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

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

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

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

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?

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?

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

The Radical Empathy Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on April 6, 2015

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

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

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?

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?

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.

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.

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.

The Questions of Indiana Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on March 30, 2015

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

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

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.

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

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.”

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.

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

The Unexpected Sprinkling of Snow Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on March 23, 2015

The View Outside my Window

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

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

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

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

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.

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

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?

The Too Busy for Pi(e) Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on March 16, 2015

Sir Christopher Ricks

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:

Rearrange these numbers so that they represent Pi: 113459.

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

How do we represent Pi with fractions?

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

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

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

Dr. Andy’s Birthday Celebration Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on March 9, 2015

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I really hope you can join me for the Pub Quiz tonight, for it’ll be one big party. A couple dozen friends will be stopping by right after the Quiz to wish me a happy birthday starting at 9:15 or so), and to hear the UC Davis all-female a cappella group The Spokes perform at 10. I would relish the chance to introduce you to some of these folks.

A different group of culture-lovers will be congregating at International House Thursday night starting at 6:30 in order to hear poems in multiple languages for International Poetry Night. One of my favorite local poets, Francisco Alarcon, will be performing works from his new book. Sick Spits will also be performing a few pieces.

Then Saturday the 14^th I will be hosting a bonus Pub Quiz for charity titled The Rotary Trivia Challenge. All the money raised goes to the different charities that individual teams decide to play for, as well as to support the good work of the Rotarians. Food and drink will be provided.

And then the following Thursday (March 19^th) Joshua Clover will be reading at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Clover has a new book out, Red Epic. Often in the news, Clover is a professor of English at UC Davis, and an author in multiple genres.

Aren’t we lucky to live in Davis? I hope to see you at two or more of these events, starting tonight with my birthday party. The only present I need is your presence.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on bridges, suburbs, counties, states, countries, flags, famous progeny, cities that beat out Davis, luddites foiling government investigators, Bucks, Nobel Prizes, clay, US presidents, male solo artists, male duet artists, clerks, coaches, natural life, American poets, American heroes, shields, sent money, comedy, parody, networks, sweetness, unfortunate movie choices, famous days, representatives, pop stars from a long time ago, contradictions, wildness, Celts, enterprises, tinkerers, baseball, basketball, and Shakespeare. You will not be asked five questions on me or my birthday, for that would unfairly advantage the people who travel with me to de Vere’s Irish Pub on Monday nights.

See you this evening!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. What brand of candy has asked us repeatedly, “Isn’t Life Juicy”?

Internet Culture. Warren Buffett was born in a year ending with a zero. What was that year? That had

Newspaper Headlines. US Senator Barbara Mikulski today announced her planned retirement from representing the state with the highest per capita income, and the oldest state capitol still in continuous legislative use. Name this densely-populated state.

Actors and Actresses. Born in 1981, what actor named Chris has appeared in movies that have grossed more than any other actor named Chris (in major roles, not counting cameos or bit parts).

Pop Culture – Music. What is the five-letter name of the most prominent genre of electronic dance music that originated in Chicago in the early 1980s?

The Tito’s Laughter-Silvered Wings Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on March 2, 2015

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Where does courage come from? In part, from those who inspire us. March finds me thinking about mentors the way that supermarkets find Ginsberg thinking about Whitman.

Have your read Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California”? It’s the most famous of his Berkeley poems from when he lived on Milvia Street, not far from my own Berkeley neighborhood when I moved there 35 years after the poem’s composition.

The poem begins this way.

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Walt Whitman, for I walked down the

streets under the trees with a headache self-conscious looking at the full moon.

In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit

supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations!

What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles

full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! — and you,

Garcia Lorca, what were you doing down by the watermelons?

I saw you, Walt Whitman, childless, lonely old grubber, poking among the

meats in the refrigerator and eyeing the grocery boys.

I heard you asking questions of each: Who killed the pork chops? What price

bananas? Are you my Angel?

Later in the poem, Ginsberg’s speaker calls Walt Whitman his “lonely old courage-teacher.” On March 2^nd I think always of my own (young) courage teacher, and my closest childhood friend, a boy named Tito.

