Mediterranean Sea

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

Another month and another quiz to get it off to a challenging start.

One or two relatively easy ones today, but I think most of them you will find tough enough.

As usual, if you get stuck, you can find the answers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down below, but please NO cheating!

Enjoy and good luck.

Q. 1: What is the official language of Brazil?

Q. 2: Which wife of a politician said in 1981, ‘Woman is like a teabag: you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in the hot water’?

Q. 3: Many expanses of water of varying sizes are designated as ‘seas’ such as the Mediterranean Sea, the Dead Sea, etc. But what is the only such sea in the world that does not have a coastline?

Q. 4: What book was Denzel Washington protecting in the 2010 movie?

Q. 5: What is both unusual and famous about the restaurant in Volterra, Italy called “Fortezza Medicea”?

Q. 6: In which city is the music recording company Motown based?

Q. 7: The official country retreat of the President of the USA, Camp David, is located in which mountains?

Q. 8: Where did the Incas originate?

Q. 9: What was the name of the Cuban President over thrown by Fidel Castro in 1959?

Q. 10: Although the United States has Roswell and Area 51, and Hollywood has pushed out a unending stream of movies based on them, the government does not officially recognize the existence of UFOs. However three well known countries do formally recognize the existence of UFOs, can you name them? (A point for each and a bonus point if you can name all three.)

Q. 11: Who was coming to dinner with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in 1967?

Q. 12: Who was dubbed “Lenin’s left leg” during the early stages of Russia’s Marxist movement?

Q. 13: In which US city was the first skyscraper built in 1883?

Q. 14: A double question with multiple points. The US State Department currently recognizes 194 different countries in the world, but how many take up approximately half of Earth’s land area?

HINT: It is a relatively small number of the 194 total and there is a bonus point for each of them that you can name.

Q. 15: What phrase is the unlikely link between Barbara Streisand and Bugs Bunny?

Q. 16: What is the only state in the Middle East in which there is no desert?

Q. 17: What former Soviet state is currently experiencing massive civil unrest and upheaval?

Q. 18: Which river has the largest delta?

Q. 19: Whoopie Goldberg played one in a movie and Patricia Arquette played another in a television series, what were they? (And bonus points if you can name the movie and the tv series.)

Q. 20: Which movie other than ‘The Bodyguard’ featured the song “I Will Always Love You”?

ANSWERS

Q. 1: What is the official language of Brazil?

A. 1: Portuguese.

Q. 2: Which wife of a politician said in 1981, ‘Woman is like a teabag: you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in the hot water’?

A. 2: Nancy Reagan.

Q. 3: Many expanses of water of varying sizes are designated as ‘seas’ such as the Mediterranean Sea, the Dead Sea, etc. But what is the only such sea in the world that does not have a coastline?

A. 3: The Sargasso Sea in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean is surrounded by ocean currents and no land and therefore has no coast.

Q. 4: What book was Denzel Washington protecting in the 2010 movie?

A. 4: The Book Of Eli. You also get a point if you said The Bible.

Q. 5: What is both unusual and famous about the restaurant in Volterra, Italy called “Fortezza Medicea”?

A. 5: “Fortezza Medicea” is a maximum security prison – the cooks and waiters are all doing sentences of at least seven years.

Q. 6: In which city is the music recording company Motown based?

A. 6: Detroit.

Q. 7: The official country retreat of the President of the USA, Camp David is in which mountains?

A. 7: Appalachians.

Q. 8: Where did the Incas originate?

A. 8: Peru.

Q. 9: What was the name of the Cuban President over thrown by Fidel Castro in 1959?

A. 9: General Batista.

A. 10: France, Italy and Chile have all formally recognized the existence of UFOs.

Q. 11: Who was coming to dinner with Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn in 1967?

A. 11: Sidney Poitier.

Q. 12: Who was dubbed “Lenin’s left leg” during the early stages of Russia’s Marxist movement?

A. 12: Joseph Stalin.

Q. 13: In which US city was the first skyscraper built in 1883?

A. 13: Chicago.

Q. 14: A double question with multiple points. The US State Department currently recognizes 194 different countries in the world, but how many take up approximately half of Earth’s land area?

HINT: It is a relatively small number of the 194 total and there is a bonus point for each of them that you can name.

A. 14: Seven countries take half of the Earth’s land area and they are Russia, Canada, USA, China, Australia, Brazil and Argentina.

