Trivia Recap

Things went swimmingly over at the Wonderland Ballroom on Monday night. Aside from a long rambling monologue on the greatness of Mississippi (which was not in any way my fault), Kevin and I were funny, congenial, and thought-provoking (we rule). The winning team was, of course, a bunch of bloggers, including Megan McArdle, music trivia god Dave Weigel, Matt Ficke, Lindsay, and one other guy whose name I’m horrified to learn I can’t remember, but who probably has a blog too Tom. Congrats to them and to team Don’t Tase Me Bro, who won for best team name.

Apparently Kevin and I were lucky to host after a few weeks of sub par quizzing, as we received a lot of comparative praise. Since trivia hosting doesn’t come as naturally to some, here are some quick tips.

• Keep your questions short, and your answers shorter
• Edit your questions for length, factual correctness, humor, and clarity. Then have someone else edit them. Then edit them again. In fact, keep editing until you have to print them out and head to the bar.
• Don’t use trivia night as a way to show everyone how smart you are. The goal should be for every team to be able to get at least a few right in each round.
• Keep your categories as broad as possible. For example, “Doctor Who” is a terrible category. “British Science Fiction” is a much better alternative.
• Try to frame your questions so that if someone doesn’t know the answer, they can at least make an educated guess from the context.

Most importantly, have fun. People are there to have a good time, not to relive their SAT experiences. Lightheartedness and willingness to bend the rules will take you very far. As will healthy alcohol intake.

If there’s enough demand in the comments, I’ll post the quiz later this week in case any of you non-DCers want to test your wits.

Wrongitude

Kevin Drum links approvingly to this post over at Headline Junky, which makes many good points about the damage the Bush administration has done to the US-Turkey alliance (mostly via Iraq), but unfortunately descends into blessed ignorance:

Turkey was already on our side. And we’re in the process of losing it, at the very moment when religious Muslims have begun to dominate the Turkish political scene.

For the time being, the Turkish military and cultural elites serve as guarantors of secularism. But if Turkey ever does wind up sliding into theocracy, it will be a major strategic setback for American regional interests.

Yes, it’s our old friend anti-Muslim hysteria (“It’s not just for Limbaugh anymore!”). Just to be clear, these are the same religious Muslims who (off the top of my head):

• made EU ascension their top priority.
• abolished the death penalty.
• opened up more of the economy to market forces
• challenged the primacy of the military in domestic politics

Yes, sharia will be around any day now. And those “guarantors of secularism”? They wanted to throw a coup because the wife of the presidential nominee wears a headscarf. Oh my, I gettin’ the vapors! A headscarf? Lawdy!