Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
The newsletter is arriving late today because Kate and I went on a double-date last night, dining with new friends at the time that I am typically hard at work writing questions for your Pub Quiz. I love making new friends. Jim Rohn said famously that “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with,” so I thought I would arrange to dine with a couple for whom the husband seems as adoringly devoted to his wife as I aspire to be with Kate. Cynical people (most of us?) probably grow fatigued with all that adoration at the same table at the Tower Café in Sacramento.
Speaking of restaurants, I try not to, but sometimes I dine in restaurants other than de Vere’s Irish Pub (which, for the food and the service, remains my favorite). In the last couple weeks, Kate has been craving the fresh-fruit milkshakes made by the staff at Redrum Burger, so I obliged, bringing her home creamy delicacies with evidence of locally-grown raspberries and strawberries in each straw-ful or spoonful. During one of these trips to the restaurant formerly known as Murder Burger (a restaurant name that suggests truth in advertising?), I saw a dad who was bringing his wife and 18-year-old son to his favorite former haunt. The son was visiting six schools, I overheard, including Stanford and UC Berkeley, but the oversized dad ensured with this trip that his alma mater UC Davis was also on the list. Furthermore, he told the restaurant owner, he wanted to bring his son to the restaurant where he had packed so many calories while training to be a linebacker for the UC Davis football team.
Everyone was full of smiles and nostalgia during this visit, but only the proprietor knew that this would be this family’s final visit to the local diner, for the final closing time had already been scheduled, if not announced. My daughter Geneva and I recently stopped by the restaurant after seeing a marvelous Davis Shakespeare Festival musical, only to be told that Saturday night they were “out of food” because of the rush of people wanting to visit Redrum Burger one last time. Come back tomorrow, we were told. The long lines shared on social media kept us away, and as of today, the restaurant is closed forever, another part of old Davis for Bob Dunning to reminisce about in his daily column in The Davis Enterprise.
The philosophers, the dharma-teaching Buddhist lamas, and the poets are better equipped than Your Quizmaster to remind us that life is ephemeral, and perhaps cyclical. Having recently reread the Tennessee Williams summer story “Happy August the Tenth,” I will share here a Williams poem that might compel you to reflect a moment on what has been lost, that some losses must be welcomed if there is to be a renewal, and that we can grow if we can let it go. (So literary! Expect a few more questions today on books and authors than usual.) Here’s the Williams poem, “We Have Not Long to Love”:
We have not long to love.
Light does not stay.
The tender things are those
we fold away.
Coarse fabrics are the ones
for common wear.
In silence I have watched you
comb your hair.
Intimate the silence,
dim and warm.
I could but did not, reach
to touch your arm.
I could, but do not, break
that which is still.
(Almost the faintest whisper
would be shrill.)
So moments pass as though
they wished to stay.
We have not long to love.
A night. A day….
In addition to topics raised above, tonight’s Pub Quiz will take on the following topics: German technology, cohosts, (poems about) remade kelp, early anagrams, movies you’ve seen, Iron Maiden, people with beautiful names, agriculture, hilarious spies, green hardware, multiple births, frenemies, official clocks, spelling bees, retirement buddies, Oakland, names in the news, deep activities, long roads, psycho action, lake countries, minimal rainfall, Berlin welcome committees, two pieces for Jade, chaotic cutlery, superstitions, famous factotums, Charles Xavier, textiles and clothing, Hungary exports, outstanding parts, jobs for Saint George, California. former heroes without capes, broken hearts, sunset songs, hydrogen, findings, universities, seasonal starts, advancements, and Shakespeare.
Please join us for the Pub Quiz tonight, for I appreciate what you contribute to the conversation.
Your Quizmaster
P.S. Here are three questions from a 2016 quiz. Even I don’t know all the answers:
- Pop Culture – Music. Speaking of groups that start with the letter C, C+C Music Factory had a huge 1991 hit with a song titled “Gonna Make You Sweat,” though everyone knew it better by its subtitle. What is that subtitle?
- Sports. Born in 1981, who is the only male tennis player to win five consecutive US Open titles?
- Science. Starting with the letter S, what species of animal has a field metabolic rate that is the lowest ever recorded for any mammal in the world?