The cries were everywhere: “I want my 2015 Xmas Quiz,” people said, ignoring the fact that (a) I have not done the Xmas quiz for a few years now, and (b) this is not my column. But still, the calls came — in email, on Facebook, on Twitter. It was a veritable firestorm. I’m not saying it went viral, but it definitely went bacterial.
This space listens; this space responds. Obviously, I don’t have time to do the whole thing, but I can give you the answers. You and your family can huddle around the Advil bottle on New Year’s Day and solve the quiz together.
Warning: Google may not help you here. Ha!
1. Maurice Candycane, an Austrian inventor. He was trying to make a biodegradable fish hook; alas, the entire thing softened into an oddly striped gelatinous mixture, then hardened again. As a result, generations of Americans remember his name.
2. Mesopotamian workmen, primarily. The much-repeated legend that the tomb was erected by the emperor’s hand-picked Palace Guards is untrue; that rumor was circulated by agents in the employ of Queen Asmopasolia, who was intriguing against her brother.
3. Reno is west of Honolulu; Hong Kong is north of Moscow; Canada is south of Paraguay, and Juneau is east of Kansas City. Remember that the globe is round and everything is east of everything, and so forth.
4. Green.
5. “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” was originally called “A Rumpty Tumpty Rumpty Tumpty Jolly Pinafore,” a bawdy drinking song about a widow, a stableman and a wheel of cheese.
6. In order: Marlon Brando, Stephen Sondheim, Lucien Truscott IV, Mary Roach, Shari Lewis, Ray Charles, J. D. Salinger and, unexpectedly, Juan Peron.
7. In 1915, the first department store window display in San Francisco was at the long-defunct Davenport’s Softgoods. All the clothes and accessories, even the drapes, were designed by Dorothy Smith. The name stuck.
8. Sort of like this:
- If your answer was (c), shoes, you’re right!
Best. Answers. Ever.
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Like Jeopardy, only without the pompous, humorless schmuck.
BTW, I got #17, But don’t expect me to go public about it.
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Did I miss the questons? Or are we to puzzle them together based on the answers? I’m old; sometimes things confuse me.
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Thanks. Where are the questions, Jon?
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EXACTLY what I was hoping for, down to misspelling
Mary Roach’s last name (or Maggie Roche’s first name).
My connection with The Plasmatics: Rick & Ruby were
asked to be the musical guests on the pilot for ABC’s
SNL rip-off, Fridays (which is how I got to meet Maryedith
Burrell, through whom Paul Reubens, and on and on).
The guest host was a visibly uncomfortable Cesar Chavez.
It went well enough that ABC picked it up, but they didn’t
run the pilot.
Later in the season, the musical guests were the Plasmatics.
But then Wendy O. Williams was threatening
not to assuage the censors, and the producers were on
the verge of pulling our number out of the archives and
running it instead, so WOW finally relented and put black
electrical tape over her nipples, thus averting a disaster,
at least until the notorious costume malfunction a couple of
decades later.
As for #17, I once earned some of my keep as a legal
secretary, and during an idle moment — most of my moments
there were idle — dreamed up Answers To Interrogatories
We’d Like To See:
– None of your beeswax
– That’s for me to know and for you to find out
– Hunh. I never thought of it that way.
– If I told you that, I’d be in a whole mess o’ trouble.
– Nosy!
jrb
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I think we have a winner!
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I only got 13 right. Is there going to be extra credit later on? Also, my grandmother died.
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And then God said to Abraham: “Nice that you were willing to kill your son, no questions asked. I like that in a man.”
Thanks be to God.
Was that #20?
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There are no questions. It was all sad hoax.
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> There are no questions. It was all sad hoax.
Spoilsport.
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Buddhist-studies grad students who pick this column for a thesis topic can cite its example of “partial emptiness.”
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Wow. I thought it was just me.
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I think questionless answers are probably key to understanding much that has occurred in the past fifty years…
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sad hoax, or window intot he mind?
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love all the photographs going along with the blog…
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Oh thank you. Having as lot of fun working with Tracy, because her stuff is gooood.
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Genius.
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