New SB article up

[Peter Sarrett]

Tim: Your earlier comment:

I have to say that I was seriously impressed with your Game Show T*R*A*S*H set up as was everyone else there including Bob Boden. Folks, if you ever get a chance to see the game that Mike devised, it is amazing.

Mike has a computer version of MANY game shows that you can play in a quiz bowl format. I was amazed. I have to say it was definitely a highlight of the weekend for me.

made it sound like TRASH was an amalgam of multiple game show formats, but I must have misunderstood.  I'd like to hear more about Mike's system.

  - Peter

[mmb5]

[quote name=\'Timsterino\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 01:47 PM\'] The prizes are all glory. There are no real monetary prizes (that I know of). I am sure Mike Burger could better answer that question. His team ended up winning "Viva Trash Vegas" this year.
 [/quote]
 Prizes won by Winners of the National TRASH tournament include:

A Coleco Adam! (1998 tournament)
Champagne Glasses! (2000 tournament)
Vegas-related prizes (comp tickets to see Ronn Lucas, buffet comps)!  (2003 tournament)
A real ECW Champions Belt -- this is like the Stanley Cup, it goes from team to team.


The one thing Tim got wrong is that this is the first tournament that TRASH has run that requires packet writing.  All other TRASH tournaments were written by the group themselves.  Tossups are somewhat lengthier than they were in the old College Bowl days, now they resemble either the Biography question from Sports Challenge or if Trebek Double Dare clues were read as one long question.  TRASH doesn't post their questions on-line, but a good example of what the questions pretty much look like is available here, although mine tend to be shorter.

Trash or \"pop culture\" tournaments got their start in the early 90's as a parody of a College Bowl splinter group which mandated rigorous academic content which really pleased those who knew the answers and horrified the ones who didn't.  Besides the two (or three) tournaments TRASH runs yearly, there are many invitational tournaments held throughout the year.  The two largest are Charlie Steinhice's Trashmasters, which is held at UT-Chattanooga the first weekend of December and my Ann B. Davis, which is held at The University of Michigan on the day before MLK Day in January.  In these, the people who write for TRASH play, and they are quite the formidable teams.  Charlie doesn't have a web page for his tournament, I only keep one for announcements and can be found here and here.  Please note the picture of Michael Burger on the second one is not actually me, I have a face made for radio.

As far as how hard it is, the team I used to win the Vegas tournament was two people from the National team (me and Craig Barker, 1996 College Jeopardy! Champ), a person who usually leads these tournaments in scoring and a fourth who was just along for the ride.  The caliber of play was roughly equivalent to what one would see at a typical invitational tournament or a TRASH regional, but below that seen at either a TRASH national or my tournament.  The Beat the Geeks people once entered an invitational tournament and held their own (not winning, though), partially because they might play 5 games in a day, we generally play 10-14.

Some of the current \"Trash\" scene is made up of alumni like me who can't seem to get enough of it, while the remainder are students.  The upper echelon of players is mostly alumni, since college students aren't quite up yet on the full range of popular culture you need to know to win these things.  If you're looking for a place to play, College Bowl programs which are friendly to Trash-style questions include Michigan, Pitt, UT-Chattanooga, Georgia, Boston University, USC, Cal-Berkeley, ASU and Texas A&M.  What many alumni do like myself is you read for the academic tournaments (and get your game show host fix out of the way) and play in the trash questions.


--Mike Burger

[melman1]

[quote name=\'dickoon\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 12:41 PM\']However, I take his use of the combination of letters G, S and C in that order as a deliberate middle finger to atgs and the established online game show fandom at large.[/quote]
The motivations for doing so being what?

(I'm several years late to the party... but if I'm gonna be reading all this stuff I like to know the history.)

[HSquares2003]

[quote name=\'melman1\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 05:20 PM\'] [quote name=\'dickoon\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 12:41 PM\']However, I take his use of the combination of letters G, S and C in that order as a deliberate middle finger to atgs and the established online game show fandom at large.[/quote]
The motivations for doing so being what?

(I'm several years late to the party... but if I'm gonna be reading all this stuff I like to know the history.) [/quote]
 Not sure which question you were asking, but if you mean ATGS, let's just say it is now pretty much a cesspool, spam ridden Newsgroup that is dead for good.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'melman1\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 02:20 PM\'] (I'm several years late to the party... but if I'm gonna be reading all this stuff I like to know the history.) [/quote]
 Well, in this case you may well have to learn to live without it, because unless you want to do some research on Google Groups, the whole tale is simply too much to be boiled down into a post or two.

