Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Happy New Year to you and your families. I hope you enjoyed what little holiday and new year’s respite you could. The Wednesday appearance of the two major year-end holidays left many of us wondering when we should take our breaks from work. What can be done with (or over) a five-day weekend?

In my family, we have a tradition of visiting snowcapped peaks over the holiday break. Last year we ventured to Mount Shasta with some close friends, while this past week my wife’s mother and our bulldog joined us for a few days and nights at Lake Tahoe. Both trips resulted in a doctor’s visit for me. Have I grown too used to the uniform horizontalness of Davis?

Sometimes we read of celebrities who never quite recover from a fall at home. Others, like Charles Rosher, the first great Hollywood cinematographer, and crusader Henry II of Champagne, died outright from a fall. These were some of the names that were not running through my head as I regained consciousness after a bad fall on the ice. Instead, I heard these helpful words: “Do you want me to get Mommy?” I must have said yes.

I was brought to the emergency room of the Barton Memorial Hospital, where I was treated especially well. Kate might have been remembering another fall that did not turn out so well, that of inexperienced skier Natasha Richardson. I was more sanguine about my experience, for I could easily answer the admitting nurse’s questions about where I was and what the day’s date was. Kate remarked later that a Quizmaster should expect harder questions if they are to test his relative mental acuity. I’m glad I wasn’t asked about Henry II of Champagne. I’m also grateful for health insurance, and for the thick wool cap I was wearing during the mishap.

On the way home to Davis, it was suggested that I figure out how to work the word “concussion” into the title of my weekly newsletter. I prefer the phrase “dying fall” made popular by Shakespeare,

If music be the food of love, play on;

Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,

The appetite may sicken, and so die.

That strain again! it had a dying fall:

O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,

That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing and giving odour!

And by Eliot,

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

I’m sure you can name the sources for these lines. If not, bring an English major to the Pub Quiz tonight, as well as someone who could speak authoritatively on the following subjects: slide rules, insults, people who are “marked,” recognizable colors, live and dead stars, blood, people with good luck, the NSA, London, faeries, anime, sequels, Honey, symphonies, people named Pike, rock bands, browsing the web, tallying votes, Emmy-winning actors, Disney, dads, people named Phillip, 2013, clinicians, Nashville, televised competitions, nights, making news, the U.S. Constitution, 2013, Brits, famous married couples, R.F. Foster on talking about faeries with guns and the occult on YouTube, baseball and football, primates, people who make good choices with their money, and Shakespeare.

Welcome to the new subscribers to this newsletter! See you tonight.

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

1. US States. It turns out that South Carolina, Kansas, and Indiana don’t have the most restrictive abortion laws in the US. They are tied for third. Neither does Utah, in second place. Which state has the most restrictive abortion laws in the country?  It’s not Texas.

2. The EU. What is also the most widely spoken first language in the European Union?

3. Sports.   The FIU men’s basketball team failed to finish 2013 on a happy note, losing to the Georgetown Hoyas 92-57 on the Saturday before Christmas. What do the letters FIU stand for?

4. Texas. The second most-populous city in Texas has more people in it than Dallas. Name the city.

5. Another Music Question. What English singer and lyricist rose to prominence in the 1980s as the voice of the band The Smiths? 

Lucky Wool Cap!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Congratulations to the Bjerke family of Davis, California, on the arrival this week of Lyla Bjerke, a beautiful baby girl. Before she started having babies, Jenny Bjerke would help me with the grading of the Pub Quiz, and Mark Bjerke competed just last week, winning the 7^th Place Bonus Prize provided by de Vere’s Irish Pub. As I follow the Bjerkes on a variety of social media, I’ve seen pictures of their beautiful family, but this new Bjerke may be the most beautiful Bjerke of all. Congratulations, Bjerkes!

The Bjerkes will benefit from a 2013-long tax deduction because of the addition of Lyla Bjerke. My son Jukie was born on January 4^th, just a few days from being the first child in Davis to be born in the new millennium. No retroactive tax deduction there, but he has rewarded us in many other ways. Jukie won’t be joining us for the Pub Quiz tonight, but he’ll be cheering us on in other ways.

