Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

In a classic first-season episode of The Twilight Zone, Burgess Meredith plays Henry Bemis, an avid reader who finally finds enough time to catch up on his reading. The ending of the 1959 episode, titled “Time Enough at Last,” depends upon a happenstance that easily-slighted Donald Trump would call “unfair.”

Trump is not known for his love of reading. Mark Twain is alleged to have said, “The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. While anti-intellectualism is regrettable, if only for the resulting lack of imagination, curiosity, and empathy, I suppose such philistinism should not be surprising, given the variety of distractions presented to us by the media and the world’s agents of consumerism. At times, our very world seems to isolate us from the written word. In the aforementioned Twilight Zone episode, this attitude is embodied by the wife of Henry Bemis, who unaccountably refused to let him read, even going so far as to crossing out all the lines in a favorite book of contemporary poetry.

While Bemis originally faced a paucity of reading opportunities, today we face is the abundance of choices. Over a million books are published every year in this country, or about one book for every 300 people. That’s a lot to keep up with, and a lot to choose from. I’ve read more than 20 books since the summer started, but I’ve only just dipped my toe into the water. Despite my railing against consumerism, I too feel the itch to purchase the new book, rather than to turn to one of the dozens of titles waiting weightlessly in my Kindle or Audible library. Once they were the new books, but then they got passed over for another title.

I sense that same surfeit of choices when I am deciding what music to listen to. Once I depended only on the radio for my music, and continue to be grateful for stations like KDVS that take the curation responsibility seriously. Then I delved into Pandora, letting algorithms choose my songs according to what I had previously enjoyed. Now we are Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers, and the choices are again too numerous: almost anything I can imagine is found in that jukebox. All the cool kids once listened to Lou Reed and The Cure; while I did not buy their albums when I was collecting vinyl or cassettes, I can access almost anything of theirs now, and am catching up. As I write this, I am enjoying Far From Over by the Vijay Iyer Sextet, voted the best jazz album of 2017. Because, why not?

On this Labor Day, I am grateful for the labor of all these authors and musicians, and for the innumerable choices available to me, more than were found in the decimated public library of Henry Bemis. With so many options available to all of us, I am also grateful every time I see you enter our Irish Pub on a Monday night, for it means that you’ve chosen your friends and my barked puzzles over even the most enticing book, music stream, or TV show. Emerson said that “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” At Pub Quiz, where every point must be earned, your friends will also forgive you for being too smart.

If we choose to read books, each of us carries our own library. I hope that today you can pick up a good book and pick up a friend on your way to the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on dramas that take place in closets, college football, the world wide web, plane travel, impatience, Shrek, baseball, agencies full of agents, shadows and lights, necessities for a clean house, space exploration, telephone redundancy, the example of snow, status indicators, exciting weather phenomena, poetic murals, nervousness, Canadian origins, turnovers, visiting pagans, nuclear families, hard domes, acronyms, Ogre songs, equiny music, Olivias, Buddha jokes, three six-letter words with the same meaning, secretaries, pretty good averages, categories, Barack Obama, social media, middle grounds, aforementioned places, and Shakespeare.

Happy 26^th wedding anniversary to my wife Kate! Once Labor Day belonged only to us.

See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com  

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. NASA. The NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson turned 100 years old recently. What movie made her famous?      
2. Books and Authors. Nominee of 17 Tonys, what playwright of Barefoot in the Park became the only living playwright to have a New York theatre named in his honor (in 1983)?  
3. Sports.  The teams with the current best and worst record in baseball are both found in the American League East, Central, or West?  

P.S. “The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.” Pablo Neruda

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

My wife’s car seems fancy to me, if only because of the satellite radio and the push-button seat-warmers. Perhaps these come standard in modern cars, such as our bright red Toyota Prius, with its Beloit College sticker and its peace sign on the gas cap. Although a hybrid, Kate’s car is zippy and stylish. During the summer, when we have more people and gear to transport, we spend more time in the Honda Odyssey, a car born the same year as our 17-year-old son, Jukie. I remember that its CD player seemed a big deal at the time – now the car is almost the only place we listen to CDs – and it still seems amazingly spacious. Yesterday my wife Kate moved our daughter Geneva into a dorm single that’s only about twice the size of our minivan.

