The Slanted Daffodil Edition of the de Vere's Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

 

            If you saw the cover of yesterday’s Davis Enterprise, you probably spied, and perhaps even recognized, members of Portraits O’ Muhammad, the winningest team in the history of the Pub Quizzes that I have hosted. They won the most points / quizzes in February, and are due “full respek,” as Ali G would put it. They won’t be basking in any glory this evening, however, for most of the team’s members will be attending Human Rights and Humanities Week, an effort of The Human Rights Initiative at UC Davis. Congrats to Keith David Watenpaugh and the other scholar heroes of human rights who live right here in Davis.

            So if you’ve ever yearned for an opportunity to win the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz, tonight might give you even more opportunities than usual. We may have a crowd tonight because of the extra local press, so please plan accordingly.

            Do you think of Winston Churchill when you think of the English Bulldog? Is that because Churchill looked somewhat like a bulldog, or because he once said that “The nose of the Bulldog has been slanted backwards so that he can breathe without letting go”? In any event, my family and I will pick up our new bulldog on Saturday, my birthday, and to celebrate these two events, I will be throwing a party of sorts next Monday night after the Pub Quiz. Starting at 9pm, I hope as many revelers will arrive as typically exit at that time, if only for the extra finger food that we’ll be providing. You’ll be responsible for your own drinks, should you still be thirsty. I will most likely have iPhone pictures of Daffodil Jones to share for those who stick around for the party.

            Tonight’s quiz will feature questions about British people, but no bulldogs. I’ve also saved a bunch of questions for an evening when I knew that POM would be gone, so expect questions on Star Trek, the Middle East, and the southeast US. Additionally, expect questions on anodynes, social media, “accidents” and “blessings,” favorite movies of recent years, illnesses, fictional people, Canadian musicians, basketball and baseball, American cities, greatness in size and degree, great apes, short song titles, brotherly love, birds that we have never seen in person, vegetable plants, abandonment, supreme beings, caterpillars and butterflies, expanding, canonical works of British literature, Irish politics, the US government, chemistry, the iPhone, home, once-recent history, sports and Shakespeare.

            See you tonight for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

 

2.         Fashion. The fashion designer who is the creative director of Liz Claiborne was the subject of the 1995 documentary film Unzipped. Name him.  

 

3.         Unusual Words. What British slang term that starts with the letter G and has the word SMACKED in it means “astounded or astonished”?  

 

4.         Pop Culture – Music. Which of Beethoven’s odd-number symphonies is considered The Eroica Symphony, originally to be dedicated to Napoleon?  

 

5.         Great Americans. Two living men with the same last name have run unsuccessfully for President of the United States. They spell that last name differently, and one lost part of his leg in combat. Name either of the two men.  

 

6.         Science – Geology.   There are three classes of rock: sedimentary, igneous, and WHAT?  

 

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Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I watch the Oscar telecast every year, and appreciate the way that it convinces me that I am young, for the actors and directors that it celebrates seem to grow older and older. This was a theme of the Monday-morning critique of the telecast of the 84^th annual Academy Awards. Last year's attempt to appeal to young viewers was such a disaster, many thought, that the show's producers returned to Billy Crystal to host for the 9^th time, giving viewers a familiar face during unstable economic times. The actors were old, we were told, and the jokes were old, and the settings of the nominated films were old and removed and distant.

Having grown up in a film household, I was steeped in film history for as long as I remember. I later studied film as an undergraduate, and taught it as a graduate student and a young faculty member at UC Davis. As a result, while I still recognize most of the names during the "In Memoriam" segments of the Oscars, I often have to ask someone else about the new starlet, such as Emma Stone (about whom you can expect a question or two later in 2012).

Of course, I have the same challenge as the producers of The Academy Awards. How do I ask questions that will appeal to participants younger than the Christopher Plummer demographic? Interviewing my younger friends helps me learn more about Flight of the Conchords or Easy A, and thus ask you questions that rewards teams whose members span generations. We'll see how it works out tonight.

Thanks to all of you who participated in the Pub Quiz-themed fundraiser that I hosted for Sunrise Rotary of Davis. Generous players donated all sorts of money to a good cause, and I got to see elderly and distinguished members of the Davis community indicate that they thought another team was full of "losers" by signing big Ls on their foreheads, and then pointing at their vanquished friends and family members. Perhaps you will know such exhiliration this evening if you make it into the winners' circle of the de Vere's Irish Pub Pub Quiz.

