Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
It’s good to be back in Davis, even though I enjoyed my recent trip to Washington DC, the place of my birth. We spent a lot of time in Bethesda, which Forbes calls the best-educated small town in America, no offense to us or to Las Alamos, New Mexico. It’s also our top-earning American town, but earnings don’t so much impress me. I was much more impressed with the area’s thick deciduous forests. The Davis speculative fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson once told me in an interview that the topography of our childhood seems the most natural to us, and that anything different seems strange. Beholding the forests of Bethesda, and then the rich greenery in and around our National Zoo, I was struck by how verdant and visually rich the area is, and that, when I was living there, I probably didn’t value the local sights and resources as highly as I should have, and could have done more to “make the most of now,” as the saying goes. “America is another name for opportunity,” Emerson said, so I suppose all of us should consider what opportunities are provided by travel and discovery. The next time you go to DC, after you spend some time inside the Mall’s museums, leave some time to explore some of the 1,700 acres of Rock Creek Park, gaze up at the spires of our National Cathedral, and sit for a while in the monkey house at the National Zoo. These wonders will be less crowded than the National Museum of Natural History, and give you cause to reflect on and in the corners of unhurried majesty in our nation’s capital.
Today’s Pub Quiz will contain questions on Washington DC, as well as telecommunications, Facebook, leading Republicans, Reese Witherspoon, dentists, children’s humor, studs, baseball, the legal system, Greta Garbo, beards, planets, dirt and glitter, American sitcoms that I hadn’t really heard of before beginning my Pub Quiz research, American statesmen, reinvested hipsters, train stations, Frank Sinatra, horror, members of the Charlie Sheen family, Dupont Circle, best-selling books, Native Americans, superheroes, little islands, particle physics, responses to anti-Semitism, Queens, football, Shakespearean villains, music producers, and Elizabeth Taylor.
I got to talk to my uncle Roy Meachum when I was DC. He was an army buddy of Eddie Fisher, and thus got to know Elizabeth Taylor a bit when she was preparing to star in Cleopatra. Younger readers of this newsletter may know Taylor best for her perfume and charity work during the (ongoing) AIDS crisis rather than for her acting; I read today that she willed most of her fortune to those same charities. The website GiveWell recommends Population Services International as the best international charity to support if you wanted to make a donation in memory of the work of this Oscar-winning actress. I encourage you to do so.
I hope you can join us for the Pub Quiz tonight. I’m grateful to Pub Quiz regular Chuck Snipes for guest-hosting the Quiz last week. I ran into a Davis businessman at the annual Davis Parent Nursery School auction Saturday who told me that Chuck did a fine job. Tonight at 9 pm I will live up to that example, I hope, as I ring the cowbell to commence another edition of the Pub Quiz! See you then.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
1. Another TV Question. What geeky CBS sitcom features an opening theme song by the Barenaked Ladies titled “The History of Everything”?
2. Know Your American States. The largest state east of the Mississippi River in terms of land area is the fourth largest (after Michigan, Florida, and Wisconsin) in total area, a term which includes expanses of water which are part of state territory. Name the state.
3. World Leaders. Bashar al-Assad is the President of what western Asian nation?
4. French Philosophers. “Judge a man by his questions, not his answers” is a quotation spoken by which of my favorite French philosophers?
5. Science. Noted science writer Gary Taubes (from UC Berkeley) published a book last year entitled Why we get fat – and what to do about it. The excess of which hormone does he advocate as the one most responsible for making Americans fat?
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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/.