All right, everybody ... No. 2 pencils only, and please don't color outside the circles on your ScanTron sheet.
Here's your latest "The Jester's Quart" Current Events Quiz:
1. The best thing about watching an entire day of opening round NCAA tournament games is:
A. Seeing the stunned faces of a No. 3-seeded team when they piss away their title hopes in a first-round loss to Boll Weevil State College of Architecture and Horticulture.
B. At the end of the night, calculating your buffalo wing-to-free-throw-attempt ratio for each of the games.
C. Feeling your retinas start to snap as you strain your eyes watching CBS's four-way split-screen coverage on your 13-inch television.
D. Telling your boss you have to stay home with "explosive diarrhea."
2. A Congressional House committee declined to subpoena Barry Bonds to its March 17 hearing on steroids because:
A. It was concerned Barry's attendance would bring unwanted publicity to a small, unassuming gathering between superstar baseball players and the most famous politicians in the United States of America.
B. It was concerned the surly Bonds would be even surlier if he had to give up green beer at O'Grady's for some dumb Congressional hearing.
C. It didn't want to face the embarrassment of having more black men on baseball's witness list they the Congress has in the Senate.
D. It was worried the Capitol dome wouldn't be large enough to encompass Barry's steroid-inflated melon.
3. Which of the following was an actual threat made by Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder to wide receiver Laveranues Coles when Coles sabotaged the team's initial trade with the New York Jets?
A. That if Coles didn't allow the trade to go through, Snyder would climb down off his telephone book, take off his platform shoes, run over to Coles and start punching his ankles.
B. Coles would be forced to work the pit crew for coach Joe Gibbs's NASCAR team.
C. Synder threatened to buy Coles a big-screen TV so Coles could watch all the games he wouldn't be playing in for the Redskins. (Ed. note: This is actually the real answer. Can you believe the gall of that Napoleonic twit? Where does a guy who's turned a once proud, Super Bowl-winning franchise into a team most opponents refer to as "our other bye-week" get off making threats to anybody?)
D. That if Coles wouldn't allow the trade to go through, Snyder would find a way to send him to the New York Knicks.
4. The person or persons most in peril as St. Louis Cardinals wild-pitcher Rick Ankiel converts to the outfield is/are:
A. The catcher.
B. The cut-off man.
C. The fans in Section 128.
D. The guy running the imported beer stand in the concourse above Section 128.
5. CBS News executives celebrated anchorman Dan Rather's last night behind the desk of the "Evening News" by:
A. Attempting to authenticate the signatures on his going-away card.
B. Listening to Andy Rooney drone on about how annoying it is to always get stuck with the shopping cart with the wiggly wheel at the supermarket because surely they have enough employees to check on such things ... but that, then again, the employees aren't the hottest irons in the fire to begin with, all of which begs the question: why does a sleeve of Chips Ahoy! cookies seem to not have the same number of chocolate chip cookies as it had back in 1989?
C. Accompanying Jon Stewart for his CBS Evening News anchorman suit-fitting.
D. Doing what everybody else usually does during the "CBS Evening News": Watching either "The Simpson's," "Friends," or "Seinfeld."
6. The NFL is investigating Minnesota Vikings coach Mike Tice for scalping Super Bowl tickets. This is significant because:
A. Tice was not a member of the Local 742 Ticket-Scalpers Union, and hence could be considered a scab scalper.
B. Tice wasn't including the TicketMaster surcharge of $10,000 per ticket.
C. The scandal could threaten the integrity of the Super Bowl ticking process, which has successfully kept real NFL fans out of the game for at least the last 25 years.
D. It marks the first time since the retirement of Fran Tarkenton the words "Super Bowl" and "Minnesota Vikings" have been this closely associated.
7. The other seven people in my Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball League should know that I:
A. Am still going through fantasy hockey withdrawal, and could potentially be tricked into trading Miguel Tejada for Nikolai Khabibulin.
B. Typically only draft the players I've heard of, meaning plenty of veteran American League designated hitters with knees so bad they are one hard slide into second base away from getting stretchered off the field.
C. Traditionally are more likely to trade with someone who begins the proposal with, "Say ... have you lost weight?"
D. Tend to lose interest by the second week in May, leaving my team as a rudderless ship that starts the same pitchers every day whether they're actually on the mound or not.
8. Gladiator star Russell Crowe recently said he was being targeted for kidnapping by Al Qaeda operatives because they wanted to:
A. Fulfill a promise to Allah that there will never, ever, ever be a sequel to"Virtuosity."
B. Impress Meg Ryan.
C. Book 30-Odd Foot of Grunt for Osama's niece's Super Sweet 16.
D. Ensure Colin Farrell would continue to have a career playing Russell's sloppy-seconds.
9. The most common reaction by the NHL's owners to a proposed $3.5 billion takeover bid from a consortium of business interests was:
A. Joy ... the kind that the owner of a broken-down 1978 Plymouth Duster with three wheels and a bumper missing feels when someone offers him $10 to take it off those cinder blocks on his front lawn.
B. Confusion, as they debated whether the bid was in American or Canadian dollars.
C. Relief, as the $3.5 billion would — according to the owners' books — leave the NHL only $3 billion short of breaking even after last season.
D. Bewilderment, as the only other times a group of Americans showed this kind of interest in hockey, either Mike Eruzione was on the ice or Paul Newman was on the movie poster.
10. The horse that starred in the movie "Seabiscuit" died this week. Its cause of death was:
A. Its face was ripped off by a rampaging gaggle of chimpanzees.
B. Utter shock that the horse who played the boxer in "Million Dollar Baby" won for Best Actress at the Oscars this year.
C. The result from its raging post-"Seabiscuit" cocaine addiction.
D. Suicide, after his inter-species relationship with the dog from "Because of Winn-Dixie" was exposed by the National Inquirer.
Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].
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