Of course, I am no accountant, so I look to the new year for other milestones and opportunities. Most people who make resolutions at this time of year resolve to become more fit, and recent research supports such a decision. As you might have seen in yesterday’s USA Today, “Studies show that exercise reduces the risk of early death, helps control weight and lowers the risk of heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, depression, some types of cancer, anxiety disorders, cognitive decline and hip fractures. It can help improve sleep, memory, concentration and mood.” As Exercise Cure author Jordan Metzl puts it, “Exercise is the best preventive drug we have, and everybody needs to take that medicine.”

Although I canceled my underused gym membership this last year, I have been exercising like a fiend in recent months, asking increasingly heavy children in my home to balance themselves on my back as I do push ups. As I am not a medical doctor, and as I have a sore back, this anecdote is not meant to substitute for medical advice about your own exercise plan, which I hope you will restart for the sake of your own health and happiness.

Because I am teaching classes about creativity in the winter and spring quarters, I look to different sorts of thought leaders for inspiration as I consider goals and paths for 2014. One such constant source of inspiration for me is Robert Pinsky, the former US Poet Laureate who taught me a crucial class when I was an undergraduate at Boston University, and who has since taught many others in a variety of media. A much sought-out public speaker, Pinsky gave a commencement address at the Concord Academy last year that reminded me fondly of his mini-lectures in our lyric poetry class. Pinsky speaks of the importance of struggle, and of taking on difficult challenges, as we do every week at the Pub Quiz. Perhaps my having grabbed the answer to a Pub Quiz question from his remarks will compel you to investigate the video.

In addition to topics raised by Dr. Pinsky, tonight’s Pub Quiz will also feature questions about independent music, madness, gangsters, anchors, admiration, home runs, absentee dukes, formerly hailed, outage magnets, American poets, Jills, nonviolence, cities in turmoil, the symbols of humankind, perilous journeys, abortion rights, the Irish diaspora, 2013 obituaries, what we Google, pretty and just gluts, lead singers, stage names, rich ladies, southern states, not so swift boats, Europe, states that are not South Carolina or Indiana, and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all of you who have informed me via email and Facebook that your erstwhile teams will be re-forming this evening for the Pub Quiz. I anticipate another full house. 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. Books and Authors.  What essayist, playwright and humorist created the diary of Crumpet the Elf?

2. The City of Woodland. What is the largest highway to intersect Woodland?

3. Battleships. The fastest and the last of the British Royal Navy’s battleships, the HMS Vanguard, was launched in what year? 1924, 1944, 1964, or 1984.

4. Science.  The antiparticle of the electron is the positively charged electron, which is produced naturally in certain types of radioactive decay. What is the three-syllable word we use to name a positively charged electron? 

5. Shakespeare.   Which of Shakespeare’s title characters says this? “I go, and it is done. The bell invites me. / Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell / That summons thee to heaven or to hell.”

P.S. There will be no Poetry Night Thursday because of the proximity to New Year’s Day. I know that some of you will still be recovering. See you in 2014! Happy New Year!

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

“Do They Know It’s Christmas?” is the name of the 1984 song orchestrated by Bob Geldof and others in order to raise funds to provide relief to those suffering from a famine in Ethiopia. The song title asks a question that we might pose today. Back in 1984, I remember, one would only see convenience stores and Chinese restaurants open on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Today a great number of retailers and restaurants are calling employees in for a shift rather than sending them home to spend time with their families.

One thinks of Ebenezer Scrooge, who was described with a “frosty rime … on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.” Dickens wrote that Scrooger “carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn’t thaw it one degree at Christmas.” Despite his famously sour outlook on Christmas, even Scrooge gives Bob Cratchit Christmas Day off, agreeing begrudgingly to “pay a day’s wages for no work!”

Sacramento political satirist John Marcotte, a “Proud Dad of Two Geek Girls” who has appeared many times on my KDVS radio show, has begun a movement to shine a light on those among us who are asked to work on national holidays by sharing homemade cookies with non-essential employees (and, I’m sure, some essential ones) on Christmas Day. Here’s how Marcotte put talked about his “Cookie Project” in an interview published in the December 20^th Sacramento Bee:

“Nobody should be forced to work on Christmas . . . . We realize there are exceptions: Police, firefighters, drugstores in case you have a sick child. But do we need Church’s Fried Chicken and Sizzler open, too? We put our idea out on Facebook and it spread virally. This Christmas, we’ll have volunteers distributing cookies in Los Angeles, San Francisco and St. Louis, too. People are joining at such a rapid clip, the project has gone nationwide.”

