Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
For tonight’s competition, I had planned five questions on Dromio, but then I saw the two captains of the team that won last week’s quiz unlocking their bikes outside of the Veterans’ Theatre yesterday, so I changed my mind about asking questions about The Comedy of Errors.
As I write this, my faculty colleagues int eh University Writing Program are finishing their lunches at our fall welcome. I feel so lucky to be working with such diverse and accomplished colleagues. For example, sitting at my table today are Steve Magagnini, the longtime race and ethnicity reporter at the Sacramento Bee who always presents himself as the most positive and humble people I know (despite his prize-winning recognition for his important work, even though his contract with the Bee has ended).
Sitting next to Steve is Sasha Abramsky, the author of many books on political and cultural topics who, as a reporter, has been leading the charge in exposing public corruption. Born not far from where I met my wife Kate (in London, England), Sasha studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Balliol College, Oxford. If you ever have a chance to see one of Sasha’s public addresses, take advantage of it! Meanwhile, you can find hi give talks about his various books online.
Each of my University Writing Program colleagues deserves the attention and love that I am sharing with Steve and Sasha here, and I’m sure that would be true for the friends who join you at your Pub Quiz team Monday evenings. So much intellectual curiosity! So much cultural capital! I could have chosen to live in any number of cosmopolitan capitals, but people like these remind me why I chose this town, this university, and this life.
As the students return to clog our streets and bike paths, I hope you have similar reasons to feel and express gratitude.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on the following topics: questions of travel, light years, the unlikely example of Ajax, words that start with Q, time travel, recognizable traits, drama, friends, what counts as dressing, philosophical authors, unpleasant helpers, distant relatives, comparisons to Los Angeles, millions of visitors, the Moon, sandals, people named Heather, aromatic spices, yeast, learners who are also ladies, hills, fannings, elephants, rhythms, alphabetized verbs, computer leaps, who vs. whom, alternative bookings, and, of course, Shakespeare.
I look forward to seeing you this evening at the Pub!
Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com
http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster
http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster
Here are three questions from a 2012 Pub Quiz. What are the answers? Who knows?
- Books and Authors. What founding father, author of The Gospel Preacher: A Book of Twenty Sermons, once said, “Glass, china and reputation are easily cracked, and never well mended”?
- Retail Sales. According to a profile published in the Sacramento Bee in 1990, Cal Worthington grossed $316.8 million in 1988, making him at the time the largest single owner of what kind of retail chain?
- Irish Culture. The population of all of Ireland, the Republic and Northern Ireland, is closest to that of which of the following US States, presented here from most populous to least? Pennsylvania, Tennessee, or Nevada.
P.S. “[T]hat old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air … Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year’s mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.” Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose