Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
This morning my son’s bus driver, John, told me that his son spent much of this past weekend flying to Saudi Arabia. I thought to myself that I want to visit Saudi Arabia. Past Pub Quiz regular, and one-time regular champion, Rob Roy lives next door to Saudi Arabia, having moved to The United Arab Emirates to teach English in the city of Ras al-Khaima, home of the dramatic sand dune races every winter. I hope that Davis summers have prepared Rob for Ras al-Khaima summers, where the average high temperature is above 100 degrees from May until September.
Speaking for myself, I would rather visit India than Saudi Arabia, and perhaps rather visit Nigeria or Argentina than the United Arab Emirates, but of course I would welcome a world tour of all these places. I don’t know about you, but when summer comes, I crave adventure. Those of us who cannot travel as Rob Roy does can read longingly of others’ adventures, and bide our time, waiting for the promise of a summer or winter jaunt. The British novelist and poet D.H. Lawrence, who traded his manuscript of his first great novel, Sons and Lovers, for a 160-acre ranch near Taos, New Mexico, said this about travel:
When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.
I’m not sure what to make of “unlying life,” but I appreciate these words of a poet. One of Lawrence’s favorite authors as a child, Robert Louis Stevenson, was more plain-spoken about travel: “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” I hope all of us can embrace the spirit of Roy, Lawrence and Stevenson this summer, and become foreigners ourselves.
The Pub Quiz will be meeting both tonight and next week, the evening of Memorial Day. Soon our city will be brimming with Davis High alumni, returning home from college and looking for some way to stay intellectually vibrant while reuniting with old friends downtown. We shall provide that opportunity, but I hope you can help me enlist some new teams to join us, both in these waning days of May, and throughout the travel season of summer. What would be an appropriate enticement for such first-time pub quizzers? Pub fries with curry ketchup? I welcome your suggestions via email or in the comments of today’s newsletter at the Pub Quiz website: https://www.yourquizmaster.com.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about one or more of the topics raised above, as well as favorite schools, graphical user interface elements, pay equity, shopping sprees, energy producers, apology-worthy films, road races, British composers, the wisdom and criticism of George Bernard Shaw, journalism and vindications, science fiction, Marketing, free associations in fiction, sequels (with which we Americans have grown too comfortable), rummy card games played in the desert, lugging bovine urine during the summer of 2001, great songs, animated television, annus horribilis, illiberalism, great U.S. states, opthamology, trick questions, and Shakespeare.
I hope you can join us this evening at 7, or a bit before to claim a table at the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
1. Mottos and Slogans. Born in 1884, what US President came up with the personal slogan “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”? We learned last week that FDR was too wealthy to spend much time in the kitchen.
2. Internet Culture. Because of a $3.2 billion dollar purchase rumored by Apple, who is about to become what he calls “the first billionaire in hip-hop,” even though he hasn’t dropped an album in 15 years? Actually, the man in question will only have about $800 million from this deal. Another disappointment.
3. Name the Category. The following all refer to different types of what? Adjustable Bend, Artillery Loop, Ashley’s Bend, Axle Hitch. I bet Ashley would be proud to be included on this list.
4. Four for Four. Between 1968 and 1980, which of the following cities, if any, hosted the Summer Olympic Games? Mexico City, Montreal, Moscow, Munich. Is every four for four a trick question?
5. A Topic Suggested on Facebook: Harry Potter. “BLANK’S WARNING” is the title of the second chapter of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Whose warning is it? Thanks to Kayla for this topic suggestion.