Dear Friends, Romans, Country and City Folk, Esteemed Clients, Avid Quiz Players and everyone else who helped make 2011 such an amazing year for trivia, both here in New York and (literally) around the world:

Of all the world capital cities, which one comes first alphabetically?

You are here.

Lisa, Jarrod, Jo, Bari, Leslie, I and everyone else in the DSO Media/Trivia NYC family would like to wish for you everything you wish for yourself. 2011 was amazing, and 2012 has already started fantastically, and we have you to thank for it. We’re managing to make something vaguely resembling a living doing something cool and unique, and without all of youse, we’d be doing it under a bridge, yelling random facts at pigeons. So thanks for saving us from that fate. (The pigeons, no doubt, also thank you.)

If you’re considering a personalized private trivia party for your company or your friends this year (and if you’re not, you really should), then let me give you an enticement: answer the above trivia question correctly, and we’ll perform your private function at our 2011 rates. (More information on private functions here.)

And if you just want to join in the action, you now have two weekly options!

• First: starting January 31, our newest weekly trivia night kicks off! Tuesdays at 7:00pm at the Raven’s Head Pub, 3804 Broadway at Steinway in Astoria (steps from the N or R trains), hosted by inked-up dreamboat Jarrod Hornbeck. Prizes, cocktail specials and our usual brand of high-concept hijinks abound! Check it out!

• Also: Our long-standing flagship operation, Wednesday nights at 7:00pm at Dempsey’s Pub, 61 2nd Avenue (between 3rd & 4th Streets) in the East Village, New York’s longest-running weekly quiz, is still very much in effect. Come early and often!

And if you’d like something a bit more structured, we host a quarterly Tuesday Team Trivia league through the New York City Social Sports Club. Seven week seasons, with jerseys, team photos, loads of drink specials, trophies and post-game activities. Sign up for next season now!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. We’re glad you’re around, and we have tons of awesome crap we’re looking forward to sharing with you in aught-twelve.

Thanks, trivia people. target="_blank">Theople.

[Note: I'm not done writing about my time on the show, but this is a good starting point. Feel free to ask me anything about it. I'll answer what I can.]

Hello, good person reading this. I’m Jeopardy! Champion Tony Hightower.

That sounds pompous, I know, but I figure I get all of one week or so in which I get to gloat about what happened this last week, and this is it. Besides, it’s rare that my slacker ass gets off the couch for long enough to accomplish anything, and this was kind of a big deal. So, yeah, well, go me.

Couple of things about the time I spent on Jeopardy!.

First off: Alex Trebek is far nicer than he comes off on TV. I don’t know how they do it, but he manages to sound way more snarky and bad-cop on TV than in real life. There’s plenty of banter during the games, and he certainly plays to the audience and isn’t terribly patient to slow players and snippy people, but he really is on your side as a player. He loves watching people do well, and it shows.

For a little while, you can watch the video of my two appearances here and here.
And here are the question-by-question breakdowns of Game 1 and Game 2.

Secondly, and I was surprised how many people asked me this: No, we aren’t given any preparation beforehand. They’re rabid about protecting the contestants from the staff. There were two contestant wranglers we were allowed to talk with, and everyone else was basically completely off limits. Maggie and Glenn were our go-to people for everything, and they were fifty kinds of awesome. I love them both. They made the whole thing go so smoothly, you didn’t realize it was a show watched by 9 million people a day, or that you were playing for kind of large sums of money. I’ve never seen anyone better at their jobs than Maggie Speke and Glenn Kagan. Thanks, guys.

Thirdly, in answer to another inexplicably popular question: no, the buzzers weren’t rigged or otherwise favoring of one contestant over another. I don’t know what it was like before Ken Jennings’ big run in 2004, but the morning of my episodes, everyone got a full two hours to play on the buzzer system, on the actual stage, to get used to how the buzzers feel, and where to look for questions. Alex wasn’t there, but Glenn filled in, and he had a decent approximation of Alex’s cadence and rhythm. I know the pressures of TV change people’s buzzer fingers a little, and that can be enough to screw things up, but everyone had a chance to become proficient on the box.

