Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

On the way home from San Diego, I read my second-favorite book by Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse. It may be my new favorite.

People who love plots may not love this book, for less happens in To the Lighthouse than happens in most of Woolf’s other novels (at least according to me, but I’ve only read six of nine). In To the Lighthouse, a bunch of wealthy and highly literate people assemble to dine and talk at a Scottish beach house (on the Isle of Skye) in 1910, and then again in 1920. Do audiences hunger for such a tale? Well, while dozens of adaptations have been filmed of, say, the story of Cinderella, so far no adaptation of Woolf’s novel has been released in theaters.

We’ve covered this sort of ground before when considering the function (or absence) of plot. One classic episode of the TV show Seinfeld, for example, showed Jerry, George, and Elaine trying and failing to get a table at a Chinese restaurant. Not much to see there, one might think. We cared about that episode not because anything happens (NBC objected to the lack of plot, but Larry David threatened to quit if the network enforced changes to the script), but instead because the observations and foibles of the three protagonists were so entertaining. 

Rather than relying on comedy, To the Lighthouse emphasizes the philosophical and psychological responses of members of the Ramsay family, as well as their artistic and literary guests. The omniscient narrator spends most of book inside the heads of the various assembled characters, representing the poetic stream-of-consciousness thoughts of the various peeved and aching geniuses. As a poet myself, I relished the novel’s associative logic and ambitious use of words and allusions. 

Woolf was also a poet, though one who published no books of poetry, having once written in her diary that “Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.” Woolf kept 26 volumes (26 years’?) of diaries between the time she was 33 and when she took her own life at age 59. Her husband Leonard Woolf called these journals “a method of practicing or trying out the art of writing.”

Other scholars have explored the interrelationship between Woolf’s diaries and her novels. She cribbed liberally from herself, having her various characters reflect her own ingenious contemplations in their internal monologues. In doing so, with To the Lighthouse Woolf has written a modernist masterpiece, and a book that outsold all her previous books. With the proceeds, the Woolfs were able to buy a car!

I doubt that any of my books have sold enough copies to fund the purchasing of even a bicycle, but then again, I’ve never published a novel. In recent years, I have been reading, teaching and writing journalism, a genre of writing that seems as wholly different from a modernist novel as could be categorized. I’ve enjoyed creating prose that is accessible, rather than inscrutable, and that is current, rather than that which aspires to be literarily permanent.

Nevertheless, I’ve been inspired. Just back from Coronado Beach, I still hear the echoes of the surf in my ears and I still feel the moist seaside sand crunching beneath my bare feet. Maybe I, too, could write a novel about family reunions in a beach house, the way that Woolf has. Most of Woolf’s best work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1926. If I were to get to work on it now, the book might come out in time for the public’s rediscovery of To the Lighthouse, published in 1927. In that case, in the form of an homage, I could even imagine borrowing directly from the structure and choice phrases of Woolf herself, so that her genius could overtly rub off on my own attempts at fiction. I would welcome the influence. As Woolf once wrote, “I think writing, my writing, is a species of mediumship. I become the person.” 

After a long break from Woolf, I have been revived by returning to her fiction. I encourage you also to read To the Lighthouse or, another favorite, Mrs. Dalloway. Despite her recursive and esoteric 100-year-old prose, one need not be afraid of Virginia Woolf.

—

Tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions about topics raised above, as well as the following: home runs, kings, gustatory collaborations, tigers, casinos, cavemen, beach conflicts, virus abatement strategies, reindeer, new ways of thinking, the Bill Buchanan podcast Davisville, Chinese mittens, ghosts, hilarious dad jokes, great basins, princesses, Orwellian exports, reality games, red superstars, really valuable people, necessary systems, musical instruments, costumes, brothers, Italian towns, civil wars, land borders, numbers divisible by six, California counties, mutants, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all of you who plan to join us at the pub this evening at 7, and thanks also to all of you who support the Pub Quiz (at any level) on Patreon. Here’s what one subscriber wrote me last week about the quiz: “[Team Name Redacted] in its current [Z]oom formation had 9 participants, including the Olympic Cottage contingent and me from Davis as well as my son in Reno, a [S]crabble buddy from Toronto, and a sister in Colorado. Thanks for giving us a safe way to socialize! We got 26 correct, so we  would almost have been in the winners’ circle in auditing status, of course.” I’m happy to contribute to the entertainment of sons in Reno and Scrabble buddies in Reno! So be like this lucky woman, who has subscribed to the Pub Quiz since we launched on Patreon, or like Branka, who just joined the mailing list yesterday!

See you this evening,

Dr. Andy

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Cities in San Diego County. Starting with the letter C, the second most-populous city in San Diego County is found equidistant between downtown San Diego and downtown Tijuana. Name it.  

2. Pop Culture – Music. Of the five living individual performers who have sold over 250 million albums as individuals, the oldest released his first charted record in 1969. What is his name?  

3. Sports. Of the six highest-scoring basketball players in NBA history, only number six was born overseas. Name him.  

P.P.S. “It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything.” Virginia Woolf

P.P.P.S. We hope you are safe, wherever you are, Melissa Skorka. 

This week’s newsletter is dedicated to the memory of Lindsay Jaclyn Nedwin Gonzales, a 32-year old onetime Davisite who filled her home, the patient rooms of hospitals where she worked, and sometimes even our own Irish Pub with laughter and kindness. May her memory be a blessing to all who knew her and loved her. To find out more about Lindsay, and the good work being done and planned in her name, see her recent obituary in the Davis Enterprise.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Dog-owners who stay in hotels in the Gaslamp District of San Diego need a smartphone app to help them find grass, or even just dirt, where they can walk their dogs. 