Some Davis restaurants are opening their doors on Christmas Eve and even Christmas Day this year, but de Vere’s Irish Pub will not be one of them. The de Vere White family has made a point of giving their employees both days off so they can all spend time with their loved ones, and I hope you will do the same. I also hope you can join us for tonight’s festive Pub Quiz, and that you might consider showing some extra appreciation to the servers and barkeeps who have helped to ensure the success of our weekly entertainment every Monday for the past year.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following topics: the Christmas season, elves, Muppets, and candy; celebrities from Pittsburgh, baby names, Spielberg projects, elevated places, fish, comedians, the aforementioned Paul Ryan, vanguards, ex-cons, ethereal hikes, atypical sports, Germans, nuptials, piccolo purveyors, cheery words, kinds of hats, not eggnog, Emmy-winning actresses, monosyllables, singing loudly, weight, humorists, Europe, radioactive decay, booksellers, title characters, materialism, current events, and Shakespeare.

I’ve been contacted by a several of you, including by local dignitaries, asking if indeed we will be holding the Pub Quiz tonight. We sure will! Bring those family members who are visiting from out of town. Tonight’s quiz will be easier than usual (I think!), and have no questions about Benedict Cumberbatch.

I wish you a Merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you observe in December. 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. Twitter in 2013. The most retweeted photograph of 2013 included the caption “Cory will forever be in my heart.” What was the first or last name of the woman who shared the photograph?

2. Sports.   The first public baseball game between all-black teams, The Brooklyn Uniques and the Philadelphia Excelsiors, was played in what year? 1835, 1865, 1895, 1925.  Baseball began sooner than usually understood.

3. Science.   Granite consists mainly of quartz, feldspar, and what four-letter mineral? Thanks for all the geology suggestions!

4. Unusual Words. What ten-letter adjective starting with A means “promising success, favored by fortune; prosperous”?

5. Pop Culture – Television.    What kind of animal is Arthur of the TV show Arthur and Friends?

P.S. Thanks to those of you who came to Poetry Night last week (and to the after-party).

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I have a friend in Wales who has never visited Scotland or Ireland. I have a friend in Citrus Heights who doesn’t leave the house. Immanuel Kant was also a homebody. The philosopher was born in Königsberg, then in the Kingdom of Prussia, and attended college there before earning a chair in metaphysics at that same University of Königsberg in that same city where he eventually died. It is said of Kant that he never traveled more than 10 miles beyond Königsberg, which would be the equivalent of living in Davis your entire life, and never visiting Sacramento. For Immanuel Kant, his small town was the set of a Truman Show, but without the cameras.

We stick with what we know. Here’s how science fiction writer Aldous Huxley put it: “The vast majority of human beings dislike and even actually dread all notions with which they are not familiar… Hence it comes about that at their first appearance innovators have generally been persecuted, and always derided as fools and madmen.”

Although I have traveled widely, I, too, could be accused of such parochialism. When I last returned to my childhood hometown of Washington DC, I beheld a large DC map that my Mom had tacked on the wall of her Waterfront neighborhood apartment, I was amazed to see that in all my explorations of the city as a youth, I had actually stayed largely within about three blocks of Wisconsin Avenue as a youngster, and then largely within three blocks of Connecticut and Massachusetts Avenues as a teenager.

I never visited the neighborhoods that today are associated with much of the city’s cultural energy, partly because when I was a teenager we heard stories of what our foolhardy classmates encountered when they went to such places to buy illegal drugs. Things have changed, for DC has been rebounding for a while. One formerly dangerous neighborhood, at 14^th and U Streets, is today home to the cultural hotspot and restaurant Busboys and Poets which, according to the restaurant’s website, offers “a space for art, culture and politics to intentionally collide.”

