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

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. As of 1983, who calls itself “The world’s favourite airline”?

Internet Culture. With an Alexa rank of 46, what site is categorized into “subreddits”?

Newspaper Headlines. Dismantled sections of what structure can now be viewed in 30 countries?

Four for Four. Which of the following four US states, if any, have the word “commonwealth” in their official titles? Indiana, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia.

Veterans Day. Following the trench warfare which took place in the fields of Flanders during the 1st World War, what kind of P flower has become a symbol of remembrance of soldiers who have died during wartime?

P.S. Poetry Night is this coming Thursday night at the Natsoulas Gallery. Join us at 8 PM for traveling poet Betsy Rosenberg and Aggie alumni Judith Rose!

P.P.S. Thanks to John Iacovelli and Theatre and Dance at UC Davis for providing tickets to their new show, The Gambling Lady, as part of the swag prizes. Congratulations to The Moops, winners of last week’s swag.

The Lennon in a Cape Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on November 10, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

One of my favorite Beatles songs is the first track on their first album. Paul McCartney wrote most of “I Saw Her Standing There” when he was about the age of one of my college sophomores. There is actually a photograph of him working on the song that had been written in a high school exercise book, with John sitting next to him. Lennon helped to clean it up a little bit adding the second of the first two lines.

Well she was just 17

You know what I mean.

McCartney was dating a 17-year-old at the time and had originally rhymed the word “17” with beauty queen, as in she “had never been a beauty queen.” John made him change that to what we recognize today.

Now that my daughter Geneva has turned 17, I look at this favorite song differently. I want to say, “No, Mr. McCartney, I don’t know what you mean about my 17-year-old daughter. Could you please explain yourself, sir?”

Bill Mahr on his weekly TV show has recently complained about ageism and the extent to which youth culture dominates popular culture. Badly written pop songs with specious lyrics, insufficiently revised animated films, and the obsession with unaccomplished celebrities fill the pages of US Weekly and the website TMZ.

By definition, all of these topics are trivial, so you would expect them to be found as the correct answers to questions in a trivia contest. For me, as a quizmaster, I also see my role as educator, so I need to present that apt mix of substance, history, and the high points in world culture, and not just a faddish mix of video games and superheroes. That said, I do love superheroes. In my mind, when I was just 17, John Lennon wore a cape.

Today’s Pub Quiz will cover a number of topics, including Veterans Day, which we commemorate tomorrow. Expect also questions about high-ranking Alexa websites, disparate structures, the names of states, favorite flowers, Elizabeth Taylor, the Beatles, big cats, basketball, foreshadowing, ancient cities, comedians, platinum reflections, canes, turtles, superheroes, super villains, rainfall, South American animals, the absence of narrowness, Italy, Star Wars, tyrants, Geoffrey Chaucer, sports topics that I haven’t decided upon yet, the Harlem Renaissance, and Shakespeare.

I expect it to be really busy tonight, for we have a rare Tuesday holiday. Everyone is encouraged to stay out late tonight, and to sleep in tomorrow. But don’t sleep in too late, for you will be able to hear the Davis Madrigal Singers if you stop by the Davis Cemetery tomorrow starting at 11. This is what the Cemetery website says: “Our annual Veteran’s Day ceremony will begin at 11 AM on Tuesday November 11th and will last approximately one hour. Our keynote speakers will include Supervisor Jim Provenza, Supervisor Don Saylor and Supervisor Oscar Villegas. The Davis High Madrigal Singers will be on hand for a musical tribute to veterans and their families. This is a free event. Please join us!”

Also, join me this evening for an appropriate mix of the specious and the fabulous!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. Leo the Lion roared inside a frame in which was written “Ars Gratia Artis” (or Art For Art’s Sake) before the start of many old movies. Name the film studio.

Internet Culture. Academy Award-winning actor Kevin Spacey has been quoted saying “Call of Duty: Advance Warfare” is likely to become the first video game he ever plays. Why would he start with this game?

Newspaper Headlines. We learned this week that Channing Tatum will star in the title role of Marvel superhero movie about a onetime X-Man from Louisiana who is an expert at throwing cards. Name the X-Man.

Four for Four. Which of the following counties, if any, are among California’s three least-populous? Mariposa, Mendocino, Modoc, Mono.