Tonight's quiz will feature questions on the Academy Awards, ancient video games, robocalls, China and other countries where the government puts people to death, fashion, the act of being astounded, classical music, Spain, presidential candidates, presidents of the United States, Danes, Japanese people, religious people, adviser updates, movies like Gone with the Wind, superheroes, science fiction, sin, poetry, bodies of water, Irish culture, Republicans, basketball, monsters, and Shakespeare.

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:

  

5.         Television. What American situation comedy has been responsible for more original episodes than any other? 

6.         Cartoons. A poll of 1,000 animation professionals revealed that the greatest cartoon of all time had a three-word title, with the first being "What's," and the third being "Doc." What five-letter word completes the title of this 1954 Warner Brothers classic? 

7.         Pop Culture – Music. With eleven number one hits on Billboard Hot Country Songs, what musician is listed in the 2012 Guinness Book Of World Records as the Female Country Artist with Most number one Hits on such chart from 1991 to present, tied with Reba McEntire?  

8.         Sports.   True or False. The New York Knicks have won every game they've played since Jeremy Lin became a starter. 

9.         Science – Space Travel. 50 years ago today, John Glenn became the first American to do what?    

  

P.S. I am hosting  a poetry reading this coming Thursday night at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Chris Sindt and Kitty Liang are the featured readers. Check out http://www.poetryindavis.com for more information.

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Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

 

I hope you can join us for tonight’s Quiz. I’ve had a fruitful and productive weekend, in that I spent the weekend listening to extraordinary public speakers and authors talking about creativity and productivity at the annual San Francisco Writers Conference, a gathering where I have been giving presentations about poetry and writing for the last eight Presidents Day weekends. I come home with such a full (I almost said “large”) head from such events, eager to share with my Technocultural Studies students about what I’ve learned about social media marketing, and eager to get to work on my next book project. Currently my wife and I are working on a book on parenting, and my most recent poetry manuscript is in search of a publisher. Should I turn my recent published book chapter on teaching with Twitter into an entire book on instructional technology? If only I had one of those stopwatches that stopped everyone else for a few weeks, while I had time to write. As Franz Kafka says, “Productivity is being able to do things that you were never able to do before,” and I think time travel may be my best option for getting everything done. I know that many of you are poets and authors, as well. I look forward to hearing more about your book projects.

           

Happy Presidents Day! Some Lincoln enthusiasts are upset that Lincoln has never been commemorated with a holiday of his own, while others point out that the Republican party would never consider Lincoln as a candidate today. For many of you, the holiday may just mean that you had a chance both to nap and to gather friends for tonight’s de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz. In addition to questions about US Presidents, expect to be asked about German companies that you didn’t know were German, file sharing, young mothers, Harrison Ford, funny TV shows, East Coast states, people who could go by the name of Luke, Bugs Bunny, country music (I feel obligated to ask at least one country music question a year), Jeremy Lin, space travel, nicknames, reproachfulness and other delightful words that start with the letter “R,” middle-aged adventures, indie rock bands and the songs that have made them famous, California cities, Dungeons and Dragons undead creatures with two hit dice, preachers, large boats, storied geographic areas with four syllables in their names, Milton, Oscar-winners, Marvel superheroes, Kings basketball, Irishmen whom you would recognize, odd-looking fish, authors named Jane, Shakespeare, and the book industry.

           

I hope you have enjoyed the holiday. See you tonight!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

 

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

 

6.         The California Flag. According to Snopes.com, the bear on the California flag was originally supposed to be which of the following? A California condor, a mountain lion, an orange, or a pear. 

 

7.         Pop Culture – Music. What one-word band won two Grammys last night for their song “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites”? 

 

8.         Sports.   The Pittsburgh Steelers has opted to cut the longest-tenured player on the team. What is his name? 

 

9.         Science.   Which of the following is closest to the age of the verified oldest individual tree, named Prometheus (a tree that was cut down in 1964)? 500 months, 500 years, 5,000 months, or 5,000 years? 

 

10.       Name the Great American.  Who was the 1st Governor of the American Zone of Occupied Germany and the first supreme commander of NATO? 

 

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Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz, 

As someone who has been performing in front of audiences for a couple decades, I don’t usually get embarrassed or flustered when speaking before large crowds. In addition to running our Pub Quiz, I’ve been teaching before large and small audiences for the last 22 years, hosting a radio show with many Central Valley listeners, and perhaps even more via the web and iTunes, and hosting and featuring at poetry events in California and Japan. My largest in-person speaking opportunity was a poetry talk and reading that I gave in a public school before 1,000 schoolchildren. Perhaps more daunting was a talk before 200 senior faculty at the Nara Institute of Science and Technology, where I made an unfortunate off-the-cuff allusion to wise words from Harry S Truman, a hero of mine who is not a hero, I expect, to many Japanese people.