Like Busboys and Poets, the best restaurants offer books on public shelves, such as those in the library of our city’s de Vere’s Irish Pub. In such a place we are invited to purchase a beer or a pot of tea and curl up with a book, the sort of entertainment that Stephen King believes to be ideal: “no commercials, no batteries, hours of enjoyment for each dollar spent. What I wonder is why everybody doesn’t carry a book around for those inevitable dead spots in life.” Of course, a counter-narrative exists, that being that we should bravely venture out into the world without regard to how much we have read. As St. Augustine famously said, “The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only one page.”

I received a letter from a Pub Quiz regular last week suggesting that, like the man who does not travel, I have been limiting the topics of my questions to my favorite topics; that I, too, stick with what I know. Some have suggested that my quirky personal topics, such as quotations from Dr. Andy’s Heroes, or Famous People Who Have Lived in Dr. Andy’s Basement, unfairly advantage those who know me well, such as my wife when she plays. My wife reminded me this week that no team on which she has played has won a prize at the de Vere’s Irish Pub Quiz, so Pub Quiz nepotism hasn’t worked out for her thus far, but she will keep trying.

A fairer accusation would be that teams who attend the Pub Quiz every week gain a certain advantage from learning how the Quiz works. It might be assumed that the Pub Quiz resembles every one of life’s endeavors: we become experts with practice. A team of six that attends the Pub Quiz every week for five years accumulates almost half the 10,000 hours that Malcolm Gladwell contends we must invest to become experts. Of course, that hypothetical team would also spend some of its time outside the pub learning about subjects that might come up on a quiz. Some of us have impressive memories, pay attention to the week’s news, or work jobs that necessitate the accumulation of otherwise impractical facts.

Nevertheless, the accusation against me has merit. Like Immanuel Kant, I travel the small town of my brain, my reading, and my experiences, returning to the same streets week after week. Those of you who have walked those streets with me on a Monday evening will sometimes encounter a familiar shopkeeper named Benedict Cumberbatch (who has appeared in two questions, as a correct and an incorrect answer, in this history of the quiz), or come across a recognizable motto or slogan at a fork in the road. Such are the advantages and travails of attending a Pub Quiz hosted by a Quizmaster who writes his own questions, and who treasures our intentional collisions at de Vere’s Irish Pub. One would hope that, like Königsberg, this small town we travel together has enough intellectual, cultural, and social attractions for you. If it does not, other attractions await you, and I hope you will experience them all.

To make up for lost Cumberbatch opportunities, tonight’s quiz will include the word “Cumberbatch” three times! Expect also questions about switches, blood, Cyberdine Systems, smiles for Republicans, Norway, The LA Times, a dog’s life, Julian Barnes, words that start with A and with M, great years in film, fortune and men’s eyes, President John F. Kennedy, polymers, short persons with big challenges, screwy transports, biological maracas, queen consorts, synthesis, an expected person, principles of math, biology, South Africans who come to the US, geology, baseball and football, no soccer this week, gossip, tragic deaths, more science than usual, cinematic heroes, Eugene O’Neill, and Shakespeare. Also, Cumberbatch.

Please tell your family visiting for the holidays that new teams are especially welcome at the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

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.   Gal Gadot has been cast as what storied character in one of the most anticipated films of 2015? Name the character.

2. Irish Culture.  Niall, Zayn, Liam, Harry, and Louis make up what English-Irish musical group? 

3. Countries of the World.  Three countries have Atlantic and Mediterranean coastlines. Two are Spain and France. Name the third.

4. Syndromes. According to pages 22-25 of the July 1999 FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin, the FBI’s Hostage Barricade Database System shows that roughly 27% of victims show evidence of a syndrome named after what city?

5. Science.  What W word do we use to refer to the flow of gasses on a large scale? 

P.S. This coming Thursday the year-end Poetry Night will feature authors published in the most recent edition of The Blue Moon Literary and Art Review. The fun will start Thursday the 19^th at 8. There should be some food and drink, an open mic at 9, and then an after-party right back home at de Vere’s. You should join us for this free event.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Imagine that President Obama became so fed up with the antics of the Tea Party that he decreed that anyone who challenged the policies of the Obama administration would be labeled a “fascist.” Imagine that Obama would then declare that fascist activities and organizations were illegal, and that organized protest against the Obama administration would be prosecuted a federal offense. I bet that many of us would consider ways that we might challenge such an administration.