German Festivals. What city of 1.4 million people is home to the largest Oktoberfest in the world, lasting for 16 days?

P.S. Thanks to Chuck Snipes from the Pub Quiz team Portraits for providing the swell swag last week. The gauntlet has been thrown – who shall provide future weeks’ swag (other than yours truly)?

The Nixon Applauding Politely Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on November 3, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Last Friday I got to visit San Francisco for a conference. Sometimes I wonder if I have a skewed view of that city, for I’m usually there to attend a conference in one of the city’s swankier hotels, such as the Mark Hopkins (every February for the San Francisco Writers Conference), and the Palace Hotel (for a UC-wide conference called UC Engage). The entryways, ballrooms and dining rooms of these five-star hotels are breathtakingly large for someone who has grown used to biking from a modest home to a 25-person classroom or a familiar conference room. As a city boy, I am still taken aback at the majesty and affluence represented by The City’s great halls.

I remember also being amazed at the size of the lobby of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC, where my parents attended opening night to see the 1971 premier performance of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. Bernstein was there that night, as was Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who commissioned the work to celebrate her late husband’s stewardship of the Arts as President. Although he was invited, then-president Richard Nixon did not attend. He said that he didn’t want to compete with Onassis for the attention of the press that night, but we have learned subsequently that Nixon’s paranoid advisors had other concerns. Bernstein’s FBI file revealed that he was a leftist and that he opposed the war in Vietnam. G. Gordon Liddy and others expected Bernstein to sneak progressive messages into the Latin sung during the performance, and that therefore Nixon, not known as a student of ancient languages, would not know what choruses to applaud politely, and which ones would warrant sitting on his hands, as some members of Congress do during the State of the Union Address. Imagine the embarrassment!

Tomorrow is Election Day (remember to vote), and I’m sure the pundits, who haven’t enough to talk about, will conduct some dimestore analyses of the current partisan deadlock, wondering if it started before, after, or during the time of Richard Nixon. Whatever the outcome, we can continue to smile at the composers and poets, such as myself, who sneak anti-authoritarian messages into their performed works, as I plan to do at the Davis City Council meeting Wednesday night. I plan also to sneak some such messages into the questions at tonight’s Pub Quiz, as I hope you will discover.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on lions, video games, Marvel superheroes, California counties, seasonal festivals, princes whose names start with F, Arizona, a mobilized White House, dead poets in London, cells with energy, Chinese exports, comedians, Asia, electricity, fiber, past colleges, bread, expired job titles, car slogans, the New York Stock Exchange, tennis vapors, Japan, animals, the last name of the fox, U.S. Presidents, representations of motion, mishaps in Toronto, beautiful women, film sequels, automobiles, and Shakespeare.

Speaking of beautiful women, tomorrow is my wife Kate’s birthday. What does such a bride deserve as a present? It’s too bad that the Pub Quiz doesn’t allow karaoke, or we might find out. Because it doesn’t, perhaps I will see you this evening!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans and Logos. What rock & roll band’s logo with a “tongue and lips” motif in 1970 was inspired in part by the Hindu goddess Kali?

Internet Culture. According to CNET, what I-word is Google using as the name of its “new killer email app”?

Newspaper Headlines. Revealed last week, what five-letter word completes the name of the most profitable company in the world (with 2013 income of $42.7 billion)? Industrial and Commercial Bank of BLANK.

Four for Four. Subcategory: Flatworms. Which of the following, if any, are characteristic of flatworms? They are bilaterian, they are invertebrates, they are segmented, they are trophoblasts.

Ebola. The Ebola Virus was named after what? A country, a doctor, a people, a river.

P.S. Bill Gainer will be performing at the Natsoulas Gallery this coming Thursday night at 8. Bill Gainer contributes to the California literary scene as a writer, editor, promoter, publicist and poet. Gainer is a past winner of the San Francisco Beat Museum’s Poetry Contest and the Sacramento News and Review’s Flash Fiction Contest. He continues to edit for the PEN Award-winning R.L. Crow Publications, is a founding and current board member of the Nevada County Poetry Series, and serves as the longtime host of Sacramento’s popular Red Alice’s Poetry Emporium. Widely published, Bill Gainer remains a nationally sought-after reader. His latest book is Lipstick and Bullet Holes, from Epic Rites Press of Canada. Visit him at billgainer.com.

