Musings of a Dead Parrot

THIS WEEK'S QUESTIONS
1. Orchestras tune up to the sound of an oboe playing what note? not knowing any better, I will guess C
2. What remarkable win-loss record was shared by both Twins pitcher Terry Felton and the 2008 Detroit Lions? 0-16. Sort of like my dating record.
3. What word appears in the titles of *both* the Pulitzer-winning plays of author Thornton Wilder? Let's see - Thornton Wilder plays - Our Town, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, The Skin of Our Teeth. I will say "Our."
4. What scientist's 1859 work most famously supplanted the popular 19th-century theory of Lamarckism? 1859 scientist? is that about the time of Darwin's Origin of Species? I cannot think of another scientific work from that period.
5. What TV network uses the new slogan "Chime In"? I certainly have not heard this slogan before. NBC has a famous three-tone sound. Is Chime In a play on that?
6. Hundreds of thousands of orders have poured in for the Ducati Model 271, a model of what made famous last month by Muntader al-Zaidi? a pair of shoes
7. What unusual distinction is shared by these films? Face/Off, Mary Poppins, La Ronde, Ronin, Ruggles of Red Gap, The Spanish Prisoner, The Sting, and Strangers on the Train. Something in the plot of each movie? The Spanish Prisoner and Strangers on A Train (correct title) both have tennis involved in the plot. In The Sting, they pull a scam with horse racing. When I think of Mary Poppins, I think of dancing penguins.

LAST WEEK'S ANSWERS
1. What career does Hermey the Misfit Elf think he'd prefer to toymaking? Dentristry! Oddly, misfit dentists often wish they were making toys for Santa. correct
2. What movie was adapted from the book In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash? That Jean Shepherd book inspired many of the anecdotes in A Christmas Story. I thought of most of the famous Xmas time movies except for A Christmas Story.
3. What botanist sent a namesake Christmas symbol back to the U.S. in 1828 while serving as the first U.S. minister to Mexico? Joel Roberts Poinsett first introduced North America to the flower the Aztecs called "cuetlaxochitl." correct
4. What two animals "kept time" for "The Little Drummer Boy"? The ox and lamb kept time. But the lamb, being white, kept clapping on the one and three. correct
5. What's the name of the Wookiee holiday analogous to Christmas in the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special? Life Day! The other day my six-year-old son asked me whose birth we celebrate on Life Day--Darth Vader's? Thank you, Star Wars, for this early theological confusion. 6. What was George Washington famously doing on Christmas Day, 1776? Crossing the Delaware. (Ironically, he was Benedict Arnold's "secret Santa"!) correct
7. What unusual distinction (at least in their respective fields) did these famous people share with the historical St. Nicholas? Ansel Adams, Marlon Brando, Copernicus, Albus Dumbledore, Stephen Fry, Charlton Heston, Michelangelo, Robert Mitchum, Thackeray, Owen Wilson. All sport (or sported) visibly broken noses. In St. Nicholas's case, we know this from modern analysis of Santa's skull. "His ears were like cauliflowers, his nose like a cherry..." Why would the question include the qualifier "in their respective fields"? Isn't a broken nose a broken nose in any field? I am not sure we should trust or use as a role model a saint with a broken nose. How did it happen? Was St. Nick a loan shark? A football player? A very clumsy person?

# posted by The O'Brien's Team @ 2:05 PM