Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I spent an hour or so this morning at the UC Davis Rec Pool, watching my seven year-old son Truman enjoy a private swimming lesson. Such lessons help to transform the potential fear and peril that a youngster might associate with the water into a feeling of independence and confidence. And such a setting! As you probably know, the rec pool is ringed at a distance with pine and palm trees whose branches’ habitual sway offers plenty of shade to the parents to relish as we shift our lawn chairs with the shifting sun. I see parents of the youngest children hover nearby, with an eye on the instructor to whom they have entrusted their futures, while the parents of the older kids are eager to catch a break; they pair and triple up in the shade, sharing gossip, stories and jokes. Or so I imagine. Only their laughter can be heard to a faraway viewer such as my wife Kate or myself.
Similar positive energy emanates from the instructors, especially Truman’s teacher, Taylor, who kept telling Truman that his attempts at pencil dives and side-breathing were “super-good” and “really awesome,” the language that sometimes creeps into the rough drafts of my students’ essays. With Taylor’s constant stream of encouragements came an absolute focus on our boy, the sort of attention that is necessary if she is to inspire the trust of children and their parents. Like a dance instructor, Taylor guided, cajoled and directed with her arms, lifting and stabilizing Truman while he tried earnestly to hear her instructions through his earplugs, and meet her expectations. Sometimes even our muscle memories are fleeting.
Meanwhile, the gentle morning heat lazes above the families and the swim instructors, reminding us all that we should move, think, and work more slowly on a summer day than we do during the other nine moths of the year. Immersed in the poolside sounds of summer, and the warm morning like a comfortable silk garment, each of us pretends for a moment that we are the children that we see around us, with nothing more pressing than the thoughts of an unhurried brunch of berries, a play-date with a friend from school (remember school?), and the water that buoys our underwater dreams and explorations.
Today might be a forgettable day, for nothing momentous or calamitous has happened, or is likely to. But today, this day, still matters, for it is also representative of that which we might treasure in recollection, in those rare moments of reflective tranquility, for the rest of our lives.
And now for the part of the Pub Quiz newsletter that Elliott and the other studious Quiz participants print out and study as they wait for the 7 PM chime at 217 E Street. Tonight’s Quiz will feature questions on superheroes, as constant a summer recreation as a dip in the pool. Expect also questions about three-letter acronyms, Lucille Ball, The Davis Food Co-Op, Whigs, breasts, North Carolina, pop music, the NFC, nine-letter genres, Greek heroes, muscles, people born in Connecticut, deceit, Superman, obituaries, stark tests that are difficult to beat, stockings, giant meddlers, seasons, hope, animated films (as promised on Facebook, though the answer will not be Turbo), Spain, great orators, the order of languages, cities that begin with vowels, loud speakers, not the prince you were expecting, presidential elections, people born in Kenya, and Shakespeare.
It was crowded last week, with many playing on the patio, and it will be crowded again this week. No cell phones during the Pub Quiz, please.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Mottos and Slogans. What FedEx competitor uses the commercial slogan “We Keep Your Promise”?
- Newspaper Headlines. What pitcher threw a no-hitter against the Padres last week?
- Bad TV Movies. What has been called the “most terribly good TV movie of the summer” was not titled “Velocirapture” or “Piranhacane.” What was the title of this much-discussed SyFy network release this past weekend?
- Name the Year. Sitting Bull and Van Gogh died the same year that Eisenhower & Lovecraft were born. Within five years, name the year.
- Pop Culture – Music. In 2012, after a trip to Jamaica, Snoop Dogg announced a conversion to the Rastafari movement and a new alias. What is Snoop’s new name?
Editor’s note: Since this was originally published, we’ve learned that a Prince of Cambridge has been born, and that the American actor Dennis Farina has been died (the momentous, and the calamitous).