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

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. “The choice of a new generation” is an advertising slogan of what product? Ironically, people of an older generation were more likely to answer this correctly than those of a new generation.
Internet Culture. On the entertainment and news website Reddit, what does the acronym AMA mean? No barriers to web-speech!
World Leaders. With almost 1.5 million followers on Google+, what country’s 15^th and current prime minister is named Narenda Modi? I didn’t know Google+ had that many followers total.
Name the Category. Blackhawk, Apache, and Comanche are all Native American tribes and, one might say, victims of genocide. But they are also examples of what H word? All words that once (and perhaps still do) cause fear in those who hear them, or hear from them.
Pop Culture – Music. The number of piano concertos written by Ludwig van Beethoven is the same as the atomic number of boron and the category of the most destructive hurricanes. What is that number? We pretended that this was also a math question.

The Pink Ladyslipper Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on June 23, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

The Pub Quiz is back tonight after a brief hiatus to give the Pub waitstaff an opportunity to recover from the rush of graduation revelers. If I were graduating from UC Davis (again), I would make sure to invite my parents and other supporters to celebrate me at the most authentic pub in Davis (so I can see why de Vere’s has been so busy).

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature a special guest, the political consultant, guitarist, and rock historian Bobby Nord. Bob and his wife, Susi, a former Democratic member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, have been working tirelessly for progressive causes in the Granite State for many years. I would love to ask some pub quiz questions about New Hampshire tonight, such as about its State Wildflower (The Pink Ladyslipper), but that wouldn’t be fair to everyone else, for Bob and Susi will actually compete in the Quiz tonight.

One could say that Bob is partly responsible for the entire Pub Quiz, for during our freshman and sophomore years in college, Bob shared my wanderlust and love of the novels of Jack Kerouac, and helped me act on it. He agreed with Seneca, who believed that “Voyage, travel, and change of place impart vigor.” We loved that term “wanderlust,” but today in Germany some use the term “Fernweh,” a word that was coined as an antonym to Heimweh (or “homesickness”). Fernweh means “farsickness,” or a fondness for a place one has never seen. Bob and I decided that we shared a fondness for the unseen California, so one summer we drove here for a car deliver service, I found a “climate [that] suits my clothes,” and I resolved to return as soon as I was set free as a college-educated scholar and poet. And here I’ve stayed.

Speaking of travel, I’ve traveled to another country since I saw you last, by which of course I mean Utah. Situated in Park City, Utah, home to June snowstorms with significant accumulation, InstructureCon featured extensive discussions about teaching, instructional technology, and decentered learning. While at this august and serious scholarly event, I collected action figure swag for my children, and got to meet heroes such as Captain America, Wonder Woman, and Wolverine. Even more impressive a hero was Robert Reich, former U.S. Labor Secretary and the InstructureCon keynote speaker. The UC Berkeley professor and intellectual powerhouse shared these thoughts on education: “I teach because it’s the best way to have a positive impact on the future. As historian Henry Adams once wrote, ‘A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.’”

Eternity will stop for a couple hours at de Vere’s Irish Pub tonight at 7, and I hope you will be there to see it. Expect questions on a wide variety of topics, including geography, television, twins, Africa, shipwrecks, special correspondents, the dreams of animals, zoology, hilly towns and cities, ports, entrepreneurs, men, mononyms, congresses of electricity, the NFL, HBO, fictional restaurants where one can “enjoy” nachos with Mel Gibson, great musicians, not Volvo, articles in the LA Times, sesquipedalian and underprepared flashes of insight and discovery, famous people who were born and who died in Maryland, Hercules, Houston, Beethoven, Native American outrage, impressive Google+ numbers, tech-niche acronyms, and the power of choice, and Shakespeare.

If you were there, you know that our last Pub Quiz filled every chair in the Irish Pub. Should that happen again tonight, I hope my newsletter readers will come early enough to claim favorite tables. See you tonight at 7. And feel free to greet Bob Nord tonight, the diminutive man with the increasingly silver ponytail who (indirectly) made all of this happen. See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from the last quiz:

Mottos and Slogans: US States. What “Garden State” has the motto “Liberty and Prosperity”?

