Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

            I came home one afternoon last week to find a frightening artifact on the kitchen table: a long and thick lock of hair. My four year-old, as many four year olds will do, had started playing the adult scissors, and decided that a first haircut was in order. You are probably wondering why I’ve never had my child’s hair cut, only a few bangs trimmed so he could see. We so adore his hair, and we’ve let it go this far, that now we can’t bear the thought. Plus, its fun to watch him strut down E Street like Samson, shrugging off the comments to me about what beautiful hair my daughter has. When the fateful day of the haircut finally comes, I shall post before and after pictures at https://www.yourquizmaster.com.

            The sight of the lone lock on the table almost inspired a poem right there on the spot. Of course, it wouldn’t have been the first time. As any English Major could tell you (and it’s always good strategy to bring an English Major to the Pub Quiz), Alexander Pope wrote one of his most famous poems about such an incident: The Rape of the Lock. If you were fortunate enough to take a Pope class with retired UC Davis professor Max Byrd, you might remember that Pope compares the taking of a single lock of heroine Belinda’s hair to the abduction of Helen of Troy, (the aftermath of which we can read about in long poems by Homer). You might also recall this Pope couplet:

Fair Tresses Man’s Imperial Race insnare,

And Beauty draws us with a single Hair.

            Although many enjoyed Pope’s tempest-in-a-teapot humor, I suppose that today a poet might not find success using the central metaphor of this poem, for “rape” is one of those terms that is so charged and inflammatory that one can’t use it in a casual, metaphorical, or certainly humorous way. In 1998 The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda recognized rape during a time of war as a potential crime against humanity, and women’s crisis centers have taught awareness about sexual assault for almost 40 years. Environmentalists once casually used phrases like the “rape of the earth,” but I don’t believe that language is often used today. I suppose words drop from the working vocabulary of most Americans every year, but I’m sure there are ways that we can compensate with new linguistic discoveries. I will do what I can to help you adorn your word choices with new flavors and varieties of diction.

            Speaking of language, and poetry, as a poet I enjoy writing these Pub Quiz Newsletter hint paragraphs, for I’m forced to think associatively and analogically, to give the impression of my meaning, rather than to just come out and say it plainly. Perhaps you’ll be inspired to think or write the same way, and compose something of your own. At tonight’s Pub Quiz you will hear questions about cascades, reaching out, The Beatles, flowers, personable and familiar DJs, stomaching jazz, Bristol, our heavy earth, decorations, mammoth caves, famous people born in 1947, Emmy-winning TV shows, the Commonwealth of Nations, The Simpsons, no Betty White (unfortunately), the aforementioned Homer, Scottish culture, pairings of Oscar-winning actors, baseball (two questions!), African-American actors, and a play be Shakespeare!

            Last week at the sold-out Pub Quiz we were joined by three celebrity participants. I expect at least two such luminaries this evening. And I hope that you can join us as well tonight for the Pub Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

P.S. This coming October Pub Quiz participant Scott Fischbein is participating in bikeathon to raise money for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. If you would like to support him in this effort, please visit http://main.nationalmssociety.org/goto/scottfischbein .

Friends of the Pub Quiz, and those curious about all the fun and fuss associated with the Pub Quiz, should come to de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis (217 E Street), the highly esteemed pub and restaurant that fills up every night because of the superb quality of food, drink and company that can be found there. The de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz takes place every Monday at 7pm, though players are encouraged to arrive early to claim a table. As always, find out more about the Pub Quiz by visiting https://www.yourquizmaster.com. For more on de Vere’s Irish Pub, visit http://deverespub.com/.

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Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

            Although my parents played some jazz on the phonograph when I was a child, it was actually my younger brother Oliver who introduced me to jazz. Having dabbled in the genre here and there, mostly by listening to evening jazz on KDVS and KXJZ, I resolved to teach a class at UC Davis called “Jazz and Literature,” mostly so I could again teach the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin and some of Langston Hughes’ jazz poems. Oliver came to my rescue that quarter by loaning me his jazz library of about 20 books, and his 500+ CDs. It took me weeks to do the research, but of course I could do it while reading books and playing with the children. Now the Pandora Miles Davis Channel gets ample play in our house, so that means I also get to hear John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Lester Young. I also know that I can choose freely from the huge jazz CD and record collection at KDVS when I am playing bumper music for my public affairs radio show, for I know that I won’t accidentally encounter any swearing. What’s your favorite kind of instrumental music? You may have a chance to answer a question or two on that subject this evening if you can join us at the Pub Quiz.

