Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

 

When I recently told some friends and colleagues who work at Academic Technology Services at UC Davis that I was going to “finish three books this summer,” at first they thought, perhaps reasonably, that I planned only to finish reading three books this summer. I had to reveal that I plan to finish writing them.

This will be the first year that I won’t have taught summer classes for UC Davis in about 20 years. With Kate running the new parent support group at Mother and Baby Source, and other welcome additional income streams, I finally have enough of a buffer to get some serious writing done. And then this past weekend I met via telephone with a new client who needs help from start to finish with an ambitious book project, so my team and I will step in to make sure that that book also will be ready to share in 2015.

As busy as I will be, none of that compares to the incredible dedication to craft, productivity, and talent that we see in some of our Pub Quiz regulars. Some examples: John Lescroart’s book The Fall was just released last Tuesday, and the critics are eating it up, calling it a riveting, engaging, and suspenseful thriller. And then Friday Catriona McPherson shared Come to Harm at a big Avid Reader event that my son Jukie and I got to attend. Catriona plays Pub Quiz on the same team as Eileen Rendahl, author of Veiled Intentions and many other books. And then this August we will see the publication of Landfalls, the 18^th-century adventure and discovery novel written by Naomi Williams, who often plays Pub Quiz with the Mavens. Hemingway said “There is no friend as loyal as a book,” but these loyal friends remind us that both books and friendly teammates are worth our time.

Did you know that you were surrounded by such creativity every Monday evening? You should keep attending the Pub Quiz, I think, so that some of it rubs off on you. It has worked for me.

Speaking of which, I myself have two events coming up soon: Thursday night at 7:30 I will be reading original poetry at Logos Books on 2^nd Street. And then Sunday at 1:30 I will be reading poetry at the Davis Cemetery and Arboretum’s “Celebration of Life.” Nestled between performances by the Bakuhatsu Taiko Dan Drummers and the Free Range Singers, I am hoping that my poems about the simultaneous ascension of James Brown and Gerald Ford will not be too anticlimactic. The Cemetery is home to the only natural hill in Davis, I believe: definitely worth surmounting.

Are you also working on a book? Tell me more!

Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on books, vocabulary words, rocks, The Atlantic, topical witches, mad hatters, interest in police, categories of performances, the bad habits of baseball players, air, lawsuits, Ebola, homophobia, the possibility of awards in six categories, foundlings, something that is not owned by Jay-Z, imitation games, people named Benjamin, the tropics, gladiators and their friends, threshing in ruby fedoras (anagram bait), queens, railroads, executive parties, US citizens, seemingly donut organisms, David Letterman, hall of famers, buddies that are not worth watching, ceremonies, current events, popular groups of consumables, and Shakespeare.

I hope that you get to consume part of a good book today. I look forward to seeing you and your team at 7.

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Mottos and Slogans.   What product available today used the 2009 slogan “Open Happiness” and the 1906 slogan “The Great National Temperance Beverage”?

 

1. Trending on Twitter. What former cast-member of the TV show Cheers was briefly trending on Twitter last week?

 

1. Pop Culture – Music. “Shut up and Dance” is a big hit from a band that derives its name from the song “Walking on the BLANK” by The Police. Fill in the blank.

 

1. Four for Four.    Which of the following Americans, if any, were Civil War generals for the Union side? General Ambrose Burnside, General Stonewall Jackson, General George McClellan, General William Tecumseh Sherman.

 

1. Great Americans. What independent US Senator from Vermont announced his candidacy for US President last week?

 

 

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Happy May the 4^th! Ever wonder if May the 4^th will be an actual national holiday 50 or 100 years from now? It certainly is in my family. This morning my wife Kate was seen in our front yard photographing a very young Darth Vader in shorts and a Star Wars T-shirt, wielding a light saber. A few years ago, Truman played Vader for Halloween, while his sister portrayed Princess Amidala. And one of their brother Jukie’s favorite picture books reveals the wise sayings of Yoda.

I shared some of these obsessions a long time ago in a city far, far away. Jack Valenti (Google him) once recommended an upcoming film to my dad, suggesting that his young son Andy would enjoy it. We headed off to the critics screening room at the American Film Institute, and as the lights were dimming, I remember asking my dad what the name of the film was. He couldn’t remember. Then we heard the opening bars of the John Williams soundtrack, and my world changed.

Within a year, Star Wars was everywhere. We had our rudimentary costumes even back then, not to mention posters, books, trading cards, and the endless figurines. But I felt privileged to have seen the film first, before all but about 12 men (and Jack Valenti) in Washington DC, the critics who filled that screening room in 1977. While today Star Wars is one of the most widely-recognized cultural phenomena of the 20^th century, there was a week or more during my youth when all that richness, fantasy, and supernatural heraldry was a private matter, undisturbed by what theorists call the “preformed symbolic complex.” Of course, as I learned that summer, the fun comes not from hoarding the magic, but from sharing it.

This lifelong flirtation with imaginative hoarding is the burden that unpublished authors carry with themselves everywhere: we are the creators of imagined worlds that have not yet been shared. Many of us choose to practice such world-building every November during National Novel Writing Month, a shared sprint towards drafts of novellas that, as was the case for George Lucas (with help from Alan Dean Foster), might just turn into something worth experiencing. Grant Faulkner, the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (did you know that months required executive directors?) will be speaking about NaNoWriMo in Davis this coming Thursday night, and reading from his new collection of short stories titled Fissures. I hope you can join us that Thursday evening at 8 at the Natsoulas Gallery.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz features questions on some of the above, as well as favorite beverages, Celtic freezing, delightful dishes, new American heroes, news-gathering, concluding verbs, bonds of sharing, digital devices, Asia, lovely ladies, the streets of Ireland, comic books, creditable receipts, impossibly big cities, filling costumes, directorships, Anders Ericsson, composers, special messages to my friend Carin (Happy birthday, Carin!), knights, tropical evergreens, old movies, the number 13, temperance, digital discoveries, minimalism, the police, cheeriness, Twitter, illicit substances, the Civil War, Pew research studies, and Shakespeare.

I hope you will join us tonight. If you see Carin at Kate’s table, make sure to wish her a happy birthday. May the Fourth be with you.

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Films with One-Word Titles. At almost $180 million domestic, Kevin James’ highest grossing film had only his male co-star on the movie poster. Name the one-word title of this 2005 film.

 

1. The City of Davis. Pollinate Davis is the new co-working facility in Regency Square, found at the corner of two streets in Davis. Name just one of those two streets.

 

1. Great Onetime Americans. Isadora Duncan and Harry Houdini both died rather suddenly within about a year of one another. Name the decade.

 

1. Four for Four.    The month of April begins with the letter A and ends with the letter L in which of the following languages, if any? French, German, Indonesian, Vietnamese.

 

1. Sports.   What former NBA player was a six-time NBA champion, a six-time NBA MVP, and a four-time NBA blocks leader, among many other laurels?

 

 

P.S. Two other events worth adding to your schedule: Pub Quiz irregular (and regular newsletter reader) John Lescroart’s book release party takes place tomorrow night, May the 5^th, at Odd Fellows Hall at 6:30. You might have read the recent article about John in the Davis Enterprise. Secondly, Saturday night at 7:30 at the Pence Gallery I will be performing a short story by Becky Mandelbaum as part of Stories on Stage Davis. I look forward to seeing you at least twice this week.

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I happen to be friends with one of Nepal’s foremost poets, Yuyutsu Sharma. He came to Davis about five years ago, and I got to co-host that event, and hear him read. At that reading in Voorhies Hall, and then again earlier this month in Sacramento, Yuyutsu regaled us with stories about his mountainous home, and with beautiful and heartfelt poems. Certain writers – one thinks of Seamus Heaney, Octavio Paz, and California’s own James Ragan – seem to be writing for all of humanity, rather than (or in addition to) representing their own perspectives that are limited by autobiography or geography. Yuyutsu is one such writer, revealing and exploring qualities of longing and discovery that we all share in common.

Because of the region about which he writes the most often, Yuyutsu also tells stories of peril: anecdotes that feature concerns about blizzards, the threat of landslides, and earthquakes. His poems represent the perspectives of villagers who live outside of (and above) many of the civil engineering feats that we take for granted. In one of his poems, a village elder speaks of the first time he had ever seen a car: it had been carried into the central square of his village on the shoulders of Sherpa guides.

We need a poet of Yuyutsu Sharma’s stateliness to represent the trauma that has befallen his home over the weekend. To quote a Thomas Fuller piece from the front page of today’s New York Times, “Residents of remote mountain villages say houses collapsed, food is running out and so far no one has arrived with aid. As rescue teams began to arrive in Nepal from around the world, much of the stricken area remained inaccessible.” As we prepare to play our game tonight, as we necessarily steep ourselves in frivolity and camaraderie, let’s remember those Nepalese families who are scared, hurting, and mourning.