Not every city has greenbelts and numerous public parks, as Davis does. Places like San Diego make me feel grateful both to have a chance to visit and to live where I do. When I asked Kate if she would like to retire on Coronado Island, home to some of our favorite beaches, she reminded me that we have too many friends in Davis to live anywhere else. There go my plans to move to Costa Rica or Thailand when I turn 67!

Speaking of time off, I am supposed to be vacationing, rather than writing newsletters, so I will repurpose here for your reading pleasure an essay about this part of California that I published on my blog on August 14, 2017, and that the Sacramento Bee published, with a color photo by Kate, about ten days later (If you want to look it up behind the SacBee paywall, search for “article169238542”). Enjoy.

As Jukie and I walked south along Coronado Beach, we could see Tijuana, Mexico on the horizon. Called the best beach in the world in 2012, Coronado Beach is home to the famous Hotel del Coronado, filming location for arguably the best film comedy, Some Like It Hot.

During our walk, Jukie and I passed a family of Frenchmen – a dad and three sons – who had made soccer goal markers out of the abundant seaweed. One of them had overshot the goal, sending the ball ten meters into the Pacific, which promptly gave it back. I could almost decipher some of their French exclamations. Perhaps ten years older than me and with a look of concentration, the father had better soccer skills but less gusto than his sons. He had opportunities to hone his skills when each new son came of age, perhaps preparing for this afternoon on Coronado Beach.

Soon we encountered three middle-aged Americans – a man and two women – digging ever deeper with juice pitchers. They were determined, but not frantic. Soon the man got out his metal detector again, and accepted the advice of the women as to where to place and how to angle the cumbersome machine. “We will just have to dig deeper,” one said. I expected that eventually they would find a metal bolt rather than a diamond ring.

Farther along the beach a Middle-Eastern couple in their 50s were walking with their daughter in her 20’s. Thinking of racial tensions in Charlottesville, I offered a friendly greeting, and they returned it. They might have been locals, or they might have been visiting from 8,000 miles away. I’m about as far from Davis as one can be and still be in California, but I still want people to know that we love and welcome strangers here. The most diverse state in the union, we depend upon the great mix of thinkers, inventors, and workers to power our state, and keep the ongoing dialogue lively and engaging.

The Middle-Eastern family had paused to take pictures, and I could see why. Well after 7 PM last night, we had reached that “magic time” for photographers when the sun’s light is diffused by the rising marine layer. It makes us all feel and look beautiful, especially on film. At that hour Jukie and I could see an engagement photographer, a family photographer, and many amateurs who wanted to take advantage of the incredible light.

Jukie lead the two of us for a mile or more on the wide beach. If it had not been getting darker, we might have walked for a few more miles until we heard the actual sounds of Tijuana nightclubs. We soon received a text from my wife Kate – I’m freezing, she said – so we started walking back, the setting sun filling our faces with light. By the time we returned to Kate, we saw the photographers packing up their equipment and nodding optimistically to their clients, we saw the French dad walking arm and arm towards the del Coronado Hotel, and we saw the middle-aged Americans climbing out of their hole to exchange a high five.

Perhaps, like Kate with her photography of Truman jumping over waves, and like Jukie and me on our walk, these three prospectors had finally found their diamond ring in the sand.

—

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will be guest-hosted by Schuyler (pronounced SKY-LAR), one of the friendliest and most erudite bartenders at de Vere’s Irish Pub. I’m so glad that Schuyler was one of the staff members to return after the long Covid hiatus of 2020 and 2021. He is ebullient, witty, and wry. He also proposed a handful of Pub Quiz questions that were too difficult even for me to consider including. I told him that he’d have to identify which questions he wrote so that the regulars know just whom to boo.

In addition to topics glancingly raised above, expect also questions on the following: toys, tech companies, fighters, U.S. presidents, unicorns, California cities, hurried meals, dishes unlikely to attract even the most committed carnivores, retirements, reservoirs, strangers, sinister butterflies, lances, spouses, open-world video games, carpenters, explorers, botanical varieties, Napa Valley pests, musical imperatives, fashion, adjacent bodies, accomplished foreigners, null points, departed legends, current events, and Shakespeare. If you would like to receive printed pub quizzes from me every week, please support these efforts on Patreon. 

Thanks in advance to Quizmaster Schuyler. Please give him your attention and your feedback during (or after) tonight’s performance. I will see you in the pub on the 24^th! Poetry Night returns to the Natsoulas Gallery on September 2^nd at 7 PM.

Best,

Dr. Andy

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Actors and Actresses. Who played the female lead and love interest in the 1994 film Forrest Gump?  

2. Science. What five-syllable word do we use for the process of heat production in organisms?  

3. Books and Authors. Having replaced David Souter on the U.S. Supreme Court, what Princeton and Yale grad authored the 2019 book, Just Ask! Be Different, Be Brave, Be You?  

P.P.S. “The purpose of a vacation is to have the time to rest. But many of us, even when we go on vacation, don’t know how to rest. We may even come back more tired than before we left.” Thich Nhat Hanh, with a warning to all of us

P.P.P.S. The family and I think of you often, Melissa Skorka. We hope you are safe.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I couldn’t go out for a walk on Friday because of the bad air, so I overdid it at home with the kettlebell, and then felt sore for days thereafter.

As I have written about in a previous newsletter, Jillian Michaels has been torturing me with her video workouts for about a decade. If you try one of her recorded workout routines after a long break, and then substitute a 15 lb kettlebell for the recommended 5 lb hand weight that she uses in her video Six Weeks to a Six-Pack, you will feel overextended, winded, and sore after about 15 minutes, at least if you are me.

