Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

What a week it has been since last we congregated at the Irish Pub for intellectual challenges and revelry! Here’s how my wife Kate put it on Facebook:

The myriad details of most days disappear from my mind by the end of the week. Friday was different — I suspect that June 26, 2015 will remain etched in many of our minds for years to come. My typical summer day includes carting my three kids to various activities all over the Sacramento valley. On that day, in between and throughout the swimming lessons and camp and medical appointments and therapy, I remained fixed on satellite radio following reports of the day’s events. And when I heard President Obama’s voice as he began to eulogize the nine church-goers slain in South Carolina, I stopped everything to listen to his remarkable performance.

A week like the last one takes a while to process and digest, and in my house, we’ve been talking about little else. Truman’s excitement, his consciously absorbing history as we all live through it, infects us with his hopefulness and curiosity. Tonight Andy and I plan to sit down with the kids to watch the eulogy together. During a week as memorable and important as this one, I’m so proud of my president and of my country.

Today’s news from the Supreme Court was less good from my ecologically-informed Davis perspective, with a ruling about the EPA’s restrictions on power-company smokestacks. According to today’s Washington Post, “The court’s 5-to-4 decision halts further implementation of the Mercury and Air Toxic Standards rule, which required hundreds of coal-burning plants to install equipment to control mercury, a substance linked in multiple studies to respiratory illnesses as well as birth defects and developmental problems in children.”

That setback aside, last week will be remembered for the decisions on Obamacare and Marriage Equality, and for the sad events that have catalyzed southern states to re-examine its relationship with the Confederate Battle Flag. Do you agree with President Obama that our union is somewhat more perfect because of the strong steps forward made by our country in June, 2015?

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on some of the topics raised above, as well as composers, U.S. Presidents, the Caribbean, flags, Twitter, rainbows, bankruptcies, A&M Records, tennis, seeking to please in Latin, Massachusetts politicians, thorns, Finnish bullets, TV antagonists, the San Francisco Bay, alien invasions, adorable puns, marriage equality, revision, numbers that are divisible by 15, stars, hymns, beautiful titles, seasickness, populous islands, Cyprus, Harry Potter, red birds, the USDA, and Shakespeare.

See you this evening!

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 raucous quiz:

1. Film. Inside Out has been released to widespread acclaim and box-office success. Divisible by five, what is the total number full-length films released by Pixar?

1. Countries of the World. The names of eight of the 14 most populous cities in South Korea end with the same letter. What is that letter?

1. Consecutive Integers. The sum of the least and greatest of 3 consecutive integers (numbers in a row) is 60. What are the values of the 3 integers?

1. Science. Starting with the letter M, small grains of what common iron oxide (with a chemical formula Fe3O4) occur in almost all igneous and metamorphic rocks?

1. Sports. Starting with the letter B, what is the last name of the Cleveland Cavaliers head coach who said that it has been a “great honor” to work with LeBron James this season?

P.S. Congratulations to my son Truman, the nine-year-old actor who will portray Miles Standish on stage at B Street Theatre in Sacramento this evening, in a production called Many Plays by Children, a title that Truman came up with himself. He and I will be performing at the same time this evening, but in different cities, so I will get to see his dress rehearsal this afternoon while the rest of our family, and many friends, see Truman’s Sacramento premiere tonight.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Fathers have it lucky, to have the longest day of the year devoted to them. Or so said my son Truman as we drove home from the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, noting that it was still light at 9 PM.

We got to talk to one of the foremost dads of Davis, Bob Dunning, after a Saturday viewing of the new Pixar film Inside Out. Bob and my wife Kate delighted in the film for the same reason: it’s wise commentary on human emotions and personality. Because of the attentive shepherding of Bob and Shelley, the four Dunning children who listened to our conversation seem to be controlled by the emotions of “Patience” and “Equanimity.” My kids, meanwhile, seem to be controlled by “wanderlust” and “boisterousness.”

