Your Quizmaster — Home of the Quizmaster of Sudwerk Brewing Company in Davis

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

Current Events –Dance Crazes that Start with F. Started by a 15 year old wearing a backpack, name the latest dance craze that requires significant coordination to execute.
Sports. What center-fielder named after a fish had a career-high five hits against the Yankees Saturday, three of them doubles?
Shakespeare. Which Shakespeare history features the infant Princess Elizabeth in a non-speaking role?

The Caped Magellan on the Metro Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on May 29, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

One of my favorite Robin Williams comedies is the 1984 film Moscow on the Hudson, and not only because I got to interview its director, the late Paul Mazursky, in person on my KDVS radio show more than a decade ago. The film lovingly depicts the immigrant’s experience, and represents New York City as a place where artists and dreamers can find their purpose. In the first scene of the film, Williams’ character Vladimir Ivanov gives directions to a tourist confused by New York City’s bus system. Soon the film flashes back to Vladimir’s first visit to New York, on the occasion of his defecting as a careworn and disoriented Russian saxophonist. Williams learned Russian and the saxophone for the role, as one does.

Last week I stood in front of my rather diminutive childhood home at 2454 Tunlaw Road, where I once displayed a Moscow on the Hudson movie poster on the wall of my basement bedroom. During my trip to my onetime hometown of Washington DC, I felt like I was living the two versions of Vladimir’s character, for on the first Saturday I was in DC I felt both annoyed and charmed that everyone but me knew that subway line repairs on the Red Line meant we had to take shuttle busses from the Van Ness station to the Dupont Circle station. On the bus, I was taking pictures madly, including of my son Jukie peering out the window as we passed the corner of Connecticut and Wyoming Avenues, the onetime site of my high school. Everyone could tell that I was a tourist.

On the subsequent Saturday, I saw a visitor from Germany who was similarly confused by the subway exodus for the shuttle busses, so I explained to her why the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority saved its subway repair work for weekends, and that the above-ground leg of her trip would afford her an opportunity to see the entrance of the National Zoo. She was grateful, and thought that her good Samaritan was a Metrorail veteran. What a difference a week can make.

All the time I spent on using public transportation gave me an opportunity to reflect on the ways that our transportation methods reveal elements of our identities. For instance, as I write this newsletter on a flight from DC to Seattle, I am discovering that although I have many songs in my iTunes library, I had actually downloaded only one to my phone: Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine.” While I myself have never tried cocaine, I am seeing to what extent the song “Cocaine” on endless loop will try my patience. What does this song have to do with transportation? I used to listen to it while engaged in a different endless loop, that of roller-skaters around the basketball courts of Jelleff Boys and Girls Club on Saturday nights in 1979 and 1980.

To adapt Clapton’s song, “When your day is done, and you want to run”: roller skating. The physical artistry, necessary balance, and speed of this pastime appealed to me, and the hours circulating counter-clockwise to late disco also provided me a way to meet girls, including the daughter of the president, Amy Carter. After looping Saturday nights from 7-11, I would roller skate the mile or so to my house past the still brightly-lit shops, bars, and restaurants of Wisconsin Avenue, sometimes wearing a cape. Is there any greater freedom? The rock and roll, disco, and rhythm and blues music, and the exhilaration of the acceleration, informed who I was, or at least who I wanted to be. With the help of a Donna Summer mix on Pandora, I sometimes recapture this feeling as a Davis bike commuter today.

I never owned a car in high school or college. I depended upon public transportation, on friends or my mom to transport me, or on walking or biking (I had hung up my skates by then). To me, the primary emotional satisfaction of owning a car came from delivering friends places, just as my French comrade Jean Gruss delivered me home in his 1973 baby blue Chevrolet Chevelle Laguna (make and model confirmed this morning via Facebook), most days after high school. Like Blanche DuBois, I depended upon the kindness of others (though not of strangers – I knew to be careful).

Yesterday I overheard that one of the presenters at the Computers and Writing Conference (where I presented a talk on the Digital Learning Environment at UC Davis) was about to drop $60 on a Lyft to get him from the Fairfax, Virginia site of the conference to Washington DC where his Florida-based nuclear family was waiting to begin touring one of the most museum-friendly cities in the world. Channeling my eminently kind friend Jean, I approached this Florida scholar named Dan and told him that I was heading to DC, and that I could facilitate the reunion with his family at the cut-rate price of nothing.

