Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

The White House today recommended that we limit our meetings to groups of ten or fewer. We average about fifteen times that at the Pub Quiz, so we will be suspending the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz until further notice.

Devoted Pub Quiz attendees have been asking for virtual means of participating in the (or a) quiz for us to have fun with until we get together again in person. I LOVE this idea, but don’t quite have the bandwidth for that this week. Why? Because I oversee the instructional designers charged with supporting faculty who were teaching online during week ten of the quarter, are giving exams this week, and who will be teaching remotely in the spring as the coronavirus era continues.

The result? An impressive (and brand new) website found at https://keepteaching.ucdavis.edu. Working with the amazing folks at the UC Davis Center for Educational Effectiveness, we at Academic Technology Services (where I am also the Academic Associate Director) tried our best to share our knowledge about teaching in a time of crisis. I’d be curious to know what you think of the product, even though it is continuing to grow and evolve to meet faculty changing needs.

So, you’d think holding a Pub Quiz online would be easy for me. But while Dr. Andy who works at UC Davis is a modest team player who forefronts his students in all his in-person learning opportunities, Your Quizmaster is a what William Butler Yeats would call “a vainglorious lout” who creates all his content days beforehand, and demands absolute compliance with his rules and processes.

I’m fond of the first guy, but people want more of the second. As a result, I had already begun work on a Patreon page for the Pub Quiz, and at one point had thought of launching a Pub Quiz podcast or even Pub Quiz YouTube channel. Who knows if those will come about anytime soon. Instead, I will merely promise you something by next Monday (March 23^rd) for you to look forward to.

Meanwhile, Happy St. Patrick’s Day tomorrow. Keep the Irish people and the people of all nations in your heart. As for me, tonight I will look forward to spending a quiet Monday night at home for the first time in more than a dozen years. It’s no wonder that the economy is reeling if we can’t even meet for a proper Pub Quiz.

I wish you and your families health and calm.

Sheltering in place,

Your Quizmaster

P.S. “We think that the point is to pass the test or overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It’s just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.” ― Pema Chödrön

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Just over 40 years ago, my mom took my brother and me to Colonial Williamsburg, the historical district in the (William and Mary) college town that was once capital of the state of Virginia. Sensible people would have checked the weather forecast first (by listening to the radio?) before making the two and a half hour long drive from Washington DC along 1-95, because as we increasingly discovered, the weather during our curious odyssey was awful.

We drove over inundating rivers, and at one point saw in the distance that the Atlantic Ocean was roiling. As Marvin Gaye would say a few years later, “the waves were rising and rising.” The torrents of rain that descended upon southeastern Virginia on that day would have dissuaded most of us from traveling, but the colonialists showed up to work in their period costumes, despite the downpour. Unlike the employees of that place (hearty blacksmiths, silversmiths, coopers, etc.), and unlike my mom and brother and me, all the tourists wisely decided to stay away from Colonial Williamsburg on that day. We had the place to ourselves.

Seeing the sheets of rain that would be a welcome blessing in northern California this month, and looking up and down the muddy streets that were being negotiated by horse-drawn carriages and wagons, I was reminded of that scene from a science fiction film that had been released only a few years before, Logan’s Run, in which the protagonists visit an abandoned post-nuclear Washington DC looking for answers to questions about the surface world that they were seeing for the first time. I found it strange to see a place I knew so well emptied of people.

So, what does one do with an important place that has been deserted? Often we delight in the perspective offered by such an opportunity. The UC Davis campus never seems more magical than on Christmas night when I finish my Wednesday evening radio show and then ascend the stairs from Lower Freeborn Hall onto North Quad Avenue, a street that is usually bustling with fast-moving bicyclists and texting pedestrians. On one holiday night, I instead saw nothing but the Tule fog and my own breath fogging up my glasses. I smiled to myself and then broke into song when I realized that I had the whole campus to myself.

My mom taught Oliver and me to embrace such fortuitous circumstances. It definitely wasn’t a disaster that we were getting soaked in Williamsburg, she told us. Instead, we made a game of counting women’s bonnets, jumping the enormous puddles, and walking in the soggy steps of the locally-shod horses in front of the reconstructed Raleigh Tavern on Duke of Gloucester Street. Williamsburg seemed to be free of constables on that day, so we acted as strangely as we pleased.