You should join us at that event, and / or at the after-party at 10 at de Vere’s Irish Pub!

The Just Hints Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on October 27, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I got to introduce the bike-commuting advocate Paul Dorn to my Silicon Valley Journalism students this morning, and thus was unavailable to compose thoughtful insights on important topics by my regular due date of 10:30 on a Monday morning. As a result, today’s newsletter contains mostly hints. Next week I may talk more about transportation concerns.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will address the following topics: the ante-chambers of a queen, bad occupation choices, sports numbers that are divisible by three, industrial banks, realty stats, biopics and many other films, killer apps, Kali, invertebrates, light, African names, feeling free, spheres, moderately great Americans who appear in bad films, quickenings, sleep deprivation, characters named Julie, South America, Pacific rim films in which flowers are braided into the hair of lead actors, measurements, indirect Halloween, golden arrows, scary books, one-word titles, big films, October 27, food and “drink,” things mapped by Ptolemy, world capitals, the Cold War, Swedish culture, football, and Shakespeare.

Happy Halloween! Tonight, in celebration of the holiday, I shall wear black.

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Newspaper Headlines. Facebook and Apple have established new policies in which they will pay for female employees to freeze their WHAT?

World History. In what city was Archduke Ferdinand assassinated in 1914?

Pop Culture – Music. What Lorde song has recently been banned from radio play in San Francisco?

Four for Four. Which of the following A-List celebrities, if any, has ever been married? Johnny Depp, Cameron Diaz, Jack Nicholson, Oprah Winfrey.

Science. Up until the early part of what decade did most astronomers think that all of the stars in the universe were contained inside of the Milky Way? Was it the 1620s, 1720s, 1820s, or 1920s?

P.S. Thanks to all Pub Quiz participants who stay until the end of the evening’s entertainment to discover who has won. The winners and the staff appreciate your patience.

The Rilke on the Conveyor Belt Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on October 20, 2014

Dear Friends of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz,

We were lucky to have the internationally acclaimed poet and playwright James Ragan visit Davis this past week, performing at the John Natsoulas Gallery and on the UC Davis campus. Ragan impresses audiences with his stories, with the many movie-stars and heads of state with whom he has worked and performed, and the quality of his poetry, much of which he has memorized.

One of my favorites of the poems Ragan keeps in his head is titled “Rilke on the Conveyor Belt at Los Angeles International” (found at the website of the journal Rattapallax):

RILKE ON THE CONVEYOR BELT

AT LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL

A rick of pages, it falls hardly noticed

into motion, and down the track, unspined,

it cycles time between a rucksack and laundry.

A book no thicker than a wallet or a comb,

it is the unworthy carry-on, newly bought,

colliding with a carpetbag and steamer

on the unlikely navigation into being

where it’s not. Each passenger has watched it

circle more than once, a bold intrusion

into the archipelago of things familiar.

There is no fixed point of concentration,

no laughter, no elation when the eyes dissect

the slow descent of baggage into orbit

as if in taking up an armstrap, each handler

slews a body to the spars of his shoulder.

Had Rilke himself fallen, unbound,

lying in united state, he would have passed

unnoticed by the baggage check or porter

who fail to think it odd or such a pity

to tag him at the lost and found.

How many miles had his words trespassed,

how many cities, alive, unread

among so many ports of authority, a gold leaf

of art so grand in the pall of memory

it gives the mind encouragement to survive.

Unless, unsung like a soldier’s duffel, duty bound,

fear spreads its tarp along the spine of language.

Creation can end this way, abrupt and final,

like travel to the ends of the world

with no intent, or vision, but destination.

(from LUSIONS, Grove/Atlantic)

I hope you are making time in your life for great performances.

Tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on U.S. Presidents, the Dalai Lama, football, early film pioneers, nearly defunct companies that start with the letter S, illuminated readings, California companies, A-List celebrities such as Johnny Depp, the cities where famous events took place, mountains, star-gazing though the centuries, meditation, sports that surround, Star Wars, people who have appeared on Seinfeld, British poets with whom you are familiar, political parties, prime numbers, Hamlet’s ethic, knights, big arrivals, the Boston Consulting Group, John Lescroart’s original fiction to be performed by a talented Sacramento actor Saturday night at the Pence Gallery, genetics, South American, and the topics of a few questions that I haven’t written yet, including the Shakespeare question.