Revolutions. The Hungarian Revolution was the name of a spontaneous nationwide revolt against the government of the Hungarian People’s Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies. In what decade did it take place?

Pop Culture – Music. According to the book Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, in 1967 one of the most famous singers in the world moved from Los Angeles to Palm Springs, California, to avoid the smog. Name this singer who moved from LA at the age of 52.

Sports. The four Olympic disciplines in Figure Skating are men’s singles, ladies’ singles, pair skating, and ice WHAT?

Great Americans Who Have Been Nominated for Five Oscars. Born in 1930, what retired actor and former Marine famous for playing villains won acting Academy Awards in 1971 and 1992?
Pink Lady Slipper

The Neighbor de Gaulle Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on June 9, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I have a rare treat in store for those of you who can attend this evening’s Pub Quiz. The flamenco guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Aaron Gilmartin will be performing a song during the intermission of tonight’s Quiz, and then a few more songs while I am grading your answers. I have known Aaron for about 40 years, and have been impressed with his work as a musician in recent years, much of which can be enjoyed online. As you can find out at http://www.aarongilmartin.com, Aaron is supremely talented and accomplished.

In addition to grading essays and seeing films with my wife Kate, I spent much of this weekend reviewing European and American history flash cards with my daughter, Geneva, a sophomore (for another week) at Davis Senior High School. At one point Geneva expressed surprise at my understanding of former French President Charles de Gaulle. Little did she know that during World War II, de Gaulle lived at 99 Frognal in Hampstead, about a mile from where I first met Kate (at 45 England’s Lane). Without regard to the years between us, de Gaulle was my former neighbor! Despite England offering him a friendly location for his temporary exile from France during the war, de Gaulle didn’t always feel obliged to return the favor to Britain, as we see in this paragraph from his Time Magazine obituary in 1970:

“Like most crusaders, de Gaulle was extraordinarily farsighted but sometimes, maddeningly, his imperious manner and fragile sensibilities infuriated his nation’s closest allies. In a vain effort to force French leadership on Europe, he twice vetoed Britain’s entry into the continent’s first economic cooperative, the Common Market. At home, he stinted on public welfare in the form of new roads, telephones and a thousand other needed improvements, to pay for symbolically important but ultimately hollow shows of prestige, like the nuclear Force de Frappe.”

De Gaulle also featured prominently in an Adam Gopnik essay in this week’s New Yorker titled “What de Gaulle Won on D-Day,” in which we discover the difference between self-congratulation, and self-regard. Our weekend discussions of American and European conflicts reminded me that I needed to write something about our weekly Monday evening competition, the one that we enjoy on Monday evenings. I look forward to seeing you tonight, and to enjoying the free concert by Aaron Gilmartin. Invite some new friends to join us, and I will see you at the Quiz!

Oh, did you want some hints? Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on wizards, an odd mix of celebrities (Arnaz, Freeman, Griffith and Quinto), universities, instruments, things that are big and little, world capitals, Dublin, repeat assignments, suspected antagonists, U.S. Presidents, drowned emus, pot-smokers, France, the triumph of the good, The Rolling Stones, preemptive apologies, nuclear physics, the portrayal of villains, burdens, famous Italians, unexpected dancers, the daunted and undaunted, award-winning retirees, bacteria and mold, ice, WebMD, Palm Springs, Soviets, Smogtown, commodities, Ray Charles, cord-cutting, liberty, prosperity, and Shakespeare. Tonight we also welcome back one of my favorite teams, In Vino Veritas.

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. “Is It In You?” is the slogan of a beverage currently manufactured by PepsiCo and distributed in over 80 countries. Name the beverage.

Internet Culture. According to this morning’s Apple developers’ conference keynote, which iOS app is used the most often on the iPhone?

Pop Culture – Music. According to the American Film Institute, what is the most important song sung in the film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs?

Four for Four: Megalodon Edition. Which of the following assertions about the giant extinct shark, the Megalodon, are true? Megalodon had the most powerful bite of any creature that ever lived; Megalodon ate mostly prehistoric krill; Megalodon’s closest living relative is the Great White Shark; Megalodon’s teeth were up to 20 inches long.