As the place was ours, we could interrupt the solitary work of any local craftsman. For example, after standing around in silence in one drafty workshop, I asked the cordwainer (leather-worker) if I could have a piece of scrap-leather from the basket at his feet. With the word “nae,” he denied my request, saying that those bits of leather would be valuable for the nearby thonger who could transform them into leather straps for saddles and laces for Lieutenant Governor Robert Dinwiddie’s riding boots.

I wanted to say, “Dinwiddle? Hey bub, drop the act. Your audience is two antsy boys and their mom who just drove to your insufficiently-refurbished and leaky 18^th century shack in a Checker Marathon. We don’t want a history lesson right now. Just give us some leather-worker swag, man.” But I didn’t say any of that. Back out in the rain, we just talked about the strange words used by the proud re-enactor, and then went to visit the blacksmithery, where at least it was warm.

Sitting in an empty Davis café on Sunday evening as I write these words, I am grateful all over again that my mom was brave or silly enough to take us out into the rain. What would you do if you were to have a place to yourself? Would you have feelings of delight, concern, or loneliness. Soon, in our era of social distancing, you may have a chance to find out.

Tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, and on the following: breakfast toasts, plusses and minuses, Bohemia, road trips, expired records, Sean Connery, promises, physics, the body parts of mammals, waltzes, resilient obstacles, the freshest of tomatoes, movies in which Tom Cruise runs, sorry states, equatorial differences, commemorations, fortuitous bathtubs, locations of coffee in South Davis, waterfalls, Italian tractors, Orson Welles, football clubs, people born in Canada, unfair trials, powerful claws, pouches, beautiful valleys, St Petersburg, spurned invitations, heartbreaking stories, science fiction, people named Rick, micro-peddlers, mathematics, and Shakespeare.

Take care of yourselves. As Thomas Carlyle said, “He who has health has hope; and he who has hope has everything.”

Perhaps I will see you this evening.

Best,

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

P.S. Here are three questions from a previous quiz:

1. Current Events – Names in the News.  General Electric’s most famous ever CEO died yesterday at the age of 84. Famous for having received the largest severance payment in history, what is his name?     
2. Sports.  Last name Williamson, what is the name of the Pelicans rookie who scored 35 points against the L.A. Lakers yesterday?  
3. Shakespeare.   How many Shakespeare plays have the name “Richard” in their titles?

P.P.S. I am coming up with some new ways for you to support the Pub Quiz. Stay tuned!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This morning while biking to campus I listened to part of the Brené Brown audiobook titled The Power of Vulnerability: Teachings of Authenticity, Connection, and Courage. In it, Dr. Brown presents a helpful definition of belongingness:

“Belonging is the innate human desire to be part of something larger than us. Because this yearning is so primal, we often try to acquire it by fitting in and by seeking approval, which are not only hollow substitutes for belonging, but often barriers to it. Because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.”

One thing I loved about my dad, who died on this day in 2004, and my late best friend Tito, whose birthday is today, is that they both made me feel included and appreciated despite my being such a quirky and imperfect young person. Could it be true that I spent more time in the 1970s conversing with Tito than I did with my dad? Perhaps. But the love they both shared with me helped to strengthen and deepen the person that I became.

Belongingness and love, Brown says, compel us to find, invest in, and spend time with lovable people who accept us, despite our flaws. These feelings speed my bike home faster on weekday afternoons, and perhaps play a factor in your joining us for Pub Quiz on Monday evenings. I feel lucky to play a part in bringing you together with your pub quiz friends.

My wife Kate works with parents who are trying figure out how best to connect with and care for their own children, whether those children are newborns who join her new parents group at the teaching kitchen of the Davis Coop on Wednesday mornings, or the parents of children with significant challenges and disabilities. Kate’s beautiful blog entry (complete with some home video) about Rare Disease Day (February 29^th, 2020) has already been shared more than 30 times on Facebook and Twitter, and has been viewed more than 2,000 times. Thanks to the Pub Quiz regulars (and wonderful people) who have recently made a donation to the Smith-Lemli-Opitz Foundation to support medical research.