Our local used bookstore Logos Books has been supporting relevant Nepal-related charities for years. As today’s Time magazine says, “Save the Children is an international charity that has been in Nepal since 1976 and is therefore in an exceptional position to help after years of operating within the country.” And in 2014 alone, Logos Books donated a total of $47,000 to Save the Children and another important charity at times like this, Doctors without Borders. As I have, I hope you will join Logos in supporting these important causes. Find the relevant Nepal Earthquake Relief donation page for Save the Children here.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on singers who are actors (and vice versa), concrete tests, circular logic, bodies of water, sailor syntax, final days, biopics, anthology favorites, that which cannot be outrun, names that century, the international meanings of April, birth cities, selfies, islands, too much salt to lick, the ACLU, unexpected and sudden endings, a Phoenician hangout, media sensations, bank holidays on the Emerald Isle, a favorite of Richard Nixon, number one albums from the past (when we used to buy albums), six-syllable words that start with the letter N, New York City, tinny chimaerae (anagram bait), first ladies, dynamite, HBO, space, regrettable neckware, pesticides, Smith and Hunt, the Streets of Davis, perfect for Mrs. Claus, available offices, Indonesian months, one-word titles, obesity myths, and Shakespeare.

You should know that some questions get multiple hints. I am thinking of starting a regular new question category: Something we learned from the newsletter. A good idea?

Thanks to everyone who participated in the KDVS Fundraiser. Because of a past Pub Quiz champion and guest-Quizmaster Rob Roy, and another donor who wanted to match Roy’s generosity, I surpassed my $1,000 for my fundraiser show by almost $100. Roy, also a popular musician and (almost popular enough) Davis City Council candidate, is teaching English and perhaps skullduggery in the United Arab Emirates.

I hope to see you this evening. The weather is beautiful, even warmer than yesterday, so I’m sure the outdoor seating will fill up fast.

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

 

 

1. Internet Culture. In 1965, what young engineer penned a now legendary paper with the scholarly title, “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits”?

 

1. Newspaper Headlines.  Who taught Malia Obama how to drive?

 

1. The Clintons. In the middle of which decade did Bill and Hillary Clinton marry?

 

1. Four for Four.    Which of the following UC Davis alumni were born in California? Astronaut Stephen Robinson, US Congressional Representative Jackie Speier, Former UNICEF Director and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, Chef Martin Yan.

1. Pop Culture – Music. Singing with her backup band, what now 70 year old vocalist known as the Empress of Soul had more than 20 top-20 singles between 1961 and 1987 (but no #1 hits, so of course the answer is not Diana Ross or Aretha Franklin)?

 

P.S. Grant Faulkner is coming to Davis on May 7th at 8 PM at the Natsoulas Gallery. Mark your calendar!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

 

We all have different enthusiasms when it comes to American and world culture. As you may have gathered, for me, poetry is central. I host of poetry radio show, run a poetry reading series, and read poems to a variety of unsuspecting and sometimes even unwilling audiences as the Poet Laureate of Davis (Have you seen my business card?). For others, the cultural expression of choice may be the visual arts, dance, storytelling, opera, or theater.

 

For many, a primary obsession is music. Plato opined that, “Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything.” While many people could benefit from more charm and gaiety in their lives, just about everyone recognizes the importance of music. And while some people purport not to care for modern dance, Italian opera, or even, can you believe it, poetry, everyone likes one form of music or another. Music gives us an opportunity to transcend language, and even momentarily transcend thought. As Hans Christian Anderson said, “Where words fail, music speaks.”

 

It could be argued that corporatist forces have “dumbed down” and diluted the force or depth of available music. Do you ever get the sense that the same 100 or 500 songs are played on the radio over and over again? I sometimes acknowledge the “trivial” in contemporary music by asking trivia questions about current pop hits, the sort that pass by like transitory fads. Do you expect to return to the most popular hits of 2015 in 10 or 20 or 50 years? I suspect not.

 

We are lucky to have a resource in Davis that is devoted to music that confronts faddism. That resource is KDVS, our campus and community radio station. Staffed by the equivalent of music professionals, curators, and librarians, KDVS offers us an unrestricted free-form perspective on our musical opportunities. KDVS can offer the discriminating listener a glorious variety of musical schools, genres, and talents, thus ensuring discovery and surprise. In 2014, for instance, I played only North African music between the guests and recorded poems on “Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour,” the show I have been hosting for the last 15 years. I don’t believe the host of any other American radio show can make that claim.

 

As I do with my poetry outreach, the KDVS on-air personalities work as volunteers, devoting long hours of research, often in KDVS listening booths, so that those DJs can offer a listening experience that reflects careful attention and curation. All of us in the Sacramento valley benefit from their enthusiasm, expertise, and long hours of devoted volunteership.

 

Now is the time when we can show our thanks to KDVS and its staff of volunteers. If you visit the KDVS Fundraiser page, you will see how close the station is to its $60,000 goal, and how easy it is for you to contribute. Those who do can choose from a variety of premiums, including music in a variety of genres, books, posters, and gift certificates.

