Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
One of the great advantages of living in a small city like Davis is that I can always count on running into friends whenever I head downtown. Sometimes people greet me before I recognize them, and sometimes people greet me whom I don’t recognize at all. This used to happen to my dad all the time in Washington D.C. While he had the added disadvantage of being functionally blind, I nevertheless learned some lessons from him in patience and grace as he was approached by all sorts of well-wishers who knew him from his regular film and theatre reviews on TV. I will also know a larger percentage of people on the streets of my town than my dad did on the streets of his town. Never having partaken in the crutch of Facebook, he nevertheless did a better job than I did in remembering names. Of course, he was also a magician.
But since I got my recent haircut – OK, it’s more that I was shorn like a shocked and bleating sheep – another dynamic has manifested: People who know me don’t recognize me. In downtown Davis, I can walk right past acquaintances without their making eye contact or recognizing who I am. And then Friday, I was waiting in front of our favorite Irish Pub, where I told my wife Kate I would meet her, and she looked right past me, as if I were an invisible ghost or someone worthy of a snub. We love our bald friends, but Kate’s eye is not yet trained to look for such people when out and about (and I stay away from mirrors altogether).
Our son Jukie was walking several yards ahead of his mom and was heading into the Irish pub when his dad’s voice appeared from seeming nowhere, telling him to wait for his daddy. Jukie had walked right past me, not only not stopping for a customary hug, but this time also not seeing me at all. I felt like a spy in my own city, a master of disguise who could infiltrate unseen, even though others who know me well had been alerted to my presence.
And then Friday night at a fundraiser that I was hosting for the local Rotary club, I got to unleash my now recognizable voice on a roomful of 200 people who were wondering if I had shaved my head in order to look older – more distinguished, like Charles Foster Kane at the end of the Orson Welles movie – or to look younger, to pretend like Bruce Willis that my new baldness was purposeful, rather than to conceal how old, grey, and balding I would be if I were to let my hair grow.
Either way, at the fundraiser local dignitaries and Pub Quiz occasionals presented me with cupcakes that, like the celebrant, had been recently shaved, only of frosting rather than of hair. What a hoot to be both mocked and fêted in the same ceremony, as if I were both myself, and this new guy, a member of the bald guy club who can walk the streets of Davis undisturbed, unstopped, and unrecognized. Yesterday I suspected that it took B Street Theater founding artistic director Buck Busfield about two minutes of conversation before he remembered who I was, as if I was unaccountably wearing a costume to a non-costume party.
We will see how long my new anonymity lasts. Meanwhile, thanks for the birthday wishes online and in person, and thanks to everyone who has donated or continues to donate to my ongoing fundraiser fighting children’s cancers, this weekend and beyond. You still have time to give, and help me break $3,000 raised for children’s cancer research. It is a Cause célèbre, even if the minor celebrity espousing it has been functionally forgotten. Here’s the link.
And here are some clues for tonight’s quiz. In addition to the topics raised above, expect also questions about garrulous villains, funny nicknames, American authors, burners, keyboards, large connections, big cities, tournaments, rising stars, notable ends, favorite continents, fast chaps, Thailand, balloons, Greek mythology, molecular formulae, repeated diction, crickets, spousal introductions, diversification, notable Americans, rates of occurrence, surprises for inventors, Spanish and English, the question of SI, hardened ivory huts, final tracks, silly announcements, thoughts about numbers, metaphorical birds, German scientists, baseball, generous plans, four notables, bus rides, San Diego, and Shakespeare.
Poetry Night is Thursday! This time we will feature DR Wagner and Dave Boles. Join us March 15th (the Ideas of March) at the John Natsoulas Gallery for a performance by these standout poets.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans. A favorite among musicians and their pets, what 1966 Beach Boys album was originally promoted with the slogan “the most progressive pop album ever”?
- Internet Culture. Amazon has recently revealed it will stop selling latest-generation smart thermostats and other space-age gadgets from Nest. What California-headquartered company owns Nest?
- Newspaper Headlines. What single country is the top exporter of steel and aluminum to the U.S.?