BigFlax.com Trivia Challenge
These are the tossups that were asked in the trivia challenge between Chris and Drew on Saturday, October 13. To see who got what right, check out the scoresheet. Bold indicates which part of the question was considered "power," while the parts underlined in each answer show what was required for an answer to be considered correct.
1. It’s not far over the border into Lake County, but it’s still about five towns away from Evanston, where, of course, Flax was born. Flax’s parents moved there after getting married in 1977, and lived on Barberry Road until 1986, when Flax’s dad was transferred to New York. For ten points, what is this northern Chicago suburb, home of Flax for the first three and a half years of his life?
Answer: Highland Park
2. It goes to show that Flax’s favorite movies are not generally comedies, because this movie vaulted from #9 to #2 but was the #1 comedy on the Top 50 list the entire time. Of course, you could always consider Back to the Future a comedy. For ten points, name this film, one of two written by Aaron Sorkin in Flax’s top ten and starring Michael Douglas.
Answer: The American President
3. Flax referred to this film as a “sprawling single cam magnum opus”, which only really begins to describe it. Clocking in at more than half an hour and well over five months in the making, the film does rip off The Usual Suspects for its finale, but Flax still considers it to be the best single cam he’s ever seen, even if it does have parts that he finds painful to watch due to his own bad acting. For ten points, what is this sophomore year movie, written and directed by David Tillman?
Answer: Tomorrow’s Another Night
4. Three answers required. Flax was a little irked with this shirt at first, but it has since become one of his favorites. His annoyance stemmed from the fact that it gave both the city and country, whereas he wanted just the city – he knew what country it was, and he thought that if anyone else needed to know they could just ask him. For ten points, name the restaurant and city and country where Flax obtained this shirt, one of his many souvenirs from 2000’s student ambassador trip.
Answer: Planet Hollywood, Auckland, New Zealand
5. Flax described the trailer for this film as the worst trailer he’d ever seen, and tore into it on the “Movies to Avoid” page by calling anyone who might want to see it a moron, referencing the director’s history of child molestation (though that is in fact true), and saying “Does it even matter what?” when discussing what the film’s monster is. Flax actually hates this film more now because he just found out it has a terrible ending in which the monster kills one of the sibling protagonists and gets away scot-free. This would be, for ten points, which Victor Salva-directed film released on August 31, 2001, and whose trailer drew unintentional laughs at a screening of American Pie 2 Flax attended?
Answer: Jeepers Creepers
6. Flax’s dad didn’t much like the comparison, but Flax found that the addition of a mustache really made quite a similarity in both general appearance and personality to the dad in a certain comic strip. Flax also compared the mothers, but with less of an emphasis on sarcasm and fanatical biking. For ten points, name the comic strip, the parents in which were compared to Flax’s own in the June 20, 2001 update.
Answer: Calvin and Hobbes
7. Despite a slippery field and the game being played almost entirely while it was raining, the WNUR Sports team still managed to win their softball game 12-1. Sports director Adam Mendelson pitched all seven innings, allowing just one unearned run, walking one and striking out one. Flax himself did not perform very well, going 0-for-3, but it was still a much more satisfying outcome than in the fall, when WNUR lost 12-7 in football to, for ten points, the team representing which other media outlet?
Answer: The Daily Northwestern Sports
8. Flax couldn’t wash his hair for about 72 hours because he had glue in it that needed to hold the bit of his skin that had been broken back together. The accident that caused this occurred while setting up for a live sports cast from the Rock, where Flax was hit in the head by, for ten points, what piece of WNUR equipment?
Answer: RPU antenna
9. It took Flax more time to get to this class than to any other for which he wrote out the time in fall 2000. Of course winter 2001 saw Intro to Sociology which, being at Tech, clearly took the most time to get to of any of Flax’s classes, but in Flax’s chart of September 28, 2000, this class took five minutes to get to, two minutes more than the second-farthest class. For ten points, what is this class, which Flax had at the library and which took almost as long to get to through the library as it did from the dorm to the library door?
Answer: Expository Writing
10. Flax found himself bored by these mandatory classes, which
seemed to be full of the sort of information that should be relatively intuitive. He summed up 102 and 103 on the site, condensing
103 into three lines: “Watch your shit,” “Buy an expensive bike lock,”
and “There’s nobody that likes parties more than policemen,” which was an
actual quote from the Evanston
PD sergeant who was on hand. For ten points,
give the common name of these classes, the 101 of which Flax had not yet attended when he
wrote the update of September 18, 2000.
Answer: Responsibilities
11. The
third episode in the Simpsons’ “Treehouse of Horror VI” was entitled “Homer
³” and
featured Homer venturing into a strange 3-D world behind the bookshelf, in which all sort
of random equations were floating around. Among
them were P=NP and epi =
-1. There was also a string of 12 hexadecimal
characters, which Owen Baker pointed out to Flax and which Flax, who had the episode on
tape, diligently set out to transcribe. This
proved tough as the full chain was only visible in a few frames, but Flax managed to do it
and converted the hex numbers into ASCII code, whereupon he came up with a message. For ten points, what was that message, a reference
to the show’s nerdy scientist?