My constant companion, Tito taught me about not only courage, but also about curiosity, audacity, humor, and action. Tito had a bias towards action, moving always towards some goal or another: a girl he was courting, a running goal he was achieving, an artistic goal he was exploring, a philosophical goal that he was considering. I remember visiting him in his Hartford dorm-room, and answering his questions about T.S. Eliot (whom I was studying that semester). I remember wondering how, as a double major in philosophy and physics, Tito knew so much about poetry.

Incessantly curious, Tito never limited himself to any particular subject. He studied Native American culture, and was welcomed into tribal conversations that I, being part Cherokee, never experienced. He studied aeronautics, and then flew solo across the country to visit Kate and me in Sacramento. Was he my angel? Picking him up at Sacramento International Airport, I felt like I knew Lindberg! He studied art and illustration, and published his drawings of an archeological dig on the cover of the Science section of the New York Times.

When we were children, Tito reminded me every March that he would always be eight days older than me. Tito could do so much, but my courage-teacher could not predict the future. As another poem put it, Tito has “slipped the surly bonds of earth, / And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings,” leaving me to smile at our inside jokes, and to celebrate his birthdays without him.

Happy birthday, Tito.

Tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions about Apple computers, conquerors, well-being, people named Chris, Chicago music, the Olympics, wizards, ganglia, the value of debt, Ordinary People, the greatest of all triumphs, Jupiter, bantamweights, familiar soundtracks, Leonard Nimoy, that which is common, Chinese culinary plays titled The Wonton, sage, years ending in zero, midwestern masters, cockroaches, mislabeled catwomen, Variety, hunger, the European Union, austerity and other topics, Geography, American states, and Shakespeare.

As you might have surmised from my discussion of Tito, above, my birthday is coming up, and I expect that the Pub will help me throw a party after next week’s Pub Quiz (March 9). Will you join us? The complimentary finger food and singing will begin at about 9:30. Can you believe that some of my friends don’t even know that I host our Pub Quiz? I hope you will meet some of those folks on March 9. Rather than considering gifts, please consider making a donation to your community radio station, KDVS.

A Wide Open Open Mic takes place on March 5^th at the Natsoulas Gallery. This means that even you could perform something, if you arrive early enough to add your name to the list. I hope you do. We start at 8. Music and prose will be performed, as well as poetry.

See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. What product completes this commercial slogan? “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s BLANK.”

Internet Culture. In the US, as well as worldwide, the first two most-visited websites are Google and Facebook. What is the third?

Newspaper Headlines. Takanobu Ito will step down from his post as the CEO of what automaker in June?

Mountains. What white mountain is the highest in the Alps and the highest peak in Europe outside of the Caucasus range?

Sports. What Spanish tennis player, nicknamed “The King of Clay,” is regarded as the finest clay court player in history?

The Gymnasts Like Tomahawks Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on February 23, 2015

Picture by JLHopgood (Flickr)

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

The modern gym is a playground for adults where children are rarely tolerated. I was excited that a gym was being built a block from my home in south Davis, but I soon discovered that it was a gym for gymnasts, with not much there for an adult to do. On the first Saturday after they opened, my nine-year-old son Truman insisted that we check out the open house, and so we went.

A place where the coaches and young gymnasts take their sport seriously, Davis Diamonds offers plenty of room for tumbling, swinging on rings, pivoting round and round a pommel horse and attempting to remain parallel on parallel bars. Perennial non-participants, we parents were invited to watch all the activity from movable benches and stools on the west wall, tapping our toes to the quick and familiar beats of Abba and Parliament Funkadelic.

Just as we parents were growing accustomed to the irregular sounds of unstructured play, the perky coaches interrupted our complacent reverie (and our children’s freedom) by clapping rhythmically in patterns that all the gym’s regulars recognized and soon mimicked. This unexpected percussion signaled the end of free play and the time for us to focus attention on exhibitions of talent put on by the “girls’ team” and the “boys’ team.”

