Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I enjoyed an interesting Halloween conversation yesterday about the integrity of the Pub Quiz. Regular attendees know that when my lovely wife attends the Quiz, I remove from the quiz any questions to which I know she knows the answer. Because she is so smart and well read, and because we have consumed much of the same media together, this makes writing the Pub Quiz particularly challenging when she joins us, and perhaps even more challenging to complete. As a result, when she plays, Kate feels a bit flummoxed on her team, as she is forced to reach back further and deeper into her personal databases of knowledge than most players have to. I bring this up because one of my favorite local politicians and Pub Quiz irregulars offered to have the number of lawn signs she distributed this election cycle be a topic for the tiebreaker question tonight, the night before she’ll be elected to another term on the Davis School Board (I expect). It was a great idea, and the question would be highly topical, but I didn’t want to seem to be giving endorsements to one of the hardest-working and most responsive public servants in Davis, and I didn’t want one of the Quiz participants to have unearned foreknowledge about the answer to even a single Pub Quiz question. As Chinua Achebe once said, “One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.”
I tend not to be blunt except when I bluntly request that my students vote in elections, as I was in class today. Of course, I don’t indicate my own voting intentions, or record. Meg Whitman neglected to vote for many an election cycle, and I imagine that she’ll regret that (expensive) missed opportunity for many moons. On the Democratic side, satirists have compared incumbent California Senator Barbara Boxer to Colonel Jessup for insisting that she “has earned” her title of Senator, though I wasn’t sure why that was such a faux pas. Regrets, Boxer has not had a few. And I’m sure Jerry Brown has no regrets over not speaking from prepared remarks as he barnstorms up and down California. He keeps the California press corps on their toes with juicy quotations. Republicans are due to make great gains, the pollsters say, in Congress, governorships and state legislatures, but here in California, it looks like the Democrats will hold their ground, and perhaps take over the Governor’s office. If you have spent time outside of California, then you probably know if your former Senator is as endangered as Democrats will be during tomorrow’s midterm elections.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on cell phone safety, mice and men, salt, New Jersey, horror film quotations, Canadian musicians, ‘foolish” politicians, leftover Halloween concerns, paper airplanes, the city of Davis, the alphabet, ravishing arks, the last states to join the Union, California museums, South America, Pat Sajak, Kentucky, genes, flying without a license, cowardice and death, Shakespeare, and Gina Daleiden’s lawn signs (a joke).
As I mentioned recently on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster), We do have room for more teams at tonight’s Pub Quiz. If you recruit a new team (that is, a team of newbies), or if you are a team of newbies, you get either a bottle of wine or an order of sweet potato fries on the house! This is a standing offer. Details at (530) 756-4556
See you tonight. Should I wear my cape?
Your Quizmaster
Five questions from last week:
6. The Monterey Bay Aquarium. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is the same age as which of the following people? Mark Zuckerberg, Derek Jeter, Keanu Reeves, or Denzel Washington? Hint: these people are listed in chronological order by decade.
7. Pop Culture – Music (Karaoke Question). What multi-Grammy winning Delta blues guitarist wrote the songs “Boogie Chillen” and “Boom Boom”?
Now for the Karaoke Bonus Round, I would like you to perform a Blues song.
8. Sports. I remember the 1989 World Series because of the Loma Prieta Earthquake. What is the only year between 1989 and 2010 that the San Francisco Giants appeared in the World Series?
9. Science – Meteorology. What three-syllable word do we use to name an intense columnar vortex (usually appearing as a funnel-shaped cloud) that occurs over a body of water and is connected to a cumuliform cloud?
10. Great Brits. What is the last name of the man whose statue lords over London’s Trafalgar Square?
P.S. A.D. Winans reads from some of his 51 books on Wednesday night at 8. See http://www.poetryindavis.com for details.