On Trash Writing Absofuckinglutely NOT Considered a Fine Art

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eliza.grames
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On Trash Writing Absofuckinglutely NOT Considered a Fine Art

Post by eliza.grames »

(a sample of rejected titles: "I guess I pictured the word 'definitely' being in there somewhere" - Auroni")

This post is my attempt to reproduce my lack of thought process during the writing of a single tossup for The Celebs Are At It Again. I did not take notes while writing the tossup in question 20ish minutes ago, so it will necessarily be an imperfect reconstruction. As far as I know, no one has EVER gone into this much detail about how a trash tossup gets written, so I hope people will find it amusing.

I'll begin with the final text of the question. This is the, uh, bad idea for a trash question that might have been part of the music distribution but really I scrapped it for some packet from The Celebs Are At It Again because this post was more fun to make.
Kenny Chesney lists one of these items after “tank top, love handles, tube socks, Jesus sandals” in “Coastal.” My Morning Jacket compares one of these things to “a kitten on fire” and says that “both sound as sweet as a night of surrender” in “Into the Woods.” In “Limes,” Brad Paisley recommends taking it all with a grain of salt and if “you got something you don’t want to remember” you should throw it in one of these things. Limp Bizkit says that their “so called girl” had a “hidden agenda” and put their tender heart in one of these things but still “I surrendered, hey, like a chump.” In a song titled for these things, the singer vows “rendezvous then I’m through with you” and repeats “tie me to the bed post, make me blind when you get close.” The singer says he would “swallow my doubt, turn it inside out, find nothin’ but faith in nothin’” before saying he wants to put his heart in one of these things in a song by Eve 6. For 10 points, name these kitchen appliances.
ANSWER: blender
The genesis of this tossup was that I googled "worst bands ever" and giggled at the some lists of horrible bands because who isn't amused by ICP and the Dave Matthews Band. Among all the lists, I noticed that Limp Bizkit was a recurring theme. I remembered the song "Nookie" from being popular when I was younger, and briefly considered writing on that, but instead decided to write on "things that rhyme with cookie." Why? I dunno.

Did I bother checking the archives to see if anyone else had written on this? Of course not, because it's an absurd idea and why would anyone else have written on words that rhyme with cookie? As you might guess, at this point, Auroni suggested that I write a trash tossup on "things that rhyme with cowhouse" but I couldn't come up with enough clues.

Approximately 5 minutes and several sips of wine later, Auroni suggested that I could include clues from "Dookie" by Green Day. At the time, I thought I had already come up with all the words that rhyme with cookie, so nothing like this had crossed my mind. I wasn't sold on the idea yet though. As part of the brainstorming process, I started reading the lyrics of "Nookie" to see what rhyming words it included. After reading the lyrics, the phrase "tender heart in a blender" jumped out at me and reminded me of an Eve 6 song. I wondered if I could write an entire common link on tender hearts in blenders. Sadly, a brief google search did not lead to enough hits, so I decided to do the obvious easier thing - I wrote a tossup on blenders in music. By now, I was feeling pretty good about this idea. Was it my best idea ever? Absolutely not - that is clearly a three-way tie between "It's Britney, bitch," "Kim Kardashian's ass," and "Scooby Dood, Where's My Car?"

I began where I always do - with a google search for "songs about blenders." This wasn't very fruitful, so I switched to "blender lyrics" and went to a lyrics.com list of lyrics containing the term blender. I realized from reading the lyrics to several country songs that it would be hard not to make it clear that this tossup was quickly becoming about making blended margaritas.

For the giveaway, I went with the most straightforward and concise definition of blenders that I know, since I already used the only song about blenders anyone actually cares about.

This is what I not actually what I read during playtesting about 15 minutes ago - I deleted some Linda Ronstadt clue that was really boring and no one cares about it. Based on feedback from Auroni, I wrote this post instead of including the tossup in the final set of Celebs. I still don't think it's the best tossup I wrote for anything - it might be the worst because no one gives a shit about blenders. However, I think it serves as a good illustration of what goes into writing a really bad trash tossup.
Eliza Grames
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Re: On Trash Writing Absofuckinglutely NOT Considered a Fine

Post by Good Goblin Housekeeping »

this could have been an audio tu
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Re: On Trash Writing Absofuckinglutely NOT Considered a Fine

Post by ErikC »

The genesis of this tossup was that I googled "worst bands ever"
How often do you do this
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Re: On Trash Writing Absofuckinglutely NOT Considered a Fine

Post by jonpin »

"Scooby Dood, Where's My Car?" was an inspired mashup answer line, and I regret that I have never been able to attend a trash tournament written by you.

pedantic note, the Eve 6 song is titled "Inside Out".
unpedantic note, the Eve 6 song is great and I hope they didn't show up in your search for "worst bands ever"
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Re: On Trash Writing Absofuckinglutely NOT Considered a Fine

Post by mozzarella »

eliza.grames wrote: I deleted some Linda Ronstadt clue that was really boring and no one cares about it.
Disappointed but not surprised. Looking forward to playing though!
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eliza.grames
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Re: On Trash Writing Absofuckinglutely NOT Considered a Fine

Post by eliza.grames »

Borel hierarchy wrote:this could have been an audio tu
Ending with clips from Will It Blend, of course.
ErikC wrote:
The genesis of this tossup was that I googled "worst bands ever"
How often do you do this
Uh, have you played an Eliza trash tournament? Because that's all I do.
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Re: On Trash Writing Absofuckinglutely NOT Considered a Fine

Post by ErikC »

Uh, have you played an Eliza trash tournament? Because that's all I do.
It does explain a lot
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Re: On Trash Writing Absofuckinglutely NOT Considered a Fine

Post by t-bar »

Just add a clue about this video and this tossup is good to go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DDkwdPaYmk
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Re: On Trash Writing Absofuckinglutely NOT Considered a Fine

Post by Ent »

Borel hierarchy wrote:this could have been an audio tu
I'm pretty sure :chip: already did this as an audio tossup.
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