Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz
My grandfather was a taciturn man who loved his children and his many wives. Born in Oklahoma when it was still “Indian Territory,” my grandpa had to leave his home state in his 20s because his union activities endangered him. He ended up in Winchester, Indiana, which has about the same population today as it did when my father was born there in 1932. From this unlikely location, Davey Marlin-Jones launched his show-business career, entertaining Randolph County children and then eventually adults with his magic tricks. Grandpa Marlin became this magician’s manager, driving the phenom to all his bookings in Indiana in the 1930s and then also in neighboring states in the 1940s.
I got to “perform” with my dad only a few times, once in the 1970s and once in the 1980s; on both occasions, TV crews carried cable and huge cameras into our homes to give viewers a sense of the homelife of Washington D.C.’s wackiest film reviewer. A few decades later, during his last visit to Davis in the summer of 2002, I interviewed dad on my radio show. We shared a stage, as it were. Reflecting on that visit, I miss his flamboyant theatricality, and his stories. Now my own kids join me on the radio to read and tell me their stories, and one of them sometimes plays the saxophone.
Show business trailblazers share tips and sometimes the stage with their famous children. Think of the advantages that Rob Reiner, Marlo Thomas, and Kiefer Sutherland had when they were starting their TV careers, with such fathers to look up to. And for the viewers, a generation growing up enjoying performances by one member of the family are always curious to see how the torch is passed to the children.
We recognize this phenomenon in other fields, as well. This coming Thursday, for example, the retired Sacramento State professor Kathryn Hohlwein will read her poetry with her daughter Laura Hohlwein in an art gallery that is filled with the younger Hohlwein’s art. What a talented family! While the pair’s genius will be on full display, I’m most pleased that Poetry Night on Thursday can play a part in making memories that will last the rest of the lives of this mother and daughter duo.
I think of what memoirist Maya Angelou wrote this about her mom in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: “To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.” I hope you get to create some memories with your hurricanes and rainbows, whoever they are, and no matter what sort of art or performance you two create together.
In addition to issues raised above, tonight’s pub quiz will feature questions on American states, days of the week, chocolate bars, images of grandparents, proud moms, Billboard charts, mispronounced French names, starches, the example of Monarch butterflies, wolves in strange places, big games, angular momentum, nicknames, popular beams, populous islands, high temperatures, pollinators, accomplished prospects, best-sellers, numbers of flags, states that are not Oklahoma, cities with basketball teams, people who don’t hole up with tycoons, predators, maladies, heavenly mistakes, beautifications, labor, beards, dangerous substances, monsters, foodstuffs, and Shakespeare.
I hope to see you tonight for Pub Quiz with some special guests, and Thursday night for an evening of Hohlwein artistry!
Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com
http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster
P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
P.P.S. “I think this to myself even though I love my daughter. She and I have shared the same body. There is a part of her mind that is a part of mine. But when she was born she sprang from me like a slippery fish, and has been swimming away ever since. All her life, I have watched her as though from another shore.”Amy Tan in The Joy Luck Club