Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Late yesterday evening I stood at the end of a really long walkway watching deplaning Sacramentans reuniting with those they love. Happy to escape the cramped seating of coach class, several people took selfies to offer social proof that they had arrived at this new city (or had finally arrived home). To my left, a portly man in his 30s stood with a bouquet of 24 roses, waiting for his beloved. She came down the gangplank, smiling, holding the hand of a yawning six year-old girl with ringlets of brown hair and a frilly dress. He bent down on one knee to look her in the eye, saying, some of these flowers are for you.
Was it his daughter? His future step-daughter? I couldn’t tell, but a bunch of young women who had traveled on the same plane with the ringletted girl slowed their walks to a sluggish stroll, smiling broadly and staring unabashedly at this reunion of three. While the man handled the matching Hello Kitty backpack and rolling suitcase, the division and dissemination of roses was negotiated on the tram from the security checkpoint to the baggage claim.
As I walked with my own daughter – arriving home from a cousin’s bat mitzvah in Seattle – I considered the relative majesty of Sacramento International Airport’s Terminal B. Unless one works at 555 California Street or the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, one is unlikely to spend time in a building larger than our Sacramento Airport. Like one of our posh California supermalls, the airport’s marble and cleanliness gives the building an air of regal ascendancy. And like Arden Fair Sacramento or, even more opulent, the Westfield Galleria at Roseville, our airport now offers many of the shops of a standard tony mall, and most of the food options.
But as I gathered last night with the other greeters and huggers, I was focusing on the emotional resonance of the airport. As explored by the film When Harry Met Sally, some of us assert our worth as friends or as partners by providing a ride to the airport. It’s a symbolic benchmark in a relationship. As I saw last night, some people stage reunions at the airport. Others still see beloved friends or relations for the last time at SMF, giving a last hug before sending that person off to a faraway life, and perhaps a distance of years of virtual check-ins, the absence finalized by a regretful phone call, or, more likely today, a Facebook post by proxy.
In The Last Tycoon, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote meaningfully about the different functions that airports have for us, saying that “airports lead you way back in history like oases, like the stops on the great trade routes. The sight of air travellers strolling in ones and twos into midnight airports will draw a small crowd any night up to two. The young people look at the planes, the older ones look at the passengers with a watchful incredulity.”
As Fitzgerald suggests, we might be distracted by the novel aviation technologies – the invasive x-ray machines, the floatation seat cushions, or the impossibly complex array of dials and readouts that await the captain behind the secure door of the cockpit – or we might, if we are willing to watch carefully and silently, see the poetry that leaps from traveler to traveler, each of us embracing a moment of adventure, or wishing that we were.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature no questions on airports. Instead expect to be asked about all of the topics suggested by these abstruse and enigmatic “hints”: Gutian, young talent in California, Des Moines political gossip, lanterns, heroes named Peter, partially submerged homes, presidential reigns, welcome rain, retired boxers, famous doctors who have returned from their adventures, long poems, The Tonight Show, British immigrants who take our jobs, late night television, Christians, actors who dress in scantily cute clothes, eight-letter words with but two vowels, network television, coffees, Edmund’s questionable choices, discontent, ponies, bonding, California cities, Irish culture, noisy punks, the supernatural, dads like us, languages other than English, MOOCs, happy breathing, and Shakespeare.
I hope you can join us tonight.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Books and Authors. The widely-regarded Man Booker Prize-winning book Life of Pi was not written by a manly tern, but it was written by a man whose name is an anagram of A MANLY TERN. Name him.
- Film. The new Spielberg-directed film Bridge of Spies stars a 59-year-old Oscar-winning actor whose films have grossed over $8.4 billion internationally. Name the actor.
- Irish Culture. What is the name of the national flag carrier airline of Ireland?