This week’s prize was over the top. We gave away tickets to David Mamet’s “Speed The Plow” at ACT’s Geary Theater in the City AND we threw in a $100 gift certificate for lunch or dinner at various restaurants participating in this year’s Dine About Town-SF. I saw Speed the Plow on Wednesday night. It was terrific! Here are this week’s questions.

MONDAY
New Jersey, Maryland and Connecticut have more of these than any other state. Mississippi, Arkansas and West Virginia have the fewest.
MILLIONAIRES (Winner-John Buckel, Cupertino)

This TV show premiered on this day in 1981…and it changed the TV drama forever.
(I played the first three notes of the TV show theme song.  Here’s the entire theme from youtube) HILL STREET BLUES (Winner-David Kraus, San Ramon)

WEDNESDAY
Only 5% of people say this is their favorite room in the house.
KITCHEN (Winner-Carol Brennan, San Francisco)

THURSDAY
For the 17th year in a row, the Labador Retriever is America’s favorite dog breed according to the American Kennel Club. Name two more breeds from their Top-10.
YORKSHIRE TERRIER, GERMAN SHEPHERD, GOLDEN RETRIEVER, BEAGLE, BOXER, DACHSHUND, POODLE, SHIH TZU, BULLDOG
(Winner-Bonnie Lucas, Oakland)

FRIDAY
This street in the Haight was named after a SF supervisor who helped create Golden Gate Park.
Munroe ASHBURY (Winner-Michael Reardon, Daly City)

Quiz yourself with this week’s Lunch Box questions.  Scroll down for the answers.  Have fun.

Monday

Cate Blanchette won a Golden Globe last night for her portrayal of which folk-music legend?

Tuesday

What team won the first ever Super Bowl?

Wednesday

What facial feature is the Mona Lisa missing?

Thursday

Benjamin Franklin’s picture adorns which denomination of US paper currency?

Answers:

Bob Dylan
The Green Bay Packers
eyebrows
$100 bill

*A follow-up on yesterday’s posting, this morning’s Chronicle reported that the bake sale for Christopher Rodriguez at Crocker Highlands School raised $33,000!

Eleven hours to Europe? Fourteen hours to Asia? Well, yes and you’d better fend for yourself. The book(s) you want to read and the music you want to hear. My wife’s employer, United, is working on new in-flight entertainment upgrades, but until then (and probably ever after) I have to load up my MP3 player with what I want to hear. I’m not an I-pod man (sorry Apple). I love my little 8Gb Sansa player that comes with FM and a voice and radio recorder function (shows videos and pictures, too). I’ve slipped in an extra 2Gb memory card to max out the capacity.
Okay, so what’s inside? I love Joshua Bell and MTT with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra playing Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto. Another wonderful fiddle player is Sergey Khachatryan playing Sibelius Violin Concertos. I have some Bach Transcriptions featuring Essa Pekka Salonen and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and old recording of the Monte Carlo Opera Orchestra playing Gershwins stuff like the Concerto for Piano in F and the Cuban Overture. I’ve loved music of Ralph Vaughan Williams since college when I ran sound for a play on campus that used an excerpt from one of his symphonies so I have his Pastoral Symphony. Jean Yves Thibaudet has recorded some forays into the world of jazz and since I’m a fan of Bill Evans I had to carry Conversations with Bill Evans. Oh and the Marin Alsop and the LSO playing Brahms. What’s currently missing is Chopin, the KDFC Samplers, The 5 Browns, Yo-Yo Ma Plays Ennio Morricone (or anything) and on and on. Frankly, I have all types of music in the little player from the tasty  Elite Hotel by Emmy Lou Harris to Pat Metheny, the Beatles even Staind(!). But I find on a long flight as I work on a crossword, read a book, watch the sky map tell me how high we are or fast we’re going, a beautiful piece of great instrumental classical is less fatiguing.

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Christopher Rodriguez is recovering at Children’s Hospital after being hit by a stray bullet at his piano lesson. Chris is a 5th grader at Crocker Highlands School in Oakland.  This is my neighborhood school and the school my own kids attended.  Chris’ friends are throwing a bake sale for him today at about 1:45 on the playground.  If you can’t get by the school today, you can donate to a fund that’s been established in Chris’ name at  Wells Fargo Bank on 40th Street near Piedmont Avenue in Oakland.

