Sir Christopher Ricks
Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Some of us in the humanities remember the semester system fondly. Imagine being able to take semester-long classes with former US Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, former Oxford Professor of Poetry Sir Christopher Ricks, or radical historian Howard Zinn, as I did as an undergraduate at Boston University. Elie Wiesel and Saul Bellow also taught at BU around the time that I was there, and we got to share them with our classmates for a full 15 weeks.
Today at UC Davis the scientists have set our academic calendar. With so many requirements to fulfill, the biologists and engineers rush from class to class, and from quarter to quarter, thankful for the jam-packed variety, as well as the substance, of their challenging classes. Meanwhile, the English majors are left to complain about the number of novels that have to be read over the course of a ten-week quarter before being evaluated on all of them. Not much time is left for reflection.
In my experience, the end of the quarter is even more jam-packed, as students who have take a somewhat lackadaisical attitude towards attendance and participation attempt to make up for their previous absences all at once, asking for extra appointments, and coming to those appointments with long lists of questions, the answers to many of which can be found in the syllabi and lecture notes of their classmates. I oblige, for I feel I should reward curiosity and a hunger for technoculture wherever I encounter them.
My quarter has also been packed. In fact, I feel like it was only two days ago that I presented a pub quiz. Because I did! Once a year on a Saturday I host a bonus quiz, a fundraiser for Davis Sunrise Rotary, a group of civic-minded friends who enjoy each other’s company, and that of guest speakers, every Friday morning around dawn. Saturday’s event featured a number of regulars from the Pub Quiz (hence the need for an entirely new Quiz), as well as some irregulars whom I typically see only for one Quiz a year. Each team played for a different charity, with the team who was playing for Acme Theatre Company taking the top prize, a significant percentage of all the money raised at this local event. Congrats to the Acme team, including its captains, Lucas Frerichs, Susan Miller, Emily Henderson, and Don Saylor.
I realize when I host two such events a week how much all that cheerful performing and badinage take out of me. Here are five questions I asked on this past Saturday, also known as Pi Day:
- Rearrange these numbers so that they represent Pi: 113459.
- Pi is the ratio of a circle’s WHAT to its WHAT?
- How do we represent Pi with fractions?
- What four-letter word describes the patters of numbers that come after the decimal point in Pi?
- Who was the Greek mathematician to first derive an accurate approximation of Pi?
What do you think? Too easy?
Tonight’s Pub Quiz is much more likely to include an Irish question than another Pi question. Cilian Murphy, anyone? Expect also questions about Lakes, lines, Ireland (see?), movies, documents, industries, rivers, digital album sales, mottos and logos, counties, ploys, princesses, biology, J words, birthdays, Twitter, repeated watchings, pleasure, people who decorate in brass, important publications, popular songs, people from Tennessee, Newmen, giants, preachers, newspapers, water everywhere, the south side of Chicago, basketball and football, ancient Greeks, and Shakespeare. There will be no questions this week on the word “badinage.”
Joshua Clover is reading at the Natsoulas Gallery Thursday. I invite you to Google him to confirm that he’s a big deal. His team has also won the Pub Quiz a few times, but not for years.
See you tonight!
Your Quizmaster
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P.S. Thanks to everyone who attended my birthday party last week!