Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
My stepmother recently told me that she doesn’t care for all the bragging she sees in social media, and thus she rarely visits Facebook, Twitter, and other such social media sites. In 2013, Broadway performer John Carroll helpfully categorized the five types of Facebook braggarts: the work braggart, the relationship braggart, the body braggart, the death braggart, and the religious braggart. I’m sure we all can think of examples of these, and imagine some additional categories that we could add.
As Your Quizmaster, I am obligated to make my Pub Quizzes helpfully topical, and sometimes I will do the same with my newsletters. Because of my family’s direct and indirect connections to the entertainment industry, I myself have sometimes been guilty of telling stories about my own interactions with celebrities who have just died, such as Amiri Baraka and Jean Stapleton. Because of my father’s work at the Washington Theatre Club, in the late 1960s, an alarming number of future millionaires lived in my basement. Sadly, the late great orator Mario Cuomo was not one of them. I would have liked to have met him.
That said, in these Monday missives I generally don’t brag about work, relationships, religious assurances, or my body. As I was preparing my goals for 2015, however, I noticed that I had actually met my 2014 goal of dropping ten pounds and biking every day to my teaching and administrative jobs at UC Davis.
And whom do I have to thank for reaching this goal? I will tell you:
- My NaNoWriMo friends who inspired me to attempt 100 pushups a day in November of 2013, thus starting me on this health quest;
- De Vere’s Irish Pub, home of the Dr. Andy salad (a large pub salad with two fried eggs and two orders of avocado – you should try it);
- Davis Swim and Fitness, the south Davis gym with new weight machines and a large stack of swag prizes that were offered for me to give out at the Pub Quiz;
- My wife Kate, for obvious reasons;
- Nutrition professor Liz Applegate, whose advice has been really helpful;
- My Vitamix 5200 super blender / smoothie maker, responsible for my daily fruit and kale protein smoothie;
- Nutrishop Davis, which provides me the protein powders that power my protein smoothies;
- My thoroughly fit friend Tylor, the de Vere’s Irish Pub server whose arms each weigh about as much as I do after losing that ten pounds;
- Jillian Michaels, who taught me that “Sometimes you’ve got to make your work and workouts co-exist”;
- John G. Martin and Jack Morgan, inventors of the Moscow Mule (sorry, Guinness family!)
- And my children, Geneva, Jukie, and Truman, with whom I have now almost caught up.
I’ve heard it said that if New Year’s resolutions worked, we wouldn’t need them. Nevertheless, I hope that your 2015 is full of empowerment and accomplishment, and that you spend part of every Monday night at de Vere’s Irish Pub in Davis.
Happy birthday to my son Jukie, the subject of an op-ed that appeared in Saturday’s Sacramento Bee (and which was adapted from last week’s newsletter). Check out the article to see a picture of my smiling boy and his daddy.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will include questions about aluminum, my friend Mike May, microprocessors, what Adele has been up to, violence (a topic I typically avoid), questions that you might ask a lava dean, surreal landscapes and the crazy things that happen there, numbers that are divisible by 8 and 12, mountains, honeypots, unfortunate back injuries, unusual sports, that which is specialized, A-list actors, villains, one of my favorite musicians from the 1980s, warnings against odd work, the ways we count on irrational fears, places that start with the letter S, movies that may never have come to Davis, military generals, tied with Norway, the CIA, what women wear, strong winds in Ireland, understanding time from 30,000 feet, Henry Ford, what we learn from watching How the Universe Works, the question whether comic books count as books, current events, the garishness of the sun, blackbirds, long words, and Shakespeare.
See you tonight, and Happy New Year!
Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com
http://www.twitter.com/yourquizmaster
http://www.facebook.com/yourquizmaster
Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Internet Culture. What eight-letter word is the most commonly-used password used to log into websites?
- Newspaper Headlines. According to NPR, Britain has surpassed France as the world’s 5th largest economy ever since Britain included the amount Brits spend on which of the following? A) Crumpets, B) Internet porn, C) Plastic surgery, or D) Prostitutes and illegal drugs.
- Superheroes. I will now name three members of the Fantastic Four. The Invisible Girl, The Human Torch, Thing. What is the five-syllable name of the missing member?
- Pop Culture – Music. The Irish musician Hozier (Ho-zee-er) has a big hit right now with the song “Take Me to BLANK.” What word fills in the blank?
- Sports. Wilt Chamberlain has four of the top-five, all-time, single-game scoring performances in NBA history including his all-time best 100 point performance in 1962 against the New York Knicks. Who in 2006 had the second highest scoring game in NBA history at 81 points?
P.S. Poetry Night returns on January 15 at the John Natsoulas Gallery.
P.P.S. This newsletter is coming out a bit late because I teach Monday mornings this quarter. I’m already loving my “Writing Across Media” class that I am teaching for Technocultural Studies at UC Davis.