 

Of course I hope you will contribute during my show. “Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour” airs this coming Wednesday at 5, and my co-host will be the educator, novelist, and stand-up comedian Chris Erickson. I have set a goal of $1,000 for the hour, something I could easily reach if all of you called in Wednesday at 5 p.m. with a pledge of merely $5 (though I know many of you can afford to give even more generously). The phone number is (530) 754-KDVS, and your donation will be fully tax-deductible. You could contact them now with your pledge, or set an alarm for Wednesday. I always love reading out the names of the donors, so I hope you can call in with a pledge of any amount while I am live on the air.

 

The three highest donors will receive a signed copy of my book, Where’s Jukie?, and the most generous of all the donors will also receive an original poem that I will write on a topic of your choosing. Join in on the fun! Pledge Wednesday!

 

Thanks to my good friend Jason for guest-hosting the Pub Quiz last week. I am grateful to have had the time to read at the MIND Institute fundraiser poetry reading – we raised bunch of money for research into autism.

 

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on four-letter brand names, cramming components, followers and those who choose never to follow, titles that start with the letter B, astronauts and chefs, red tides, cities in common, presidential aspirants, soulful people, royalty, Homo sapiens, trees, big numbers, excellent writing, mighty beatings, the letter Z, people who are not Celine Dion, grapes, people who rush, jasmine, beer culture, actresses who are unknown to me, centripetal forces, names in the news, unwise races, fringed wings, the KDVS fundraiser, David Letterman, and Shakespeare.

 

I hope you enjoyed Picnic Day. See you tonight!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

An old friend with a strong, stentorian voice will join us this evening as the guest Quizmaster. Jason is a pop culture enthusiast, and a reader of great books and small, some of them with pictures. He has a penetrating acumen, a sharp wit, and an occasional flair for the dramatic. Captain of the Hall of Fame team “The Penetrators,” he is remembered well by teams who aspired to second place.

Once a year I take a Monday off in April to participate in the annual evening of poetry and art at the MIND Institute in Sacramento. Featuring poets and authors whose lives have been touched by autism, the event raises money for the research and outreach work of the Institute, through sales of art and books, and through donations made by people who are granted emotional highs and lows provided by the assembled poets, and who then want to help.

Regular readers of this newsletter know that my most recent book, written with my wife Kate, is part of our year-round effort to raise money for similar research. All proceeds from book sales of Where’s Jukie? are donated to the Smith Lemli Opitz Foundation to support research into this rare syndrome. As the volunteer Communications Director of the Foundation, Kate also counsels concerned parents around the world, many of whom are just learning of the syndrome after discussions with a doctor in the maternity ward. Tonight Kate will read a stirring essay about both time travel and living in the moment. If you can join us tonight at 7 in Sacramento, bring some Kleenex!

As it is National Poetry Month, I have been steeped in verse, even more than usual. Yesterday I wrote a poem about the time that Joseph Campbell helped me find my bicycle. It’s not about autism, except insofar that poems about children with autism are always adventure narratives. How will the young man with autism leave home to begin his quest? Is he not an expert at “living the questions,” as the poet Rilke teaches us to be? As a poet and dad, I am still fiddling with these ideas — they will have to addressed more thoroughly a year from tonight. The final reader at this event, I will read my long poem, “The Last Pterodactyl,” and a few poems from Where’s Jukie? As I might have said in the previous paragraph, you are welcome to join us.

If you wish not to leave Davis, but still want to do your part for poetry, tomorrow night at 7:30 Paul Breslin and Jeanne Foster will read at 126 Voorhies Hall (at 1st and A Streets). That event featuring accomplished poets and professors is sponsored by the UC Davis Department of English. And then Thursday the John Natsoulas Gallery and I will welcome Mary Zeppa, Bob Stanley, and Bob Stanley’s banjo. As Bob says in one poem, “the banjo was always ready to embrace the boy with its staccato tones.” Join us Thursday for the warm embrace of poetry.

Actually, a warm embrace is more than most of you want from poetry. Such people are encouraged to sit in the back of the Natsoulas Gallery on Thursday at 8, arms crossed, and resist. I wager that something you hear that night will woo you. And then the after-party starts at 10.

For tonight’s Quiz, Jason has written questions both tricky and tantalizing. Expect him to cover topics such as corporate sexism, emoji, celebrity painters, helpful robots, sweetness, space travel, middle names, champions, remedies, British singers, surnames, fan fiction, tetralogies, islands, cars, surprising continents, clothing, logos, honest stewards, California aspirations, railway traffic, pronunciations, deliberative bodies, scryers, the waters of the Caribbean, weak minds and strong, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join Jason or me tonight for a different sorts of adventure. I will be back next week.

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Mottos and Slogans.   What is the most famous two-word commercial tagline of the California Milk Processor Board?

 

1. Canada. Home to its capital and largest city, St. John’s, what is the most easterly province of Canada?

 

1. Pop Culture – Music. What singer joined Boyz II Men for the 1995 single “One Sweet Day,” a song that spent a record 16 weeks at number one on the Hot 100 list?

