Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Davisites have been spared a triple-digit Memorial Day, but most people that I know seem not to be happy about it. When I check the Twitterverse (@ http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster), I read incredulous comments such as “Weather gods? Memorial Day and 68 degrees? Really?” As someone with no freon, seemingly, in the air conditioning of his QuizMasterMobile, and as someone who almost never uses said vehicle because of my commitment to his 15 minute bike commute, I am loving this weather, even the strong winds that have made my new nightly badminton practice a challenge. I have 15-year-old memories of an April concert at The Delta of Venus that was almost cancelled because of the 105-degree temperatures, and that was at 8 pm. A halo of heat hovered over the asphalt of B Street, warning all of us to be still, and to wish for even the slightest breeze. As the British playwright Sheridan once put it, “When delicate and feeling souls are separated, there is not a feature in the sky, not a movement of the elements, not an aspiration of the breeze, but hints some cause for a lover’s apprehension.” I hope you are not separated from those who you call your “delicate and feeling souls.” On this day devoted to gratitude, we should be thankful to borrow Berkeley’s weather for a couple weeks, and just enjoy our satisfied “aspiration of the breeze.” The heat will come soon enough.
And when the summer heat comes, so will the crowds. Many Davis High grads return to their family homes to summer with their parents, and immediately recall the need to escape on a Monday evening. And many UC Davis students are stuck with apartment leases and a tepid job market, meaning that they can stay out late on a Monday evening without disappointing anyone the next day. As a Pub Quiz Newsletter subscriber, you should know that all this means that the best tables for Pub Quiz will disappear sooner, and if you choose not to reserve a table at all, you may be ordering your evening snacks from DJ Nate at the bar. So reserve your table early – no matter how busy it gets, we don’t want to disappoint anyone.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will cover a number of topics, with a usual mix of questions for every sort of person on your team, as long as your team includes a mix of the young and old, the film buff and the political junkie, the pop culture aficionado and the NPR addict. People who read actual books also make valuable contributions – I can include only so many questions about Harry Potter, Pokémon, and Glee (and none tonight) before I turn to the pesky topics I encountered while earning that PhD. Tonight expect questions on refreshing beverages, video games, New England cities, snowcocks, food and drink, European countries, revolutions, Presidents of the United States, groups that can be tellingly compared to Sade, baseball teams that I have never seen play in person (as far as I remember – there are so many), inorganic chemistry, Michigan, the old joke about the word “gullible” not being in the dictionary, the Tea Party, biracial America, young musicians, a Shakespeare play that you may actually have read, people with the last name of “Seaborn,” respected Academy-Award nominated actors who now appear only in forgettable movies, angry birds, unpopular bodies of water, film class films, the Old Testament, songs of the south, heroic playwrights, “It” girls that I had never heard of, three-letter words that come up frequently in conversation, world capitals, zip codes, Native Americans, and broadband internet. This week we will hear no questions about anyone named “Gretel.”
I look forward to seeing you this evening for another raucous edition of the Pub Quiz!
Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
1.Mottos and Slogans. “Whassup?” was a commercial campaign for a beer company from 1999 to 2002. Name the company or the beer.
2. Internet Culture. What is the eleven-letter name of a single-person video game that has come bundled with versions of the Windows operating system from 3.1 on?
3. Newspaper Headlines – the Sports Section. As of late-May, 2011, which of the following is closest to where Tiger Woods can be found in the world golf rankings? 1, 11, 21, 31.
4.Four for Four. Which of the following current Sacramento Kings, if any, were born outside the United States? Omri Casspi, Samuel Dalembert, Beno Udrih, Hassan Whiteside.
5. Actors and Actresses. What two actors’ names were above the title on the poster of the 2010 film The Other Guys?
P.S. Former Sacramento Poet Laureate Dennis Schmitz will be performing his poetry this coming Wednesday night at 8:30. Dennis Schmitz is the author of several books of poetry, and his work has appeared in some of the best journals that accept poems, including American Poetry Review, The Nation, Paris Review, the Chicago Review and Zyzzyva. Schmitz taught for more than thirty years at California State University in Sacramento, where he now lives. His students have included Raymond Carver, Charlene Ungstad and Gary Short. For more information about this even, please visit http://www.poetryindavis.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/.