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By Mike, January 10, 2007 8:35 pm

The call went out on Wednesday: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to trek through the snow and go to trivia and drink for free…”

Dave, Lisa and Mike arrived at the Kiwi & Kangaroo shortly before 8:30. The place looked empty yet there wasn’t an empty seat. The group took space near the corner and assumed the name of Baby Pony MySpaceGroup… or Baby Pony MSG as our British friend noted on the scoresheet.

Our namesake Baby Pony in DC (with Captain Awesome) came in 3^rd earlier in the week, so we needed to continue the team’s winning spirit…

Right before the 1^st question was asked, Nicole and Isaac popped in and joined BPMSG. Seconds later, Master P made his arrival. The team was set to defend its title…

Matt cashed in a previous 3^rd place award on a pitcher of Manny’s IPA and it was time to settle into Round 1, which turned out to be a mixed bag. Matt knew that Jon Bon Jovi owned an Arena Football team, but we were stumped and The Good Shepherd was not the #1 movie at the Box Office last weekend. We guessed that Muhammed Ali fought superman in a comic book in the 60s. We put down Thriller as the #1 Song of the 80s and were pissed that we were foiled by a 2 ^nd Bon Jovi answer. Mike came up w/ Scott Adams as the creator of Dilbert. Matt knew the bar at the Edgewater was 6Seven and that it was on Pier 67. We couldn’t get our MINDS around what a noologist was. Mike, remembered sitting in his college living room w/ his roommates to watch Tiger win his first Major in 1997. We guessed Bourbon came from rye and was pissed that it was corn. And Lisa, knowing her naked women (and setting a foreshadowing for later events) knew Marilyn Monroe was Playboy’s first Playmate. A 6 out of 10 for BPMSG.

The Brit confused us and handed out the pictures after round 1. And in unusual Baby Pony tradition we were able to identify some of the pictures. Troy Smith, Nancy Pelosi, David Akers, Sienna Miller, Bill Gates’s forehead. 5 for FIVE. Master P pulled out Dale Earnhardt Jr. Then we followed w/ Vijay Singh, Tony Romo’s hands, Philip Rivers and Mariska Haggarty. TEN 4 TEN. Team BP was in chartered territory, which quickly ended. We thought the pickup was a Nissan, but it was a Toyota. We picked out the random city in Maine as Agusta. Lisa thought it was a Levi’s commercial then switched to The Gap unfortunately. We didn’t know the cartoon. Nicole knew Tara Connor. Everyone recognized Book Club’s Amy Sedaris. We couldn’t figure out 50Cent’s grill-less grill. We nailed Hirohito’s description (after multiple misspellings). We got the next female wrong, but got Kate Winslett and Matt Damon. Apolcalypto was easy as was George Strait. Ben Stiller perplexed us but MasterP knew Michael Flatley AND Right Said Fred. We didn’t get the next lady either, but finished strong w/ Lance Bas, Seinfeld’s puffy shirt and Joan Osborne. A VERY well done 23 out of 30. And the spirits were high for BPMSG.

Round 2 started w/ a 3 ^rd Grade layup asking about marsupials’ pouches. We’ve heard the women’s equivalent of the Davis Cup but our guess of the Nation’s Cup didn’t work for the Federations Cup. Dave knew Russia had the most lives lost in WWII and that Gary Oldman was Sid Vicous. We got Piano and Cello out of the Piano Trio, but stumbled on violin. We knew the Continental Divide entered Canada from Montana and that the tradeshow was in Las Vegas. Mike heard that Elvis would have been 72 this week but we were pissed when “Pluto’d” was the Word of the Year and not “Truthiness”. We also didn’t know that Kwanzaa ended on Jan 1 ^st. A still respectable 8 points earned in round 2.

As always, the last 2 rounds are the “Geo-Political” questions but they don’t seem too different from the 1^st two rounds… Dave tried debating the 1^st question of what Pelosi banned in the House and was happy that Mike knew it was simply smoking. He redeemed himself w/ knowing that Daniel Ortega was just reinnaugurated. We knew that ETA were Basque separatists (who are mad b/c no one knows where there language comes from), the 4 DNA bases begin w/ A,T,C,G. The iPhone will retail at $499. Lisa threw out ENIGMA as the German Coding Machine… and holy shit, she was dead on. We knew Omaha was one of the Dday Beaches that the US landed on but we couldn’t get our hands around Utah as well. Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, Elizabeth Taylor married Richard Burton twice (but we didn’t know he was Welch). And the final question was right in BPMSG’s wheelhouse- the capitals of Nicaragua, Oman & Qatar (Managua, Muscat & Doha). A very, very, very satisfying 12 points in round 3.