 

1. Sports.   The first Westminster Kennel Club show was first held on May 8, 1877, making it the second-longest continuously held sporting event in the United States. What is the oldest, originally held in 1875?

 

1. Great Americans. Who said “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”?

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

One of my favorite past Mayors of Davis was Julie Partansky. She believed in protecting the “historic” (that is, unpaved) alleyways of central Davis, in curbing light pollution in our city, and in playing klezmer music at the Farmers’ Market. She served on the City Council from 1992-2002, and was Mayor of Davis from 1998-2000. Two white butterflies were released at her swearing-in ceremony.

I was hosting a pub quiz around the time of Julie’s passing, in 2009, so of course I included a question about the former mayor. Not everyone follows the news as closely as I did, so it was my quiz question that presented this sad news to some of the participants. Even more awkward, some teams cheered to themselves when they answered the question correctly. I resolved then to practice extreme sensitivity when choosing Pub Quiz topics, carefully tip-toeing around difficult topics, whether it be the most recent massacre, conflict, or plane crash.

Such was the case with the murder-suicide that occurred when I was vacationing with my family over the spring break. One way to show respect would be not to bring up the names of the two people involved at our weekly game of chance and skill. Although that guy Andy Jones has no Facebook friends in common with Whitney Engler, for example, Your Quizmaster has three such friends. And no doubt those friends were hurting, as all of us in the Davis and UC Davis community are.

But like any of us, I still found myself thinking about the life, the selflessness, and the promise of Whitney. I was also touched by the outpouring of love for this veterinary graduate student who was mere weeks away from finishing her studies when she was killed. The (successful) community search for Whitney’s cats and dog also rooted my interest.

As you may know, I have other public-facing jobs, in addition to that of Quizmaster. As the Poet Laureate in Davis, I am asked to write and read “occasional” poems on a particular subject or event, such as the yearly 4^th of July celebration in Central Park. I’ve taken to reading such poems every other month or so at Davis City Council meetings, starting off the evening’s work of these public servants with a poem in the way other meetings do with a pledge or a patriotic song.

A poet observes closely, remembers purposefully, and practices radical empathy. I tried to engage in these three duties when writing the poem that you read below, one that I read last Friday at a Sunrise Rotary meeting at which I was the featured speaker. I didn’t anticipate that the dean of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine would be in the audience, or that I would be asked to reread the poem before Whitney’s parents and a couple hundred of her friends at a memorial service that afternoon. I was honored to do so.

 

“The Telephone – An Elegy”

For Whitney Joy Engler

 

The veterinary brain behaviorist opens her blinds.

She stretches in light clothing, and uncovers the birds.

She remembers the San Diego dawn that illuminates the hills above the bay,

the lights and shadows bestowed by childhood windows.

Today the woman squints her eyes.

She is buffeted by the morning light, and can’t help but smile.

Creatures alive today loved her before they loved anything.

After breakfast, she leaves her telephone at home.

Welcomed by uncaged birds in the enlivening spring,

she is the only stroller through Village Homes

who belongs to the Westminster Kennel Club.

She knows about breed standards, urinary tracts, and the slobber of jowly dogs.

In her mind she reviews such facts, and the quizzical faces of small animals.

They look up to her.

She trains her service dog to serve someone else,

a bond that is severed before anyone is ready.

Rosie is trained not to bark at the telephone.

She plays piano recordings for her pets, others’ pets:

the intimate delicacies of Chopin spilling into the back yard,

ineffable suggested patterns in the Delta breeze,

Aeolian harps rather than the telephone.

Back at work, she reserves empathies for the pit bulls, the Chihuahuas,

for what her professors call “the relinquished.”

She imagines herself Dr. Doolittle, a vet with a following.

In the break room, cats slept on her chest.

 

What does she own?

She has registered no weapons.

She owned a telephone.

The telephone rings and rings.

 

I hope the Engler family finds some comfort in having spent some time with the many here in the city of Davis who knew and loved Whitney.

Tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on the following topics: polar bears, Irish cities, Tumblr vs. Instagram, mottos and slogans, diseases, two-syllable words that start with H, bad jokes, Hawaii, 16-week successes, animals, taxes, philosophy, non-American actresses, gas, movie theatres, Beatles, green energy and green layovers, US Presidents, repeated words, sculptures, Disney characters, tall buildings, chompers, the practices of rich people, law degrees, Academy Awards, journalism, and Shakespeare.

Nothing else is going on tonight, such as in Indianapolis, so you should really join us at the Irish Pub tonight. See you then!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Newspaper Headlines. Senator Harry Reid recently announced he would step down at the end of this term, ending a decade-plus of leadership of Democrats in the Senate. What state does Reid represent in the U.S. Senate?