Regular readers know that my reading of books such as Atomic Habits by James Clear and Deep Work by Cal Newport has led me to my daily regimen of ultra-low-impact exercise: every day I take long walks with my son Jukie. This has become such a regular part of our pandemic routine that I feel deprived or incomplete if we don’t walk for two hours, sometimes split over different sections of the day. Because of this consistency, he and I are on track to walk 2,000 miles this year, the equivalent of more than 75 marathons. As James Clear says, “Intensity makes a good story. Consistency makes progress.”

So I walk every day, but not this past Friday, a day when the air was choked with Dixie Fire smoke. I tried to make up for the unavailable outdoors by wearing my phone / steps-tracker indoors all day, including while running up and down the stairs as I attended to family needs (a big part of my day for the past 18 months), and as I was doing prisoner lunges and other cruel sounding (side planks?) exercises for Jillian Michaels. These incidental exercises, what exercise biologists call Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (or NEAT), were complemented minimally by the three-minute walk to the hotel where my daughter Geneva is a bartender. Despite these vain (in both senses of the word) indoor efforts, Friday I ended up walking less than half my quota – only about 6,000 steps!

Resolved to compensate for this perambulatory disappointment when the air had cleared, Jukie and I set out early on Saturday, starting with a long walk north, following Mace Ranch bike paths wherever they would take us. We ended up so far north that we circled the Wildhorse Golf Course, a beautiful part of Davis that I don’t get to explore often. 

In doing so, I returned to memories of a rainy winter afternoon more than ten years ago when I made that same golf course circumference walk with Jukie and his younger brother Truman. As is the case now, on that walk, Jukie wanted to explore every tree and shrub we passed by. There were also puddles to splash through. We enjoyed the added challenge of Truman being too young – maybe four years old? – to make such a long walk; back then, aimless and unhurried Jukie was also unaccustomed to such long jaunts. Soon they both asked to be carried.

So I would pick up Truman, who was as light as a feather compared to his nine-year-old brother, carry him 25 yards up the path, and then go back for Jukie, and carry him past his brother about 50 yards up the path, and then go back to get Truman. The success of this experiment depended on neither one of them stumbling into a drainage ditch while I was attending to the other “passenger.” The aerobic workout felt very much like what the Swedes call a fartlek, only with the added bonus of the ongoing fireman carry of my two boys. After a while, Truman would stroll forward on his little legs while I was carrying Jukie, and at least once Jukie thought it would be funny to start scampering off in the wrong direction, yodeling and laughing while he ran. At one point, I had to make sure that the dark stick in Jukie’s hand was not, in fact, a snake. That boy does not suffer from ophidiophobia, so back then I had to keep a close eye on him when we ventured into the wild areas of Davis.

Today my two boys and I are more hearty and adventuresome walkers. On agenda-free Saturdays, Jukie and I are like Springsteen’s “river that don’t know where it’s flowing,” for we often will take “a wrong turn and just [keep] going.” On such days, our hearts are hungry more for miles, rather than destinations: this past Saturday Jukie and I walked and walked until we were recalled by my wife Kate with the news that the air quality had again deteriorated.

We covered 11 miles on Saturday. That’s just a mile or two less than the distance between Davis and Winters, or between our house in South Davis and Sacramento’s Tower Bridge. In all the years that I lived in Sacramento (most of the 1990s), I never once biked or walked the distance between these two cities. If Jukie and I encounter an upcoming Saturday when both the temperature and the air quality appeal to us, my strong walker and I will cross that daylong feat from our bucket list. 

For me, the simplest exercise of walking has become the most satisfying, in part because it gives me time to think, as Forrest Gump does when he famously runs across the country a few times. I find there is something bracing and even dignified about a long walk. As Edward Abbey says, “Walking is the only form of transportation in which a man proceeds erect – like a man – on his own legs, under his own power. There is immense satisfaction in that.”

I hope you can join us in person for tonight’s Pub Quiz. The quiz will surely touch upon at least one topic raised above. Expect also questions about mileage totals, the differences between what’s inside and what’s purposeful, Hepatitis C, people named Jennifer, prize-winners, alphabets, Olympians, blanket answers, popular wood choices, monarchies, platinum albums, Apple products, more than three wishes, promised postcards, crime dramas, bitter fruits, heavy loads, dancers, testing regimens, female heroes, quarterbacks, asking questions in children’s books, what it means when the heat is on, actors and actresses, rivers, bonded loners, art and art history, increasing complexity, current events, and Shakespeare.

Special thanks to all the teams that support the Pub Quiz and these newsletters on Patreon. Over these last two weeks, I’ve enjoyed welcoming back to the pub people who that have sustained this effort, including, last week, members of the teams The Outside Agitators and Bono’s Pro Bono Obo Bonobos. If you would like to receive print versions of the Pub Quiz while on vacation, or if you’d rather just enjoy the fun from afar rather than congregating with teammates and other friends, please consider subscribing.

Stay safe, and I look forward to seeing you this evening!

Dr. Andy

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

P.S. Below please find five questions from last week’s quiz:

1. People That Were Born the Year Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was Released. LeBron James, Scarlett Johansson, and Mark Zuckerberg were all released the same year as Ghostbusters and Beverly Hills Cop. With a one year margin of error, name the year.  

2. Sports. Weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz won an Olympic gold medal for her home country of over 108 million people, ending her nation’s 97-year medal drought. Name the country.  

3. Great Italians. Starting with a V, what was the name of the Tuscany town where Leonardo da Vinci was born?    

4. Unusual Words. A nosegay is closest to which of the following: Flowers, a kennel, perfume, spectacles? 

5. Pop Culture – Television. Dunder Mifflin is a fictional paper company in what US state?  

P.P.S. “He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance; one cannot fly into flying.” Friedrich Nietzsche

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Steven Spielberg said the second Indiana Jones movie was so dark in part because he was breaking up with his girlfriend at the time. The auteur was looking through his camera lens darkly, and the resulting film scared filmgoers and, not long thereafter, resulted in a new rating: PG-13. 

