Monday, December 16, 2013

Final quiz of the year this Wednesday - Merry Xmas & a Happy New Year!

Wednesday, December 18, 2013
7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: 2013: THE YEAR IN REVIEW

Time once again for the annual review of the year's events in the Subject Round.  This is one of those years when both Christmas & New Year's Day fall on Wednesdays, and for that reason we'll not have another quiz until January 8.  That week I can already tell you we'll be keeping with recent years' tradition and do 2014: The Year in Review as a Subject Round.

Wednesday, December 4, 2013

1000th blog post... didn't feel like one post over 940

Wednesday, December 4, 2013
7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: EVERYTHING INVOLVES THE WORD 'THOUSAND'

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Batten down the hatches for another Thanksgiving Eve

Wednesday, November 27, 2013
7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: VISUAL IDENTIFICATION ROUND

Given the annual influx of Thanksgiving Eve revelers who'd not normally be spending a Wednesday night at the bar, it seems prudent for a few reasons to do a visual round.  Regulars might like to get settled in a bit earlier than usual in order to ensure you have somewhere to sit.

This is the 999th post on this blog.  So enjoy some 999.


Tuesday, November 19, 2013

This week's theme depreciates in value 99% the minute you walk out of the store

Wednesday, November 20, 2013
7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: COMIC BOOKS &/OR GRAPHIC NOVELS

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

C you at the quiz

Wednesday, November 12, 2013
7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BEGINS WITH C

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Pig out on quiz

Wednesday, November 5, 2013
7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: JUNK FOOD

Tuesday, October 29, 2013

All of the answers in this week's quiz will have unnecessary extra letters

Wednesday, October 23, 2013
7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BRITISH TV

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Drink up

Wednesday, October 23, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: ALCOHOL

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Groovy quiz tonight

Wednesday, October 16, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: THE 1960s

Monday, October 7, 2013

It's been too long since the last visual round

Wednesday, October 9, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: VISUAL ROUND

Can't really study for that I realize.  Sorry.

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

It's a magic number

Wednesday, October 2, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: 3

Tuesday, September 24, 2013

It's a double helix of fun at this week's quiz

Wednesday, September 25, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BIOLOGY

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Have a nice quiz

Wednesday, September 18, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round:THE 1970s

Friday, September 13, 2013

How stupid are Philadelphians? Apparently on average we're pretty fucking stupid

I've had an issue lately with a company operating out of Chicago.  Long story short, they've engaged in bait and switch advertising and related fraud.  Although we're getting our money back (after a fight), I still wanted to report them to their local Better Business Bureau.

The BBB, a topic for another time, has given the company an A+ despite 1,400 similar complaints in the past three years which according to the BBB's own site are almost never resolved to the customer's satisfaction.

This led me to wonder about the BBB itself (no complaints ever = A+, yet 1,400 unresolved charges of fraud also = A+?!),  which some small business owners are describing as a virtual protection racket.  This gets us to the title of the post...
 

Exhibit B
Google reviews of BBB Chicago, which popped up doing a phone number search, give them a very low rating (about 1.8 stars out of 5) with 19 total reviews.  All 19 of those are reviews of BBB Chicago, which is obviously what is supposed to happen.

BBB Philadelphia (Eastern PA) has 11 Google reviews, at a higher 2.4 stars, which piqued my interest so I read them.  All 11 reviews - 11 out of freakin' 11 - are of businesses, meaning messages intended for the BBB to readNot a single one - not one of 11 - is a review of the BBB itself.  Because duh.

There's a negative review of a dentist and a few positive and negative things about a few contractors and some obvious requests for the BBB to begin investigating something, although I'm not sure how they would if you leave no contact info and no specifics of your issue.

I flagged all 11 as off-topic so they might come down soon, so if by the time you read this there are 0 reviews and no rating figure at all that's what happened.

This is all the same Google, so the 19 people in Chicagoland who filled the form out correctly and the 11 people here who all didn't saw the exact same internet form and came to completely opposite notions as to how to use it and what it meant, and with an iron-clad consistency that defies statistical likelihood of anything other than local dumbfuckitude.

Congratulations, Philadelphia, you've made me ever so proud once again.

Monday, September 9, 2013

Q is for quiz


Wednesday, September 11, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: FLAGS OF THE WORLD

Monday, September 2, 2013

Sci-fi questions in this week's subject round

Wednesday, September 4, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: SCI-FI

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Your very late annoucement of this week's subject round

Wednesday, August 28, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: WORD ORIGINS

It's been a very busy week, sorry.

Monday, August 19, 2013

Quiz proudly

Wednesday, August 21, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: See below

One of two things is going to happen this week.  Either Historic Philadelphia Inc.'s marketing people are going to deliver a package of questions and bonus prizes before this week's scheduled quiz or not.  If they do then the Subject Round is AMERICAN HISTORY (I should expect it to be Philadelphia-heavy) and if not then in order to stave off doing the same subject two consecutive weeks I'll go with WORD ORIGINS.  Yes, English words.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Quiz the price of certain goods

Wednesday, August 14, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: LANGUAGES

Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Go bonkers at this week's quiz

Wednesday, August 7, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: INCIDENTS OF BIZARRE RUMOR AND/OR MASS HYSTERIA

Monday, July 29, 2013

Travel to South America in this week's quiz

 
Wednesday, July 31, 2013 7:30pm  
12 Steps Down  
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: SOUTH AMERICA

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Time for your close-up

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_G6cvqrLBPnM/Sjjg8qmJElI/AAAAAAAABK8/IMfIri5_5mU/Hill%20-%20Images%20of%20Movie%20Stars_thumb%5B2%5D.jpg?imgmax=800
Wednesday, July 23, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.

 Subject Round: MOVIE STARS' LIVES

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Hot stuff in this week's quiz

Wednesday, July 17, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.

Subject Round: HOT STUFF

We'll 'celebrate' the heat wave with questions about all things heat-related.

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Go back in time in this week's quiz

Wednesday, July 10, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.

Subject Round: THE 19TH CENTURY
Proper attire for tonight's game


Monday, July 1, 2013

Drinker's has fired its marketing personnel, cancelled the quiz and threatened to withhold my pay

What I don't think is considered - or need be considered - by anyone else is that when things go south in a regularly scheduled quiz I still need to explain to people using this blog for updates and making their plans for the week what's happened.  The bar doesn't feel compelled to make any annoucement.  Heck, the bar hopes you don't know the quiz is cancelled and that you show up and order at least one drink before you find out.

Twice I've had bars and/or restuarants seat and serve quiz regulars, let me set up, and then tell me as of five minutes ago there's no more quiz, that the people who just ordered drinks aren't getting one, and I'm not getting paid for that evening.  It's a pretty shitty industry.

If out of the blue I simply stop mentioning a quiz and wipe it from memory 1984-style, that's going to reflect poorly upon me.  I'd feel a bit of a jerk encouraging people to come do something for weeks, months or years and then just not mention it when no longer convenient and leave loyal patrons hanging.  This is not a compunction, I've learned the hard way, that most of the bar industry has.

Thus because I want to avoid that particular variety of jerkery and in hopes that others learn some things from my errors and successes in dealing with these venues (no verbal agreements, people!), I bang out these accounts.

All of the following is unfortunately true:

- About six weeks ago Four Corners Management (owners of the Drinkers bars and otherwise quickly metastasizing) contacted me to start a quiz with them.  Repeating: they contacted me to do a quiz.  This wasn't my idea.  I stated at the time that I'd already tried doing a quiz at the Old City Drinker's a few years back, that it didn't work so well at that location, that either other Drinker's location would likely work better.  I was assured that things were better crowd-wise, that I could expect less patron douchebaggery, that they were willing to put time and money into promotion and that they wanted this to work.  (Allow me to state that bar staff Chris and Sean were nothing but polite and helpful during our brief overlap.  Thanks, gents.)
Drinker, singular
 - FCM encouraged me to come into their business office twice to pick up and distribute fliers and posters on my own time, the first set announcing a 7:30 start time for the quiz.  This was followed by a decision to make that 8pm (because hey screw the fliers and the work put into that) and then after the second round of updated printed materials not to do it at all, because, hey ... isn't not doing exactly what you pay to advertise what they teach at Wharton?  And why not have me distribute materials that are immediately made serially incorrect and pointless?  Fantastic.  Stellar.


