Your Quizmaster — Home of the Quizmaster of Sudwerk Brewing Company in Davis

Here are three questions from a 2016 quiz:

History. Michelangelo’s statue of David is found in what Italian city?
Science. According to Purdue University, there is one spring vegetable for which only the young shoots are commonly eaten, for once the buds start to open, the shoots quickly turn woody. Native to Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia, name this vegetable that is especially rich in vitamin K.
Unusual Words. What four-syllable noun refers both to faithfulness and to the degree of exactness with which something is copied or reproduced?
Summer Fashion. The first Bikini swimsuit was introduced this month (July 2016) how many years ago? Was it 70, 50, or 30 years ago?
Another Music Question. Thom Yorke, Jonny Greenwood, Colin Greenwood, Ed O’Brien, and Phil Selway make up what British rock band?

P.S. Overheard over breakfast today: “Why does anyone think that Hope Hicks has a brain in her head and can do anything?” Evidently she has a new job at FOX.

The Lean and Slipper’d Pantaloon Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on September 25, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

Yesterday I got to greet UC Davis Music Professor David Nutter as he strolled into the matinee showing of the Davis Shakespeare Festival play As You Like It, now at the Veterans Memorial Theatre on 14^th Street here in Davis. Nutter’s emeritus faculty photograph shows him playing a lute, which makes sense for someone who has published scholarly essays in Journal of the Lute Society of America. As my marketing friends tell me, “the riches are in the niches.”

You know the last name Nutter if you have attended any of the poetry readings that I’ve hosted over the last couple years, for Timothy Nutter, David’s son, is the Musical Director of the Poetry Night Reading Series. When you engage in significant volunteer activities, as I do, you get to throw around impressive titles; that sort of power is a nice substitute for a salary. In addition to being a dancer, translator, and founder of the Art Theatre of Davis, Timothy Nutter is a multi-instrumentalist himself, so we’ve enjoyed hearing his performances on the electric and acoustic guitar, and on the keyboard that he hauls into the Natsoulas Gallery himself.

Often laconic until he steps up to the microphone, Timothy wows people with his concerts, mixing instrumental and vocal genres of performance with combinations of choral bravado and original lyrics that you won’t find anywhere else. Or at least you wouldn’t find Timothy regularly singing anywhere else before this production of As You Like It opened last weekend. Walking around the stage, and sometimes stopping for an extended solo under a spotlight, Timothy provides most of the production’s interstitial music, as well as the mood music that works ingeniously to make a 400-year-old play more accessible and successful. He also plays the part of William, a hesitant suitor to Audrey, one of the many sought-after beauties whom one expects to be married by the end of this Shakespeare comedy.

Because Timothy is so adept at playing the part of musical director while spending significant time on stage, the music really ties together this remarkable production. His father David must have been so proud, watching from the back of the house with Timothy’s brother also experiencing the fun. I was there with my son Jukie, perhaps the youngest attendee at yesterday’s production, so Jacques’ famous speech about the ages of man resonated with me and probably other audience members directly, with so many generations of playgoers enjoying the performance.

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,

Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.

And then the whining school-boy, with his satchel

And shining morning face, creeping like snail

Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,

Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad

Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,

Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,

Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,

Seeking the bubble reputation

Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,

In fair round belly with good capon lined,

With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,

Full of wise saws and modern instances;

And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts

Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,

With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,

His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide

For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,

Turning again toward childish treble, pipes

And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,

That ends this strange eventful history,

Is second childishness and mere oblivion,

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

I didn’t see you there at the play, but, luckily, you have a few more weekends to see Timothy Nutter and the other talented actors commanding our attention at the Veterans Memorial Theatre. If you have been in love, are currently in love (as I am), or would like to be, the play will delight you. You will want to experience the play yourself, rather than taking my word for it. As heartsick Orlando says at one point, “Oh, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes!”

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, as well as on the following: Greek mythology, video games, PS foods, music as the food of love, boat adventures, unions that you’ve heard of only if you are a participant, ancient history, flowers that are not known for their blooms, people whose work can be found in The New Yorker, the satisfactions available to the consumer of oranges, a hesitant suitor to Audrey, Buddhists, circulation, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, forest adventures, Vermont pastimes, people named LeBron, uncomfortable bosses, deep dives, public school assignments, plant life, blacklists, favorite squares, Academy Award nominees, outmatched heifers, outerwear, U.S. Presidents, professors that are more famous than your professors, beverages and cosmetics, stadia, hard-working musicians, and, as you will have gathered, Shakespeare.