Such was the challenge that Nelson Mandela faced in 1948 when the white supremacist Nationalist party came to party, decreed that anyone who opposed its policies were communists, and then passed the Suppression of Communism Act. As a result of such legislation, Mandela and many other ANC leaders were arrested in 1952 and many times thereafter for their opposition to white supremacy in South Africa. As Newt Gingrich recently wrote on his website, “Mandela was faced with a vicious apartheid regime that eliminated all rights for blacks and gave them no hope for the future. This was a regime which used secret police, prisons and military force to crush all efforts at seeking freedom by blacks.” I invite you to view Gingrich’s videotaped remarks showing that he has broken with many conservatives by showing respect for Nelson Mandela.

Even though the Republican-controlled US Senate eventually overrode President Reagan’s veto of The Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 (which imposed strict sanctions on the apartheid regime), some in the House of Representatives agreed with the South African government that Nelson Mandela was a terrorist. Future US (Vice-)President Dick Cheney was one of them, also voting later against a simple House Resolution stating that Mandela should be freed from prison.

When Mandela was freed, in 1990, he made a point of coming to northern California to thank his most ardent congressional supporter, Ron Dellums, for the congressman’s 18+ year campaign to spring Mandela from Robben Island Prison. Today in Mandela’s eight by seven foot prison cell one can see a single candle lit to represent Mandela’s hope, and his triumph over adversity. Like so many other Californians who were optimistic about a free South Africa, I got to see Mandela speak at Oakland Coliseum Stadium on June 30^th, 1990. The South-African leader finished his speech that day with these words:

“IN THE MEANTIME, I want to tell you that Oakland is the last city that I am visiting in the course of my tour. Let me assure you that, despite my 71 years, at the end of this visit I feel like a young man of 35. I feel like an old battery that has been recharged. And, if I feel so young, if I feel like an old battery that has been recharged, it is the people of the United States of America that are responsible for this. It is you, the people of Oakland, the people of the Bay Area, who have given me and my delegation strength and hope to go back and continue the struggle. You must remember that you are our blood brothers and sisters. You are our comrades in the struggle. Remember that we respect you. We admire you, and above all, we love you all.”

In this the week of the passing of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, I’ve enjoyed reading all the ways that that love he showed us has been returned.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about Nelson Mandela. Expect also questions about automobiles, currency, hostages, the Irish town of Granard, geometry, rivers, alcoholic drinks, people who wear funny hats, US presidents, maximum absolute values, dragons, generosity and forgiveness, winter sports, singers on stage, foreign variance drains, drafts, happiness, domes, British poets, education, hell-raisers, that which we serve, dictionaries, Israeli combat troops, musical groups, the Mediterranean, ghost writers, large scale gasses, vengeful people with tiny dogs, Wales, football, and Shakespeare.

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. Rich People. If he were alive today, Walt Disney would be the richest Oscar-winner of all time, with a net worth of about $5 billion. Today only two living Oscar-winners (not counting honorary prizes, such as the one Oprah won) are billionaires, and one of them is a composer. Name either man.

2. Food and Drink. What is the first ingredient in gazpacho?   

3. Pop Culture – Music. What 22 year-old red-headed English singer-songwriter saw his song “The A Team” nominated for Song of the Year at the 2013 Grammy Awards, and spent 2013 touring as the opening act for Taylor Swift?  I like one team’s answer, “Boy Ginger,” but that’s not correct.

4. Sports.   The name Vincent Edward Scully is most associated with what professional sports team?

5. Science.    What alkali metal has an atomic number of 3, and occurs in nature only in compounds?

Nelson Mandela in the cell that was once his only home.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Happy Thanksgiving Recovery Day! Actually, I just made up that holiday. Friday I was biking with my son Truman to downtown Davis when I was passed by Davis bearded inventor Peter Wagner, creator of those delightful Whymcycle vehicles that one sees on Picnic Day and sometimes at Central Park on Saturday mornings. Riding a two-story bike that would be jaw-dropping in any other city, Peter yelled out to us “Happy Digestion Day!” He also honked what looked like a homemade horn made of a funnel and a long tube. The man invents holidays and delightful toys – maybe he’s our Kris Kringle.