I remember the film having been so disturbing that I even waited until my son Truman was 15 and a half before I sat down to watch it with him this past Friday. We both agreed that the enslavement and forced labor of children, the repeated voodoo-doll impalements of the titular hero, and the magical unscheduled manual cardiectomy (“Indy! Cover your heart!” shouted Short Round) would be a little much for the children who had so enjoyed the family film E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial when they were younger Spielberg fans.

When Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom was released in 1984, all of us in my high school were excited to see the film, but only I had tickets to the critics’ premiere. I would have gone with my dad, the actual critic to whom the passes had been mailed, but he was otherwise occupied, so I had a difficult decision to make: whom would I invite to go with me?

First on the list was my friend Sarah, the woman who would be my date to the prom later that month. Were Sarah and I “dating” if she and I were going out on two or more consecutive and planned dates? I would have liked to have thought so. Not a sports star or an actor, I didn’t have many ways to impress women, but I did have access to a steady stream of cinematic events, and in a decade well before we could imagine streaming or the internet. I don’t think that Sarah was particularly impressed with me, but she enjoyed the movies (we later attended the premiere of Breakfast Club together), and perhaps my company.

The second candidate was Will Layman, my most influential teacher in high school, and an aesthetic hero of mine. Will was a fan of everything cool, including Pynchon and Nabokov, jazz and funk, theatre, and the best action movies. For example, Will would later join the Trendsetters and me at opening night of the film Aliens in July of 1986.

Somehow I let slip that I was deciding between Sarah and Will as the lucky person who got to accompany me on this special occasion. Once during that week when I was weighing who would receive the Temple of Doom“rose,” I accidentally whistled the familiar (to all of us) Indiana Jones theme song as I walked into Will’s trigonometry class. Will merely said, “You’re killing me, Jones!” Will was everyone’s favorite teacher, but no readers will be surprised that I chose Sarah.

Standing in line on the day of the cinematic event of the year (because we didn’t know that Ghostbusterswould be such a big deal when it was released a month later), I spotted the TV crew that was following Arch Campbell, the other notable film critic in Washington DC, and one who looked up to the wacky and theatrical Channel 9 critic, and my dad, Davey Marlin-Jones. Arch was asking everyone in line how they were able to secure the coveted tickets to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. When he came to me, I told him that my dad got me the tickets, and that he was seeing a play that night at the Warner Theatre downtown. “And who is your father?” Arch asked, knowing the answer. “He’s Davey Marlin-Jones.” Oh, how I reveled in the rich irony: I was plugging my dad on a competing network!

The next day at dinner, my dad expressed some frustration that I didn’t point out that he wasn’t SEEING a play at the Warner – he was DIRECTING a play there! You can imagine how crestfallen I felt, after what I thought was such a successful media appearance. The agony of defeat was snatched from what I thought was the thrill of televised victory.

In my defense, I will point out that a UNLV master’s thesis later written about my dad revealed that he had directed more than a thousand productions in his 71 years, so my brother and Oliver and I understandably could not keep straight the prodigious iterations of his theatrical productivity. He knew so much about film and theatre that, at his funeral at the Kennedy Center, just a few miles where Sarah and I had watched Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, one of the eulogists compared his passing to the burning of the great library of Alexandria. Although that high praise for my dad might be an overstatement, it has always felt that way to me.

Meanwhile. I have thought often of that delicious moment of anticipation. Standing in line to see the year’s biggest movie with my junior prom date, and smiling with false confidence when I caught the eye of Arch Campbell, I remember thinking that everything was coming together. Nothing works out the way we might think – often it turns out to be better – but I’ve lodged that one moment in my Alexandrine library of memories, and there it shall remain for as long as I do.

***

I so enjoyed returning to de Vere’s Irish Pub to host last week’s Pub Quiz. Members of the young team that had a somewhat more accurate answer to the tiebreaker question after answering 22 questions correctly, and that therefore won the entire quiz, were surprised and thrilled. I hope they return this afternoon. Congratulations to the team Quizzers with Attitude, Pub Quiz champions from March of 2020 to last week. Thanks to the Quizzers and to all the teams who supported the Pub Quiz during the long hiatus. The teams Original Vincibles, Quizimodo, The Outside Agitators, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos were especially generous in their Patreon patronage, and thus made it possible for me to share new weekly content. An occasional attendee named Josh just joined on Patreon and is loving the opportunity to access older quizzes. Speaking of supporters, I hear from the Bobobos that they will be returning to the Pub this month!

Not everyone can or will return to the pub during a time when the national and regional health news continues to be troubling. Let’s fill up the outdoor tables, mask up inside, and, of course, get vaccinated so that we can continue to socialize, play, and compete together.

And now, the hints. Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following topics: superstitious nicknames, cells, people named Anson, alphabetical cities, farmers, Neolithic tools, horror film rejects, clowns, weights, Eminem, funny people, bridesmaids, famous interviews, party aftermaths, driving designs, wolves, triangles, fictional companies, masques, shovels, catchers, attorneys general, apparatuses, blades, electron anagrams, trenches, Cole Porter, habits, Italian towns, atria, broken droughts, primary color frames, cameos by Oscar-winners, current events, and Shakespeare.

It’s even easier to socially-distance at Poetry Night at the John Natsoulas Gallery on first and third Thursdays at 7 than it is at the Pub. This Thursday, August 5^th, we feature the Sacramento poets Susan Flynn and Laura Rosenthal. Check out the details at the website poetryindavis.com. Inspired by the work of the staff and volunteers (and donors like you) at the Yolo Food Bank, I am working on an uplifting series of poems about hunger that I will be sharing this summer and fall.