This put in a tie for 1^st leading into the final round. It was about this point when Mike looked at the little corner Gaming machine and noticed that there were 5 Credits still on it. A Game of “Picture Match” began which incited the group. Oh, and yeah, the pictures were of naked women. This entertained us through the beginning of Round 4 when we realized we were in the money and needed to focus.

Dave knew that Nick Hornby wrote High Fidelity and then got into a fight w/ the quizmaster over its literary prowess. We put down Eichmann as the last prisoner of Spandau Prison, but it was Hess. We knew that the Bradley and the other 2 names were tanks. Lisa knew James Watt invented the first steam engine. We were able to sort of get the Chaos Theory. We figured that China was the world’s largest exporter of tobacco and that Southeby’s was the world’s oldest auctioneer. We didn’t know that Michelangelo was his first name (his name is Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni), but the team’s Michelangelo (in name, not artistic ability) knew that SAS was owned by Norway, Sweden and Denmark. We ended in figuring that MDCLXVI was 1666 and we turned in our scorecard.

As the answers were being read, Mike got a sneak peak at the score totals and saw the results. Team Baby Pony MySpaceGroup was in a 3-Way tie for First. An unprecedented first @ the K&K.

The tiebreaker at the K&K is a spin at the infamous wheel. A representative from the 3 teams stepped up. Baby Pony has been in this position for 2 ^nd and 3^rd place before and has an amazing history of doing quite well. (To be honest, MIKE has the luck and the undetermined spinning technique w/ past spinning victories of beating a 96 w/ a 99 in the “HI” Game and landing on 50 exactly and was BPMSG’s Team Rep).

Last night’s championship spinning was the “HI” Game. The lady went first w/ a very hard to beat 5 (five). Mike stepped up represntin’ for the second spin and ended up w/ a… NINETY-EIGHT! The third guy reluctantly spun w/o hope, got something lower than 98 and Team Baby Pony MySpaceGroup ended up with the year’s second First Place finish. We collected our $50 and left happy.

The Baby Pony is striding high in 2007!

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By Mike, January 3, 2007 8:36 pm

For those of you who may not know, my friend Matt from DC, an occasional K&K Trivia attendee has started a sister Baby Pony trivia team in our nation’s capital. This trivia report is dedicated to them, our brothers and sisters in knowledge…

Consensus for trivia was attained and we were off to the Kiwi & Kangaroo. Dave& Lisawere the first arrivals to the packed pub and secured a window sill to camp out at. Mike arrived shortly before registration, we paid our $4 entry (for some reason he didn’t want our last $1) and the trio took to the stage under the moniker of Baby Pony Manganese… Like our namesake, we were hard and very brittle, fusible with difficulty, yet easily oxidized.

Round 1 was a breeze. We knew that gin came from the juniper berry. Only one of us had seen Midnight Express so we backed into the fact that he was smuggling Hashish. We knew Bobby Knight just notched win # 880, Courtney Cox’s new show is DIRT, Gulliver landed on Lilliput, Rutgers mascot is the Scarlett Knight, and Mexico City had horrible chances of being taken over by a tsunami (*dumbest question of the night award). Lisa knew that Loretta Lynn was the Coal Miner’s Daughter. Dave nailed Stanley Kirk Burrell as MC Hammer, and we all knew the Nato-Phonetic alphabet for “G” was GOLF. A sweet 10 for 10 and BPMn was on its way…