Sports. Born in 1941, what living baseball player made 17 All-Star appearances at an unequaled five different positions (2B, LF, RF, 3B, & 1B)?

The Dressed as a Wizard Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on June 2, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Kate and I got to see former Poet Laureate Rita Dove perform her poetry Friday night. Here’s a favorite Rita Dove poem, titled “Exit”:

Just when hope withers, the visa is granted.

The door opens to a street like in the movies,

clean of people, of cats; except it is your street

you are leaving. A visa has been granted,

‘provisionally’-a fretful word.

The windows you have closed behind

you are turning pink, doing what they do

every dawn. Here it’s gray. The door

to the taxicab waits. This suitcase,

the saddest object in the world.

Well, the world’s open. And now through

the windshield the sky begins to blush

as you did when your mother told you

what it took to be a woman in this life.

And then Saturday night, we saw a play at the B Street Theatre: Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike. Here’s what the LA Times said about this inventive play: “Rarely has middle-aged despair over dashed dreams and squandered hopes been put to more hilarious effect than in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Christopher Durang’s giddy farce on Chekhovian themes that won the Tony for best play last year.

One of the best parts was running into my old friends Bruce and Diane, two members of the Pub Quiz team The Ice Cream Socialists who ruled the Quiz for an entire summer. Bruce and Diane were ushering, and they seemed to be having more fun than anyone else in the theatre, at least until the play began. I encourage you to go see it.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature no Chekov questions tonight. Instead, think Megalodon. Also expect questions about repeated words, beverages, Apple, Germany, Sam’s date, Spain numbers, Prince, astronomy, freed slaves, musical notes, simple jewelry, art history, big films, story time, colors, TV shows that I don’t watch, oases, Brazil, actors who were also soldiers, words lacking an I (such as “team”), a hero’s enthusiasm for couches, famous authors, young adults, little creatures, dead Brits, current events, Chicago, Juan Carlos, and Shakespeare. Also, Lupita Nyong’o has joined the recently announced cast of Star Wars: Episode VII – that won’t be on the Quiz, but I just wanted to be the first one to tell you.

Thursday night at 8 the great Design professor D.R. Wagner will be performing his poetry at the John Natsoulas Gallery. Wagner has written more than 20 books, and has won many important prizes. He also looks great when dressed as a wizard (but then don’t we all?). I hope you can join us.

But first, contact your team for tonight’s de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. What beverage is known as “The Uncola”?

Internet Culture. You would think that with its 250 million users Pandora would be the top source of streaming music, but it’s not. What is the #1 source of streaming music?

Pop Culture – Music. The singer who has a big hit this week with the song “Fancy,” and who features on the hit “Problem” shares a first name with one of my favorite punk rockers. Tell me the singer’s first or last name.

Sports. A three-time world champion, Elvis Stojko competed in what sport?

Science. By what monosyllabic word do we know the fluid that circulates throughout the lymphatic system?

The Flanders Poppies Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on May 26, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

When I lived in London in the 1980s, I noted that remembering World War I, and the British soldiers who died in that war, was still a national preoccupation. Many knew of family members (almost all of them young men) who had died in that war, and occasionally Kate and I would see a televised interview with an actual World War I veteran. Seemingly, a generation of youths was lost. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission had listed 888,246 war dead for the U.K and Colonies, or about 2% of the British population at the time.

As I was studying poetry at the time, I noticed on Remembrance Day (November 11^th) when this particular poem was posted in the Underground and on telephone poles to commemorate the Second Battle of Ypres (in western Belgium):

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

Inspired by this poem authored by Canadian physician John McCrae, more people are wearing poppies on November 11^th and on other remembrance days this year as we approach the 100^th anniversary of the beginning of World War I.

