Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I wrote poems from time to time for specific occasions, a practice I started when I was Davis poet laureate, back when I would write poems for city council meetings and for rallies and memorials. I had written one book of poetry about Yolo County veterans, and thus was asked to read poems from the book at Memorial Day and Veterans Day ceremonies at the Davis Cemetery. I will be reading one such poem to begin Stories on Stage Davis this coming Saturday (Veterans Day) at 7:30 at the Pence Gallery.
Most of the poems I write for people or for occasions are for my wife Kate, and I often return to such compositions when I am starting a Pub Quiz newsletter on a Wednesday afternoon, but with many meetings and obligations between newsletter time and the time I take the stage. Today, for instance, I will be delivering one family member to the doctor and another to the dentist and a third to a fourth family member (we don’t all live in the same house anymore), all between now and when I start my KDVS radio show at 5.
So happy belated birthday (November 4) to my wife Kate. For her “birthday week” (which is ongoing), I wrote her two poems and let her choose which one to pose on Facebook. The second one, this one, would get posted on Instagram:
The Two of Cups
You entice like a riddle
Your legs never end
You prefer banjo to fiddle
I’m in love with my friend
The artist at the griddle
Has her boy’s plays to attend
You call our dog “Liddle”
You’re my workweek’s weekend
You make my heart giggle
Your eyes, they transcend
We’ve just now reached the middle
You are the poem that I’ve penned
My high-end godsend birthday girlfriend
I’d marry you again and again and again
It’s rare that I wrote poems where the only punctuation marks are quotation marks, and this time even those might be superfluous. Happy birthday, Kate!
If you are in the city of Davis tonight, please join us for the Pub Quiz at Sudwerk. Recruit a team, dress for sunset, and join us at the beautiful outdoor patio where we have room for almost everyone. As it gets cooler, some of you may want to find a table to play inside. We always have more fun with the bigger crowds and more voices.
In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on getting things done with oil, radios, yachts, ducks, county seats, hospital bills, compounds that you may remember from 11th grade, seals, tall athletes, orchestral necessities, deciduous trees, Albania, Iranians in California, famous forests, sports in the Midwest, people with common and uncommon names, plows, Greek mythology, big countries, dramas about race relations, cities that change names, Brown characters, musical queens, Oscar-winners, Roberts, Novelists with opinions on late starts, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, southern states, National Parks, current events, angry whales, books and authors, and Shakespeare.
Thanks to The Original Vincibles, Summer Brains, The Outside Agitators, Gena Harper and others who support the Pub Quiz on Patreon. I would love to add your name or that of your team to the list of supporters. I appreciate your backing this pub quiz project of mine!
Best,
Dr. Andy
P.S. Here are three Pub Quiz questions from last week:
- Film. The top-grossing film from this past weekend, Five Nights at Freddy’s, was adapted from which of the following: Another film, a novel, a TV show, or a video game?
- UC Davis Youth Culture. What is the most popular location on the west side of the UC Davis campus where students watch the sun set?
- Science. In the field of genetics, what P word do we use for the observable traits of an organism?