Trivia Newsletter CLIII: He's Spinning the Ball on His Finger! Just Take It!
Trivia for July 10, 2023
Below are six trivia questions. If you’d like to participate, you can either reply to this e-mail or submit your answers via Google Forms by using the button below. You can find our rules and guidelines by following this link.
1) The five folks shown in the image below generally go by WHAT title?
2) In June 2021, following months of deliberation, the Board of Trustees of WHAT university located in Lexington, Virginia decided by a 22-6 vote not to change its name?
3) Give the first, middle, or last name, or title of the character from the novel Catch-22 who “had three strikes on him from the beginning—his mother, his father and Henry Fonda, to whom he bore a sickly resemblance almost from the moment of his birth.”
4) WHAT word, which can also describe a type of writing desk, was originally used in English to refer to a person entrusted with confidential information? Those with this career in modern times may also be privy to confidential matters.
5) As the titles of their television shows state, Harvey Birdman (2000-2007) and She-Hulk (2022) share WHAT one-word profession?
6) Specifically WHAT word could follow each of the answers to the questions in this newsletter?
Trivia Newsletter CLII Recap
Thanks again to Patrick for writing these questions!
1) She was born Lesley Hornby in Neasden, Middlesex, in 1949. By 1966, when she weighed 51 kilograms, she was internationally famous. She retired in 1970, declaring “You can't be a clothes hanger all your life.” By WHAT NAME was she generally known?
This is TWIGGY. More on her:
Twiggy's adolescent physique was the perfect frame for the androgynous styles that began to emerge in the 1960s. The trend was manifested in a number of templates: sweet A-line dresses with collars and neckties, suits and dresses that took their details from military uniforms, or, in the case of Yves Saint Laurent, and explicit transposition of the male tuxedo to women. Simultaneously, under the rubric of 'unisex,' designs that were minimalistic, including Nehru suits and space-agey jumpsuits, were proposed by designers such as Pierre Cardin and Andre Courreges, and, most famously in the U.S.A., by Rudi Gernreich.
Through brilliant marketing, Twiggy's boyfriend and agent Justin de Villeneuve helped launch her not just as a model, but as a cultural commodity - she did become the face of my generation certainly. Twiggy had her name in lights - which was nice - right alongside the famous designers whose clothes she modeled, and the photographers that immortalized them. Everyone knew who she was. She was not just another good-looking clothes peg upon which clothes hung.
Twiggy appeared in some films as well, though many of them were made-for-TV films or films with limited released. By far the most successful film in which Twiggy appeared (whether measured by box office take or essentially any other measure of notability) is WHAT 1980 film? The answer’s at the end of this newsletter.1
2) The Max Weinberg 7 were to Conan O'Brien as WHAT is to Jimmy Fallon?
This is THE ROOTS, Fallon’s house band on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. The composition of The Roots has changed quite a bit during the group’s long existence, but lead MC Black Thought and drummer Questlove remain steady presences as the group’s frontmen:
3) The volume of WHAT solid can be obtained by multiplying pi, the solid’s height, and the square of the radius of the solid’s base, and then dividing by three?
This is a CONE, one of these:
You can use Cavalieri’s principle, which I think has something to do with marrying and then divorcing Jay Cutler, to show some interesting connections between cones and pyramids.
4) A musical revue ran on Broadway from 1937 to 1940 (and was revived in 1978) with the sponsorship of the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union. Many of the original cast were cutters, basters, and sewing machine operators, who became full-time actors as the musical experienced success. WHAT WAS THE THREE-WORD TITLE of the musical, which is often used to describe a usually transient and self-limited form of paresthesia?
This one was PINS AND NEEDLES.
The many of you who play LearnedLeague will recall this very recent question:
The 1962 Broadway musical I Can Get It for You Wholesale was not particularly successful, but it is notable today for the appearance of Elliott Gould in his first starring role and even more notable as a launching point for what star, who received the show's only Tony nomination?
The answer here is Barbara Streisand. Why am I mentioning that? For the 25th anniversary of Pins and Needles, Columbia Records released a studio recording of the score, and that recording featured Barbara Streisand as well. That 25th anniversary was in 1962, the same year that Streisand made her Broadway debut in I Can Get It for You Wholesale. The connections don’t stop there: Harold Rome was the lyricist for both Pins and Wholesale. In fact, Columbia Records offered to record the anniversary studio recording of Pins so it could get the cast album for Wholesale.
(Completely coincidentally, I Can Get It for You Wholesale is based upon a novel of the same name that was published in 1937, the same year that Pins and Needles debuted on Broadway.)
5) WHAT is the full name (first and last) of the legendary baseball executive credited with originally developing the farm system as well as signing Jackie Robinson, famously telling Robinson that he was looking for a man who “had guts enough not to fight back”?
This is BRANCH RICKEY.
Chicago’s Wrigley Field, where the Cubs play, currently has a maximum capacity of 41,649 people. A record that will never be broken (barring dramatic renovations at Wrigley, which seems unlikely, as the stadium is a National Historic Landmark) is Wrigley’s single-game attendance record of 46,572, set on May 18, 1947, which was Jackie Robinson’s first game in Chicago. (There are fewer seats now due to renovations between 1947 and now.) Read more about that game here.
6) WHAT prominent Hollywood actor, who is 42 years old and who is perhaps best known for playing a role originated by another actor decades earlier, is most closely associated with the theme of this newsletter?
The intended answer here is CHRIS PINE. The newsletter answers each pointed to parts of a pine tree (Twiggy for “twig,” The Roots, cone, Pins and Needles, and Branch Rickey for “branch”). Our newsletter title, “Yearning,” is a synonym of “pining,” another clue for you. Chris Pine is perhaps best known for playing Captain James Kirk in the various Star Trek reboots; of course, that role was originated by William Shatner.
Congratulations to our one reader who came up with the acceptable answer ELIJAH WOOD, who is also 42 years old and whose name shares a connection with our other answers. Patrick points out that, arguably, Wood’s role of Frodo in the Lord of the Rings films is a role originated by prior adaptations of the novel, including The Return of the King, the 1980 film by Rankin/Bass Productions. Rankin/Bass Productions was also behind The Last Unicorn, which means I have an excuse to share this wonderful post by Animation Obsessive, an animation-focused Substack:
Question #6 Leaderboard
The Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link. (We ought to be caught up now.)
Twiggy appears in the film THE BLUES BROTHERS. Substack doesn’t seem to play well with embedding YouTube links in footnotes, but you can try this link if you want to see that scene: https://youtube.com/watch?v=0VN_KoDMvRg