            Another form of low-cost entertainment is the local poetry reading. This coming Thursday at 8pm at the John Natsoulas Gallery the local poet and publisher Jill Stengel will be performing her work. Jill runs a “micropress” called “a+bend press” that has published more than 41 chapbook titles, with more in the works. How lucky we are to have her as a cultural leader in our city of Davis! Jill’s own work, including the chapbooks lagniappe, late may, and may(be) can be viewed online at www.dusie.org, and her first full-length collection is due out in early 2011 from Black Radish Books. Having lived for many years in Los Angeles and Davis, Jill will be giving her first Davis reading on Thursday, and I get to host the event. You are invited to join us. For more information, see http://www.poetryindavis.com.

            On tonight’s Pub Quiz, you should expect questions on buying and selling, Apple, Inc., Irate Robbers, movies whose narrative structures resemble those of video games, special months, Jersey Shore (forgive me), songs in Spanish that you might sing in the shower, Football, prime numbers, research conducted by Men’s Health magazine, American cities, a preference for Pablo Picasso, Missouri, The 4^th of July, rich celebrities who are nevertheless difficult to dislike, blundering helmets, palindromes, Republicans, stoneworks (kinda), the New York Yankees, radical jingles, college basketball, Coney Island, Walt Disney, government programs, legal terms, Valentine’s day, gravity bombs, tennis, New Orleans, and Shakespeare.

            I hope you can join us tonight for the most simultaneously raucous and intellectual Pub Quiz in town!

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000464035243

P.S. Inaugural player Rob Roy will be returning from Korea to play the Pub Quiz this evening. Greet him at table 12 or so if you see him.

Friends of the Pub Quiz, and those curious about all the fun and fuss associated with the Pub Quiz, should come to de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis (217 E Street), the highly esteemed pub and restaurant that fills up every night because of the superb quality of food, drink and company that can be found there. The de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz takes place every Monday at 7pm, though players are encouraged to arrive early to claim a table. As always, find out more about the Pub Quiz by visiting https://www.yourquizmaster.com. For more on de Vere’s Irish Pub, visit http://deverespub.com/.

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Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

If you are a Davis resident, you are lucky to live in a city that cares so much about parks and bicycles. As I write this, I can see from my vantage point a juggler in Central Park (sometimes called Farmers’ Market Park) who somehow can juggle seven balls at once. If this guy were performing this feat in Boston or London, where I went to college and enjoyed interacting with all the buskers, he’d have a guitar case full of bills and change in front of him. But here in Davis, with so much wide-open space where one can practice one’s juggling, play Frisbee, or enjoy live music with a hundred or more friends picnicking nearby, such a sight is almost typical. Some of the people walking by in pairs are laughing, clearly committed to their conversations, and the Davisites biking by are wearing helmets, so obviously they value bike safety and won’t be distracted; neither party thinks to look up as the juggler’s ostentatious ovals become more and more elliptical.

I was thinking about our parks and playgrounds while out on outdoor adventures with my two sons in Davis this weekend. There’s a partially-shaded play structure off Elk Place in far North Davis that offers a view of farmland to the northeast, and almost a mile of bike paths to the south. As is the case with the juggler, we sometimes disregard such quotidian peace and beauty in Davis, having taken such outdoor leisure space for granted. Imagine being a child in a town where the city seems to be designed for play in the sunshine! The designers of our fair city were thinking of our such children when they imagined our city, especially after we had committed ourselves to supporting and making room for our bike-commuters. I learned from my friend Paul Dorn to associate our bike paths with retired Psychology Professor Bob Sommer, the author of many bike-centric (and train-centric) essays that you might have read in the Davis Enterprise. With more than 600 publications on his CV, Bob is what you might call a productive scholar, one who in the 1960s had a bicyclist’s vision of our city; Bob’s plan has benefited so many of us since, whether we use our available green geography for rest or play, for dining or for sports.

