Musings of a Dead Parrot

THIS WEEK'S QUESTIONS
1. Followers of the "Quiverfull" movement believe in having many what? arrows. apples. gravy. very small rocks.
2. What 1980 drum machine from Roland has been immortalized in the title of Kanye West's latest album? I am helpless on anything related to Kanye West except "George Bush doesn't like black people."
3. "Wild Bill" Donovan is known as the "father" of what U.S. government agency? I have no idea which means guessing. But there are a lot of agencies to choose from - EPA, FDA, Park Service, CIA, FAA, etc. "Wild Bill" sounds like an outdoorsman or a military guy. What about the Secret Service? Maybe KJ is thinking of the upcoming inauguration.
4. Until 1987, Goodyear blimps were always named in honor of the winners of what sports event? Goodyear makes tires, so shouldn't this be the Indy 500?
5. What's the only country in the world that bans women from driving? sounds like something Saudi Arabia would do
6. What disease takes its name from the same Greek root as a type of coal, for the coal-black lesions it produces? what is the medical term for black lung?
7. What unusual distinction is shared by these celebrities? Saffron Burrows, David Denby, Carrie Fisher, Jonathan Larson, Steve Martin, Lou Diamond Phillips, Busta Rhymes, and Rudolph Valentino. I got nothing by looking at the bios for these folks. Maybe their last names are significant? Update - after lots of searches working on some connection between the last names, I think I have something. Pottery or porcelain. I found Phillips pottery, Fisher porcelain, Denby pottery, Valentino porcelain, Larson porcelain. That's enough for me.

LAST WEEK'S ANSWERS
1. Orchestras tune up to the sound of an oboe playing what note? It's an A...440 Hz, to be precise, though orchestras tend to vary between 438 and 445, in practice. I am not a band guy nor did I ever attend band camp.
2. What remarkable win-loss record was shared by both Twins pitcher Terry Felton and the 2008 Detroit Lions? Felton was 0-16 lifetime for the Twins--just like the hapless Lions were this season. correct
3. What word appears in the titles of *both* the Pulitzer-winning plays of author Thornton Wilder? Well, Wilder wrote Our Town, so if you knew that, you had a 50-50 shot. His other Pulitzer winner was his crazy geologic-epoch-hopping The Skin of Our Teeth. correct
4. What scientist's 1859 work most famously supplanted the popular 19th-century theory of Lamarckism? Lamarckism, a widely accepted theory of how organisms evolve, turned out to be mostly bunk. It was quickly supplanted by the natural selection theory of Charles Darwin. correct
5. What TV network uses the new slogan "Chime In"? NBC, whose famous trio of chimes (G3, E4, Middle C) was the first audio signature ever trademarked in the U.S. correct
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? The 271 is a model of black leather oxford from Istanbul--it's the model of shoe that was thrown at President Bush in Iraq last month. correct
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. All feature a scene with a merry-go-round or carousel...and I just noticed now that I mis-typed the name of Strangers on a Train, one of my favorite Hitchcock movies. Criss cross! Alex's memory was much better than mine on this one. I had no recollection of carousel scenes in The Sting or The Spanish Prisoner.