If you would like to follow their lead, and make belongingness more possible to people without the advantages that you and I have, I hope you will also consider sending a donation. Happy March 2^nd to you. I hope you can join us tonight for the Pub Quiz.

Here are some hints: Tonight expect questions on towns and cities, monarchs, Davis businesses, tech giants, The Economist, cute little pelicans, famous books that you’ve probably read, politics, French words, New York City, severance payments, happy creatures, sediment, trickery, gasses, pitchers, nearby clocks, small businesses, chestnuts, states that start with W, literary laureates, superhero films, souls, the Central Pacific, Apollo, big cities, Catholic emus, Sacramento on TV, and Shakespeare.

Poetry Night Thursday will feature Izzy Lala and Lauren Frausto!

Yours,

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

P.S. See you tonight!

P.P.S. Here are some sample questions from this week in 2012:

1. Mottos and Slogans. “Don’t be evil” is the informal corporate motto (or slogan) of what company?  
2. Internet Culture. What video arcade game, released in 1981, had third-party international knock-offs / clones with the following titles? Mill Pac, Magic Maggot, Jackler, Slither, and War of the Bugs or Monsterous Manouvers in a Mushroom Maze?  
3.  Fashion. The fashion designer who is the creative director of Liz Claiborne was the subject of the 1995 documentary film Unzipped. Name him.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Happy Black History Month! Originally, the national commemoration of Black History was limited to a mere week, but eventually, a month was considered more appropriate, even though, as Spike Lee has pointed out, February is our shortest month.

It’s hard for me, as a white guy, to know how best to talk about African-American history and culture, except carefully and appreciatively. As most of you know, I was born and raised in Washington DC, a city that was more than 50% African American when I lived there. As a result, I was exposed to a lot of Black culture, much of it via the radio. I loved funky and soul music from the 1970s, so in grade school and high school I had posters of The Commodores and Earth, Wind, and Fire up on my bedroom wall, and Stevie Wonder on my cassette deck.

While my dad was a theatre director and my mom was a city librarian, the Waldorf school I attended was populated mostly by suburban kids who didn’t get to spend time with African-American adults unless they came to a playdate at our house. I remember my friend Todd once pointing out to me that “your family sure knows a lot of Black people!” I didn’t know what to make of that odd remark, beyond acknowledging that he was right.

Yesterday I watched three minutes of raw video of President Obama taking a 2016 walk along the Mall, greeting tourists and locals who were gob-smacked to encounter such a charismatic and congenial U.S. President out for an unexpected stroll. I bet all the people who ran up to shake President Obama’s hand didn’t vote for him, but all of them knew that he felt he was doing his best for all citizens. In addition to being one of my heroes, President Obama seems to appear in many of the political ads of Democratic candidates for U.S. President.

For additional perspectives on Black History and steps we can all take to confront racism in our attitudes and in our country, I recommend two books that I read last year by Ibram X. Kendi: The National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America, and the more recent How to Be an Antiracist. Both books are worth your time!

In addition to topics raised above, tonight at the Pub Quiz expect questions on the following: The World Bank, dialects, adaptations, finish lines, groups of voters, questions of value, rotten tomatoes, head injuries, notable feminists, common names, armies and navies, world capitals, superheroes, hilarious comedians, graduate student concerns, visitors to the western hemisphere, a pharaoh with cats and spoons, monkeys, really fast computers, indirect communication, the example of stop signs, little colonies, dangerous side hustles, planets, hard ages, the example of California, security rules, and Shakespeare.

I started this newsletter at 9:30 this morning, and then, twenty interruptions later, I am sending it out at 2:30. You should nevertheless still plan to join us at tonight’s Pub Quiz at 7. See you then!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Here are three questions from a quiz from February 17, 2014:

1. Pens and Sponges. A pen is like a sponge because both are involved in dispensing what L word?   
2. Greek Gods. Cupid is the son of what Greek goddess? 
3. Pop Culture – Music. When I asked my 16-year-old daughter if she knew the rapper who had a big hit with the song “Happy” from the Despicable Me 2 Soundtrack, she responded “Oh, do you mean the guy with the hat?” What is the name of the rapper?   