This past weekend, though, I actually did become momentarily flummoxed, and hot under the collar, while performing an original poem on stage at the Pamela Trokanski Performing Arts Center here in Davis. Just as I was about to read my poem a second time, this time interpreted by a member of Trokanski’s troupe, my delightfully uninhibited 11 year-old son Jukie had finally decided that he could sit in his seat no longer, and thought instead that he should join the dancer on stage to help interpret my poem. I wondered if I should keep reading, or interrupt myself to shoo Jukie off stage. He eventually left of his own accord, stomping up the cheap seats, where he could watch the show without everyone watching him. Here’s how my friend the poet Katy Brown put it on a post on my Facebook wall:

Andy, Jukie was the best part of the dance/poetry event today! I was so stunned and deeply moved by how he "got it" — the relating to and dancing with another dancer — the expressive use of your arms and posing — the just-letting-go that dance requires . . . my regret is that I didn't get up and help him take off his Crocs so he could dance on the hardwood floor. He was wonderful — the best part of improv! Thank you for bringing him. I'll always remember his natural grace and spontaneity.

What’s more, the highly-esteemed Davis Enterprise columnist Bob Dunning was in the audience to see his daughter, the beautiful dancer and Bikram Yoga owner Erin Dunning. Usually I encourage Jukie to act up and out when members of the local press corps are not there to record him. We’ll see if the new City Council candidate (and de Vere’s Pub Quiz fan) Lucas Frerichs ("Fr-air-icks") will keep Bob’s Tuesday afternoon column occupied this week.

On tonight’s Pub Quiz, you’d be wise to expect questions on The Grammys, and on Whitney Houston. Look also for questions about beverages, Afghanistan, apples, Massachusetts, short poems and long poems, Prometheus, South Africa, mountain lions, bears, condors and other monsters, wards, trees, NATO, pilfering, late night talk show hosts, European countries, birth dates, pets, Eddie Murphy, basketball, ghosts, Disney, hum-vees, Irish culture, pests, borders, festivals, the changing book industry, candidates for the Presidency of the United States, actual presidents thereof, football, basketball, love and chocolates.

Welcome to new readers of this weekly blog who are finding it at Davis Patch, the local online newspaper edited by Justin Cox.

See you tonight at 7 or before at de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis.

 

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:

 

3.         Newspaper Headlines.  We found out today from CNN the size of the trust fund that stands ready to support Mitt Romney's five sons – Matt, Tagg, Craig, Ben and Josh. Is that trust fund $10 million, $100 million, $1 billion, or $10 billion? 

 

4.         Four for Four.   Which of the following foods, if any, are mentioned specifically in the 2001 blockbuster film Shrek? Broccoli, Onions, Parfait, Veal. 

 

5.         Actors and Actresses. What actor appeared in the following films in the early 1980s? Nine to Five, On Golden Pond, Tootsie, Wargames. 

 

6.         The American Man.  With a half-inch margin of error, what is the average height of a Caucasian American man as reported by the CDC’s "National Health Statistics Reports, Number 10, (October 22, 2008)"? 

 

7.         Pop Culture – Music.  What two-letter word starts the first two lines of the repeated refrain of the new song “Young Wild & Free” by Wiz Khalifa?

  

P.S. Looking for more culture in your life? Check out Jessica Kristie and Nora Bergamino as the featured performers at this coming Thursday’s Poetry Night reading at the John Natsoulas Gallery. See PoetryinDavis.com for more details.

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Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz, 

Congratulations to The Penetrators, the longtime Pub Quiz team who won our first-ever monthly contest at de Vere’s Davis. Having come in first or second place more than any other team last month, they have earned themselves a generous bonus of $100 in Irish food and drink. In some ways, their win is a bittersweet occasion, for I received a text from the team’s co-captain last week saying that some of life’s other responsibilities have precluded The Penetrators from attending the Quiz this week, and that they may have to attend less often in the coming months. Childcare, academic responsibilities, and the choice to spend some time with one’s spouse are often factors cited by even the diehards who need to take breaks from the Pub Quiz. Or so they say. But soon, they again feel that itch, that jones, that nagging urge to compete, to collaborate, to challenge themselves, and to put to work all that knowledge that has been gained through a lifetime of schooling, reading, listening, conversing, and NPR monitoring. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it,” said the philosopher, but rarely are thoughts themselves so entertaining, especially when such thoughts represent a correct answer, than when we depend upon them at the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz. We’ll see to what extent, if any, January quiz champions The Penetrators can stay away from the place where everybody knows their (team’s) name.