If you bring a new person or a new team to the Pub Quiz tonight, which I encourage, make sure to introduce me to the newcomers. See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. Starting with the letter P, what Japanese company founded in 1955 uses the slogan “Ideas for Life”?

Internet Culture. What successful American international commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington has revealed plans to open its first ever brick and mortar store in New York City?

Newspaper Headlines. According to the ranking firm Interbrand, what is the world’s most valuable brand?

Four for Four. According to the most recent polling, which of the following Republican governors, if any, has greater than 50% approval rating by voters in his state? Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry, Scott Walker. If for some reason you don’t know which US State one of these governors is from, that would be embarrassing.

Oscar-Winners. What do the following Oscar-winning actresses have in common? Julie Andrews, Jennifer Hudson, Lupita Nyong’o, Anna Paquin, Barbra Streisand. We know it is not country of origin, for Lupita Nyong’o was born in Mexico.

P.S. What are your Halloween costume plans this year?

The Taut, Serpentine Spring Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on October 13, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Thinking back, I believe now that my family and I were the troublemakers in my Washington, D.C. neighborhood. During the 1970s, my mom would throw parties (salons, really) that were exclusively attended by women, sometimes too many women to fit in our Glover Park row house. I bet they didn’t make too much noise, but I’m sure some of the neighbors were scratching their heads.

My brother Oliver and I often did explore the joy of volume when we later encountered rock and roll. At a yard sale I picked up a large drum with a taut serpentine spring across its surface. We discovered that if one were to sufficiently increase the volume on the hi-fi while playing Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” the spring on the drum would vibrate sympathetically with the deep bass of the song, providing “live” percussive accompaniment. You can imagine how much the neighbors appreciated this auditory experiment.

Oliver and I played a lot of Frisbee back then, throwing the disk back and forth to each other in the front yard. Our front yard was only about 15’ by 20’, so we would take advantage of the yards of the adjoining homes. One time we realized that we could listen to our favorite records while playing Frisbee merely by moving the huge speakers of our record player to the front door and the front window. One of our elderly neighbors, who I haven’t thought of in a long time, and who has probably been dead for 25 years, dropped by to talk to us about the volume of our music, inquiring whether or not we were hard of hearing. I think he once worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Shambhala Buddhist Lama Sakyong Mipham once said that “Like gravity, karma is so basic we often don’t even notice it.” I found myself reflecting on karma this morning when deciding what to do about our neighbor’s dog. Perhaps our neighbor, too, is hard of hearing, for after she lets her dog out at 10 PM, 1 AM, or, most mornings, 6 AM, she seems not to hear the incessant barking that has fractured our sleep. That dog has a message that can be easily hard over the collective message of I-80, built along the same road that Mark Twain took to visit San Francisco, or the subtler message of the crickets, who perhaps are celebrating that all the frogs have disappeared. I sometimes wonder if that dog is the insistent reincarnated soul of that elderly neighbor who seeks to remind me of my childhood appreciation of the deep bass, the sympathetic drum, and the speakers in the windows of our home on Tunlaw Road.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about fathers and sons, Japanese companies, bricks and mortar, Republican governors, Oscar-winners (including one born in Mexico), women who are not Taylor Swift, football on television, wrestling, missing systems, POTUS, stingers, times and places to wear jeans, two unusual words (so bring your linguist), musicians, “yule lines” for Santa, tabloid rumors, that which binds and limits, martial arts, best-selling memoirs, rich white dudes, African countries, organic chemistry, big prizes, awful diseases, Greek cities, Las Vegas, IT workers, and Shakespeare.

Do join us tonight for the fun.

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. What product used this tagline? “Image is nothing. Thirst is everything. Obey your thirst.”

Internet Culture. Yesterday was the anniversary of the death of Steve Jobs. How many years?

California. After LA and San Diego, what is the third most-populous city in California?

Four for Four. Which of the following states, if any, are home to the closest 2014 midterm Senate races (with less than a 4% spread)? Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan.

Sports. The number of medals that Michael Phelps has won is also the same as the following: the sixth discrete semiprime number, the atomic number of titanium, the retired jersey numbers of Jim Palmer, Clyde Drexler, and Emmit Smith, the number of yards in a chain, and the name of a song on Taylor Swift’s album Red.