 P.S. “No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.” Henry Brooks Adams, The Education of Henry Adams, 1907

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This morning I woke to a dream that I found to be so hilarious and engaging that I said to myself, “There’s a book in that.” Of course, I can’t exactly remember it now, but there was something about a six-year-old girl unexpectedly taking the mic at a Mike Bloomberg rally to give her opinions on what should be changed about America.

“There’s a Book in That” might work as the motto of the 2020 San Francisco Writers Conference, where I have spent most of this long weekend (instead, the official motto is “A Celebration of Craft, Commerce, and Community”). Speaking of community, a little bit like summer camp, this conference has provided me a yearly opportunity to reunite with friends that I typically see in only one place (not counting Facebook), and an opportunity with them to “play” with the ideas of inspiration, writing systems and habits, and revision. In addition to these craft concerns, we also spend a lot of time talking about audiences, markets, marketing, and book cover designs.

On the one hand, lessons that I have learned from this conference have made me much more thoughtful, ambitious, and productive. I get to learn from great speakers such as Rusty Shelton, the founder of Zilker Media, and Walter Mosley, creator of the Easy Rawlins mysteries, such as Devil in a Blue Dress. And I learn strategies to improve my writing and my understanding of independent publishing in a rapidly-changing industry.

On the other hand, insofar as I have attended this conference every year for the last 15, I see how many of my friends and colleagues have lapped me in terms of their own productivity, processes of discovery, and book titles. Of course, many of these folks are full-time writers, while I have many irons in many fires. When strangers asked me what book I was working on, I have to decide which of the four to mention first (or solely). Like my writing projects, my days are chopped up into multiples. I should remember what Alexander Graham Bell’s advice: “Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.”

Even though you may be distracted by the remnants of San Francisco pillow fights at dawn, or by a jubilant City French bulldogs named “Marcello,” I hope 2020 is full of clear vision and bright focus for you. Meanwhile, as today is a holiday, I’m going to write you some hints and then dine on a holiday breakfast with my family.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following topics: Missouri, living languages, one-way radios, early Apple additions, Bay Area cities, notable marriages, art and art history, the 2010 Census, musical anniversaries, regrettable injuries, an offer of latitude, American cities, that which follows thievery, confederations, rules that are unknown to me, Pulitzer bookends, Silicon Valley, WS Merwin, Modern Library rankings, received signals, human anatomy, Abraham Lincoln, writers conference discoveries, comparisons to Delaware, neighborhoods in New York City, blue streaks, unread books, mail service, faddish demises,  and Shakespeare.

Thursday is Poetry Night in Davis. John Brantingham is our featured poet, and we would love to see you there. Check out the Facebook event! He is also running a workshop at the Davis Arts Center all morning and part of the afternoon on February 22^nd – what an opportunity!

Happy Presidents Day to you. See you tonight at 7!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

Send Pub Quiz questions and recommended question topics to Dr. Andy at yourquizmaster@gmail.com

P.S. Here are three questions from last week.

1. Science.  True or False: Sharks can get cancer.  
2. Books and Authors.   In her book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, the American Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön writes that “We can use our personal suffering as the path to BLANK for all beings.” Fill in the blank with a three-syllable word.  
3. Current Events – Names in the News. What Democrats were the two top vote-getters in Iowa last week?  

P.P.S. “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” Calvin Coolidge

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I wrote the entire Pub Quiz between 8 and 9:30 this morning. Sure, people send me question ideas, and sometimes complete questions, and I collect ideas in a Google Doc over the course of a week, but most of what you enjoy this evening came from my head this morning. Let’s see if tonight’s experience suffers because of my attempt at quick-witted trivia velocity.

You see, I was up late last night watching the Academy Awards. I come from a film household (I read weekly Variety as a child), so we treat the Oscars the way that some American families treat the Super Bowl. We try to watch most of the nominated movies. Kate takes Truman to all the age-appropriate films, and I catch up where I can. For example, I finished Joker and The Irishman just last week, both streaming.

If you are waiting for my take, Parasite was my favorite film of 2019. 1917 was more impressive in many ways, but I don’t think it provokes as much thought as the Bong Joon-ho masterpiece that we were treated to last year. The World War I film made me wonder why biplanes were not used to drop messages, thus obviating much of the action of the story, but as with the eagles in Lord of the Rings, we find that the most logical strategy (having the lead eagle just fly the ring to where it needs to go) is not the one that would reward the filmgoers.