“Sports Geography” would make a great Pub Quiz topic. Other topics you should expect tonight include dialogic responses to movie taglines, rich proponents of economist Lawrence Summers, people named “Hutton,” Bank of America, two US states where you likely haven’t spent much time, the swordplay of angry and fated kings, supermodels, volcanoes, the US Constitution, CNN, guitarists, Tony-award-winning producers who have also taught acting, razorbacks, Nicaragua, three sports where Americans excel, poets laureate, San Francisco actors, South Asia, midwestern states, medicine, the territory ahead, CEOs, bears, statues, flight attendants, and Shakespeare.

I hope you will join us tonight. New faces and new teams are always welcome!

Your Quizmaster

Friends of the Pub Quiz, and those curious about all the fun and fuss associated with the Pub Quiz, should come to de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis (217 E Street), the highly esteemed pub and restaurant that fills up every night because of the superb quality of food, drink and company that can be found there. The de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz takes place every Monday at 7pm, though players are encouraged to arrive early to claim a table. As always, find out more about the Pub Quiz by visiting https://www.yourquizmaster.com. For more on de Vere’s Irish Pub, visit http://deverespub.com/.

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Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I’m continually impressed with the energy and activism of our Pub Quiz participants. You might remember that one of our favorite long-time players, Meg, has left Davis to join Teach for America. She’s now inspiring young minds in towns and hamlets of the Mississippi Delta rather than the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Now another one of our Pub Quiz regulars has heeded the call to service, this time in Vietnam. Melissa Chordas has traveled to the Ba Vi Orphanage in rural northern Vietnam to provide desperately-needed support for the staff and orphans there. As she put it in a recent letter to the Davis Enterprise, the orphanage “is home to more than 35 infants and more than 40 school-aged children” and it “provides shelter and care for orphans who have lost one or both parents.” Melissa is working overseas because “Many orphanages in Vietnam are understaffed and the children are badly in need of attention and supplies. We have created [a] group to spread awareness about our outreach effort, gain support and share information about our fundraising efforts and our travels.” If you would like to find out more, and how you can help, visit http://bit.ly/baviorphanage. Congratulations to Melissa and her team for their humanitarian work on behalf of the neediest among us (and a special personal thanks to local teachers and caregivers who support Americans with disabilities).

This week’s Pub Quiz newsletter is a bit shorter and a bit later than I had planned, for I was called home to take care of our latest pet, a mouse that we unwillingly adopted some time last week. My four-year old, Truman, named the house mouse “Dolly,” and was not at all concerned that the mouse was recently spotted scampering beneath his bed just before bedtime. Although we had set out a number of small plastic “have-a-heart” traps, this mouse would somehow trigger them without ever stepping inside. The debate began about what more expeditious means we might use to find Dolly a new home (and perhaps a celestial one). Finally today I bought a deluxe, complex metal trap that not only immobilized Dolly within hours of setup, but also gave the kids a chance to see her continue to dine on the peanut butter that we had set out for her. And just now Truman and I drove Dolly out to a field where Dolly could be released and, the story goes, be reunited with her family. I may add a picture of proud animal lover Truman to the web version of this newsletter, so check yourquizmaster.com later for visual evidence of our adventure.

Speaking of adventure, what fun we will have tonight at the Pub Quiz! You can expect two questions about baked goods and desserts, at least two on ancient civilizations, and one or more apiece on topics such as favorite candy bars, Linda McCartney, the subject of one of my favorite Hoagy Carmichael songs, Star Trek, Chelsea Clinton, Lady Gaga and other four-syllable musicians, fatter verbs, human anatomy, countries separated by a common language (as George Bernard Shaw put it), platinum records, NBC, famous people with limited income potential, Yul Brynner (who I once saw perform in The King and I at the Kennedy Center), confederacies, loyalty and honor, going rogue, scary movies, famous dogs, mountain ranges, erotic thrillers, healthcare reforms, skipping to my lou, Sean Astin, John Coltrane, and Shakespeare. As far as we know, Shakespeare did not declare himself to be a vegetarian – that might have been impractical.

