Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
If you don’t know already from having read recent articles in the Davis Enterprise (subscription) and the California Aggie, our Pub Quiz has been cancelled. As I found out this past Friday evening, tonight’s Pub Quiz will be my last. I’ve so enjoyed working with the managers and staff, and am grateful for the support that they provided me while I walked around the restaurant, barking obscure questions like a mad and outlandish Cliff Clavin. Special consideration should be directed at Nate the Bartender, the upbeat DJ and drink-mixer who makes everyone feel better about themselves; Lauren the waitress, who multitasks heroically and precisely like an Octopus with OCD; and our former assistant manager Zack, who rightly considered himself my Pub Quiz partner when it came to preparations and the quick scoring of your answers. As ultra-capable and devoted as Zack was, he still found that he had to absent himself during the karaoke contests.
Yesterday I ran into California State Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg at Marine World in Vallejo (we were there for my son Truman’s 6th birthday, which is today). I had the impression that Darrell Steinberg had never been recognized at Marine World, and he was pleased to be appreciated by an admirer. I mention this because of the two great benefits that I have enjoyed from my participation in the now defunct Pub Quiz. The first is that the younger of past quiz participants yell out “Dr. Andy!” in the street, making me wonder if I know the exuberant person from class, Poetry Night, or the Quiz. I’ve grown used to rudimentary friendliness in Davis – the best place to lose one’s wallet, someone said to me today – but not to this personalized generosity. One walks the street with the realization that anyone one meets might be a Pub Quizzer, or could become one. The downside of all this attention and affection is that I generally have to behave better, and that that I don’t get to spend as much time sleeping in public spaces.
And now that UC Davis has put my face on the front page of our course and learning management system (answer: SmartSite), I’m getting recognized all over campus, too. Those interactions are somewhat less friendly.
The other great benefit has been all the friends I have made. Many of you have graciously shared with me your food and wine at Farmers Market, your stories about your lives and your families, and your thoughts on the more obscure intellectual topics that I touch upon during the Quiz. Through the Quiz I have met local authors, politicians (public servants, as they may think of themselves), moms and dads, and civil leaders, all of whom have been willing to “pay” to be assessed, to risk frustration by having their memories stretched in ways that we are unaccustomed in the post-Google age. Friendships, a loving family, and a meaningful job are three of life’s most important riches, and I am grateful for all the ways that the Pub Quiz has intersected with all three of these for me. And I am thankful especially to all of you who have participated, and participated repeatedly.
The final Pub Quiz will feature questions about telecom questions, nerdy computer terms, Davis in the newspaper, fish, Richard Dreyfus, insanely popular music, famous goodbyes, Julius Caesar, songs that you sing in the shower (maybe you could sing one of those for us tonight?), brother’s date, good hearts, NFL history, cellular signaling molecules, great Californians, monosyllabic words that have at least 17 definitions, sad music, the O’Jays, sauciness, Missouri murders, final lines of films, kings, Presidents of the United States, knives, mountains, chemical elements, parsecs, names in the news, and favorite Shakespeare plays. If you want to spend some time with Google before the quiz, you could try looking up tonight’s tie-breaker, quoted here verbatim: “Measured in pages, how long is my running list of Pub Quiz topics and questions that now will never be heard?”
We will have to wait and see if those questions get to be heard anywhere else. Meanwhile, I can always be reached via the communications media listed in my signature file, below.
Thank you.
Dr. Andy
Your Quizmaster
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