With all these automotive options, and Kate and Geneva gone for the long weekend, one would think that I would have turned up the radio and spent the last few days driving around town with the boys, making wonderous discoveries in Davis and Sacramento. Instead, we’ve left the cars in the driveway and ventured into the world on our bicycles. Although Truman starts his junior-high orientation at a school five miles from our Davis home, he’d still like to bike it from time to time, even if we are not yet sure how he is going to transport his alto saxophone. On Saturday, while biking downtown for book-shopping and pizza, Truman and I discussed approaches to bike-commuting, and on Sunday, we did a dry run, and came up with a per-mile speed that’s about twice that of Roger Bannister, the runner’s hero who died earlier this year: It took us 40 minutes to transverse five miles, and that was without the saxophone.

Of course, there were reasons for our inevitable slowdowns. First, I took the time to teach Truman the route, much of it along Putah Creek greenbelts in South Davis. We discussed that the influx of new UC Davis students makes the beginning of the fall quarter an inadvisable time for an unsure cyclist to bike on campus, or even around town. Second, the circumference of Truman’s bike tires is small compared to that of an adult bike, thus slowing him down when compared to my regular pace. And finally, I was hauling Jukie on the cargo bike. My middle child is not a peddler, and the two of us together weigh about 300 pounds. Let’s just say that while hauling the cargo known as Jukie around, I enjoyed both an anaerobic, as well as aerobic, workout.

Nevertheless, we felt exhilarated at the end of our long bike odysseys this past weekend, and this morning I have already biked to and from work in order to attend important meetings. Passing along my bicycling enthusiasm to my son may mean that, in the future, he may choose a hometown according to its bikeability, as I have done. The bike paths of Davis offer us opportunities to reflect, to meditate (the trees fly by too quickly for one to “grasp” any one of them), and, for me as an Audible addict, to hear stories and treatises. As I make my way around town, I never regret the extra time and effort that my bicycle requires of me.

As Arthur Conan Doyle said in Scientific American in 1896, “When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.” Meteorologically, August days are almost never dark in Davis; luckily, a bike ride can also dispel our mind-forged cobwebs that might otherwise cloud an August afternoon.

I hope you can join us for tonight’s pub quiz. In addition to topics hinted at, above, expect questions tonight about Beethoven on war and peace, horses, organisms, Latin America, long roads, squares, tasty beers, seats in churches, before and after a birth, glaciers, fashionable shapes, dynasties, talking slow after drinking fast, container ports, panhandles, the flatness of Davis, what’s in your weekend, the San Francisco Bay, introductions to Hamlet, shoelessness, layers, famous computers, superheroes, dark storytellers, slaves to fashion (guilty!), notable cones, hair-raising Scrabble scores, cheese that you would not serve to your Irish mum, current events, big banks, Crimea, and Shakespeare.

What fun we will have this evening, especially if you are there!

Your Quizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Irish Culture. What was the largest Irish city to suffer bombing runs during World War II?  
2. Countries of the World.  The Hebrides is an archipelago comprising hundreds of islands off the northwest coast of what country?  
3. Celebrity Families. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore reunited to take a picture with their daughter on her birthday last week. How old is Rumer Willis? Is she 15, 20, 25, or 30?
4. Science.  What S-word is missing from this sentence: Unlike frogs, an adult BLANK is able to regenerate limbs and its tail when these are lost.  
5. Books and Authors.   The word “Dharma” appears in the title of Jack Kerouac’s second-most-famous book. What is the full title?  

P.S. Who is to blame for the lack of respect given to John McCain by the White House? Well, John McCain, of course: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/27/politics/james-inhofe-john-mccain-white-house-flag/index.html

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

One day last week as I was walking along Harbor Boulevard after a long day with the family at Disneyland, I saw a frightful character. The man’s sleeveless undershirt revealed oversized biceps and skull tattoos, his buzz cut barely protected his pale scalp from sunburn, and his military-style boots and long camouflage pants seemed out of place when all the tourists around us were wearing shorts on that 95-degree day.

