Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
“Nourish beginnings, let us nourish beginnings. Not all things are blest, but the seeds of all things are blest. The blessing is in the seed.” ~Muriel Rukeyser
Stories of romance and of coming of age are always about beginnings. We cherish the unstained potential, the optimism of possibility. I myself revisit often in my mind’s eye the moment I met my wife, Kate, in a Spartan room on 45 England’s Lane in London, England. My good luck, to have met this particular Chicagoan a few blocks from Hampstead Heath, seemed both so improbable as well as entirely fated. Sharon Olds explores this theme more darkly from a daughter’s perspective in her poem “I Go Back to May 1937”:
I Go Back to May 1937
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
I hope your year has begun well. This past week I got to be interviewed by the BBC on the passing of the great American poet Amiri Baraka, and I got to perform the prose of Anthony Marra before a crowd of 100 at The Pence Gallery as part of Stories on Stage. How auspicious for 2014! And what fun! I hope you are also working on your bucket list.
Tonight’s pub quiz will include questions that touch upon the following topics: Amiri Baraka, Madison Avenue’s Advertising Walk of Fame, thresholds, the big three, trees with attitude, Gallup polls, surprised swallows, unilateral disengagement, U.S. States, underwater hunger, remarkable women, fabrics, Razzie awards, English departments, tobacco, South Americans, nosey musketeers and other great Frenchmen, the dispersal of demons, avoiding cancer, the vindication of echoes, hit songs with refrains that are not grammatically correct, Brooklyn, the piano, female authors, periodic tables, college football, things that are cold, Oscar-winning actors, big purchases, things that will be released in 2015, and Shakespeare.
All the tables were occupied last week during the Pub Quiz, and my quizmaster Twitter account has been attracting new followers every week, so I expect another sold-out Quiz this evening. I hope you will join us!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans. The 3-part slogan of the TV show Survivor is Outwit. Outplay. WHAT?
- Internet Culture. Inexplicably, Internet Explorer has the largest international market share of web browsers, at about 58%. What web browser has the second-largest global market share, ahead of Google’s Chrome?
- Chimpanzees. Starting with the letter C, what river divides the native habitats of the two species of chimpanzee?
- Pop Culture – Music. When last night at 9 I checked the temp in the birth-city of Bob Dylan, it was -18. Name this birthstate also of Judy Garland and F. Scott Fitzgerald.
- Sports. What retired baseball pitcher holds records in career no-hitters, strikeouts and base on balls?
P.S. This coming Thursday night at 8 I will be hosting a celebration of the life of Amiri Baraka at the John Natsoulas Gallery. The event will feature award-winning poets from Sacramento and Davis. You are invited to come read something of Baraka’s or to just enjoy the show. See you then, and see you tonight.
P.P.S. Happy early birthday to Pub Quiz irregular John Lescroart!