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Unreal Nose News

Congrats to our News Challenge winners! Come forward and collect your booty!

Unreal was shocked and gratified by the avalanche of response we received for our first annual Crap Giveaway, a.k.a. the "Unreal News Challenge 2006," published in the RFT's December 21 edition. OK, we weren't shocked. Or particularly gratified, for that matter. But we did tabulate the results, and we have a winner.

Congratulations, John Stumpf, you're our grand prize recipient!

Señor Stumpf answered 95 of 100 questions correctly. Heck, that's better than Unreal did, and we knew the answers.

Other prize winners: Richard Wicks, Bob Ell and Jeffrey Smith, all of whom scored 90 percent or better on the quiz.

We are indeed gratified (honest!) to report that we've got a booby prize to award, as well, to Annie Webb, who emerged as low scorer, with a very impressive 65 incorrect answers.

Prize winners should contact RFT editorial assistant Kristie McClanahan at 314-754-6401 to make arrangements to pick up their, er, booty.

Here is a complete answer key:

1, D. 2, C. 3, B. 4, D. 5, C. 6, A. 7, A. 8, B. 9, A. 10, C. 11, B. 12, D.

13, B. 14, A. 15, B. 16, D. 17, C. 18, B. 19, A. 20, D. 21, C. 22, C.

23, A. 24, B. 25, C. 26, A. 27, D. 28, C. 29, C. 30, B. 31, C. 32, D.

33, B. 34, C. 35, A. 36, B. 37, B. 38, D. 39, C. 40, D. 41, C. 42, D.

43, D. 44, A. 45, C. 46, C. 47, B. 48, C. 49, D. 50, B. 51, B. 52, C.

53, A. 54, D. 55, B. 56, C. 57, A. 58, B. 59, D. 60, D. 61, B. 62, C.

63, A. 64, D. 65, C. 66, A. 67, B. 68, C. 69, A. 70, C. 71, B. 72, D.

73, A. 74, D. 75, C. 76, D. 77, A. 78, B. 79, C. 80, B. 81, A. 82, D.

83, D. 84, B. 85, A. 86, C. 87, D. 88, B. 89, C. 90, D. 91, A. 92, D.

93, B. 94, B. 95, A. 96, D. 97, C. 98, A. 99, D. 100, C.

Possum Hooch

The Big Brother and Itch'y Show, broadcast on Charter cable every Friday night at midnight, is the creative effort of two men with regular jobs who wanted to make a very irregular show.

Richard Hamilton and Jim Wheeler come up with a theme for each show (the last one focused on the Mayan prophecy that the world will end in 2012) and play a rotating cast of characters that includes Big Brother (representing the government and bosses everywhere), Itch'y (a crazy Mafia guy) and Billy Joe Nimrod (who has rotted teeth and is always drunk on a type of alcohol not even Unreal has heard of: possum hooch).

But Hamilton says the real purpose of the show, which runs on Channel 18 in the county (Channel 218 in the city), is to showcase local talent.

Evidently St. Louis talent is decidedly weird.

Unreal: What did you guys do for the 2012 show?

Richard Hamilton: We brought on this guy who knows all about ghosts, Bigfoot, UFOs — stuff like that. We did a whole show on UFOs a little while back.

Are there a lot of UFOs around here?

Oh my God, yes. There's sightings all the time. We even put some raw footage on the show. And we brought on this woman who says she was abducted by aliens several times. She says they impregnated her and then took the child from her.

Was she freaked out at all by this?

No, she was pretty much at ease. But when she talks about her hybrid child, it upsets her. Now we're working on a show about the Old West. We're going to interview this historian who lives on a French trading post. He's supposed to be a complete eccentric. Just so you know, everybody on the show is supposed to be really strange.

No! Who's been your weirdest guest so far?

We had a guy who cooked with garlic. Everything he makes is garlic, even his ice cream gets garlic on it.

What about the bands you've brought on the show — do you find them or do they come to you?

We generally go to them. We've had some bands call, though. I had to turn them down. To be honest, they sucked. I don't want anything on the show that sucks. I felt like freaking American Idol.

Adventures in Novel-Reading

To hear Robert E. Lipscomb tell it, he's seen it all. Now the business owner-cum-hobo has jotted down his experiences in the book Down Town, which the cover describes as "the true tales of one white, middle-class man's fall from grace, his Buddha-like renunciation of the world and his inspirational climb back to the summit of true faith, new love and recovered prosperity."

It's a St. Louis tale with many twists and turns. And for your reading pleasure, Unreal challenges you to choose Lipscomb's adventure from Unreal's misadventure.

1) While spelunking with his mates in a cave beneath what is now a city park but once was a paupers' cemetery, Lipscomb encounters:
A) A seething nest of copperheads
B) A trove of gay porn magazines from the 1940s and 1950s
C) The hastily scattered remains of a potter's field

2) While bringing in a little scratch by donating plasma, Lipscomb describes the clinic nurse as:
A) Queen of the Sanguine Arts
B) Plasma Pam
C) The Hemoglobin Succubus

3) After being jumped by a gang looking for a bumfight, Lipscomb supposes he wasn't attacked because:
A) "You can play with the puppies, but you mess with an old, gray wolf, you just might get bit"
B) "The stain of urine growing from my crotch must have dissuaded the hooligan"
C) "A pair of brass knuckles and a bottle of rubbing alcohol can be pretty persuasive"

4) According to Lipscomb, God loves:

A) "The meek and faithful"
B) "A good pair of shoes"
C) "Baloney sandwiches and Cheerwine"

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