The students are back in town. Isn’t it exciting? See you tonight.

Your Quizmaster

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

Late Actors. What late actor won Golden Globes for his work in Evening Shade (TV) and Boogie Nights (film)?
Science. Starting with an A, what is the central unifying concept in behavioral ecology?
Books and Authors. “Rip Van Winkle” a short story by the American author Washington Irving, was published in what century?

P.S. Congratulations to “Portraits of Professor Christine Blasey Ford” for scoring 29 points at last week’s Pub Quiz. I think Karen Mo was the deciding factor there.

The Time-Traveling Swedish Death Cleaning Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on September 18, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I’ve been making discoveries in our garage, and reflecting upon how we treat ourselves when it comes to or stuff.

Discovering two boxes of framed pictures, including photographs from before and after the frabjous dancing on our wedding day, I asked my wife Kate why all these priceless artifacts were boxed away. She conjectured that we probably packed them up when we moved to our current house in 2004, and haven’t thought to go through them since.

Garages, crawl spaces, and attics are dangerous for this reason: they give us space to forget the joys and burdens we have packed away. Inspired by Kate’s mom’s recent downsizing from a four-bedroom house to a two-bedroom condominium, my sister-in-law decided that she, too, was going to engage in some “Swedish Death Cleaning.”

Do you know the term? Made popular by the Margareta Magnusson book The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter, the term “Death Cleaning” comes from the Swedish word döstädning, where dö meaning “death” and städning meaning “cleaning.” The thinking is that you have a better sense than your eventual heirs of what, if anything, of your possessions would be worth keeping. As a college student who both read a lot of biographies of writers, and who had literary ambitions myself, I used to imagine that the curiosities I collected would make for fascinating sifting for my eventual biographer. I was confused. Now I am doing the sifting, and I feel like I am having a time-traveling conversation with my earlier self, asking him to throw things out in the present so that a future self won’t have to take valuable time to make sense of them, or make room for them.

An English major with a love of reading, I note again that books have always been an enthusiasm of mine, for my collections have numbered in the thousands, probably as much as ten thousand. Today my laptop and iPhone still reflect that enthusiasm. While my current digital collections of books will not provide treasures for some future librarian to interpret, at least the Kindle and Audible format of my books will make it easy for my daughter Geneva or one of the other kids merely to say, “No thanks. Delete.” Downsizing my collections is one of the kindest gifts I can give Geneva and her brothers and, for a few more decades yet, also myself.

Yesterday I delivered about ten boxes of effects to the SPCA. They took everything except the clothes and the space heaters. After I make a few more runs to the SPCA and the Davis Public Library, we will finally have enough room for our bikes and our car to pull into the garage easily, without precision driving. “Three moves equals a fire,” a friend once told me. If I can devote about six more weekends to the garage, we would have the freedom, if not the necessary funds, to move to a new house within Davis, even if we eventually decide to stay put. And my future self will thank my current self for the sustained act of kindness and self-regard.

What sort of conversations are you having with yourself about all that junk you own?

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on core American values, such as freedom from junk. Other topics will include the city of Miami, sweaty humans, long hiatuses, Orion reports, delightful snacks, trips to the forest, last dances, favorite stories, ecology, the Golden Globes, company for France, necessary bonds, kinky song anagrams, authors other than Yeats and Beckett, science fiction films, Spanish words, the prevention of commerce, memoirs, impartiality in the courtroom, famous articles, numbers that are divisible by nine, softball questions, Ray Charles, the start of school, amino acids, accomplished players, unfortunate alliances in the South Pacific, pool-time fun, robots, and Shakespeare.

Valerie Wallace joins us from Chicago as the featured poet at Poetry Night this coming Thursday night at 8. I would love to see you at the Natsoulas Gallery to help me welcome this important visiting writer.

See you this evening!