We see such an act of kindness as an everyday occasion in Davis, but in Central Florida, evidently, this just doesn’t happen. My new friend was effusive in his thanks, offering on three separate occasions to contribute towards the gas that was fueling my mom’s Chevy Trax (a peppy and comfortable compact SUV that I have never seen advertised – perhaps I should have asked Chevrolet to sponsor this week’s newsletter). I kept changing the subject to our families, our universities, and the sights around us. Ever the teacher, I professed on the history of the different monuments arrayed before us as we crossed Memorial Bridge into our grand capital city.

As Dan Martin’s effusive gratitude continued on Twitter that evening, Dan also pointed out that the Computers and Writing organizers had created a conference where people are engaged, friendly, and mutually supportive, which is true. As I read his complimentary words about me, I also realized that I didn’t quite feel like my 2010s self when I was spending so much of my DC trip waiting for or on busses and subway trains. But when I could do something kind for someone, as is expected of me as poet laureate, faculty member, or quizmaster, then I was enacting my best (Be best!) and most authentic self. Taking up the microphone and committing acts of kindness make me feel like I am still wearing that cape, fresh from holding hands with a pretty girl to the music of Eric Clapton, which for some reason I can still hear echoing in my ears today.

Happy Memorial Day! Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as on the following: toasts on Memorial Day, mighty Mikes, the measure of a gram, sweetness, battlefronts, streams and rivers, triple-doubles, franchises, roofs, generous plans, cinematic investments, payment options, big booms, Dulles Airport, infant princesses, the history option, Africa, possibly free of merits, Yankee shortcomings, unlikely backpack choices, regrettable mistakes, favorite fruits, she don’t lie, Susan B. Anthony, unread collaborations, old poems, women in charge, comic characters, football moves, pretty women, cities on rivers, scourges to tyrants, energy hogs, expensive revivals, a topic that I haven’t chosen yet, a bathrobe and a funny hat, and Shakespeare.

I am honored to read a poem at today’s 10 AM Memorial Day ceremony at the Davis Cemetery, and my introductory remarks will answer one of the easier questions on tonight’s quiz. Even though I have given you no notice, perhaps I will see you there. If you need more poetry than that, this coming Thursday night at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery, Berkeley poet Susie Meserve will read from her recently-published first book of poetry, Little Prayers. Opening for Meserve will be an actor/monologist from the Davis Shakespeare Festival, an opportunity not to be missed. I hope to see you at one or both these events, and tonight for a Memorial Day Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

Current Events – Names in the News. What is the name of the new president of the National Rifle Association?
Sports. What member of the Golden State Warriors was recently scolded by his mom for a profane outburst?
Shakespeare. Who speaks the following lines in Hamlet? “Neither a borrower nor a lender be”; “To thine own self be true,” and “Brevity is the soul of wit.”

P.S. Typically I turn my longest Facebook posts into Quizmaster newsletters, or vice versa, but this week was full enough to warrant two posts, if not many more. Facebook-stalk my most recent post if you want to see how my son Jukie did during a week of tests and procedures at the NIH.

The Fecund Humidity Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on May 21, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Why is the newsletter so late today? Because my morning has been filled up medical appointments in one of the most respected medical facilities in the world: The National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD.

I was driven past the NIH a great number of times when I was a kid, but, luckily I suppose, I never had a chance to visit until much later, when doctors and medical researchers expressed significant interest in my son, Jukie. We know so much more about Smith-Lemli-Opitz Syndrome today than we did when Jukie started visiting this place as a three-year-old, but the procedures for the visits are largely the same: individual meetings with experts in audiology, anesthesia, neuro-psychology, ophthalmology, and physiatry. We also talk to some of the foremost researchers who study Jukie’s syndrome. Such knowledge! Such support!

I also get to see this lovely city of Washington that I called home for the first couple decades of my life. The air is thick with fecund humidity, and the bird songs and cricket and cicada symphonies sound absolutely tropical. This past weekend I took some pictures of the old home at 2454 Tunlaw Road, and got to explore some of the neighborhoods that I knew as a child. They have all shrunk.

I have more to share, but will have to save that for after I have done some reflecting on the passing of the years. As Helen Keller said, “So long as the memory of certain beloved friends lives in my heart, I shall say that life is good.”

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will be hosted by Quizmaster James, for which I am grateful. Expect questions on the royal wedding, chastisement, periods of time, updated vision statements, research centers, shortened brevity, degrees, our golden state, Congressional testimony, hunger, various syndromes treated at the NIH, spelling words with a C or a K, fathers of things, official languages, Brexit, fictional countries, both a Hugh and a Hugo, medical topics, quotations from yesteryear, noodles and other foods, criminals, superheroes, sneaky entrances, dead wood, altitudinous greenery, soap operas, patents, lists that include beavers, valuable teams, and Shakespeare.

Have fun tonight at the Pub Quiz. I will return on Memorial Day for our next Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

Four for Four. Which of the following animals, if any, were domesticated by 5,000 BCE? Cats, Dogs, Horses, Siamese Fighting Fish.

Pop Culture – Television. What Andy Samberg TV show was recently cancelled after five seasons?

Another Music Question. Whom did Rolling Stone describe as “the most revered jazz trumpeter of all time”?

P.S. “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.” Mahatma Gandhi

The Mighty-Mighty Moms Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on May 14, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I hope you enjoyed Mother’s Day. I’ve been thinking about my own mom, who I get to see in DC later this week, and about my wife Kate, who I am seeing right now as I write this.

Because of her ailing knees, When Kate finds herself on a couch or in a restaurant booth, she feels most comfortable when she extends her legs over something sturdy to support her, and that usually means my legs. I’m grateful that Kate is quick to lean on me. I know she misses the constant pressure of our departed bulldog, for Dilly often rested her head on Kate’s feet while she cooked, or snuggled up next to or upon Kate when she would (rarely) sit down in a comfy chair or love seat.

Studies show that our pets make us happier and healthier. In class last week, one of my students nominated “minimize stress” as one of the five ways we can sustain good health. Everyone nodded, but some modified their perspectives on stress after my subsequent lesson on positive psychology and “flow.” I reminded my audience that our writing class and other UC Davis classes seek to strengthen students — strengthen their brains, their habits, their resolve — rather than to eliminate the stressors in their lives. Students who spend a lot of time playing intramural sports or exercising in our Activities and Recreation Center know that they must appropriately challenge and stress their bodies in order to become stronger.

Our family has been relearning this lesson in recent weeks and months, Kate in particular. For instance, while Kate’s knees look as cute as ever, X-rays and MRI imaging suggest possible reasons for her ongoing discomfort. Let’s just say that if Kate were drafted, she could use her two sets of under-kneecap Texas longhorn bone spurs to defer her military service, only legitimately!

But none of the knee issues or other ailments compares in intensity to the severe heartsickness that we all feel in our house, a house that has been without our bulldog for a long and lonely week. At home, Dilly had been Kate’s constant companion, and her absence has brought her and the rest of us unwelcome trials of sadness.

Of course, this mom has been responding heroically. Kate and a friend primed our living room and dining room on Dilly’s last full day on earth, and then painted both those rooms on the first full day that she was gone. On Thursday, the day of Kate’s double knee injections, with strict orders to rest, Kate instead painted two coats in the bathroom, solo. Kate has sought to bring order to the house at a time when we all feel chaotic and unmoored. The new bamboo floor will be installed tomorrow, with a couple Pub Quiz irregulars stopping by late tonight to help us move the heavier furniture off the carpet.

Times like these remind me what a powerful woman Kate is, and how beautiful she is while in action, whether it be spending hours on a tall ladder with funky knees, or walking slowly from the car to the Mondavi Center for our date night seeing David Sedaris. (As an aside, it was David’s sister Amy who said, rather sardonically, “Sometimes losing a pet is more painful than losing a human because in the case of the pet, you were not pretending to love it.”)

While I can quote many writers and humorists on grief or beauty, often at such times I turn to the poetic stylings of the Commodores when thinking of my strong and lovely wife. As we are told in “Brick House,” a song that could have been written for Kate herself, “she’s mighty-mighty.”

I commend my Kate, my mom, and all the mighty and marvelous moms out there who struggle for their families, and become stronger and even more beautiful because of it.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as the following: regal names, unforgettable images, karaoke for small audiences, untold wealth, noisy creatures, unwelcome love letters, the Appalachian Trail, shared authorship, vowel endings, domestication in Siam, the absence of vitality, the measure of a gram, states that start with A, hazards in New Zealand, oceanography, a million dollars, under covers, popular songs, calls and responses, statuary, the meaning of mountains, the Google effect, a defined period of time for comedy, quarter runs, puns with time and money, military service, multicultural authors, African animals, composers who are neither Rod Stewart nor Al Stewart nor Jimmy Stewart, fighting bellboys, the opinions of the writers of Rolling Stone, delightful colors, absent future presidents, ornithology, living where you work, slumping popularity, and Shakespeare.

