News Quiz

No. 325: “Wrapped Attention”

In a TV commercial running in Houston, friends cover a Diane Keaton look-alike in bubble wrap then roll her down a hill and through a sprinkler. We don’t find out what’s being advertised until the end, when the tag line comes up. For 500 points and the game: What is the tag line?

Send your answer by 5 p.m. ET Sunday to newsquiz@slate.com.

Wednesday’s Question (No. 324)–“Mad About Beef”:

Fill in the blank as Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, comments on some declassified documents with this personal anecdote: “My residence had just been broken into by six students angry about beef quotas. They tried to burn my house down. And I thought, ‘God Almighty, if they get this mad about beef, what will they do when they learn we have _________ here?’ “

“Beefcake.”–Matt Sullivan, David Finkle, and Dee Lacey

“Cable.”–K. Coombs

“Copies of the final.”–Dave Gaffen (Neal Pollack and Dee Lacey had similar answers.)

“If this were ‘Match Game ‘74,’ Charles Nelson Reilly would answer ‘bazooms.’ “–Kenton Cernea

“Martha Stewart’s balsamic glazed onions.”–Jay Majors and Barbara Lippert (similarly, Todd York)

Click for more answers.

Randy’s Wrap-Up

We risk hubris, given our lackluster national cuisine–not that I’m knocking high-fat, high-calorie, high-profit, bland stuff served up on a bun and eaten in a car–if we mock the food of another country. So, unlike many Quiz participants, I won’t. Instead, I’ll point out that one of the pleasures of urban life is juxtaposition–buildings of different eras, clothing of various subcultures, books, movies and, of course, food. When we make dinner plans, we don’t name restaurants; we list countries: Should we go for Thai? Italian? Indian? Mexican? Vietnamese? French? Spanish? Ethiopian? Argentine? Brazilian? Cuban? Chinese? Cuban-Chinese? And I’ll say this: If all the nations of the world got along as well as do the bagel and mango on my breakfast table every morning, that would be an impressive amount of along-getting. Right, anxiety-free doggy? Rrrrrrrrright!

Critical Mass Appeal Answer

If they get this mad about beef, what will they do when they learn we have nuclear weapons here?

During the Cold War, the United States stored 12,000 nuclear weapons in at least 23 countries, including some with a no-nukes policy, not always informing local governments of this deployment. Currently American weapons of mass destruction are kept in at least seven foreign countries–Belgium, Greenland, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Turkey, and Britain.

It took 16 years to declassify the document, “History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 through September 1977.” William Arkin first requested it in 1983 under the Freedom of Information Act for use in a book he was writing, Nuclear Battlefield. An article describing the document is in the current Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Ambassador Gregg’s colorful anecdotes now delight his colleagues at the Asia Society.

Raymond Chen’s at the Movies Extra

Edward Norton explains what the fighting in Fight Club is really about: “It’s very much a metaphor for self-transforming radicalism, for the idea of directing violence inward at your own presumptions. … The fighting is a metaphor for stripping yourself of received notions and value systems that have been applied to you that aren’t your own. And freeing yourself to discover who you actually are.”

“And pummeling your opponent into a bloody pulp,” he did not add.

(Read more preposterous actor jabbering here.)

Floyd Elliot’s Media Buyers Extra

Floyd Elliot’s News Quiz responses are for sale to reputable or disreputable advertisers. Drug dealers welcome. Contact Floyd’s parole officer for details.

Sure and Certain Proof That the ‘60s Are Over Again Extra

Actual evidence gathered from actual publications, because the Man can’t bust our news sources.

  • “Gregory Sizer was running a Christian bookstore here when he decided to launch a second business: selling guns.” (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 19, 1999)–Jay Carvell
  • “Tom Jones and the Semiotics of Panty-throwing–by Virginia Vitzthum.” (Salon’s Table of Contents, Oct. 19, 1999)–Joy Nolan
  • “Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Let Me Stand Next to Your Fire’ now used to tout Pontiac Sunfire in TV spots.”–Ed.
  • “By using her celebrity in exchange for stock in the company, Ms. Goldberg adds her name to a list of cyberrepresentatives that already includes the former Star Trek actor William Shatner. I’m speechless.”–Ellen Macleay
  • “Peace, love, and understanding–hrrrpphh, that’s funny! What a joke. I swear to God. You know what I’d do? I’d line ‘em up and shoot ‘em. Yeah, yeah. Shoot ‘em all. Hrrrpphh. Hilarious.” (My friend’s ex-hippie older brother, now a golf course designer in Tampa.)–Jim O’Grady
  • “The Pink Panther/Owens Corning Fiberglas commercial co-opting Fractured Fairytales. I hope moose-and-squirrel got mucho bucks out of them, considering the legalistic stink the P.P. folks (Universal) made several years ago when a gay nonprofit anti-violence group had the temerity to call itself ‘Pink Panthers’ (although in this drunk-on-synergy era Universal probably owns all of Jay Ward’s output as well).”–Fred Gormley
  • “In 1997, I co-authored a ‘comprehensive and dramatically told’ (San Francisco Chronicle) biography of radical anti-war priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and it sold many less copies than, oh, Jewel’s diary or a novel by Ethan Hawke. Yet conveniently, my book made it into paperback and can be purchased by clicking here.”–Jim O’Grady
  • “In 1968, News Quiz was used to fight imperialism in solidarity with the workers and peasants, not to promote one’s own books.”–Ed.

Common Denominator

Funny foreign food, Pokémon.