We were reminded of a Martin Scorsese quotation last night, “the most personal is the most creative,” and this is probably an important reason why Parasite took the top prize. That South Korean film introduces us to characters that we grow to care about, if perhaps not identify with, making personal Bong Joon-ho’s concerns about economic inequality, an important theme for both the films and the presidential race of 2000. I hope my family cheers as loudly on election night as we did as the end of Oscar night!

In addition to topics raised above, tonight expect questions about South America, fuel that is not gasoline, medieval leapers, bulldogs, things that are light and unstable, automobiles, the color “cerulean,” Yolo bypasses, crops, places to find gentlemen, heart advice for difficult times, sharks, kidnappings, differences between Alaskans and Californians, turnout, moving memoirs, winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, metals, value in the 1990s, unexpected additions, meanings of pool, birth decades, countries that border each other, runners-up to the energy sector, forests, beauty and lunacy underwater, new shows, onetime resort towns, Cole Porter, and Shakespeare.

I saw a few of you at Poetry Night on Thursday! Thanks for joining us. Our next event with John Brantingham is February 20th.

I hope you can join us this evening. Come early to secure a table inside so you can be safe from today’s blustery winds!

Your Quizmaster

P.S. Here are three questions from last week, this time with answers!

1. Newspaper Headlines. What State did Donald Trump use Twitter to congratulate after yesterday’s Super Bowl? Kansas

2. Four for Four. Which of the following countries, if any, border Ukraine? The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Uzbekistan. (NYYN)

3. Know Your U.S. Senators. Mark Warner is the richest U.S. senator, and the second and third-richest senators comes from Warner’s political party. Is Warner a Democrat or a Republican? Mark Warner, Diane Feinstein, and Richard Blumenthal are all Democrats

P. P.S. “Compassion is the basis of morality.” Arthur Schopenhauer

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Does anyone else miss Oliver Sacks? He seemed to me a uniquely likable fellow who sought to relieve suffering and the causes of suffering for everyone with whom he engaged. In his 2015 book Gratitude, published just after he died, he wrote this about his gratitude for having lived so long, and so richly:

At nearly 80, with a scattering of medical and surgical problems, none disabling, I feel glad to be alive — “I’m glad I’m not dead!” sometimes bursts out of me when the weather is perfect… I am grateful that I have experienced many things — some wonderful, some horrible — and that I have been able to write a dozen books, to receive innumerable letters from friends, colleagues and readers, and to enjoy what Nathaniel Hawthorne called “an intercourse with the world.”

Sacks also expressed some regrets:

I am sorry I have wasted (and still waste) so much time; I am sorry to be as agonizingly shy at 80 as I was at 20; I am sorry that I speak no languages but my mother tongue and that I have not traveled or experienced other cultures as widely as I should have done.

Last week my son Jukie’s favorite bus driver, named John, retired after serving and supporting Jukie for about a decade. John greeted us school mornings and afternoons for the last many years with patience, humor, and genuine warmth. As part of his job, John has had to establish and then unwillingly break heartfelt bonds with children who were medically fragile, who had moved to new school districts, or who had aged out of the system. Strong, determined, and buffeted by an indefatigable work ethic, John probably didn’t think often about the day that he himself would be breaking the bond with all the special children whom he had grown to love.

Like Oliver Sacks, perhaps like any of us, I feel like I could write my own book titled Gratitude. A couple months before he died, I asked my dad about the people for whom he was most grateful. In addition to his wife and his ex-wife (also known as my mom), he mentioned close friends from different stages in his life. It’s hard to feel pity for one’s self, or to maintain anger or resentment, when one is also feeling gratitude.

Via past newsletters, I’ve introduced you to people for whom I feel the most gratitude, including Kate, my children, my parents, and my brother Oliver. I would also include my closest friends (Hello Bob and Susi! Hello Evan!), my students who have kept in touch with me (Hello Melissa Skorka! We miss you! Hello Storm!), and especially the mentors who have guided me, including Jack Petrash, Will Layman, Roger Shattuck, Christopher Ricks, Harry Thomas, Sandra Gilbert, and Alan Williamson. These names won’t mean anything to most of you, but it’s gratifying for me to see them listed here.

