Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I hard a fascinating story on National Public Radio this morning. Evidently Autism researchers don’t have enough brain tissue samples to do the research they would wish to on the causes and possible treatments of the disorder. The most compelling part for me was hearing the perspective of Jonathan Mitchell, one of the most eloquent people with autism I have ever heard. He speaks of being “embittered” because of his life’s missed opportunities, but hearing him speak, I was just struck by the absorbing way in which his sentences become rapid-fire paragraphs.
Although I have my own personal connections to Autism, Mitchell’s words resonated with me this past weekend because of the ways that the fever I was wrestling with on Friday and Saturday has inhibited, complicated, and warped my own thinking patterns. Mitchell said, “I have an impaired ability to relate to people. I can't concentrate or get things done," and I, too, found that this weekend I could get almost nothing done but write tonight’s Pub Quiz. (For instance, one of my children gave himself a haircut while I was napping on Saturday.)
More a poet than a scientist, I was fascinated by the ways, as I tried to sleep, my febrile brain would race ahead of its own thoughts, not bothering even to attempt to make logical connections, or even suggest a sequence between one thought and the next. Ezra Pound called this poetic composition method of juxtaposing images “parataxis” (as did others before him), and it is in part this sort of paratactic thought that makes modern poetry so difficult, as exemplified by the beginning of Pound’s “Three Cantos”:
HANG it all, there can be but one Sordello!
But say I want to, say I take your whole bag of tricks,
Let in your quirks and tweeks, and say the thing’s an art-form,
Your Sordello, and that the modern world
Needs such a rag-bag to stuff all its thought in;
Say that I dump my catch, shiny and silvery
As fresh sardines flapping and slipping on the marginal cobbles?
(I stand before the booth, the speech; but the truth
Is inside this discourse—this booth is full of the marrow of wisdom.)
Perhaps one reason some people were / are turned off by modern poetry is its willful resemblance to the ravings of a madman. Of course, one finds great treasures in such a poem once one learns the tactics and vocabulary to approach it.
I think you will find tonight’s Pub Quiz approachable, for it will contain no mention of Ezra Pound, parataxis, or even modern poetry. I shall save those topics for later in the year. Also, I am feeling much better, and am eager to share some thoughts on topics cinematic and otherwise this evening.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will be dedicated to the memory of Melanie Michailidis, a faculty member at Washington University (and former visiting professor at UC Davis) who was killed in a car accident Friday evening. I got to know Melanie only briefly when she participated at a previous iteration of our Pub Quiz, but I mourn her passing today with friends who knew her well, members of the Pub Quiz team formerly known as Portraits of Mohammed (now Bards Against Humanity). Please take a moment to read about Melanie’s life in the Ladue-Frontenac Patch, a sister publication to the Davis Patch where one encounters this weekly newsletter. Elizabeth Childs, the chair of the Department of Art History and Archaeology where Professor Michailidis taught, said “She was an exceptionally bright and thoughtful scholar, an energetic and rigorous teacher, and always an extremely kind and generous colleague.” I’m sure she will be missed by her students and colleagues, as well as by friends in Davis.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about yesterday’s Super Bowl, film, the distance one can see on a clear day, denominations, oranges, fairyland creatures, funky music, great athletes, astronomy, mathematics, Italian words, Ohio State, greens, HBO, Swedes, hopped-up sinners that have been nominated for Academy Awards, miles, the Hastings Racecourse Fact Book, whites, other colors, social science, Ireland, remakes, actors and actresses, medications, closets, dragons, relations, parking lots, and Shakespeare.
Thanks to members of The Wilhelm Screamers, who offered to sub for me if I were to be too ill to perform my Quizmasterly duties, but I will be there tonight, most likely sipping something other than my favorite pint of Guinness. I hope to see you.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
2. Internet Culture. Starting with the letter D, what is Adobe’s best-selling web design and development application?
3. Newspaper Headlines. The spokesperson of what 102-year-old Dallas-based organization said today that it “is discussing potentially removing the national membership restriction regarding sexual orientation”?
4. Four for Four. When Rolling Stone magazine compiled its 100 greatest albums of all time, The Beatles rightfully had four in the top ten. Which of the following groups or performers, if any, had two albums in the top ten? The Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, The Rolling Stones.
5. The Fictional Rich. Starting with the letter S, what is the five-letter name of the richest fictional character (according to the most recent such list from Forbes Magazine)?
6. The US Government – Know Your Cabinets. In addition to being the world’s largest employer, the US Department of Defense is also the largest Cabinet department in the US government. Name the second or third largest Cabinet department, as measured by number of employees, in the US government.
P.S. Come to Poetry Night this coming Thursday night! Zara Raab will be reading at the John Natsoulas Gallery at 8. The afterparty begins at about 10 at the Irish Pub. You are invited.