The latest from Scott Turner of Rocky Sullivan’s in Red Hook. Greetings, salutations, political analysis and news about the pub quiz at Rocky’s.

Greetings, Pub Quiz Election Merriment Mounters…

It’s over. In fact, it’s been over for a week as I write this.

It still feels good. It’s still momentous. It still ranks with those rarest of instants, the ones we play over and over when we need a lift. Or when we simply can’t believe it’s happened.

Yes, this is dangerous stuff, luxuriating in a man’s legacy when he hasn’t even taken office yet.

So what. A lot of us have never been happy — truly happy — over a president’s election. I’ve been voting since 1980. Never…ever…been happy. Relieved, sure. But it’s not the same, not even close.

There was dancing in the streets. On our way home from Rocky’s Election Night Party, total strangers were momentary cohorts. It was okay to make and break bonds just to feel the fidgety joy well up and overwhelm all over again.

How you reacted to this election is the clearest window into your heart and soul as any this country has ever produced. I know a lot of Republicans, a lot of Democrats, and a lot of socialists and communists. For those of us on the leftier side of the spectrum, this is the first time we’ve rejoiced when the Big Checkmark went up next to someone’s name. Democrats had Kennedy and Johnson, Carter and Clinton, and Republicans had them a whole bunch of Nixon, Ford and all manner of Bush.

The rest of us here on the Freedom Road…nuthin’. ‘Til now, anyway. There have been other emotional, searing moments: Nelson Mandela walking out of prison, Stephane Matteau’s goal in ’94, the ball going through Bill Buckner’s legs.

That’s why pure joy is so much fun…because it happens so rarely.

Now the hard work starts, for all of us. In a final dip into the Big Kettle of Sports Parlance, here’s hoping that President-Elect Obama isn’t the highly-touted phenom who never measures up. Sure, he’ll do a lot of very centrist things. But there are centrists that govern and centrists too afraid to. For now, the President-Elect continues to get my support.

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Two sad losses last several days — the first, Studs Terkel, the amazing Chicagoan whose oral histories gave voice to working people when the halls of academia couldn’t be bothered. His books, including Working, Hard Times and The Good War were celebrated and reviled. Celebrated by people with hearts, reviled by stuffy higher-ed sorts who believed that only they controlled the keys that unlock history.

Terkel was vibrant, and he saw our march through time in bright, bold colors. “That’s what we’re missing,” he said, ruing our too genteel discourse. “We’re missing argument. We’re missing debate. We’re missing colloquy. We’re missing all sorts of things. Instead, we’re accepting.”

It blows, completely blows, that Terkel died before Obama’s stunning victory.

So good was Terkel that he was one of the few things my step-father and I could agree on. For Christmas one year I gave him The Good War, and he didn’t put it down ’til he was done. My step-father has never fully trusted the books I’ve given him. This one, there was no question.

“I want a language that speaks the truth,” Terkel once said. He not only found it, he wrote in it. Fluently.

And then, a couple of days ago, Miriam Makeba left the building. She’d just come off stage in Italy when she collapsed. She’d been performing at a benefit concert for Roberto Saviano, a reporter the local organized crime gang had targeted for death just for writing about them.

It’s Miriam Makeba. You know her history — fighting apartheid first at home and then, from 1960 ’til the ’90s, kept out by the spiteful and fearful Afrikaaner government. She could sing anything to anyone, make people dance and cry at the same time. Makeba’s voice was the perfect clarion call for the South African freedom movement — no mean thing, given the government’s banning of her music at home all those years.

“”I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa, and the people, without even realizing.” Makeba may not have…but in the townships in South Africa and people fighting to end apartheid everywhere else, everyone else realized, picking up the frequencies of freedom every time she sang.

Forgotten is the fact that South Africa wasn’t the only place her music was banned. In the United States, her marriage to Stokely Carmichael cost her record deals, concerts and t.v. appearances. And Makeba always protested that she wasn’t a political singer. That, of course, just made people pay closer attention.

The played-out metaphor about one door opening when another closes seems fitting here. Obama’s election is so electrifying and hopeful — at the same time we lose two of the world’s greatest hope merchants. Me, I think the door-closing-another-opening is a rationale to painful to evoke here. Sure, everyone dies. But it doesn’t mean the Big Clock has to be this heartless.

Time to immerse ourselves in Hard Times and sing “Pata Pata.” Might help in these days of hope and fear.

This week’s Rocky Sullivan’s Pub Quiz will be a not-long-’til-the-holidays General Knowledge affair. Come early for dinner, stay for the Quiz and attendant imbibing.

This week’s Guest Round is helmed by Amanda Hulsey, who asks only one thing from you — know all the ingredients in her Pot Luck for Masters quiz. This week’s Guest Music Round DJ is Lynley Wheaton, whose mix bases itself on a competition as old as the Pyramids…but fresh as today’s hit parades.

And…of course…there’s this great stuff.

* Individual potable prizes after each round;
* MissWit tee shirts — free tee shirts from Brooklyn’s most appropriately-attitudinal tee-shirt emporium.
* Rocky Sullivan’s Pub Quiz SuperMix Compilation CD — answer a super-tough question and win a mix CD of full versions of all the songs in this week’s Music Round;
* Special prizes from the Quizmaster’s Magic Bag Of Stuff You Can Live Without But Why Would You?
* Grand Prize — a thirst-slaking round for everyone on the winning team.

DON’T FORGET: As is custom, somewhere in this e-mail is a clue for this week’s Pre-Quiz Bonus Question. Get it right and your team earns five points before the Quiz has started.

The Big Clock ticks away…but it stands aside when Quiz Time comes…

Scott M.X.
Rocky’s Quizmaster

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Rocky Sullivan’s Pub Quiz
General Knowledge Night
with Quizmaster Scott M.X. Turner
This Thursday evening, November 13th
8:00 pm
free admission, potable prizes, per chance wearable winners and aural awards
Rocky Sullivan’s
34 Van Dyke Street
Red Hook, Brooklyn
F/G to Smith/9th Streer -or- F/R to 4th Avenue/9th Street Stations
transfer for the B77 Bus to corner of Van Dyke & Dwight Street, Red Hook
free Ikea shuttle buses and ferries, go here for more info: http://info.ikea-usa.com/brooklyn/
http://www.rockysullivans.com/quiz.html