- I showed up at the Old City location to do four quizzes. Of those four weeks, two of them were up against the irregularly scheduled, large-prize TV-show themed quizzes at another Drinker's location.  Same nights, same time, and drawing people who'd been regulars at my Templequiz.  And who can blame you for going to the special events with the bigger prizes?  I might have gone to one myself had I not had this quizzo gig someone hired me to do.
Drinkers, plural
- Four Corners had me fill out an independent contractor's tax form and give office staff my contact info separately in case anyone needed to call me.  This was a few weeks ago.  A couple of days ago they ended the quiz - via a two-sentence email from a person I'd never dealt with - triggering a call from me to find out what in hell was happening.   I was told that they lost all my contact and tax info, and had no idea what my phone number nor address were.  The IRS must love these folks.

Drinker's, possessive
- I was supposed to be entered into payroll.  One can expect a gap on that sometimes and I thought about now I'd be getting the first check; that wasn't going to happen if we believe that all my contact info and my tax form vanished.  So ... was the plan just not to pay me or not to inform me that I couldn't be paid until I complained ... or are we just lying about losing the contact info so that no one would have to speak with me on the phone about things like a responsible adult..?  Either way, WTF?

Drinkers', plural possessive
- When I asked to speak with someone in charge after not getting any cohesive answer as to why all of this was happening or when and how much they were planning to pay me, I learned that Drinker's 'decided to go another direction' (one of those zombie-corporate-speak phrases) after firing the marketing staff who happened to hire me.  Also 'this is not a reflection on you [me]', to which I reply I certainly hope no sane person would consider it to be.  Of course it has an impact on me, and on other customers and potential customers, but hey screw us, right?

Apparently it's considered quite alright to jerk around anyone recently retained in a new project because you're firing someone else for unrelated reasons.  Apparently it's the pinnacle of project management to let personnel you know you're planning to let go any minute now start new projects with outside contractors and then spring your change of plans on everyone as a big ol' nasty surprise.  Apparently, as we see below, it's expected that everyone is going to accept this casual jerkwad behavior silently.

I have to wonder how much effort FCM allowed marketing and I to put into this after they knew they were cleaning house and were going to ditch the quiz.


Like this, but older

 Eventually I was transferred to someone identified as a partner of the management group, and I told him that his staff weren't managing this all very well, and that this wasn't a very mature nor sensible way to do business.    He told me that he 'wasn't going to listen' to me tell him or his staff that they weren't managing things very well.  I was referred to as 'duuuude.'  And then told  'maybe I'm not going to send you your fucking check.' (Exact quote.)   And then Dudemaster hung up on me, because that's apparently how adults run businesses these days.  (As a Crank Yankers puppet I certainly see this guy in a tiny Ed Hardy shirt.) Let's face it, the American bar and restaurant industry is built on stiffing employees and habitually keeping their final paychecks, stealing their tips, stealing online tips, especially if and when fallen on hard times.

It's an industry in which wage theft is endemic, and I suppose this fellow thought that he didn't really have to pay me if he didn't like what I was saying.  Deciding not to pay someone in the bar and restaurant business because you're in management and don't like their face or a sentence that came out of their mouth (or just because it's easy theft) is just second nature I should imagine.  Usually the victim would be a 22 year old waitress who doesn't have any paper trail of the money owed, and isn't likely ever to recover a penny.  (Interestingly if you're in the less than 1% of American food service workers in a union, you get your last fucking paycheck even if a building falls on you.)

- I called back and pointed out to other staff that we had a long trail of written agreement to times, dates and amounts for the quizzes, as well as roomfuls of potential witnesses that I did the work, and that it would be my pleasure to have them ordered to pay me my fucking check plus my fucking court costs in Philadelphia fucking Small fucking Claims fucking Court.  Said partner got on the phone again and sheepishly took my address so it would be... unlost.

- A check for the full amount owed arrived the next day.  I'll update this post when it clears so we all know I did get paid, just to be fair to all parties.  (Update: Check cleared.)  Put that small claims court link in your Bookmarks, kids.  On the plus end for once a bar ended a quiz before they served people who came out for it!

The initial casual termination email suggested that Four Corners would give me a call again in the future should they need me.  I can only hope that was as insincere as it read.  I won't be buying a beer from these people let alone getting suckered into working for them again.  Duuuude.

Sunday, June 30, 2013

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Two new quizzes this week

Tuesday, June 25, 7:00pm
Drinker's Tavern
124 Market St. 
Subject Round: SIT-COMS

Wednesday, June 26, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.