Thanks for reading. I hope to see you and your team tonight at 7!

Dr. Andy

Follow me on Patreon

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Books and Authors. What British Romantic poet and British Poet Laureate wrote the poems “I wandered lonely as a cloud” and “‘A slumber did my spirit seal”?  

2. Film. What 60-year-old actor was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for the 2019 Pedro Almodóvar film Pain and Glory?  

3. Countries of the World. Java, the world’s most populous island, is home to more than half of what country’s population?  

P.P.S. A Denis Diderot quotation from my upcoming book, The Determined Writer: “Pithy sentences are like sharp nails which force truth upon our memory.” 

P.P.P.S. This week at a dinner party I discovered the local musicians (and new friends) Misner & Smith. As you can see on their website, they are sharing “Rough Cuts for Rough Times.” Check them out!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Typically I write a Pub Quiz, and then write a newsletter, reflecting on what sort of pub quiz topics might warrant a mention in the weekly missive. This week, because of changes here in the city of Davis, I am writing a newsletter for a pub quiz that I will be performing live tomorrow in an actual pub. 

I will ask for your patience during this transition. The beloved Patreon subscribers who have been sustaining the pub quiz during the Great Lockdown on 2020 and 2021 will receive their print and perhaps audio and video quizzes on Tuesday night or even Wednesday morning instead of on Mondays, as locals have grown used to over the last dozen years.

De Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis opened up in the fall of 2012 and has provided a classy and exuberant home for the Pub Quizzes that I’ve hosted every week since October of that year. The March 2020 suspension of the Pub Quiz came quickly, as it did for everything else in our lives. 

I myself have both enjoyed changes in my life, and endured them. Since that day 500 days ago, I’ve walked almost 3000 miles, most of that with my son, Jukie. I’ve also talked to Truman about his screenplay ideas and about his crossword puzzles, watched a bunch of Hitchcock movies rented from Bizarro World, and even played some games of Dungeons and Dragons in person (with my kids) and online (with university colleagues). As someone who meditates regularly, I elected to play a monk.

During those 500 days, I have written many poems, more weekly essays like this one, even more emails, and even more comments on student articles submitted to remotely-taught journalism classes. During those 500 days I have eaten probably more than 200 burritos, and zero Dr. Andy Salads at my favorite pub. With the exception of an occasional glass of wine with my wife Kate, I’ve also largely stopped drinking alcohol. This has helped me lose a few pounds, but my friends working at the pub have also lost out. Regrettably, I’ve tipped de Vere’s staff about $4000 less over the last 500 days than I had over the previous 500 days.

Although during those 500 days I’ve spent almost zero hours waiting in line or in traffic, I’ve spent about 350 hours in Zoom meetings. During those 500 days I’ve read or listened to more than 75 books, and consumed probably all or part of more than 500 podcasts. During those 500 days, I’ve hosted about the same number of poetry readings that I typically do, and attended to almost as many as I usually do, most of those from my phone while walking with Jukie. Thanks to KDVS airing reruns of Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour, I’ve hosted zero new radio shows over the last 500 days, while having hosted more than 1000 radio shows over the previous 20 years.

Now the microphone calls me. I’ve enjoyed being differently busy over the last 500 days, but coming this Tuesday night at 7 at de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis, I will be returning to a bit of normalcy. On Tuesday, July 27^th, I will be returning to in-person hosting of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz. Maybe you will join me.

Some things about the Pub Quiz will have changed. We will meet on Tuesdays instead of Mondays. If you serve on the Davis City Council (Hello, Vice-Mayor Frerichs!), you will have an excuse, but otherwise, I hope the new day at the regular time of 7 PM will work for you. As Tuesdays have just been added to the pub schedule, the staff at de Vere’s is opening the place up for us just for us. Although I will be taking a pay cut (as the rest of the pub staff had to do over this last year), the gift-card and swag prizes for Pub Quiz winners will be the same. Like many bars and restaurants, our pub will offer no “happy hour.” I am just grateful that the de Vere White brothers could reopen our pub open during a time when so many other restaurants and retail shops have closed for good.

So please bring your vaccinated self to the Pub tomorrow, and subscribe to the Pub Quiz if you can’t join us in person. It’ll be fun to see if, after 500 days, the quiet and contemplative version of Dr. Andy can still remember the script.

I will send the hints and a reminder tomorrow, after I have written the Quiz.

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are four questions from a March, 2019 Pub Quiz:

1. Famous Ships. What was the name of Ernest Shackleton’s ship which became stuck in Antarctic ice in 1915?  

2. Pioneers in the mass production of tires. In what year was the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company founded? Was it 1880, 1900, 1920, or 1940?   

3. Science.  A Tarantula Hawk is which of the following: A bird, a military jet, or a wasp?

4. Unusual Words. What monosyllabic G verb means “to obtain something, especially money, illicitly”?  

P.P.S. With the Delta variant sickening more and more people in Yolo County, locals still need your support. Please support the Yolo Food Bank.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This past Wednesday I walked downtown to meet my wife Kate for a warm outdoor lunch. I feel lucky to have such a lunch partner, and to have such a pleasant walk to the restaurant district of my hometown.

As I walked home afterwards, I listened to a New York Times podcast about the fearsome heat wave that had recently descended upon the Pacific Northwest, baking people whose homes were not outfitted with air conditioners. Hundreds of people died not just because of the extreme temperatures – record-breaking highs were as many as nine degrees higher than previous record highs – but also because their bodies had not adapted to the heat. One could imagine that if those same temperatures had hit Phoenix, far fewer people would have died.