Speaking of what controls our personalities, my wife Kate and I took the same psychology class in London in the mid-1980s, and since then we have shared observations on the strange choices made by our friends and, later, our children. Lewis Black almost stole the film with his spot-on impression of anger, but Kate and I were even more excited to discover Paula Poundstone’s role as a “Forgetter,” one of those necessary creatures who vacuums up and gets rid of the unnecessary facts and memories in our heads, such as the phone numbers of our best friends from childhood.

Tito’s phone number was 337-7653. I couldn’t tell you the phone numbers of any of my friends today. Thanks, Google.

I recommend the film, and I recommend you checking out the writing of Bob Dunning to see if any Pixar imagery appears in his commentary in the coming days. Some films, like some memories, are haunting.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on Pixar, dads, scattered celebrities, the state of Utah (where I spent all last week), iPhones, integers, hot tellers, NBC, basketball, hungry antagonists, photography, hit-makers, football, cell phone market penetration, going gluten-free, Best Actor nominees, exuberance, impressive queens, superheroes, dogs, sweet barhops and other plurals, former dance scholars, Philadelphia pride, eco-friendly golf, invented titles of big books, the culture of Ireland, mathematics (for my teachers off for the summer), minerals, best-sellers, honors, Drood, Bangladesh, and Shakespeare.

I hope you will join us tonight. It’ll be good to see you.

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. Dudes Named Claude. Neither the actors Claude Raines nor Claude Akins, nor the composer Claude Debussy is the most famous Claude who ever lived. Born in the 19th century, who WAS the world’s most famous Claude?

1. Pop Culture – Music. The title of Maroon 5’s highest charting song right now shares a name with a short-chain, soluble carbohydrate that most of us consume every day. What’s the one-word title of the song?

1. Sports.   According to ESPN, what left fielder born in 1918 was the best player ever for the Boston Red Sox?

1. Science.   What does the Scoville Heat Unit Scale measure?

1. Pop Culture – Television.   Tinky Winky was the name of a character on what children’s TV show?

P.S. Please send Pub Quiz topic suggestions to your Quizmaster at yourquizmaster@gmail.com or @yourquizmaster.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

One of my favorite Davis Enterprise columnists is Debra DeAngelo because of her engaging prose and the seeming reckless abandon with which she reveals whatever is on her mind. Like many of us, she holds multiple jobs and thus is overworked. In addition to her Enterprise gig, she has made a career of encouraging many other talented columnists. Here is part of her bio at iPinion: “Debra is a columnist with McNaughton Newspapers, editor of the Winters Express newspaper, and is co-founder, co-editor and CEO for iPinion Syndicate. She has five First Place awards from the National Newspaper Association for column writing, two Seconds and two Thirds, and four Firsts and three Seconds from the California Newspaper Publishers Association.” How impressive!

As you can see in yesterday’s Enterprise, last weekend Debra attended a talk I gave at the University of the Pacific Writers Conference on the morning routines that will make practitioners more focused and productive, titled “Productivity Lessons from High-Performing Authors and Thought Leaders.” Here’s what Debra said in her column titled “Writing conference a necessary and enlightening indulgence”:

Of all the classes I attended (each one top notch — hats off to UoP professor Scott Evans for putting this conference together!), the real takeaway gem was led by UC Davis professor/Poet Laureate Andy Jones.

No, it wasn’t about poetry. I hate to break anyone’s heart here, but I just don’t have the patience for poetry. Poetry usually leaves me fighting the urge to plunge my fingers into my eyes and slowly dig. Get to the damn point already!

Anyway.

Jones’ focus was “productivity,” something I supremely suck at. (We’re allowed to end sentences in prepositions now. I read it on the internets.) That may seem odd, given that I manage to produce a column every week. But that’s work, not my “real” writing: books, novels and screenplays I’ve mapped out in my head, and in some cases even started, and then abandoned after three chapters because they weren’t perfect.

“Perfectionism and How to Overcome It.” Scott Evans, please add that workshop to next year’s conference.