Subject Round: CLASSIC MOVIES AGAIN

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Two different quizzes to play this week

Tuesday, June 18, 7:00pm
Drinker's Tavern
124 Market St. 
Subject Round: US PRESIDENTS

Wednesday, June 19, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.

Subject Round: US PRESIDENTS II

Monday, June 10, 2013

Second week of Drinker's quiz; two entirely different quizzes

 
Tuesday, June 11, 7:00pm
Drinker's Tavern
124 Market St. 
Subject Round: CLASSIC MOVIES

Wednesday, June 12, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.

Subject Round: CLASSIC MOVIES II ... yes, a sequel

Monday, June 3, 2013

You can play the quiz twice per week starting this week

Tuesday, June 4, 7:00pm
Drinker's Tavern
124 Market St. Subject Round: US GEOGRAPHY

Wednesday, June 5, 7:30pm

12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.

Subject Round: US GEOGRAPHY II

Yes, there will be two entirely different sets of questions for those of you who can't get enough quiz (and/or beer).  I look forward to starting the new quiz and hope to see you there!

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Back to the '40s

Wednesday, May 29, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: 1940s MOVIES ... by request

What I mean the past few weeks by 'by request' is that some regulars have simply asked me if certain rounds would be possible and I've been happy to oblige.  Thus far the requesting teams have been 0 for 2 in quizzes in which they've had requests filled.  In fact in neither week did the requesting team even do best within the confines of that one round.  Let's see how things go this week.  Reasonable suggestions for categories of question are generally welcome.

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

New additional Tuesday night weekly quiz at Drinker's Tavern starting June 4

What to add to that?  I'll give you more detail as it becomes available.  The bar is at 124 Market St.

After quitting the Temple quiz I was pretty OK with keeping a chill once-weekly schedule, but I've received a nice offer from this Old City bar and who am I to refuse it?  I'm hoping it draws some of you who live closer to that area than South Philly and/or who avoid 12 Steps Down (which is continuing as normal) because of smoke.  I'm preparing to have two totally different quizzes for those of you who need this twice weekly.  You know who you are.

Classic Simpsons in this week's quiz

Wednesday, May 22, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: CLASSIC SIMPSONS ... by request

Tuesday, May 14, 2013

This week's Subject plus... new additional quiz likely starting in June

Third year medical class at Thomas Jefferson U.
Wednesday, May 15, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: MEDICINE ... by request

So I was contacted this week to begin a Tuesday night quiz (that's in addition to continuing Wed. nights at 12 Steps) in the beginning of June.  More on that as details become available.

Tuesday, May 7, 2013

O Brasil é o tema do quiz desta semana

Wednesday, May 8, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BRAZIL
File:LOGO GUARANA.jpg

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Quiz returns this week to 12 Steps Down

 
Wednesday, May 1, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: JAZZ

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

Tonight's quiz cancelled owing to yuck

I have a very nasty bug that came on suddenly (as in "projectile vomiting for distance records") Monday night.  Originally I thought I could tough it out by tonight but unless you'd like to be squirted with the various liquids continuing to shoot out of my rear I don't think this is a good idea.  I tried to get short-notice coverage to no avail.  I really hate cancelling and have done plenty of quizzes in the past when under the weather; this isn't the normal tummy ache, I have some intestinal Alien-style creature in me.

 
On the whole I'm feeling better than I was 36 hours ago - not saying much - but still pretty weak and leaky. Yesterday I was too weak even to really bother with a blog post.  At the moment I'm holding down Saltines and watered-down Gatorade like a champ and should be up and around shortly.  Another few days of this and I'll be on a catwalk.

The quiz will be back next week provided I don't end up in some CDC relocation program.  My apologies.

Saturday, April 20, 2013

FYI: I quit The Draught Horse, no more quiz there (at least none I'm running)

Over the past five years I've been doing the Thursday night quiz at The Horse.  It's been largely fruitful but on a downward slope in a few ways from my perspective.  I'd been considering quitting at the end of this Spring term, and after not one but two unfortunate customer run-ins last night, on the heels of one two weeks ago, I decided that the next few weeks of the quiz there would be a few weeks too many.

First a cell phone cheater I disqualified two weeks ago returned to harass me at the beginning of the game last night.  He appeared already buzzed & looking for trouble at 9:02.  At one point he mockingly said "Oh, this guy takes his job seriously!" which for some reason was defined as a problem.  A fortnight ago he tried claiming prizes I was handing out to actual winning teams, not getting the social cue that if I don't announce your team score I'm fully well aware that you didn't get the last 20 consecutive questions correct on your own merit after getting only 3 correct in the Easy round.

Hyperbolic image, but funny...
Then some prick decided to have a loud cell phone argument literally 3 feet from my head - in a massive room where anywhere other than right next to the one guy running a bar-wide event would be in order - while I was attempting to explain the third round, and refused to have that argument anywhere else than in my face.  It became one of those events in which an over-entitled upper middle class kid who is used to (as I said at the time) having all the college employees on campus suck him off because his parents are paying tuition miscalculated that he had some similar form of power over me.  He discovered too late that he brought a pissing contest knife to a pissing contest gunfight.  As it stands I don't think the bar is legally bound to have my corner should one of these jackholes actually swing at me, or vice versa, and I'm not inclined to find out.  Unfortunately some these kids have been trained from a young age (or see here), correctly, that any incident they cause will rain down a lot more hell on the person working a job with whom they are fucking than they will reap themselves.

When awesome bar manager Jay K. (now living in San Diego, their gain and Philadelphia's loss) brought me on at DH after seeing my quiz at Ray's Happy Birthday Bar, figuring I'd be a good fit, the quiz crowd was more law and grad students.  I'd say that 5 years ago the average age in the room was in the late 20s, and is now in the early 20s, and this has been problematic.  Those few years make for a lot of difference in behavior.  There's also a big difference between a room of grad and law school students coming out for the quiz intentionally, and a room where half of the attendees are fifth-year seniors who happen to be drinking again and find themselves in a quiz by happenstance.

On the whole for most of the time I've been treated fairly, and I thank the staff for that.  Of course "the staff" has been very fluid recently, with a great deal of turnover the past couple of years, and by last night I think I was the only person working in the room who was there when I started.  Things are a bit unstable when your continuity is the quizzo guy.

I simply can't deal with X number of over-entitled 21 or 22 year olds who've been drinking, and have made it a mission to screw with the entertainment monkey with the mic.  This is especially the case when security is running late and AWOL (as happened at the beginning of last night with Mr. Drunken Cheater), leaving me to run a quiz and monitor the worst behavior directed at me in a very large room simultaneously.  And it hasn't helped that a few times when I have brought in management or security to deal with one or two clods in a huge room, ruining things for 120 others, that we enter into behavior negotiations with them instead of just booting them from the room.  Penny wise, pound foolish - unfortunately most of the bars I've worked have taken this approach with problem customers and I don't understand it, so no singling out The Draught Horse here.

I'd be lying if I didn't say that a partial motivation here is that fact that a couple of months ago, out of the blue and with no discussion, for the first times ever after more than 4 years, I'd been presented with a tab for one or two beers on nights I did bother drinking alcohol, on the way out the door.  The first time this happened I wrote it off as a new employee error, the second time I realized it was an change in policy, and maybe a little shady not even to mention when I ordered that a tab was being run.  Often I'd try making Thursday a mellow night, as I do imbibe on Wednesdays and weekend socializing is coming up.   I don't need to hit the sauce 3 or 4 consecutive nights, but I can live with 2-3 non-consecutive drinking nights per week and not feel like Charles Bukowski.

When Jay left town he told me that I was bringing in as much income for the bar as live bands, but I cost a lot less in terms of not paying extra security, property damage and band fees.  He suggested that I probably saved the bar several hundred to a thousand dollars or more, plus headache, each Thursday as opposed to live music.  It seems maybe then shooting me a couple of free beers (at wholesale cost to the bar no less!) would have been a good investment in addition to, in my experience, being the industry standard.  I mention this in part because this same undiscussed tab presentation started at El Camino Real a few weeks before the bar (which had by that point a surreal amount of turnover to the point where I no longer bothered learning each new week's employees' names) decided to pull the plug on the quiz with no notice after seating and serving the quiz regulars who came to play.  Dirty Frank's pulled that same stunt my final night, although in fairness I never paid a penny for a drink there.


What now?  In part this is a relief for me as I'm only anchored to leaving the house involuntarily one night per week, and I can certainly use my Thursday evenings and Friday mornings to work on my non-quiz income streams to the point where I can match-or-better the income lost by quitting.    I also have a few less profitable harebrained schemes to screw around with that I'm more likely to actually do something about with a day-shifted sleep schedule at the end of each week. Between writing material for the quiz, round-trip travel time and doing it we're talking about the equal of almost a full day's work at an office job.  There are few things more liberating than not needing to do a gig.

As I told some regulars last night who want to come out to my quizzes north of South Philly, if you know a relatively chill bar that might like to pick up a mellow Tuesday or Thursday night quiz, I might be up for that.  Hopefully nothing at a college campus, I'd like to do a quiz at a bar I'd hang out anyway.  I'm not actively pursuing that at the moment but would consider the right venue.  It would be great if the place you have in mind - and some of you are apparently already prepared to act as my unsolicited booking agents, thanks - would be somewhere I could keep the questions at an interesting level of difficulty.

Thus thank you again to the Temple U. community and Draught Horse for paying me to berate you with quiz for 5 years.  I feel I'm getting out before a good thing gets too bad.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

This week's Subject Round subjects

Wednesday, April 17, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: PHOTOGRAPHY

Thursday, April 18, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: TV 2000-2010

Monday, April 8, 2013

Defect to this week's quizzes

Wednesday, April 10, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: US CITIZENSHIP TEST MATERIAL

Thursday, April 11, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: US CITIZENSHIP TEST MATERIAL II

Last week I asked a couple of questions about US history and government in the last round.  Very few teams were correct on either and I'm not sure anyone got both correct.  I wasn't joking when as a result I said that I should ask people citizenship test questions to see how well people stack up against immigrants just now learning English.

I'd be OK with making such a test a requirement for native born citizens remaining in the country after the age of, say, 25.   I'm willing to make exceptions for people with severe learning disabilities; we'll need a note from a doctor.  Not sure where everyone else gets deported.  Most countries aren't eager to accept morbidly obese blank slates with video game-oriented skill sets.

One question I won't be asking I did see on a sample test is "What kind of economy does the USA have?"  They were fishing for "free market capitalist."

Is that really what we have?  We actually have a sort of backasswards nega-socialism with pretty tight controls on pricing and an absolute refusal to allow some actors to lose money when they screw up.

Anyone familiar with the columns of Paul Craig Roberts (a Reagan era Treasury conservative in the true sense of the term, so not exactly Karl Marx) knows the detail of how the Fed manipulates the bond and precious metals markets (downward) and as a result the value of the dollar itself (inflated), and therefore any payment instruments issued in dollars.  That's a huge part of the economy right there neither free market nor capitalist.

Add in price basements on everything from milk to cigarettes, the minimum wage (not that I'm against it mind you), massive subsidies on agricultural, mineral and timber products, tax rebates to businesses posting losses, the closure of Wall Street before 4pm when the DJIA dips (but not rises!) too much, the S&L bailout a generation ago, the bank and auto bailouts still occurring now, federal no-bid contracts for a large portion of stuff actually manufactured in the USA, the illegality of voluntary collective wage bargaining in half of the states... all of this the tip of the iceberg... and we appear to have a more managed economy in patchwork fashion than Yugoslavia pulled off on purpose.  The very last thing in the world most corporate managers would want would be to have to deal with an actual market, one in which they'd be allowed to fail.

The Day That...

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Put mayo on your fries at this week's quizzes

Wednesday, April 3, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: BELGIUM... because it's my quiz world and you're quizzing in it.

Or whizzing in it.

Thursday, April 4, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: BASEBALL
Thanks to my coverage team for taking care of the quizzes in my absence.  I've received, thus far, no reports of injury.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Quiz schedule for the next two weeks

Wednesday, March 20, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: THE 1980s

Thursday, March 21, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: THE 1990s
 
Wednesday, March 27, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: TBA

Thursday, March 28, 9pm
The Draught Horse
Broad St. & Cecil B. Moore
Temple University Campus
Subject Round: TBA

The quiz is back at both locales this week as classes have resumed at Temple.  Next week I will be out of town and I have coverage for both quizzes.  Each host is writing quizzes and I am oblivious to the content, other than to tell you that my usual format will be retained, along with the usual prizes etc.
 
 

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Your belated quiz topic for the one quiz this week

Wednesday, March 13, 7:30pm
12 Steps Down
9th & Christian Sts.
Subject Round: YET ANOTHER VISUAL IDENTIFICATION ROUND
This week's Temple quiz (March 14) will not be held because of Spring Break, and the Draught Horse reverts to its reduced hours.