Your Quizmaster

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

Verbs that start with the letter T. What two-syllable T verb means “to engage in a vigorous struggle or scuffle”?
Current Events – Names in the News. On 4 September 2018, Arif Alvi was elected as 13th President of what country of 194 million people?
Sports. What is the only NFL team that plays its home games in the state of New York?

P.S. Do you appreciate these little quotations at the end of the newsletters? Here’s another: “A house is just a place to keep your stuff while you go out and get more stuff.” ― George Carlin

The Reading Choices and Working Bifocals Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on September 3, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

In a classic first-season episode of The Twilight Zone, Burgess Meredith plays Henry Bemis, an avid reader who finally finds enough time to catch up on his reading. The ending of the 1959 episode, titled “Time Enough at Last,” depends upon a happenstance that easily-slighted Donald Trump would call “unfair.”

Trump is not known for his love of reading. Mark Twain is alleged to have said, “The man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. While anti-intellectualism is regrettable, if only for the resulting lack of imagination, curiosity, and empathy, I suppose such philistinism should not be surprising, given the variety of distractions presented to us by the media and the world’s agents of consumerism. At times, our very world seems to isolate us from the written word. In the aforementioned Twilight Zone episode, this attitude is embodied by the wife of Henry Bemis, who unaccountably refused to let him read, even going so far as to crossing out all the lines in a favorite book of contemporary poetry.

While Bemis originally faced a paucity of reading opportunities, today we face is the abundance of choices. Over a million books are published every year in this country, or about one book for every 300 people. That’s a lot to keep up with, and a lot to choose from. I’ve read more than 20 books since the summer started, but I’ve only just dipped my toe into the water. Despite my railing against consumerism, I too feel the itch to purchase the new book, rather than to turn to one of the dozens of titles waiting weightlessly in my Kindle or Audible library. Once they were the new books, but then they got passed over for another title.

I sense that same surfeit of choices when I am deciding what music to listen to. Once I depended only on the radio for my music, and continue to be grateful for stations like KDVS that take the curation responsibility seriously. Then I delved into Pandora, letting algorithms choose my songs according to what I had previously enjoyed. Now we are Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers, and the choices are again too numerous: almost anything I can imagine is found in that jukebox. All the cool kids once listened to Lou Reed and The Cure; while I did not buy their albums when I was collecting vinyl or cassettes, I can access almost anything of theirs now, and am catching up. As I write this, I am enjoying Far From Over by the Vijay Iyer Sextet, voted the best jazz album of 2017. Because, why not?

On this Labor Day, I am grateful for the labor of all these authors and musicians, and for the innumerable choices available to me, more than were found in the decimated public library of Henry Bemis. With so many options available to all of us, I am also grateful every time I see you enter our Irish Pub on a Monday night, for it means that you’ve chosen your friends and my barked puzzles over even the most enticing book, music stream, or TV show. Emerson said that “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” At Pub Quiz, where every point must be earned, your friends will also forgive you for being too smart.

If we choose to read books, each of us carries our own library. I hope that today you can pick up a good book and pick up a friend on your way to the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz!

Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on dramas that take place in closets, college football, the world wide web, plane travel, impatience, Shrek, baseball, agencies full of agents, shadows and lights, necessities for a clean house, space exploration, telephone redundancy, the example of snow, status indicators, exciting weather phenomena, poetic murals, nervousness, Canadian origins, turnovers, visiting pagans, nuclear families, hard domes, acronyms, Ogre songs, equiny music, Olivias, Buddha jokes, three six-letter words with the same meaning, secretaries, pretty good averages, categories, Barack Obama, social media, middle grounds, aforementioned places, and Shakespeare.

Happy 26^th wedding anniversary to my wife Kate! Once Labor Day belonged only to us.

See you tonight!

Your Quizmaster

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

NASA. The NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson turned 100 years old recently. What movie made her famous?
Books and Authors. Nominee of 17 Tonys, what playwright of Barefoot in the Park became the only living playwright to have a New York theatre named in his honor (in 1983)?
Sports. The teams with the current best and worst record in baseball are both found in the American League East, Central, or West?