Happy Memorial Day to you and your families.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on one or more of the topics raised above, as well as on beverages, favorite sources of music, long-standing conflicts, something rich and strange, team accomplishments, the ivy league, 13 letters in common, smiley people, a lot of nerve, reruns, multi-syllabic country names, babbles and snorts, Irish waiters, Doctors who make poor choices, fraternities, U.S. states, the evils of tobacco, unusual languages, lead characters, the idea of Switzerland, breakfast staples, colorful M words with many meanings, captains, the U.S. Supreme Court, monosyllabic liquids, Elvis, fancy problems, deans, people named after Greek heroes, spiky-haired reporters, and Shakespeare.

Tonight’s anagram contains the hint of sex, violence, and off-color language; nevertheless, it is still safe for family hearing. How will I pull this off? You and your team will have to join us tonight to find out. See you at 7!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Mottos and Slogans. What motto on the crest of what famous boarding school is “Draco dormiens nunquam titillandus” which of course translates as “Never tickle a sleeping dragon”? I wasn’t even going to translate the Latin, but someone suggested that the first question of the Pub Quiz shouldn’t require conjugating.

2. Actors and Actresses. What English-born Australian actor’s second, third, and fourth highest-grossing films were Clash of the Titans, Terminator Salvation, and Wrath of the Titans, which he later apologized for making? Somehow I missed all three of these movies.

3. Pop Culture – Music. What 33 year-old American singer-songwriter and actor has a hit this week with the song “Not a Bad Thing”? Some critics disagree.

4. Sports. According to the American Academy of Ophthalmology, basketball and WHAT cause the most sports-related eye injuries? Hint: Boxing and MMA matches only endanger two people at a time.

5. Science: Flora. Oak woodlands, pine woodlands, and, in California, walnut woodlands can all be described with what six-syllable adjective that begins with the letter M? I learned the answer to this question from Elaine Fingerett in the Davis Arboretum.

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

by yourquizmaster on May 19, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

This morning my son’s bus driver, John, told me that his son spent much of this past weekend flying to Saudi Arabia. I thought to myself that I want to visit Saudi Arabia. Past Pub Quiz regular, and one-time regular champion, Rob Roy lives next door to Saudi Arabia, having moved to The United Arab Emirates to teach English in the city of Ras al-Khaima, home of the dramatic sand dune races every winter. I hope that Davis summers have prepared Rob for Ras al-Khaima summers, where the average high temperature is above 100 degrees from May until September.

Speaking for myself, I would rather visit India than Saudi Arabia, and perhaps rather visit Nigeria or Argentina than the United Arab Emirates, but of course I would welcome a world tour of all these places. I don’t know about you, but when summer comes, I crave adventure. Those of us who cannot travel as Rob Roy does can read longingly of others’ adventures, and bide our time, waiting for the promise of a summer or winter jaunt. The British novelist and poet D.H. Lawrence, who traded his manuscript of his first great novel, Sons and Lovers, for a 160-acre ranch near Taos, New Mexico, said this about travel:

When we get out of the glass bottle of our ego and when we escape like the squirrels in the cage of our personality and get into the forest again, we shall shiver with cold and fright. But things will happen to us so that we don’t know ourselves. Cool, unlying life will rush in.

I’m not sure what to make of “unlying life,” but I appreciate these words of a poet. One of Lawrence’s favorite authors as a child, Robert Louis Stevenson, was more plain-spoken about travel: “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler only who is foreign.” I hope all of us can embrace the spirit of Roy, Lawrence and Stevenson this summer, and become foreigners ourselves.

The Pub Quiz will be meeting both tonight and next week, the evening of Memorial Day. Soon our city will be brimming with Davis High alumni, returning home from college and looking for some way to stay intellectually vibrant while reuniting with old friends downtown. We shall provide that opportunity, but I hope you can help me enlist some new teams to join us, both in these waning days of May, and throughout the travel season of summer. What would be an appropriate enticement for such first-time pub quizzers? Pub fries with curry ketchup? I welcome your suggestions via email or in the comments of today’s newsletter at the Pub Quiz website: https://www.yourquizmaster.com.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about one or more of the topics raised above, as well as favorite schools, graphical user interface elements, pay equity, shopping sprees, energy producers, apology-worthy films, road races, British composers, the wisdom and criticism of George Bernard Shaw, journalism and vindications, science fiction, Marketing, free associations in fiction, sequels (with which we Americans have grown too comfortable), rummy card games played in the desert, lugging bovine urine during the summer of 2001, great songs, animated television, annus horribilis, illiberalism, great U.S. states, opthamology, trick questions, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us this evening at 7, or a bit before to claim a table at the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Mottos and Slogans. Born in 1884, what US President came up with the personal slogan “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen”? We learned last week that FDR was too wealthy to spend much time in the kitchen.