Now it will be your team’s turn. As of tonight, the first prize team will earn three points, the second prize team two points, and the third prize team will earn a point. The fourth prize team will win swag (Dr. Mo’s favorite kind of prize).

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will be more philosophical than a typical quiz. Of course, who can predict what might be typical? As Francis Bacon says, “A sudden bold and unexpected question doth many times surprise a man and lay him open.” All I’m saying is that English and Philosophy majors should have their day of social relevance and celebration at least a few times in this life, and I aim to increase the frequency of such days. Tonight’s quiz will also feature questions about South Korea, boys named Tagg, brutishness, African and African-American history, Italy, baby cows, wargames, cross-dressing actors, CDC statistics, the American man, British poets, youth and freedom, 9-5 jobs, California sports, acid, only one space after a period in the post-typewriter age, famous secretaries, ancient Greeks, cinematic food choices, rudeness, rappers, sleeplessness in Europe and the Middle East, organic chemistry, Frenchmen who lived in the Netherlands, contemporary feminism, animated films, science fiction, uncanny powers, Irish culture, Egypt, physics, Crimea, Brits, yesterday’s Superbowl, Broccoli, Greenland, and Shakespeare.

 

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:

  

6.         Liam Neeson Movies. What’s the title of that new Liam Neeson film where Neeson’s character battles wolves? 

7.         Pop Culture – Music. The name of the only artist with Grammy Award wins in Pop, Rap, Gospel, and R&B is an anagram for the common musical command BLARE MY JIG. Name the artist. 

8.         Sports.   What American tennis player spent 286 weeks at no. 1, the most of any player? 

9.         Science.   What color is the part of the human brain that coordinates communication between different brain regions? 

10.       Great Americans.  With a two-year margin of error, in what year did Franklin Delano Roosevelt die? 

 

P.S. Please forward this newsletter to a friend who might be tempted to join us some Monday night. All are welcome to subscribe at https://www.yourquizmaster.com. 

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Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

 

As most of you know by now, tonight’s Pub Quiz at de Vere’s Irish Pub will begin late. I will be attending The Sacramento Poetry Reading for Autism III at the Sacramento Poetry Center. At that event, I will probably read this poem of mine, the comical (until the last line) “My Entropy Elephant”:

 

My Entropy Elephant

 

He is my entropy elephant, my kangaroo of chaos.

The contents of all drawers will be revealed!

All the shirts become T-shirts! All the gowns strapless!

Water seeks its own level, and this boy is a guide!

If a tree falls in the forest, run to take the axe from his hands.

If the water main has broken, then he has taken a break.

Left-handed people are sinister and clumsy, they say.

Well our little lefty hoorays the lightning strike, the wind shear.

We get no rest from this tempest. The nanny cries.

It’s not their stuff, so the neighbors just sit back and watch,

Thinking “With that arm he could pitch for the Reds.”

“I never knew that pliers could be used in that way.”

We can find no matches for his socks, his shoes, his mittens.

He plays with matches; how will we ever find him a match?

 

As is the case with my Pub Quiz persona, my Featured Poet Persona actually doesn’t talk much about himself. What’s the opposite of a confessional poet? Maybe an obscurational poet? Microsoft Word doesn’t care for that coinage, but I will leave it in. If you would like to join me at the reading tonight, then I will see you at 1719 25^th Street in Sacramento at 7pm. I will be rushing back to Davis after I perform, and expect to start the Pub Quiz around 8:30 tonight. I hope you can join us.

 

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about mid-western states, billion-dollar companies, Davis buildings, modern Christianity, blades, canines, blaring your jig, people who spend more than 280 weeks at #1, matter, grouchy royals, colors, great presidents, jeans, Dublin, NASA, Annie, wastelands, hooky, Mars, successful sequels that none of my friends have seen, Nazis, kingfishers, wells, friends of Obama, dragonflies, Africa, textiles, gold records, late novels, heads of state, football, Autism, and Shakespeare.

 

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.         Mottos and Slogans.    “It’s Time to Fly” is the commercial slogan of an airline that merged with Continental in 2010. Name it. 

 

2.         Internet Culture. What does SOPA stand for? 

 

3.         Newspaper Headlines.   We learned today that supermodel Heidi Klum is separating from her husband. What is his name? 