P.S. “The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.” Pablo Neruda

The Biking for Pizza with Sherlock Holmes Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on August 28, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

My wife’s car seems fancy to me, if only because of the satellite radio and the push-button seat-warmers. Perhaps these come standard in modern cars, such as our bright red Toyota Prius, with its Beloit College sticker and its peace sign on the gas cap. Although a hybrid, Kate’s car is zippy and stylish. During the summer, when we have more people and gear to transport, we spend more time in the Honda Odyssey, a car born the same year as our 17-year-old son, Jukie. I remember that its CD player seemed a big deal at the time – now the car is almost the only place we listen to CDs – and it still seems amazingly spacious. Yesterday my wife Kate moved our daughter Geneva into a dorm single that’s only about twice the size of our minivan.

With all these automotive options, and Kate and Geneva gone for the long weekend, one would think that I would have turned up the radio and spent the last few days driving around town with the boys, making wonderous discoveries in Davis and Sacramento. Instead, we’ve left the cars in the driveway and ventured into the world on our bicycles. Although Truman starts his junior-high orientation at a school five miles from our Davis home, he’d still like to bike it from time to time, even if we are not yet sure how he is going to transport his alto saxophone. On Saturday, while biking downtown for book-shopping and pizza, Truman and I discussed approaches to bike-commuting, and on Sunday, we did a dry run, and came up with a per-mile speed that’s about twice that of Roger Bannister, the runner’s hero who died earlier this year: It took us 40 minutes to transverse five miles, and that was without the saxophone.

Of course, there were reasons for our inevitable slowdowns. First, I took the time to teach Truman the route, much of it along Putah Creek greenbelts in South Davis. We discussed that the influx of new UC Davis students makes the beginning of the fall quarter an inadvisable time for an unsure cyclist to bike on campus, or even around town. Second, the circumference of Truman’s bike tires is small compared to that of an adult bike, thus slowing him down when compared to my regular pace. And finally, I was hauling Jukie on the cargo bike. My middle child is not a peddler, and the two of us together weigh about 300 pounds. Let’s just say that while hauling the cargo known as Jukie around, I enjoyed both an anaerobic, as well as aerobic, workout.

Nevertheless, we felt exhilarated at the end of our long bike odysseys this past weekend, and this morning I have already biked to and from work in order to attend important meetings. Passing along my bicycling enthusiasm to my son may mean that, in the future, he may choose a hometown according to its bikeability, as I have done. The bike paths of Davis offer us opportunities to reflect, to meditate (the trees fly by too quickly for one to “grasp” any one of them), and, for me as an Audible addict, to hear stories and treatises. As I make my way around town, I never regret the extra time and effort that my bicycle requires of me.

As Arthur Conan Doyle said in Scientific American in 1896, “When the spirits are low, when the day appears dark, when work becomes monotonous, when hope hardly seems worth having, just mount a bicycle and go out for a spin down the road, without thought on anything but the ride you are taking.” Meteorologically, August days are almost never dark in Davis; luckily, a bike ride can also dispel our mind-forged cobwebs that might otherwise cloud an August afternoon.

I hope you can join us for tonight’s pub quiz. In addition to topics hinted at, above, expect questions tonight about Beethoven on war and peace, horses, organisms, Latin America, long roads, squares, tasty beers, seats in churches, before and after a birth, glaciers, fashionable shapes, dynasties, talking slow after drinking fast, container ports, panhandles, the flatness of Davis, what’s in your weekend, the San Francisco Bay, introductions to Hamlet, shoelessness, layers, famous computers, superheroes, dark storytellers, slaves to fashion (guilty!), notable cones, hair-raising Scrabble scores, cheese that you would not serve to your Irish mum, current events, big banks, Crimea, and Shakespeare.

What fun we will have this evening, especially if you are there!

Your Quizmaster

Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:

Irish Culture. What was the largest Irish city to suffer bombing runs during World War II?
Countries of the World. The Hebrides is an archipelago comprising hundreds of islands off the northwest coast of what country?
Celebrity Families. Bruce Willis and Demi Moore reunited to take a picture with their daughter on her birthday last week. How old is Rumer Willis? Is she 15, 20, 25, or 30?
Science. What S-word is missing from this sentence: Unlike frogs, an adult BLANK is able to regenerate limbs and its tail when these are lost.
Books and Authors. The word “Dharma” appears in the title of Jack Kerouac’s second-most-famous book. What is the full title?