2. Internet Culture. Because of a $3.2 billion dollar purchase rumored by Apple, who is about to become what he calls “the first billionaire in hip-hop,” even though he hasn’t dropped an album in 15 years? Actually, the man in question will only have about $800 million from this deal. Another disappointment.

3. Name the Category. The following all refer to different types of what? Adjustable Bend, Artillery Loop, Ashley’s Bend, Axle Hitch. I bet Ashley would be proud to be included on this list.

4. Four for Four. Between 1968 and 1980, which of the following cities, if any, hosted the Summer Olympic Games? Mexico City, Montreal, Moscow, Munich. Is every four for four a trick question?

5. A Topic Suggested on Facebook: Harry Potter. “BLANK’S WARNING” is the title of the second chapter of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Whose warning is it? Thanks to Kayla for this topic suggestion.

The Dancing with Patchouli Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on May 12, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I was reminded again this weekend why I love living in Davis. The Whole Earth Festival gave me a chance to dance to some live music with my family amid the scents of patchouli and incense, and then Saturday night my wife Kate and I enjoyed Stories on Stage Davis, where the kind organizers gave away a copy of our new book, Where’s Jukie?, as a door prize.

Last night after my Sunday evening office hours I received a Facebook message from a former student of four years ago; she was expressing concerns about the extent to which such cultural offerings are available to everyone, especially when considering the high cost of living in Davis. She wrote, “Hi Dr. Andy. Many of my peers have expressed the concern that Davis as a town is now largely socio-economically unequal and overrun by its affluent, “white” residents. As a poet living in Davis, do you have an opinion about this sentiment?”

This was my response:

Hi Mariam,

Well, your friends are right about the economic challenges of living in Davis. Rents are high, and median home prices are unaffordable to most new families, thus likening the housing market here to some of the more expensive ones in the Bay area. Like most cities under 100,000 in the U.S., the city is also majority Caucasian. That said, Davis has a large Asian population, as you know, and a growing Latino and African American population. The city is also younger than you might expect, with about half the population under 25, and almost 75% under 45. As a progressive city, Davis makes a point to tax itself more heavily than other Central Valley cities, with most of those extra taxes going to support education, which is a significant leveler when it comes to income inequality.

In recent years, city and business interests have made significant investments in the arts and culture. Most (but not all) of that is concentrated downtown, thus attracting visitors and new residents to Davis who care about quality of life issues outside of one’s financial comforts. A city with a strong library, bike-able streets that are also served by a vibrant public transportation system, public and performing arts venues (such as Third Space), and some inexpensive restaurants, is a city that has made an investment in attracting and keeping a significant diversity of citizens.

UC Davis will always be a feeder engine for the City of Davis, which means that as the university attracts more and more ethnically and economically diverse students, we can hope that more of them will move here (or move back here) to raise families and contribute to the cultural richness of 95616 and 95618. When Kate and I moved (back) here in 1998, we could barely afford our mortgage, but now we are thankful for the great schools that our property taxes help to fund.

If you are implying that Davis needs to do more to welcome poets and poetry, I agree with you. My KDVS radio show, the Poetry Night Reading Series, and the extra poetry classes I teach represent some of my efforts, but I’d like to see more widespread interest and investment in the literary arts in Davis.

I have some friends on the Davis City Council whom I am sure will want to chime in about ways they have addressed some of the concerns you raise. I wouldn’t be surprised if thoughtful folks such as Joe Krovoza, Dan Wolk, Brett D Lee, Lucas Frerichs, and Rochelle Swanson chime in. We might even hear from some folks who hope to serve on the City Council in the future, such as Robb Davis and Sheila Allen. If you end up having conversations with any of these public servants, I would be interested to hear what you learn. As a UC Davis alumna and a talented poet, your opinion matters, and should be heard. Thanks for writing.