Even more concerning than his outfit or his haircut was the determined – almost angry – look on his face as he crossed West Katella Avenue, and the fast clip at which he jogged towards us on the crosswalk. I gripped my son Jukie’s hand a little more tightly as he ran past us, relieved that we were not his objective.

With great concern, I considered the fate of the homeless person we had just passed, a Latino man with a multicolored sign asking for money for food. I wondered if the tattooed runner had chosen him as his target, and if I and others nearby would have to alert the authorities to a hate crime that would soon be taking place just a block from Disneyland. The “Walk / Don’t Walk” timer in front of us was counting down to zero.

And then, a moment later, even before crossing the street, I heard the combat boots behind me again, as the man sprinted to the sidewalk ahead of us, surprising some people who were standing at the corner, but not one little blonde girl who reached her hand up to the man whom I thought was so angry, and perhaps violent. This is the interchange I heard:

“Daddy, how much did you give him?”

“I gave him enough to help.”

Still in Southern California, today I turn the Quiz over to guest-Quizmaster James. He provided a number of questions, and I provided the rest, some of them reflecting my environs and discoveries in Los Angeles and San Diego. Tonight expect questions on infidelity, symbologies, pouches, the importance of mythology, gems, museum directors, people named Stein, French lawyers, inciting incidents, romances, textiles and clothing, completed missions, avant-garde imagineers, what banks do, really strong tables, the names of little girls, ensemble works, renunciants, groups of four, names in the news, depth psychology, videos, Federal agencies, quintets, monkeys, roles to be played, alternatives to irony, anthrax, onetime nitrates, retirements, radio songs, Australia, people born overseas, third generations, space forces, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us tonight for the Pub Quiz. Knowing that you are continuing to grapple with the conundra I create will bring me comfort as I walk along the beach this evening.

Your Quizmaster, Dr. Andy

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

yourquizmater@gmail.com

P.S. Rilke: “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

What’s a summer for, anyway? Henry James says that “summer afternoon” are “the two most beautiful words in the English language.” If that’s true, we might each look to summer for different reasons.

Some look to the summer for what it doesn’t offer: ongoing responsibilities, the burden of ongoing productivity, all the open loops that we need to close in order to be making progress. Others define summer positively, as a chance to grow, to evolve. Remembering lessons from summer camp, we seek to develop new skills. We might spend time discovering or recommitting to a musical instrument (my son Truman practices his saxophone every morning), or learning a language (preferably in the faraway country where it is spoken), or taking a class in something creative (such as at our own Davis Arts Center).

Others prefer to learn, to grow in less social or structured settings. One can rent audiobooks online from our own Davis branch of the Yolo County Library – they make excellent company for a long nature walk. Just this morning, I signed our family up for Amazon Music Unlimited, meaning that each of our devices, and everything that answers to the name “Alexa” around our house, can play any song we can imagine or remember. We will see if any of us feel overwhelmed by having too many choices. Today I have been listening to Duke Ellington.

Others choose to socialize, to catch up with friends and relations whom we neglect during the past year of work. For example, this coming weekend I look forward to enjoying long conversations over wine with a best friend from college, and her Lithuanian-born husband. They open up their San Diego home to us every time we visit, and give us tours of the best sights of what some call the “City in Motion.” According to two new studies covered in the New York Times, we should all keep in motion this summer, at least by taking walking tours the areas that we drive to. As I say when I hear a new favorite book calling me, I need to earn that time of rest, usually with the kettlebell.

I bet that you have earned a break this summer. I will take mine in the coming week (thanks to James for guest-hosting the Pub Quiz in my absence next Monday), and it will reward me with new books and music, with time spent with old friends and treasured family members, and with stories that will fill my memories and future newsletters. I hope to see you tonight, and two weeks from tonight, so that we can make our own memories.

Until then,

Your Quizmaster
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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Books and Authors. The first woman to win two National Book Awards for fiction has MRS. JAN DEWY as an anagram of her name, not that you should need that. Who is this author of Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing?