 

4.         Four for Four.  Which two of the four surviving Republican candidates for President, surprisingly, were born in Pennsylvania? Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum. 

 

5.         Film Quotations. In what film does Bruce Willis say “I love the music of the 20th century”? 

 

 

P.S. Alan Williamson reads his poetry this Thursday night at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery. See http://www.poetryindavis.com for details. He directed Dr. Andy's dissertation, so the gratitude from the Quizmaster will be palpable at this event.

 

 

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Dear Friends of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz,

 

            This past weekend, after a long hiatus, I held a meeting of the Manly Man’s Movie Club of Davis. At Regal Holiday Theatres at 101 F Street we saw the new Gina Carano film Haywire, a Bourne-like action thriller with a number of realistic mixed-martial arts-style fight scenes. The film also featured a number of past and future Oscar nominees, including Antonia Banderas, Michael Fassbender, and Michael Douglas. According to Metacritic, it’s the best-reviewed widely-released feature film released this year, but of course that’s not yet saying much. As six of us gathered at de Vere’s Saturday night to discuss the film and other matters, I fondly recalled the foundational Ralph Waldo Emerson quotation that helped to inspire the group when it was formed a dozen years ago: “Great men, great nations, have not been boasters and buffoons, but perceivers of the terror of life, and have manned themselves to face it.” And I was left wondering if large groups of men gathering together in the absence of women can be construed somehow as being more sexist or exclusionary than a large group of women meeting in the explicit absence of men, as my wife does with her many book groups and GNOs (“girls’ night out”) several times a month.

            Speaking of my wife, she and I support a number of charities, and chief among these are organizations such as Autism Speaks that, as its website says, is “dedicated to increasing awareness of the growing autism epidemic and to raising money to fund scientists who are searching for a cure.” Every January I participate in the Sacramento Poetry Center’s Reading for Autism, an event that raises funds and awareness for this important cause. This year’s event takes place at 1719 25^th Street (25^th and R Streets) next Monday beginning at 7:30. As a result, next week’s Pub Quiz will start about 90 minutes later than usual, but I hope you will still join us on January 30^th for some raucous and noisy fun at our favorite Irish pub. If you’d like to learn more about the event in Sacramento, please visit the website for the Sacramento Poetry Center, or the event page on Facebook.

            Tonight’s Pub Quiz will start at 7pm, as always, and cover a mix of the sort of subjects that you have come to expect. Tonight we will review air travel, intellectual properties, Bruce Willis, elderly women, Baltimore, doctors, fun facts about Republicans, globes, French verbs, London, no apologies, inaugurations, baseball, West Virginia, numbers instead of letters, faddish musicians, monkeys, storm clouds, trees, libraries, relinquishments, sword fights, crime, art and art history, France, British pseudohistory, Pennsylvania, nude toes, drama, welfare reform, multiple sclerosis, laughter and forgetting, American novels, classic films, Irish culture, universities, the Mesozoic Era, 40-book authors, football, foodies, Asia, and Shakespeare.

            See you tonight! Don’t let the possibility of rain dissuade you!

 

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:

 

 

5.         Muppets. Who starred in the documentary Being Elmo? 

 

6.         Architecture. Rounded off to the nearest 200 feet, how tall is the Washington Monument? 

 

7.         Pop Culture – Music. “The Queen of Gospel” sang at the 1963 March on Washington, and had a name that is an anagram of the common phrase KOALAS JAM CHINA. What is her name? 

 

8.         Sports.   The Boston Bruins are the current reigning Stanley Cup champions, and have been hockey champions six different times. Only one American team has more Stanley Cups, at eleven. Name the city and team. 

 

9.         Science – Ornithology.   Which of the following numbers is closest to the number of cervical vertebrae found in the neck of an owl? Is it 7, 14, 21, or 28?  

 

 

P.S. My mentor Alan Williamson will be giving a poetry reading at the Natsoulas Gallery on February 2^nd. Mark your calendar now!

 

P.P.S. If you know a Pub Quiz participant who hasn’t yet signed up for this newsletter, tell that person to sign up at https://www.yourquizmaster.com. 

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"An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

 

            One of the great joys of performing as your Quizmaster on Monday nights is the practice of immediate friendship, or at least of the manifestation of friendship, with so many of the Pub Quiz regulars. For instance, when I hear a remark or a quip as I pass by a table, I might echo that remark, or lightly satirize that person or that remark before the Irish Pub crowd of almost 200 people. Those of us not named Don Rickles usually reserve such light-hearted ridicule for our friends (or for public figures), so I feel privileged to good-naturedly mock you all in this way. I think you can take it.

