Dear Friends,
I am excited that the Jazz Beat Festival is returning to Davis this Saturday. Peter Coyote will be a featured speaker Saturday night, and other poets will be performing at the event, including Mercedes Ibanez, our current Davis poet laureate.
I will be reading the first section of Allen Ginsberg’s epic Beat poem Howl, which means that even though I don’t swear in private, much less in casual conversation, at this event I will be required to swear poetically before a large audience.
This conference has an amazing track record of phenomenal speakers and performers. This year’s highlight, Peter Coyote, will also appear on my KDVS radio show around 5:10 this afternoon.
- Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) — Poet, critic, and Black Arts Movement leader; Dr. Andy talked with Baraka for two hours during a drive from the San Francisco Airport to downtown Davis.
- Ray Manzarek — Keyboardist of The Doors; appeared in Davis with Beat poet Michael McClure, playing a grand piano in the grand hall of the John Natsoulas Gallery.
- Michael McClure — San Francisco Beat poet/playwright; performed with Manzarek and enjoyed meeting my then teenage daughter Geneva.
- Dana Gioia — Poet, California poet laureate and former National Endowment for the Arts chair; poetry hero Gioia inspired Dr. Andy’s KDVS radio show.
- Judy Chicago — Landmark feminist artist; danced with Dr. Andy outside the largest 19th-century estate in South Davis.
- Peter Coyote — Actor, Emmy-winning narrator of over 200 documentaries and audio books, counter-cultural hero and co-founder of the Diggers, Zen priest, memoirist, and poet; one of the adult leads in the film ET, The Extra-Terrestrial. Coyote will appear on my radio show this afternoon around 5:10.
- Gary Snyder — Pulitzer Prize–winning poet of the Beat circle and retired UC Davis professor; Gary turned 95 in May.
- David Amram — Composer/multi-instrumentalist and Beat collaborator; a dynamic pianist and bon-vivant.
- George Herms — Seminal California assemblage artist linked to the Beats; I have one of Herms’ assembled paintings in my campus office.
- Anne Waldman — Poet and co-founder (with Ginsberg) of Naropa’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics; performer, editor, and teacher associated with the Beat and post-Beat avant-garde.
- Craig Baldwin — Experimental filmmaker and Other Cinema curator; friend of Davis cultural hero Jesse Drew.
- Deborah Remington — Painter and Six Gallery alumna.
- John Handy — Alto saxophonist and Bay Area jazz great.
- Tom Mazzolini — Bay Area jazz/blues broadcaster and festival producer.
- Phil Elwood — Influential San Francisco jazz critic/historian.
Many jazz bands will perform outdoors during the day on Saturday, followed by speakers, dancing by Linda Bair and her troupe, and ‘happenings’ at the Natsoulas Gallery in the evening. Check out the Gallery website to find out more. Perhaps I will see you there.
Andy
The pub quiz tonight will be so much fun, and not only because it should be easier than last week’s quiz. I invite you to join the regulars and irregulars outside our favorite brewery tonight for a grand competition featuring 31 questions on a variety of topics you should know something about. There might be a larger crowd than usual, so come early. I might even join you for dinner. As I said last week, festivity will abound! Today’s pub quiz is again 937 words, just like last week, if we count the answers. The answers always count, like that guy with the monocle on Sesame Street.
In addition to topics raised above and below, expect questions tonight on the following: faraway countries, small businesses, adventures, telegrams, unexpected antonyms to lazy, sturgeon jokes, AI, prayers, titans, estates, minor characters, funerals, engineers, European countries, fatal numbers, the Hot 100, outsiders, unusual verbs that rhyme with each other, sweaters, gasses, memorial birthdays, immigrants, crooners, the midwest, autocracies, playing cards, domestic terrorists, proportions, oceans, memoirs, plants, U.S. states, geography, current events, and Shakespeare.
For more Pub Quiz fun, please subscribe via Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/c/yourquizmaster.
Thanks to all the new players joining us at the live quizzes and to all the patrons who have been enjoying fresh Pub Quiz content. We have over 80 Patreon members now, including the new paid subscribers Kiera, Esther, James, Damian, Jim, and Meebles! I should write a question for Kiera. Thanks also to new subscribers Prescott, Bill and Diane, Tamara, Megan, Michael, Janet, Jasmine, Joey, Carly, The X-Ennial Falcons, and The Nevergiveruppers! Every week I check the Patreon to see if there is someone new to thank. Maybe next week it will be you! I also thank The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, Still Here for the Shakesbeer, The Outside Agitators, John Poirier’s team Quizimodo, Gena Harper, the conversationally entertaining dinner companions and bakers of marvelous and healthy treats, The Mavens, whose players or substitutes keep attending, despite their ambitious travel schedules and the cost of the aforementioned avocado. I appreciate the Mavens’ kind words to me in the newspaper. Thanks in particular to my paid subscribers on Substack. Thanks to everyone who supports the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of pub quiz boosters. Also, I sometimes remember to add an extra hint on Patreon. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine!
I also want to recognize those who visit my Substack the most often, including Luna, Jean, Ron, Myrna, and Maria, to whom I send sustained compassion.
Best,
Dr. Andy
P.S. Three questions from last week:
1. Mottos and Slogans. October 1st marks the anniversary of the motto “In God We Trust” first appearing on U.S. paper currency. Name the century.
2. Internet Culture. What are the three letters in the name of the satellite-based navigation system owned by the United States Space Force and operated by Mission Delta 31?
3. Newspaper Headlines. In a September 19, 2025 decision, did the US District Court for the Central District of California rule that nurses with doctorates could or could not call themselves doctors in clinical settings?