Peter wasn’t the only stranger who yelled something at me over the break. While I tried to do as little shopping as possible, last Wednesday I did a small bit of grocery shopping at a time when a number of anxious shoppers were picking up last-minute items. Hank, the guy who barely seemed old enough to ring our groceries at Safeway, seemed surprised that I did indeed want a bag for my single box of cereal. No doubt he knows how people in Davis feel about plastic grocery bags. I told Hank that my boy Jukie and I were heading to Rite Aid pharmacy next, and we didn’t want to be accused of shoplifting our Grape Nuts. He smiled.

Ten minutes later, we walked past Hank as he was maneuvering an electric wheelchair shopping cart back towards the store. “Hey Hank,” I yelled, “do you need a push?” “No, I got it,” he said. Then, after a pause, he shouted, “Hey Jukie, did you pay for those Grape Nuts?”

I appreciate people like Hank just as I appreciate Pub Quiz participants like Chuck, Jason, and Denise who actually interact with my bombastic welcoming message on Pub Quiz night, choosing to answer, loudly, my rhetorical questions. If you value our Davis community, as I do, consider in what humorous and positive ways you might interact with your fellow citizens.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature five questions about films that came up in conversation over Thanksgiving (at least in my house). Expect also questions about office supplies, famous websites, sequels, North Korea, Walt Disney and other rich people, soup, sex education, jerks, boxing, baseball teams, silvery metals, Superman, stupefaction, villains, morning television, Academy Award nominees, young women, basketball, famous agreements, tourist attractions, news headlines, Thanksgiving aftermath (new category), and Hamlet, the play by Shakespeare.

You might re-read Hamlet before 7 PM, when the chime will ring to begin the Thanksgiving recovery edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

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. Great Americans.  Fill in the Blank. John F. Kennedy was the only U.S. president whose BLANK outlived him.

2. Unusual Words. Q, the initial of the man who provides James Bond with those delightful gadgets, stands for what four-syllable word?

3. Davis Driving. Is the distance between this pub and the Sacramento International Airport closest to 10, 20, 30, or 40 miles?

4. Pop Culture – 50 Year-Old Television Programs. What British TV drama this year won an Institutional Peabody “for evolving with technology and the times like nothing else in the known television universe”?     

5. Another Music Question. In 2010, what rapper had his only #1 hit with “Black and Yellow”?  I hope you appreciate the precise wording of this question.

This coming Thursday, The Poetry Night Reading Series will be featuring a performance by Columbia College Professor David Lazar. Please join us Thursday night at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery (521 1^st Street).

According to his website, “David Lazar’s books include Essaying the Essay  (Welcome Table Press), The Body of Brooklyn and Truth in Nonfiction (both Iowa), Powder Town (Pecan Grove); Michael Powell: Interviews and Conversations with M.F.K. Fisher (both Mississippi). Forthcoming is Occasional Desire: Personal Essays, from the University of Nebraska Press. His essays and prose poems have appeared widely in anthologies such as Bending Genre, Understanding the Essay, Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction, An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Sentence), and Like Thunder: Poets Respond to Violence in America, and magazines such as Gulf Coast, Black Clock, Sentence, Denver Quarterly, Best of the Prose Poem, Southwest Review. Five of his essays have been “Notable Essays of the Year” according to Best American Essays. He created the undergraduate and Ph.D. programs in Nonfiction writing at Ohio University, and directed the creation of the undergraduate and M.F.A. programs in Nonfiction Writing at Columbia College Chicago. He is the founding editor of the literary magazine Hotel Amerika, now in its thirteenth year, which has featured groundbreaking issues in transgeneric writing and the aphorism.”

A bust at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Sad anniversaries have inspired a number of weighty questions this week. What is the sustaining importance of John F. Kennedy? Why do his presidency and his truncated life still inspire us? Although the books on my parents’ floor-to-ceiling bookshelves have long-since been dispersed, somehow I can still remember their smell, and remember the titles. William Manchester’s The Death of a President and Arthur M. Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House were books that I consulted as a young reader. I suppose most DC homes in the 1960s and 70s had such books, for the mysteries surrounding Kennedy’s death had yet to be understood conclusively.