Fourth: The people I played against were all awesome people. Julia Kozicki, the woman I beat, was great and sweet, and if I had lost to her it wouldn’t have been a shock or a disappointment. Jennifer Bernstein could have beaten either of us if the questions had fallen a little different. And on the second day, I lost to a good player in Will Castaneda, and Captain Dan Kull, well, even the people in the bar I was watching that game with were cheering for him.  He was just so god damned good-looking.

Fifth: To clear things up: I wasn’t calling out for Alex’s job, like he thought I did. I was calling out Johnny Gilbert. I know he’s got another 30 years in his career, but still, I wanted to announce my candidacy. Gilbert has the best job of the whole show. He stands up, says “This! Is… Jeopardy!“, introduces the contestants, and then sits down and reads the paper for a half hour while the show plays out. It’s the best gig in show business, and I watched him do it once, and I thought, that’s my speed. (But if Alex decides he doesn’t want to do it anymore and they ask me? I’d be there before the end of the question was out of their mouths. Like I said, every dog gets his day. I’m fully aware that this is mine.)

Do I feel a little wistful about how it ended? Well, sure. I made a betting error that (had I had another 30 seconds or so to clear my mind and think it through) I wouldn’t have made. But honestly, I’m fine with how it panned out.  I won on Jeopardy. How fucking cool is that?

Jeopardy! is the best-run television show I’ve ever seen, hands down, and I’m honored to have been a part of it. They have that thing down to a science, and I was allowed to go up there and clown around on their set for a day without anyone telling me to frigging stop it already. I’m grateful to them, and to everyone who came out for the viewing party on Wednesday. That was positively humbling. Now I owe you guys to keep doing better by trivia, both in New York and in Las Vegas, and Chicago, and San Francisco, and Fort Myers, Florida, and wherever you are. This was one of the better weeks of my life.

Thank you.

Oh, and the cocktail blog I was talking about on the show? That’d be Cocktailians, run primarily by my best mate, Sam. Get on it.

December 10th, 2011 by Tony H

The Drunken Smartass Trivia Podcast is sponsored by Open Letters Monthly, home of our sweet monthly literary quiz.

Before we get anywhere near the inside of this week’s triumphant return to the world of podcastery with this, our newest move into your ears, first may I just thank you for sticking with us while we went down the last two months. (We had a very good reason to take the sudden break, but it’s my fault to not have shared it with you, dear listener.) See, I was on Jeopardy!, and well, that kind of took the whole operation over a bit.

Yeah, I got the call (it’s apparently known as The Call, like I was a relief pitcher in AAA or something), and I flew to Los Angeles to prove my worth as a human being on this planet in front of King Alex the one-legged and his guardians of the intellectual realm. Honestly, it was as fun a thing as I have ever done in my life, and I’m still trying to make sense of it. But anyway, my episode airs tomorrow night, and I’m holding a bit of a party at Dempsey’s, because it has the good fortune of happening on a day where we’re holding a quiz. You should totally come down!

Oh, and this week we premiere the Audio Name Three question. Figure out what the three clips I play have in common, and then tweet the answer to TriviaNYC. We’ll give you something nice. (Dear promotional specialists: please contact us! We have people who like things, and many of them have jobs! Good ones, even!)

Enjoy the podcast.

 

 DSTP #21: Little Silhouetto Of A Man Edition: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This week we were digging:

• Jo Scutts: Adam Gopnik, The Table Comes First
• Scott Lydon: Black Power Mixtape, the movie
• Sam Meyer: the Mutter Museum of human curiosities in Philadelphia
• and me, Tony Hightower: well, I was digging the fact that I don’t have to be afraid I’ll give away the results of my time Culver City before the episode airs. I’m such a friggin yenta.

Feedback? Ideas? Questions? Have an answer to the Audio Name Three question? Did you really miss Podcast #20? Email us! Or tweet at us!

Happy birthday, Dr. Venkman.

The Drunken Smartass Trivia Podcast is sponsored by Open Letters Monthly, home of our sweet monthly literary quiz.

This week, Sam Meyer teaches Scott Lydon how to pronounce snooker, Jarrod Hornbeck knows more about the 1980′s than the other three guys in the room, who were actually there, we insert Adam Sandler into the director’s cut of “Birth Of A Nation”, people so stoned they’ve lost the infant skill of object permanence, we pretend 20 year old hip hop is current, we insert a kicky plot-free musical montage in the middle, just like John Hughes would, and we lock Danica Patrick and JD Salinger in a room together.

