Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
I wrote the entire Pub Quiz this morning, playing the free association game that leads me to potential topics, picking up ideas from overheard conversations, and from the constant stream of titles, names, places, events, and news stories that flows through my head during these spates of practiced receptivity and creativity on which an original quizmaster depends. I have read that some quizmasters buy banks of questions and then just spend a few minutes cutting and pasting. How dull! How irresponsible! I take as my guide Henry James, whose advice in The Art of Fiction (1884) has been inspiring novelists for more than a century. James wrote:
The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implication of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern, the condition of feeling life, in general, so completely that you are well on your way to knowing any particular corner of it — this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience, and they occur in country and in town, and in the most differing stages of education. If experience consists of impressions, it may be said that impressions are experience, just as (have we not seen it?) they are the very air we breathe. Therefore, if I should certainly say to a novice, “Write from experience, and experience only,” I should feel that this was a rather tantalizing monition if I were not careful immediately to add, “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”
I saw two plays this weekend, Schoolhouse Rock Live at the Davis Musical Theatre Company, and the final show of Detroit at the B Street Theatre in Sacramento with one of our favorite Sacramento actors, Dave Pierini. As I watched both plays, thinking of what passing phrase or enacted conflict could become a pub quiz topic, I recalled James’ words: “Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!”
Tonight’s Pub Quiz will feature questions about trucks, superheroes, food products that I haven’t sampled since 1981, Nancy Cartwright, state capitals, silly names for British foods, hard-skinned creatures, celebrities (to make up for the harder questions on other topic), basketball players whose names are not LeBron, 2013 films, Napoleon’s plans, people who take a bath, Israel, eulogies, nutrition, marriage equality, seven-letter one-syllable words, religion, absurdity, local acronyms, super-villains, astronomy, vials of oregano, offspring, archaeologists and metal-detecting hobbyists, coverings, Frenchmen, Catholics, knotted things, contemporary actors about whom much ink is spilled in the pages of People magazine, old guys, US Presidents, Nobel Laureates who have recently passed away, questionable sports, fond memories, and Shakespeare.
I hope you can join us this evening.
Your Quizmaster
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Here are five questions from last week’s quiz:
- Internet Culture. Will the new Sony Playstation soon to be released be the Playstation 2, 4, 6, or 8?
- Film. With 4 words in its title, what film distributed by Disney earned $86 million, and dominated the weekend box office, according to studio estimates yesterday?
- Diamonds in China. According to a new study from Citigroup, what percentage of Chinese couples use diamond engagement rings? Is it closest to 0%, 10%, 33% or 67%?
- Pop Culture – Music. The first rap artist ever to win the Academy Award for Best Original Song has a new single titled “The Monster.” Name him.
- Sports. Anthony Davis finished Friday’s NBA game with career-highs of 32 points and six blocks, leading his New Orleans NBA team over the Los Angeles Lakers 96-85 on Friday night. What is the name of his team?