Fringe Fest 2013 Reviews: TriviaCity (the Greatest Event of All Time)

Question:
What was the most amazing way for Rochesterians to
spend Wednesday night?

Answer:
By participating in TriviaCity: An Arts & Culture
Quiz, put on by City Newspaper at the Spiegelgarden
as part of the First Niagara Rochester Fringe Festival.

I
can say, without any conflict of interest, that this was the greatest game of
trivia ever played. Of all time. The greatest!

I
kid, I kid. But it was a pretty fun time. We had more than 13 teams play (a few
dropped out before the end), and 50 or so people in the mix (some of y’all just
like to watch). Our amazing host, Dresden Engle, did a fantastic job posing the
questions. Our teams did a great job answering them. Except
for that tricky Broadway round. More on that in a minute…

Given
that TriviaCity was part of the Rochester Fringe
Festival, the questions for this quiz focused strictly on arts, entertainment,
and Rochester. No sports or geography questions here. We had six rounds of
eight questions each, plus five bonus questions. If you were the first to shove
the correct bonus answer in my face, you got a sweet Fringe City t-shirt. Hot
damn!

Round
1 was devoted to the Fringe Festival and its performers, and featured questions
like this:

Question 5: Pulitzer Prize winner Dave
Barry is the headliner for Friday’s show Kodak Hall. In the mid-1990’s CBS
aired a sitcom based on his life, “Dave’s World.” What 1980’s sitcom star
played Barry on the show?

A
good number of the teams wrote some variation of, “That dude from ‘Night Court.'”
Do you want to know what appeared on my answer sheet? Answer: Harry Anderson
(do NOT accept “that dude from ‘Night Court.'”) Swear to god!

The
average score for Round 1 was 3. The highest was 6. Things were not as rosy for
Round 2, devoted to Broadway/pop mash-ups. It was modeled after the “Before and
After” rounds on “Wheel of Fortune,” but not
exclusively using that mechanic. Basically I was looking for answers that fused
together a showtune and a pop song that each featured
the same word. For instance:

Question 3:Ann-Margaret’s girl-power
anthem in “Bye-Bye Birdie,” mixed with Britney Spears’ warning to cheating
douchebags. (Answer: “How Lovely to Be a Womanizer.”)

People
were NOT having this round. I knew when I was writing the questions that people
would either love it or hate it. Most people came down firmly on the side of “hate.”
The most common score for Round 2 was 1 (!) and we even had a few 0 scores. The
highest score of 4 was shared by two teams, Joanie Loves Ciaccia
and All Hail the Hypnotoad. But Joanie used its
once-a-game Extra on this round, doubling its score – but screwing the team in
the long run (spoiler!).

Dear
readers, I knew I was in trouble when I stepped to the mic
to reveal the answers for this round and was greeted with the white-hot daggers
of rage flying out of the crowd’s eye holes. We did have a minor kerfuffle when
one member of the group — who happens to be a totally awesome person —
challenged me on the following question:

Question 4:Maria teaches the Von Trapp
kids the basics of music, and 2 Live Crew gets filthy while telling you about
how long they’ll love you (hint: it’s a long time).

The
answer I was going for was “Do-Re-Me So Horny” (my favorite answer in the game,
by the way). Awesome Person in the Audience argued that the “Sound of Music”
song is actually called “Doe a Deer.” Not according to Amazon, Spotify, iTunes, or Wikipidea.
But if someone can find an official source that says differently, I’ll eat a
Five Guys bacon cheeseburger with fries. Seriously, I’m begging you. Prove me
wrong.

We
got people back on board with Round 3, which featured
fake personal ads by famous Rochesterians, past and
present. So, for instance:

Question
4: I’ve been called a Black Sheep, I’ve been labeled a Foreigner, but I’m a
Rochesterian, born and bred. I’ve found women can be
as cold as ice. Now, I want to know what love is. Maybe I’ve been waiting for a
girl like you. (Answer: Lou Gramm/Lou Grammatico)

Scores
went WAY up this round, with most teams scoring 4 or better, and even two
perfect scores, by Trivia Titans and Didier.

Round
4 was our visual puzzle, an art-history round in which City Newspaper’s Mark
Chamberlin photoshopped images from Miley Cyrus’s
recent VMA performances over classic works of art co-curated by City Art Critic
Rebecca Rafferty. We could only call it…”Twerks of
Art.” (It’s amazing what will come to you at 1:30 a.m., it really is.)