This coming Thursday night we are featuring a memoirist at Poetry Night: Janelle Hanchett, author of the new book I’m Just Happy to Be Here. A former student of mine, Janelle has been building audiences with her blog for years, and now her book is selling madly. Check out the reviews on Amazon, and then join us Thursday night at 8 the Natsoulas Gallery. Because my son Jukie and I fly out of town early the next morning, I myself won’t be able to attend the after-party, but the reading and open mic will be memorable and well-attended. Next week’s pub quiz will be hosted by James Haven, the longtime player who did such a good job on April 30^th. I will see you tonight.

Your Quizmaster

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

Yet another question about U.S. States. What is the only U.S. state to border the Canadian provinces Manitoba and Saskatchewan?
Science. According to an April 30th publication in Circulation magazine, Harvard researchers say five things will help you live longer, and the list isn’t all that surprising: 1) exercise, 2) eat a healthy diet, 3) maintain a healthy body weight, 4) don’t drink too much, and WHAT?
Sports. The LA Dodgers recently put what left-handed pitcher on the disabled list with biceps tendinitis?

The Interrupted Sleepover Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on May 7, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Usually when a dad returns to the site of the sleepover, the hosting parent has called with the news that the kid in question wants to sleep in his own bed, after all. This past Saturday afternoon, I returned to fetch our 12-year-old without being called. One of the assembled boys asked, “Why does Truman have to leave?” The eyes of the hosting mom were misty as we walked to the car.

During the drive to the South Davis Veterinary Center, we talked about illness and death. I reminded Truman that while all creatures die, some come to the point in their illness when they can or should be offered a “good death” (from the Greek: “Eu” for good, as in “euphoria,” and “Thanatos” for “death”). Euthanasia spares a pet unneeded suffering at the end of his or her life.

Truman endured the lesson unwillingly. From his perspective, the car couldn’t move fast enough along Covell Boulevard towards South Davis, and by the time we pulled up to the vet, he jumped out of the car and ran into the empty lobby of the veterinary office, not knowing in which direction to run to find and embrace his bulldog, Dilly.

Daffodil “Dilly” Jones joined our family in March of 2012, having been improbably discovered at a kill shelter in Modesto. Seeming full-pedigree English bulldogs are not often found in such shelters – we’ve often wondered if she had escaped from a puppy mill – for breeding bulldogs is an expensive and difficult enterprise. We were on a rescue list for a French bulldog, but the kindly woman who saved Dilly told us of this particular dog’s angelic disposition, a necessity for this family eager to meet her. We didn’t know if Dilly was one, two, or four years old, but we loved this wheezy and jowly gargoyle immediately, welcoming her to our home and into our hearts.

Although thinner and with a forlorn look in her eyes, the version of Dilly with whom Truman reunited Saturday afternoon looked not much different from the one we adopted all those years ago. Half in my wife Kate’s lap, and half comfortably stretched across her favorite maroon blanket, Dilly was repositioned into Truman’s arms as soon as he sat next to her on the floor of the examination room.

“Is today her last day?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so.”

The four of us used up a box of Kleenex before Kate, Jukie, and Truman said their last goodbyes, reminding Dilly that she was the best dog our family could ever have hoped for, and that we would keep her alive in our hearts.

Then I alone was left to comfort our family’s first dog, and, as Truman told us, our only dog ever. Dr. Mueller and Angie the vet tech had stayed after closing hours to attend to Dilly, a longtime favorite patient, for the last time. She could not have asked for better care.

Dilly was already calm, so not much sedation was necessary to help her relax further and into sleep. I thought she had quickly fallen asleep when a distant and unanswered office phone began to ring. Hearing the fourth ring, Dilly looked up at me, seeming to ask, “Are you going to get that?” The ringing continued, echoing in empty offices, as she drifted away.

I told Dilly that she was loved, that we were grateful for the affection and devotion that she shared with our family. The last thing she heard in this world was that she was a good dog.

Afterwards, the darkness in the hallway of the South Davis Veterinary Center matched my demeanor as I clutched Dilly’s blanket and strode uncertainly towards the exit, and then stepped, blinking and diminished, into the late afternoon sun.

