Below are six trivia questions I’ve written. You can reply to this e-mail if you’d like to participate. Like most trivia, the answers can be readily found via Google, so you’re on the honor system. The SIXTH question of each set is designed to be a question that cannot be easily Googled, so correct answers to those will be tracked and recognized in the next newsletter. The answers, and the next set of questions, will be published every Monday and Thursday.
1) FILL in both blanks here: In 2000, Zack de la Rocha announced he was leaving the band [BLANK].* The three remaining members of that band, Tim Commerford, Tom Morello, and Brad Wilk, wanted to stay together and find a new vocalist. They linked up with Chris Cornell and became [BLANK], which was primarily active from 2001 to 2007.
*Note: Unless specified otherwise, a “[BLANK]” in these newsletters can stand in for any number of letters and/or words.
2) WHAT film is being described by the review excerpted below, which review is entitled “Rats in a Cage”? (The brackets in the second sentence are my edit.)
Major American auteurs don’t usually sign on to do remakes of foreign hits. My guess is that what attracted [the film’s director]—apart from the paycheck—was the chance to fashion a fast, mean, relatively impersonal crime thriller in which everyone is damned to hell. There’s no mercy—not even for the audience. (The movie’s theme song is the Stones’s “Gimme Shelter.”) William Monahan’s dialogue is Mamet-speak played at Alvin and the Chipmunks speed with a broad Boston accent.
3) It’s not that rare for someone to serve multiple Cabinet positions throughout their lifetimes—James Monroe was even simultaneously the Secretary of State and Secretary of War for a time. However, what is rare is for someone to be the sole officeholder of a Cabinet position during a presidency, and then, later, be the sole officeholder of a Cabinet position during a different presidency. NAME the former Secretary of Labor and Secretary of Transportation to most recently accomplish this.
4) NAME the seven-letter variety of rice whose name literally means “fragrant” and that is traditionally grown in India, Pakistan and Nepal—it’ll have you coming back for more.
5) It’s the phrase you might scribble on something you weren’t supposed to receive, or it’s a 1962 Elvis Presley song about “a quarrel, a lover's spat.” WHAT’s the three-word phrase?
6) WHAT unusual distinction is shared by each of the following film sequels? Short Circuit 2 (1988), The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997), Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997), Men in Black II (2002), Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003), American Pie Presents: Band Camp (2005), The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part (2019).
Here are the answers from last time:
1) You already know who it is! Silentó, Silentó, Silentó—go on and do it for me. WHAT’s the verb that I’m about to do before I nae nae? If we’re going way back, though, it’s also part of what you must do when a problem comes along (before the cream sits out too long!).
This question alluded to Silentó’s 2015 song “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” and also to Devo’s 1980 song “Whip It,” and so the answer is “whip.” Angel Diaz wrote the following for Complex, the bimonthly magazine:
The dance is cool, the kids love it, white people love it, everybody loves it. The song, though? Trash. One of the most annoying things to ever exist. The video has half a million views. I pray to god that people watch it on mute. Let’s leave this song in 2015. Please, I beg of you. We have to stop giving white people dances to ruin. Do it for the culture.
2) “O, burn her, burn her! Hanging is too good,” says a shepherd—shortly thereafter, she responds:
First, let me tell you whom you have condemn’d:
Not me begotten of a shepherd swain,
But issued from the progeny of kings;
Virtuous and holy; chosen from above,
By inspiration of celestial grace,
To work exceeding miracles on earth.
WHO is the speaker of this excerpt, the beginning of one of Shakespeare’s more notable female monologues, found in Henry VI, Part 1 (Act V, Scene 4)?
The answer here is Joan of Arc. Joan of Arc, among many other accomplishments and influences, was the inspiration for the “bob” (the hairstyle) when it was popularized in the early twentieth century.
3) Never say never again, sir: name the actor who won the 1987 Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the first Oscar he was ever nominated for, and then was “untouchable” because he was never nominated for an Oscar thereafter.
This is Sean Connery—the clues here were that Connery’s last Bond film was Never Say Never Again, he was knighted (thus, the “sir”), and the won the Oscar for the film The Untouchables. This question got a little mangled in rewrites—The Untouchables came out in 1987, but the won the award in 1988. Some sources refer to the Academy Awards ceremonies with the year they took place, and others refer to Academy Awards ceremonies with the year that the films in question came out. Our staff regrets any confusion caused here.
4) In the comic book Green Lantern #54 (1994), the title hero finds his girlfriend has been murdered and unceremoniously stuffed into a certain appliance. Writer Gail Simone collected this and other examples on her website of the, in her view, too-common trope in media for women to suffer indignities as mere plot devices to advance a male character’s story arc. Name the eight-letter “verb” derived from the name of Simone’s website that today is used to refer to this trope.
The word is “fridging,” and the website in question was called “Women in Refrigerators.” In 2017, Catherynne Valente wrote a graphic novel called The Refrigerator Monologues, exploring the lives and deaths of superheroines and the girlfriends of superheroes.
5) Between 1880 and 1920, what is today’s America’s 38th-largest and 17th-most-populous state had its “Golden Age of Literature,” as world-renowned authors all from this state (e.g., George Ade, Theodore Dreiser, Meredith Nicholson, and Lew Wallace) published their most influential works. The Golden Age ended, but this state’s output didn’t; Kurt Vonnegut, Jim Davis, and the guy who made that famous ‘LOVE’ sculpture, whatever his name is, hail from here too. Name the state.
This one’s Indiana. Wild, right? The “LOVE” sculpture refers to this design you’ve probably seen [image below], and it was Robert Indiana who came up with it.
6) WHAT unusual distinction do these television shows and films share? Muppet Babies (1984-91), The Simpsons (1989—), Toy Story (1995), The Rugrats Movie (1998), Family Guy (1999—) Scrubs (2001-10), Shrek 2 (2004), Hannah Montana (2006-11), Disaster Movie (2008), Regular Show (2009-17), It Chapter Two (2019), Red Notice (2021).
Each of these works, at some point, has a parody or other direct allusion to the events in an Indiana Jones film—usually something relating to the famous “boulder scene” where Indiana runs away from a rapidly approaching boulder.
The newsletter’s theme (“Leap of Faith”) refers to the sequence in Last Crusade where Indiana must cross a chasm by trusting that there is an invisible bridge—the words “leap of faith” are explicitly spoken by Indy. The first question (“whip”) refers to Indy’s signature weapon. Joan of Arc is an oblique reference to the Ark of the Covenant (the “Lost Ark”). Sean Connery played Indiana’s father in Last Crusade (“We named the dog Indiana”). “Fridging” was meant to refer to the widely disliked sequence in Crystal Skull in which Indy survives a nuclear blast by hiding in a refrigerator. Finally, “Indiana” likely speaks for itself.
The current Question #6 leaderboard can be viewed at this link.