2. Film. Who played the mom in the 2003 remake of the Disney film Freaky Friday? Jamie Lee Curtis

3. Countries of the World. The prime number of official languages in South Africa is the same number that appears on the first manned spacecraft to land on the moon. What is that number? (Apollo) 11

P.S. “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.” Natalie Babbitt

P.P.S. Do you mind finding the hints down here? I hope not. This evening expect questions on favorite colors, dating features, doomsdays, garden tools, famous sailors, neutralizations, natterings of compromise, signs, unusual boys, carpool options, stories by Lucas, consistent kicks, leather, whips without chains, trending kings, wakefulness, film debuts, ABC, massive numbers, Star Wars stories, descending waters, keeping the home fires burning, the benefits of chaos, household devices, dishonest words, British words, South American exports to America, ants, baseball teams, piano concertos, belts in America, imported K words, and Shakespeare. See you tonight!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I really admire Rachel Maddow. Along with a few folks on National Public Radio, I find her to be among the brightest, most ethical, and most responsible news anchor working today. I like that she comes from our home state of California, that she was the first openly LGBT Rhodes Scholar and news anchor, and that she monologues for as long as 20 minutes in the beginning of her show. I always learn something from Ms. Maddow (or, should I say, Dr. Maddow, as she earned her PhD in politics from Oxford University, from which some of the world’s best scholars have emerged, or are emerging). Of all the news folks on TV, I have the most respect and affection for Rachel Maddow.

All that said, I have stopped watching her show. In fact, I have stopped watching MSNBC altogether. The network does a better job than most in keeping its viewers informed about current events and politics (PBS takes the top spot for me), but its success also depends to a certain extent on stoked partisan outrage. Such outrage is helpful and maybe even necessary to mobilize people to confront a corrupt and immoral political status quo, with the Fourth Estate a necessary check on the other three estates, but after a while such outrage becomes heavy and disquieting baggage, a source of agitation rather than prompted action. In the end, I prefer to support thinkers and leaders who voice inspiring ideals rather than only indignation.

These days, I find myself reading more books than newspapers, and watching more films than cable news TV shows. I still keep up with the world – for the sake of my participation in dinnertime conversations, and for the sake of current events pub quiz questions – but increasingly I am doing so as a reader, rather than as a viewer, or even as a listener (sorry, NPR). A few minutes spent reviewing the website Political Wire or the trending stories at Muckrack can be fruitfully substituted for hours spent with once-favorite TV shows or news podcasts. Not wanting to separate myself from causes that inspire me, I still plan to support certain candidates for office (Lucas Frerichs comes to mind), and to march to the state capital with friends and family when warranted, but I also know that I’d rather spend quality time with my wife Kate, with my kids, or with a good book (I read three just last week), rather than to take time to pay homage to the outrage machine.

I will still mock villains on Twitter and eagerly anticipate the revelations in Robert Mueller’s eventual report, but I needn’t give up my headspace or my evenings to do so. As Gandhi said, “Action expresses priorities.” I suppose that inaction, or how we spend our earned summer leisure hours, should also express our priorities.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on concerns raised above, and on the following: women who hold their own doors, drafting citizens, back-up plans, sexual misconduct, inventions, the National Book Award, French hunting, nursing, megabands, flown kites (such as those we saw at the windy beach this past weekend), successful musicians, product placements, offices, nearby rivers, sentiments, gathered players, big birthdays, many parts, mothers in law, Chicago art, official languages, prime numbers, visitors in 2018, everyday supplies, swapping with guitars, Mrs. Jan Dewy, Black Liberation and what follows, people named Elizabeth, American governors, fans of Fernando and money, smooth unbreakable dorks, now and later, frequent breaks, lovely cheeses, a flight attendant who can also fly the plane, baseball, rich alphabets, current events, and Shakespeare.

I look forward to seeing you this evening. I’ve heard from at least two past Hall of Fame teams who will be joining us in a competitive mood this evening, so I anticipate some high scores. I hope that yours will be one of them.

Your Quizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz, along with some commentary about the answers:

1. Unusual Words: Fletcher’s Edition. What do fletchers straighten? You might remember this coming up in last week’s newsletter.
2. Fabrics. With a glossy surface and a dull back, what comes in 4-harness, 5-harness, and 8-harness weaves? Because I feared the quiz was too easy, I took out a crucial hint at the last minute last week – the first letter of this word.
3. Pop Culture – Television. What TV comedy follows the adventures of slacker Philip J. Fry, who is accidentally transported to the 31st century? My daughter Geneva knew this one immediately (while I have never watched the show).

