Truman with Light Saber (photos by Kate)
Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Happy May the 4th! Ever wonder if May the 4th will be an actual national holiday 50 or 100 years from now? It certainly is in my family. This morning my wife Kate was seen in our front yard photographing a very young Darth Vader in shorts and a Star Wars T-shirt, wielding a light saber. A few years ago, Truman played Vader for Halloween, while his sister portrayed Princess Amidala. And one of their brother Jukie’s favorite picture books reveals the wise sayings of Yoda.
I shared some of these obsessions a long time ago in a city far, far away. Jack Valenti (Google him) once recommended an upcoming film to my dad, suggesting that his young son Andy would enjoy it. We headed off to the critics screening room at the American Film Institute, and as the lights were dimming, I remember asking my dad what the name of the film was. He couldn’t remember. Then we heard the opening bars of the John Williams soundtrack, and my world changed.
Within a year, Star Wars was everywhere. We had our rudimentary costumes even back then, not to mention posters, books, trading cards, and the endless figurines. But I felt privileged to have seen the film first, before all but about 12 men (and Jack Valenti) in Washington DC, the critics who filled that screening room in 1977. While today Star Wars is one of the most widely-recognized cultural phenomena of the 20th century, there was a week or more during my youth when all that richness, fantasy, and supernatural heraldry was a private matter, undisturbed by what theorists call the “preformed symbolic complex.” Of course, as I learned that summer, the fun comes not from hoarding the magic, but from sharing it.
This lifelong flirtation with imaginative hoarding is the burden that unpublished authors carry with themselves everywhere: we are the creators of imagined worlds that have not yet been shared. Many of us choose to practice such world-building every November during National Novel Writing Month, a shared sprint towards drafts of novellas that, as was the case for George Lucas (with help from Alan Dean Foster), might just turn into something worth experiencing. Grant Faulkner, the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (did you know that months required executive directors?) will be speaking about NaNoWriMo in Davis this coming Thursday night, and reading from his new collection of short stories titled Fissures. I hope you can join us that Thursday evening at 8 at the Natsoulas Gallery.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz features questions on some of the above, as well as favorite beverages, Celtic freezing, delightful dishes, new American heroes, news-gathering, concluding verbs, bonds of sharing, digital devices, Asia, lovely ladies, the streets of Ireland, comic books, creditable receipts, impossibly big cities, filling costumes, directorships, Anders Ericsson, composers, special messages to my friend Carin (Happy birthday, Carin!), knights, tropical evergreens, old movies, the number 13, temperance, digital discoveries, minimalism, the police, cheeriness, Twitter, illicit substances, the Civil War, Pew research studies, and Shakespeare.
I hope you will join us tonight. If you see Carin at Kate’s table, make sure to wish her a happy birthday. May the Fourth be with you.
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Films with One-Word Titles. At almost $180 million domestic, Kevin James’ highest grossing film had only his male co-star on the movie poster. Name the one-word title of this 2005 film.
- The City of Davis. Pollinate Davis is the new co-working facility in Regency Square, found at the corner of two streets in Davis. Name just one of those two streets.
- Great Onetime Americans. Isadora Duncan and Harry Houdini both died rather suddenly within about a year of one another. Name the decade.
- Four for Four. The month of April begins with the letter A and ends with the letter L in which of the following languages, if any? French, German, Indonesian, Vietnamese.
- Sports. What former NBA player was a six-time NBA champion, a six-time NBA MVP, and a four-time NBA blocks leader, among many other laurels?
P.S. Two other events worth adding to your schedule: Pub Quiz irregular (and regular newsletter reader) John Lescroart’s book release party takes place tomorrow night, May the 5th, at Odd Fellows Hall at 6:30. You might have read the recent article about John in the Davis Enterprise. Secondly, Saturday night at 7:30 at the Pence Gallery I will be performing a short story by Becky Mandelbaum as part of Stories on Stage Davis. I look forward to seeing you at least twice this week.