Wells Fargo Bank
510-597-4210
Christopher Rodriguez
Account # 7013202606

The critics hate it, but how can you go wrong with a movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman.
“The Bucket List” is doing boffo box office and I had some nice emails today from listeners that thought the critics are off base (again?). In todays USA Today is an article about websites I’d never heard of that allow you to post your list of the things you want to do before you kick it. Over a million people have posted their personal lists at 43Things.com in the last three years and the top spot on most lists is losing weight. Ellen Degeneres wants to learn Spanish. Morgan Freeman wants to make more movies. Sasha Cagen, author of To-Do List: From Buying Milk to Finding a Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us, says making travel goals can get us through the drudgery of a mundane job. Some of the other online sites are Superviva.com and Reaperlist.com. So what’s on your bucket list? The picture posted here shows you one of the items on mine.

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Thanks to everybody who sent book suggestions.  I could be happily reading for several millenia.   The relief is that I picked up the latest from author Kate Atkinson and I’m loving it.   It’s called One Good Turn and is full of great characters whose stories intertwine in present-day Edinburgh. 

On a completely different note, whither the Academy Awards ceremony this year? I’m in crisis mode thinking that it might be canceled as the Golden Globes were and I wish I could fly down to L.A. and mediate the negotiations myself. I’m one of those people who has an Oscars party each year and whose best Jeopardy category is always “Oscar Winners”.  And here at KDFC we have a lot of fun with movie music leading up to the Oscars.  I can’t imagine that the folks who make a ton of money from the Oscar telecast will let this one pass.  Fingers crossed.

This week we gave away tickets to the Russian music program by the Marin Symphony coming up Sunday, January 20th.

MONDAY
According to an online advertising site, the number one selling piece of exercise equipment works out this one part of the body.
THIGHS (Winner-Beth Lewis, SF)

TUESDAY
This actress who died in 1995 finally has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.   Name the actress and the character she’s playing in this sound bite.

(I played a section of the following sound bite from youtube….from the 1:42 mark to 1:53 mark.   It’s the section where Serena says she’d like to experience mortal heartache)

ELIZABETH MONTGOMERY and SERENA (Winner-Laura Tippett, Alameda)

WEDNESDAY
Women’s Health Magazine says a third of women say they often lose or misplace their keys. Even more “lose” these because we have so many of them, it’s hard to keep them all straight.
PASSWORDS (Winner-Denise Croizer, Berkeley)

THURSDAY
We all own one of these and use it every day. And a new high tech model is about to hit the market with built in surround sound, speakers, iPod dock, even temperature control and sensors to make sure you’re breathing properly.
BED (Winner-Ned Moore, Sonoma)

FRIDAY
San Francisco and Seattle are two of the most Internet-wired cities in America. Name one more city from the Forbes Top-10 list.
ATLANTA, RALEIGH, CHARLOTTE, BALTIMORE, ORLANDO, CHICAGO, NEW YORK, PORTLAND
(Winner-Peter Tritz, San Rafael)

I hope to spend the entire weekend in the yard. Enjoy your place of peace, whatever/wherever it may be. See you on the Big Island this Sunday.

A big thank you to Toni Sherman for this very wise advice:
Listen, Dianne, You are obviously the victim of early parental
exhortations to “finish everything  on your plate or you don’t get
desert,” or some variant of that.  In my case I had a plate with a
picture on the bottom.  I was urged to eat until I could uncover it.
It’s amazing to me now how old I got to be before it occurred to me
that I had, after all, already seen the picture many times before.

You have to put that behind you.  It is not only not necessary to
finish a book you don’t like, it’s positively evil to do so.  Life is
too short & too full of good books you’ll never have time to read,
even if you live to be 100 with your eyesight intact.  Look at it
that way & put that book down for good.

And they say we should get up from the table a little bit hungry.
NOW they tell  us!

Toni, I want you to know I’m headed back to Stacey’s after work today to buy The Memory Keeper’s Daughter.

Monday’s question:

How much did the group Radiohead charge for its “download” only CD “In Rainbows”?

Tuesday’s question:

What great mind is celebrating his 65th birthday today?  He wrote “Black Holes and Baby Universes” among other things.

Wednesday’s question:

What confident quarterback bragged that he could guarantee a win in Super Bowl III for his New York Jets?

Thursday’s question:

The Berkeley City Council will vote soon on whether there are just too many of these memorials in the city’s parks.  What are they seeking to limit?

Answers:

Fans were asked to pay whatever they felt like paying.

Stephen Hawking

Joe Namath

Just too many benches dedicated to departed loved ones

While doing some show prep today I came across this beautiful video that Leif Ove Andsnes and Norwegian Television created last year in honor of the 100 anniversary of Edvard Grieg’s death. I love the line that Andsnes paraphrases from Grieg that Bach and Beethoven built palaces, but the Grieg couldn’t do that. He built houses for people to live in. That beautifully expresses my feelings about Grieg’s music.
Enjoy.

P.S. Look for the Easter egg. Gamers know what I mean.
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