Ladies first. The girls sped towards the floor exercises with the sort of power and grace that neophyte gymnastics spectators such as myself see only on television, and even then typically only once every four years. The most practiced of these powerful sprites spent much of their time in the air, bouncing about as if their legs and spines were made of springy coils. Flipping backwards and forwards, often not letting their feet touch the ground, these young women in spandex seemed to spinon an invisible shoulder-high pivot, rotating impossibly like thrown tomahawks.

The young men resembled extras in kung fu films. With the grips of veteran mountaineers, they clasped the smooth high bars or rings, their chalked gloves protecting them from friction, and then hurled themselves forward in ever quickening circles, exploring centrifugal forces like muscled propellers. Their arms and torsos showed an independent understanding of angles, pitch, and propulsion; they twitched with anticipation and aspiration, and with each rotation, these young men inched closer and closer to unassisted flight. Already accomplished athletes, the oldest among these young men was merely a high school senior.

The tumblers’ peers cheered them on by name, while the rest of us—parents and supporters—applauded after each improbable feat was completed. Some children just watched in stunned silence, hoping for a future of such strength and grace. Their awe and the genuine applause softened my skepticism about the need for such a gym in the neighborhood.

One little girl also heard the applause. Perhaps three years old, she was relishing open play at Davis Diamonds. Her brown curls pulled back into a ponytail, this tot suddenly found no line for the long and narrow trampoline while everyone else was watching the show. Unsteady at first, but with increasing speed, she heaved herself with uneven bounces towards a pit filled with blue cubes of foam, landing with great joy while at the same time a muscle-bound boy dismounted from the rings. As the auditorium filled with applause, she scrambled out, thinking that the ovation was for her alone. With her eyes squeezed shut, she bowed towards the crowd with her arms stretched out like wings, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a confident smile.

And just like that, a gymnast was born in Davis!

With regard to hints, for many of you the salient part of these newsletters, tonight’s Pub Quiz will surely feature questions on the 87^th Academy Awards. What did you think of the telecast, or of the big winners, such as Birdman? I watched the ceremony on television, noting what topics would make for good pub quiz questions. Any Oscar ceremony makes me think of hundreds of other favorite films, and the importance of film as a shared receptacle of storytelling, entertainment and culture. Expect also questions on the Grammy Awards, online video, the importance of money, Mexican culture, Irish culture, British culture, car companies, Dickens, poetry, the City of Davis, chemistry, cities I have never visited, organs, several questions I haven’t written yet, for my life is packed with responsibility and joyous time spent with family and friends, and so is yours, and Shakespeare.

Perhaps tonight I should ask you to remind me on what nights one can enjoy performances at the poetry Night Reading Series. Just so you know, those events take place on first and third Thursdays of the month, as you can discover at PoetryInDavis.com.

See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Internet Culture. To Irish sports fans, GUI stand for the Golfing Union of Ireland. To what internet topic does the GUI acronym refer?

Newspaper Headlines. A crucial meeting of Eurozone finance ministers over the future of what country’s bailout broke down in acrimony today?

American Cities. Starting with R, what US city of 233K people is 735 m. from Phoenix, 578 m. from Portland, and 2996 m. from the other Portland?

Pop Culture – Music. Ranked by VH1 as number 14 in their special 100 Greatest Artists of Hard Rock, what Seattle grunge rock band was formed in 1984 by singer and rhythm guitarist Chris Cornell, lead guitarist Kim Thayil, and bassist Hiro Yamamoto, and had a number one album in 1994 with Superunknown?

Science. What plural R word refers to mammals that are able to acquire nutrients from plant-based food by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion, principally through bacterial actions?

P.S. Have you made it to the end of the newsletter? I thank you. Here is a poem I read today.

The Quieted Cablecars Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on February 16, 2015

The View of San Francisco from our Hotel

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz!

San Francisco! I’ve been there since Thursday, giving or moderating around ten talks at the San Francisco Writers Conference, as I have done now for the past 11 years. I enjoyed three moments among my conferees the most.