1. Bodies of Water. Lake Rayburn, 1673 miles from Davis, is found in four counties, including Angelina and Sabine Counties. It is the largest lake (or reservoir) found in what state of almost 28 million people?

1. Gangsters. According to Time Magazine, what gangster “modernized the Mafia, shaping it into a smoothly run national crime syndicate focused on the bottom line”? Hint: He is especially known for splitting New York City, not Chicago, into five different Mafia crime families.

1. Four for Four. Using any measurement that you wish, which of the following solar system objects, if any, are larger than our planet earth? Ganymede, Mars, Neptune, Venus.

1. Pop Culture – Music. What are the six words in the title of the Beatles’ first #1 hit in the US?

 

P.S. April is National Poetry Month. I hope you will spend some time read new and favorite poems this month. You will find my most recent book and many other poetry books in the Davis branch of the Yolo Public Library. You could also start here.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t think much of Indiana or its governor this week. Of course, my concerns about Indiana have lasted my entire life, for I grew up on my father’s stories about trying to escape the state. A magician by training, my father traveled in ever-widening circles around his hometown of Winchester, driven by my grandfather, putting on magic shows for small and large groups. He earned his living and his early fame as a showman on stage for years, all before starting college.

 

His enthusiasm for magic made him pay better attention to actors he saw on the big screen (whom he saw frequently) and on stage (whom he saw rarely in Winchester). At Antioch College, in neighboring Yellow Springs, Ohio, my dad trained as an actor, a director, and a playwright, and enjoyed extended internships doing radio and television, including his own children’s television show, with puppets, in a variety of mid-western cities. The author R.L. Stine and his brother used to watch “Captain Davey’s Locker” on Columbus television when they were children.

 

My dad sought adventure, increasingly larger audiences, and intellectual challenges, all of these fueled by his love of the arts. In addition to writing and acting in plays, he read Russian novels, read and wrote poetry, published a book of his magic tricks, visited museums, and sought out culture in all of its available forms. Buffeted by these cultural discoveries, my dad couldn’t understand what he saw as the regrettable and self-defeating attitude in most of his fellow Hoosiers: a willful indifference to the world’s cultural offerings and to the open-mindedness necessary to be curious about new ideas.

 

I see this fear of difference and variety evidenced in the bill that was signed into state law last week by Indiana Governor Mike Pence. The “Religious Freedom Restoration Act” effectively protects religious institutions, businesses and associations from lawsuits for their acts of discrimination against gays and lesbians. The Civil Rights Movement taught us that we should all be wary of such segmentation, this separate and discriminatory treatment of one group as compared to another. Race and sexual orientation are separate categories, but some of the beliefs and tactics used to justify bigotry are the same. As the Atlantic pointed out in an article published last June, “the Public Religion Research Institute found that 10 percent of Americans believe business owners should be able to refuse to serve black people if they see that as a violation of their religious beliefs.”

 

Some might be surprised that that same survey revealed that more people in the mid-west than the south felt that such racist attitudes and practices could be thus justified, and more young people than old. Southerners and the elderly remember well the civil rights conflicts that helped first to stigmatize and then to confront this antidemocratic idea of “separate but equal.” I hope the Governor and legislature of Indiana will soon realize what the Chamber of Commerce and civil rights activists already do: bigotry and backsliding are bad for business, and bad for America.

 

If my father were alive, I’m sure that today we would have engaged in a long conversation about Indiana, and I would ask him to tell me more stories. He would have reminded me that Cole Porter, who grew up about 90 miles from my dad, was a home-state hero who inspired my dad and many other potential performers with his show tunes. Porter wrote the music and words to one of my favorite musicals (largely because of its title), Kiss Me Kate. I bet Porter first encountered The Taming of the Shrew in an Indiana classroom.

 

Speaking of favorites, my favorite person on television right now is David Letterman. My favorite crossover ballet choreographer is Twyla Tharp. My favorite 80s singer was Michael Jackson, and my current favorite standup comedian is Jim Gaffigan. What do all these people have in common? Indiana. Plus Letterman, Tharp, and/or Michael Jackson’s and Jim Gaffigan’s parents might have seen my dad performing magic in the early to mid 1940s. One of them might even have considered the magic of entertainment after watching such an entertaining Indiana magician.

 

So as we do with all groups, we should judge Indianans by the best of them, rather than by the limitations of the most shortsighted of them. Davey Marlin-Jones taught me to do that with every group, and thus taught me the importance of heroes. So it should be with the scrutinized and perhaps now awakened people of Indiana.

