Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Why would you write about Penelope in the newsletter, my wife Kate asked. It’s a fair question. How do I choose any of these topics, really? Whereas I collect Pub Quiz question topics over the course of my busy workweek, I typically save the newsletter topics for the moment I sit down to the keyboard. Perhaps you can tell. I wish for these little essays to be more lyrical than expository or, say, argumentative. I have to explain and argue enough in my other jobs. When writing these newsletters, I summon up my training as a poet, and thereby trust the creative process. I do the same in the classroom when I share moments of creation and discovery with my students, so that every class can offer something new and unexpected.
“Penelope” might make one think of the actresses Penelope Ann Miller or Penelope Cruz, or perhaps even the Kristin Wiig character Penelope, the neurotic hair-twirling swellhead who is even more competitive than regular PQ participant Keith David Watenpaugh (Hi Keith!). But of course I was thinking of the wife of Odysseus. As you may remember, the hero of The Odyssey was delayed on his return home from the Trojan War, primarily because he had angered Poseidon by blinding the god’s son (long story), thus spurring the ocean god to hamper the wayward hero’s return to Ithaca. Meanwhile, over the course of 20 years, Penelope used a variety of tricks to discourage and hold off her 108 suitors, even though it wasn’t clear that she knew Odysseus was still alive. Not to spoil the ending, but Tarantino has optioned the final confrontation scene between Odysseus and the suitors.
There are no suitors or unstringable bows in my house. Instead, I’ve been managing children for the last two and a half weeks as we wait for the hero of our household, my wife Kate, finally to come home from her childhood home of Chicago. The weeks have seemed like decades in part because of how much we all rely on her, and because I’ve instituted a ban on television and junk food during Kate’s absence. This afternoon the children and I will have a powwow in the living room in order to discuss our hazy memory of what the house looked like before Kate left, and how we might possibly return it to that state by tomorrow afternoon. If you are reading this, Athena, some divine intervention would be appreciated.
In honor of Penelope, expect a question on fidelity this evening. Tonight’s Pub Quiz will also include questions on the following topics: China, Israel, and American islands; two people named Hilton, toucans, popular bands, the word “the,” bans, Paul McCartney, angry people who died with no friends, Richard Gere, searches, refraction, celebrated soldiers, banana imports, Great Scots, speed demons, syndicates, seaport cities, summer songs, Brad Pitt, visas that arrive just in time, leftists, unlikely teenagers, therapy candidates, Fridays, ecology, gangsters, elitism, famous parks, and Shakespeare.
Alzada Knickerbocker, the owner of The Avid Reader bookstores, has expressed some interest in our Pub Quiz. I think the least I can do to repay her for all the years we’ve spent in her bookstore would be to add a few more bookish questions when she joins us for the first time. I will let you know when that is. Meanwhile, I encourage you to purchase your books locally: you have three 2nd Street bookstore choices within a block of de Vere’s, and each of them deserves your patronage. Two of them also host regular author events, thus spreading cultural goodwill in our fair city, as I try to do every week with the Pub Quiz.
See you tonight!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
1. Newspaper Headlines. What is the name of the meteor shower that peaked this past weekend?
2. TV Actors. What well-known television actor had small roles in the following films?Get Shorty and Fallen in the 1990s, The Man Who Wasn’t There and All The Kings Men in the 2000s, and Killing Them Softly and Zero Dark Thirty in this decade?
3. Pop Culture – Music. What are the first and last names of the American harpist and singer who is both Andy Samberg’s fiancée and the second cousin, twice removed, of the Lieutenant Governor of California?
4. Sports. The most-recognized of all football players holds the record for the most yards gained in back-to-back games, at 476. Name the player.
5. Science. Also known as a dwarf leopard and by its Latin species name, Leopardus pardalis, what is the three-syllable common name of the wild cat distributed extensively over South and Central America?