P.S. Poetry Night on August 2^nd celebrates the Blue Moon Literary and Art Review, the local journal that features some of our best local writers. Join us Thursday at 8 for the fun.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I’ve been tearing through audio books this summer, spending more than I should at Audible.com. It started with a couple film books as I was preparing for the Film as Narrative class that I am teaching for the Department of English during the first summer session, and now I am reading about Buddhism, working my way through titles such as Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery, by Chögyam Trungpa.

If I take the fast route, and if I hit the lights right, I can bike from my home in south Davis to my office on the west side of campus in the time it takes to listen to three Stevie Wonder songs. Typically and preferably, I take the long path to work, meandering comfortably along Putah Creek, and encountering no vehicles except for occasional other bicycles. This commute rewards me not only because of the fresh air and the opportunity to greet everyone along the green belt, but also because I take the time to listen to a chapter or more of my current book.

My recently restarted meditation process has resulted in one welcome benefit: a growing ability to focus. One way this manifests itself, I’ve discovered, is through my ability to listen to audio books at accelerated rates. Typical conversation is shared at about 150 words per minute, but I can play my audiobooks comfortably at about 150% speed and still follow, at least when I concentrate. For me, this is a practiced skill, one that can be further improved. For instance, I have blind friends in town for whom my sped-up rate of listening would be lugubriously slow – I’m amazed at how quickly and effectively they can process aural information.

Self-impressed with my practice of eating up the pages of books this summer, I still find myself zoning out whenever I bike for a short stretch alongside Interstate 80. I find that on West Chiles Road, just before Hamel Lane, the traffic noise interferes significantly with the speakers of the iPhone in my shirt pocket (I know not to use headphones on a bike). Sometimes I back the book up 30 seconds to see what I missed, while at other times I just resign myself to having missed 30 seconds of information, story, or poetry. At such moments I realize that most of us, including especially myself, are like bike commuters along a highway much of the time, in that we find that outside noise interferes with our own thinking processes. Some of us continue for years this way, welcoming other people’s noise and seeking any sort of distraction rather than merely sitting for a moment with our own thoughts.

As the Buddha said, “Irrigators channel waters; fletchers straighten arrows; carpenters bend wood; the wise master themselves.” Mastering one’s self may seem too ambitious for the summer. I would be happy just to practice better understanding what I am thinking about, and why.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight expect questions about undertakers, elves, German titles, taking cures, active compounds, kidney ailments, sweetness, eastern Europe, seas, consumerist autonomy, smaller than Taurus, what you can only imagine, momentous deaths, carboniferosity?, American cities, Harry Potter, David Bowie remarks, retired numbers, John Brown, harnesses, future slackers, bands that are filled with young men, Cheez Whiz, Scottish tips, divided houses, three initials, soft drinks, drivable city visits, facts that you know but which your teammates do not, bellicosity, limestone, world-changing books, rivers, fall dragons, Korea, future Fries, acts of rebellion, Miami, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us this evening. As Helen Keller says, “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”

Your Quizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Books and Authors.   Who narrates F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby?   

1. Current Events.  What supermarket chain that is moving its headquarters from Woodland to Davis?  

1. Sports: World Cup Finals. Who lost to France?  

P.S. These are the last weeks for you to see the summer 2018 productions of the Davis Shakespeare Festival. Tickets are still available!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Have you ever noticed that we really only have four hills in Davis. One of the hills is manmade, Slide Hill of Slide Hill Park where children slide down the concrete incline on boxes left behind by previous children. I’m surprised bike helmets are not also handed out. Two of the hills are overpasses, passing over Interstate 80, the artery that connects the Atlantic to the Pacific. The fourth hill is found in the cemetery, which is now also an arboretum. Each of these hills deserves a visit.

Sometimes I bike up the Pole Line Road overpass so quickly that the top feels like an opened curtain, tickling my nose. The metaphor manifests itself in an actual tickle. I have to close my eyes while sneezing twice on the way down the steep hill, the bike itching towards the guardrail, the impact of the sternutation nearly throwing me, as if I were wearing a bronco. To fix this problem, I learned how to imagine cresting the overpass as I approach it, to get my sneezes safely out of the way.