As I was digesting this story, and what the rise in global temperatures might mean for all of us, my phone rang. Kate called to tell me that Jukie’s school bus had arrived 25 minutes early, and I was still a mile from home! I started to run.

There was a time when running was my natural and preferred means of locomotion. When I first moved to California in 1989, I would run at least five miles a day, many of those miles up in the hills of north Berkeley. That’s where I ran my first marathon, or so I figure, for I left Indian Rock one Saturday at 8 AM, ran for a few hours, got lost in Orinda, and then eventually retraced my steps and ran home, arriving around dinnertime. If a casual marathoner finishes in four hours, I figure that I completed at least that distance over eight hours.

But in the 21^st century, I biked for the first 20 years, and then walked for the next year and a half. Now that I’ve cut back my drinking from at least twice a week to about twice a month, and now that I walk about six miles a day with Jukie, you would think that I would be in excellent shape. But as I began my emergency run last Wednesday, I felt like the Portlanders who had to acclimate instantly to a 30-degree rise in temperatures: I was unprepared.

Overheated and exhausted, I arrived at my front door ten minutes after getting Kate’s call, pretending to my neighbors and other passersby that I meant to be out jogging in a button-down shirt, and that I was always that shade of crimson. Having escorted Jukie from his bus into our cooler home, I still felt as if I were in a sauna, sweating, as the Brits say, like a turkey at Christmas.

So, like our overheated earth, I thought I was in good shape, but really I’m not. I have more work to do when it comes to protecting our planet (local action first), and strengthening my body and lungs. Isak Dinesen once said that “The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.” Some people, I’m sure, experience all three at the same time. I myself have cried my share of tears over the last 18 months, and because of my recent school bus sprint, I have sweated as I rarely do.

Now I am ready for a break, the sort that teachers get. Air conditioning is nice, but I seek deeper relief, so I have scheduled my dip in the Pacific. While I enjoy my work, I agree with Clarence Day: “The ant is knowing and wise, but he doesn’t know enough to take a vacation.” I do! Do you?

The Pub Quiz will be returning to de Vere’s Irish Pub, but with some important changes. In consultation with the owners of the pub, I have hatched a plan first to have a “dry run” with a smaller crowd before I make a grand announcement and invite all of you to join us. With that in mind, I will post the details for the soft opening on Patreon (with subscribers at the $4 or higher monthly tier getting the first invitations). We will see how that goes, and then fill in the rest of you later once the new staff is ready. Join us on Patreon if you want to be in the loop.

Meanwhile, tonight’s Pub Quiz will be a lot of fun. I hope you get to see the questions. Expect to be asked about mirrors, British authors, leaks, mad men, voting rights, fairy tales, eye doctors, musical theatre, spiders, squandered miracles, literary originators, valves, Disney facts and figures, medical terminology, narrow places, amazing writers, uncashed checks, insects, dragons, sequel adventures, happy animals, debates, keys, grand theft auto, secretaries, dominatrices, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to everyone who came to our last Poetry Night. Our next event takes place August 5^th at 7PM at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Sacramento-area poets Laura Rosenthal and Susan Flynn. Later this fall we will be featuring Julia Levine, Hannah Stein, and Peter Coyote. Google them to be impressed.

Thanks for reading, thanks to the stalwarts who have made newsletters like this possible, and welcome aboard to the new subscribers.

Dr. Andy

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

P.S. Here are three questions from our last Pub Quiz:

1. Mottos and Slogans. What retailer has been using the tagline “Expect More. Pay Less” since 1994? 

2. Newspaper Headlines. What is the last name of the 14-year-old from New Orleans, Louisiana, who won the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee crown after correctly spelling “murraya” — a type of tree — that she associated with the famous comedian Bill Murray?  

3. Four for Four. Which of the following countries, if any, have capital cities that start with the letter K: Afghanistan, Jamaica, Nepal, Peru?  

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

If friends of mine would move away from (or to) Davis every weekend, I would be in much better physical shape, for lifting another man’s possessions for a couple hours will strengthen both one’s arms and one’s sense of gratitude.

Such has been the case the last two weekends in a row, for first our closest neighbors, Erik and Nate, and then my favorite Davis pastor, Bill Habicht, have packed up their PODs and their moving trucks and moved to the east coast.

While Boston (Erik and Nate) is right on the water, Raleigh is more than a two-hour drive to the nearest North Carolina beach. Some westerners think of all of those original colonies as being right on the “east coast” in the same way that many people back east think that Californians live along Baywatch beaches. I’m sure that I’m not the only Davisite who doesn’t own a surfboard.

Although I feel more toned after all the boxes that I’ve hauled recently, I’ve certainly lost more than I’ve gained this month. I will miss my neighbors! These three gentlemen greeted me with a smile or a hug, a bit of news or a cheeky remark. When I thanked Erik for the huge box of DVDs that showed up at our door the day before I drove him and Nate to the airport for the last time, he wrote back that they meant to pack them in the POD, but somehow they had been overlooked. “Our fumble is your fortune,” Erik said. 

Now I have a bunch of action films to share with Truman and, after we’ve watched them, to share with lovers of cinematic swag once the in-person pub quizzes restart in downtown Davis. Meanwhile, I look across my driveway wistfully at the empty house, missing the friends who would often give me rides home after the big show on Monday evenings. At least Erik and Nate subscribe to this newsletter and to the quizzes themselves via Patreon. I look forward to continuing to entertain them remotely, while they also find entertainment in Red Sox games and a highly-functional public transportation system. 