I hope you can join us tonight at 8 pm at 226 F Street for the Pub Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

P.S. You are also invited to attend Wednesday’s poetry reading with Nevada City Molly Fisk in the banquet room. We start at 8, with the open mic beginning at 9. See http://www.poetryindavis.com for more information.

Friends of the Pub Quiz, and those curious about all the fun and fuss associated with the Pub Quiz, should come to de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis (217 E Street), the highly esteemed pub and restaurant that fills up every night because of the superb quality of food, drink and company that can be found there. The de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz takes place every Monday at 7pm, though players are encouraged to arrive early to claim a table. As always, find out more about the Pub Quiz by visiting https://www.yourquizmaster.com. For more on de Vere’s Irish Pub, visit http://deverespub.com/.

Posted via email from yourquizmaster’s posterous

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I participated in an inspirational poetry reading in Lodi yesterday. In addition to the featured reader, the Starry Night Poetry Series at the Lodi Public Library featured an open mic by a great number of local poets, several of them over 70. Many of you youngsters would consider what I’ve just described to be a ho-hum affair, perhaps one that would confirm your suspicions about dull modern poetry readings. As the event unfolded, however, I was struck by how sharp, curious and witty the local poets were. One in particular, Jim Turner, who turns 85 this week, showed me recently-written poems that were intellectually and imaginatively vibrant: first-rate work. He read a couple poems before announcing that he didn’t have the breath to share his final poem, a long three-voiced work about a wife helping his husband struggle with PTSD after the Civil War. He asked me to read it, and I was delighted to do so – it reminded me of Frost’s “Death of the Hired Man” (see http://www.bartleby.com/118/3.html). I think my interpretation of the Turner poem touched the audience much more than any of the poems I had brought. It was a special moment, really moving.

So I began to wonder if poetry, and other such intellectual activities (such as researching Pub Quiz questions!) can keep us young. I look forward to finding out, and found some hints about the future from three old friends. During recent trips to Washington DC I took advantage of opportunities to enjoy long conversations with three East Coast journalists who I knew as a child. Former Natural History magazine editor Alan Ternes; former CBS news anchor (and member of the Johnson administration), Roy Meachum; and former Washington Post Religion Editor William MacKaye (of the famous DC MacKaye clan) were all born in the 1920s and early 1930s, and all three continue to impress me with their eloquence and intellectual rigor. And two of them are uncles! As a child, I didn’t realize how privileged I was to have such intellectual heroes in the family (counting, as well, my Mom and Dad).

Speaking of great journalists, all of us lost an American intellectual hero last Friday week with the passing of Daniel Schorr. NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday played a long remembrance of Schorr, and this coming Thursday afternoon at 5pm on KDVS (90.3) occasional Pub Quiz participant (and winner) Douglas Everett will feature his archived interviews with Daniel Schorr on “Radio Parallax.” If you get to hear the interview, you’ll be impressed by the cerebral acuity of this nonagenarian and protégé of Edward R. Murrow. He will be missed.

And how many Pub Quiz questions will you miss this evening? It depends on how much you know about the following topics: ubiquitous TV slogans, internet culture, today’s news, Aussies, gems, trucks, sports initials, organic compounds, Duke Ellington (also of a friend of my Uncle Roy), Native American tribal customs, multi-platinum albums, talk show rumors, this whole Shirley Sherrod scandal, superheroes, American authors, Uma, film planets, famous painters, matrimonio, Louise Mandrell, Bell Telephone Laboratories, two of my favorite poets, willful blindness, and German walls (but maybe not the ones you are thinking of).

I look forward to see you at this evening’s edition of the Pub Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

P.S. Ifyou haven’t done so already, check out the website of the Pub Quiz at https://www.yourquizmaster.com.