Yesterday in the gathering room of the Davis Shambhala Center, just before the sitting, a four year old boy was walking among the adults saying “I can’t see because I am covering my eyes with my hands!” Then he removed his hands and said, “Now I can see.” It was almost like a sermon.

Friday, while wearing a red and blue shirt, I found a red and blue bracelet on 3rd Street here in Davis, so I put it on, noticing the match. It was Art About, so Heidi Bekebrede served me a cookie at The Artery. And then, on the bike ride home, I saw a tree, a red-tailed hawk, and the setting sun; I welcomed them in, again noticing the match.

Have you ever played “Rock Paper Scissors” with an octopus? I have. It goes like this: Rock? Tentacle. Paper? Tentacle. Scissors? Tentacle. Tentacle wins every time.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on recent movies, for this has been a summer of movies for me. I’m teaching a film class, I am a MoviePass subscriber, and I am married to Kate, my favorite cinephile. Also, I’ve recently joined the subscription service at Four-Star Movies, found in the back of Bizarro World, right next to our pub, so that I have easy and ongoing access to their 7,500 film titles. So expect more film questions in the coming weeks and months.

Tonight expect also questions about Michael Jackson, internet letters, video content delivery mechanisms, Tintern, thrillers, home country heroes, wielded pestles, narrators, Keanu Reeves, macromolecularity, big hits, preferred colors, heroes, Dubliners, everyday monsters, Australian dollars, writing credits, great Greeks, new alphabets, a musical imperative about one’s beloved, wasps, groups of four, menacing dogs, people named Jimmy, mariners, short capes, siblings, garden pavilions, indoor sports, ferocious women, understanding America, numbers that are divisible by five, Einstein and jazz, superheroes, monism, chemical clothes, patrilinear job titles, perambulations, and Shakespeare.

Did you know that we get even bigger crowds when it’s hot than when it is not? Plan accordingly, unless you don’t mind sitting outside.

Your Quizmaster
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http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster 
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yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
 

1. Decarbonization. By banning fossil fuels, President Carlos Alvarado has set a goal of decarbonizing by 2021, which will mark 200 years of independence for what country whose name starts with the letter C?   

2. Fast Food Restaurants. The U.S. state with the most fast food restaurants per capita is found near or at the beginning of the alphabet, while the U.S. state with the least fast food restaurants per capita is found near or at the end of the alphabet. Name either state, but not both.  

3. Pop Culture – Music. Largely about pain, the video for a top-selling Imagine Dragons song of 2017 features a boxing match between Dan Reynolds and Dolph Lundgren. Name the one-word title of the song.  

P.S. Two Pub Quiz irregulars who happen to be established and respected authors are FEATURING at Poetry Night on Thursday, and they will both be reading FICTION! Find more on Naomi Williams and Evan White below:

Naomi J. Williams was born in Japan and spoke no English until she was six years old. She is the author of the novel Landfalls (FSG 2015), long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Zoetrope: All-Story, A Public Space, One Story, The Southern Review, and The Gettysburg Review. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and one-time winner, Naomi has an MA in Creative Writing from UC Davis. She lives in Davis, California, where she teaches creative writing and serves as co-director of the beloved literary series Stories on Stage Davis. Naomi’s new writing projects include a collection of short stories inspired by Japanese ghost stories and folktales, and a novel about the early 20th-century Japanese poet Yosano Akiko.

Evan White is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing. As an undergraduate, White co-founded Absurd Publications and published an anthology of poetry and short fiction, All the Vegetarians in Texas Have Been Shot, and the creative journal The Oddity. He has designed and published half-a-dozen books as a freelance designer, including Pub Quizzes: Trivia For Smart People, Where’s Jukie?, and the children’s book Che the Rat Lives in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Evan has contributed stories to numerous programs on KDVS 90.3 FM, the UC Davis campus and community radio station. He serves the local literary community on the board of Stories on Stage Davis, and as the designer for Under the Gum Tree magazine in Sacramento. In 2016, his story “Patterson” received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award contest. He works as a graphic designer at UC Davis.

