Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
For many, vacations have finally begun in the City of Davis. As the school-year bicyclists retreat to their hometowns and cities, the percentage of helmet-wearers shoots up to new records. Last week a close friend was visiting Davis, and it took us a full five minutes of talking and walking Davis streets before someone came up to us to greet me by name. I think that’s also a record.
Our city becomes lighter, and our Pub Quiz has become even more crowded and raucous (both welcome developments). Perhaps subletters (who some Brits call “underletters”) love trivia questions. More likely, many of us who are left in the city find ourselves with fewer responsibilities, and more parking spaces downtown. The breathing room effect reminds me of a visit to Davis in 1989 (the first year that I drove through town). I hope time travel appeals to you!
Speaking of time travel, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about a few of the most famous people who lived in the last century, as well as questions about unusual words that you are more likely to encounter in the drawing room than the war room (no scimitars or claymores this time). Expect also questions about gasoline, air travel, long states, that which is gleefully avoided, Olaf, Oscar-winners, elevators, cups, redundancy, misspellings of the best possible owls, short words that pack in the syllables, herbaceous plants, feuds, flags, colors, celebrated actors, US Presidents, big companies, women who grew up, Snakes, dancers who love to crank their lower hips, verbs that accompany annoyance, fabrics, dark tan moles, glue, mutants, politic speech, Ireland, isolation, peninsulas (not peninsulae?), Senators, badly-reviewed films, Vogue, and Shakespeare.
My marketer friends remind me to mention my newly-published book with every newsletter, but then they express disappointment that Kate and I are giving away all the book proceeds to charity. You can’t please everyone.
I hatched a new book idea this last week, so I may be sharing sections from future chapters right here, even though it is not (purposefully) a book on trivia. Seth Godin, who appears in the new book, says this about regular blogging: “Habits like blogging often and regularly, writing down the way you think, being clear about what you think are effective tactics, ignoring the burbling crowd and not eating bacon. All of these are useful habits.” Some useful habits are more easily accomplished in crowded pubs than others.
You should expect a crowd tonight. I do!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans. “The choice of a new generation” is an advertising slogan of what product? Ironically, people of an older generation were more likely to answer this correctly than those of a new generation.
- Internet Culture. On the entertainment and news website Reddit, what does the acronym AMA mean? No barriers to web-speech!
- World Leaders. With almost 1.5 million followers on Google+, what country’s 15th and current prime minister is named Narenda Modi? I didn’t know Google+ had that many followers total.
- Name the Category. Blackhawk, Apache, and Comanche are all Native American tribes and, one might say, victims of genocide. But they are also examples of what H word? All words that once (and perhaps still do) cause fear in those who hear them, or hear from them.
- Pop Culture – Music. The number of piano concertos written by Ludwig van Beethoven is the same as the atomic number of boron and the category of the most destructive hurricanes. What is that number? We pretended that this was also a math question.