Friends of the Pub Quiz, and those curious about all the fun and fuss associated with the Pub Quiz, should come to de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis (217 E Street), the highly esteemed pub and restaurant that fills up every night because of the superb quality of food, drink and company that can be found there. The de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz takes place every Monday at 7pm, though players are encouraged to arrive early to claim a table. As always, find out more about the Pub Quiz by visiting https://www.yourquizmaster.com. For more on de Vere’s Irish Pub, visit http://deverespub.com/.

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Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

For some people, summer is a time for major projects. Some will finally clean out the garage, visit a faraway country with the family, or reunite with old friends. For many academics, summer finally leaves one time to work on writing and research projects now that the distractions of the classroom and the faculty meeting room are finally behind us. As I might have mentioned last week, for his summer project, my friend James Kaelan is supporting his new novel, We’re Getting On, with a book tour from Los Angeles to Vancouver on his bicycle. He rolled into Davis Sunday night, and tonight he will be giving a reading just before Pub Quiz, at the Davis Avid Reader at 7:30. I will be MCing that event as well as our Quiz, so if you would like to see my professional schizophrenia on public display, I invite you to attend both events. And no one at the Avid Reader will require you to buy anything to enjoy the James Kaelan show. If you want to find out more about Kaelan’s bicycle odyssey, or see a picture of him on the cover of the current Poets and Writers magazine, visit http://www.zeroemissionbook.com/. If you want to register your interest in joining us at that event, visit http://bit.ly/zeroemission.

For me, one of my summer projects has been to imagine, research, write and wordsmith (with some help from an ingenious web designer) the completed webpage of the Pub Quiz. If you visit https://www.yourquizmaster.com, you will see a prior Pub Quiz, photographs from past quizzes, a list of some of the resources I use to research Pub Quiz questions, etc. I welcome your feedback or suggestions. Each of these newsletters will appear as a post, so I am now officially a blogger, though for a rather esoteric readership made up of bar-goers who, for some reason, usually jump right to the third paragraph. For a much more interesting blog by a frequent Pub Quiz participant, one that touches upon cupcakes, Davis cows and restaurants, and San Francisco street art by the elusive Banksy, visit http://blog.keithbradnam.com/. If you have a web-based or creative resource that you would like me to plug in a future newsletter, let me know. If you need help setting up your own blog or site, I could give you the name of my web designer.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature five questions that you should really know the answer to. Really. That’s the subject of the five single-topic questions tonight. I’m hoping everyone will score in double digits (on the Quiz) this evening. Those teams that actually win prizes will most likely correctly answer questions about insurance companies, social web 2.0 applications, young and fated geniuses, clever riddles found in children’s books, Danes, graduates of the School of Rock, Olympians, frigidity, the day jobs of American Presidents, unusual words that begin with S as in “Sam,” electrical impulses, Mel Brooks movies, Benjamin Franklin’s business, cyborgs, bicameral elks, US states, World War II, classical music, villains and their henchmen, city nicknames, a guy named Merrick, Native Americans, Europeans, pretty actresses who somehow don’t seem substantive enough to have won Academy Awards, candles, fauxtobiographies (I just coined that – do you like it?), the US Senate, players getting kicked off their professional sports teams, and a really long Shakespeare play, such as Hamlet.

I expect tonight’s Pub Quiz to sell out, but you might want to reserve a table for a future Pub Quiz at (530) 756-4556. I hope to see you this evening at the James Kaelan reading at the Avid Reader, or at the Pub Quiz.

Your Quizmaster

https://www.yourquizmaster.com

Three questions from last week’s quiz:

21.Books and Authors.What Pulitzer-Prize- winning 47-year old author wrote the novels The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007)?

22.Name the Year. All of these events happened in the same year. What year was it? Gavin Newsom started marrying gay and lesbian people at SF City Hall, Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunctioned at the Superbowl, and, in Davis, people first started using both Harper Junior High and the Davis Wiki (at http://www.daviswiki.org).

23.Musical Instruments. You are probably familiar with the word that refers to the Hawaiian stringed lute that resembles a small guitar. Are there one, two, three or four repeated letters in that word? (As an aside, my favorite local player of this instrument is the KDVS DJ Gary Saylin.)

