This Much I Now Know ... Since Saturday That Is
Another Saturday, another Quizzing GP: more or less the same result. Third place, which coming after my second (New Brighton), fourth (Northampton) and third out of the Brits at Tallinn, suggests that if I ever drop out of the top five again, I will surely gnash my fists, teeth, whatever, in despair and disappointment. The expectations are swelling. Must wallow in pessimism to ensure I will be Zen content when such a tragic event is going to occur (which it surely will).
Oddly, I found this GK paper hard work. "God, some of this paper is really hard work," I thought to myself, and which I muttered to myself again in the garden whilst on a fag interlude. The answers, or at least a good few of them, came eventually. I did wonder whether it was infinitely more satisfying this way: sweating the blighters out like bullets, pounding my brain until it yielded an answer or a good guess. Maybe, it is. Then again, I'm thinking that total effortless recall of absolutely everything is the supremely satisfying way to do things. Doing it any other way is knackering. In contrast to previous indie papers this one did feel harder and as evidenced by more score (11 down on the previous GP) it most certainly was. But when did I ever think this malarkey was going to be easy? It is not and should not be easy. It should stretch you and titles aren't won just by turning up on the day.
Hey, Lily Cole is a real person. I spent most of the GP trying to convince people that she was, or more pertinently find someone who actually answered that question correctly at Abbots Langley. So look at this and look at all those magazine covers AND her positively humungous Wikipedia entry. She's a bona fide supermodel make no mistake *harumph* and wait until I ask a question on Devon Aoki.
I did the Clicker quiz like everyone else. It was mid-table mediocrity for me. Good fun and decent questions, though, (I feared the worst as is the case with all technological advances like the neutron bomb and remote control bombers) despite the disturbing "Here's the answer" sound. Almost gave me a heart attack. Generally, it took all its 'exciting' cues from Millionaire which isn't a bad stratagem. But was the same heartbeat background music necessary for a 'fun' quiz? Now the funny thing about "fun quizzes" is that the more fun they are, the less I am interested in them and therefore the less fun I find them. It's a paradox, I tells ya. Give me 500 hardcore mother truckers in a written test and I'm in hog heaven. Give me gadgets and smiley mass audience participation and I wince. Perhaps, it is the whinging elitist in me (who often likes a bit of a barney with the twatty misanthrope).
Next stop: Newport for the Worlds. That's in Wales. Not on the Isle of Wight, which would have been so much more convenient. (I was going to write interesting but then I thought the Welsh constabulary might want to add me to the list of people they want to prosecute for perceived anti-Welshism)
I don't really feel like doing a BH quiz. So I won't. Samey behaviour gets to me for a while. I have a low tolerance for any sustained activity; it's why I ruled out coalmining as a possible occupation at quite a young age. In fact, three months is a bloody miracle. Be thankful that I've written any quizzes for you at all, or even more than two questions.
I can't take pure streams of trivia at the moment. So I'm reading Penguins Stopped Play. And, yes, I didn't quite give up the acceptable literature, well not the non-fiction kind. Possibly because it feels like vital oxygen for my brain. Without it, it will wither and go a little bit crazeee. Harry Thompson's book is the kind of warm, laugh-out loud experience that happily ties in with the greatest sport in the world, and which I am damned to love. Just a pity that Thompson, the man who moulded famed producer of Have I Got News for You and They Think It's All Over among many other programmes you will have heard of, died of inoperable lung cancer despite never smoking a single cigarette his whole life and will never write another word. But please read the book. Here's an extract, which like all extracts is an unsatisfying little apetiser because it happens to be an extract and not the whole book. Like eating cheese samples on cocktail sticks in supermarkets while some Brenda watches you hawk-eyed. Maybe.
It makes me miss playing the game. Club cricket or just plain cricket: the act of bowling and hitting (fielding I never cared for, unless I could do an athletic dive that proclaimed: "I used to be quite a good shot-stopper in my youth"). Oh yes, I remember. Looking back, one of the reasons I think I gave up was that I happened to be turning into Ian Austin and not Waqar Younis as I had hoped. The company was great: generous, fun-loving guys, except for the bastard Blackwell twins. Two irredeemably evil oiks whose tobacco-stained parents had probably adopted from an Aryan sperm bank, since they resembled their progeny so little. I would go back and see what was up at my old club but fancy that Ashes fever is still raging and helping recruitment. Better to wait until English cricket is stuck in the mire of defeat and decay again, before I venture onto the playing field again.
