Quiz Master! - Costa Mesa, CA

THE SCENE: Patio at the Harp Inn, approximately 4 Saturdays ago.

SPECIAL NOTE: Exact conversation may vary. I have a bad memory and I failed to bring along my personal stenographer that night.

MOE: (sigh) I wish John Joe would have a pub quiz here. Or that the Shamrock holds one again soon. I’ve really been in the mood for a pub quiz.

KEVIN: The Harp is having a pub quiz?

MOE: NO, I said I WISH the Harp was having a pub quiz.

DAVE F: Then have a pub quiz.

MARILYNN: What’s a pub quiz?

MOE: What do you mean, HAVE a pub quiz? Like hold one ourselves?

KEVIN: The Shamrock is having another pub quiz?

MARILYNN: What’s a pub quiz?

ANDY: Sure, why not? Just ask John Joe.

MOE: ...to hold a pub quiz?

ANDY: Yep.

KEVIN: What time is the pub quiz at the Shamrock?

MOE: The Shamrock isn’t having a pub quiz, I just said I WISH they were.

DAVE F: A pub quiz here would be a good idea. Hold it on some Sunday when it’s dead.

MOE: OK, let’s have a pub quiz!

ANDY: Who wants to be Quiz Master?

(Moe shoots her hand in the air before the question is even out. She does this because she believes that Quiz Master is a sought after title and many will be clamoring to take from her if she is not swift in her acceptance to hold it.)

ANDY: You want to be Quiz Master? You sure?

MOE: Absolutely!

DAVE F.: It’s a lot of work…

MOE: That’s fine.

(John Joe suddenly appears out on the patio. Moe calls him over.)

MOE: Hey John Joe, can we have a pub quiz here?

JOHN JOE: Sure.

(Without another word John Joe walks away)

MOE: Maybe I should have been more specific.

MARILYNN: What’s a pub quiz?

And that, my friends, is how I suckered myself into hosting my first pub quiz this past Sunday afternoon.

To steal directly from Wikipedia so that I don’t have to go about describing something ineffectively: A pub quiz is a quiz held in a pub (oh, good one Wikipedia). It is largely a British phenomenon. (damn those Brits with their brilliant ideas to get people to drink more!) Most pub quizzes depend on answers being written in response to questions which may themselves be written or announced by a quizmaster (in da hoooouse!). It is up to the quizzers to form teams, which are generally based on tables. The team members decide on a team name, which must be written on all papers handed in. (Maybe I would have been better at describing this). People often have to pay to participate – ranging from £1 to £5 per person (current currency conversion rates mark this as $12.35 to $800 billion American). There may be between one and more than half a dozen rounds of questions, totaling anything from 10 to upwards of 80 questions. Prizes are awarded to the highest scoring team, and possibly runners-up as well.

My own personal experience with pub quizzes is minimal. I attended one at the Shamrock last year and I was at one with Beth at some dodgy bar in New Berlin, but I could have sworn I’ve been to at least one more. Wait, I think it might be coming back to me….it’s fuzzy but it’s there…2000 or 2001, Huntington Beach, Fitzgerald’s….I was there with either Andrea or Finky…probably Andrea…we lost…badly. Sorry that I slipped into a reminisce. Now I have to listen to “Reminiscing” by the Little River Band as punishment for making you go through that.

“Hurry! Don’t be late
I can hardly wait!
I said to myself when we’re old
We’ll go dancing in the dark
Walking through the park and remiiiiiiiiniscing!”

God, what a horrible easy listening 70’s tune. And yes, I do have a perfectly good explanation on why I have it in my iTunes catalog. And no, I will not be revealing that explanation to you.

So yes! The pub quiz. I want to share this with anyone who may be tempted to shoot up their hand as if on fire at the prospect of owning the title Quiz Master. Being the Quiz Master is a lot of work. You may think to yourself, “Self, this will be EASY. How hard is it really, to collect together 50 odd questions? Easy peasy Japanesey. Like, a day tops is all it’s going to take. Self, you are totally all over this.”

These fine lads are enjoying their pints and crisps while thinking of ways to taunt the Quiz Master.

What you fail to realize when your hand shoots up as if reaching for falling money at the glory of Quiz Master is that you will be on a stage with a microphone reading 40-50 odd questions to a bunch of people who, while claiming to be your friend, will not hesitate to heckle you the very moment you screw something up. These questions, because they are coming out of your mouth, are YOUR questions. If the question is too easy, your now drunken heckling “friends” will roll their eyes and odd drunks who are not even playing will call out the answer ruining that question for everybody. If your question is too hard you will get a collective groan and “whatevers!” and “well, I’m out on this one!”…after they (your now VERY drunken heckling friends) force you to read the question not once but three times to make sure that they were correct in assuming that this particular question was the most lamest asinine question ever known to man.