Friends of the Pub Quiz, and those curious about all the fun and fuss associated with the Pub Quiz, should come to de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis (217 E Street), the highly esteemed pub and restaurant that fills up every night because of the superb quality of food, drink and company that can be found there. The de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz takes place every Monday at 7pm, though players are encouraged to arrive early to claim a table. As always, find out more about the Pub Quiz by visiting https://www.yourquizmaster.com. For more on de Vere’s Irish Pub, visit http://deverespub.com/.

Posted via email from yourquizmaster’s posterous

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I’ve been impressed with the turnout at the Pub Quiz this summer, despite these being traditional vacation months. We can thank one of my favorite educational reformers, Horace Mann, among others for the timing of our summer vacations. In the 1840s, (a decade before becoming the founding President of Antioch College, alma mater of both my father and my wife Kate), Mann worried that crowding schoolchildren into humid classrooms would encourage the spread of diseases, and that the overstimulation of young minds would drive children to agitation, and even insanity. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a schoolchild around that time, and he must have agreed with Mann, for he once said, “Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed.” One can only conclude from this logic that you should bring your “accurate” and overtaxed mind tonight to answer some tough questions. As Holmes also said, “A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.” You can start on those tasks and questions tonight at 9!

Speaking of your regular attendance at the Quiz, it has been brought to my attention that sometimes on the same Monday night that the hostesses have turned away teams of players who wish to participate in the Quiz (as may be the case tonight), other teams have gladly enjoyed the entertainment and camaraderie that we have grown used to on Monday nights, but chosen to order almost no food or drink. Although I get to focus only on the fun and challenge of amusing you for a couple hours, I do recognize that is a business that pays for the time and labor of the excellent wait staff and barkeeps that keep you happy and nourished while I prattle on about Supreme Court Justices and educational reformers. So if you enjoy the show, please support the restaurant that provides you that show. Other folks (folks who don’t plan ahead or remember to call 756-4556 by Sunday or so) are often available to take your booth if you don’t fill it – sometimes you see these folks crowding around the bar, hoping that SportsCenter will provide them an advantage on questions numbers eight and twenty-nine.

In addition to making Pub Quiz happen, also supports the Poetry Night Reading Series. This coming Monday night, before Pub Quiz, the reading series brings UC Davis alumnus James Kaelan to town. You might have seen Kaelan on the cover of the current Poets and Writers magazine, talking about his Zero Emission Book Project book tour – Saturday he left Los Angeles on his BIKE, and he is stopping in cities and bookstores from LA to Vancouver as he wends his way up the West Coast this summer. He’ll be stopping at The Avid Reader on 2^nd Street this coming Monday, July 19^th. I’ll be hosting that event at 7:30, just before hosting our trivia event at 9, so this week I will have to read Kaelan’s novel We’re Getting On. To find out more about Kaelan’s bike tour (with maps, pictures and movies), visit http://www.zeroemissionbook.com/, or register your interest in attending this event via Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=107634285951344&ref=ts .

Here are the hints regarding tonight’s Pub Quiz. Expect questions about publishing companies, internet culture, Canadians, state flowers, potent potables, philosophical economists, Chaka Khan (karaoke hint!), football, insects, Sesame Street, public servants, words beginning the letter “E,” fight songs, those who labor in freedom, basketball, actors and more actors, novelists, questions whose answers you can find on DavisWiki.org, Gary Saylin, Seeds and Grasses, famous socialists, California cities, remarkable California buildings, the obligatory LeBron James question (sort-of), and a Shakespeare play that you might actually have seen. I hope you have fun tonight.

See you tonight for the Pub Quiz!

Your Quizmaster

P.S. Last week’s Pub Quiz can be found in its entirety on the new website of the Your Quizmaster. I will be launching the site for real perhaps next week.

Friends of the Pub Quiz, and those curious about all the fun and fuss associated with the Pub Quiz, should come to de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis (217 E Street), the highly esteemed pub and restaurant that fills up every night because of the superb quality of food, drink and company that can be found there. The de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz takes place every Monday at 7pm, though players are encouraged to arrive early to claim a table. As always, find out more about the Pub Quiz by visiting https://www.yourquizmaster.com. For more on de Vere’s Irish Pub, visit http://deverespub.com/.

