Current Members


Eric Kwartler | ekwartler@gmail.com
University of Texas - Austin | Junior
Fall Tournament Coordinator
Eric joined the ACF Cabal after Scipio Africanus visited him in a dream.  He once led a group of pilgrims to Saint Truth, after which he fought Sir Oliphant while looking for an Elvish Queen.  Una took him to the school of Faith, where he learned about Subash's ten tips on writing questions.  He was freed from a tower by peasants and crowned King of Poland, then he built an altar to love and cut off a piece of Belinda's hair.  Brought as an infant to Andreas and Gretchen Futteral, he has a weekly arm wrestling match with Chris Romero, which he wins every time.  He went to an island to experiment with vivisection, then renounced his ambitions to the priesthood after seeing a girl wading in the ocean.  He has a mistress he calls the Monkey and a sister he calls the Brass Monkey, and he enjoys making spaghetti to the overture to La Gazza Ladra.
 
Jerusalem
 
And did those hands in ancient time
Buzz upon Welty's "Curtain of Green?"
And was the holy Lamb of God
Inspiring the thirtying of bonuses unseen?

And did the Candace Benefiel
Shine forth upon your Southwest Regional?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among fair Kwartler's ACF Fall?

Bring me my question set of burning gold!
Bring me my clues of desire!
Bring me my spear! O Gungnir unfold!
Bring me the packet of Nick Meyer?

I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my buzzer sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In Texas' scenic quizbowl land.

 

Eric Kwartler creating ACF Fall.
Matthew Weiner | mattweiner@hsquizbowl.org
Virginia Commonwealth University | Senior
Fall Tournament Associate Editor

Matt Weiner

              Matt Weiner, child of scorn,
                  Grew lean while he assailed CBI;
              He wept that Mike Decker was ever born,
                  And he had reasons.

              Matt Weiner loved the days of old
                 When John Sheahan was bright and Jeff Johnson was prancing;
              The vision of Matt Colvin
                  Would set him dancing.

              Matt Weiner sighed for what was not,
                And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
                He dreamed of Jim Dendy and Georgia Tech,
                  And great ACFers.

             Matt Weiner mourned the ripe renown
                That made so many a name so fragrant;
             He mourned Subash, now on the town,
                And Ezequiel, a vagrant.

             Matt Weiner loved Don Windham's teams,
                Albeit he had never seen one;
             He would have buzzed incessantly
                Could he have been on one.

              Matt Weiner cursed the commonplace
                  And eyed a 20 point bonus with loathing;
              He missed the academic grace
                  Of consistent boni.

             Matt Weiner scorned the NAQT title he sought,
                But sore annoyed was he without it;
             Matt Weiner thought, and thought, and thought,
                And thought about it.

             Matt Weiner, born too late,
                 Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
             Matt Weiner coughed, and called it fate,
                 And kept on buzzing.
 

 

FACTOID:

Highest per capita trophy
winner in history.

 
Jerry Vinokurov | grapesmoker@gmail.com
Brown University | Graduate Student in Physics
Fall Tournament Associate Editor

While growing up as a poor deprived child in Communist Russia (actually Communist Ukraine), Jerry was told that he would never speak English properly because he couldn't roll his R's. Upon arriving in the States, Jerry was thrilled to discover the existence of Corn Flakes, of which he is still fond today. After slacking his way through high school where he played quizbowl for four years, Jerry arrived at Berkeley, where he aimlessly stumbled through the club ranks until becoming chief potentate (president). During his tenure, it was conjectured that he was the Source of All Lies but upon further inspection, it was determined that he was actually only The Source of Some Lies and a Conduit for Others. He is not at all bitter about majoring in subjects he's no good at like math and engineering, and his hobbies include not working, scaring small children, complaining about poorly written science, and not answering questions about Jane Austen or Restoration drama. He is currently on a crusade to expand the academic canon to include chess, which no matter what the IOC may say, is still a sport.
 

THE ACF PLAYERS.
FOUR AT THE MANU GINOBILI.

I real cool. I
Left Berkeley. I

Read Russian. I
Be crushin'. I

Write astro. I
Neg slow. I

Cheese moon. I
Buzz soon.

 

  
Seth Teitler | setht@uchicago.edu
University of Chicago | Graduate Student in Astronomy
Fall Tournament Associate Editor
 

Abou Ben Teitler

                Seth Teitler (may his tribe increase!)
              Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
              And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
              Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
              Jim Dendy writing in a book of gold:--
              Exceeding titles had made Seth Teitler bold,
              And to the presence in the room he said,
              "What writest thou?"—Jim Dendy raised his head,
              And with a look that was Hentzel's epitaph,
              Answered, "The names of those who love ACF."
              "And is mine one?" said Teitler. "Nay, not so,"
              Replied Jim Dendy. Teitler spoke more low,
              But cheerly still; and said, "I pray thee, then,
              Write me as one that loves his fellow men."

              Jim Dendy wrote, and vanished. The next night
              It came again with a great wakening light,
              And showed the names whom love of ACF had blest,
              And lo! Seth Teitler's name led all the rest.
 