P.S. Who is to blame for the lack of respect given to John McCain by the White House? Well, John McCain, of course: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/27/politics/james-inhofe-john-mccain-white-house-flag/index.html

The Giving Enough to Help Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on August 13, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

One day last week as I was walking along Harbor Boulevard after a long day with the family at Disneyland, I saw a frightful character. The man’s sleeveless undershirt revealed oversized biceps and skull tattoos, his buzz cut barely protected his pale scalp from sunburn, and his military-style boots and long camouflage pants seemed out of place when all the tourists around us were wearing shorts on that 95-degree day.

Even more concerning than his outfit or his haircut was the determined – almost angry – look on his face as he crossed West Katella Avenue, and the fast clip at which he jogged towards us on the crosswalk. I gripped my son Jukie’s hand a little more tightly as he ran past us, relieved that we were not his objective.

With great concern, I considered the fate of the homeless person we had just passed, a Latino man with a multicolored sign asking for money for food. I wondered if the tattooed runner had chosen him as his target, and if I and others nearby would have to alert the authorities to a hate crime that would soon be taking place just a block from Disneyland. The “Walk / Don’t Walk” timer in front of us was counting down to zero.

And then, a moment later, even before crossing the street, I heard the combat boots behind me again, as the man sprinted to the sidewalk ahead of us, surprising some people who were standing at the corner, but not one little blonde girl who reached her hand up to the man whom I thought was so angry, and perhaps violent. This is the interchange I heard:

“Daddy, how much did you give him?”

“I gave him enough to help.”

Still in Southern California, today I turn the Quiz over to guest-Quizmaster James. He provided a number of questions, and I provided the rest, some of them reflecting my environs and discoveries in Los Angeles and San Diego. Tonight expect questions on infidelity, symbologies, pouches, the importance of mythology, gems, museum directors, people named Stein, French lawyers, inciting incidents, romances, textiles and clothing, completed missions, avant-garde imagineers, what banks do, really strong tables, the names of little girls, ensemble works, renunciants, groups of four, names in the news, depth psychology, videos, Federal agencies, quintets, monkeys, roles to be played, alternatives to irony, anthrax, onetime nitrates, retirements, radio songs, Australia, people born overseas, third generations, space forces, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us tonight for the Pub Quiz. Knowing that you are continuing to grapple with the conundra I create will bring me comfort as I walk along the beach this evening.

Your Quizmaster, Dr. Andy

yourquizmater@gmail.com

P.S. Rilke: “For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks… the work for which all other work is but preparation.”

The Duke Ellington with the Kettlebells Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on August 6, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

What’s a summer for, anyway? Henry James says that “summer afternoon” are “the two most beautiful words in the English language.” If that’s true, we might each look to summer for different reasons.

Some look to the summer for what it doesn’t offer: ongoing responsibilities, the burden of ongoing productivity, all the open loops that we need to close in order to be making progress. Others define summer positively, as a chance to grow, to evolve. Remembering lessons from summer camp, we seek to develop new skills. We might spend time discovering or recommitting to a musical instrument (my son Truman practices his saxophone every morning), or learning a language (preferably in the faraway country where it is spoken), or taking a class in something creative (such as at our own Davis Arts Center).

Others prefer to learn, to grow in less social or structured settings. One can rent audiobooks online from our own Davis branch of the Yolo County Library – they make excellent company for a long nature walk. Just this morning, I signed our family up for Amazon Music Unlimited, meaning that each of our devices, and everything that answers to the name “Alexa” around our house, can play any song we can imagine or remember. We will see if any of us feel overwhelmed by having too many choices. Today I have been listening to Duke Ellington.

Others choose to socialize, to catch up with friends and relations whom we neglect during the past year of work. For example, this coming weekend I look forward to enjoying long conversations over wine with a best friend from college, and her Lithuanian-born husband. They open up their San Diego home to us every time we visit, and give us tours of the best sights of what some call the “City in Motion.” According to two new studies covered in the New York Times, we should all keep in motion this summer, at least by taking walking tours the areas that we drive to. As I say when I hear a new favorite book calling me, I need to earn that time of rest, usually with the kettlebell.