[Timsterino]

[quote name=\'Peter Sarrett\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 03:29 PM\'] Tim: Your earlier comment:

I have to say that I was seriously impressed with your Game Show T*R*A*S*H set up as was everyone else there including Bob Boden. Folks, if you ever get a chance to see the game that Mike devised, it is amazing.

Mike has a computer version of MANY game shows that you can play in a quiz bowl format. I was amazed. I have to say it was definitely a highlight of the weekend for me.

made it sound like TRASH was an amalgam of multiple game show formats, but I must have misunderstood.  I'd like to hear more about Mike's system.

  - Peter [/quote]
Sorry about the confusion Peter. Mike Burger's game took place at the end of the Game Show Congress. It was not part of TRASH.  It was set up in a quiz bowl TRASH format. It was four on four. Team #1 would start and click a mouse to stop the \"whammy\" board. Whichever game show your team lands on is the one played for that round and so on for each subsequent round. Your team starts first. Then you actually play that game show. Mike has an elaborate set up which truly amazed us all.  The team with the most points after 30 minutes (I think) wins.

I think the wildest thing for me was to watch Bob Boden and his team play Lingo. It was classic.

Tim :-)

[melman1]

[quote name=\'HSquares2003\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 02:28 PM\'][quote name=\'melman1\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 05:20 PM\'] [quote name=\'dickoon\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 12:41 PM\']However, I take his use of the combination of letters G, S and C in that order as a deliberate middle finger to atgs and the established online game show fandom at large.[/quote]
The motivations for doing so being what?
 [/quote]
Not sure which question you were asking, but if you mean ATGS, let's just say it is now pretty much a cesspool, spam ridden Newsgroup that is dead for good.[/quote]
I knew that atgs died due to severe troll infestation., yes.

But what I was asking, though, was why SB would make a \"deliberate middle finger\" to the atgs \"regulars\".  Yes, I'm sure it's a sordid and complicated story but I was hoping there was a simple explanation.

[Brandon Brooks]

[quote name=\'melman1\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 06:00 PM\'] I knew that atgs died due to severe troll infestation., yes.

But what I was asking, though, was why SB would make a "deliberate middle finger" to the atgs "regulars".  Yes, I'm sure it's a sordid and complicated story but I was hoping there was a simple explanation. [/quote]
 Simple.  From what I understand, it's because a noticeable amount of ATGS harshly criticized his method of running his website, whether it was deserved or underserved.  A lot of us realize that Beverly is one of the few major outlets online for everything about game shows.  His site is comprehensive, and covers everything about game shows, and does it daily, a huge feat to accomplish.  I'll admit, Beverly does have some rather annoying biases which are just not journalistically professional in the least.  (It's even worse since he's a jornalism prof.  A lot of the stuff he does would probably get him booted with a quickness at Northwestern University's Medill.)  

But I don't really care that much... because it's his site, and he can scratch whatever itch he wants to on his site.  And not a single person can do a thing about it.  So, as Chris explained, if ATGS doesn't like him, he doesn't have to like ATGS.  Fine.

With that being said, he's not my arch-rival; I'm pretty sure he's not an evil person in real life or anything.  And to tell the truth, it's not really my place to say he shouldn't do a lot of what he does on his site (unless, of course, it's slanderous or doesn't give people credit).  I go to his site to look at what I want to, and I get a lot of my info here.

So I hope that serves as partial explanation, and if I'm way out in left field, I would hope someone would correct me.  But I've been in ATGS for three years, and that's what I've known it to be.

Brandon Brooks

[dickoon]

[quote name=\'melman1\' date=\'Aug 8 2003, 12:00 AM\'] But what I was asking, though, was why SB would make a "deliberate middle finger" to the atgs "regulars".  Yes, I'm sure it's a sordid and complicated story but I was hoping there was a simple explanation. [/quote]
 Short answer: he and his site have a long history of utter pretentiousness and of deliberately distancing himself from the rest of the game show fandom. Worse than that, in the funocracy that is the Internet, he's just not really good enough at what he does - not nearly an entertaining enough writer - to be able to get away with breaking the unwritten social rules of interacting with a community.

