Memento Vivere: 2025 Trivia Quiz

Answer: "The Girls on the Beach"

With too many tunes to list, you can only go with a personal favorite. To be precise, "The Girls on the Beach" (1965) was the film where the Beach Boys appeared, singing the theme tune "Girls on the Beach." It is hard to know which other Beach Boys recordings to list as examples: "Good Vibrations" (1966), "I Get Around" (1964), "In My Room" (1963), "California Girls" (1965), "Surfin' U.S.A." (1963), "She Knows Me Too Well" (1965), "Help Me Rhonda" (1965), and let's throw in the entirety of "Pet Sounds" (1966) while we're at it.

Wilson was an idiosyncratic perfectionist, and revolutionized the use of studio equipment to modify the sound of the recording. Sadly, Wilson struggled with mental health issues for the last decades of his life, and was not able to bring his magnum opus, the album "SMiLE," to fruition. Nevertheless, he continued as a solo artist after departing the Beach Boys, releasing eleven albums under his name.

Answer: "New Math"

The great novelty songwriter Tom Lehrer sort of lived a double life. Much of his better-known stuff follows is witty, semi-academic stuff, at times even educational. Not too surprising since, after all, he also taught mathematics at MIT, Harvard, and the University of California. I have personally had his version of "The Elements" (1959), rattling the periodic table off to a Gilbert and Sullivan tune, since I was twelve.

Yet many of his songs had teeth, which kept him comfortably apart from mainstream success. He was proud to tell the Washington Post in a 2000 interview his popularity grew "more like herpes than ebola." "New Math" (1965) ruthlessly sends up mid-century public school reforms: "In the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you're doing - rather than to get the right answer." "We Will All Go Together When We Go" (1959) did the same for mutually assured destruction by nukes. And lest you think he was on high-minded satire, consider his ode to venereal disease, "I Got It from Agnes" (1952).

Not only was he hilarious, he was generous: in 2022, he relinquished copyright on the totality of his lyrics and recordings (at tomlehrersongs.com). He wrote there, "Help yourselves, and don't send me any money."

Answer: "The Najdorf Variation: Sicilian Defense"

The Soviet grandmaster Boris Spassky reigned as World Chess Champion from 1969 to 1972. Spassky's success in the chess world has been overshadowed by his resounding defeat by Bobby Fischer in the 1972 Match of the Century. But Spassky had many admirers, and even Fischer himself included Spassky as one of the ten greatest chess players of all time. Fischer said of him: "He can blunder away a piece, and you are never sure whether it's a blunder or a fantastically deep sacrifice. He sits at the board with the same dead expression whether he's mating or being mated."

Despite a measure of muck-raking by the American press, Spassky had an adamantine reputation as a gentleman and a sportsman, even applauding Fischer after resigning the 1972 match. His obituary in El Pais pointed out that Spassky, ironically, was one of the only people to remain friends with Fischer late in his troubled life.
(The Najdorf variation of the Sicilian defense is a chess opening.)

Answer: "Himmelsstürmer: My Life in Free Fall"

Felix Baumgartner was the daring skydiver who, in 2012, shattered parachuting height and speed records when he jumped from a height of 24 miles (39 km), reaching a top speed of Mach 1.25. Almost all the previous "space dives" attempted before Baumgartner's were unsuccessful (the previous record was set at 19 miles, or 31 km, by Joseph Kittinger in 1959). That isn't even close to all of his remarkable jumps. He flew across the English Channel in an experimental wingsuit, and has BASE jumped from the Millau Viaduct, the Taipei 101, the Petronas Towers, and the statue of Christ the Redeemer. Ironically, though he dreamed of flying often as a child, the pressurized suit he used gave him claustrophobia.

"Himmelsstürmer," made of the German words for "sky" and "stormer," is a common German idiom for a daredevil or (in the sense of a person) a shooting star - one so bold he attacks the sky itself.

Answer: "Killing Me Softly with His Song"

Although R&B singer Roberta Flack was very successful on the charts, her strong commercial standing cannot diminish the emotional complexity of her plaintive soul singing. Tracks like "Killing Me Softly with His Song" (1974), "The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face" (1972), and "Feel Like Makin' Love" (1975) cut a place in the marketplace for catchy yet subdued soul music. The Guardian described her as "quiet when quiet was unfashionable." Indeed, she is credited as a progenitor of the quiet storm subgenre of R&B.

Flack was a musical prodigy who was awarded a scholarship to Howard University when she was just 15. Several of her most acclaimed songs were duets with Donny Hathaway, including "Where Is the Love" (1972) and "The Closer I Get to You" (1978).

Answer: "Sick, Sick, Sick"

Known as a cartoonist - that was the work for which he won the Pulitzer Prize - Jules Feiffer was a true Renaissance man. His projects spilled over into novels, playwriting, screenwriting, animation and short film. A bard of New York City's Greenwich Village, he produced a long-running strip for the Village Voice, then later the New York Times, simply called "Feiffer." (Its original title, "Sick, Sick, Sick," was also the name of his 1958 anthology.)

His art style may be most familiar from "The Phantom Tollbooth" (1961), for which he drew the illustrations. His cartoon "Munro" (1960), about a four-year-old who gets drafted into the U.S. Army, won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film.