The next day I told my son Jukie that Dilly would not be coming home, that she was gone. Our non-verbal boy signed “all done” to me, and then fetched one of his favorite books, Elmo’s New Puppy, leafing through the pages while holding his plastic bulldog.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following: privacy laws, Avengers, words that end in Z, Katie Couric, great Americans, people in holes, skeletal calcium, Rolling Stones, Washington Post headlines, islands, private emptiness, authors with monosyllabic first names, Circulation magazine, Canada, variants, principal photography, the difference between micrograms and milligrams, Netflix and Uber, urchins that have been bitten by the Oscar bug, Gertrude Stein, actors who can’t help but work for Disney, 11% margins of error, prominent mothers, languages other than English, people named Washington, vitamins, karate, colds, abecedarians, not sake, transportation costs, people born in Germany, freedom, profound thanks, the age of Love’s loss, movies with short names, food science, a question of trust, subjects of Suzanne Vega songs, and Shakespeare. Sadly, “Be Best” came too late for today’s pub quiz. Sorry, Melania!

I hope you can join us tonight, for I look forward to catching up with some friends. Speaking of friends, if you and your team can convince the largest number of friends to sign up for this free newsletter, I will reward your team this evening with a bread pudding. Remember to bring this to my attention before the kitchen closes!

Your Quizmaster

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

Classic horror movies. What movie franchise debuted in 1980 and went on to have nine sequels between 1981 through 2001, a cross over movie in 2003, and a reboot in 2009?

Countries of the World. Justin Trudeau is the Prime Minister of Canada, but who is its head of state?

Actors and Actresses. First name Joan, what Chinese-born actress who now lives in San Francisco came to prominence for her work on the film The Last Emperor?

P.S. Thanks to Quizmaster stand-in James, whom I hear did a spirited and effective job substitute-hosting the Pub Quiz last week. It helps to entertain such many talented people when one is looking for substitute quizmasters. Thanks also to the team Quizzers with Attitude for giving up one of their strongest players. See you this evening!

The Storytelling as Meditation Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on May 1, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

My Washington Waldorf School education came in handy often while I was earning my undergraduate and graduate degrees in English. Master teacher Jack Petrash patiently and continually told my classmates and me stories that were filled with magic and wonder. Because many of these stories were also central myths and parables of the world’s religions, and because many of them recounted the foundational narratives of world literature, I have drawn upon that deep well often in class and in conversation, providing context for students, for example, as reminders of what we should know in order to be educated.

Such narratives are even more important for what they do for us, rather than just because of the new information that we carry in our heads. Jack Petrash was patient in the retelling of these stories, in this way he taught us patience, too. Listening to a long story is a kind of meditation that we become practiced at when we are children, if we are lucky, and become unaccustomed to when we are older, choosing instead to chase after distractions on big screens and small. Partly for this reason, I have returned to listening as a form of meditation, consuming a couple books a month while bicycling to and from campus.

Stories are important, too, because of their transformative effect, and even, to coin a term, their transportative effect. Art critic John Berger puts it this way: “When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story’s voice makes everything its own.” Reading is liberating for the imagination and the soul.

Aristotle famously spoke on the transformative emotional effect a great play can have on its playgoers. My grade school teacher Jack Petrash introduced me to Aristotle in the 1970s, and at UC Davis I’ve been lucky to teach a number of sections of “Introduction to the Principles of Literary Criticism: Plato to Coleridge” in the intervening decades. Nothing roots a seminal text like Aristotle’s Poetics in one’s mind more than teaching it; the patient professor is reminded that teaching itself can be a form of meditation, a form of storytelling.

I’ve thought a great deal about Aristotle’s concepts of “pity and fear,” of “discovery” in the plot of a literary work, and of the necessary qualities of a character who is worthy of an investment of time and attention. Great rewards await readers who engage in such identification. As George R. R. Martin once put it, “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” One also takes risks as a reader, for the person who consumes great works of literature – and perhaps this might also be said about stirring films – might also experience many deaths, giving each of us a different sort of reflective process that focuses necessarily on departures, on loss.

Such losses remind us intellectually of the ephemeral quality of life, but the jury is still out on whether such literary and cinematic losses can prepare us for the more bracing life challenges that await us. As Shakespeare says, “Everyone can master a grief but he that has it.”

