QUIZ: Play TC Lane’s Celebrity Odd Man Out
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Before we get into this questionable exercise of your cognitive abilities, I should admit that, like our friend in the sky with diamonds, I got some ‘splainin to do.
OK, I, your narrator, am Thomas Cleveland Lane, whom you may have encountered in the act of providing snarky reviews of shows that are often themselves high in snark, but usually, really good snark. A very small number of you—approximately in the area of none—may also know me as the Doggerelist Lauriat of America. That is a lifetime title I claimed in the name of Isabella Rossellini and Ferdinand the Bull. In that capacity, I have published two volumes of poetry. The first, titled Too Many Rhymes, Not Enough Brains, is something you might enjoy reading to your children or grandchildren. The other, titled The Lost Notebooks of Glub Dzmc, is more attuned to adults, which is to say, unbalanced adult sensibilities, although far from pornographic. WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT! Both collections are available online at a scandalously low price at either Amazon or Synergebooks.com. Read the reviews, read the samples, draw your own conclusions.
Getting on to the more important format of the quiz, here is how it works. I will provide you with five groups of four famous names. They will all be notable people, if not entirely celebrities from the entertainment world. Some will be real, some fictitious. Some may be living, some dead. And, even though the quiz is called Celebrity Odd Man Out, some of the entries reserve the right to be women. Your object will be to pick the one entry among the four that does not belong. Ideally, you should also be able to discern the reason why. I should point out that I did not invent the concept. It used to be an occasional feature in the NPR quiz game My Word.
In the course of making these discoveries, you should bear in mind that race, gender, religion, sexual preference or the present ability to inhale and exhale air will never be the determining factor. For example, if one group consists of four men and a woman, the woman will not be the oddity by reason of her gender. The OMO could very well be one of the three men. Also, in terms of the setup, I will list each group of four notables in alphabetical order and let the non-conformity out where it will.
There are no prizes for getting most or all of the answers right, other than the smug feeling of self-satisfaction, much like what you get from those endless Bookface quizzes you take, except this one, as I said is only five questions, not the better part of your evening. All that said, I will throw in one little wrinkle to keep your eye from “accidentally” straying to the answer key. Between the questions and the answers, I will provide you with the diversion of a dumb joke or anecdote. Fair enough? Of course it is.
All right, then, with further adon’t, let us get to the meat and the spuds.
Group 1
Carol Burnett
Tina Fey
Mary Tyler Moore
Lily Tomlin
Group 2
Frank Howard
Frank Perdue
Buffalo Bob Smith
Cornelius Vanderbilt
Group 3
Michael J. Fox
Anne Hathaway
Patricia Heaton
Christopher Walken
Group 4
Adam Arkin
Tim Curry
Jon Polito
Ray Porter
Group 5
Jack Dempsey
Wild Bill Hickok
Benny Hill
Dudley Moore
Now, as I previously warned you, it is time for the space-wasting joke. In keeping with the quizzical nature of this exercise, I will make this interlude a bit of a challenge in itself. Rest assured that future space breaks (if there are to be any) will be a lot less aggravating. In this instance, I will present you with a number of those famous light-bulb jokes, but then I will, not only jumble the answers, I will throw in an extra one to which there was no antecedent question—yet another “odd man out.” Ready? Here goes nothing, then.
1) How many gorillas does it take to change a light bulb?
2) How many Jewish grandmothers does it take to change a light bulb?
3) How many male, heterosexual Broadway dancers does it take?
And now, the resolutions of the aforementioned conundra…
1) The whole team and they each get a semester’s credit
2) Both of them
3) Never mind, I’ll just sit in the dark.
4) One, but it takes an awful lot of light bulbs
The Answer Key
Feeling refreshed and re-invigorated are you? Well, nevertheless, we have to get on with it. Here at last is the answer key, wherein you get to know the joy of snorting with derision as you see an answer you have already doped out or (and here is the really fun part) forcibly smiting your forehead with the heel of your hand as you see how badly you have been duped. This is your narrator now, letting her rip.
Group 1
Carol Burnett
Tina Fey
Mary Tyler Moore
Lily Tomlin
All four of these ladies have made a decent living from being funny, but only three of them were funny enough to win the Samuel Langhorne Clemens Award, colloquially known as the Mark Twain Prize. Mary Tyler Moore has been spared the bother of having to fork over bus fare to the Kennedy Center.
Group 2
Frank Howard
Frank Perdue
Buffalo Bob Smith
Cornelius Vanderbilt
I implied earlier that it would help to have some knowledge of the entertainment industry, but only Buffalo Bob was actually in showbiz. On the other hand, others of the group may have appeared on television in a different context. The thing is, this group has nothing to do with that, but instead, with higher education. Howard, Perdue, Smith and Vanderbilt are all colleges or universities. While the last names of the first three guys are entirely coincidental, Cornelius Vanderbilt actually endowed the school that bears his name, so he is it.
Group 3
Michael J. Fox
Anne Hathaway
Patricia Heaton
Christopher Walken
Michael J. Fox starred in a show called “The Michael J. Fox Show.” The plot took into account his Parkinson’s disease, and therein lies the commonality. Fox, obviously, plays a person so afflicted in that show, while Anne Hathaway’s character had the disease in Love and Other Drugs, and Christopher Walken’s character had the same affliction in an excellent movie called A Late Quartet, which may be less well-known than it deserves to be. Those of you who have Netflix Streaming can catch it there. Oh, right, Patricia Heaton is the OMO.
Group 4
Adam Arkin
Tim Curry
Jon Polito
Ray Porter
This series could be a bit of a toughie, unlike the lead-pipe cinches your narrator has heretofore provided. To solve this one (including getting the reason right) you need to be familiar with the long-running series, Monk. Three of these guys were Adrian Monk’s opponents, but here is the strange part of the deal: they were all the same guy. Morbidly obese, filthy rich evildoer Dale (“The Whale”) Biederbeck appeared in three episodes, the first time, played by Adam Arkin; the second by Tim Curry (who, I believe did the best job with that character); the third by Ray Porter. Jon Polito, whom you may know from the film Miller’s Crossing and the TV series Homicide, Life on the Street, never got to be The Whale, even though, in the absence of a fat suit, he may be the portliest of the four.
Group 5
Jack Dempsey
Wild Bill Hickok
Benny Hill
Dudley Moore
Neither Alfred Hawthorne Hill nor James Butler Hickok nor William Harrison Dempsey were born with the first names we would come to know them by, while Dudley Moore was Dudley from the get-go.
Okay, that’s it. How many did you get right? Feel not dejected if you did not max out. I have run quizzes like this elsewhere, and learned that getting even two or three right (including for the right reasons) makes you a smarty-pants of a high order. Getting all five probably makes you a damn cheat, but who am I to judge?
Seriously, if you want to see any more of these quizzes, please let people know, including your highly-skilled Interrobang editorial team. This is, in its own very humble way, a small bit of show business, and like all the other bits, no business, no show.
Thank you for your extraordinary patience
T.C. Lane
Thomas Cleveland Lane
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