Here he is: Scott Turner, Thursday night quizmeister at Rocky Sullivan's in Red Hook, bringing you his latest and greatest thoughts and observations. This feature is brought to you by Miss Wit, Red Hook's t-shirt entrepreneur extraordinaire.

Greetings Pub Quiz Gaze Averters…

Did you see the Leonids meteor shower this morning?  Neither did I!

But
I have in the past, and it's beyond cool.  This year's was supposed to
be particularly fabulous.  But I forgot.  Plus, hard to see a meteor
shower here in New York City.  Then again, for most cramped New Yorkers, getting to the regular shower is a task.

Light pollution, astronomers call it.  I'm more likely to call it "not running into things at night."  Gothamites have to plan out a Leonid experience.  Can't just step outside the bar, look up and say "that sky's crazy!  Or maybe it's that 9%-alcohol beer from Quebec…"  Actually, that you can say.  And many of us do.

Regardless, it's a wacky thing, these Leonids.  The earth passes through particles left from a passing comet, Temple-Tuttle.  (Tuttle discovered the comet a few weeks after Temple, but the International Comet Monikerization Agency awarded joint custody.  Also, Tuttle-Temple is just on the other side of the Silly Line for scientists who, it is well known, hate joy and mirth.)

So, it's not so much that meteors fall on our heads.  Rather, we
put our heads down and charge, like a fullback, straight into the
meteors.  Every year.  Center-of-the-universe way that we think, it
seems like the meteors are showering down from the constellation Leo. 
Hence, Leonids.  By the way, I think instead of calling human progeny
"children," "kids," "offspring" or "insufferable life-altering
parent-culture-inculcating whiners," we should just call the little
ones "nids."

Here are two views of this week's Leonid shower:

what did people do before digital technology?!

Here's another view from Niagara Falls.  Apparently, the Leonids were joined last night by the Spermonids, a lesser known meteor shower from the passing Jolie-Suleman Comet.

The meteors that form terrifying End Of Days
fire in the skies are actually particulate matter — dust, really. 
Sometimes I get bummed about stuff, and I think about very cool things
to snap me out of it.  One of those things is that meteor showers look
like the Earth is under attack from flaming-rock-throwing outer-space aliens, but it's just dust on fire!

Other cool things that pull me out of deep-blue funks are: Esa Tikkanen, the t.v. show Firefly, Petula Clark, the great Curt Flood
and that black guitar of mine that's never out-of-reach.  You should
know this, in case you stumble across me in one of those moods. 
Consider this my Quizmaster's Medic-Alert e-male bracelet.

the black guitar?  It's identity is a closely guarded secret — unless you make it to the next RebelMart show.

Here's
another statistic so mind blowing it can't help but cheer us all up:
the average person's DNA strand, if stretched out, is long enough to
reach across the diameter of our solar system.

Fantastic!!

There you have it.  Dust particles from
space and DNA strands brightening our world tonight.  All without the
help of Esa Tikkanen, Firefly, Petula Clark and the great Curt Flood.

Or the black guitar.