Guests are invited to arrive to Poetry Night early (by 7:45) to sign up for a spot on the open mic that will follow the readings by our featured poets. Please bring your poems, short stories, monologues, and songs. Performers with instruments are especially welcomed. Participants will be asked to limit their performances to five minutes or two items, whichever is shorter. The Poetry Night Reading Series is hosted by Davis poet laureate Dr. Andy Jones, and is supported by Musical Director Timothy Nutter, and Dr. Andy’s graduating interns. The after-party begins at 10 P.M. at de Vere’s Irish Pub. You might be familiar with it.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I wonder if a city such as Las Vegas will seem strange and irresponsible a decade, a half century, or a millennium from now, assuming there are still people in 3018 to take note of our obsessions and foibles. The 8,000 megawatts that Las Vegas uses daily, 20% of which comes from the city’s 40 large casinos, would power the entire state of Idaho. Do visitors consider such concerns when engaging with all those slot machine pixels, when strolling beneath blinding Strip lights, or when bundling up amid all that air conditioning?

Will we all someday live like this, separated from an environment that we have made unlivable, as foreseen by the dystopian science fiction worksThe Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritchby Philip K. Dick or Pixar’s WALL-E? Is it too late to make better choices? Perhaps in this coming century we will better understand and employ solar technology, so that Nevada and the rest of our desserts can bake solar panels, rather than our diminishing ice caps, and all our planet’s residents.

We can all make less wasteful choices. For example, this past weekend my family and I visited Stinson Beach, a place to commune with our nearby ocean. Despite the intense car traffic leading up to this fog-protected census-designated place with a population less than 1% that of Davis, and the illuminated road signs reminding tourists that one needs reservations to park at Muir Woods, a visit to Stinson Beach allows one to step away from the glowing “future” of Las Vegas, or even our busy present of our lives in Northern California, and instead spend some time in a never-changing past.

We know from the miracle of radiocarbon dating that a typical drop of water deep in the Pacific Ocean is about 1,000 years old, though the oceans themselves formed more than four billion years ago (I’m glad I’m not responsible for explaining the relationship between those two facts). The entertainments that awaited my family and me at Stinson Beach Saturday—the endless surf, the diggable sand, the pelagic birds (and no oil rigs)—are the same that have existed for each of those thousand or the past million years. Although these evergreen qualities of the beach were complemented by a sampling of my Kindle library and by my wife Kate’s amazing iPhone photography, the essence of our trip was timeless, or even outside of time.

Thoroughly sunscreened, Kate and I gripped the sand with naked feet and laughed at the seaside escapades of our children as the stress of the week or of the year faded from our shoulders. I was reminded of something Marcus Aurelius said: “When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” Californians have access to delightful locales where we might step away from the consumption of megawatts and instead just breathe, just think, or even just attempt the cessation of thinking. Such delights are free, and freeing. If you can make such an investment in your peace of mind, consider an extended stint walking along a beach, hiking Sierra paths, or gazing up old-growth redwood trees. In these places you may find the essence of summer.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about kites, plot and plots, cute animals, sequels, Portugal, competition for Harry Potter, boxing, big questions, reimbursements, decarbonization, 17 seasons, rich rungs, tragic novelistic choices, the interests of billions, one-word names, the reduction of pathogens, imagination, famous daughters of famous fathers, the view from space, popular films, islands, geometry, fast “food,” dead rituals, Victorian releases, Oscar-nominated films, our many days of summer, people named Ellen, the Buddha, prisons for parents, the lessons offered by pain, people whose names start with M, and Shakespeare. When I asked the Buddha question to Truman, he answered it correctly and instantly, so I made it harder. Thanks for the QAQC testing, Truman!

Happy birthday to my brother Oliver, college professor and movie reviewer for the New York Observer.Click his reviews to see some fine and principled writing.

I hope to see you at de Vere’s Davis this evening at 7. If you bring a full team, I can all but guarantee that you will score in double digits. Jake will be there.