I promise one thing though: more confidence when I am batting. And more violence. I have realised that not caring about what the ball can do to you is tantamount to winning half the battle. But I have realised that my cricketing mission in life is to perfect my one great delivery: the outswinging off-cutter. So good was it that it is was far too good to get many wickets. At club level the slip cordon is practically non-existent and deficient in the area of catching ability. And, of course, batsmen have to be good enough to get a nick on the bloody ball, which they never were (I may be exaggerating my own ability here). The funny thing is that I have even learned to bowl an inswinger. Last year, I perfected the delivery, although whether it will work with a real cricket ball on a real 22-yard pitch rather than with a ping-pong ball in my cluttered corridor at home is open to debate.
I'm a sucker for big summer movie trailers. I know they've got me when I watch them three times in a row. To wit: Superman Returns. It makes my heart pop in several, different tingly frequencies. I like the fact that it retains the John Williams score and story arc of the first two Reeve movies. Only what about Kate Bosworth? She's a bit young, and never looks like a mother, let alone Margot Kidder with five years added on. I only hope she doesn't start skiing on pistes made of pure Bolivian marching powder or hang around in people's gardens while searching for her knocked out teeth.
I am a helpless, vulnerable creature. More suction: I've been sucked into the ol' watching entire DVD series on TV again. This time it is Firefly, though I really do think that it has the same soundtrack as Deadwood. But Firefly is so witty, urbane and imaginative and has so many strong female role models and is a western SET IN SPACE NO LESS. No wonder it got cancelled after 14 episodes. Surprised it lasted even that long to be honest.
iTunes is on. Listening to That's When I Reach For My Revolver by Mission of Burma. Incendiary and invigorating in a great way, but not very good for your concentration due to its potential for making you want to run out on the streets and incite a revolution.
(PS. Don't worry. I'll write another quiz. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and you may regret it for the rest of your life.)
Oddly, I found this GK paper hard work. "God, some of this paper is really hard work," I thought to myself, and which I muttered to myself again in the garden whilst on a fag interlude. The answers, or at least a good few of them, came eventually. I did wonder whether it was infinitely more satisfying this way: sweating the blighters out like bullets, pounding my brain until it yielded an answer or a good guess. Maybe, it is. Then again, I'm thinking that total effortless recall of absolutely everything is the supremely satisfying way to do things. Doing it any other way is knackering. In contrast to previous indie papers this one did feel harder and as evidenced by more score (11 down on the previous GP) it most certainly was. But when did I ever think this malarkey was going to be easy? It is not and should not be easy. It should stretch you and titles aren't won just by turning up on the day.
Hey, Lily Cole is a real person. I spent most of the GP trying to convince people that she was, or more pertinently find someone who actually answered that question correctly at Abbots Langley. So look at this and look at all those magazine covers AND her positively humungous Wikipedia entry. She's a bona fide supermodel make no mistake *harumph* and wait until I ask a question on Devon Aoki.
I did the Clicker quiz like everyone else. It was mid-table mediocrity for me. Good fun and decent questions, though, (I feared the worst as is the case with all technological advances like the neutron bomb and remote control bombers) despite the disturbing "Here's the answer" sound. Almost gave me a heart attack. Generally, it took all its 'exciting' cues from Millionaire which isn't a bad stratagem. But was the same heartbeat background music necessary for a 'fun' quiz? Now the funny thing about "fun quizzes" is that the more fun they are, the less I am interested in them and therefore the less fun I find them. It's a paradox, I tells ya. Give me 500 hardcore mother truckers in a written test and I'm in hog heaven. Give me gadgets and smiley mass audience participation and I wince. Perhaps, it is the whinging elitist in me (who often likes a bit of a barney with the twatty misanthrope).