The first happened right at the start: Thursday afternoon I was getting ready to enjoy a presentation by Sam Horn on turning a non-fiction book into speaking opportunities, when I received a text from one of the conference organizers. Evidently the road closures associated with President Obama’s stay at the Fairmont Hotel across the street from us had shut down the famous cable cars, thus delaying one of the speakers. The texted question: Could Dr. Andy give this missing presenter’s talk, starting right now? Of course I would. As I walked into the room, I just asked one question before beginning my remarks: What was the title of my talk?

My second favorite moment was welcoming Kate to the conference. This was the first time in 11 years that she could join me, so I really relished the opportunity to introduce her to my dozens of friends there, many of whom I have enjoyed yearly reunions with for five years or longer. I also loved watching Kate experience the majesty of the city through her eyes. I know the area around the International Mark Hopkins Hotel pretty well by now, but Kate the photographer helped me see it anew. She pointed out contrasts between the jagged landscape and the faraway water, the glorious illuminated sky at sunset, and the need to take all photographs in portrait mode, so as to capture the unreasonable hills and perched skyscrapers. Her photographs suggest why Wayne Thiebaud finds such inspiration in the painted urban mountains of this great city.

My third favorite moment was the dancing.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature an appearance by the team of one of the keynote speakers of the San Francisco Writers Conference, our own John Lescroart. I’ve even added the mention of a Lescroart title to one of the questions, though I don’t think this will advantage his team unduly. I should have asked five questions about books or the book industry, considering everything I learned over the weekend, but instead I went in a historical direction, in homage to my son Truman the history buff, who included a sinking Titanic on his valentine’s day card to me.

Also expect questions about multinational companies, empowerment, bats, the golfing Union of Ireland, the two big cities named Portland, plasma, VH1 hard rock favorites, right fielders, famous living Brits, St. Valentine’s Day, pitcher debuts, numbers that are multiplied by 365, hunters, first lines of poems, presidential endings, the rise and fall of big cities, Irish history, trinities, chambers, women who take charge, silver certificates, coed strippers, that which is lost, Cuba, ribbons and other decorations, people who proclaim their names, plant-based food, the many mickeys, Irish culture, and Shakespeare.

With Lescroart and his team claiming a table, and all the Lescroart fans coming for a glimpse or autograph of the New York Times bestselling author, we will surely sell out tonight. Plan accordingly, so that you needn’t sit outside. There will be time enough for that once it warms up significantly, such as later in February.

See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. Sports apparel company Adidas used a commercial slogan that tells us that “Impossible is WHAT”? Some of you rewrote this slogan to say that “impossible is possible.” Adidas used something much more definitive.

Internet Culture. What city of 837,000 people is home to the headquarters of the transportation company Uber?

Newspaper Headlines. Which of the following is closest to the percentage of late Hall of Famer Dean Smith’s athletes who earned their undergraduate degrees at University of North Carolina? 40, 60, 80, or 100%.

Four for Four. Which of the following US States, if any, is home to one or more of the 25 tallest waterfalls in the world? Alaska, California, Hawaii, Wyoming. Speaking of Wyoming, this past weekend I enjoyed a ten-minute conversation with former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson and his wife. One of their daughters owns an art gallery in Cody.

Wisconsin Republicans. What is the name of the Wisconsin governor who scored first in the recent Iowa poll of Republican presidential hopefuls?

P.S. Katie Peterson, a recent hire at UC Davis, will be the featured poet at Poetry Night. You should really join us Thursday night at 8 at the Natsoulas Gallery.

The Swag Fishing in Davis Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on February 9, 2015

Downtown Davis at on a warm February night. Photo by Kate Duren.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I really love living in Davis. Having grown up in Washington DC, I thought I would remain a big city person for my entire life. I found all sorts of reasons to be intellectually and aesthetically excited at home with my parents, and in the city as a whole. My mom was a librarian, sparking my lifelong interest in reading, and my father was a theatre director, and then a film and theatre critic, sparking my lifelong interest in the performing arts.

I get to call upon both of these enthusiasms in the classroom and on Monday evenings with you fine people. Generally, I have found that Davis offers many of the attractions of a big city – a quorum of curious and cultured people, literary and theatrical attractions, almost enough live music, and a big university. I spent many more hours biking (and running) in DC than I did driving, so Davis feels comfortable to me in that respect, as well.