This
was our only 16-point round, as we gave points for the correct artist AND
correct title of work. Teams did well here in general, and several took the
hint I gave at the start of the game to save their Extra score doubler for this opportunity. It literally changed the
course of the game. All Hail the Hypnotoad missed
just two points, and doubled the round, giving the team a whopping 28 points.
Back From Belgium was just behind them with 24. Team Slothasaurus pulled up to the bumper, but not in a sexy
Grace Jones way, with just 2 points this round.

Round
5 was titled Rochester ESCANDALO! and tested our
quizzers on various scandals and crimes from Rochester’s past. Teams did well
this round in general — average score was 5 — and we got a perfect score from Dr. T. This question was well received by most teams:

Question 2: In 1984 a mass grave containing
more than 700 bodies of people who died in the Monroe County Insane Asylum,
Almshouse and Penitentiary was
discovered in what popular Rochester park?

The
answer is Highland Park. So remember, next time you’re eating funnel cake at
the Lilac Festival, you’re basically eating carnival food in a cemetery. But
the flowers sure are lovely!

The
final round was entertainment news from the week past, featuring much broader,
general pop-culture questions. Like:

Question 3: The current No. 1 movie in
the country stars Hugh Jackman and Jake Gyllenhaal, but it is not called “All the Gay Rumors.” What
IS the name of the film? (Answer: “Prisoners”)

Most
teams scored 6 or better on this round, and it elicited at least two actual
shrieks of delight from a member of Joanie Loves Ciaccia.
One was for a question regarding Anna Kendrick’s casting in the “Into the Woods”
film (the “Twilight” element of the question encouraged many teams to write
Kristen Stewart, which was intentional, because I’m awful) and the other was
about the Broadway show “Kinky Boots.” So at least you got your cheap thrills,
Rochester!

Apologies
that the game dragged on a little longer than promised. I will tell you what, I
have a new respect for Ryan Schofield, the poor bastard who runs the weekly
trivia game my friends and I play in at Scotland Yard. Scoring is HARD, you
guys, and when you have 50 people tapping their feet waiting for the answers,
it gets intense.

Speaking
of intense, we had a tie for second place. So we had to do a sudden-death
tiebreaker between Back from Belgium and J Squared. The task was to name
musicals written by the pair of Rodgers & Hammerstein. One look at J Squared’s score on the Broadway/pop round (a 1!) would
suggest that this put the team at a distinct disadvantage, and indeed, its
representative whiffed it with an answer of “Showboat.” The lovely lady from
Belgium snatched victory with her correct answer of “Cinderella.” Meanwhile,
the members of Joanie Loves Ciaccia seethed over
missing the showdown. They missed out on prize contention by 1 POINT! I know.
It’s tragic. Next time, folks!

Here
are the final standings:

1.
All Hail the Hypnotoad: 56 points (PRIZE: 2 tickets
to Cirque du Fringe!)

2.
Back from Belgium: 44 points (PRIZE: 2 tickets to Dave Barry!)

3.
J Squared: 44 points (PRIZE: 2 tickets to Silent Disco!)

4.
Joanie Loves Ciaccia: 43 points

5.
Dr. T: 42 points

6.
Trivia Titans: 41 points

7.
Kate + Rob: 38 points

8.
Good Old-Fashioned BlasianThrowdown:
36 points (team name of the night)

9.
Past RPO-ers: 35 points

10.
Last Place: 28 points

11.
Didier: 23 points

Thank
you again to our host, Dresden Engle, and to the Rochester Fringe Festival for
inviting us and providing the awesome prizes. We were the only way to get
tickets to Cirque du Fringe by Wednesday night, so if you didn’t play, you were
SOL, kids.

If
you’d like to reassert your trivia dominance, I encourage you to come down to
Scotland Yard Pub on Wednesdays at 8 p.m. for Geeks Who Drink trivia. Several
of the City staffers, including the bastard who wrote those infuriating
questions for TriviaCity (that’d be me) play on Team
Fuck Mountain, and we love a good challenge. As the Rancho Carne Toros say, Bring it on!

TriviaCITY at Rochester Fringe

This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2013.