(Today I’ve done my hardcore guest-posting over at Both Teams Played Hard, owned and operated by one Jared Wade, or @BothTeamPlayed on Twitter. The topic is the logo of the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers.)
You may remember some time back when I had something called Vegetable Trivia Game – it was an intricate system by which I was ranking every movie I’d ever seen, from best to worst.
Since I last touched VTG in December, this website called FlickChart launched, and they’ve developed some kind of like nerd stuff that lets the internet figure all this out for you.
It serves up two movies, you pick the one you like better, and it like pops it into some kind of online internet computer, and then like the internet puts it on your list, and after that’s finished, you can look at the list.
It’s fun and addictive and easy, although the one drawback is that it takes awhile for what you might call your “true rankings” to emerge. Here are my current rankings, and I’ll lay out a comparison of the two systems below:
Vegetable Trivia Game/FlickChart
1) Back to the Future/Die Hard
2) Die Hard/Jurassic Park
3) Fight Club/True Lies
4) The Dark Knight/Unbreakable
5) The Empire Strikes Back/Goodfellas
6) Rocky/Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
7) The Matrix/Speed
8) Star Wars/The Big Lebowski
9) Superman: The Movie/Rocky
10) Terminator 2: Judgment Day/There Will Be Blood
They have ways to filter – like you can choose to just pair up your top 20/50/100 for awhile, but until like specifically “Back to the Future vs Die Hard” comes up, my real #1 won’t be there, and Goodfellas at #5 is like really weird – I don’t know if that’s even top 30 for me.
It seems like every other match-up begins with “Starship Troopers vs – ” lately.
Have you used FlickChart. Also, what’s the most scared you’ve ever been in your life, and do you wish I had been there at all -
(Don’t forget the 1st WSM? teaser-trailer is live and happening at the Facebook Page, and also like there in this sidebar, but it’s admittedly low-res.)
Trailer
UPDATE: This is all null and void – I got bored of VTG really quickly. I still gave away the free book for the one round we did play.
The Rules of Vegetable Trivia Game:
1) I will post a piece of Vegetable Trivia whenever I feel like it.
2) You will reply.
3) The third person to make me laugh with their answer scores a point.
4) Whoever has the most points at the end of the week wins a free copy of my book, Prelude to a Super Airplane.
This is the tricky part – even if answer #2 makes me laugh more, you have to be the third person to make me laugh. Surely all kinds of alliances and strategies will form, right?
Here’s a sample question I ran this morning, while Twittering a pretty English girl:
In Die Hard, why didn’t Bruce Willis stop to eat vegetables in the middle of the movie?
I’m really excited for this, because it’s both book promo AND my special way I found to use Twitter. Like, it’s entertaining advertising.
I’ll keep a running tally of questions, points, and weekly winners in the tab at the top of the blog. You can, if you really want, leave answers in the comments of that page. (Some Twitter-based questions may get no laughs, right?)
Let’s start playing…now.
(Oh, my other use for Twitter is to ask Marvel Comics how their various characters would fare in a fight against a choo-choo train. So far, Iron Man would win, and they stopped answering me at Daredevil.)
Feel free to be patient, though – I’d much rather seduce you into buying it than have you blindly spend your money on a short description.
Things that will be happening as I attempt to get every single one of you to buy this:
1) Starting tomorrow, chapter excerpts.
2) After the excerpts are done, I’ll be posting bonus material. These will be pieces about characters that are inside the Super Airplane Saga, but don’t drive the primary story of this particular book.
This will give you a continued idea of the tone/quality, and also be a fun thing for those of you who have (or eventually) read it. It’s not throw-away stuff, either – it’s just that the forty characters that are in PTSA are the only ones that were absolutely necessary to tell this story.
3) Fifteen (15) people have read this already, including a few readers of this here blog. Reviews are forthcoming.
4) The banner ads stay until I have verification that all of you have bought it. The nice thing is they’ll be rotating with short teases on each character, drawing you in until you have no choice but to push the “purchase” button. An example:
5) I know nothing about the publishing business, so I’m doing short interviews with authors and other people, including, but not limited to, a construction foreman. He knows nothing about publishing, either!
6) Vegetable Trivia Game is going live, and its a chance to win free copies of PTSA. But you can only play on Twitter – I’m not bringing it here yet. Rules are in a forthcoming post.
So yeah – go buy my book!
(It’s also available via Amazon, but if you go through my site I make a lil’ more…he said humbly. Should be out on Barnes and Noble, Borders, et al next month. Furthermore.
And seriously – if anyone is savvy in eBook stuff, please let me know. I’d be happy to cut you off something to help get that done.)
UPDATE: If you haven’t hopped on my Twitter feed yet, go do it. We start playing Vegetable Trivia Game tomorrow, and you’ll want to be there.