Jones offered all sorts of productivity tips, and gave examples of two “daily writing rituals” from highly productive authors. I liked the “ritual” concept, because it implies a practical method of accomplishing something, and accomplishing “something,” or “anything,” would be a vast improvement over what I’m accomplishing now.

Although I appreciated that my talk was so helpful, one of my favorite parts of this story took place later on Facebook. A Pub Quiz regular asked if Debra was referring to “Andy Jones the Quizmaster?” Debra wrote back, “No, professor and Poet Laureate at UC Davis!”

My wife has often questioned the odd division I have imposed between two of my different selves: that scholar who gives talks, publishes essays, and has taught at UC Davis for 25 years, and the imperious entertainer who asks Monday night questions about 50 Cent and igneous rocks. Debra DeAngelo stays pretty current with current events (such as the ongoing controversy about what chemicals may be found in the fabric of Chinese-made Victoria Secret brassieres), but somehow I was able to conceal my secret identity from this esteemed local writer who has been a Facebook friend since 2011.

Thanks for mentioning me in your most recent published essay, Debra! Turnabout is fair play. We will see if the editor of the Winters Express adds herself to the Your Quizmaster mailing list, or even joins us some Monday night for the fun at de Vere’s Irish Pub.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on U.S. states, flying cars, schools releasing their students, protocols, heat flares, attentive doctors, the difference between Bilbo and Bilbao, French dudes who are not named Debussy, homelessness, heavy lifting, famous raisins, animal titles, trilogies, interactive history exhibits, five-syllable words that start with the letter I, long roads ahead, bringing the heat, out of left field, short chains, colors other than optic yellow, marginal comments, faraway capitals, Tonys, famous neighborhoods, marijuana, famous feathers, courthouses, silly debuts, adding an E, and Shakespeare.

Congratulations to all our graduating Pub Quiz competitors, and welcome back to all the Blue Devil alumni who will be filling the packed pub this summer for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

See you tonight.

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 N product has used the slogan “Spread the happy”?

1. Internet Culture. Which Microsoft Windows operating system will arrive July 29 of this year? I’m looking for a number.

1. Newspaper Headlines. Divisible by 5, how much older is Hillary Clinton than her new Democratic primary opponent, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley?

1. Four for Four.    Which of the following Presidents of the United States, if any, attended the funeral of Eleanor Roosevelt? Calvin Coolidge, Dwight David Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Harry Truman.

1. Famous Actresses. What actress and singer whom you have heard of but have unlikely seen in a film dated all of the following people? Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, Greta Garbo, George S. Patton, Edith Piaf, Frank Sinatra, Adlai Stevenson, John Wayne, Joe Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and President John F. Kennedy. In some of these cases, “dated” is a euphemism. Name the actress and singer.

P.S. My UC Davis colleague Laurie Glover will be one of the featured poets at the June 18 Poetry Night. Joining her will be La Quinta (Coachella Valley) poet and teacher Laura Johnson-Bickford. In the late 1970s, Johnson-Bickford edited the book No Where Else in Town: The Davis Poetry Anthology. Anyone have a copy I could borrow?

Ballista

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Welcome to June! June 1^st marks the anniversary of the 1967 release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, ranked first on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the Greatest Albums of All Time. Considered by many to be the first “concept” album, SPLHCB inspired Bob Dylan to say to Paul McCartney “Oh I get it, you don’t want to be cute anymore.” Paul felt that they were done being boys, entertainers to tens of thousands of screaming (mostly female) fans. In the Barry Miles book Paul McCartney: Many Years From Now, Paul is quoted as saying “we’d now got turned on to pot and thought of ourselves as artists rather than just performers.”