Oh, and lastly…try to choose questions that don’t contain words that are hard to pronounce or give way to Freudian slips. You will be nervous enough without saying loudly in a microphone to a bunch of your drunken heckling friends “Bram Stroker’s Dracula” (Bram Stoker) or “Vinson Massive” (Vinson Massif) or “Jaffa” (pronounced Yafa or Hafa, not Jaffa like Jaffa cakes). That’s right, I’m here making the mistakes so you don’t have to. What can I say? I’m a giver.

Needless to say that once I got into formulating my questions, I started getting nervous. I knew I would have a mix of Americans and Europeans so, for example, sports questions, I couldn’t have them all NFL or soccer related. And after talking to people who would either say, “Please don’t make the questions too hard” or “You don’t want me to play, I’m excellent at trivia” I started to stress whether the questions I had were decent enough to keep both sides of the coin contented enough to have fun. I honestly spent a good two weeks putting together 50 questions and lost a bit of sleep at night those two weeks because I couldn’t stop thinking about the questions. I’m usually not this obsessive (I’m inherently too lazy to be obsessive on a regular basis) but I wanted it to be good enough that John Joe would consider holding a pub quiz again.

FAMOUS QUIZ MASTERS OF OUR TIME:

Marty "I read 'em, you weep" Johanson

Jacob "Spit on me again and I'll break your falange" Cook

Peter "The Lush" Hoover Jr.

Peter "The Lush" Hoover Sr.

Amiya Pahare (no, really)

By the time this Sunday hit and the quiz was two hours away my stomach was in knots. I went to the Harp to set up and seeing as that only took 5 minutes, I spent the rest of the time walking from the patio to the inside then back to the patio to either smoke my way through a pack of cigarettes, drink a pints upon pints of water, or use the bathroom (because of said water). I was basically pacing.

"Ha Ha Ha! Wait until we fuck with the Quiz Master this time! HA HA HA HA!"

The quiz started at 4 o clock (ish). 20 people showed up for the quiz forming a total of 5 teams. John Joe had gotten the hated microphone out for me but I was still a bit shaky to get up on stage. I pleaded with Kevin to go up there and read out the quiz rules for me. I needed to see how the crowd responded. If they threw peanut shells at him (and the Harp doesn’t even sell peanuts) then I knew I couldn’t do it. But the crowd, still sober, was fine. They heckled a bit but it was in good fun. So I got up there. The first round was a bit hard…my voice was trembling a bit, I mispronounced a couple words and I was in a constant fight with the bastard microphone…but over all it was OK. By the final 4th round I was pretty comfortable on stage. I still had trouble having fun with the hecklers though…I’m just not quick witted enough to throw something back in time (I tend just to make a face back which I think is a lot worse than just ignoring the heckle. I could be wrong).

Written: The Quiz Master is a big stupid head.

At the end the Tea Baggers were victorious (they choose the name not me)(and damn am I going to get a bunch of unwanted internet traffic with that sitting there) by getting 25 out of 40 of my American\European Hard\Easy questions correct and Bravo 2-0 getting 17 for 2nd place. People in general seemed to have a good time and I had not one but three people come up to me immediately after asking when the next quiz was. And get this…John Joe bought me a beer! John Joe! The owner! Bought ME a BEER! To make it even better, he wants me to come in this Tuesday to talk about scheduling more quizzes.

"We won the quiz so we won't beat up the Quiz Master on the way to her car."

After the quiz I sat outside on the patio talking to my participants\friends\drunken hecklers. They gave me a lot of great suggestions for the next quiz. I’m looking forward to it, I really am.

Thank you to everyone who showed up. Thank you for the beers and the suggestions. And mostly, thanks for having fun or at least saying you did.

**Sorry that once again I have no pictorial evidence of this event. I didn’t forget my camera this time…it was actually sitting on the coffee table begging to be brought along. Due to my habit of blushing on a moment’s notice, I couldn’t bear to have internet evidence of me on a stage with a bastard microphone beet red from nervousness. Maybe next time, maybe not. Let’s just say that you’ll probably get the Little River Band story about the same time as you get a picture of me on a stage with a bastard microphone.