a week is a long time

The world's my oyster, except for the fact that I just rammed a wooden stake in my brother's heart because he turned into a vampire, even though I don't believe in vampires. Aside from that unfortunate business, everything's hunky-dory.

After last week's sub-par outing we stormed back to a reasonably comfortable win in the quiz last night.

We got an unprecedented fifteen out of fifteen in the music round but on the other side of the ledger I was overruled assigning the movie-round quote above to From Dusk till Dawn when groupthink implanted a false memory in certain minds of having heard it The Lost Boys.

There is a family resemblance I will grant you to "Look at your reflection in the mirror. You're a creature of the night Michael, just like out of a comic book! You're a vampire Michael! My own brother, a goddamn, shit-sucking vampire. You wait 'till mom finds out, buddy!" so it just goes to show what an exalted level we operate at.

The Legend Continues Continued

We fell down to third in the quiz last week after four wins in a row, so shoulders back to the wheel and noses once more to the grindstone tonight, and on our own dollar with no prize money to fund brain cell lubricants.

If we have to learn all 763 new jokes from the limited edition of Anchorman 2 for the film round, we may never win it again.

touch wood

We won the quiz at the Antelope last night for the third consecutive time, and also with half an eye on the telly watching Chelsea beat Man City to leave Arsenal top of the table.

It's not winning it five times in a row (Icons passim) but still a fine free night out; last week's winnings covering the bar bill.

Time for a new Quiz label here.

Whatever happened?

Paul Roberts:  Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky?
Myself:  He got an ice pick that made his ears burn

Paul Roberts: Whatever happened to dear old Lenny, the great Elmyra, and Sancho Panza?
Myself  Pass*

Paul Roberts: Whatever happened to all the heroes?
Myself: All the Shakespearoes? They watched their Rome burn

Paul Roberts, who was the lead singer of The Stranglers between 1990 and 2006, is your host for the Tuesday night pub quiz in the 'Nonce. This fact cheers me so mightily that I am hugging myself in my mind.

---

* Lenny Bruce, Elmyr de Hory, and, for it is he, Sancho Panza. You are Lobby Lud and I claim my five pounds

I'll give it five

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

An epochal fifth win in a row in the quiz last night, caused (well that and the lager) me to declaim "Ozymandias" as a warning against hubris. The team was smaller than of late, which meant last week's £50 bar tab paid for all our booze. I really can't see a flaw in the arrangement.

Prodnose: How did the film quote round go?

Michaleen Flynn: Impetuous! Homeric!

Myself: Barry Fitzgerald in John Ford's The Quiet Man.

I am Reg Smeeton

Narrator: Reg Smeeton, floccose red wig like a kipper nailed to his bonce, nodded with ill-feigned interest; but the butterfly flexions of his face muscles argued the mental tumult within - urging fervid facts chattering in Stockhausen tongues.

Smeeton: Drawing from my vast, though admittedly unresolved catalogue of general know-it-all, facts of interest etcetera, corroborated, corroboree: a sacred or warlike assembly of aboriginals, may I.. remind you of the exploits of one William Barker of Manchester? In the 1890s, Billy cleared a canal thirty-five feet wide, making a running jump, jack-knifing into a second to land, perfectly dry, on the other side.

Seth: I could clear a snooker table, full-length mind, from a standing jump before 'operation. I could've made a mint, had I been a bit more shrewd.

Smeeton: Did you know that the elephant shrew never closes its eyes?

Narrator: Through the intestinal smoke of Seth's pipe, Smeeton's sweat-spangled face, eyes straining with mad intensity behind glasses the shape of Ford Cortinas, shuddered with the ungovernable maelstrom of information, inessential, infantry and endless, that constituted the grotesque furniture of his mind. Filing cabinets unlocked; thesauri fell agape; data danced in strict formation, quick, quick, quick-quick quick... puzzles fitted - it all added up: niggling, self-edited, tumbling with clicking impatience, cross-reference and erupting gathered beserk-fierce, heedless and torrential, howling for outlet from his springboard lips.

Prodnose: You want me to ask about the quiz don't you?

Myself: Quizzes this week mate. Quizzes.

Prodnose (monotone): How did it go?

Myself: We won at the Antelope on Monday, and we won at the William Morris on Wednesday; £50 and £30 bar tab prizes respectively. We were winning at the interval in Tuesday's Wimbledon Bookfest Literary Quiz, but then ....

Prodnose: ..then?

Myself: Do I have to spell it out in a non-pictographic consonantal alphabet, or abjad? We came third.

Prodnose: That's not too bad; bronze medal position.

Myself: (morosely):  "There are forces at work in this country about which we have no knowledge. Do you understand?"

Prodnose: The Queen to Paul Burrows?

Myself (brightening): Correct! So now there's everything to play for as we go into the next round .....