I am intrigued by this idea of personal evolution, and of discovering the work that one is meant to do. This past weekend I touched on such topics in a couple talks presented at the University of the Pacific Writers Conference in Stockton. Organized by popular UOP professor and Davis resident Scott Evans, the conference gave participants an opportunity to discuss craft, writing genres (e.g., paranormal werewolf-centric romance novels), and the business of writing and publishing. One theme of the conference, and of perhaps of every writers conference in 2015, is that much of the money to be made by midlist authors will be made in what is now called independent publishing, thus necessitating the term “indie author.”

Joanna Penn’s definition could be helpful here: “At its most basic, indie means there is no separate publisher involved. Many indies may have setup their own micro-press, so their books still have a publisher name that is not the author’s name but the publisher is not one of the author services companies. The indie author most likely owns their own ISBNs. The indie pays the bills and is paid by the distributors e.g. Amazon/Smashwords directly. The only middleman is the distributor.”

(Did you know that Smashwords has an office right here in Davis? You could hit its roof with a ballista bolt shot from the roof of de Vere’s Irish Pub.)

So obviously it’s a lot of work to do, this becoming a publisher and publicist, as well as an author. We all have to decide how we are going to grow.

How does all this connect to The Beatles? Well, McCartney’s comment about members of the band seeing themselves as artists, and as men rather than boys, reminded me of a comment made this morning by a prominent local journalist who had attended my session titled “Productivity Lessons from High-Performing Authors and Thought Leaders.” The local author said this:

“If there was ONE thing from the creative writing conference workshop I attended over the weekend that is THE gem, THE game-changing thing I MUST do… it’s take responsibility for how I spend my time. (Thank you, Andy Jones!) So… I did that this morning. Got up at 5 a.m., paid attention to what I’m doing and for how long, and limiting my Facebook time. So: if you really need to reach me, please email/PM/call. I am trying (at the age of 55) to be an adult now.

Sayonara for now, and let’s start a new trend: Mindful Monday… how will YOU spend this 24 hours of your life?”

“Taking responsibility for how [she] spend[s her] time,” my friend the journalist has opted to become an adult at 55. Paul McCartney gave it a go at 24 and a half, while I myself am still struggling. But I agree with my friend that each of us should “pa[y] attention to what [we are] doing,” and resolve to spend our time in the ways that best help us reach our artistic, spiritual, and professional goals. What’s on your agenda?

Our Pub Quiz this evening won’t necessarily cover anything raised above. If I had weaved in talk of Helen Keller, Eleanor Roosevelt, Hillary Clinton, and a bunch of other notable American women, then that would have been relevant. Expect also questions about odd foods, Academy Awards, culminating contests, characters from Star Wars, best-selling authors, people seemingly named after birds, weak and unopinionated interlocutors, Canada, Ireland, film sequels, Presidents of the United States, static children, ladies born in faraway countries, the liberation that comes with defenestration, three-war veterans, famous Nobel Prize-winners, whether or not Sepp Blatter should go away, missile words, Scottish people, normal functions, “sports,” top sellers, Edith Piaf, the Kennedys, and Shakespeare.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz, filled with strong women, will be dedicated to Lisbeth Petty, one of my favorite players on one of my favorite teams, The Mavens. I have been sending the previous night’s Pub Quizzes to Lisbeth most weeks since learning of her cancer diagnosis, and was saddened to read of her passing last month. On behalf of all Lisbeth’s appreciative competitors, I send words of appreciation and condolence to the Petty family during this difficult time.

Lisbeth (also known as Lisa) was the Shakespeare expert on her team, so I shall conclude this week’s newsletter with some words from Shakespeare’s Sonnet #60:
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

I hope you can join us for the Pub Quiz this evening.

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. London Architecture. When its refurbishment is complete, an large private home in London, named Witanhurst, will have about ninety thousand square feet of interior space, making it the second-largest mansion in the city. What is the name of the largest mansion in the city?

1. Pop Culture – Music. What Billy Corgan band features a cultivar of the squash plant in its title?

1. Great Americans. What general had command of all Union armies in 1864?

1. Pop Culture – Television. Produced by Hanks and Spielberg, what American war drama miniseries won the 2001 Emmy and Golden Globe awards for best miniseries?