Plus: Super Mario Kart battle: Salman Rushdie vs. Judi Dench!

And we discuss the theory (possibly first put forth by Martin Amis, though I’m having problems sourcing it properly; certainly, it wasn’t my original idea) that says that there is no one in history of any real influence whose first name is Timothy*.

(And yes, that is Adam Sandler covering Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves Of London.” So drink your gin and tonica, or smoke your marijuanica, or whatever gets you into the right headspace, and enjoy this week’s podcast.)

 

 DSTP 19: The Best Of Tims Edition: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

• Milli Vanilli’s video for “Blame It On The Rain,” which is as terrible as you think, though honestly I think the music holds up surprisingly well.
• Jarrod is really into Dashiell Hammett & Raymond Chandler novels these days.
• Sam’s digging Bill Carter’s second book about the late night talk show wars, The War For Late Night.
• Scott’s into Iain M. Banks’ Culture series. If you’re not familiar, io9 has a primer.
• and Tony’s been listening to Greg Proops’ awesome, dark podcast, The Smartest Man In The World.

* I mean, Tim Burton and Tim Robbins are both great, but are they the greatest Tims of all time? I’m positive we’re missing someone important. Leary? Howard? Conway? Tiny Tim? Tim Gunn? Tim Russert? Timothy McVeigh, fergodsake? Help us out. Also, if your name is Tim, then you can see how easily this mantle could pass to you.

Feedback? Ideas? Questions? Who do you think is going to be the next American Nobel Literature Laureate? Email us! Or tweet at us!

The Drunken Smartass Trivia Podcast is sponsored by Open Letters Monthly, home of our sweet monthly literary quiz.

First off: Apologies for the podcastlessness last week. There was a hurricane that screwed us up a bit. Everyone will be back next week. This week, though, we have something special.

Had me a lovely conversation last Wednesday evening after the quiz with Chella Quint, a British comedian and quiz nerd (and Brooklyn expat) who’s putting together a project, The Venns, on what makes a good pub quiz, and checking how universal these truths really are.

Her approach is as scientific as anyone exploring the inexact science of trivia could possibly be; her zines are full of charts and diagrams about how often questions contain clues from more than one discipline, how often team names incorporate pop culture references versus topical news items versus sexually suggestive punchlines, and a detailed breakdown of the different kinds of player you do (or don’t) want on your trivia team. There are close to two dozen examples, each with a good anecdote or two.

Yes, I said zines. If the last time you saw zines was in the mid-1990s, well, they’re very much still around. Tumblr and Facebook have skimmed off the fat (which, honestly, was about 95% of them) and left only the most dedicated practitioners, who were frankly the fun ones anyways. Her zines are glossy, quick shots of what she wants to get across. They’re not made to go 500 issues deep. She’s getting to a certain point, laying out some stuff, printing it out, and going back for more, which is how this shit is supposed to go down. Pursue your passion until it runs dry, then find a new one. String enough of those things together, and your days start to look rather like a life. It’s how it’s supposed to work, and there are way too few people who do it that way.

Chella’s on it. She moved to Sheffield as a fan of British beer and football, and stayed for the rest of the culture. Honestly, for what she’s looking to do, she couldn’t possibly be better placed. She’s a comedian with nerdy tendencies who wants to do panel shows and write books. I mean, my god, the BBC will need people like her to present shows until the sun swallows us whole. She’s smart, quick on her feet, glib, and unashamed to go wherever the conversation goes. There aren’t nearly enough people in the world like that. Certainly, there isn’t anyone else doing scholarly research into bar trivia at this level; the work she’s put into this field is extensive, and frankly, necessary.

Enjoy. We’ll be back with Scott, LJ & the rest of the our panel-based ado next week.

 

 DSTP 18: The Chella Quint Interview: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

If you’re interested in more information about any of Chella’s zines, including The Venns: A Quest For The Perfect Pub Quiz Team, Adventures In Menstruating, or It’s Not Just You, I Need Space (a poetry zine in which celestial bodies have feelings of attraction and rejection), you can reach her on Twitter @ChellaQuint or via her blog.

Feedback? Ideas? Questions? Email us! Or tweet at us!