place tie between Boob Raider and ZIFF, but due to the intrinsic power that Rock has over Scissors, the Raider team took the prize.

That's all I got for now.  Looking forward to seeing you all next week.

 

Oskar's Kitchen
621 1/2 Queen Anne Ave
Seattle, WA 98109
Tuesdays: 8:00 PM
View All Posts
Comment Now
12:54 AM, May 08, 2013
Scores
How's Your Harry Stimulus Package 84
And in 3rd Place is My Mom is Slutty 77
Land-Boat Saves Christmas 72
Cheaters Next to Us 70
Quiz on Your Face 70
Amanda Berry, Hide and Seek Champion 66
Quiz in My Pants 65
Where's Jaclyn? 61
Macular Degenerates 59
Nameless for Now 57
Anal Tyrants 55
Betta Reneck-o-nize 55
Quick, Someone Get Forrest Whittaker Some Penicillin
Stephen


Web

Quiz Schedule
Oskar's Kitchen (Uptown/Queen Anne), Tuesdays 8-10 pm 		Stephen ()

Oskar's Kitchen hosts the preeminent Tuesday night quiz in ALL of Queen Anne Avenue between Roy and Mercer Streets.  Bar none.

About the quizmaster:

Stephen spent the first 24 years of life in northern Colorado, when a little tech company called Microsoft convinced him to try living in the Pacific Northwest.  After four years, he returned to Denver; but at the end of 2009 another little startup named Amazon lured him back to Seattle, and, as it so happens, he moved into a little place across the street from a place with a Wednesday night pub quiz.

After being a team player for a year and a half, Stephen took the plunge and auditioned for quizmastery.  He currently resides in lower Queen Anne, in a deluxe apartment in the sky-y-y, with his lovely wife Laura and a psycho killer cocker spaniel from hell named Kuno.

People in Seattle are an odd lot when it comes to sunshine.

We get months and months of a cold wet grey-green darkness, muddling through the mist, inexplicably too proud to use umbrellas, in a paradoxical hell world where the rainwater actually makes your skin feel all dried out.  Know why salamanders are all slimy?  They actually just order moisturizer in bulk, without which they'd look like your fingertips after a bath.

So when that shiny little ball in the sky escapes the clouds and heats things up, the crazed Seattle populace blinks, stretches, and disappears from work on "sick" days as they go renew their on-again, off-again relationship with Vitamin D.

We got some serious sun around here lately (87 freaking degrees in May, seriously?).  On top of that, Cinco de Mayo claimed more than a few local victims, who at last check were sitting with cold towels over their eyes and wondering what they possibly could have eaten that was that color.

So when I went to Oskar's tonight, I fully expected a quiz contingent of three crickets and the homeless dude from the corner who sometimes surprises you with a yell as he vehemently argues politics with a voice somewhere behind his left eyeball.

I therefore was thrilled to see a bustling crowd.  A dozen teams carved a couple of hours out of their Tuesday for some quiz action, and far be it from me to disappoint you.  So we went and did this thing.

How did things play out in the quiz itself?  Well, the top two teams are also the two teams that ACED the karaoke audio round, and then just held for dear life onto the reins through the end of the evening.  (They also both aced the 5th and 6th rounds, though other teams shared in that glory as well.)  Land-Boat Saves Christmas got a high score of 12 in the final random-knowledge round (and jokered besides), but it didn't quite propel them into the winner's circle.

Will your team hit a knowledge sweet spot and taste an equally sweet victory next week?  Already looking forward to finding out!  Catch you crazy kids then.

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