1. A Music Question About Dudes Named Josh. Who charted in 2007 as the number-one best selling artist in the United States, with over 22.3 million records in the nation?

P.S. The great Davis poet Francisco X. Alarcon will be reading at the John Natsoulas Gallery this coming Thursday evening at 7. There will be music, as well. You should join us.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Last night we sat down as a family to watch The Wizard of Oz, with all three of the children seeing it for the first time. My wife Kate and I had forgotten much of the Kansas part of the film, while the Technicolor sections remained vivid and familiar, perhaps because of the repeated playing of the soundtrack in my Washington DC home. The Wizard of Oz continues to be important to generations of young people, and remains the most watched film of all time, because of its implied commentary on the magic of filmmaking, and by extension, of the imagination. The scene of Dorothy stepping through the doorway, from sepia Kansas farmhouse to the rainbow-hued sculpted gardens of Munchkinland, reminds us that film and other arts can stir us to wonder, to curiosity, and to our own brave acts of creativity.

Filmgoers in America and elsewhere needed a cinematic never-land to escape to, for just a week after the release of the film, Germany invaded Poland, initiating World War II. Four years after the release of the film, Bob Hope introduced Judy Garland so she could sing “Over the Rainbow” for American troops fighting in World War II. The song had become an American anthem, where the eventual stability of post-war life stateside had become the “somewhere” of the song’s refrain, rather than the film’s earlier focus on escaping Kansas.

Music and other arts can sustain us during trying times, including during international conflict. Churchill is purported to have been a fan of the arts. It was once suggested to Winston Churchill that he cut funding to the arts to pay for Britain’s war, to which he responded “Then what would we be fighting for?” Sadly, no one could find a precise source for this popular quotation which has been pasted as a meme on a thousand Facebook walls. We do know that French Canadian author Gabrielle Roy said, “Could we ever know each other in the slightest without the arts?” The source? The back of every Canadian $20 bill. Do Britain and Canada know something about the arts that we have not embraced in the U.S., home to Judy Garland, Jackson Pollock, and Jazz?

We have used our homespun creativity to remember those who have given their lives so that we might freely debate such topics. Since the Civil War, we have chosen a Monday in the spring to celebrate our war dead by decorating their tombstones with the plethora of available flowers, another example of Americans using creativity and artistry to brighten all of our lives, even during an otherwise somber occasion. Happy Memorial Day to you and your families. Let’s remember that today’s holiday was earned.

Some of the aforementioned topics will come up on today’s and future pub quizzes. Expect also questions on English kings, thrilling finishes, mansions, Nobel prizes, Emily Dickinson, poisons, unexpected tallies, European destinations, GDP in Euros, Kurt Russell, familiar books, linguistics, Captains, serving requests, beer, rainbow varieties, a hero’s broader worth, purposeful flowers, courage, general command, public enemies, squash cultivars, London real estate, video games, imagined destinations, and Shakespeare.

See you this evening!

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. Film. The Breath of God, The Word of God and The Path of God are the names of the three tests that what recognizable cinematic hero had to pass to reach the Holy Grail?

1. Irish Culture. Are potatoes the 1st, second, third, or fourth world’s largest food crop?

1. Countries of the World. According to a 2010 survey from the Pew Research Center’s Religion & Public Life Project, 80% of the people in Burma practice what religion?

1. Standing Armies. Starting with the letter C, and about 4400 kilometers from Los Angeles, what country permanently abolished its army in 1949, becoming the first of only a few sovereign nations without a standing army?

1. Science. How long does it take sunlight to reach the Earth? Is it closest to 8 seconds, 80 seconds, 8 minutes, or 80 minutes?

P.S. This summer I hope to launch a service that would allow Pub Quiz enthusiasts to subscribe to our weekly quiz. Do you know non-Davisites who might be interested in such an opportunity?