Your Quizmaster

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Here are three questions from a Pub Quiz from July, 2008:

1. American History. Who was the first American to orbit the earth?   
2. Books and Authors. What is the last word of the title of this 1726 novel? Travels into several remote nations of the world, in Four Parts, by Lemuel [BLANK].Fill in the blank. 
3. Pop Culture – Music(Karaoke Question). What Rolling Stones song begins with the line “I was born in a cross-fire hurricane”? 

P.S. More oceanic inspiration: “We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch – we are going back from whence we came.” John F. Kennedy

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

My son Truman was born on the same date as a primary subject of my doctoral dissertation, T.S. Eliot. I used to recite Eliot poems to Truman when he was a baby, distracting him with the unusual combinations of words and sounds. Registering Truman’s delight, I recalled something that Eliot wrote in a long essay about the poet Dante: “What is surprising about the poetry of Dante is that it is, in one sense, extremely easy to read. It is a test (a positive test, I do not assert that it is always valid negatively), that genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” By this Eliot means that the power of mellifluous rhyming poetry can work its magic on the listener even before the words are understood. One of my Eliot professors in college, William Arrowsmith, an important classics scholar who had been called “arguably the most gifted poetic translator of his generation,” accompanied Eliot to Italy when Eliot presented that Dante appreciation essay, titled “What Dante Means to Me.”Arrowsmith noted the kerfuffle that resulted when the collection of Dante scholars expected Eliot to present his address in Italian, but the Anglican poet spoke in English. Scandal!

Arrowsmith was on hand for a centennial celebration of the life and work of T.S. Eliot that took place at Harvard Theatre at Harvard University, a building where Eliot himself doubtlessly spent some time when he was a Harvard undergraduate from 1906-1909. Also on hand were a number of authors who admired Eliot, such as UC Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, Nobel Laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott, and poets and even actors who knew Eliot. For some reason, the musician James Taylor also performed a song. When I attended this even in 1988, I knew that I would never forget the names of all the assembled literati and glitterati, many of whose names I have since forgotten.

Most of all I remember my conversation with Donald Hall, a poet and anthologist whose curatorial work shaped my understanding of 20^thcentury poetry, and whose works I had studied in my classes. Hall told the story of going with another undergraduate to interview Eliot in 1951, just before heading to Oxford.

Christopher Hitchens picked up this story in The Atlantic in 2005:

Then Eliot appeared to search for the right phrase with which to send me off. He looked me in the eyes, and set off into a slow, meandering sentence. “Let me see,” said T. S. Eliot, “forty years ago I went from Harvard to Oxford. Now you are going from Harvard to Oxford. What advice can I give you?” He paused delicately, shrewdly, while I waited with greed for the words which I would repeat for the rest of my life, the advice from elder to younger, setting me off on the road of emulation. When he had ticked off the comedian’s exact milliseconds of pause, he said, “Have you any long underwear?”

Hall earned the biggest laugh of the evening that night, but I was more impressed with how kind and patient he was with me, a poetry fan and undergraduate who didn’t know quite what to say when meeting an idol. He made conversations and made jokes, wishing that he was young enough to cavort on stage with the actors. Donald Hall seemed old to me then, and in recent interviews he has seemed ancient, having endured so much, and having shaped a generation’s understanding of poetry as a public man of letters, and as the winner of the National Book Critics Circle prize, and the National Medal of Arts. Hall died yesterday at age 89, but his acts of kindness and his poetry will live on in those who remember and read him, as I encourage you to do.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about the ephemeral nature of life and newspapers, as well as domestic birds, monks, the moon, lords and Lords, Pence’s challenges, Virginia disappointments, doves, appreciated portraits, fibers, strength against chaos, people caught on tape, The World Cup, wind whipping through valleys, fake dads, fine songs, immortal players, charcoalification, understanding the universe, electric countries, network TV, musical mathematics, stores for elites, really cute animals, Henry David Thoreau, controversial times that prompt leaders to step forward, serifs, military fashion, popular hotspots, tariffs, and Shakespeare.

See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com  

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com 

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Science.  The aardvark is native to what continent? 
2. Books and Authors.   Norton Juster’s most famous book is titled The Phantom WHAT?  
3. Current Events – Names in the News.     We learned today that Kim Jong Un is more popular than what prominent Democrat among the GOP?  

P.S. Please go find and read a Donald Hall poem today.