The “Life During Wartime” Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

 

The fall quarter has finally begun for me, for I’ve just finished teaching my first writing class: “Topics in Journalism: Silicon Valley and Internet Culture.” In some ways, I’ve been in training to teach this class since I first started hosting “Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour” on KDVS back in the year 2000.

 

Sometimes I envy people who work just the one job. I’ve been a journalist for the entirety of this century, but I’ve also been a university faculty member, an ed-tech administrator, an arts and poetry activist, a published author, a marrying minister and, of course, a quizmaster. Just this past Thursday, one of the members of one of our most regular teams, The Mavens, said that she had trouble recognizing me in my multicolored Poetry Night shirt rather than the authoritative black I wear Monday nights. With all these jobs, I sometimes feel like the speaker of the Talking Heads song “Life During Wartime,” who says,

 

We dress like students, we dress like housewives,

or in a suit and a tie.

I changed my hairstyle so many times now,

I don’t know what I look like!

 

As Whitman says, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” I wish for simpler lives for my students. How great to focus on the one occupation, say, being a journalist, and spend a lifetime moving towards expertise, and then to mastery! The dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov knew that the benefits of this sort of mastery can come with the sort of obsessive focus from which everyone in the audience benefits. Baryshnikov said, “No matter what I try to do or explore, my Kirov training, my expertise, and my background call me to return to dancing after all, because that’s my real vocation, and I have to serve it.”

 

That said, Baryshnikov has also been nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for his acting. I guess sometimes the focus he brings to one vocation can translate to another.

 

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on food and drink, because one of the Fairfield School moms keeps demanding it. Expect also questions about that which must be obeyed, incendiaries, contemporary captains of industry, unemployment, favorite US states, North of LA, the iPhone 6, the Periodic Table, American patriots, French words, exes, tire production, solo praise, baseball, noses, darkness, sustaining books, coagulation, platinum songs, the Mediterranean Sea, potatoes, Pilgrims, ice, weariness, poetry, Formula One drama, going hungry, grizzled leaders, curious cases, alliterative names in movies, Paris, snakes, that which is rich and fantastic, A-listers, graphic novels, words that begin with E, metals, and Shakespeare.

 

The Mavens won’t be joining us tonight, regrettably, so there might be room in the packed pub for your team if you arrive by 6:30 for tonight’s edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

 

See you tonight.

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

 

  1. Internet Culture. Yesterday CNET ran with a headline that read “Meet BLANK, the social network that wants to be the anti-Facebook.” Fill in the blank.

 

  1. U.S. Geography. The only location in the U.S. where four states meet, what are the four states that touch “Four Corners” in the southwest?

 

  1. Space Travel. What was the name of the lunar module used on the Apollo 11 moon landing mission?

 

  1. Four for Four. Which of the following prominent men, if any, was the son of a mother or father born in Syria? F. Murray Abraham, Mahatma Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Freddie Mercury.

 

  1. Pop Culture – Music. Two artists have simultaneously occupied the top three positions of Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. One is 50 Cent. What is the mononym of the other?

 

 

P.S. This coming Saturday at noon at the David Public Library my wife Kate and I will be speaking on a panel about raising kids with special needs. And then the next day, Sunday the 12th at 1 PM, I will be reading new poetry at the Davis Cemetery’s Celebration of Life. I am opening for Grateful Dead keyboardist Bob Bralove. I hope to see you at one of these events!

P.P.S. Also expect film questions tonight.