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as on the following: Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, animated characters, Marvel movies, comedy, notable queens, active predators, world initiatives, blizzards, notable losses, domiciles, actresses, big games and matches, legislators, memorized lines of poetry for National Poetry Month, the unexpected groupings of monosyllabic nouns (such as dance, fur, gas, light, and sound), emperors, architects, heads of state, population counts, classic films with sequels, poetic pronouncements, U.S. presidents, magic, wildcats, angry adjectives, deficiencies, odd-numbered years, stopping only when sated, food and drink, and Shakespeare.

As I will be hosting a bonus poetry reading with Jane Hirshfield this evening, for today is the last day of National Poetry Month, today you will be quizzed by a substitute quizmaster, James Haven. James describes himself this way: “James Haven has been a DeVere’s pub quiz regular for over the past five years. He moved to Davis in 2008 to finish his BA in Philosophy and, since 2009, he has been employed by the city of Davis in transportation services for the elderly and disabled. He grew up in the Fellowship of Friends, a pseudo-cult located in the foothills of Yuba County where he was exposed to classical music, art, all things Greek, and Shakespeare (the only plays the youth acting troupe were allowed to perform). James enjoys the nerdier things in life including Dungeons & Dragons, Magic the Gathering, and the marvel comic universe especially the X-Men (DC comics need not apply). James is probably most recognized in Davis by his adorable Corgi companion, Lord Buckingham Reginald McMorecourt Chesterfield or “Bucky” for short.” Intriguing!

I hope you will still join us for the fun. I may be able to return in time to help with the grading. Thanks very much to James for stepping in for me this evening.

Your Quizmaster

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. Nicknamed “The Sport of Kings,” what was an Olympic sport from 1900 to 1936?

Internet Culture. According to a headline in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, “Who Has More of Your Personal Data Than Facebook?”

Newspaper Headlines. Which of the following stars of the 2013 comedy film Last Vegas today is older than the marriage of George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Bush? Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline.

P.S. Poetry Night is also Thursday. See Poetry in Davis for details. You should really attend one of the poetry readings I host before we all die (decades and decades from now, I’m sure).

The Twiney Handles and Red Canyons Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on April 17, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Some people delight in complaining about their ails and travails on social media. I myself do not. So when I contracted a debilitating case of poison oak over spring break, one that later became a staph infection, almost nobody knew about it. “To live is to suffer,” Nietzsche said (the Buddha might also have said something similar), and “to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” So over the last couple weeks I got to practice my willpower, and to reflect on the mind-altering side effects of the drugs I was prescribed. As this is National Poetry Month, I also found myself “finding some meaning” by writing poems, including one I unveiled at a Davis Arts Center reading yesterday, titled “Prednisone.” Containing a Pub Quiz allusion right at the start, this poem will stand in for my newsletter this week. Enjoy.

Prednisone

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for prednisone.

Yes, it’s prednisone, that oral steroid

and immunosuppressant that will cure what ails you!

When I told my doctor, himself a former marine,

that I was feeling a bit off, as if I had been topped off,

actually filled to the brim, and beyond the brim,

when I told him that because of the prednisone

maybe I was ‘roided up

like the strut-damnable villain in an action movie;

when I told him all this I could tell that he was taken aback.

His chair actually moved backwards.

He reminded me that prednisone differs significantly

from the anabolic steroids taken by professional wrestlers,

weekend weightlifters,

and high-school linebackers with muscle dysmorphia.

This drug prednisone is a horse of a different color.

I asked him, Is it a rainbow horse? Time to saddle up!

Tell me more about the side effects, doctor!

Talk me through my feelings. Be my therapist! Earn your co-pay!

Prednisone! It’s a corticosteroid!

Perfect for conditions such as arthritis, blood disorders, breathing problems,

severe allergies, skin diseases, eye troubles, and immune system disorders.

I wondered how one drug could be perfect for so many troubles.

Medical science seems to be dumbing down the standards for perfection.

Even more fun than the disorders would be the side effects.

These include weakness, weight loss, nausea, muscle pain,

headache, tiredness, and dizziness.

Ha! Where do I sign?

Not typically a drug user, once too tough for Tylenol,

and unaccustomed, for example, to caffeine,

my body responds to medications atypically, and intensely.

I wanted to tell the good doctor that I was a special case,

a sensitive poet, if you will.

At least I was sensitive before the prednisone.

Weight loss? Yes.

I finally dropped down to 160 lbs this week,

training weight, fighting weight,

but otherwise the side effects don’t apply:

I am feeling strong, rather than weak,

awake, rather than tired,

and tightrope sharp, rather than dizzy.

