Quizbowl is a trivia game in which teams use lock-out buzzer systems individually to try to be the first to answer and a pyramidal style toss-up question and then work as a team to answer a subsequent multi-part bonus question. Of course, if any of that made a lick of sense to you, then you probably already play quizbowl. For a much more understandable explanation, try this article on wikipedia.
See above for an explanation of basic quizbowl. Trash quizbowl is a specific flavor of quizbowl in which all the questions used are about popular culture and sports topics. Trash refers to the general type of tournament, but there is also T.R.A.S.H. (Testing Recall About Strange Happenings) that is a business that runs regional and national championships in trash. T.R.A.S.H. Regionals are typically two to three weeks after F.O.G.H.A.T. and while the two are in no way directly affiliated, many have found playing in F.O.G.H.A.T. or practicing on its questions to be useful preparation for T.R.A.S.H. tournaments. If nothing else, Jeremy White can definitely attest that writing F.O.G.H.A.T. is good preparation for T.R.A.S.H. events as he been on four Regionals champions and two TRASHionals champions and often finds that roughly a third of his answers he learned by writing F.O.G.H.A.T.
F.O.G.H.A.T. uses a five-column distribution. Roughly 20% of the questions in each packet of questions cover each of the following major areas: sports, music, movies, television and miscellaneous. The miscellaneous category is about a third pop lit (think Tom Clancy, Peanuts, Maxim magazine, etc) and then two-thirds just about everything else (video games, food/beverage, consumer brands, cars, etc.) Within each major category, the questions will be distributed across different eras, genres, subjects (i.e. movie titles, characters, actors, etc).
Try the announcement of the next tournament, posted here. If you need more info, e-mail Jeremy White.
All past F.O.G.H.A.T. question sets are available for ordering (usually $5 to $15 for the entire tournament) and new F.O.G.H.A.T. sets are usually available within a week of the tournament date. E-mail Jeremy White for more information or to order. The University of Tennessee-Chattanooga runs a mirror (i.e. separate tournament using the same questions) of F.O.G.H.A.T. called the Big Lots Open and other mirror sites are potentially welcome. E-mail Charlie Steinhice for details on the UTC mirror and e-mail Jeremy White for mirroring requests.
Yes, there was and still is. If you would like to learn more about them, try the websites for their original recipe and the current incarnation. Once you are tired of that, try searching for their bio and discography in the most excellent All Music Guide.
It has something to do with this organization.
Last revised: August 24, 2005