Alisa Stewart   Queen of Quizzery
Quiz Writer & Creator of Pub Quiz USA

When Alisa isn't screwing around in Maui, she is a musician by night and highly qualified personal injury paralegal by day. She graduated toward the top of her class at Oregon State and moved to Chicago to pursue a theater career. After attending Columbia College in pursuit of a Masters degree, she found that drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and being broke was a lot more fun than taking classes. For seven years she worked in professional theater before moving back to the Pacific Northwest, where she started a band and released her first album, Little Things Unseen, in 2000. She toured the west coast and hopped the pond to the UK, where she had her first glimpse of pub quizzes in between gigs. Upon moving to Seattle in 2002, she started attending pub quizzes every Thursday with an English bloke by the name of Paul. Although they did pretty well, Alisa got tres' frustrated when the same team would win every week.

Paul eventually moved back to England and Alisa eventually moved back to Oregon. Upon her arrival, she couldn't find a pub quiz to save her life. Most people would look at her funny when she asked, "Do you know where a pub quiz is?" (most responses were "What's a pub quiz?"), so she decided to start one, in her own style, making sure to put mechanisms in so that the same team really couldn't win every week.

Alisa passed all the Mensa tests & could be a member of the elite group, but she'd much rather write quizzes, hang out in pubs, drink beer and give money & pitchers of beer away. Besides, Mensa meetings have got to be boring.

Wendy Holmes   Quizmaster Extraordinaire

How did my legend begin? My earliest recollection of my parents was one filled with ominous green light, screams and a scary, hooded being who took my parents' lives; leaving me to be the only one to survive the Killing Curse. Wait...that was Harry Potter's beginning.

I lived most of my life in the Sacramento Valley of California in a little, rural community called Yuba City. I was one of those awkward teenagers who just wanted to be accepted. I met a young man who liked me and we started dating. I married my high school sweetheart and had 2 children with him. Shortly after we separated, I shed my California tan for a Portland umbrella, and my kids & I share our pad with my new beau, his Rottweiler, and our 2 cats. I love dancing, shooting excellent tequila, camp, hot tubbing, more dancing, movies, and did I mention dancing? My daughter and I like to be couch potatoes on Sundays, catching up on all of the reality TV shows we DVR. My boyfriend and I hit up the karaoke every week. It's one of my moments to be famous. LOL. And here we are!

Jeremy Henrickson   Quizmaster Extraordinaire

When I'm not Quiz Mastering at the Horse and Hound in Hood River (Shout out to my peeps!) I practice my art of underwater basket weaving. I graduated from Portland State after a stint at the University of Oregon. I have a degree in Literature with a minor in writing, so you know my word Kung Fu is strong! I'm all WHAM! and CRACK! I could go on all day with the Batman sound effects.

I previously worked in the hustle and bustle of a newspaper called The Argus. Now, I am living happily in Beaverton with my cat, who demands most of my free time. When I do get a moment, I am always up to things of a notorious nature with my buddies over in Portland. It never ceases to provide new and interesting ways to get into trouble. The good kind of trouble - not the Big Trouble you'd sometimes find in Little China. With Kurt Russell.

John Patrick Pullen   Quizmaster Extraordinaire

A dual Irish/American citizen, John Patrick Pullen was born on St. Patrick's Day in Boston. He spent a stretch living in Ireland, and an even longer stretch residing in South Boston. He drinks Guinness and Baileys and like most people, enjoys U2 when Bono isn't being too preachy. Still, despite all these cliches, he's a pretty run-of-the-mill fellah, unassuming and even average looking. Basically, he's the kind of guy you'd ask for directions on the street, and many people have, in fact.

However, since he spends his days working as a freelance writer, people mostly ask him to write and edit various things. Once upon a time, he edited the third best inflight magazine in the country. He has also worked on the world's most colorful direct marketing industry trade publication, a women's website where he - using an assumed name - gave brides-to-be advice based on his very limited experience of being (and staying) married just once, as well as several travel magazines for places he's scarcely been. David Sedaris has called him "very nice," and Ira Glass once left him a voicemail message. And yet while none of these things qualify him to be a Quizmaster, his adroit manner with the English language, comfort with public speaking in general, years of experience as a pub trivia player, and crackerjack ability to recite lyrics of 1980s sit-com theme songs somehow make him perfect for the job. Oh yeah, and he was a Resident Advisor in college, so he knows how to handle pain-in-the-ass drunks.

Pat Moran   Quizmaster Extraordinaire

Just who does that Pat Moran think he is anyways?

