New Scaratings

Better late than never...

Topix:

January 2 - New Year's Celebrations
January 3 - Musical Months
January 9 - Sculpture
January 10 - 2012 Movies
January 16 - Nelson Mandela
January 17 - TV Teachers
January 23 - Cold Blooded
January 24 - One-Hit Wonder
January 30 - Ski Resorts
January 31 - Movie Debuts

Trendalicious:

January 3 - Paul Walker - Fast & Furious
January 10 - 2013: Gone But Not Forgotten
January 17 - Former Disney Stars
January 24 - Golden Globes
January 31 - Grammy Awards

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

I wonder if January 10th is supposed to be 2013 Movies.

I'm wondering that, too, BO. I doubt the Buzzies are THAT far behind in their theatre-going
(In any case, GIMPY and I are celebrating our anniversary by going to see Blue Rodeo that night)

One-Hit Wonder (sic) is the only game that strongly appeals to me. I might give a try to all of the Topix games after the 15th; Ski Resorts promises some Canadian Content. Trendalicious looks like a five-course dog's breakfast from where I sit, though

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/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

Hopefully they didn't recycle the Stevie Wonder question, else people will have a lot of fun with that one tonight (50/50 chance )

There is not one category for Topix that really interests me this month. And definitely not Trendalicious...

I think that 1/16 and 1/30 tops this months list, provided I don't have to drive through a blizzard...

I opted to stay home last night. Does anyone recall last night's questions?

-- RWM

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"...It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED...."

My reliable* short-term memory can recollect

What do Brazilians toss into the ocean? FLOWERS
What's New Year's called in Scotland? HOGMANAY
The Waterford ______ Ball drops every year in Times Square: CRYSTAL (Rubber was the most amusing wrong answer)
What country is the first in the world to celebrate New Year's Day? KIRIBATI
Something about Saint Sebastian's Day (rendered in Dutch) being significant in: BELGIUM (Netherlands not on list)

Two questions on the names of the festivals in Korea and Thailand. One gave the Hungarian way to say Happy New Year, pick the correct language. Ireland was in that game somewhere, too

_________________
/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

My time stamp recall is atrocious but I can add Italians traditionally wear _________________ on New Years Day, with various color/clothing options listed and 12 grapes are customarily eaten at midnight in ___________________


Red underwear and Mexico were the answers (the 12 grapes I knew as Spanish and when it was not listed defaulted to the Spanish speaking country fortunately).


EDIT: oh and Romans made sacrifices to ________________ to celebrate the new year. I was expecting a trademark BT double correct answer on this one as Julius Caesar reshuffled the Roman year to begin in January not March, so for much of the Roman era it would have been Mars, but fortunately they didn't offer that as a choice, making Janus a fairly easy guess even for the non-classicists.
.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

January 3 - Musical Months

Okay, POMAN asked for a recap, here it is:

1. What group had a hit with “January Friend”? Goo Goo Dolls
2. Lyrics: The 3rd of June is opening line to: Ode to Billie Joe
3. Which month is mentioned in American Pie? February
4. Who had a hit with “Wake Me Up Until September Ends”? Green Day
5. Counting Crows had album titled: August and Everything After
6. “June is Busting Out All Over” is song from: Oklahoma (see below)
7. Taylor Swift had hit with: Back to December
8. “April Skies” is from this punk/rock band: Jesus and Mary Chain
9. Foo Fighters song is February: Stars
10. Lyrics: A misty shadow spread it’s wings: Kinks (Rainy Day in June)
11. “Like a Firecracker Below” is mentioned in which month in “Calendar Girl”: July
12. “Oh What a Night” from Four Seasons: December
13. Who had hit with “November Rain”? Guns and Roses (one of my favorites)
14. Lyrics: All the trees are stripped bare from “October”: U2
15. “End of May” was a hit from: Michael Buble

Okay, something about question 6 being Oklahoma didn't sound right, and I verified this morning it's from Carousel. Not sure if Carousel was a choice, but we went "South Pacific". NTN definitely had Oklahoma as the answer on the game though...I knew it was Rodgers/Hammerstein, but couldn't recall the musical...

The Michael Buble final was obscure, it didn't appear to be released as a single, and not on any of his albums that I could tell.

So.... BT does a musical month Topix and the only month that doesn't get included is the month that actually is a musical form.
Bitterly ironic or ironically bitter... you be the judge...

It is with both hope and trepidation that I note Thursday's topic. Sculpture is by far my favorite of the visual arts but I can't shake my much-BT-buttressed pessimism that the 40000 years between the Aurignacian and Auguste Rodin will get fewer questions than the shapeless blobs and (literally) piled up garbage of the last few decades. One fucking question about supermarket bottle racks and I walk out. At least dead sharks take effort if not quite rising to artisanry let alone art.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Now the sculpture game has downloaded I will make a not-really-bold prediction. If you want an easy 1000pts read up on "Unconditional Surrender" - a cheesy piece of plagiarism by Seward Johnson (bit of a redundancy there - cheesy plagiarism is all he does). As SD's most prominent statue it's likely to get included. I suppose they could go for Sun God instead but I doubt it.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Well, I was busy, so I did not see every question, but it looked like a pretty decent game from what I saw. Nice #1 finish (East), by the way!

ROGUE kicked his ass in the west, he is such the stud.

Yes I'm sure I could call him up and we could intelligently discuss the move from kouroi to contrapposto, the meaning of dogu, and the varying historical importance of maquettes for hours.

