Musings of a Dead Parrot

THIS WEEK'S QUESTIONS
1. What performer's act was usually overseen by his brother, Dr. Leopold Weiss? Leopold Weiss ---> Erich Weiss ---> Houdini
2. Inspired by an episode of The Simpsons, in 2003 botanist Rob Baur created a successful hybrid of a tomato and what other plant? A Simpsons question! Hey, Alex - any ideas? I don't know this episode. A guess - wheat. Perhaps Homer wanted to find a way to grow pizzas.
3. Why didn't Serena Williams vote for Barack Obama? Possibilities - she did not like his plan to tax people making over $250K. She is not registered. She like the old guy better. I'll go with Obama's tax plan as the deal breaker.
4. The world's largest national park, bigger than 163 entire nations, is the entire northeastern portion of what island? It has to be a big island. Greenland, New Guinea, Sumatra, Madagascar. I'll guess Madagascar since it a) has a shape that has a large northeastern portion; b) is known for its biological diversity.
5. It's been over 400 years since there was a calendar year when England and France both had a king of the same name. What was the shared name? Over 400 years takes us back to the late 1500s/early 1600s. Well after Henry VIII. Around the time of Shakespeare. How about Charles.
6. Only 69 men have ever been named yokozuna, the highest rank in what field? sumo wrestling
7. What unusual distinction is shared by all these movies? Angela's Ashes, An Angel at My Table, Atonement, Cinema Paradiso, Return of the Jedi, Shine, Slumdog Millionaire, and Zodiac. I have seen Atonement, Cinema Paradiso, Return of the Jedi and Slumdog. But I don't recall anything about Cinema Paradiso. One similarity between Atonement and Slumdog - they feature characters at different ages played by different actors. Same is true for Shine, An Angel at My Table and Angela's Ashes according to wikipedia. Cinema Paradiso too.

LAST WEEK'S ANSWERS
1. In Irish legend, what's a leprechaun's day job? Except for the one who's a breakfast cereal spokes-sprite, they're all shoemakers or cobblers. No idea how an economy works where everyone's a shoemaker. Maybe it's collapsing and that's why they're all so heavily invested in gold. all the leprechauns in the world and the one I use to guess is the only one who is not a shoemaker.
2. What name for a large Midwestern stew has become the exclamation of choice for broadcasters like Stuart Scott and Jim Cramer? Booyah! correct! never knew that is a stew
3. The adjective "vermiform" is used to describe which small bodily organ? "Vermiform" means "worm-shaped," but before your imagination gets carried away, this is just your appendix. I could have known that vermiform means "worm shaped" and I still would not have known that is the shape of the appendix.
4. M.I.A.'s hit "Paper Planes" samples "Straight to Hell" and Cypress Hill's "What's Your Number?" samples "The Guns of Brixton," both songs by what band? This is radio (friendly) Clash. correct
5. What U.S. state has the word "quadricentennial" on its state quarter? Virginia, celebrating the 1607 founding of Jamestown. correct
6. What sports figure currently has two Texan namesakes on prime time TV: the middle school on King of the Hill, and Matt Saracen's best friend on Friday Night Lights? Former Dallas Cowboys head coach Tom Landry lives on in prime time. To all overseas Tuesday Trivia players sick of all the baseball questions--look, this time it's an NFL question! See, we're shaking it up a little. oh, so close! But the question diverted me a bit. I was trying to think of a FLN character named for a sports figure. The character is named Landry Clarke.
7. What unusual distinction is shared by these famous people? Fidel Castro, Marc Chagall, Bill Clinton, Marlene Dietrich, Giuseppe Garibaldi, Magic Johnson, Joe Louis, Golda Meir, Burt Reynolds, and Richard Wagner. I thought this one was pretty hard, especially since I spent hours looking for non-Google-able list members. They all wrote an autobiography called My Life. Hey, I guess I could have left off Clinton and made it REALLY hard. Ken, it was REALLY hard even with Clinton as a clue.

# posted by The O'Brien's Team @ 7:14 PM