 

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on some of the topics raised, above. My dad was a film guy, so we will see a greater than typical number of film questions. Expect questions about the eastern conference, questions of biography, national book favorites, multicellular organisms, Asians in America, the Speaker of the House, unwelcome standards, popular brands, villains, magic, Abraham Lincoln, Philadelphia, Harry Potter, American comedians, credentials to enter heaven, universities, attracting notice, first families, that which generates buzz, dinner tabs, the Mafia, big lakes, today’s headlines, the solar system, popular sports, big thoughts, Irish culture, and Shakespeare.

 

Pub Quiz regular Katy Brown will open for Davis Poet Laureate Emerita Allegra Silberstein this coming Thursday at 8 at the Natsoulas Gallery. National Poetry Month is almost upon us, so you should be making some plans.

 

See you tonight!

 

Your Quizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

 

1. Mottos and Slogans.   For a while, all of us had to watch commercials in which a bunch of friends repeatedly asked each other this question: Wassup?! Name the brand of beer that was responsible for this hip and urban slogan.

 

1. Newspaper Headlines.  Today Eric Schmidt said that a certain Google wearable is “not dead.” What was he referring to?

 

1. Quotations by Women. Born in Utah in 1952, and now a Hawaii resident, what actor, comedian and politician said “The thing women have got to learn is that nobody gives you power. You just take it.”

 

1. Four for Four.    Which of the past or current members of the cast of The View has an eponymous TV show that currently airs new episodes? Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Meredith Vieira.

 

1. Flowers. What four-syllable flower is the symbol of the Emperor of Japan and the official flower of Chicago, and Salinas, California?

 

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

From where I write this on this Monday morning, I can see a welcome sprinkling of snow on the eaves outside my window, a hint of precipitation in an alpine region that would seem parched with thirst were it not for the huge lake nearby.

The cover of yesterday’s Sacramento Bee showed unused ski lifts above miles of rocky soil. Has the ski season ever ended so early? The stores and restaurants at Kings Beach should be inundated with skiers and their families, but instead, we find parking spaces quite easily, and take hikes in walking shoes rather than in snow boots. I hope this bit of snow at least raises the spirits, if not the fortunes, of the folks we’ve been meeting in this tourist destination.

One such person was an elderly man we encountered in the Kings Beach Safeway yesterday. He was sitting near us in the Safeway Starbucks (and by the way, must there be a Starbucks in every store we enter? We are so lucky to have Mishka’s in Davis!). I noticed that he was reading the aforementioned Sacramento Bee, so I couldn’t resist pointing out that I had an op-ed in the Opinion section, a reflection on the sources of courage that you might remember a version of in our March 2^nd newsletter.

 

He was surprised to find a journalist in his midst, and thus immediately began regaling me with stories of his travels since escaping violence in Hungary as a child, and coming to California as an immigrant. He remembers being amazed by the fresh fruit, the oranges and bananas, that were unknown to him as a child, except as props in picture books.

I am grateful to hear such immigration stories, for they remind us of how lucky we are to live in a country that attracts talented and eager people from all parts of the world. My friend and former student Kitty, for example, impressed me and all her friends when she earned her Commercial Driver’s License, and then started driving 18-wheelers back and forth across America.

As you can read about in Kitty’s most recent blog entry, when she came to the US from China at 13, this artist and future truck driver was bewildered by religion. A number of life experiences opened her mind and her heart, and now she has just been accepted to Harvard Divinity School, whose graduates include Ralph Waldo Emerson. Kitty’s personal statement convinced me of her readiness to join such august company. Here is a favorite section:

Being distanced from religion growing up, I found an eager and respectful openness to many faiths as I explored them. Last year, I began studying texts across three major religions: Catholicism, Buddhism, and Daoism. From Summa Theologica to The Diamond Sutra to I-Ching, everything I read seemed meaningful yet ambiguous: God is absolutely simple, yet omnipotent.

Kitty was a star student in the large Introduction to Poetry class that I taught to 100 mostly freshmen and sophomores in the fall of 2005, the quarter that my son Truman was born. Whether it’s an elderly Hungarian man whose shock of white hair likens him to Magneto, or a truck-driving hospice chaplain from China, I feel lucky to get to meet so many impassioned and creative people because of my jobs here in California, including my opportunity to interact with new and established friends on Monday nights at a favorite restaurant.

 

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions of travel, as Elizabeth Bishop would say, as well as urban greetings, operating systems, Elisabeth Hasselbeck (which is much more enjoyable to say than to watch), baseball in the movies, recognizable titles in alphabetical order, midwest surprises, times when the eyes have it, muses, the weather, fitness, the 25 biggest crowds, counties, beasts, beloved authors who jolt rinks, the question of scuba, state capitals, dead celebrities, a place where you could wash your elephant, butter, the tarmac blues, nationalism, layabouts, current events, resting places, bones, sports jerseys, US states, crowded staterooms, people whose life journey took them from Utah to Hawaii, taking power, something mentioned in the newsletter, and Shakespeare.