That said I confess to being absolutely wrong about Johnson's kitsch being included. Let's hope that this is a sign that the disturbing parochialism in all subjects is on the wane. I agree with our Mughal friend; that was overall a well-written game. Couple of gimmes, couple of guess 'ems, but mostly variably difficult questions that you actually had to know at least something about the topic to get right immediately - in other words the whole point of a Thursday Topix. I could raise a quibble or two about the complete absence of the eastern hemisphere and anything before 500 BCE but that would be nitpicking. I'm genuinely happy with a serious Topix day quiz where all of the questions were actually about the actual topic, and were almost all things that a 20 minute Wikipedia scan wouldn't hand neophyte crammers on a plate. Nicely done BT - a 9/10 effort at least.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

So was it actually movies from 2012?

Yes, believe it or not. I didn't realize some of the 2012 movies were title ripoffs of 90's films which messed me up.

Surprisingly poor scores on Mandela tonight on what I thought was a far easier Topix than usual. Most of the answers were lifted straight from his very popular "auto"biography. The last question about where he was buried obviously wasn't (he was a BIT more involved in the autobiography than that) but it was an easy transfer from his childhood home.

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Please forgive any strange typos or grammar errors. I am typically using voice recognition software to enter text, and sometimes editing works differently from how I expect.

Actually, every single answer could be found in his Wikipedia entry, which I read this morning. I was working, so I did not play, but I was feeding answers to one of our regulars. Had it been a touch slower and I could have stood next to him the whole game, it would have been a perfect. (Trusting his fingers.)

Cold-Blooded was fun tonight. We were fourth in the East. I had a couple of lucky guesses to help. Overall it was a great night as I got my personal high score for Six and we were 2nd in the East.

One-Hit Wonders was an enjoyable game, albeit scant on music more than 20 years old. I'd sure like a do-over on that third round; 11000 for the first 11 questions, 970 for the last 4

Some of the material covered included:
"Call Me Maybe" singer? Carly Rae Jepsen
"One of Us" in 1995? Joan Osborne
Duo with "Crazy" in 2006? Gnarls Barkley
One-named singer, "Somebody I Used to Know": Gotye
1996 hit by the Butthole Surfers? Pepper

I'd probably have remembered more if I wasn't so focused on the NYT crossword

_________________
/°v°\ • Every time Linux boots, a penguin gets its wings
I'm a solipsistic conspiracy theorist. I'm sure I must be up to something, and I won't stop until I find out what
Why not downgrade Plutonium to a dwarf element?

_________________
liljol, still residing in a humble lil abode in Buzztime's Backyard, San Diego County, in The Horribly Site-Poor Golden State, California...

<--805 NTN Buzztime sites visited as of 11/13/2018...

F CUBS!!!!! FBOSOX!!!!!

FPDRES!!!!! FCHGRS!!!!!

This was a game/category that we avid music fans had been looking forward to for a long time (it's been teased many times as the Headliner in Playback but has never been selected). But not surprisingly, the game was lame because of corporate's mandate to have the majority of Topix questions be from the 2000s. If they
want to do early 2000s, fine, although even the Vanessa Carlton question was lame. They stressed the Pop 100 chart over the Hot 100 chart on that one, which is fine, but she's had three top five hits on the Pop 100 chart ("Ordinary Day," which I personally like a lot more than "A Thousand Miles". And she's also credited on the Counting Crows version of "Big Yellow Taxi").

I know buzztime was trying to be funny on the Jepsen question, but shortly after that hit she paired up with Owl City on "Good Time"...which reached #8 in the Hot 100 chart. That definitely eliminates her from One Hit Wonder status.

If/when buzztime does select this category in Playback, I just hope they ask real One Hit Wonders instead of the "target group" junk we got last night

Below is a recap of One Hit Wonders topix game. Multiple choice made this much easier since each artist only had one hit (for the most part):

1) Who had a hit in 2006 with “Crazy”? Gnarls Barkley
2) Who had a hit with “Futures So Bright, Gotta Wear Shades”? Timbuk 3 (1986)
3) Who had hit in 2011 with “Call Me Maybe”? Carly Rae Jepsen ( I called her, no answer)
4) Who had hit with “One of Us”? Joan Osborne (1996)
5) Foster the People had hit with: Pumped Up Kicks (2010)
6) Who had hit with “A Thousand Miles”? Vanessa Carlton (2002)
7) The Waitresses had a hit with: I Know What Boys Like (1982)
8) Who had hit with “Somebody That I Used to Know”? Goyte (2011)
9) Butthole Surfers had a hit with? Pepper (1996)
10) Who had hit with “Who Let the Dogs Out”? Baha Men (how did this song get on radio, 2000)
11) Daniel Powter’s lyrics, blah blah rain… Bad Day (2006)
12) Who had hit with “Wherever You Will Go” in 2001? The Calling
13) Who had hit with “Sorry” in 2007? Buckcherry (um, Crazy Bitch)
14) Who had another remake hit with “Sukiyaki”? 4 P.M. (1995)
15) What are opening lyrics to “ I Try” ? Games, changes, and fear (dammit) (2000)

Summary: 2000-2011: 10, 1990-1999: 3, 1982-1989: 2, 1900-1981: 0

Seems a little soon to call some of these folks one hit wonders, but I’m predicting they’re spot on with Goyte

Zager and Evans wept.