Q. 15: What phrase is the unlikely link between Barbara Streisand and Bugs Bunny?

A. 15: “What’s up, Doc?” is Bugs’ catchphrase and the name of a 1972 comedy/romance movie starring Barbara Streisand and Ryan O’Neill.

Q. 16: What is the only state in the Middle East in which there is no desert?

A. 16: Lebanon.

Q. 17: What former Soviet state is currently experiencing massive civil unrest and upheaval?

A. 17: The Ukraine.

Q. 18: Which river has the largest delta?

A. 18: The River Ganges.

Q. 19: Whoopie Goldberg played one in a movie and Patricia Arquette played another in a television series, what were they? (And bonus points if you can name the movie and the tv series.)

A. 19: They played ‘mediums’, Whoopie Goldberg in the movie ‘Ghost’ and Patricia Arquette in the hit tv series ‘Medium’.

Q. 20: Which movie other than ‘The Bodyguard’ featured the song “I Will Always Love You”?

A. 20: ‘The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas’, a movie starring Dolly Parton who wrote the song.

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“Fight Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

I used to be friends with a guy from Northern Ireland. We are going back thirty years here so quite a while ago. We’ve lost touch since as you tend to do with some if not most acquaintances.

This story is about his Dad.

As you may or may not know the weather in Ireland is awful. Cold, wet, windy, rains every day with a ‘y’ in it, or so the locals say. One traveler from Africa once remarked that it was like living under an elephant!

The result has been a continual decline in vacation resorts, towns and villages there. People still come for the golf, there is renewed interest in that with the recent success of Rory McIlroy and Darren Clark. But on the whole the locals prefer to get away for one or two weeks to a location with at least the chance of a bit of heat and sunshine.

But in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the period in which this story is set, foreign travel was a fairly new phenomenon for most ordinary people.

But my friend’s father and mother thought it would be a nice and different break for them and they booked two weeks in the south of Spain.

They arrived without incident, booked in to their hotel and that first night just had a meal in the hotel restaurant and went to bed. Traveling is always tiring.

The next day they partook of the buffet breakfast that most of the touristy hotels in Spain provide and after that went back to their room, got their towels and creams and so forth, and headed for the beach, which was only about 100 yards or so from the hotel.

My friend’s mother lay down on a towel to take some rays, as they say, and his father who wasn’t really the type of guy who liked to lay about all day, got a beach chair from which he had a better vantage point to survey the beach and sea activities.

We’ll never know whether it was the heat, or just the sight of bare heaving glistening continental bosoms, (they are not a bit bashful in some parts of Europe), but after about half an hour on the beach it all became too much for my friend’s Dad. All of sudden, without any warning whatsoever, he jumped out of his beach chair, started to yell like Tarzan, beating his chest at the same time, and ran towards the Mediterranean Sea.

There was a slight slope in the beach and by the time he had reached the water he had built up a considerable head of steam. His momentum took him quite a bit into the water, not quite waist deep but getting there.

Now, I should say that the Med is no Pacific Ocean, but there are nevertheless waves and as everyone knows the seventh is usually bigger than those preceding it.

And just when my friend’s father reached about as deep as he could on his feet he decided to dive through the next wave, which was a relatively big one. According to his wife, who was looking as this spectacle with more than a little bemusement, he was still doing his version of a Tarzan yell and beating his chest. And so into the sea he dived still yelling and open mouthed.

I forgot to tell you he wore dentures, which is rather crucial to the rest of the story.

Yes, when the wave passed and he resurfaced not a tooth of any kind had he in his mouth.

Of course he frantically searched for both sets of gnashers.

I love watching when people who don’t know how to dive underwater try it. Their ass goes way up in the air, their head maybe six inches or a foot under, and then after maybe two or three seconds they re-emerge gasping and spluttering as if they’ve just been down to the bottom of sea. I imagine that’s what he did.

But you know what the sea is like. Both sets of false teeth were long gone, never to be found again.

I have heard tell of people packing extra underwear, or shoes (hey ladies), or even glasses as emergency back-ups. But I have never heard of anyone packing an extra set of teeth.

My friend’s father wasn’t to be the first one to do it and so he had to spend the next twelve and a half days of his vacation completely toothless, only able to eat soft mushy stuff and soup, but having to avoid the juicy steaks completely.

And he looked like a prat, maybe not quite as bad as the photo below but you get the idea.

fasab

Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy

Mediterranean Sea

The Quizzes March On!

Tarzan Takes A Vacation