I bet that you have earned a break this summer. I will take mine in the coming week (thanks to James for guest-hosting the Pub Quiz in my absence next Monday), and it will reward me with new books and music, with time spent with old friends and treasured family members, and with stories that will fill my memories and future newsletters. I hope to see you tonight, and two weeks from tonight, so that we can make our own memories.

Until then,

Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com
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yourquizmaster@gmail.com

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:

1. Books and Authors. The first woman to win two National Book Awards for fiction has MRS. JAN DEWY as an anagram of her name, not that you should need that. Who is this author of Salvage the Bones and Sing, Unburied, Sing?

2. Film. Who played the mom in the 2003 remake of the Disney film Freaky Friday? Jamie Lee Curtis

3. Countries of the World. The prime number of official languages in South Africa is the same number that appears on the first manned spacecraft to land on the moon. What is that number? (Apollo) 11

P.S. “The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.” Natalie Babbitt

P.P.S. Do you mind finding the hints down here? I hope not. This evening expect questions on favorite colors, dating features, doomsdays, garden tools, famous sailors, neutralizations, natterings of compromise, signs, unusual boys, carpool options, stories by Lucas, consistent kicks, leather, whips without chains, trending kings, wakefulness, film debuts, ABC, massive numbers, Star Wars stories, descending waters, keeping the home fires burning, the benefits of chaos, household devices, dishonest words, British words, South American exports to America, ants, baseball teams, piano concertos, belts in America, imported K words, and Shakespeare. See you tonight!

The Judicious Breaks from the Fourth Estate Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on July 30, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I really admire Rachel Maddow. Along with a few folks on National Public Radio, I find her to be among the brightest, most ethical, and most responsible news anchor working today. I like that she comes from our home state of California, that she was the first openly LGBT Rhodes Scholar and news anchor, and that she monologues for as long as 20 minutes in the beginning of her show. I always learn something from Ms. Maddow (or, should I say, Dr. Maddow, as she earned her PhD in politics from Oxford University, from which some of the world’s best scholars have emerged, or are emerging). Of all the news folks on TV, I have the most respect and affection for Rachel Maddow.

All that said, I have stopped watching her show. In fact, I have stopped watching MSNBC altogether. The network does a better job than most in keeping its viewers informed about current events and politics (PBS takes the top spot for me), but its success also depends to a certain extent on stoked partisan outrage. Such outrage is helpful and maybe even necessary to mobilize people to confront a corrupt and immoral political status quo, with the Fourth Estate a necessary check on the other three estates, but after a while such outrage becomes heavy and disquieting baggage, a source of agitation rather than prompted action. In the end, I prefer to support thinkers and leaders who voice inspiring ideals rather than only indignation.

These days, I find myself reading more books than newspapers, and watching more films than cable news TV shows. I still keep up with the world – for the sake of my participation in dinnertime conversations, and for the sake of current events pub quiz questions – but increasingly I am doing so as a reader, rather than as a viewer, or even as a listener (sorry, NPR). A few minutes spent reviewing the website Political Wire or the trending stories at Muckrack can be fruitfully substituted for hours spent with once-favorite TV shows or news podcasts. Not wanting to separate myself from causes that inspire me, I still plan to support certain candidates for office (Lucas Frerichs comes to mind), and to march to the state capital with friends and family when warranted, but I also know that I’d rather spend quality time with my wife Kate, with my kids, or with a good book (I read three just last week), rather than to take time to pay homage to the outrage machine.

I will still mock villains on Twitter and eagerly anticipate the revelations in Robert Mueller’s eventual report, but I needn’t give up my headspace or my evenings to do so. As Gandhi said, “Action expresses priorities.” I suppose that inaction, or how we spend our earned summer leisure hours, should also express our priorities.

Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on concerns raised above, and on the following: women who hold their own doors, drafting citizens, back-up plans, sexual misconduct, inventions, the National Book Award, French hunting, nursing, megabands, flown kites (such as those we saw at the windy beach this past weekend), successful musicians, product placements, offices, nearby rivers, sentiments, gathered players, big birthdays, many parts, mothers in law, Chicago art, official languages, prime numbers, visitors in 2018, everyday supplies, swapping with guitars, Mrs. Jan Dewy, Black Liberation and what follows, people named Elizabeth, American governors, fans of Fernando and money, smooth unbreakable dorks, now and later, frequent breaks, lovely cheeses, a flight attendant who can also fly the plane, baseball, rich alphabets, current events, and Shakespeare.