 

Tonight’s swag will be provided by Screaming Squeegee, which somehow claimed the valuable Squeegee.com internet property many years ago. As you probably know, Screaming Squeegee provides custom-printed apparel and promotional products for regional businesses and non-profits. If you have a logo, and I suppose our Pub Quiz needs one, the screamers could help you display it on shirts, hats, decals and even beer glasses. I thank graphic designer Claire Impens and her friends from Screaming Squeegee for their support of the Pub Quiz.

 

Happy spring break, if that applies to you. If I can drive all the way back from Lake Tahoe for tonight’s event, I bet you could drive or bike downtown to de Vere’s Irish Pub Davis this evening for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz. See you then.

 

Your Quizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

 

 

1. Internet Culture. PDFs can be opened by just about any word processor or operating system. What do the letters PDF stand for?

 

1. Newspaper Headlines.  Marvin Gaye’s family has won $7.4 million in a trial involving what recent pop song?

 

1. Companies Whose Names Start with K. BLANK Industries is the second-largest private company in the U.S., with interests in manufacturing, trading, and investments. Name the company.

 

1. European Rivers. Ulm, the birthplace of Albert Einstein, is a city on the banks of what river?

 

1. Pop Culture – Music. Of the 13 major genres of music, which was the only genre to have its digital album sales decline, year-on-year, between 2011 and 2012?

 

 

 

 

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

 

Some of us in the humanities remember the semester system fondly. Imagine being able to take semester-long classes with former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, former Oxford Professor of Poetry Sir Christopher Ricks, or radical historian Howard Zinn, as I did as an undergraduate at Boston University. Elie Wiesel and Saul Bellow also taught at BU around the time that I was there, and we got to share them with our classmates for a full 15 weeks.

 

Today at UC Davis the scientists have set our academic calendar. With so many requirements to fulfill, the biologists and engineers rush from class to class, and from quarter to quarter, thankful for the jam-packed variety, as well as the substance, of their challenging classes. Meanwhile, the English majors are left to complain about the number of novels that have to be read over the course of a ten-week quarter before being evaluated on all of them. Not much time is left for reflection.

 

In my experience, the end of the quarter is even more jam-packed, as students who have take a somewhat lackadaisical attitude towards attendance and participation attempt to make up for their previous absences all at once, asking for extra appointments, and coming to those appointments with long lists of questions, the answers to many of which can be found in the syllabi and lecture notes of their classmates. I oblige, for I feel I should reward curiosity and a hunger for technoculture wherever I encounter them.

 

My quarter has also been packed. In fact, I feel like it was only two days ago that I presented a pub quiz. Because I did! Once a year on a Saturday I host a bonus quiz, a fundraiser for Davis Sunrise Rotary, a group of civic-minded friends who enjoy each other’s company, and that of guest speakers, every Friday morning around dawn. Saturday’s event featured a number of regulars from the Pub Quiz (hence the need for an entirely new Quiz), as well as some irregulars whom I typically see only for one Quiz a year. Each team played for a different charity, with the team who was playing for Acme Theatre Company taking the top prize, a significant percentage of all the money raised at this local event. Congrats to the Acme team, including its captains, Lucas Frerichs, Susan Miller, Emily Henderson, and Don Saylor.

 

I realize when I host two such events a week how much all that cheerful performing and badinage take out of me. Here are five questions I asked on this past Saturday, also known as Pi Day:

 

1. Rearrange these numbers so that they represent Pi: 113459.

 

2. Pi is the ratio of a circle’s WHAT to its WHAT?

 

3. How do we represent Pi with fractions?

 

4. What four-letter word describes the patters of numbers that come after the decimal point in Pi?

 

5. Who was the Greek mathematician to first derive an accurate approximation of Pi?

 

What do you think? Too easy?

 

Tonight’s Pub Quiz is much more likely to include an Irish question than another Pi question. Cilian Murphy, anyone? Expect also questions about Lakes, lines, Ireland (see?), movies, documents, industries, rivers, digital album sales, mottos and logos, counties, ploys, princesses, biology, J words, birthdays, Twitter, repeated watchings, pleasure, people who decorate in brass, important publications, popular songs, people from Tennessee, Newmen, giants, preachers, newspapers, water everywhere, the south side of Chicago, basketball and football, ancient Greeks, and Shakespeare. There will be no questions this week on the word “badinage.”

 

Joshua Clover is reading at the Natsoulas Gallery Thursday. I invite you to Google him to confirm that he’s a big deal. His team has also won the Pub Quiz a few times, but not for years.

 

See you tonight!

 

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

 

 

P.S. Thanks to everyone who attended my birthday party last week!