P.S. James Ragan reads Thursday night at 9 at the John Natsoulas Gallery, and you should come. James Ragan is an internationally recognized poet, playwright, and essayist. Translated into 12 languages, he has authored 8 books of poetry including The Hunger Wall and The World Shouldering I. He has read for six heads of state and in 1985, was one of 4 poets including Seamus Heaney, Bob Dylan and Robert Bly, invited to perform at the First International Poetry Festival in Moscow. Honors include three Fulbright Professorships, two Honorary Doctorates, the Emerson Poetry Prize, 8 Pushcart Prize nominations, a Poetry Society of America Citation, and the Swan Foundation Humanitarian Award. Ragan’s plays have been staged in the U.S, Russia, Greece, and China. He has worked on staff during the making of The Godfather and in production on The Deer Hunter, The Border and recently, The House. He is the subject of a documentary, “Flowers and Roots,” based on his life in the arts (Arina Films, 2014). For 25 years he directed the Professional Writing Program at the University of Southern California.

The “Life During Wartime” Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on October 6, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

The fall quarter has finally begun for me, for I’ve just finished teaching my first writing class: “Topics in Journalism: Silicon Valley and Internet Culture.” In some ways, I’ve been in training to teach this class since I first started hosting “Dr. Andy’s Poetry and Technology Hour” on KDVS back in the year 2000.

Sometimes I envy people who work just the one job. I’ve been a journalist for the entirety of this century, but I’ve also been a university faculty member, an ed-tech administrator, an arts and poetry activist, a published author, a marrying minister and, of course, a quizmaster. Just this past Thursday, one of the members of one of our most regular teams, The Mavens, said that she had trouble recognizing me in my multicolored Poetry Night shirt rather than the authoritative black I wear Monday nights. With all these jobs, I sometimes feel like the speaker of the Talking Heads song “Life During Wartime,” who says,

We dress like students, we dress like housewives,

or in a suit and a tie.

I changed my hairstyle so many times now,

I don’t know what I look like!

As Whitman says, “I am large, I contain multitudes.” I wish for simpler lives for my students. How great to focus on the one occupation, say, being a journalist, and spend a lifetime moving towards expertise, and then to mastery! The dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov knew that the benefits of this sort of mastery can come with the sort of obsessive focus from which everyone in the audience benefits. Baryshnikov said, “No matter what I try to do or explore, my Kirov training, my expertise, and my background call me to return to dancing after all, because that’s my real vocation, and I have to serve it.”

That said, Baryshnikov has also been nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for his acting. I guess sometimes the focus he brings to one vocation can translate to another.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on food and drink, because one of the Fairfield School moms keeps demanding it. Expect also questions about that which must be obeyed, incendiaries, contemporary captains of industry, unemployment, favorite US states, North of LA, the iPhone 6, the Periodic Table, American patriots, French words, exes, tire production, solo praise, baseball, noses, darkness, sustaining books, coagulation, platinum songs, the Mediterranean Sea, potatoes, Pilgrims, ice, weariness, poetry, Formula One drama, going hungry, grizzled leaders, curious cases, alliterative names in movies, Paris, snakes, that which is rich and fantastic, A-listers, graphic novels, words that begin with E, metals, and Shakespeare.

The Mavens won’t be joining us tonight, regrettably, so there might be room in the packed pub for your team if you arrive by 6:30 for tonight’s edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

See you tonight.

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Internet Culture. Yesterday CNET ran with a headline that read “Meet BLANK, the social network that wants to be the anti-Facebook.” Fill in the blank.

U.S. Geography. The only location in the U.S. where four states meet, what are the four states that touch “Four Corners” in the southwest?

Space Travel. What was the name of the lunar module used on the Apollo 11 moon landing mission?

Four for Four. Which of the following prominent men, if any, was the son of a mother or father born in Syria? F. Murray Abraham, Mahatma Gandhi, Steve Jobs, Freddie Mercury.

Pop Culture – Music. Two artists have simultaneously occupied the top three positions of Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. One is 50 Cent. What is the mononym of the other?