Children can sometimes be nuisances to business owners – certainly I was as a child and teenager – but as an adult I have found myself welcomed by the businesses in town. Perhaps that’s because we tend to spend all our money here. I have found de Vere’s Irish Pub to be a place where everyone knows your name, or at least my name, but the staff here are as conscientious as they are friendly.

Do you have favorite Davis businesses upon whom you depend?

With regard to realtors, for example, Chad DeMasi helped us sell and buy our last and current home, and he is well known in Davis for his excellent customer service. In 2014, we referred two friends to Chad to help sell their homes, and they were both extraordinarily pleased with the help they received from Chad.

Chad and his lovely wife Grace attend the Pub Quiz infrequently, for they have many duties and two energetic sons, but one local realtor who attends the Pub Quiz almost every week is Caitlin McCalla. Caitlin sits at my wife Kate’s table, proving herself to be knowledgeable about a wide variety of substantive and trivial topics, as well as Davis real estate. I would be glad to introduce you to her some Monday evening.

Kate and I see just about every movie that comes to the Varsity Theatre, for we remember well once having to drive to Sacramento to see artsy or independent films. Both The Varsity and Mishka’s Café, where I have met with hundreds of students over the decades, have provided swag for me to give away at the Pub Quiz.

Nina Gatewood of the Haute Again consignment shop has also provided gift certificates to players of our Pub Quiz. Nina has been active in promoting a thriving downtown for all of us to enjoy, and clothes options that take our city-wide “recycling” sentiment to heart. I appreciate anyone who gives us an alternative to some big box store in a suburban shopping plaza.

Professor John Iacovelli and others from the Department of Theatre and Dance attend the Pub Quiz most weeks, often with free tickets in hand for those teams who are lucky enough to win 4^th place. For instance, a new production of the play Woyzeck by Georg Buchner, and adapted by Neil Labute, will be directed by Granada Artist in Residence Bob McGrath starting on February 26^th. Perhaps John will join us tonight with more tickets to this show.

Tammy Hengel, owner of Davis Swim and Fitness in South Davis, provided free month gift certificates during most of 2014, and her generosity continues into 2015. That’s the gym where I catch up with my podcasts and with my running quotas. Perhaps I will see you there later this month.

The local fiction authors John Lescroart, Catriona McPherson, and Eileen Rendahl have all kindly donated their own books to the Pub Quiz effort, and then offered to sign them afterwards. Local compounding pharmacist Chuck Snipes has also donated books, games, and any number of doodads for me to share. He and his team have won more prize money from this Quiz than anyone else, so I suppose it is only fitting that they give back.

With regard to swag, I am just about out of rubber dinosaurs and frogs (thanks, Evan), though I seem to have an endless supply of academic books to share. If you know of a downtown Davis business that deserves to be highlighted for its good deeds, or for its donations to our weekly competition, please put them in touch with me. I also welcome your comments on YourQuizmaster.com.

Otherwise, I will start visiting the kids’ rooms in order to collect more of those offbeat white elephants that swag winners so appreciate.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about shoes, corporate headquarters, the attractions of western states, drumsticks, Iowa, astronomers and what they see, nails, pelicans, Nigerian athletes, people named Richard, doctors named Priscilla, Biblical quotations that become book titles, nails, summer projects, forgotten countries, sky, people who look like double rainbows to you, principal authors, art and art history, overlapping age-spans, Auguries of Peter and other anagram bait hints, touching articles about braces, cat men, the irascibility of Whoopi Goldberg, Carthaginians, unusual mathematics words, male horses, creatures that weigh less than camels, basketball, and Shakespeare. And happy 71^st birthday to Alice Walker!

I hope you enjoyed last week’s newsletter about my daughter Geneva finally stepping out of her back brace for good. A version of that essay was published Saturday in the Sacramento Bee. If you subscribe to the paper version of the Bee – as I do the online version – I would love it if you could cut out the article from Saturday’s opinion page and bring it by the pub. I haven’t yet seen it in paper form.

Thanks, and see you tonight!

Your Quizmaster