So what did I leave out of my assessment of our fair city? I look forward to hearing your opinions, too.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on kitchens, cities that begin with the letter M, words that start with “A” (such as “artillery” and “axle”), a topic suggested by one of you on Facebook, authors with names that start with H, victory, Cervantes, sports that Americans don’t follow, the Philippines, U.S. states, the acreage of Ireland, Tiffany, injurious sports, the Greek alphabet, the death penalty, wine, waves, Doris Day and Nancy Reagan, experimental music, the culture of rugged geography, birds of prey, songwriters, mothers, crimes, U.S. Presidents, TV networks, a Poe boy, actor-directors, boats, metals and voles and worms, climate change, St. George, and Shakespeare.

See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. What San Francisco-based country is known for the slogan “Quality Never Goes Out of Style”? Most of you use more of this company’s products than I do.

Internet Culture: Again with the Web Browsers. The Yuba City horse that won Saturday’s Kentucky Derby shares a name, partially, with a web browser. Which browser is it? Yay, California!

Film Quotations. What film includes the line “Into the garbage shoot, flyboy!” Thanks to Truman for this question suggestion.

Pop Culture – Music. OMG. The lead singer of Maroon 5 has totally dyed his hair platinum blond. What is his name? Do we call a male blond “platinum”?

Sports. Yesterday we enjoyed this baseball headline: “Wil Myers Hits 3-Run Inside-the-Park Home Run Despite Jogging to 1st Base.” Myers has hit four home runs against the Yankees this season. For what team does this outfielder play? I myself always enjoy watching a batter round the bases while Yankee outfielders look on.

P.S. Poetry Night this week is an entirely Open Mic. Thursday at 8 at the John Natsoulas Gallery.

The Productive Pomodoro Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on May 5, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I’ve agreed to give a talk at the University of the Pacific Second Annual Conference on Creative Writing. Organized by Davis resident and University of the Pacific professor Scott Evans, this conference features presentations by many of northern California’s most accomplished and innovative writers, including New York Times bestseller James Rollins, local television journalist and devoted dad Sam Shane, and Pub Quiz regular John Lescroart, whose new novel The Keeper will be released tomorrow, May 6. I hope you have reserved your copy, as I have.

At the Conference I will be speaking on a subject that I’ve researched and practiced often, but presented on rarely: personal productivity. Here’s how it will read in the program:

Productivity Lessons from High-Performing Authors and Thought Leaders

“This session will sample some of the theories and practices of productivity gurus such as David Allen, Seth Godin, and Tim Ferriss. We will discuss maintaining focus, eliminating distractions, and meeting deadlines. Participants in this session will learn the meanings of terms such as GTD, Pomodoro, the Four-Hour Workweek and the 10-Minute Hack.”

Does that sound enticing? The organizers of the conference picked this and a social media platform presentation from the six options that I presented them. Funny that my PhD in English and 25 years of university teaching are evidently less valuable to aspiring writers than what I’ve learned about productivity and social media marketing over the last decade.

Are your most valuable skills the ones you were schooled in, as it were?

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about current events, first base jogs, web browsers (again with the web browsers), Romantic poets, Jimmy Stewart, the 1970s, American rivers, human rights (unfair, I realize), divisive holidays, garbage, blondes, Nyle C. Brady & Ray R. Weil’s 2009 book Elements of the Nature and Properties of Soils, Emmy-winning shows, 30 pounds of muscle, moving in a circle, people named Zachary, rooflessness, Semisweet inns (sounds like an anagram), percentage jumps, sequels, big cities, power, divisible integers, independents, Wordsworth, iPods, books about books, mechanical devices, literary prize-winners, American rallying teams, Alan Rickman, salads, the volume of gas, and Shakespeare.

Tomorrow night’s John Lescroart book release party, complete with wine and food and live music, will take place at the Odd Fellow’s Hall at 6:30 p.m. As with the Pub Quiz, I encourage you to come early to reserve a seat. John always puts on a good show, and the critics love his new Dismas Hardy book, The Keeper.

