In which our ingenious amphibian adopts a cunning disguise, and is yet robbed of 3rd place by having fewer points than 3 other teams.

In a tribute to Dave's tribute to Joseph Heller, and in no way because the team had grown sick of the title Ethel the Frog, our ingenious amphibian adopted the name The dead man in Yossarian's tent last night as a cunning ruse by which to sneak up unawares upon our arch-nemeses (who had yet to be identified) and open this blog post with an inordinately long sentence (which I feel I have achieved).

Within a few moments of declaring this alias, the team a few places down from us on the big excel spreadsheet display had changed their name to Major Major Major Major, thus announcing to all and sundry that it was on, dear reader, like Donkey Kong. Also on our hit-list was a team calling itself Brian Slept with a China Man, ¹who clearly felt the need to resort to such underhand tactics as bringing a team of 15 people in order to beat us. Arse-cunts. Another name worthy of note, being the Fudge Packers. Fudge Packer, dear reader, turns out to be New Zealand slang for gay. And they call Australians crass and un-couth .... to which we respond by joking that they like to shag sheep, thereby demonstrating their point.

By the end of the night, dear reader, you will be pleased to learn that we had crushed both the Fudge Packers and, more importantly, Major Major Major Major underfoot. Brian on the other hand, no doubt due to having the answers supplied to him by that China man in return for his fudge packing services, went on to win the night on 78/100. Two other teams tied on 72, and we got 68.

Questions we failed to suck at.

1. What U2 song was dedicated to Billie Holliday? But for my somehow managing to mix Billie Holliday up with Buddy Holly, we would have gotten this a whole lot sooner.....
2. The flag of Ethiopia consists of of what three colours in vertical bands? Thanks go to Helena for inducing me to look at that flags web-site.
3. Who spreads herself over a piano in The Fabulous Baker Boys?
   
4. What European team won the 1982 World Cup(the real one)? I just felt the need here to point out that there are sports questions I actually know the answer to.
   

Questions we managed to suck at.

1. Who played the title Role in the 1980s Cop show T.J. Hooker?
2. What land carnivore is said to be able to smell humans from 20 miles away?
3. What is the only animal born with horns?
4. What is the highest altitude capital in Europe? A useful one to know, since it's not the one you'd (probably) suspect. Also, my office-mate is currently disputing the answer, and apparently has some grounds to do so....
   

¹A claim over which some doubt was expressed.

Concerning Ethel the Frog's worthy ascention to the top of the trivia pack.

By which, of course, I mean the top of the Bell curve. With a team of three, we came 7/15. A great many things worthy of note occurred at trivia last night, let me tell you dear reader. Unfortunately, it is my melancholy duty to inform you that as far as I could tell they all happened to other teams.

To what should I direct your attention, I wonder? The manner in which the noble Sancho managed to confuse a stilson wrench with a monkey wrench in round one? This was, I admit, high drama indeed .... but up to the usual standards required of a trivia post concerning our most excellent of frogs? I think not.

Without further ado, then, let me just relate that the night's themes were as follows:

1. Tools
2. Military matters
3. Western Movies
   
4. The written word¹.
5. History²
6. Science and Nature
7. Pot luck
8. Grammy winners³.

And while we're on the topic of lists, let us see what manner of questions I can recall.

Questions such that, by virtue of supplying a correct answer, our noble frog earned at least 1 point.

1. What U.S. military unit goes by the motto "semper fidelius"? My thanks to the movie Rushmore, for the fact that the words 'semper fi, soldier, semper fi' (spoken in a Scottish accent, which I want you to imagine I'm imitating it right now, 'cause I am) were used in Max's play.
2. The polaris missile is used by which branch of the military? I knew this from an episode of "Yes Minister".
   
3. What battle tank was named after some general from the Vietnam war? Should I be ashamed of knowing the name of a likely, and it turns out correct, candidate?
4. Spell "brochure". Yeah, there's quite a range in question difficulty....
5. What is the difference between the words "flammable" and "inflammable"? Look, so most of the interesting questions I remember we fucked up....
6. 2007 best pop performance by a group 'My Humps'? Mentioned as an excuse to link to this.
   

Questions of such unparalleled dastardly cunning and insurmountable difficulty that our ingenious amphibian was incapable of supplying a correct answer, and was thus forced to go pointless.

1. How many branches of the U.S. Military are there? There's an obvious line of reasoning related to a famous building which occurs to you only when you know the correct answer.
2. What two actors starred in the 'trinity' western movies? For fuck's sake....
3. Who created the comic book character Dick Tracy?
   
4. The first working model of which device was invented in 1960 by Thomas Maimam?
5. Citius Altius Fortius is the motto of which organisation? Guessing roughly what he last two words meant, and reasoning that 'citius' was related to 'city' in some way ... we guessed the Freemasons. I wish we were right..... although, just quietly I think we were close (the organisation in question is fooling nobody, *touch nose*).
   

¹This category should not, I assure you, be confused with a literature round.

²For which a question about The Monkees apparently qualified.

³Where a "when unsure, just write 'Keith Urban'" policy earned us a point.

Covers

A recent conversation I was involved in turned its attention to cover versions of songs. Specifically, cover versions which are better than the original. This category turned out, unsurprisingly, to be very small. We could all agree, for instance, that Gary Jules' version of Mad World is better than the original by Tears for Fears. Yes, all agreed, Eminem's Ice Ice Baby is indeed superior to the original by Vanilla Ice¹. Things got a little more strained over whether or not Hendrix's version of All Along the Watchtower beats Dylan's (it does, damn you)..... but where things always get a little hairy (for me) is when we get onto Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. It's not that I think the original is, well, a good arrangement per se (dear god that awful eighties backing) .... it's just that Jeff Buckley gives me the shits. In point of fact, I would submit that no-one has yet covered this song properly². It's a great song. It sounds to me a little like a drunk finding god in a pool of his own vomit (in a good way, though .... honest).... but when I hear Buckley doing it, well, I find myself saying (unfortunately, and as far as social decorum is concerned) "oh for fucks sake why don't you just shoot yourself already". Matters inevitably take a hairy turn from this point onwards. It was lucky, then, that I was able to produce the following video. However we may differ as human beings, I offer, we can all agree that Avril Lavigne must never, ever be allowed to sing³ Coldplay's The Scientist ever again.

Ladies and gentlemen, live and off-key I give you perhaps the greatest piece of butchery ever performed by a diminutive Canadian pop singer on the work of a contemporary British band:



¹Of course, this is true in a rather trivial sense. It really doesn't matter how good or bad you think Eminem's version is .... what's good about it is the simple knowledge that Eminem is covering Vanilla ice. If just knowing that such a thing exists in the world isn't enough to make you smile, well, I guess you're one of those people who didn't cry when Bambi's mother died.

²Which actually adds to its charm. If the version you end up hearing never quite matches up to the version in your head, well I mean, .... listen to the lyrics. This is .... appropriate.

³It was very, very tempting to stop typing on that word.....