Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I recently encountered a passage in Jane Austen’s novel Mansfield Park that reminded me of one of the (many) reasons that I enjoy writing and hosting our Pub Quiz. Austen writes,
If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out.
Do Austen’s words resonate with you about your own memory? The ubiquity of Google’s services in 2011 has no doubt weakened our memories, and perhaps cheapened them. Why keep all that information in one’s head when one can literally “ask” Google the facts that one would otherwise have to recall? I appreciate the Pub Quiz, by contrast, because it rewards knowledge, schooling and autodidact curiosity, as well as collaborative learning, rather than thumb-speed. How and why is it that a group of six friends in a booth can call up facts that none of the six could produce separately? Pub Quiz participants talk it through, enjoy flashes of brilliance, and even make discoveries. We share our memories at work.
When my daughter Geneva joined me for dinner last night after the family watched the new film Cars 2, I was peppering her with Pixar questions, testing future Pub Quiz questions for their perceived difficulty. Whip-smart, and a bit obsessed with Pixar, Geneva answered my questions even before I could finish my well-crafted sentences. Geneva is only five or so years younger than another memory master, Robert Lipman, the pop culture enthusiast and DHS student who has helped to keep the Pub Quiz team Portraits of Mohammed in the Winners’ Circle for the last three years. Robert is about to venture off to Oxford, England for a number of weeks, so we’ll see how well his team can do without all of his youthful brainpower. Some are predicting that we are about to begin an interregnum in the era of POM dominance. The value of that prediction may depend upon you, your teams, and whether you remember to make reservations early for the typically sold-out Pub Quiz.
In addition to the topic of memory, tonight’s Pub Quiz will cover Starbucks, French clothing, corruption, Nevada, depilation, Halloween, vicious cycles, numbers (what is your favorite song with a number in its title or lyrics?), baseball, classics of American literature, illegal drugs, gay rights heroes, communists, cathedrals, astronomy, Illinois, depreciation and disapproval, Richard Pryor, popular music, isolated incidents, James Bond, living novelists, Stephen Colbert, film quotations, the Pulitzer Prize, Presidents of the United States, common birds, the 15th century, Star Wars, hockey, and William Shakespeare.
I hope you enjoy the 4th of July with your families. I look forward to seeing you tonight, and on July 11th for another edition of the Pub Quiz!
Best,
Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com
http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster
http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster
Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
1. Mottos and Slogans. According to the ads, what is “The Happiest Place on Earth”?
2. Internet Culture. What Canadian electronics manufacturer reached its peak in market share at 21% in the third quarter of 2009, but has been eroding market share steadily since then, such that now its products are being abandoned for cooler and flashier-looking alternatives?
3. Newspaper Headlines. Euro zone finance ministers recently gave what country the “austerity for loans” ultimatum?
4. Four for Four. Which of the following, if any, are heptalogies? The Chronicles of Narnia, The Harry Potter books, The Oz books, The Ring of the Nibelung
5. American Cities Anagram. The names of the second and third largest cities in New England can be spelled from the words in the title of the infamous religious horror film CONCEIVED PEW TERRORS. Name both cities.
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/.