Answer: "All Things Considered"

Although I did not recognize Stamberg's name when I heard of her death, I know every detail of her voice. Susan Stamberg was one of the "founding mother" of National Public Radio, the nightly voice of the longrunning show "All Things Considered" from 1972 to 1986. True to its name, the show tackled much more than news: Stamberg's interviews were a highlight of the broadcast, and she continued to do them after she stopped anchoring "All Things Considered" in 1986. Of course, she was also an avid supporter of the medium of radio. Her NYT obituary records: ""I think the pictures in your mind's eye from listening are always better than what someone shows you on television."

She was famous for her yearly tradition of working her mother-in-law's cranberry relish into the broadcast (often awkwardly and hilariously). In September 2025, she retired a month before her death after fifty years of broadcasting.

Answer: "Lost Moon"

It's ironic to include Lovell on a list of achievements, since he is best known for, in his own words, a "successful failure." Jim Lovell captained NASA's Apollo 13 mission, which suffered a catastrophic loss of oxygen fuel on the first leg of its lunar journey. The level heads of Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert, combined with quick thinking from Mission Control in Houston, brought the three-man crew home safely, using the Aquarius lunar lander as a "lifeboat," and tube socks to attach their CO2 filters.

Lovell, it should be noted, was not picked out of a hat to lead the mission. Nor did all his successes fail. Lovell had already been to space three times, as part of Gemini 7 and Gemini 12, which bolstered the U.S.'s capacity to sustain men in orbit. Later, Lovell was on the first mission to orbit the moon, Apollo 8, for which he and his crewmates were named Time's People of the Year. After Apollo 13, Lovell went on to co-write "Lost Moon" (1994) with Jeffrey Kluger, the basis for the "Apollo 13" movie (1995).
(Quote taken from the Guardian's obituary of Lovell.)

Answer: "Amazônia"

Making black and white film ripple like wind over a lake, Sebastião Salgado was world-famous for his devastatingly beautiful photography. Famous for his photos of indigenous South Americans, impoverished miners, and harsh natural landscapes alike, much of Salgado's work is astonishingly chaotic. According to the Guardian, he disliked the "distraction" of color; the choice to shoot only in monochrome makes his photos disorienting, alien.

Following a temporary retirement, one of his last major works, "Genesis" (2013), took him eight years to produce. Borne of his desire to see "what is pristine in the world," it took him from his native Brazil to the extremes of Africa, the Arctic. Along with Salgado's son, the director Wim Wenders (of "Paris, Texas" (1984) fame) produced a documentary chronicling Salgado's life, "The Salt of the Earth" (2014). Many of Salgado's critics accused him of profiting by misery. "Misery, what is the misery?" he told the New Yorker. "I never, I *never*, photograph the misery. Never. I photograph people that were less rich in material goods. [...] They deserve to have a nice picture. Why not?"
"Amazônia" was his final book of photos, released in 2021. (All quotes from the New Yorker article, "Sebastião Salgado's View of Humanity".)

Answer: "Unguarded: My Forty Years Surviving in the NBA"

By the end of his life, the title of "Unguarded" (2013) was outdated: his career spanned over fifty years in total. First as a player, he played in nine NBA All-Star games. During the second of his four seasons with the Seattle SuperSonics, while still a starting point guard, he was named their head coach.

Coaching, it turned out, was where Wilkens truly excelled. Contrasting figures like Bobby Knight and Mike Krzyzewski (immortalized through images of them screaming from the sidelines), Wilkens was sedate and soft-spoken. While his rival, Celtics head coach Red Auerbach, focused on finding star players, the teamwork-focused Wilkens could seemingly turn any team into a contender. By the time of his retirement, Wlkens had edged out Auerbach to become the second most victorious among all NBA coaches The NBA ranked him one of their 50 greatest players of all time in 1996 - but one of their ten best coaches. He made it into the Hall of Fame in both roles.

Answer: "There's a Riot Goin' On"

The career of funk bandleader Sylvester "Sly" Stone can be demarcated into two main eras. Sly and the Family Stone's earliest releases were upbeat, danceable tunes, often laced with calls for racial unity, like "Everyday People" (1968) and "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" (1969).

After attaining heights of fame, Stone became something of a recluse, producing recordings within the confines of his mansion, and his music took a dramatically darker turn. "There's a Riot Goin' On" (1971), retitled in reply to Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On" (1971), captures Stone's weirdness (the title track has Sly yodeling), his wildness, his Black Power politics and, above all, his supreme grooves. Many consider the album Stone's masterpiece. In his book on the band, Joel Selvin wrote: "There was black music before Sly Stone and there was black music after Sly Stone. Simple as that."

Answer: "In the Shadow of Man"

Like Snow White, young Jane Goodall would tame birds at her window. But Goodall didn't want to be Snow White; she wanted to be Tarzan, the hero of her favorite adventure stories. In Gombe, Tanzania, her wish came true and then some: she was given the opportunity to observe chimpanzees in their wild environment, something considered too dangerous for anyone to do. She spent 20 years in the field herself and never lost her ties to the expedition established there. Running since 1965, her Gombe Stream Research Centre is the longest-running field station in the world.

Her observations were profound: she documented poorly-understood behaviors such as tool use among chimps, and made new discoveries, such as that they happily eat red meat. She also reported them hunting and caring for their young. Of her 32 books, "In the Shadow of Man" (1971), documenting the similarities of chimpanzees and humans, was a bestseller. Goodall's work in primatology and conservation earned her the Kyoto Prize, the Kilimanjaro medal of Tanzania, the Order of the British Empire and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.