Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
For some people, summer is a time for major projects. Some will finally clean out the garage, visit a faraway country with the family, or reunite with old friends. For many academics, summer finally leaves one time to work on writing and research projects now that the distractions of the classroom and the faculty meeting room are finally behind us. As I might have mentioned last week, for his summer project, my friend James Kaelan is supporting his new novel, We’re Getting On, with a book tour from Los Angeles to Vancouver on his bicycle. He rolled into Davis Sunday night, and tonight he will be giving a reading just before Pub Quiz, at the Davis Avid Reader at 7:30. I will be MCing that event as well as our Quiz, so if you would like to see my professional schizophrenia on public display, I invite you to attend both events. And no one at the Avid Reader will require you to buy anything to enjoy the James Kaelan show. If you want to find out more about Kaelan’s bicycle odyssey, or see a picture of him on the cover of the current Poets and Writers magazine, visit http://www.zeroemissionbook.com/. If you want to register your interest in joining us at that event, visit http://bit.ly/zeroemission.
For me, one of my summer projects has been to imagine, research, write and wordsmith (with some help from an ingenious web designer) the completed webpage of the Pub Quiz. If you visit https://www.yourquizmaster.com, you will see a prior Pub Quiz, photographs from past quizzes, a list of some of the resources I use to research Pub Quiz questions, etc. I welcome your feedback or suggestions. Each of these newsletters will appear as a post, so I am now officially a blogger, though for a rather esoteric readership made up of bar-goers who, for some reason, usually jump right to the third paragraph. For a much more interesting blog by a frequent Pub Quiz participant, one that touches upon cupcakes, Davis cows and restaurants, and San Francisco street art by the elusive Banksy, visit http://blog.keithbradnam.com/. If you have a web-based or creative resource that you would like me to plug in a future newsletter, let me know. If you need help setting up your own blog or site, I could give you the name of my web designer.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature five questions that you should really know the answer to. Really. That’s the subject of the five single-topic questions tonight. I’m hoping everyone will score in double digits (on the Quiz) this evening. Those teams that actually win prizes will most likely correctly answer questions about insurance companies, social web 2.0 applications, young and fated geniuses, clever riddles found in children’s books, Danes, graduates of the School of Rock, Olympians, frigidity, the day jobs of American Presidents, unusual words that begin with S as in “Sam,” electrical impulses, Mel Brooks movies, Benjamin Franklin’s business, cyborgs, bicameral elks, US states, World War II, classical music, villains and their henchmen, city nicknames, a guy named Merrick, Native Americans, Europeans, pretty actresses who somehow don’t seem substantive enough to have won Academy Awards, candles, fauxtobiographies (I just coined that – do you like it?), the US Senate, players getting kicked off their professional sports teams, and a really long Shakespeare play, such as Hamlet.
I expect tonight’s Pub Quiz to sell out, but you might want to reserve a table for a future Pub Quiz at (530) 756-4556. I hope to see you this evening at the James Kaelan reading at the Avid Reader, or at the Pub Quiz.
Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com
Three questions from last week’s quiz:
21.Books and Authors.What Pulitzer-Prize- winning 47-year old author wrote the novels The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay (2000), and The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007)?
22.Name the Year. All of these events happened in the same year. What year was it? Gavin Newsom started marrying gay and lesbian people at SF City Hall, Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunctioned at the Superbowl, and, in Davis, people first started using both Harper Junior High and the Davis Wiki (at http://www.daviswiki.org).
23.Musical Instruments. You are probably familiar with the word that refers to the Hawaiian stringed lute that resembles a small guitar. Are there one, two, three or four repeated letters in that word? (As an aside, my favorite local player of this instrument is the KDVS DJ Gary Saylin.)
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/.