I’ve known Bill even longer, and watched with admiration how he was recognized for what he did for our city. Bill had an entire box in the garage marked “awards.” You might know that Bill was the first recipient of the Jay Gerber Young Community Leader Award, created by the Sunrise Rotary Club. He won another award from the City of Davis for “Excellence in Community Involvement” in 2014. You’d think the other friends helping Bill move boxes on moving day would show him more respect, but one of them said that one box is not enough to hold all his awards. The other said that he has had to rent a storage facility for all the awards he has won. Such sass!

Such problem these pillars of the community have. I suppose this ribbing would have been funnier if it weren’t true: each of these gentlemen has won more awards than I have. One thinks of the time that soap opera actress Susan Lucci hosted Saturday Night Live in 1990, and the entire opening monologue was about how everyone had an Emmy but Lucci herself, the poor dear.

As university faculty, we are used to losing people to bigger (if not better) places. My student Melissa left Davis for Oxford, and then took her doctorate to peace-keeping efforts in Afghanistan. I wish her success! My student Lauren recently set up shop in Santa Cruz, where she is conducting her own research. My current protégé Josue hasn’t left town yet, choosing instead to publish articles, such as this one about Yolo County food insecurity in today’s Davis Vanguard. 

Universities and great cities like Davis launch rising stars. Junior astronomers, those of us on the ground wave goodbye to them from the launching pad, all of us wiser and stronger for having known them during their stay.

In addition topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature question on the following: Famous Bostonians, the names of Kings, banks, strings of losses, governors, keeping up with the Jones families, Detroit, hyacinths, Europe, podcasts, the absence of mutants, audiobooks, the stain of slavery, peace prizes, stage names, news shows, wonderful men, camels, cars that need to be filled more, frightening animals, retail stores, headphones, crowns, K as in Kate, Oscar winners, resistances, successful singers, catch phrases, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thursday night the great poet, musician, and retired Design professor DR Wagner will be reading from his new four-volume book of poetry. Join us at the Natsoulas Gallery at 7PM on March 15^th!

Thanks to all my regular supporters, including the teams that contribute the most every week: The Outside Agitators, The Original Vincibles, Quizimodo, and Bono’s Pro Bono Oboe Bonobos. Many other teams also subscribe, meaning that they get to read the entire quiz and all the answers every week! Check us out on Patreon. 

Thanks for reading.

Dr. Andy

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

P.S. Here are four questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Chicago Statues. Last week, a Chicago committee revealed a new statue paying tribute to an anti-lynching and suffrage activist, making it the city’s first sculpture honoring a Black woman. Name the subject of this honor.   

2. Science. Now eradicated, what was the target of the first vaccine?  

3. Books and Authors. Who co-wrote the current best-selling political thriller, The President’s Daughter, with James Patterson?  

4. Sports. First name Dennis, what former Oakland Athletic became the first of two pitchers in MLB history to have both a 20-win season and a 50-save season in a career?

P.P.S. “Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” Tennessee Williams

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

My wife and kids don’t run much, so I would have to say that my favorite runner is Olympian Kim Conley, who is recuperating from injury and thus must sit out this year’s summer Olympics.

I got to teach Kim English 3: Introduction to Literature about a 20 years ago. Kim always sat along the westernmost wall of our Olson Hall classroom, she always participated when I asked students if they had questions (now I just say to my students, “Ask me questions”), and she always maintained focus on me and the class.

Perhaps once maintaining such focus in a college class would not seem noteworthy, but today, students and faculty alike swim in in a sea of distractions. The smartphone is the most prominent diversion, interrupting students with its notifications. Blessed is the student who remains unnotified. Wherever one is, the smartphone reminds us, something more interesting might be happening someplace else.

UC Davis students are such bright, accomplished, and engaging young people, so I would imagine that most of them want to spend most of their time with their peers. I felt that every day of college was an opportunity to build new connections, whether between neurons in my brain, between images in a poem, or between myself and a new friend. As I remember it, as a college student, I was always eager for new experiences, but also eager to be right where I was at any particular moment. Especially if I was with Kate.

I find it odd, then, to see groups of students sitting together in a restaurant or, before the pandemic, in the UC Davis Coffee House, and notice that they are all on their phones. I am tempted to interrupt their techno-reverie with the news that the joy they seek can be found in the eyes and the laughter of the friends that surround them. The entangling and teasing tedium is the trouble with Twitter. Life tops Facebook.

Such social media thrive by manufacturing desire, by implanting in us the longing for the thing we don’t yet have. The itching and distracting quest to become rich can actually make us poor. As Christopher Manske says in his book, The Prepared Investor, “When you buy a bigger house, another luxury car, or a fancy boat, you are showing people that you used to have money.”

I myself will likely not be a significant investor, prepared or otherwise. Rahter than thinking overmuch about finances, I prefer the perspective of one of my favorite Buddhist thinkers and authors, Pema Chödrön, author of When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, which I have read perhaps three times since it was published. In that book, Chödrön says, “Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty. We can’t simply relax with ourselves. We hold on to hope, and hope robs us of the present moment. We feel that someone else knows what’s going on, but that there’s something missing in us, and therefore something is lacking in our world.” 

Kim Conley surely feels that sense of lack, that something is missing, as she watches her professional runner competitors at the Olympic trials as she herself recuperates. Knowing Kim as I do, however, I know that this experience will remind her what a blessed life of running, of play, and of mile after meditative mile she has been living. 

Although Simone de Beauvoir famously said that “The body is the instrument of our hold on the world,” for Kim – ever focused, ever present, and ever a UC Davis Aggie – her body has also been an instrument of freedom, of letting go. For that, and for her accomplishments on and off the Olympic track, Kim Conley remains my hero.