Come and play with us, Steve; show some backbone and some humility. Then we'll want to come and play with you.

This is my last word on the subject in this thread, barring sufficient provocation to make me decide to want to eat those words, because I recognise we're getting increasingly off-topic and I recognise that I've probably done more than anyone else on this thread to get us there.

[clemon79]

[quote name=\'Brandon Brooks\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 05:21 PM\'] So I hope that serves as partial explanation, and if I'm way out in left field, I would hope someone would correct me.  But I've been in ATGS for three years, and that's what I've known it to be.
 [/quote]
 I think that's part of it. I think another part is the fact that he's never been part of \"our\" community...like I said, he lurks here, I'm sure, but he never posts. He takes, but he doesn't give back. That chafes at me some.

Yet, at the same time, because he's enginneered the press to think so, he's anoited himself King Of The Game Show Geeks, and that's reaffirmed every time 20/20 or whoever grabs him for a sound bite on whatever story might be pertinent.

So: he uses us for his own gain, though he gives off an air of being too cool for the room, unless of course a camera is pointed at him, when he becomes our Fearless Leader.

If he chose to do so, he might do well to make his presence known in here and answer the hard questions his detractors have been asking about him all of these years. Maybe he has good explanations. I'd certainly be willing to listen with an open mind.

[Peter Sarrett]

Tim: That sounds very cool.Mike, any chance of making your app available to an interested party?

[uncamark]

[quote name=\'clemon79\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 08:06 PM\'][quote name=\'Brandon Brooks\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 05:21 PM\'] So I hope that serves as partial explanation, and if I'm way out in left field, I would hope someone would correct me.  But I've been in ATGS for three years, and that's what I've known it to be.
 [/quote]
I think that's part of it. I think another part is the fact that he's never been part of \"our\" community...like I said, he lurks here, I'm sure, but he never posts. He takes, but he doesn't give back. That chafes at me some.[/quote]
It seems as though Steve posted on a.t.g-s in the early days (I've seen his name on Googled archive posts) and on GS-L when that was a more active list, back in the days of the Turkish server.  The last post I seem to remember him making on GS-L was way back in 1998, when a new poster asked for the rest of us to describe ourselves and if we were going to the GSC that year in Cleveland.  Steve complied and then said that he would not go to GSCs because of the \"immature, foul-mouthed\" participants or something to that effect (as if you wouldn't expect anything else from a group of men, mostly heterosexuals, together for a week--sorry kids, but when the girls aren't around, we tend to talk dirty).

Be it as it may, Steve decided to be his own voice away from the established forums then (it was around the time his site adapted its current format) and has pointedly chosen not to have any kind of regular message board, probably because he doesn't want to traffic-cop it to keep with his principles.  Which, of course, is his choice.

[mmb5]

[quote name=\'Peter Sarrett\' date=\'Aug 7 2003, 11:52 PM\'] Tim: That sounds very cool.Mike, any chance of making your app available to an interested party? [/quote]
 Information on what Tim has been talking about can be found here:

http://www.mikeburger.com/gsr.html




--Mike Burger

[catkins522]

[quote name=\'dscungio\' date=\'Aug 5 2003, 11:11 AM\'] I agree.  Nice read, but Steve namedropped everybody who showed up.

It sounds like that they all had fun and everything, but I have a question.  Just how many people showed up for this thing?  It's not a popular national event like a comic book convention.  Steve doesn't give any attendance numbers in his articles, so I'm suspecting that only a hundred people showed up.

Is anyone here seriously considering going to next year's event?


P.S. By sharing the letters "GSC," do we have to make a distinction between the Congress and our fan-based "Conventions"?




Dean Scungio
dscungio@worldnet.att.net (dscungio@worldnet.att.net)
AIM & Y!: dascungio (Note the "a"!)

"It's not how much we give away,
it's the way we do it." -Monty Hall [/quote]
 

Is anyone here seriously considering going to next year's event?

I am thinking of hosting of the HOMETOWN GSC.  School is out, the studios are mostly free, and I am an employee of the station.  Plus, there is some props that are sitting in storage.  I could bring them out and play with them.  Hmmmmm....

Charles

[Timsterino]

[quote name=\'dscungio\' date=\'Aug 5 2003, 11:11 AM\'] Is anyone here seriously considering going to next year's event?

 [/quote]
 Yes!

Tim :-)