Kennedy mattered the most to me because of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. I remember my parents dressing up to attend the opening of the Center in September of 1971, and I remember examining that huge bust of Kennedy in the great hall during intermissions of the many shows my father the theatre critic took me to over the years. If I am remembering correctly, my father was working as a stage director and as a staff member for the Actors Equity Association during the Kennedy administration, and therefore he so appreciated our country being led by an advocate for the arts.

Less than a month before he was killed, President Kennedy gave stirring remarks about the arts at Amherst College in Massachusetts. The occasion for his speech was the death in January of that year of Robert Frost, who has read an inaugural poem for Kennedy just a couple years previously. In addition to praising Frost, Kennedy said this:
If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. We must never forget that art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth. And as Mr. MacLeish once remarked of poets, there is nothing worse for our trade than to be in style. In free society art is not a weapon and it does not belong to the spheres of polemic and ideology. Artists are not engineers of the soul. It may be different elsewhere. But democratic society–in it, the highest duty of the writer, the composer, the artist is to remain true to himself and to let the chips fall where they may. In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation. And the nation which disdains the mission of art invites the fate of Robert Frost’s hired man, the fate of having “nothing to look backward to with pride, and nothing to look forward to with hope.”

I look forward to a great future for America, a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose. I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty, which will protect the beauty of our natural environment, which will preserve the great old American houses and squares and parks of our national past, and which will build handsome and balanced cities for our future.

Considering these words, we might wonder anew if the importance of our greatest presidents is established not merely by what they accomplish during their presidencies, but also by how they were able to focus our attentions and inspire our spirits. A president does this with the written word. On this occasion of the sesquicentennial of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, we might remember our greatest presidents for what they (and their speechwriters) wrote. Lincoln inspired us all with his rhetoric, and rhetoricians such as Ted Sorensen (for Kennedy) and Peggy Noonan (for Reagan) helped Americans believe in the hopes and visions of their bosses. The late Ted Sorensen, whom Kennedy called his “intellectual blood bank,” even helped President Obama with his first inaugural address, which perhaps helps to account for some of the elated optimism that so many Americans felt during that time.

Tonight expect questions on explorers, web-based e-learning, presidential elections, painters who love France, fun with prime numbers, two anagrams, US Presidents, bookstores, music genres, mistakes, friends of Imelda, iconic films, the seven seas, magazines, baseball numbers, John F. Kennedy, knees, comedy, British letters, Minnesota, jungles, Sacramento travel, TV shows that evolve with technology, rappers, tanning salons, Saturday Night Live, negotiated exits, khaki dramas, self-reliant film heroes, big-budget films, hydronium, and Shakespeare.

I hope that you enjoy the Thanksgiving break with your families, and that some of those family members can join you soon at the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Mottos, Slogans, and Ad Campaigns. What action star does the splits between two Volvo trucks in a new ad that went up on YouTube on Wednesday and already has been viewed more than 17 million times?

2. Newspaper Headlines – The Art World. At Christie’s in New York City, Three Studies of Lucian Freud sold for US$142.4 million, a record price for a work of art sold at auction. The painter, who died in 1992, shares a last name with what kind of food, and shares a first and last name with what English “creator of Empiricism”?

3. US Cities. What state capital is 1976 miles from Seattle, 1782 miles from Los Angeles, 1023 miles from Denver, 943 miles from Boston, 814 miles from Miami, and 759 miles from New York City?

4. Food and Drink. An “aubergine” in British English is called what in American English?   

5. Pop Culture – Music. People Magazine paid $6 million for the first photos of the twins of Marc Anthony and what singer and actress?

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I wrote the entire Pub Quiz this morning, playing the free association game that leads me to potential topics, picking up ideas from overheard conversations, and from the constant stream of titles, names, places, events, and news stories that flows through my head during these spates of practiced receptivity and creativity on which an original quizmaster depends. I have read that some quizmasters buy banks of questions and then just spend a few minutes cutting and pasting. How dull! How irresponsible! I take as my guide Henry James, whose advice in The Art of Fiction (1884) has been inspiring novelists for more than a century. James wrote:

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it — this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, “Write from experience, and experience only,” I should feel that this was a rather tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”