Michael Angelo Sorice | msorice@uiuc.edu
University of Illinois - Urbana Champaign | Graduate Student in Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering
Regional Tournament Chief Editor
A master of nearly every non-X-Box video game known to man, Mike Sorice is the “rude[st] and [most] annoying and [most] obnoxious” person that Sarah-Mordan McCombs had ever met, at least as of November 7, 2001. That’s not surprising, actually, because in those three categories, he’s second only to quizbowl’s greatest drunken racist homophobe, aka Chris Frankel.

Undoubtedly, the former Hairboy has a bad habit of getting under people’s skins, as illustrated by the multiple times that I’ve taken him to parties with me, left him there for whatever reason, and had people say to me the next day, “Dude, WHO was that ASSHOLE you brought to our party last night?” Whether it’s throwing a notebook at the wall or pounding the desk and cursing after taking an early neg (because OF COURSE he got hosed, regardless of the lead-in) or yelling at the TV and/or radio after any defeat of his beloved White Sox, he can always be counted on for entertainment. Legendary for his efforts on the buzzer, Mike has been known to take upwards of 25 negs at some tournaments, and indeed outdid himself at Sectionals in 2004 with 32 negs over the course of fifteen rounds. However, it should be noted that he does have a fantastic ability to pick up his game, like at the 2005 Manu Ginobili Open, and he played alongside myself and the A-Train en route to the undergrad title at the 2004 ICT.

According to a recent article, psychologists have altered current personality tests to include the newly-created Sorice point, a level of arrogance and intractability so high that achieving it somehow causes the entropy of the universe to decrease, violating the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Now here’s a cool story:

After surviving the battle of Zama, the Sepoy Mutiny, and the Boxer Rebellion, Mike Sorice read The Rebel, saw the supposed futility in altering the established order, and tried to blow his brains out, except he found that he was now impervious to bullets. He broke into a summit of world leaders and shot every last leader who disagreed with him about the potential for nuclear fusion…that is, to say, all of them. In doing so, he was declared Supreme High Commander of the Entire Universe, a position whose responsibilities he shirked in the process of chasing and screwing various Catholic womenfolk. Soon, however, he discovered the highly addictive world of academic trivia (oh yeah, and amphetamines), and, having found his life’s calling, was happy to return control of the world’s countries to its respective citizens.

Today, when he’s not attempting to incorporate never-found and never-confirmed epic poems loosely attributed to J.M.W. Turner into hardcore academic quizbowl tournaments, Mike can be found getting cancer from sitting in front of his computer, alcohol poisoning from his constant consumption of MGD, or shrunken testicles from his late-night experiments with radioactive isotopes and plasmas at UIUC’s Nuclear Engineering Lab.
 

This poem was first published in the QB Crisis and won an award for its nubile author. It was first known as "Up to Snuff," but was later changed to reflect the political turmoil of the times during which its subject played the game.
 

Mike Sorice Speaks of Formats
 
I've known formats:
I've known formats ancient as the world and older than the flow
Of Doc Meredith's Blood in Doc Meredith's veins.

My soul has grown deep like the formats.

I bathed in the packets of IHSA when dawns were young.
I built my hut near the NAQT and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the CBI and the straw men that defended it.
I heard the singing of the ACF when Dom Ricci* went
Down to New Orleans, and I've seen its muddy bosom turn
All golden in the sunset.

I've known formats:
Ancient, dusky, formats.
My soul has grown deep like the formats.

* : Sorice's teammate during the 2005 ICT, held in New Orleans

 

FACTOID:

His hair is a nationwide phenomenon;
 it is said that individual strands
can fetch a kingly sum.
Chris Romero | romero@texasquizbowl.org
Texas A&M University | Graduate Student in Mathematics Education
Regional Tournament Associate Editor
 
You, Chris Romero
 
And here playing at the Chicago Open
And here on ACF's obscure height
To feel the expanding of the canon
The always rising of the spite:

To disdain tossups on curving fruit
At CBI tournaments poor and slow
Whose crappiness is in dispute
Only with those you scorn to know

And strange at NAQT the clues
Are very much like last year's strange
Sameness that Hentzel rarely rues
The lead-ins somehow never change

And now at Penn Bowl none await
Tossups on Milne and Chocolate Wars
And through the twilight now the late
Samer his own tossups adores

And Wesselmania goes under and the lore
Of Tennessee Masters the gilded buzz
And Philly Experiments vanish and no more
The tournaments that died because

They lacked pyramidality:

And here face downward in the sun
To feel how swift how secretly
The shadow of ACF comes on . . .

 

  
Matthew Lafer | lafei2@yahoo.com
University of Michigan | Senior
Regional Tournament Associate Editor
According to Cleanth Brooks' "The Surly Wolverine" this may be the most hopeful of the various poems about famed quizbowl player Matt Lafer. He argues that this lyric concerns itself with the undaunted courage of a man ready to face Burger King and his destiny.
 
Hap
 
If but some vengeful moderator would call to me
From down the packet, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy
That thy team's loss results from too much sitting!"

Then would I buzz, and clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of spite inherited;
Half-eased, too, that a player more powerful than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unlearn the facts I swear I'd known? –
Crass CBI obstructs the sun and rain,
And the Stanford Archive for gladness casts a moan…
These purblind Doomsters get me real blown
Sending me bumbling and stumbling on a pilgrimage of pain.