Well, a lot of things actually. He is a Seattle native who emigrated down the I-5 corridor to go to school at the University of Portland where he earned a degree in Acting. He also earned a degree in how to accrue hilariously large, almost Scrooge McDuck-ian heaps of student loans but that is neither here nor there.

In addition to a career as a local actor, Pat is a writer for a few decently respected magazines and is hard at work developing the proverbial "somewhat great sort of American novella". He also saves his pennies to travel to places that remind people of different stomach viruses, such as Kathmandu, Bangkok and Spokane. He likes reminding people to drive the speed limit, trying to learn how to cook more than canned food, listening to too much NPR and being outdoors while saying things like "why don't we do this more often?" and "Hey cool! A Bear! Let's get closer!".

He also is aware that his last name is similar to "Moron" but considers it a term of endearment and a low set of expectations.

John Broetje   Quizmaster Extraordinaire

Interestingly enough John has not always been the trivia guru he has come to been known as today. He once dressed up as a libraian lobster just to see if it would inspire the lobsters of the world to read (See picture). He feels the need to wave goodbye to passing leafs just to see if they'll whisper hello, he sheds a tear when no words are spoken. Today John has left such things in the past to concentrate on his pursuit which is shared by all trivia masters, the pursuit to know every useless piece of random information that exist in this world.

He earned his BA after a grueling five years, in between skipping classes he found out that sitting on the corner of the road playing "you honk we drink" was much more educational than any class. Please if you see John walking on the side of the street, stop him, say "hello", share some useless information with him and perhaps you'll hear him "howl" in return...

Kevin Parks   Quizmaster Extraordinaire

Kevin has taken his "act" from place to place over the years--from humble beginnings in Kansas City, he spent four years accidentally finishing college in Lawrence before leaving the center of the country for larger pastures...of Wisconsin.

He has spent a solid month with both Michelangelo's David and Rodin's Thinker, and once unwittingly awoke in the middle of the Adriatic Sea. He's slept amongst the dusty aisles in Paris' Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore (and thought about doing the same at Powell's, before deciding otherwise), and he nearly died while off-roading through the landmine-ridden mountains of Afghanistan (presumably looking for snow leopards--and Osama). He's also traveled to every state in the country, except Arizona. (He now attests that to be a personal political boycott, though the more logical amongst you surely realize it's mere coincidence.)

Kevin's always been a contrarian, enjoys the rain, and likes craft beer and bicycles, so moving to Portland seemed like a good fit (plus he now gets to shop at Powell's regularly without having to stow away amongst the stacks).

Carlson Muss   Quizmaster Extraordinaire

Carlson Muss was born a bastard child in Van Nuys, California (the porn capital of the world). Despite the odds, his mother was NOT a porn star. When he was just a mere 2 years old he realized he needed a positive male influence so he latched onto Alex Trebek while his mother cooked dinner while Jeopardy was on. This is the quiz master you see before you. What makes him 100% better than Trebek is that he's 100% American. No Canada bullshit!

Muss is currently a full time student at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. Studying video, he plans of making revolutionary music videos for you (if you're a musician of sorts, or a receptive audience of musicians of sorts).

Liz Veazey   Quizmaster Apprentice

Liz is proud to be a "Carolina Girl, best in the world!" She grew up in the short, but beautiful mountains of Western North Carolina, although she really loves the big mountains out here on the west coast. She has a BS degree in Environmental Science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and has worked with students in the Southeast and the nation to bring clean energy to their campuses and beyond. She attended her first trivia nights in Chapel Hill and was hooked. In Knoxville, Tennessee she fell in love and she followed her heart out to Eugene to be with her partner who is pursuing a PhD at the University of Oregon (UO). In the fall of 2010, she'll be joining him as a grad student at the UO in the Environmental Studies Masters Program.

Dani Tamar   Quizmaster Apprentice

Though Dani enjoys promulgating her insurmountable awesomeness and lovingly referring to herself in the third person, she'd rather spend her time pondering the *important* questions. Questions like: are dogs actually smarter than humans? Why the hell does Waldo keep disappearing? Are neutrons friends . . . or foes? What if we really ARE living in the Matrix? Am I part of the cure? Or am I part of the disease? Does Waldo have commitment issues? And why, all of the sudden, am I strangely attracted to him? Mint chip or moose tracks? How come we never run out of songs? Hypothetically speaking, if [someone] were to stalk Waldo on facebook, would Waldo take secret pleasure from knowing that fact?

Insight on these and other mysteries is always welcome. Until then, Dani reminds you to reduce, reuse, recycle, and to choose . . . wisely.