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10/03/2004: Weekend Trivia answers
1) Who is the only musical performer to make the Billboard Top 20 charts as a solo act, as part of a duo, as part of a trio, as part of a quartet, AND as part of a quintet?
Paul McCartney. (Duets with both Linda McCartney and with Michael Jackson; as trio with Wings; as quartet with the Beatles; as quintet with larger edition of Wings).
2) What was the first special effect in movie history?
An un-collapsing wall. (The Lumiere Brothers filmed men demolishing a wall, then ran the film backwards.)
3) Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has what is probably one of the most unusual trick endings in mystery literature--so twisted, in fact, that one reviewer initially called it a "dirty trick." So, whodunit? (Hint: who would be the least likely suspect?)
It is the narrator of the story who is the murderer.
4) Burned by acid as a boy, he took up the violin as therapy for his injured arm. He might have had a promising career as a concert violinist (yes, he was really that good), but he met a pair of brothers and was sidetracked into vaudville, and ultimately short comedy subjects. Who is he?
Larry Fine of The Three Stooges (aka, "Porcupine").
5) Imagine--you've been lucky enough to be cast as the latest actor to play James Bond. The terms of your contract allow you to appear in other, "non-Bond" movies PROVIDED you don't do one thing. What is the one thing you can't do in other movies?
Wear a tuxedo.
6) Tom Seaver, Van Morrison, Bob Newhart, Roger Waters, and Orson Welles. What do these men all have in common?
All of them were originally given the first name of "George" at birth, but they all acheived fame going by their middle names.
7) In 1985, Wilbur Snapp got himself ejected from a minor league baseball game in Clearwater, Florida. What did he do that got him ejected?
Snapp was the organist at the stadium, and he hassled the umpires for a bad call by playing "Three Blind Mice".
8) Kentucky Mountain Bible College didn't like their assigned telephone numbers. Can you figure out why?
They had been assigned "666-" as their exchange prefix.
9) I have a list here: 10 people who, even though dead, still managed to overcome that obstacle and earn buttloads of money in 2002; in fact, they were the highest earning corpses that year. How many of them can you name?
Elvis Presley ($40 mil); Charles Schulz ($32 mil); J.R.R. Tolkien ($22 mil); John Lennon; George Harrison; Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel; Dale Earnhardt; Tupac Shakur; Bob Marley; Marilyn Monroe.
10) The Harlem Globetrotters started playing basketball games in 1927. It took them until 1968 to finally get around to doing something you'd have thought they did much earlier. What was that?
Actually play a game in Harlem.
11) In 1942, wartime travel restrictions didn't cause the cancellation of the annual Army-Navy game at Annapolis that year, but it did result in one of the most unusual orders ever given to the Brigade of Midshipmen. What were 3,200 Navy midshipmen ordered to do that day?
Cheer for Army
12) A two part TV trivia question: What prime time TV series was set the furthest in the past? Which was set the furthest in the future?
PAST: "Dinosaurs" (60,000,003 B.C.)FUTURE: "Battlestar Galactica" (60th century A.D.)
13) You may remember Marcel, the monkey from "Friends". Katie the capuchin monkey played that role. Katie also played the monkey carrying a killer virus in "Outbreak". But all this was a mere warmup for her greatest role. What was that?
Katie was the Anaheim Angels' "Rally Monkey", who was arguably a major factor in the Angels winning their first World Series in 2002.
14) Sure, I had the list of the corpses that made the most money in 2002. Big deal. According to Forbes magazine, who are the 15 richest fictional characters, and how much does Forbes say each is worth?
See here for the gory details. But here's the list: 1. Santa Claus infinite net worth
2. Richie Rich $24.7 billion
3. Oliver "Daddy" Warbucks $10 billion
4. Scrooge McDuck $8.2 billion
5. Thurston Howell III $8 billion
T5. Willie Wonka $8 billion
7. Bruce Wayne $6.3 billion
8. Lex Luthor $4.7 billion
9. J.R. Ewing $2.8 billion
10. Auric Goldfinger $1.2 billion
11. C. Montgomery Burns $1 billion
T11. Charles Foster Kane $1 billion
13. Cruella De Vil $875 million
14. Gordon Gekko $650 million
15. Jay Gatsby $600 million
15) What book did George W. Bush claim was his childhood favorite, and why did that claim prove that George might be a little slow on the uptake?
Bush said that The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle was his favorite childhood book. Since that book was first published when Bush was in college, either Bush is a bit confused, or his childhood lasted quite a bit longer than most of ours did.
16) I have no doubt that you've seen a picture of Edith Shain and Carl Muscarello, but I'll wager you couldn't tell me where if your LIFE depended on it. Prove me wrong: who are they, and where did you see them?
Edith is the nurse, and Carl the sailor, who were caught kissing in Times Square on V-J Day in the famous 1945 Life Magazine photograph.
17) The time machine in the 1985 film "Back to the Future" wasn't originally supposed to be a DeLorean. What was it supposed to be in the original script, and why was it changed?
It was originally supposed to be a refrigerator; director Robert Zemeckis, afraid that children might be killed or injured shutting themselves in refrigerators after seeing the movie, ordered the change.
18) In the earliest days of IBM-compatible "clone" PCs, a particular software program came to be the "gold standard" for testing if a computer was 100% PC compatible. What was that program?
Microsoft Flight Simulator.
19) Billy Batson would shout "SHAZAM!", and with that word become Captain Marvel, the World's Mightiest Mortal! But what was the meaning of the magic word, "SHAZAM"?
Supposedly, each letter of the word stood for an attribute which Batson acquired when he became Captain Marvel: Solomon's wisdom, Hercules's strength, Atlas's stamina, Zeus's power, Achilles's courage, and Mercury's speed.
20) A question in belated honor of the DVD release of The Star Wars Trilogy: what's the connection between Wedge Antilles of the original trilogy and Obi-wan Kenobi of The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones?
Ewan McGregor, the actor who played Kenobi in Star Wars Episodes I and II (and Episode III when it is released), is the nephew of Denis Lawson, who played Wedge Antilles in the Trilogy.
Len on 10.03.04 @ 07:31 PM CST