P.S. This coming Saturday at noon at the David Public Library my wife Kate and I will be speaking on a panel about raising kids with special needs. And then the next day, Sunday the 12^th at 1 PM, I will be reading new poetry at the Davis Cemetery’s Celebration of Life. I am opening for Grateful Dead keyboardist Bob Bralove. I hope to see you at one of these events!

P.P.S. Also expect film questions tonight.

The Gluten-Free Weltanschauung Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on September 29, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

September is almost over, and with it for me an extended season of officiated weddings. This morning a new bride thanked me for bringing a little bit of Davis to her wedding in Sacramento this past weekend. As an Aggie alum, she meant this as a compliment, but we might wonder what it means to bring a bit of Davis to another location, and how comfortable others are with this importing of 95616.

Last night my wife Kate and I were discussing the inevitable culture shock that any of us would feel when visiting another part of the country, or another part of the world. During visits this past summer, some of Kate’s Chicago friends accused her of being too slender, for example, while we know that, because of concerning family health history, Kate’s focus is entirely on health and fitness. In my experience, here in Davis we support each other’s best health choices with frequent talk about nutrition and exercise.

We sometimes find ourselves in times and places in our lives where it is difficult to make healthy choices. In some parts of the country, and in some parts of California, the food choices are so limited (or the television advertising so pervasive) that people grab the default prepackaged foods that can stay “fresh” a long time on the store shelf. By contrast, here in Davis we generally appreciate and choose the fresh foods we can find at the farmers market, the Davis Food Co-op, and in our salads at de Vere’s Irish Pub. Likewise, while in some cities people spend a lot of time complaining about lengthy commutes and expensive parking, here in Davis our Mayor Pro-Tem Robb Davis gives public speeches about how and why he decided to give up the family car. And I think we lead the nation in the percentage of our residents who commute by bicycle.

I would guess that most people who live in Mobile, Alabama or Fairbanks, Alaska hope that their value system – one that reflects local interests and influences – will spread to other parts of the country, and be adopted by people who quickly admit the wisdom of the conversion. We certainly feel that way here, with the hopes that all of us will make healthy choices about sustainability (and, for that matter, about conflict resolution and respect for diversity). I’m sure some people wonder whether our own organic, non-smoking and often gluten-free Weltanschauung is rooted in generosity, or just our own Davis brand of provincialism. Our summer vacations are over, but perhaps we could all benefit from additional travel opportunities in 2014.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about British history, muscles (two questions), CNET, Syria, US states, space travel, Mononyms, athletes with incredible discipline, Nobel Laureates, wits, speed, unusual words that start with the letter T, mayors, fictional names that are anagrams of one another, thicknesses, putting the children first, geniuses, controversial books, Oscar-winners, short titles, dead favorites, nine-letter places I have not yet visited, jazz musicians, funny nicknames, prominent living Americans, and Shakespeare. Regrettably, the Quiz will not include any mention of the word Weltanschauung.

I don’t know if you have noticed, but the UC Davis students have returned, and their parents are visiting. Consequently, I encourage you to come early to tonight’s Pub Quiz in order to secure a table. See you then!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Internet Culture. According to the Wall Street Journal, how many new iPhones did Apple sell this past weekend? Was it closest to 100,000, one million, ten million, or 100 million? Most teams answered this question correctly.

Famous Ships. The ship that took Charles Darwin on his famous research trip in the 1830s was the HMS WHAT? Shouldn’t everyone know this?

That Crazy Rand Paul. Rand Paul recently said in a speech that he would like to eliminate all executive orders by all U.S. Presidents ever in the history of our nation. What does your host, Dr. Andy, feel to be the most important of our nation’s executive orders so far? Not everyone answered this correctly, but I think everyone agreed with my opinion. A curve-ball question.

Four for Four. Which of the following stars of the film The Hunger Games, if any, were born in Kentucky? Woody Harrelson, Josh Hutcherson, Jennifer Lawrence, Stanley Tucci. People like me to ask Hunger Games and Harry Potter questions.

Science. What seven-letter adjective do we use for the waves caused by an earthquake? I liked the incorrect answer “Tsunami” for this question. Clever, but wrong.

P.S. On this coming Thursday evening, Poetry Night will feature the work of two Davisites: Julia Levine and Denise Lichtig. Both are talented writers, and both are well known in Davis for reasons outside of (or in addition to) their poetry. I hope you will join us Thursday at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery.