Someone bring me a tightrope.

What could go wrong? I’m on prednisone!

Boy, you look nice this evening.

Speaking of wrestlers, I will just move this couch for you by myself

with my remaining good arm.

That’s OK, I don’t need help carrying in these twelve bags of groceries,

for I am insensible to the many ways their plastic twiney handles

cut red canyons into my poison oak hands, my ragged claws.

I think we deserve a song at this juncture.

Nobody asked me to scat right about now, but that won’t stop me.

Brace yourself for my fricatives, plosives, and open vowels.

Anticipate my arpeggios as they inform the melodic lines

like a blooming calla lily, each petal a riff, you know,

a rough, the good stuff, the sniffed snuff.

This is the good stuff.

Come on, come on, help me do.

I’ve been feeding the rhythm.

Help me feed the rhythm.

The aging bulldog stops on each stair,

but is nevertheless eager to ascend to the second floor

where her mistress awaits.

Every household should have a Queen of Sheba.

Wishing to encourage the bulldog, I skip

up the stairs next to her, and then run back down.

I take the stairs two at a time

next to her, and then run back down.

She’s almost there. I take the steps three at a time.

Cassius says that Caesar “doth bestride the narrow world / Like a Colossus,”

but nobody speaks of jealous Cassius today.

Meanwhile, the bulldog is still climbing.

Hey Bulldog, some kind of innocence is measured out in years,

and you don’t know what it’s like to listen to your fears.

I commend you for your effort, dear bulldog,

but my new friend prednisone

and I beat you to the top of the stairs.

Knock knock!

In additions to some of the topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on the following: bank robberies, notable universities, narrowness, football teams, books mentioned on the Times Online website, Persian legends, crime-fighters, lurches towards extinction, the one that got away, our silent seas, the end in mind, Pulitzer Prizes, angels in America, hearts, poetry in April, troublesome transitions, Tonya Harding, butterflies, automatic trust, the wives of race car drivers, data plan deserts, Disney films, mythical creatures, shadowy mangoes, brooks and rivers, plastics, U.S. presidents, manifestations of expressions, world capitals, the state of looming, current events, and Shakespeare.

After the jump, look for some information about Thursday’s Poetry Reading at the Natsoulas Gallery. We have Modesto poet laureate Stella Beratlis, and award-winning Stegner fellow Dana Koster. Meanwhile, I love how busy the pub has been on our Mondays together. I hope you can join us this evening.

Your Quizmaster

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

Black Panther. Last week the film Black Panther claimed the number three spot on the all-time domestic box office chart, not adjusting for inflation. What film did it displace from that position?

Anagram. What can make landfall in Northern California from October to April? Hint: The correct answer is an anagram of the common phrase ALPINE SEX PEPPERS.

Charles Darwin. What is the name of the Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy that is most closely associated with Charles Darwin?

P.S. Here’s the poetry reading information I promised you:

Poets Stella Beratlis and Dana Koster will read in Davis on April 19th!

The Poetry Night Reading Series is proud to feature two notable Modesto poets: Stella Beratlis and Dana Koster. They will perform on Thursday, April 19th at 8 P.M. at the John Natsoulas Gallery at 521 1^st Street in Davis.

Stella Beratlis is the Poet Laureate of Modesto. Beratlis grew up in a Greek-American family in Northern California. Her work has appeared in Quercus Review, Penumbra, Song of the San Joaquin,In Posse Review, California Quarterly, and other journals, as well as in the anthology The Place That Inhabits Us: Poems from the San Francisco Bay Watershed (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2010). She is coeditor of the collection More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets (Quercus Review Press, 2011). Beratlis is a librarian in Modesto, where she lives with her daughter. Alkali Sink is her first collection of poems.

Lee Herrick, author of Gardening Secrets of the Dead, writes of Beratlis, “Stella Beratlis writes unforgettable poems that stir inside you long after you’ve finished reading them. Alkali Sink is simultaneously domestic and wild, urban and rural, full of surprises and wisdom. Your axis may shift after reading this remarkable book. Beratlis is a fierce talent whose beautiful mind encompasses the land, the open road, the kitchen window, and the heart’s inconstancies. Her first full-length collection is one of the best debuts I have read.”

