Those Dissolute Ways
I'm knackered but delighted to have finished my Sunday work. My brain is full of sunshine and endorphins. Actually, I'm lying about the contents of my brain. It's actually filled with a dull yet agonising pain. It appears that I have a hangover. A really bad one. Last night I went to a party in Whitechapel, that was both very fun and very dark, and got, how shall I say, "totally wasted".
At times like these I do wonder if going teetotal would improve both my quizzing abilities and my mental wellbeing. I don't really like what alcohol does to me and I constantly worry about headaches. Neither do I drink during many quiz matches because I also have this fear of impairment. Of course, the odd pint doesn't hurt but I've always believed the cumulative effect, or 'drunkening' effect of alcohol clouds the quiz faculties. I have seen such proof at buzzer quiz tournaments where once sterling performers have had too many beers and have consequently been knocked out or beaten. I'll grant them one thing though: they probably had a bloody good time anyway.
But if you do see me putting a poppers bottle to my nose, please feel free to knock it from my grasp and then slap me round the head repeatedly. I tentatively inhaled some for the first time in two years last night and, though I giggled maniacally as I felt my head burst like a pricked balloon, and realised again why I hadn't partaken of them of late. The primary reason? Poppers destroy your brain and, therefore, I believe they destroy stores of quiz facts. You can actually feel them do this to you. Last night I'm sure the areas occupied by pre-WW2 tennis stars, birthstone months and US Civil War battles were ravaged by the devilish chemicals. Sophie, it's all your fault!
However, they do serve some purpose. They are proof that if heroin was legal everyone would try it. Ban them now! (Not that I would ever do them or any other mood altering drug at a quiz tournament. It's just fags and Coca-Cola for me. Come to think of it, maybe that's why I always feel ill by the end of the team quiz.)
Yet I'm not saying that quizzing with a hangover acts as a terrible detriment to your scores. In fact it could do your powers of recall and concentration the world of good. When I won at Villa Park I was in the midst of a stag weekend in Nottingham and turned up with a hangover of the like binge drinking 13-year-olds will proudly recall in their old age and the answers still flowed. Maybe all that pain focuses you and takes you away from sober distractions, I'm not sure. Then again it could be a huge coincidence, what with the random question selection and the like, but when I was in Estonia for the European Quizzing Championships I was terribly ill and had to get loaded on Sudafed, aspirin and jets of nasal spray before feeling even grotty, and still finished in the Top Ten. Of course, Sudafed is a performance-enhancing substance and I would have been disqualified from competition if I had been an athlete, but we're quizzers, aren't we? We are different.
I was going to cite skiing wildman Bode Miller as an example of someone at the top of their game but also competing in the same game while drunk or hungover, but then he finished fifth in the downhill today and he is a bit of a busted flush so that went by the wayside.
Going back to the party, I also had a chat with a nice Norwegian chap with a beard who works for a TV company. He was kinda into quizzes. He was thinking of entering a team for Eggheads and had tried to pitch an English version of the little-seen (at least in this country) Scrabble documentary Word Wars but it had been turned down flat. Having explained my exalted place in the quiz firmament, I then gave him my "Reality of the Quiz Scene in the UK" speech. With a "How I was rejected by Eggheads" addendum. I think even bored myself.
Of course, that may all be rubbish because I had transmogrified into Rowley Birkin QC by then and may have been talking to a stereo system that simply looked like a beardy Norwegian. I never meet Norwegians.
Apologies if you think all this juvenile, substance-addled ranting is beneath me. But then you should have read my old blog. Ha ha ha etc. Plus, you have to remember that there are those of us rarely nicknamed quizzers who have to somehow maintain them and prove that they are not ironic ones of the like bestowed upon Steve "Interesting" Davis. Who's Rock 'n' Roll again? (To be honest I could kill Nick, the TV guy who coined it. Whether with a brick or by a thin ligature, I am not sure).
At times like these I do wonder if going teetotal would improve both my quizzing abilities and my mental wellbeing. I don't really like what alcohol does to me and I constantly worry about headaches. Neither do I drink during many quiz matches because I also have this fear of impairment. Of course, the odd pint doesn't hurt but I've always believed the cumulative effect, or 'drunkening' effect of alcohol clouds the quiz faculties. I have seen such proof at buzzer quiz tournaments where once sterling performers have had too many beers and have consequently been knocked out or beaten. I'll grant them one thing though: they probably had a bloody good time anyway.
But if you do see me putting a poppers bottle to my nose, please feel free to knock it from my grasp and then slap me round the head repeatedly. I tentatively inhaled some for the first time in two years last night and, though I giggled maniacally as I felt my head burst like a pricked balloon, and realised again why I hadn't partaken of them of late. The primary reason? Poppers destroy your brain and, therefore, I believe they destroy stores of quiz facts. You can actually feel them do this to you. Last night I'm sure the areas occupied by pre-WW2 tennis stars, birthstone months and US Civil War battles were ravaged by the devilish chemicals. Sophie, it's all your fault!
However, they do serve some purpose. They are proof that if heroin was legal everyone would try it. Ban them now! (Not that I would ever do them or any other mood altering drug at a quiz tournament. It's just fags and Coca-Cola for me. Come to think of it, maybe that's why I always feel ill by the end of the team quiz.)
Yet I'm not saying that quizzing with a hangover acts as a terrible detriment to your scores. In fact it could do your powers of recall and concentration the world of good. When I won at Villa Park I was in the midst of a stag weekend in Nottingham and turned up with a hangover of the like binge drinking 13-year-olds will proudly recall in their old age and the answers still flowed. Maybe all that pain focuses you and takes you away from sober distractions, I'm not sure. Then again it could be a huge coincidence, what with the random question selection and the like, but when I was in Estonia for the European Quizzing Championships I was terribly ill and had to get loaded on Sudafed, aspirin and jets of nasal spray before feeling even grotty, and still finished in the Top Ten. Of course, Sudafed is a performance-enhancing substance and I would have been disqualified from competition if I had been an athlete, but we're quizzers, aren't we? We are different.
I was going to cite skiing wildman Bode Miller as an example of someone at the top of their game but also competing in the same game while drunk or hungover, but then he finished fifth in the downhill today and he is a bit of a busted flush so that went by the wayside.
Going back to the party, I also had a chat with a nice Norwegian chap with a beard who works for a TV company. He was kinda into quizzes. He was thinking of entering a team for Eggheads and had tried to pitch an English version of the little-seen (at least in this country) Scrabble documentary Word Wars but it had been turned down flat. Having explained my exalted place in the quiz firmament, I then gave him my "Reality of the Quiz Scene in the UK" speech. With a "How I was rejected by Eggheads" addendum. I think even bored myself.
Of course, that may all be rubbish because I had transmogrified into Rowley Birkin QC by then and may have been talking to a stereo system that simply looked like a beardy Norwegian. I never meet Norwegians.
Apologies if you think all this juvenile, substance-addled ranting is beneath me. But then you should have read my old blog. Ha ha ha etc. Plus, you have to remember that there are those of us rarely nicknamed quizzers who have to somehow maintain them and prove that they are not ironic ones of the like bestowed upon Steve "Interesting" Davis. Who's Rock 'n' Roll again? (To be honest I could kill Nick, the TV guy who coined it. Whether with a brick or by a thin ligature, I am not sure).
posted by That Quiz Guy at 4:18 PM
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