Speaking of gratification, science indicates that expressing gratitude improves our mental health, even if we don’t share those expressions with their intended recipients, and that the positive effects of those expressions change our brains for the better with effects that last longer than you would expect. So, I will express here again my appreciation for John the bus driver and for all the people who have encouraged, helped, or buffeted me or my family, in large ways and small. For some of you, I will somehow return the kindness. For the rest, I will just do my best to pay it forward. One thinks of what John F. Kennedy said: “As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.” So, in closing, happy retirement, John!

Tonight’s Pub Quiz may touch upon topics raised above. Expect also questions on medical subspecialties, hurricanes, opaqueness, frictional verbs, islands, international cuisine, oldsters, economic threats and cushions, carriers of forces, South Central, train adventures, angry sisters, three-year margins of error, entire continents, fall announcements, named colors, fated rockers, American painters, soccer terms, distinguishing Republicans from Democrats, countries on wordless maps, the success of forges, international flights, and Shakespeare.

It was almost warm enough to sit outside last Monday. Today it’ll be rather blustery, so arrive early enough to claim a table tonight! And while you are making plans, plan to join us Thursday at 8 at the Natsoulas Gallery for a joint reading by Susan Browne (Oakland) and Julia Levine (Davis).

Best,

Your Quizmaster
yourquizmaster@gmail.com

P.S. Here are three questions from our previous quiz:

1. Newspaper Headlines. Writing for Politico, Patrick McGinnis said yesterday that when it comes the Democratic caucuses, indecisive Iowans are suffering from FOBO: Fear of a better WHAT?

2. Four for Four. Which of the following is currently true of the late Kobe Bryant? He was the oldest player to score 60+ points in a single game, he was the youngest player ever to appear in an NBA game, he held the record for the most offensive rebounds in an All-Star Game, he won an Oscar.

3. Prime Numbers. The lowest prime centered pentagonal number (whatever that means) is also the number of hockey teams in the NHL and the number of states in Mexico. What is this number? Hint: Mexico has fewer states than we do in the U.S.

P.P.S. “At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” Albert Schweitzer

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Like so much of America, I am thinking of the people who died in that Los Angeles helicopter crash yesterday morning:

Kobe Bryant, 41.
His 13-year-old daughter, Gianna “Gigi” Bryant.
Gianna’s basketball teammate Alyssa Altobelli.
Alyssa’s father, John Altobelli, 56, the baseball coach at Orange Coast College.
Alyssa’s mother, Keri Altobelli.
Christina Mauser, a basketball coach at the nearby Harbor Day School, where Gigi Bryant attended.
Payton Chester, a middle-school student.
Sarah Chester, Payton’s mother.
Ara Zobayan, the helicopter pilot.

I woke up this morning to texts from my college senior, Geneva. She has just seen a film, Rabbit-Proof Fence, that she recommended we show to her 14-year-old brother, Truman. In turn, I sent her a photograph taken from her brother Jukie’s room of the sun coming up over the trees of our cul-de-sac. She responded that the skies over Wisconsin this morning are all white, as if mirroring the snow on the ground.

Such everyday happenstances take on a greater resonance when one considers the families who woke up this morning to the same sudden and grim realization.

Because of Kobe Bryant’s prowess and prolific scoring on the basketball court, and his two-decade commitment to the Los Angeles Lakers, an entire generation of sports fans are feeling his loss profoundly. Not a Kobe fan because of some of his activities off the court, my brother Oliver still appreciated Bryant’s support for women’s basketball. Yesterday he sent me a November picture (see above) that he snapped of Kobe and his daughter Gianna talking with players and coaches after a game. One can see the love and enthusiasm in Kobe’s demeanor when talking basketball with his daughter, something noted by other sports stars who conversed with Kobe post-retirement.

Like the Bryant, Chester, and Altobelli children, my son had a playdate yesterday, only rather than being shuttled to a basketball game, he and a friend joined their moms at a showing of Gone with the Wind on the big screen. Unlike the junior-high students in Los Angeles, these two boys returned home to Davis without incident, full of images and stories from one of Hollywood’s greatest films, one that also highlights the tragic loss of a child.