P.P.S. “Valor grows by daring, fear by holding back.” Publilius Syrus

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

When Time Magazine published an article last week about the bicycle-friendliest cities in America, of course Davis was on the list. Just about a quarter of our residents commute by bicycle, more than any other American city. Other cities like Chicago and Washington DC have recently installed new bike lanes, while Portland has been bike-friendly for years.

This image shows bicyclists peddling alongside the Taedong River across from the Juche Tower in Pyongyang, North Korea. The setting looks not too different from my teenage bike rides alongside the Reflecting Pool on the Mall in Washington DC. The river looks about as broad as the Potomac, a famous waterway that separated the towpaths where I would bike for hours with my dad, and the Commonwealth of Virginia across the way.

Bicycling has been a source of joy for me for more than 40 years, just as I hope it is a source of satisfaction in Pyongyang, where there are far fewer options, especially options for displays of what my friend Wrye Sententia would call “cognitive liberty.” Of course, Mark Twain reminds us (perhaps apocryphally) that “The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.” Could it also be said of bicycles, that the person who rides no bike in Davis has no advantage over those who own no bikes, or who don’t live in Davis?

Perhaps something similar could even be said about those of us who frequent our beloved Irish Pub. As Ray Oldenburg might remark, people who never attend their local café, family pub or other “third place” have no advantage over people who lack such advantages in their hometowns. We must support such places, I think, lest our future grandchildren be left to meet their friends only at the mall or the parking lot of every city’s Walmart.

And for the record, although I bike commute every day, I prefer to drive our Prius to the Irish Pub on Monday nights. We like to make sure that everyone from our circle of friends gets home safely after Monday night revels. As someone who moves from wine or a Moscow Mule to mineral water by halftime of the Quiz, I’m the best qualified to be a designated driver. I hope you also plan for such contingencies when traveling home from the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on comedy, literacy, royalty, preferences, foolish displays, long poems, the science behind the Beatles “little darlings,” diminution, that which was gladly abandoned in 1949, blonde actresses, world religions, staple foods, the Holy Grail, well-paid ghostwriters, extant cash, daily scientific measurements, literary wrestling, enshrined fame, personification, paying the rent, drummers, commentary on marriage, televised familiarity, philistinism, lonely gaps, ball categories, baseball, musical rumors, name the state, runners with vowels, frauds, corner stores, popular music, and Shakespeare.

Congratulations to rock and roll drummer and sentence algebra inventor Brad Henderson and his lovely girlfriend Sharon Campbell Knox, a couple of local authors who met each other at one of my Pub Quizzes, and who this week celebrate six years together. I don’t expect drummer Brad to join us tonight, but I’ve included one question especially for him.

UC Davis has a few weeks of school, yet, but many other smart people are done with school for the year, and they need the intellectual stimulation of Pub Quiz. Expect a crowd tonight.

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 insurance and financial services company has used the slogans “Own a Piece of the Rock” and “Strength of Gibraltar”?

1. Newspaper Headlines.  What plural M word completes this recent important news headline? “Marvel Confirms Scarlet Witch And Quicksilver Are No Longer BLANKS.”

1. World War II. Exactly how many years did ago this week did the Allies declare victory in Europe?

1. Four for Four.    Which of the following people with M nicknames were adversaries of Batman? The Mad Hatter, The Man-Bat, Metallo, Mr. Freeze.

1. Buddy Comedies. What is the title of the Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara buddy comedy that opened this weekend and that was not helped by critics, one of whom dubbed it “not in any way worth watching”?

P.S. Award-winning poet Greg Glazner and his band will be playing and sharing poetry this coming Thursday night. When Glazner is not teaching literature and writing classes at UC Davis, he is playing a mean and bluesy guitar at gigs throughout California. See Poetry in Davis for details, or just join us at the Natsoulas Gallery at 8.

Greg Glazner with Guitar

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

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 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?

Truman with Light Saber (photos by Kate)

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

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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.

Nepal Poet Yuyutsu Sharma

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

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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!