As we entered Round 2 our confidence was sky high and our roll continued. Our science minds knew that 100kgs was 220 pounds. Lisa knew that the Egyptian Theatre was on Pine and not Broadway. We debated the first word spoken on the moon, went with Houston and got another question correct. A guy playing pool tipped us off that the original Hollywood sign actually read Hollywoodland. After watching the Motorcycle Diaries, Dave knew that Che Guevera was born in Argentina . We worked on our Australian geography and figured out that Steve Irwin’s zoo was in Queensland. Naming an animal that ate meat and vegetables as an omnivore was a layup. Our first stumble was to name the movie where they said “Attica, Attica”- the guess of Ben Hur was incorrect and I never heard the correct answer (which I am OK w/ not adding to my trivia compendium). At this point we were wondering when our Notre Dame contingent (aka Team DeFrank ) was going to give up their hopes for a Bowl win against LSU and arrive. We knew that O_neg was the universal blood donor and Dave pulled out ‘Nobody Does it Better’ as the theme to Bond’s “The Spy Who Loved Me”. All in all 9 out of 10 for BPMn. 1 Wrong through the 1^st two rounds and we were happy. Until…

The Picture Round… Isaac arrived just in time to assist BPMn. We worked on the faces and Clive Owen was a sinch. We missed out on Brad Pitt, the asian guy w/ the beard and Nicholas Cage. Isaac thought #5 was Urkel, and Mike thought he made the pull of the night w/ naming Jaleel White, but alas it was Winston Marsalis- who knew they looked so similar? We didn’t get that singer, but I knew Elizabeth Berkeley from Saved By the Bell and Showgirls fame. None of us knew the new Superman, but teamwork got us to Toni Collette. We name Natalie Portman in The Professional, but struck out on Yasmine Bleeth, the kid from Home Improvement, some other random chick and I thought that Tonya Harding looks like Tina Yothers. We ended the incorrect streak w/ Roseanne, pegging “You’re so Money” from swingers. Dave knew the guy was from Thank You for Smoking but we didn’t know his name. We went on a hot streak and got Point Break, Bill Bavasi, Resovoir Dogs, and LA Confidential. We confused Kate Moss w/ Kirsten Dunst. Mike instantly knew Portugese and Manchester Utd striker Christiano Renaldo. Dave got Kirsten Dunst’s eyes, knew Steve Hutch. Dennis Rodman caused some debate but we got it and after close examination I was able to convince that it was Brandi Chastain in a sportsbra. We finished w/ a young Jake Gyllenhaal and Lisa pegged the last one as Brittany Murphy in Clueless. A horrible showing of 17 out of 30. Quite embarrassing and BPMn was humbled.

As we moved on to Round 3, our foursome continued on knowing that it was (Henry) Foss HS in Tacoma where the shooting occurred earlier in the morning (Dave was also happy to point out that they had a strong swimming program “back in the day”), we knew the new UN Secretary General was from South Korea. Mike knew that the Adam Air jet that crashed in Indonesia was a 737 and was upset that he got no love for knowing that it was a -400. Another layup was at hand when we knew it that Starbucks giving up on TransFats. Knowing that Toyota was now the #3 car manufacturer in the US, we guessed that they’d be the world leader in ‘07 and was surprised to get that right. Thanks to our Inca Trail guide Voldemort, we remembered that the Shining Path was from Peru. We figured that New Zealand had more sheep than Australia but were wrong. Isaac stepped up and knew that Bile was produced and kept in the gallbladder, but we were all stumped on which element Priestly discovered- interestingly enough it was Oxygen and not 90210ium. The geography question to end the round was in our wheelhouse… sort of. The capitals of Australia and NZ were easy but the Falkland Islands? The Falkland Islands? Really? We went w/ Whitehall, but we were happy to add Stanley to our knowledge list. Another 9 points to BPMn’s score and we were happy, knowing that we needed to make ground from our horrible showing in the Picture Round.

The fourth and final round started out knowing that you needed a viola to finish out a string quartet. Mike pulled Thomas Gainsborough out of his ass as the painter of “Blue Boy”. Of course we knew that Hannibal used elephants to cross the Alps, but we had no clue that the Parliament of the European Union met in Strasburg. We knew that there were 46 chromosomes in the body, that Kilimanjaro was in Tanzania, and Antarctica had 90% of the world’s ice (although 10,000 feet???). The last Apollo mission was 17 (not 16 as we guessed), and Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize in ‘73. The final round netted us an additional 7, bringing BPMn’s total to a respectable 50. Close to some of our previous totals, maybe good enough for another free pitcher, but still about 10% off our high.

At the end, some team nabbed 3^rd, Lotion in a Basket grabbed 2^nd and, surprisingly, our beloved Baby Pony Manganese won the first edition of trivia in 2007 at the Kiwi & Kangaroo!

Our rake for the evening… $73