I saw two plays this weekend, Schoolhouse Rock Live at the Davis Musical Theatre Company, and the final show of Detroit at the B Street Theatre in Sacramento with one of our favorite Sacramento actors, Dave Pierini. As I watched both plays, thinking of what passing phrase or enacted conflict could become a pub quiz topic, I recalled James’ words: “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about trucks, superheroes, food products that I haven’t sampled since 1981, Nancy Cartwright, state capitals, silly names for British foods, hard-skinned creatures, celebrities (to make up for the harder questions on other topic), basketball players whose names are not LeBron, 2013 films, Napoleon’s plans, people who take a bath, Israel, eulogies, nutrition, marriage equality, seven-letter one-syllable words, religion, absurdity, local acronyms, super-villains, astronomy, vials of oregano, offspring, archaeologists and metal-detecting hobbyists, coverings, Frenchmen, Catholics, knotted things, contemporary actors about whom much ink is spilled in the pages of People magazine, old guys, US Presidents, Nobel Laureates who have recently passed away, questionable sports, fond memories, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us 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. Internet Culture. Will the new Sony Playstation soon to be released be the Playstation 2, 4, 6, or 8?

2.  Film. With 4 words in its title, what film distributed by Disney earned $86 million, and dominated the weekend box office, according to studio estimates yesterday?  

3.  Diamonds in China. According to a new study from Citigroup, what percentage of Chinese couples use diamond engagement rings? Is it closest to 0%, 10%, 33% or 67%?

4. Pop Culture – Music. The first rap artist ever to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song has a new single titled “The Monster.” Name him.

5. Sports.   Anthony Davis finished Friday’s NBA game with career-highs of 32 points and six blocks, leading his New Orleans NBA team over the Los Angeles Lakers 96-85 on Friday night. What is the name of his team?

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

We have in-laws visiting from Chicago this weekend, so I’ve been focusing on family rather than the Pub Quiz. As I write this, we are discussing the dangers of sitting, the delightful discoveries that await listeners of KDVS (I was a guest on “Honey Badger Radio” at 8:30 this morning), and the characters in the Davis High School production of Pippin.

Last night I was holding office hours at Crepeville until 10, often typing up my advice for students as they work on drafts of their (mostly theatrical and musical) performance reviews. When I published on Tumblr a top-ten list of revision advice for one of my students, one of my work colleagues (qbnscholar) made the following comment: “You should share this w/ all IORs [Instructors of Record]. It took me years to piece together what you succinctly delineate here.” Pressed for time, I will share that advice with you here:

1)   Clarify the point of each paragraph.

2)   Don’t include evidence / facts / narratives / memories unless they support a point you wish to make. Your reader will wonder why you are sharing those facts.

3)   Emphasize insights and assertions.

4)   Revise ruthlessly for wordiness and needless repetition.

5)   Don’t let any part of a previous draft survive if it doesn’t contribute.

6)   Carefully review transitions between sentences, especially when you are quoting Sirc (an assigned theoretical text).

7)   Introduce and integrate quotations, especially those from Sirc.

8)   Define terms when necessary, especially, again, when you are quoting Sirc.

9)   Watch out for weak verbs that emphasize stasis instead of shown action that substantiates your claims and value judgments.

10)   Have your bits of evidence and bits of quoted Sirc passages grow organically from the strong assertions found in each topic sentence and paragraph.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on candy, Sony, 31 hits by the same artist, superheroes, diamonds, China, professional basketball, hammers, birds and not birds, US Presidents who were veterans, problematic Republicans, action-adventure TV shows, holidays, blows, India, brie that is not precise, the City of Davis, tea, Irish pubs, science fiction films, relatives of goblins, Irish heroes, international education, astronomy, Hudsons, American authors, banned books, football, Russia, and Shakespeare.

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster

yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Visit https://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster to find five questions from last week’s Quiz. Happy Veterans Day!

P.S. It was gratifying to hear the names of Pub Quiz irregulars Val Dolcini and Dan Wolk mentioned at this morning’s Veterans Day ceremony at the Davis Cemetery. I look forward to seeing these two Davis citizens at a de Vere’s Pub Quiz again soon.

P.P.S. Irish Songwriter Mick Flannery will his Central Valley debut this coming Friday, November 15^th at 8 at Third Space here in Davis. See https://www.facebook.com/events/702411206453427/ for more details.