Thanks to my friend Michael J. Mikolay for sending this my way:
Listened to at the gym this morning:
Welcome to the Terrordome – Public Enemy
Welcome to the Terrordome – Public Enemy
Welcome to the Terrordome – Public Enemy
Welcome to the Terrordome – Public Enemy
Welcome to the Terrordome – Public Enemy
Welcome to the Terrordome – Public Enemy
Welcome to the Terrordome – Public Enemy
Welcome to the Terrordome – Public Enemy
Welcome to the Terrordome – Public Enemy
Welcome to the Terrordome – Public Enemy
LeBron better get his stuff together before I accuse him of spending all his time at the movies again.
Yes, he had a triple-double lasterday, but only because he went out of his way to try at his doing rebounding at the end, in order to get said triple-double.
The rest of the game he was acting like Tracy McGrady.
Z being out for a month (my estimate) stinks, so maybe it’s time to do the Wally-for-Brad Miller trade. All goes well, and Wally can be back with CLE by this time next month. He looks like he could use the rest anyway.
I see a lot of music videos at the gym that I’ve never seen before – probably because the gym is the only place I watch music videos.
Anyway, below is where some German chicks called Ultra Flirt try to trick a man into giving them a Ferrari.
I like this because it completely fools you into thinking the girls are hot, plus the whole thing seems like it’s from 1985, but Germanies are really doing this today.
Oh, and it’s a remix of “Heaven is a Place on Earth”, but I don’t think there’s any irony involved in this concept.
I like the part where the robot voice goes, “Let’s go!” and it says “Let’s Go!” on the screen at the same time.
Catchy in its own way, plus at some point, Doc apparently dropped the wife, kids, and choo-choo train. It’s like a continuity mystery.
Okay, so Monday two things will happen.
1) The full lowdown on my book. Excerpts start getting posted Tuesday. If you’re clever enough, you can buy it now.
2) You can start playing Vegetable Trivia Game for real, and it’s the only way to win a free copy of my book, and it can only be done on Twitter. If you’re not following me now, maybe you should go start.
I’ve almost got it figured out, and I knew that was true when I started using it to hit on girls.
(These are some excellent search terms people use to find this blog.)
It’s been almost exactly three months since I’ve updated my Vegetable Trivia Game, so I thought I’d better do it.
I’ve seen a startlingly low number of new releases this fall, and since all I do now is re-watch The Dark Knight on DVD, I can’t see that changing in the next month or so.
Here are the latest additions:
Swimming Pool
The Ladykillers (2004)
The Transporter
Dirty Pretty Things
Missionary Man
The Foot Fist Way
Leatherheads
The Girl Next Door
Beverly Hills Chihuahua
Eagle Eye
Body of Lies
Alvin and the Chipmunks
Twilight
Goodfellas
Forrest Gump
The Godfather
The Godfather Part 2
The Godfather Part 3
Not one, but two movies, jumped into the bottom ten.
One of these was direct-to-DVD, and the other was Beverly Hills Chihuahua.
Yes, I saw this. I had been hired to write another chihuahua movie, so it was research, okay? And honestly, I expected to like it – I like kids movies, and I like nice things.
That said, it was really terrible. I mean truly, it was a mess. On top of that, the poster features the male chihuahua, and he’s not even the main character.
Truthfully, I thought you could cut him out altogether and the movie wouldn’t change at all. Anyway, whatever, etc.
Since I know you’re dying to know – Twilight came in at #405, between Runaway Bride and X-Men: The Last Stand.
Since someone, according to stats, actually found this site by searching Google for “vegetable trivia”, I thought maybe it was time to have an actual Vegetable Trivia Game, instead of the fake Vegetable Trivia Game up top there.
Here’s how it’ll work – give yourself 1 point for a correct answer, 2 points for an incorrect answer, and 3 points if you pass on the question.
Whoever ends up with the average number of points, wins. You’re responsible for grading your own quiz, because I don’t know the answers to any of these questions.
Let’s start!
Q1) An apple is:
a) red
b) seven
c) table
d) delicious
Q2) Carrots can be prepared in which of the following ways?
1) baked
2) carrotted
3) blue
4) crunchy!
Q3) Which of the following is not actually a vegetable?
1) bread
2) meat
3) milk
4) internet
Q5) Complete the following sentence: I like to eat vegetables because ________.
1) vegetables
2) meat
3) carrotted
4) meat
Q6) Unbelievable!
1) two
2) one
3) eight
4) oranges
Okay, post your score in the comments section, and the winner will be announced at the Cavs-Mavs game on November 3rd in Dallas!
(Today I’ve done my hardcore guest-posting over at Both Teams Played Hard, owned and operated by one Jared Wade, or @BothTeamPlayed on Twitter. The topic is the logo of the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers.)
(VTG can only be played on Twitter – 
(These are some excellent search terms people use to find this blog.)
Since someone, according to stats, actually found this site by searching Google for “vegetable trivia”, I thought maybe it was time to have an actual Vegetable Trivia Game, instead of the fake Vegetable Trivia Game up top there.