I look forward to seeing you this evening. I’ve heard from at least two past Hall of Fame teams who will be joining us in a competitive mood this evening, so I anticipate some high scores. I hope that yours will be one of them.

Your Quizmaster

Here are three questions from last week’s quiz, along with some commentary about the answers:

Unusual Words: Fletcher’s Edition. What do fletchers straighten? You might remember this coming up in last week’s newsletter.
Fabrics. With a glossy surface and a dull back, what comes in 4-harness, 5-harness, and 8-harness weaves? Because I feared the quiz was too easy, I took out a crucial hint at the last minute last week – the first letter of this word.
Pop Culture – Television. What TV comedy follows the adventures of slacker Philip J. Fry, who is accidentally transported to the 31st century? My daughter Geneva knew this one immediately (while I have never watched the show).

P.S. Poetry Night on August 2^nd celebrates the Blue Moon Literary and Art Review, the local journal that features some of our best local writers. Join us Thursday at 8 for the fun.

Escaping Lugubriousness by Bicycle Edition of the de Vere’s Irish Pub Pub Quiz Newsletter

by yourquizmaster on July 24, 2018

Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,

I’ve been tearing through audio books this summer, spending more than I should at Audible.com. It started with a couple film books as I was preparing for the Film as Narrative class that I am teaching for the Department of English during the first summer session, and now I am reading about Buddhism, working my way through titles such as Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery, by Chögyam Trungpa.

If I take the fast route, and if I hit the lights right, I can bike from my home in south Davis to my office on the west side of campus in the time it takes to listen to three Stevie Wonder songs. Typically and preferably, I take the long path to work, meandering comfortably along Putah Creek, and encountering no vehicles except for occasional other bicycles. This commute rewards me not only because of the fresh air and the opportunity to greet everyone along the green belt, but also because I take the time to listen to a chapter or more of my current book.

My recently restarted meditation process has resulted in one welcome benefit: a growing ability to focus. One way this manifests itself, I’ve discovered, is through my ability to listen to audio books at accelerated rates. Typical conversation is shared at about 150 words per minute, but I can play my audiobooks comfortably at about 150% speed and still follow, at least when I concentrate. For me, this is a practiced skill, one that can be further improved. For instance, I have blind friends in town for whom my sped-up rate of listening would be lugubriously slow – I’m amazed at how quickly and effectively they can process aural information.

Self-impressed with my practice of eating up the pages of books this summer, I still find myself zoning out whenever I bike for a short stretch alongside Interstate 80. I find that on West Chiles Road, just before Hamel Lane, the traffic noise interferes significantly with the speakers of the iPhone in my shirt pocket (I know not to use headphones on a bike). Sometimes I back the book up 30 seconds to see what I missed, while at other times I just resign myself to having missed 30 seconds of information, story, or poetry. At such moments I realize that most of us, including especially myself, are like bike commuters along a highway much of the time, in that we find that outside noise interferes with our own thinking processes. Some of us continue for years this way, welcoming other people’s noise and seeking any sort of distraction rather than merely sitting for a moment with our own thoughts.

As the Buddha said, “Irrigators channel waters; fletchers straighten arrows; carpenters bend wood; the wise master themselves.” Mastering one’s self may seem too ambitious for the summer. I would be happy just to practice better understanding what I am thinking about, and why.

In addition to topics raised above, tonight expect questions about undertakers, elves, German titles, taking cures, active compounds, kidney ailments, sweetness, eastern Europe, seas, consumerist autonomy, smaller than Taurus, what you can only imagine, momentous deaths, carboniferosity?, American cities, Harry Potter, David Bowie remarks, retired numbers, John Brown, harnesses, future slackers, bands that are filled with young men, Cheez Whiz, Scottish tips, divided houses, three initials, soft drinks, drivable city visits, facts that you know but which your teammates do not, bellicosity, limestone, world-changing books, rivers, fall dragons, Korea, future Fries, acts of rebellion, Miami, and Shakespeare.

I hope you can join us this evening. As Helen Keller says, “Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.”

Your Quizmaster