Reading with Stella Beratlis will be Dana Koster. Dana Koster was born in St. Paul, Minnesota and grew up in Ventura, California. She earned her English degree from UC Berkeley and MFA in poetry from Cornell University. From 2011-2013, she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. She lives in Modesto, CA with her husband and sons, where she works as a wedding photographer.

Koster’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in EPOCH, Indiana Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Cincinnati Review, PN Review, Muzzle, Thrush Poetry Journal and many others. She has work in the anthologies Drawn to Marvel: Poems from the Comic Books, Haiku of the Living Dead and More Than Soil, More Than Sky: The Modesto Poets. In 2012, she was the recipient of a Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prize and a Theodore Christian Hoepfner Award. Her first book, Binary Stars, was published by Carolina Wren Press in 2017.

The World Autism Awareness Day Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on April 3, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

In her blog, titled Thriving in Holland, my wife Kate has written eloquently about the importance of April 2^nd as World Autism Awareness Day. She opens, “On this day, we shine a light on autism in the hope that those living with autism will feel less alone and know that people around the world celebrate, support, and welcome their difference, their uniqueness.”

I originally recommended that Kate add the word “blue” to that light we shine on autism, acknowledging the efforts around the globe to raise awareness exemplified by the blue lights that today illuminate some of the world’s most famous landmarks, including the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, the Empire State Building, and the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.

Even though our family shall be wearing blue today as we celebrate our boy Jukie, Kate pointed out to me that many people with autism feel uncomfortable with the organization behind the “Light It Up Blue” campaign, Autism Speaks. Founded a dozen years ago by GE vice chairman Bob Wright, Autism Speaks has been accused of deploying disease metaphors when addressing autism. We might wonder if autism should be “cured,” for example, when people with autism see autism as inherent to their sense of themselves. They express similar concerns about rooting out the causes of autism, in part because of concerns about choices people might make once we have a better understanding of such causes.

Any parent of a child with autism, such as Kate or myself, becomes an advocate for autism awareness in the act of advocating for a beloved child. And Jukie’s loss of skills and language when he was young continues to be a source of heartbreak for us. All that said, people with autism rightly question the extent to which well-meaning advocates may functionally silence those people with autism because of the focus on proxies, such as parents and organizations, rather than those who might more accurately and eloquently speak on behalf of those with a version of this syndrome, the people with autism themselves.

Indeed, an author friend of mine in Japan saw my retweet of Kate’s link to her blog entry and responded with typical insight: “It’s evident that your support comes from a place of love. You might not know, though, that many many #ActuallyAutistic people (including me) feel that Autism Speaks (the #LightItupBlue folks) do[es] harm to autistic people. You can read here, for example: http://metro.co.uk/2018/03/26/this-is-why-i-will-never-light-it-up-blue-for-autism-awareness-we-do-not-need-a-cure-because-autism-is-not-a-disease-7408706/ .”

I agree with the opinion shared in that Autism Speaks critique that we should all show more respect and love with people with neurological variance, and that more people with autism should serve on the board of such organizations. I also know that if he were asked to serve, our wordless and curious boy Jukie (whose particular form of regressive autism deserves newly-discovered and better therapies and treatments) would quickly grow bored by the required meetings. Jukie would lead me out the boardroom door into the bustle of E. 33^rd Street so that we could gape like hayseed tourists at the actual Empire State Building which towers over New York a block from the Autism Speaks headquarters. And then our nature boy would walk me over to nearby Bryant Park or Madison Square Park to see how Manhattan playgrounds compare to those in Davis, California.

And I would follow Jukie to where he takes me, because that’s what I do, on World Autism Awareness Day, and every day. Happy April 2^nd!

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will have an international flavor. Expect also questions on constant improvement, Louis Armstrong, lists of records, walled settlements, W.E.B. DuBois, the problem with sin, Russian cities, early start times, a break from the children, Catholic research, Al Antz, National Poetry Month, Jimi Hendrix, canine nicknames, millions of thrillers, an odd use for glass, capturing General Washington, prime numbers, Burkina Faso, trips to earth, jogged memories, notable people named James, reasons to visit London, Jim Morrison, your cute uncle Noel, remixes, cartoons, the French navy, foreign languages, facts about plants, volatility, Swedish exports, candy, Trump Tower regrets, Janis Joplin, words that rhyme with taxi, and Shakespeare.

Thursday night is Poetry Night in Davis. Join us April 5^th at the Natsoulas Gallery. We gather at 8 PM to hear from out of town poets Richard Robbins and John Dooley.

See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster