Kisses for Kittens has three-week win streak

K4K has a little dynasty going at Ray's Wednesday nights, notching three consecutive Beautiful Golds.  This has been overlooked in my blog hiatus.  This week we had a full house  which manifested itself in just three teams.  Your scores from Ray's just for the past three Wednesdays, in reverse chronological order:

Kisses for Kittens  132

The Georgian Military Juggernaut  130

Amoeba Frohawk  128

Kisses for Kittens  97

Another One Bites the Aerosolized Anthrax Dust  72

Quizzie McGuire   66

Kisses for Kittens  142

Late Room  127

Mondays have had extremely uneven turnout.  A month ago it was busier than Wednesday, now we're hobbling along.  Consider stopping by.

Vote for Ray's Happy Birthday Bar as the Best Dive Bar in Philadelphia

Here is your link for that, on AOL/CityBest.

It might be the one vote you cast this year that gets counted...

Bobby Rydell visits Ray's; your bartender Paul E. ruins everyone's photos

Apparently he jumped into all of the pics, making faces like that one. This is the only one he has a copy of, and I had to share.

Ray's Happy Birthday Bar: The viral(?) video

With a cameo from yours truly. This will be on the upcoming uwishunu.com profile of Ray's soon. Thanks for the alert to cameraman/editor Jimmy V., who tells me that the garbled beginning is only in the YouTube upload.

South Philly Five Bar Crawl: I have a FREE pass for one lucky player at Ray's this week!

No word on whether or not First Drunkette Jenna Bush will be attending, but as part of Philly Beer Week, Ray's Happy Birthday Bar and four other nearby South Philly bars are selling $12 vouchers good for five drinks, one drink at each location, Saturday, March 8. Yes, that's less than $8.72 per drink assuming I did the math correctly.

Ray's was kind enough to give me a FREE pass - a $12 value - as a shout-out prize for this Tuesday's quiz.

Other participating bars are 1601, The Dive, South Philly Tap Room and the POPE.

Doc Lee & Co. entertained splendidly at Ray's Happy Birthday Bar

Just a quick note to let you know that I caught the Doc Lee & Company show I wrote about last week. Doc is a great singer, covering a lot of standards of everyone from Marvin Gaye to Sinatra, and you can tell that keyboardist Sheffield Craig is having a darn good time when he plays out.

These guys will be gently rockin' Ray's again the evening of January 29th, so be sure and come on out to support the cause of great live music in Philadelphia.

Doc Lee & Company set for a night of music at Ray's Happy Birthday Bar

Doc Lee & Company will be playing 3 shows at Ray's Happy Birthday Bar on the night of Saturday, November 24. Showtimes are 9:30, 10:30 and 11:30 and admission is free.

According to the flier, Doc Lee is a "legendary r'n'b singer... former singer with the Tymes vocal group on the RCA label. This vocal stylist brings with him an array of soulful songs from the '50s, '60s and '70s... from Otis Redding to Marvin Gaye to Billie Holiday to Billy Paul."

The Tymes are all over the web, but Doc Lee is not unfortunately. I did get a hit for the Doc Lee Pepper Company of Greensboro, North Carolina, which has been producing Doc Lee's Blue Ribbon Pepper Relish since 1977. A lot of times both older obscure soul singers and regional condiment companies have a hard time establishing a net presence, but I'm willing to endorse both sight-unseen. Nine times out of ten you don't want to miss an old soul singer, nor a small-batch regional hot sauce. These things are what redeem America in the eyes of the world.

Johnny Gloryhole wins at Ray's

Three different champs in 3 weeks at Ray's. Johnny Gloryhole had a clear victory Tuesday, defeating Quizzo-cutioners 119-94 in the race for the top spot. For their efforts the Glorylads won some liquid comfort and a copy of the '70s touchy-feelie (un)game The Stamp Game: A Game of Feelings. You can see how happy this made them, too. It's a great game to pull out at a party if people are having too much fun and you'd like to lose a couple of friends and a great deal of dignity.

You can't make this up if you tried:

"The Game consists of 100 of each colored card (stamps). The stamps name seven predominant feelings, plus one unspecified, Anger ― Fear ― Happiness ― Confusion ― Guilt ― Sadness ― Embarrassment ― Wild Card.

General Directions

"1. Players sit in a circle, or if only two people they sit across from each other. 2. Stamps (colored cards) are placed in the center of the circle and in piles according to color. 3. Players pick up stamps that represent their feelings. The more intense the feeling the more stamps a player will pick up. 4. Players position their stamps in the order representing which of their feelings are most visible/most aware of down to those that are least visible/kept hidden. 5. Players take turns sharing their feelings in relation to their stamps and the feeling presented. 6. Other players offer feedback when player sharing finishes. This is optional."

"Oh please can we play with optional rule 6 this time? I don't get enough criticism in my daily life!" I love "Wild Card"; it suggests that things will only get worse after anger, fear, confusion and sadness. Don't forget to visit the article How the Stamp Game Was Created. I had a pet theory about Yakub, but it turns out to have been the work of Claudia Black, PhD.

The Ray's quiz is really taking off; rumor has it that Ray's legends Kisses for Kittens will be in the mix next week! We'll see them and you Tuesdays at 9pm!

Beautiful Gold: Johnny Gloryhole 119
So-So Silver: Quizzo-cutioners 94
Shameful, Shameful Bronze: Drink to Fuck or So... 83

Also-rans:

Paul E.* 24

*Paul E. only played the art round, and had the best score in it!

Jet Czech wins big at Ray's, becomes first Ray's team to make All-Time Top Ten

Jet Czech won by a wide margin at Ray's on Tuesday, beating up on Cosine of Four 159-92. The 159 points ties them for the 10th all-time high score, sets a new Ray's record and also gives them a new Ray's margin of victory record with a big 57 point cushion.

The bulk of the difference was the 1967 audio round, in which Jet correctly identified 8 of 10 bands. This was an especially impressive showing as two members had just flown in that day from Turkey and were jetlagged. It was Cosine's first loss in a month.

Scores:

Beautiful Gold: Jet Czech 159
So-So Silver: Cosine of Four (-2) 92
Shameful, Shameful Bronze: Johnny Gloryhole 84

Also-rans:

New York Defectors 47

Good to see the returning teams! Hope to see people again next week.

Week in review

The big news of the week was Group W's nearly record-setting performance at Frank's. They scored a ridiculous 171 in one of my harder quizzes, blowing away the field. Note at the right side of this page that that's the second-highest score in the history of this format. W is almost impossible to photograph, kinda like getting decent footage of mating sharks. Again, you just need to come out to Frank's on a Wednesday night and see them in action. I'm using this photo to represent them, it's a male and a female with a ball. Group W are a male and female, and this week were joined by the similarly purposeless-but-fun Mr. Ball. It's a visual pun, and taken in Iraq to boot. Am I going to Hell yet..? Dave from Group W was also awarded a hardback copy of Dirty Dave's 101 X-Rated Jokes as a spot prize, which is oddly selling for more than $37 Canadian on Amazon.ca. Go figure. It's not even funny.

Team Mike finished an honest last place and therefore won a used-but-intact edition of the game Adverteasing. It's a trivia game focused on advertising, and unfortunately if they play it as a group some of them will still lose. Thanks for coming out, guys! They almost screwed things up by getting 2 right in the Unreasonably Difficult Round too. Last by 3 points!

I'm happy to report that we had our second consecutive week of no shouted answers at Frank's. Thank you. The scores for this week follow...

Champs: Group W 171
So-So Silver: Suck Gas Evildoers 134
Shameful, Shameful Bronze: Prufrock 117

Also-rans:

Holding Alli's Hair Back 75
Team Mike 73

We can only hope Alli gets better!

Over at Ray's on Tuesday night, a smaller version of our old friends Frankenberry Harvest won by a comfortable margin. The team walked home with some free drinks and another darn Adverteasing game! What can I say, there they were, they're cheap, they're trivia, I snagged a couple when available as prizes.
In second we had Machete, only one member of which was willing to appear on camera:
This fellow appears to be indicating that he's willing to commit as many as 5 lewd acts for $3. At least that's how I interpret that. Your scores:

Champs: Frankenberry Harvest 108
So-So Silver: Machete 92
Shameful, Shameful Bronze: Cosine of 4 (Minus 2) 89

Also-rans:

It's a Shame About Ray's 76
Shakes 43

There was light bar attendance this week. Hopefully things will pick up next week. Remember that you can play one or both quizzes as a completely new set of questions is written for each. I'll be posting the most challenging questions of the week and a whole lot more in the coming days. See you soon!

NEW VENUE - Ray's Happy Birthday Bar

In light of the last-minute cancellation of the Tuesday night quiz by Finn McCool's, I've managed to secure a replacement venue at Ray's Happy Birthday Bar in South Philly, tonight at 8:30.

Ray's Bar - "The Happy Birthday Bar"
South Philly
1200 East Passyunk Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19147
Telephone: (215) 365-1169

Be especially nice to the bartender, Paul E. We grew up in close proximity in the lower NE. Obviously there's something bad in the water pipes up there.

Although the technical address of Ray's is 1200 E. Passyunk, the bar is located between 8th & 9th Sts. on Federal, on the same block as the tasty La Lupe Mexican restaurant.

This will be a normally formatted quiz, and we'll figure out prizes as we go. At the very least I can promise a couple of cool board games. I have no idea yet if this will be a weekly event; I now have the night open and we'll see what interest there is.