            This practice of “instant friendship” reminded me of one of my closest friends from my college days, Kevin, someone I thought about often during my recent weekend trip to Boston. During my first moments as a college student, before I had taken my first class, before I had even unpacked my first bag, I met a man in Boston who would become a friend, a guide, an inspiration, and a delight, and that man was Kevin Quinn. Throughout our friendship, Kevin communicated these qualities to me in the same easeful, guileless, engaging, joyful, and gracious way that he welcomed me to Boston University, and to this foundational learning experience of Kevin upon which I have built so much since. His offer of friendship was immediate, warm, and absolute. He took risks in the way that he revealed himself to me and to others, treating us straightaway as if we were old friends, close friends. He treated us as if we were all worth the investment in us of his elated wonder, that we would be receptive to the evidence of his practiced belief in discovery and adventure.

            What was the result of this investment? Within ten months of that first meeting, on the Fourth of July, Schmevin (as he had come to be called) had joined a group of friends and me in a Washington DC stadium as we danced and swayed and harmonized (attemptedly) to the largest concert I had ever attended, one featuring Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Just over a year after that he was visiting my apartment in London, England. A few years after that, he sat in on one of the first classes that I taught as a graduate student, and explored northern California with my new fiancée and me. A year after that, he stood up in a grassy clearing outside Chicago on a misty day in September to speak at our wedding. And in the coming years he would play goofily on the floor of our homes with our children, my daughter being one of many to call him “Uncle Schmevin.” In the years after hosting my wife, daughter, and mom in a 2008 conference in Boston, he would phone the house and ask to talk to my daughter Geneva about school and her stuffed animals. Presents would be mailed to us on birthdays and at Christmas.

            Who was this man who enriched our lives so immeasurably? A man who approached me on that first day in Boston as he approached all new friends and adventures in his rich, rich life. Kevin Quinn was a man without guile, or pretense, or dishonesty, or selfishness. He was the personification of eagerness. He helped to create a community and a life that rewarded him for his selflessness and engaging generosity, a community in turn that celebrated him this past weekend to observe the end of his incredible life, and a community of adoring friends and family that continues to share lessons, and stories, and goofy vivacity with all who might be moved anew by the wide-eyed exultation that was, and forever will be, my friend Schmevin.

            In honor of Schmevin, you should expect a Boston question or two on tonight’s Pub Quiz, as well as questions about other things that Schmevin loved, such as baked goods, movies, Martin Luther King, Jr., architecture, gospel music, and sports. We’ll also review questions about Republicans, Muppets, mountains, ornithology, vests, legumes, African-American comedians, a merry jig, Prince, famous Greeks, Persian Muslims, Sailors born in 1932, famous BU professors, taking the T for tea, requests for a motorcycle, Saturday Night Live actors, vans, South America, endangered species, 19^th century novels, college sports, same-sex marriage, patricians, and Shakespeare.

            Happy Martin Luther King Day to you! I look forward to seeing you this evening.

 

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:

 

4.         Four for Four.      Which of the following Davis streets, if any, intersect both Russell Boulevard / 5th Street and Covell Boulevard? Anderson Road, Eureka Ave, K Street, Oak Avenue.  

 

5.         Food and Drink. Bourbon is a distilled spirit made primarily from what grain? 

 

6.         The Mafia. The two words that make up the long name of a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy each has an O and an A as its only vowels. What are these two words? 

 

7.         Pop Culture – Music. What band made history in Scotland when two of their tracks, "Sunshine on Leith" and "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" were featured on Scotland's Greatest Album (2011)? 

 

8.         Sports.   Charles Barkley played for three basketball teams, the most recent being the Houston Rockets. What were the other two? 

 

Two Postscripts:

 

1)   Congratulations to the three winners from last week’s Pub Quiz. Outside Agitators came in first with 24 points, Portraits O' Muhammad came in second with 23 points, and The Whiskey Bonders came in third with 22 points. Hooray! I’ll be awarding a bonus prize at the end of the month to the team that did the best overall.

 

2)   I will be hosting a poetry reading with local writing teacher and poet Rae Gouirand this coming Thursday night at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery (521 First Street). We will be returning to de Vere’s for the after party, if you would care to join us. Details on the reading can be found at https://www.facebook.com/events/224734354260430/

 

Posted via email from yourquizmaster’s posterous