Meanwhile, I hope you will join us tonight for some trivial fun!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Mottos and Slogans. The only major sportswear brand without a slogan is a German company named after a genus of large cat. Name the brand.

Newspaper Headlines. A surprising announcement revealed what about George Clooney yesterday?

Complete the Quotation. The saying that “BLANK is a good walk spoiled” is often attributed to Mark Twain. What one-syllable word completes the quotation?

Pop Culture – Music. Only four named bands were among the top 15 highest-grossing musical acts of 2013. Name just one of them.

Sports. Fill in the blank from the FIFA.com website: “A match is played by two teams, each consisting of not more than BLANK players, one of whom is the goalkeeper.” Fill in the blank.

P.S. UC Davis professor Joe Wenderoth is reading at the Black Box Theatre / Lab A at Celeste Turner Wright Hall (the UC Davis Theatre Building) this coming Thursday night at 8. Parental discretion advised.

P.P.S. Did you see that last week’s newsletter appeared later Monday evening in the Sacramento Bee?

The Racist Banana Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on April 28, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Like many sports fans yesterday, I have been thinking about the place of racism in professional sports. Standing in the sun near the new eastern entrance to our UC Davis Arboretum while my son Jukie inspected the archway made of shovels, I wondered what others were saying about how the LA Clippers would respond to the opinions of the team’s owner, so I searched for the term “racist” on Twitter, and discovered that most of the mentions on that day concerned sporting events and teams. Although George Orwell called sport “War minus the shooting,” I was actually encouraged by what I discovered, including mentions of Branch Rickey.

As we consider the private racist conversations of the owner of the LA Clippers, who thought it wise to privately disparage Magic Johnson for being a black man, we might take a moment to remember that it was another sports executive, Branch Rickey, who helped to challenge racism in professional sports in 1947. By signing Major League Baseball’s first African-American player, Jackie Robinson, Rickey broke an important color barrier, gave all Americans a Rookie of the Year to cheer for, and incidentally made it possible for Rickey to recruit subsequent baseball standouts of color at bargain prices. Sometimes it pays to be the first: it could be argued that Branch Rickey remains the most appreciated baseball manager in American history, and not just because he was the first to mandate that his players wear batting helmets. This week Donald Sterling will find out what price he will pay to be the least appreciated owner in sports.

As we have talked about at the Pub Quiz, and as we will touch upon this evening, soccer is a much more popular sport worldwide than any of our American sporting exports. So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to see that my search for incidents of racism on Sunday found many more mentions of soccer than baseball, with much attention paid to Dani Alves, the offensive right back who plays for FC Barcelona in La Liga. Evidently at a match yesterday someone threw a banana onto the field before Alves. I don’t understand such acts of racism, nor do I care to delve into the motivations or symbolism of such an act, but certainly any of us might feel anger or humiliation at being jeered in such a way. Rather than getting upset, Alves grabbed the banana, took a bite, and then kicked his corner kick. Alves later said, “We have suffered this in Spain for some time. You have to take it with a dose of humour. We aren’t going to change things easily. If you don’t give it importance, they don’t achieve their objective.” The six-second clip has been shown on YouTube and Vine tens of thousands of times since, reminding us that the equanimity of the LA Clippers players, Jackie Robinson or Dani Alves (my new favorite soccer player), is sometimes necessary to confront entrenched racism without being confounded by it.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature some international flavor, and thus unfairly advantage those of us who travel. The question topics will include large cats, mad men, Canada, light solids, films that you may have seen the preview for without having remembered the title, Queen Elizabeth, ice, cast members with the letter O in their names, the Nobel Prize, Latin America, a master’s degree from Yale, summer songs, People’s Choice Awards, people named Thomas and Richard, flowability, former Secretaries of War, protein, bands that you may have actually seen play live, whiskey, famous felons, a few other topics that I haven’t chosen yet, browsing, viruses, German companies without slogans, second marriages, and Shakespeare.

