By Randy Cohen
I give the headline from Alabama’s Birmingham News; you give a brief summary of the story: “Explosion of Bugs.”
by 5 p.m. ET Sunday to e-mail your answer (NewsQuiz@slate.com).
Responses to Wednesday’s question (No. 20)–“Gang of Six”:
The list is: president, vice president, Senate majority leader, House majority leader, head of the National Endowment for the Arts, head of the National Endowment for the Humanities. List of what?
“Kathleen Willey’s follow-up list (handwritten on ‘Hang in There, It’s Almost Friday’ kitty-cat-hanging-from-a-branch note paper) of possible positions that could make good use of her excellent listening skills, after she concluded that she wasn’t going to get that ambassadorship.”–Barbara Lippert
“People who can’t ever fly in the same plane, lest–God forbid–it went down and damn, there goes the secret recipe for Coke for all time.”–Bill Franzen
“The cast of MTV’s stunningly boring Real World VI: Washington.”–Beth Sherman
“Now that Tommy Lee is out of the picture, this is the line of succession for who gets to boff Pamela Anderson in the next home movie.”–Jon Hotchkiss
“The six jobs Americans consider least desirable.”–Patty Marx
“They each killed a man in the ring.”–Charlie “Charley” Rubin
“People who serve as body doubles for Janet Reno, when pressing business necessitates her absence.”–Larry Amaros
Click for more responses.
Randy’s Wrap-Up
Six things I never thought I’d type on the same page: boff, Big Bird, Martha Stewart, knuckler, Gravy, MTV. I guess I have my next six answers for my weekly game of Mad Libs. I guess Alfa-Betty Olsen and Marshall Efron knew the correct answer and offered it with almost Japanese tact. Boff. Faced with “boff,” would the New York Times print a euphemism, an elaborate yet evasive descriptive phrase, or a simple ellipsis? Boff. Incidentally, The Newlywed Game? Is that still on?
Middle-Age White Guys Answer
All six are Southerners, the New York Times notes in a profile of Bill Ivey, the director of the Country Music Foundation nominated to chair the National Endowment for the Arts. The Times says there is a shift of political and cultural power to the South. Ivey says, “It’s a lot easier to say string quartets are good and polka bands are bad and much tougher to find the great string quartets and great polka bands.”
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