***

Happy Independence Day weekend! In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on patriotic topics, as well as candy, rabbits, palm trees, marbles, Brunos, Oscar nominees, parsimonious speakers, dictionaries, sailing trips, unlikely partners, Davis businesses, synonyms for confidence, unpronounceable names, people named Chuck who may or may not have birthdays today (Happy Birthday, Chuck!), German trees, hockey pucks, family weapons, people who made a career of saving a lot of things, famous fictional daughters, vaccinations, anti-racists, places with initials, European culture, famous battles that were won by little girls (with help), contagious sorrow, fireworks, again with the Tom Cruise, dancing stars, current events, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all our regular teams who support the online Pub Quiz on Patreon. When we return to in-person presentations, subscribers will be able to enjoy the Pub Quiz on one day, and receive the same pub quiz via email or Patreon the next day. Perpetual souvenirs! Thanks specially to The Outside Agitators, The Original Vincibles, Quizimodo, and Bono’s Pro Bono Obo Bonobos for their generous support. Because of these teams and a number of others, I’ve been able to sustain this medium of entertainment throughout the pandemic. If you would like to join these local heroes, then do!

A bonus poetry night takes place this coming Thursday night at 7 via Zoom. How cool!

Be well, and thank for reading.

Dr. Andy

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. U.S. Presidents. Both found in the second half of the calendar, two months are tied as the birth-months of the most U.S. presidents, including Carter and Biden. Name just one of these months in which six presidents each were born.  

2. Pop Culture – Music. Released in 1985, Brothers in Arms was the first album to sell more than a million copies on compact disk. Name the band, now in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.  

3. Sports. The man named the best Portuguese player of all time by the Portuguese Football Federation is the first soccer player, AKA footballer, to have earned a billion dollars over the course of his career. Who is this man who was named the world’s most charitable sportsperson in 2015?  

P.P.S. One more gem from Simone de Beauvoir: “One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.”

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I wonder if all private and public social bonds between strangers and friends begin with the idea of hospitality.

Our first great poet, Homer, communicates the importance of hospitality in the opening stanzas of The Odyssey when the son of Odysseus, Telemachus, receives a lone stranger to his father’s house. “Welcome,” said he, “to our house, and when you have partaken of food you shall tell us what you have come for.” Telemachus doesn’t even ask the visitor’s name before making sure he is fed and comforted.

The ancients called this xenia hospitium, or “guest-friendship.” The hospitality of Telemachus led the stranger – actually the goddess Athena in disguise – to help his father return from his adventures. Such private hospitality bonds laid the foundation for local alliances and even major treaties in ancient Greece and Rome. As the Aeschylus asks in his play The Libation Bearers: “What is there more kindly than the feeling between host and guest?”

Someone close to me recently visited someone’s home and was surprised to be treated inhospitably, even accusingly, by her host. I hear the story through my friend’s tears, and the incivility still stings me.

The cruelty my friend experienced should remind us all of our obligations to one another. For example, this experience has led me to consider my own duty, as the “host” of college classrooms, a radio show, a poetry series, and, of course, a pub quiz, to treat all attendees and participants as honored guests. 

I think of the AAA repair technicians who have visited my driveway to jumpstart my car and of the drivers delivering us packages or meals during the pandemic. Each of these essential workers is an angel in disguise. I think also of international students, honored travelers from afar, who spend part of their education at UC Davis; each of them enriches me with the time, attention, and stories that they bring to my classroom. Each such visitor should be welcomed with friendly questions and compassion.

All of us can recall excellent hosts. I think of the hospitality that my wife Kate shows to parents who have just discovered that their newborn has a rare genetic syndrome. Representing the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation, Kate welcomes them to an online community, an extended family of parents who recognizes their struggles. Strengthened by significant challenges, this community of kind-hearted people appreciates the dignity and humanity of their new far-flung friends, even if just previously they were strangers.

The love Kate shares with struggling parents, whether they be members of the new parent group that she runs here in Davis, or parents coping with their baby’s unwelcome diagnosis, makes me proud to be her husband. I wish that we all might treat our guests with such kindness. 

In the end, our riches and our accomplishments matter less than the compassion we share with those who visit our city or enter our homes. As Maya Angelou said of hosts and guests alike, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will include questions about transport, speaker systems, mathematicians, medical centers (the words “hospital” and “hospitality” come from the same root), calendars, big numbers, one-word titles, Russia, nosy summer hammocks, soul, confused passengers (all of us?), goats, lackeys, strange bedfellows when doing right, the needs of a fire, American cities, bank notes, Arizona, Irish influences, Portuguese exports, supposed brothers, double times, birthdays (Happy Birthday to esteemed subscriber Ted!), warm states, marines, current events, and Shakespeare.

I extend special thanks to all the teams who pay extra on Patreon to support the Pub Quiz. I call out especially The Original Vincibles, Quizimodo, The Outside Agitators, and Bono’s Pro Bono Obo Bonobos. Compassionate people may be reincarnated as the especially good-natured bonobos. Also, one team will soon receive a copy of How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America by Clint Smith, the author of the best-selling non-fiction book in America.

Emily Hughes will be visiting the John Natsoulas Gallery from Brooklyn this coming Thursday at 7 and will be reading new poems for Poetry Night. You should join us!

Ever thankfully yours,

Dr. Andy

P.S. Here are three questions about China from a 2010 Pub Quiz: 

1. Here in the US, we have the dollar. What is the primary base unit of modern Chinese currencies?  

2. Which of the following is the name of the second largest river in China (by volume)? The Diamond River, The Emerald River, The Jade River, The Pearl River.  

3. Compassion, moderation, and humility are the three “jewels” of what religious practice or philosophical tradition?  

P.P.S. “You cannot do kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” Ralph Waldo Emerson