Dear Friends of the Pub Quiz,
Years ago my brother left People magazine in part because he could see the writing on the wall: increasingly magazines had been substituting reporting on celebrities’ revelatory Twitter and Instagram posts rather than sending out reporters to cover people and events.
Of course, the academy noted these changes first. Way back in 1996, my onetime neighborhood college, Georgetown University, launched what we think is the nation’s first Internet Studies master’s degree – the program is now called Communication, Culture & Technology. In that same year, I with my new PhD was a campus resource on such topics, but soon UC Davis would create its own undergraduate program in Technocultural Studies (now called Cinema and Digital Media Studies).
But back to Twitter for a moment: Did you know that linguists have been discovering and charting busy all the ways that Twitter users in March and April of 2020 were assigning the Coronavirus the names, monikers, and characteristics of women? Here are some examples, taken from the essay “COVID-19, the beer flu; or, the disease of many names” by Antonio Lillo in the October, 2020 journal Lebende Sprachen (which I just happened to have on my bedside table):
Things have been tough lately all thanks to Auntie Rona. (13th May; Ghana) |
Getting killed by Aunt Rona because my co-worker is an idiot is a little different. (21st April; U.S.) |
I’m so congested today. Big Rona is that you? (20th March; U.S.) |
I hope Lady Rona pays you a sweet sweet visit. (24th March; U.S.) |
Herd immunity was, at the time of its writing, the official policy of the UK concerning La Rona! (28th March; U.S.) |
It sounds as if Mama Rona is about to pound y’all hard[.] (22nd May; U.S.) |
Mamma Rona popped up and it suddenly got a lot easier to not shake women’s hands. (17th April; U.S.) |
I’m up in the midlands where miss Rona can’t touch me[.] (19th March; UK) |
Queen Rona is not working hard enough… (11th April; Australia) |
I would love to attend my first Lost Lands, but Rona has other plans. (29th April; U.S.) |
Brian called coronavirus “Señora Rona” and that was the highlight of my quarantine. (20th March; U.S.) |
It’s bout time sis Rona leave us aloneeee. (22nd April; Liberia) |
I’d maybe wait a few months – some of the original series are on hold cuz of Sista Rona. (21st April; Ireland) |
The government really needs to get Sister Rona under control – this lockdown ain’t it. (30th April; UK).
I omitted some of the tweets with language that was demeaning or that was too spicy for this newsletter.
I wonder how soon Coronavirus Cultural Studies (Virus Studies?) will be a major, or at least a designated emphasis, at an American or British university. Universities are already leading the way in helping us understand and combat the coronavirus (a much catchier name than “SARS-CoV-2”), but who shall help us understand the ways that creative professionals will respond to the virus with art, books, and film? My domestic autodidact film studies enthusiast and son Truman has been lining up great American movies for us to see over the last 18 months, so we’ve been engaging in our own form of cultural studies, but as I watch these movies, I can’t help but wish that the films’ protagonists would stand farther away from one another and mask up.
Last night Kate, Truman, and I and some friends (happy birthday week, Kari!) went to see the Australian acrobatic troupe Circa perform their show Humans: 2.0. We loved it, Kate describing the show “mesmerizing, a bit terrifying, and so beautiful.” Throwing and catching each other, and spinning each their fellow circus actors around their bodies like lightweight props, the nine performers get to know (and trust) each other very well, and even they wore their masks on stage. Even though we stared at them intently for 70 minutes last night, if any one of those performers were to knock on my door today, I probably wouldn’t recognize them. Even Georgia Webb, the woman who can balance two stories of performers on her muscular shoulders, would get a blank look from Dr. Andy. I’ve never seen her face.
Interestingly, I have been “meeting” with my advanced writing students for a month this quarter, and we have another six weeks left to the quarter, but I may never “see” those students again, for this week we are pivoting from appearing unmasked in Zoom squares to thoroughly masked in the classroom.
I admire these hard workers that fill my virtual and actual class rooms. Perhaps these will be the very students whose eventual research, creativity, and writing will someday help us better understand the unevenly isolated and infected world and culture in which we live.
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Thanks to all of you who subscribe to the Pub Quiz via Patreon. This week’s quiz will feature questions on topics raised above, and on the following: London in the 1960s, long lifetimes, Hawaiian exports, short titles, old titles, rooms and passages, founding fathers, famous princes, manic flights from the Midwest, mermaids, notable stones, four-syllable words that start with the letter P, roses, Tropical birds, babies of knowledge, population dips, Michael Jordan’s basketballs, Canadian warriors, Hungarian Roma, rediscovered books, light gasses, faster and more furious, the Black Sea, Stephen Breyer factoids, London in the 1960s, long lifetimes, Hawaiian exports, short titles, old titles, rooms and passages, founding fathers, famous princes, manic flights from the Midwest, mermaids, Mary had a Little Lamb, notable stones, four-syllable words that start with the letter P, roses, famous unions, surface areas, derailed painters, units and credits, hometown heroes, current events, and Shakespeare. If I were to repeat some of these clues, would you notice?
Poetry Night Thursday takes place at 5 PM on the ROOF of the John Natsoulas Gallery. You should join us.
Be well.
Dr. Andy
P.S. Here are three questions from last week’s quiz:
- Internet Culture. In what web-based word game do players attempt to guess a five-letter word in six attempts?
- Newspaper Headlines. What U.S. Senator was recently censured by the Arizona Democratic Party executive board?
- Four for Four. Of all American states, for which of the following fruits is California the largest (or top) producer: grapes, kiwifruit, peaches, strawberries?
P.S. “You don’t have to be doing vocal acrobatics or singing all over the scale to have soul.” Mariah Carey