The Neck Twists Like a Rope Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on September 23, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

The Poet Laureate of Davis has been meeting the expectations of his office with great gusto! In the last week I have lectured on sonnets at the high school English class of Pub Quiz regular and frequent champion Dianna Huculak, hosted a reading by Davis poets Henry 7 Reneau, Jr. and Allegra Silberstein, given my own reading atthe Unitarian Universalist Church of Davis with the poet James Lee Jobe, read a global warming poem at the People’s Climate Action Day at Farmers Market Park, and finally I was publicly interviewed for an hour-long podcast with the former Poet Laureate of Sacramento, Bob Stanley. I also wrote a half-dozen poems, at least a few of which will appear in much improved form in my next book, Tentacle, to be published in 2015.

The global warming poem that I will share here, “Gecko at Noon,” was also published in the Davis poetry anthology Entering (edited by the aforementioned Allegra Silberstein). I wrote it a year or two after watching Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth at the Varsity Theatre.

Gecko at Noon

When it is hot,

when the ground sparks like the thought of lightning

and the air is so thin that the birds just wait it out,

that’s when I emerge.

Hot hot hot hot hot

I sample the stunned insects,

big black beetles that scramble in my mouth,

green katydids that jumped too late,

the complacent moth.

My neck twists like a rope;

my eyes are little suns.

Driven by absence, by lack, by

The sun, it is crushing, crushing

We are small and becoming smaller,

bug-eyed in the bush;

we are like mercury underfoot,

just as toxic.

Once it was cancer, the slow crab at the end.

Now we are becoming hormonal misfits,

each generation afraid of the next.

We dare not look into their faces

The land is like the original bush,

still burning after three thousand years,

still giving orders,

still blanching the locals.

They are stuck in the book,

but they ache for a cycle.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on books and more books, but too little poetry. Expect also questions on famous boats, articles from today’s Wall Street Journal, dogs, Stanley Tucci and other even more famous actors who appear in movies with him, the bay area, license plates, radish cousins, California cities, London, Rand Paul, virtuosos, “the most powerful man in BLANK,” increasing bitterness, red cups, obesity, Jane Goodall, crime dramas, roaring anthems, Madame’s complaints, beloved notebooks, California prisons, Ireland, happiness, big cities, Sacramento notables, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us this evening for the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. According to the advertising slogan, “There are some things money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s WHAT?”

Internet Culture. What company confirmed it’ll acquire the studio that created the hit “sandbox” game Minecraft for $2.5 billion?

French Words. The most common French word for “bread shop” or “bakery” start with what letter?

Four for Four. Which of the following were parents to three children? Hamlet Sr., King Lear, Prospero, Shakespeare himself.

Pop Culture – Music. The biggest hit for American dance duo Reel 2 Real was a 1993 reggae fusion Eurodance number that became the theme song for the Madagascar animated films. In the song, the speaker repeatedly proclaims that he likes to do something. According to the song’s title, what does he like to do?

P.S. If you would like to follow the Davis poetry scene, please subscribe to the free newsletter athttp://www.poetryindavis.com. It comes out about twice a month.

The Picasso Quotations with Hegnar Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on September 15, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

One of my favorite faculty members at UC Davis is an art history professor named Hegnar Watenpaugh. She and I met with a couple of her colleagues this morning to talk about the sustained and sustaining importance of art and art history to Art History majors at UC Davis, and too many other undergraduates. The conversation was so enjoyable and so lengthy, that I barely have had time today to share with you the hints for tonight’s Pub Quiz.

I added a Picasso question in honor of my friend Hegnar. Expect also questions about money, bread, sandboxes, four, Eurodance, and young NBA stars. Expect also questions about grandiloquence, food measurements, nitrogen, drama, and champagne. Many people like reggae, if they give it a chance. And everyone appreciates inspiring quotations, even skeptical hipsters who mock them. Tonight you will find questions about elderly bigots, Flying, Thomas Edison, and presidents of the United States. Every month is poetry month for me, but tonight we will also talk about theater, British politics, faraway national parks, and moose. If you have been listening to National Public Radio this week, and reading all of the most sophisticated magazines, journals, and blogs, I’m sure that you will do well on tonight’s pub quiz. I have not yet written the Shakespeare question.

See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster