Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Have you ever noticed that we really only have four hills in Davis. One of the hills is manmade, Slide Hill of Slide Hill Park where children slide down the concrete incline on boxes left behind by previous children. I’m surprised bike helmets are not also handed out. Two of the hills are overpasses, passing over Interstate 80, the artery that connects the Atlantic to the Pacific. The fourth hill is found in the cemetery, which is now also an arboretum. Each of these hills deserves a visit.
Sometimes I bike up the Pole Line Road overpass so quickly that the top feels like an opened curtain, tickling my nose. The metaphor manifests itself in an actual tickle. I have to close my eyes while sneezing twice on the way down the steep hill, the bike itching towards the guardrail, the impact of the sternutation nearly throwing me, as if I were wearing a bronco. To fix this problem, I learned how to imagine cresting the overpass as I approach it, to get my sneezes safely out of the way.
Yesterday in the gathering room of the Davis Shambhala Center, just before the sitting, a four year old boy was walking among the adults saying “I can’t see because I am covering my eyes with my hands!” Then he removed his hands and said, “Now I can see.” It was almost like a sermon.
Friday, while wearing a red and blue shirt, I found a red and blue bracelet on 3rd Street here in Davis, so I put it on, noticing the match. It was Art About, so Heidi Bekebrede served me a cookie at The Artery. And then, on the bike ride home, I saw a tree, a red-tailed hawk, and the setting sun; I welcomed them in, again noticing the match.
Have you ever played “Rock Paper Scissors” with an octopus? I have. It goes like this: Rock? Tentacle. Paper? Tentacle. Scissors? Tentacle. Tentacle wins every time.
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions on recent movies, for this has been a summer of movies for me. I’m teaching a film class, I am a MoviePass subscriber, and I am married to Kate, my favorite cinephile. Also, I’ve recently joined the subscription service at Four-Star Movies, found in the back of Bizarro World, right next to our pub, so that I have easy and ongoing access to their 7,500 film titles. So expect more film questions in the coming weeks and months.
Tonight expect also questions about Michael Jackson, internet letters, video content delivery mechanisms, Tintern, thrillers, home country heroes, wielded pestles, narrators, Keanu Reeves, macromolecularity, big hits, preferred colors, heroes, Dubliners, everyday monsters, Australian dollars, writing credits, great Greeks, new alphabets, a musical imperative about one’s beloved, wasps, groups of four, menacing dogs, people named Jimmy, mariners, short capes, siblings, garden pavilions, indoor sports, ferocious women, understanding America, numbers that are divisible by five, Einstein and jazz, superheroes, monism, chemical clothes, patrilinear job titles, perambulations, and Shakespeare.
Did you know that we get even bigger crowds when it’s hot than when it is not? Plan accordingly, unless you don’t mind sitting outside.
Your Quizmaster
https://www.yourquizmaster.com
http://www.twitter.com/
http://www.facebook.com/
yourquizmaster@gmail.com
Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Decarbonization. By banning fossil fuels, President Carlos Alvarado has set a goal of decarbonizing by 2021, which will mark 200 years of independence for what country whose name starts with the letter C?
- Fast Food Restaurants. The U.S. state with the most fast food restaurants per capita is found near or at the beginning of the alphabet, while the U.S. state with the least fast food restaurants per capita is found near or at the end of the alphabet. Name either state, but not both.
- Pop Culture – Music. Largely about pain, the video for a top-selling Imagine Dragons song of 2017 features a boxing match between Dan Reynolds and Dolph Lundgren. Name the one-word title of the song.
P.S. Two Pub Quiz irregulars who happen to be established and respected authors are FEATURING at Poetry Night on Thursday, and they will both be reading FICTION! Find more on Naomi Williams and Evan White below:
Naomi J. Williams was born in Japan and spoke no English until she was six years old. She is the author of the novel Landfalls (FSG 2015), long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Award. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Zoetrope: All-Story, A Public Space, One Story, The Southern Review, and The Gettysburg Review. A five-time Pushcart Prize nominee and one-time winner, Naomi has an MA in Creative Writing from UC Davis. She lives in Davis, California, where she teaches creative writing and serves as co-director of the beloved literary series Stories on Stage Davis. Naomi’s new writing projects include a collection of short stories inspired by Japanese ghost stories and folktales, and a novel about the early 20th-century Japanese poet Yosano Akiko.
Evan White is a graduate of the University of California, Davis, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in English, with an emphasis in Creative Writing. As an undergraduate, White co-founded Absurd Publications and published an anthology of poetry and short fiction, All the Vegetarians in Texas Have Been Shot, and the creative journal The Oddity. He has designed and published half-a-dozen books as a freelance designer, including Pub Quizzes: Trivia For Smart People, Where’s Jukie?, and the children’s book Che the Rat Lives in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Evan has contributed stories to numerous programs on KDVS 90.3 FM, the UC Davis campus and community radio station. He serves the local literary community on the board of Stories on Stage Davis, and as the designer for Under the Gum Tree magazine in Sacramento. In 2016, his story “Patterson” received an honorable mention in Glimmer Train’s Short Story Award contest. He works as a graphic designer at UC Davis.
Guests are invited to arrive to Poetry Night early (by 7:45) to sign up for a spot on the open mic that will follow the readings by our featured poets. Please bring your poems, short stories, monologues, and songs. Performers with instruments are especially welcomed. Participants will be asked to limit their performances to five minutes or two items, whichever is shorter. The Poetry Night Reading Series is hosted by Davis poet laureate Dr. Andy Jones, and is supported by Musical Director Timothy Nutter, and Dr. Andy’s graduating interns. The after-party begins at 10 P.M. at de Vere’s Irish Pub. You might be familiar with it.