Next stop: Newport for the Worlds. That's in Wales. Not on the Isle of Wight, which would have been so much more convenient. (I was going to write interesting but then I thought the Welsh constabulary might want to add me to the list of people they want to prosecute for perceived anti-Welshism)
I don't really feel like doing a BH quiz. So I won't. Samey behaviour gets to me for a while. I have a low tolerance for any sustained activity; it's why I ruled out coalmining as a possible occupation at quite a young age. In fact, three months is a bloody miracle. Be thankful that I've written any quizzes for you at all, or even more than two questions.
I can't take pure streams of trivia at the moment. So I'm reading Penguins Stopped Play. And, yes, I didn't quite give up the acceptable literature, well not the non-fiction kind. Possibly because it feels like vital oxygen for my brain. Without it, it will wither and go a little bit crazeee. Harry Thompson's book is the kind of warm, laugh-out loud experience that happily ties in with the greatest sport in the world, and which I am damned to love. Just a pity that Thompson, the man who moulded famed producer of Have I Got News for You and They Think It's All Over among many other programmes you will have heard of, died of inoperable lung cancer despite never smoking a single cigarette his whole life and will never write another word. But please read the book. Here's an extract, which like all extracts is an unsatisfying little apetiser because it happens to be an extract and not the whole book. Like eating cheese samples on cocktail sticks in supermarkets while some Brenda watches you hawk-eyed. Maybe.
It makes me miss playing the game. Club cricket or just plain cricket: the act of bowling and hitting (fielding I never cared for, unless I could do an athletic dive that proclaimed: "I used to be quite a good shot-stopper in my youth"). Oh yes, I remember. Looking back, one of the reasons I think I gave up was that I happened to be turning into Ian Austin and not Waqar Younis as I had hoped. The company was great: generous, fun-loving guys, except for the bastard Blackwell twins. Two irredeemably evil oiks whose tobacco-stained parents had probably adopted from an Aryan sperm bank, since they resembled their progeny so little. I would go back and see what was up at my old club but fancy that Ashes fever is still raging and helping recruitment. Better to wait until English cricket is stuck in the mire of defeat and decay again, before I venture onto the playing field again.
I promise one thing though: more confidence when I am batting. And more violence. I have realised that not caring about what the ball can do to you is tantamount to winning half the battle. But I have realised that my cricketing mission in life is to perfect my one great delivery: the outswinging off-cutter. So good was it that it is was far too good to get many wickets. At club level the slip cordon is practically non-existent and deficient in the area of catching ability. And, of course, batsmen have to be good enough to get a nick on the bloody ball, which they never were (I may be exaggerating my own ability here). The funny thing is that I have even learned to bowl an inswinger. Last year, I perfected the delivery, although whether it will work with a real cricket ball on a real 22-yard pitch rather than with a ping-pong ball in my cluttered corridor at home is open to debate.
I'm a sucker for big summer movie trailers. I know they've got me when I watch them three times in a row. To wit: Superman Returns. It makes my heart pop in several, different tingly frequencies. I like the fact that it retains the John Williams score and story arc of the first two Reeve movies. Only what about Kate Bosworth? She's a bit young, and never looks like a mother, let alone Margot Kidder with five years added on. I only hope she doesn't start skiing on pistes made of pure Bolivian marching powder or hang around in people's gardens while searching for her knocked out teeth.
I am a helpless, vulnerable creature. More suction: I've been sucked into the ol' watching entire DVD series on TV again. This time it is Firefly, though I really do think that it has the same soundtrack as Deadwood. But Firefly is so witty, urbane and imaginative and has so many strong female role models and is a western SET IN SPACE NO LESS. No wonder it got cancelled after 14 episodes. Surprised it lasted even that long to be honest.
iTunes is on. Listening to That's When I Reach For My Revolver by Mission of Burma. Incendiary and invigorating in a great way, but not very good for your concentration due to its potential for making you want to run out on the streets and incite a revolution.
(PS. Don't worry. I'll write another quiz. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and you may regret it for the rest of your life.)
posted by That Quiz Guy at 9:41 PM
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