Speaking of international flavor, notable Pablo Neruda translator and stirring poet William O’Daly will be performing at the John Natsoulas Gallery this coming Thursday night, for it is Poetry Night. Join us at 8 that night to see why those events are so much fun.

See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Newspaper Headlines. A plan introduced in 2010 set the price for Netflix’s U.S. streaming subscribers at how many dollars a month? Hint: Correct answer is a number that is divisible by 4, so of course it is not 7.

Patriot’s Day. Patriot’s Day is a civic holiday commemorating the anniversary of two battles on April 19, 1775. Name either battle.

Acreage. How many square yards are there in an acre? Is it closest to 5, 50, 500, or 5,000?

Pop Culture – Music. What current hit song begins with these lyrics? “The snow glows white on the mountain tonight / Not a footprint to be seen / A kingdom of isolation, / And it looks like I’m the queen.”

True or False. The median home value in Davis is more than half a million dollars.

P.S. If you recruit a brand new team of first-timers to come to tonight’s Pub Quiz, I will reward that team with a serving of pub fries with curry ketchup.

The Vivid and Perpetual Exhibits Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on April 21, 2014

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Happy Patriots’ Day! When I was a Bostonian, I relished having a Monday off in late April. My friends and I would either watch the Boston Marathon runners go by from one of our dormrooms, or head out to the sideline of the race to cheer on the finishers. I have heard that the cheering was particularly loud this year. I suspect that if I were running the race this time, I still would not have crossed the finish line as this newsletter goes to print.

I probably should have joined a running group when I lived in Boston, for I would have benefited from the inspiration provided by regular runners. As the Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.” I tended to run solo: along and across the Charles River to Cambridge, home to the great bookstores; along Commonwealth Avenue and then Newberry Street to end up at the Boston Common and Gardens which I had once learned about in childhood picture books; and sometimes out in some randomly chosen direction through neighborhoods that I sometimes revisit in my dreams. Alan Sillitoe explored this sort of determination to cover ground as a solo runner in his most famous book, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner. He wrote: “You should think about nobody and go your own way, not on a course marked out for you by people holding mugs of water and bottles of iodine in case you fall and cut yourself so that they can pick you up – even if you want to stay where you are – and get you moving again.”

In Davis, of course, most of us bicycle instead of run, and we most often bike for transportation rather than for freedom-seeking exercise. I wonder to what extent the City of Davis took a hit during the aftermath of Lance Armstrong’s duplicity, his betrayal of all those who cheered him on. Had he been a legitimate champion, our US Bicycling Hall of Fame would have had Armstrong appearing in vivid and perpetual exhibits, much like those Smithsonian Institution exhibits devoted to Captain America in the most recent Marvel film. By contrast, Armstrong’s accomplishments are obscured by the largest possible asterisk.

Willy Nelson recently came to Davis to perform at the Mondavi Center, causing some Davisites to revive the apocryphal remark supposedly shared by Nelson when the Armstrong scandal broke: “I think it is just terrible and disgusting how everyone has treated Lance Armstrong, especially after what he achieved, winning seven Tour de France races while on drugs. When I was on drugs, I couldn’t even find my bike.” Willie and Lance were friends, so who knows if the musician really said such a thing. Either way, the story is worth a chuckle. I just hope that however you venture to de Vere’s Irish Pub this evening, you will do so safely.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on Kill Bill, metal nuts, CEOs, civic holidays, perseverance and energy, newspaper headlines, things that are hastily sealed, acreage, buffalo milk (I know, again), wingmen, coaches, names in the news, American novelists, cops and their rotating partners, rumblings, medieval physiology, wandering popes, Star Wars, 129 countries, Amazon, American heroes and patriots, animation, familiar tunes, alliterative titles, real estate, publishers and polynomials, happy employees, odorlessness, running, lyrics of isolation, repeated names, India and Shakespeare.

Thanks to all of you who came to my book party on Saturday. We filled every chair in the John Natsoulas Gallery with about 120 people, and feel very lucky to be living in the City of Davis. Copies of Where’s Jukie are available at The Avid Reader in Davis.

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

Your Quizmaster