Thinking last night about all the people I love, those in the house, those in faraway homes, and those who are even farther away than that, I hugged my teenage son a little tighter than usual before tucking him in for an evening of safe and restful sleep.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will cover some of the topics raised above, as well as the following: royal placements, bicycling, a year for frets, relabeled tribes, hockey, applications, place names, snakes, recent polls, Russian literature, broken ties, the letter R, church duties, ice barriers, Oscar-winners, comparisons to stones, role playing games, the distance between major cities, punching down, musical counterpoint, languages, alliterative names, suckers, baseball stars, racist neighbors, Mexico, caucuses, hurricanes, flowers, and Shakespeare. There will be no questions this week about John Bolton.

This afternoon I will be reading a poem on the same stage as Chancellor May and a few other notables. Relive the video of that experience here. This event might have to be the topic of next week’s newsletter. Meanwhile, I look forward to seeing you this evening.

Best,

Your Quizmaster
yourquizmaster@gmail.com
https://www.yourquizmaster.com

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

1. TV Stars. What TV star and comedian appeared in the films Diner, Beverly Hills Cop, and Aliens?

2. Pop Culture – Television. Henry Cavill plays Geralt of Rivia in what Netflix series?

3. Another Music Question. I will give you the first (stage) name of a rapper, and you tell me his last (stage) name: Busta.

P.P.S. “Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you had to earn it.” Ann Brashares

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Watching Gene Kelly makes me want to learn to dance like him, while watching Oscar Levant makes me want to learn to play the piano while leading an orchestra. Watching Leslie Caron makes me want to pick up a book or take a yoga class.

I suppose that I am intended to feel this way. An Oscar-winning film like An American in Paris (which my family and I saw yesterday on the big screen) will typically introduce filmgoers to characters with which they can identify, or wish to emulate, even if outside of their fantasy worlds those filmgoers can’t carry a tune or walk across a ballroom without tripping.

I again confirmed yesterday what my mom once remarked to me: Gene Kelly is athletic and adorable. And as I remember my dad remarking to me, the music of George and Ira Gershwin sustains the film. It seems silly that I would share so many aesthetic heroes with my parents, but I continue to be influenced by a childhood home that was filled with a love of film and of the music of film and stage musicals. For example, we had an eight-track tape that had the soundtrack of Singin’ In the Rain on one “side,” and the Judy Garland / Fred Astaire film Easter Parade on the other “side.”

The beauty (or, for some people, horror) of the eight-track player is that any album started on this device would play continuously until it was ejected. Whether with dolls, blocks, or even pipe cleaners, I remember playing and playing to that music for hours, the eight-track continuing all the way until bedtime.

Those were simpler times. Today, we have so many choices in the products that we consume, whether they be the shampoos on Safeway shelves or the myriad video offerings from Netflix and other curators of online content. In his 2008 book A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink tells us that the world of abundance and prosperity provided by left-brain thinkers has led to thought-workers increasingly turning to something beyond consumer goods. Our world now places “a premium on less rational, more [right-brain-]Directed sensibilities — beauty, spirituality, emotion.”

Another lover of movies and music, Martin Luther King, Jr. also recognized a hierarchy of values that privileged the human over the material. He once said, “We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

While we reflect on Leslie Caron or Martin Luther King, Jr., let us hope to live in a world where not all our heroes have come of age in the 20th century or before.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on the wings of energy, rebuffed slaveholders, expensive conveniences, rubber, dogmatic haloes, things that are only metaphorically broken, determined practice, cross streets, Beverly Hills, young stocks and bonds, mammalian contexts, people named after farmers, details, big cities, public libraries, old and compassionate, economic inequality, hearts, railroads in the west, snakes, fancy dancers, DVD sales trends overseas, Bible stories, Irish culture, the lifetime of Willow Smith, the attributes of greatness, oddsmakers, unusual cars, a clock’s passage of time, vitamins, human pairings, stories in the Post and the Times, chocolate, teeth, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us at the Pub Quiz tonight. Happy Martin Luther King Day!

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

1. Books and Authors. What is the best-selling novel ever published by the author Charles Dickens?

2. Irish Culture. Within five degrees Fahrenheit, what is the record high temperature for the island of Ireland?

3. Mascots. Steely McBeam is the mascot for whom?

P.P.S. “As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation — either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.” Martin Luther King Jr.