Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Every year as I drive back to Davis from the San Francisco Writers Conference, I am brimming with ideas for books and projects, as well as thoughts about the best ways that I can make use of all the new publishing and media technologies that I have learned from all the authors that I have met in The City. I also made a number of friends this year, including an athletic Haiku poet and corporate trainer whose move to Italy has shaved 10 years off his biological age, a retired lieutenant colonel and essayist who supports emerging writers with scholarships (and who freely shares stories about her infant daughter), and the CEO of a digital media company that represents over 300,000 musicians. Val Kilmer also stayed in my hotel (the International Mark Hopkins Hotel), though he seemed more interested in my friend Brad’s djembe drum than in the book faire. If I don’t manage to get Kilmer to appear on my radio show, I should at least write you a Pub Quiz question about him. Expect that in 2011, but not tonight.
Tonight you can expect questions about Presidents and First Ladies, books and authors, Apple. Inc., Snoopy, rocks, hard rock, seagulls and duckies, California, mystical hoaxes, the jungle, the NBA, human anatomy, winners of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, enthusiastic words, opera, smart Germans, short poems, southern California cities, jasmine, people whose names are also common nouns, scientists, statism and its detractors, exorcism, Shakespeare, the British royal family, Asia, football stars, the 17th-century equivalent of a knock-knock joke, and musicians with a penchant for melodrama.
Speaking of musicians, one of my favorite local musicians, Random Abiladeze, is also a roof-raising poet, and he’s coming to Davis. He’ll be performing at Bistro 33 for Poetry Night on March 2nd, the birthday of a number of my heroes, including Dr. Seuss, Desi Arnaz, and Tito Lord. To find out more about Random, please visit http://randomab.com/blog/. I’ll let you know next week how you can register your intent to join us.
When last I checked, we still had a number of tables available for this evening’s performance of the Pub Quiz. I hope you will be one of the diners enjoying the performance. Perhaps you will be performing yourself. One needn’t attend a writers conference in order to be inspired, as you folks teach me every week. Happy Presidents’ Day!
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from a Pub Quiz fundraiser I hosted recently for my friends at Davis Sunrise Rotary (see davisrotary.org):
1. Mottos and Slogans. Found 68 miles south of the state capital of Sacramento, what county seat of Stanislaus County has as its city motto this phrase? Water Wealth Contentment Health.
2. Internet Culture. What website with the slogan “Relationships Matter” promises that it will “strengthen[] and extend[] your existing network of trusted contacts”?
3. Frivolous Celebrities. “Lindsay Lohan Charged With Felony Grand Theft, Could Face Years In Prison,” proclaimed a recent headline. What did Lohan allegedly steal?
4. Four for Four. Which of the following people, if any, were born in the 19th Century? Jimmy Durante, Cary Grant, A.A. Milne, Daniel Webster.
5. Art and Art History. What French artist and Post-Impressionist painter has been called the bridge between Impressionism and Cubism, and “the father of us all” by both Matisse and Picasso?
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/.