Posted via email from yourquizmaster’s posterous

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Happy Independence Day! I hope you enjoyed the holiday festivities you’re your families yesterday. We had a spot so close to the Community Park fireworks that, once they began, we all had to lie down rather than crane our necks. We were too far from the grandstand to hear our Davis Poet Laureate, Allegra Silberstein, read a poem, but I was thinking about a Langston Hughes poem called “Let America Be America Again” that could be appropriate for the day. Here’s how the poem concludes:

O, let America be America again–

The land that never has been yet–

And yet must be–the land where every man is free.

The land that’s mine–the poor man’s, Indian’s, Negro’s, ME–

Who made America,

Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,

Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,

Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose–

The steel of freedom does not stain.

From those who live like leeches on the people’s lives,

We must take back our land again,

America!

O, yes,

I say it plain,

America never was America to me,

And yet I swear this oath–

America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

The mountains and the endless plain–

All, all the stretch of these great green states–

And make America again!

Inspired by this poem, I’ve written a few questions for tonight that reflect upon this theme. You will also encounter questions on manly men, the internet, British royalty, Art Tatum (do you know his music? You might go download “Cocktails for Two”), tires, Star Trek, clever rhymesters, hormones, Broadway, objects worthy of pursuit, fireworks, fictional magazines, The Wall Street Journal, the filthy rich, the US Constitution, American Presidents, American films, Iraq, shipping, a white dwarf star, Spider-Man, Afghanistan, France, and Shakespeare, who once asked this famous question in Sonnet 65:

O, how shall summer’s honey breath hold out

Against the wreckful siege of battering days,

When rocks impregnable are not so stout,

Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time decays?

Before signing off I would like to acknowledge the contributions to the Pub Quiz of UC Davis Professor Ben Orlove, his family, and his friends. Ben attended his last Davis Pub Quiz this past week, and is now headed to a new teaching gig in Columbia. Congratulations, Ben. You and your team will be deeply missed by me, and somewhat less deeply by all the teams you would beat at the Pub Quiz every week. I hope you enjoy your memories as much as I have appreciated the memories of you and your teammates!

Your Quizmaster

P.S. Poetry Night returns to this coming Wednesday with Chris “Whitey” Erickson and his wife Mischa Erickson, about who poet Joe Wenderoth has said the following: “Chris Erickson and Mischa Kuczynski Erickson are tremendously talented writers.to have the chance to hear them read is to have the chance to be shaken and seized by the shape of where we are.or by the rushing veins of whatever it echoes with.it is a chance to free yourself, literally, from the delusion of on-going communication.it is a chance to feel the houses that you’ve slept in.” Wednesday at 8pm at . See http://www.poetryindavis.com or http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=136812969677861&ref=ts for details.

P.P.S. Here are four questions from last week’s Quiz. How many did/could you get right?

10.Know Your Historical Figures (taken from the “A” chapter of the World Book encyclopedia). How many years older was Aristotle than Attila the Hun? They were born around the same time, Aristotle was about 400 years older, he was about 800 years older, or he was about 1600 years older.

11.Unusual Words. What two-syllable, six-letter word starting with the letter “H” means “relating to the sense of touch; tactile”?

12.Another Music Question.Nikki Sixx, Tommy Lee, Mick Mars and lead singer Vince Neil, who yesterday was arrested on suspicion of a DUI one week after publicly declaring his sobriety, together make up what American rock band that was formed in Los Angeles in 1981?

13.Pop Culture – Television. What rotund comedian beat out Dolly Parton for the gig of host of the 1999 revival of the TV game show Family Feud? Hint: He stayed on the game show until 2002.

Friends of the Pub Quiz, and those curious about all the fun and fuss associated with the Pub Quiz, should come to de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis (217 E Street), the highly esteemed pub and restaurant that fills up every night because of the superb quality of food, drink and company that can be found there. The de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz takes place every Monday at 7pm, though players are encouraged to arrive early to claim a table. As always, find out more about the Pub Quiz by visiting https://www.yourquizmaster.com. For more on de Vere’s Irish Pub, visit http://deverespub.com/.

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