Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Despite the cold, this morning and this afternoon my wife Kate and I walked the UC Davis Arboretum loop. We were still buzzed with joy and musical cheer after seeing LaLa Land at the Varsity Theatre last night. Fans of the rare well-made modern musical, we could see why the film made so many top-ten lists for 2016 films, including being voted the top film by critics at Rolling Stone and All Things Considered (NPR), among other media outlets. Tom Hanks said, “When you see something that is brand new, that you can’t imagine, and you think ‘well thank God this landed’, because I think a movie like La La Land would be [anathema] to studios. Number one, it is a musical and no one knows the songs.” Peter Bradshaw of the British newspaper The Guardian gave the film five stars, calling it “a sun-drenched musical masterpiece.” It is heart-wrenching and heart-warming in all the ways that work.
Kate loved the soundtrack so much that she downloaded it on Christmas night, and played it during her two walks around the Arboretum loop (about seven miles total). So that I could hear, during the second loop Kate unplugged her earbuds, sharing the tunes with me and the occasional smiling and quizzical passersby. Feeling like we were in our own musical, Kate proposed that we learn some dance moves like those used by Sebastian and Mia in the film. Excited about our Boxing Day project, we are now searching for choreographers, and may have to turn to our friends at the Davis Shakespeare Ensemble for help.
In any event, I was dancing in the park this morning instead of writing newsletters for the pub quiz. Like you, I have been on vacation. In her book, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now, Maya Angelou writes, “Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. Jobs, family, employers, and friends can exist one day without any one of us, and if our egos permit us to confess, they could exist eternally in our absence. Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for. Each of us needs to withdraw from the cares which will not withdraw from us.”
I hope that our Pub Quiz can function this way for you, as a two-hour sanctuary from your cares and woes. I expect a crowd tonight, so I hope you can join us by 6! Happy holidays and happy new year.
And here are the hints. In addition to what was mentioned above, tonight also expect questions about Christmas carols, drones, cards, Hebrew words, the entertainers, chambers, important dates in history and mythology, my latest writing projects, speech-writers, wooing with rough strife, rivalries, popular people, life and comedy, sicknesses, nutrients, Academy Awards, states of peace, journalism, Ireland in the movies, Judds, fountainheads, columnists, structured information in the news, beating China’s record, mayday flowers, successful athletes, top-ranked neighbors, halls of fame, hitters, domestic enhancement, candles, crackpot conspiracy theorists who are not actually related to me, places of the heart, data, and Shakespeare. Did you know that I often stick in additional hints here that one won’t even see in the newsletter? Don’t ask me why.
See you tonight.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Pop Culture – Music. With four letters and two words in its name, what band’s video for “Here It Goes Again” won a Grammy Award for Best Music Video in 2007?
- Science. What two-syllable M word completes this definition of “Spectroscopy”? “Spectroscopy is the study of the interaction between BLANK and electromagnetic radiation.”
- Unusual Four-Syllable Words that will Never Appear in a Donald Trump Tweet. What C word, a noun, means “deception by trickery”?
P.S. “The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” Mary Oliver
P.P.S. Thanks for your support of the Pub Quiz in 2016. I hope you can join me in looking forward to completing meaningful creative or philanthropic projects in 2017.