Answer: Frink rules!
12. The
idea behind titling the page with “Andrew K.” was to maintain some measure of
anonymity for the
person whose IM conversations appeared on it, but since the page’s name was “aklein.htm,”
that may not really have worked. For ten
points, what is this page, wherein David Tillman and Justin Starling torment an inebriated
Andrew Klein?
Answer: The Drunken Ramblings of Andrew K.
13.
Flax’s biggest problem was that the play was too damn long. Other than that, he also didn’t really like
its outmoded, sexist attitudes and poorly written characters, not to mention a huge
collapse in the plot at the end. But he
thought the performance itself was pretty good. For
ten points, what is this musical, put on in March of Flax’s senior year at Columbia
High School?
Answer: How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying
14.
Disappointed that the group wasn’t going to get to see it, Flax snuck away during a
shopping jaunt at nearby Victoria Markets and went to
this building, easily the tallest in Auckland. Somewhat
embarrassingly, though, he was confused by the entrance and couldn’t figure out how
to get in, so he ended up simply returning to the Markets without ever having been inside,
for ten points, what “syringe-looking thing” on the Auckland skyline?
Answer: Sky Tower
15. The
road up New Zealand’s Mount Tarawera was cut in the forties and had evidently been
left alone ever since, because it was incredibly bumpy.
Flax, who tends to have issues with motion sickness, narrowly avoided
throwing up solely because of
the song that came on the radio, which he knew the words to and could sing along with
which, while embarrassing in its own right, spared him the embarrassment of losing it all
over the bus. For ten points, what is this
New Radicals song, in which the lead singer was clearly talking to Flax when he said,
“Don’t give up, you’ve got the music in you?”
Answer: You Get What You Give
16. Its
year runs from February to December, and it has about 1350 students. The seniors often wear sweatshirts reading “Senior”
and though there is a uniform, only freshmen and sophomores are obligated to wear it. Flax only visited it for one day with his homestay
host Nick Jones while in Hamilton, New Zealand, and he found the classes to be pretty
boring, but it was better than in South Africa when he was forced to say a few things in
Afrikaans. For ten points, what is the name
of this high school, which inexplicably had a physics classroom adorned with the type of
signs you’d expect to see in sixth grade chemistry?
Answer: Hillcrest High School
17. It is
situated on South Stradbroke Island, which
unnerved Flax a little because there used to only be one Stradbroke Island until the
middle of it washed away. The group stayed in
six-person cabins which were supposed to be eco-friendly, but all that really meant was
that the TV could tell Flax’s cabin mates that he was using up all of the hot water
in the shower. For ten points, what is this
resort, the room key from which Flax still carries around with him and where Flax killed
his knees and feet by biking an incredible amount?
Answer: Couran Cove
18.
When Flax saw a ball with this team’s logo emblazoned on it in a rugby store in
Sydney, he instantly found the name terrific. Unfortunately,
the ball was the only piece of merchandise he saw with the logo, and it was too expensive
and awkward to justify buying and transporting back.
He would later find out that the reason there was nothing else was that the
team no longer exists, having merged with the Balmain Tigers. For ten points, name this NRL team, one of the
sport’s original franchises and now half of the Wests Tigers.
Answer: Western Suburbs Magpies
19.
Because of rebel insurrection in Suva, the Fiji leg of the New Zealand trip never left New
Zealand. Unfortunately, flying into a
country embroiled in civil war may have actually proved less hazardous for one of
the students, who got off the train in Palmerston North, a Wellington suburb, allegedly
for a smoke, and fell onto the tracks to his death when the train began to depart and he
tried to jump back on. For ten points, name
this late student, roommate of Flax’s friend Sean in Rotorua.
Answer: Ian Phillips
20. His
response to the shaved Flax was “AHHHHHHHH! NO
WHERE’S THE BEARD?!” It’s funny that he should have that response
because Flax had a similar response, if slightly more bemused than freaked, when he first
saw this guy with a Flax-imitating (though he’ll deny that) goatee. Flax has known him ever since he moved from Long
Island in the middle of eighth grade, but he’s best known to visitors of BigFlax.com
as one of the stars of “A Choice of Weapons” as well as the person on whose
answering machine Mr. Mullin left his infamous messages.
For ten points, who is this friend of Flax, now a student at Ithaca College?
Answer: Redd or Stefan Tannenbaum
21
(tiebreaker, not used). Flax laid into this Winter 2001 class on the CTEC because he didn’t
think it had much to do with the material it, by all rights, should have been offering. The “film” it dealt with was the kind
you took photographs with, while the rest of the course was spent designing websites. Needless to say, there was never any radio,
television, or film in, for ten points, what introductory class in Flax’s major?
Answer: RTVF 180 or Media Construction