Nicholas Kaufmann's Journal

Second place tonight! Team Totally Tits* is slowly rising back to its championship status. It's only a matter of time before we progress from four-time to five-time champions!

Tonight had the craziest audio round, though. Instead of the usual snippets of songs, they played the music and sound effects from classic video games, which we then had to identify. We got more than half of them right, which is pretty good, actually, but not enough to secure first place. Also, it was the most headache-inducing audio round ever. I feel like all those bleeps and bloops scrambled my brain!

We return Monday, February 9 to see if we can reach number one again and put another Tit sticker (it looks exactly like you think it does) on the trophy!



* You already know I didn't come up with the name, so stop rolling your eyes at me. Though the funny thing is that after going through a few roster changes, the team is now almost entirely comprised of men!

This was one of the questions at last night's trivia. I was one of the few who figured it out. Now let's see if you can!

An Arabian sheik informs his two sons, the Princes, that they must race their camels to the neighboring city, but that whoever's camel is the slowest will inherit his fortune. So the Princes take off, riding their camels aimlessly around the desert for five days, with neither wanting to be the first to reach the city, until they meet a wise man. They tell the wise man their situation, and the wise man gives them a piece of advice that has them both jumping back on the camels and racing as fast as they can for the neighboring city. What did the wise man tell them?

Answer in comments, please, and I'll let you know if you're right or wrong.

But don't look at the comments until you've already answered, or you might see the right answer accidentally!

Good luck!

I just got back from tonight's inaugural reading of Pen Parentis, a pretty cool New York-based organization started up by my friend M.M. De Voe that provides resources to published authors who are parents. The reading was held at The Libertine by Todd English, which is part of the Gildhall Hotel on Gold Street in lower Manhattan, and it went smashingly. I wasn't familiar with either of the authors beforehand -- Jennifer Cody Epstein and Leigh Newman -- but I loved what I heard of their work (especially Leigh's, which was hilarious and nostalgic and had a strong narrative voice).

I gotta tell you, the Gildhall Hotel is one of the loveliest hotels I've ever been in, all dark wood and bookshelves. It's like being in an eccentric millionaire's multilevel library. Of course, glasses of wine ran around $20 a pop at the bar -- I had to settle for a $7 bottle of Stella -- but the ambiance really charmed me. Some day when I have a million dollars I'm going to get a room there!

You can sign up at the website if you want to be alerted to news about their monthly reading series. Also, if you're a writer who's also a parent and want to take part in this New York-based series, you can drop them a line at the email address on the site.