Destroy All Monsters – "Nobody Knows" (1979)

Where I come from

Nobody knows

I like to win at trivia competitions as much as the next guy.  It’s a great way to impress babes, of course – “Did you really know which two bordering New England states are the only states in the U.S. that elect their governors to two-year terms instead of four-year terms?  That’s sooooo hot!”  

(Here’s another clue for you all)

And winning a certificate worth 30% off your bar tab is nothing to sneeze at.

But what keeps me coming back to play trivia week after week are the zen moments when an obscure  answer to a seemingly impossible query seems to materialize in your mind out of thin air.

It’s almost an out-of-body experience when the trivia-meister reads a question that sparks nothing in the way of a possible response.  You gape at your teammates, but you don’t really see or hear them – your brain slows to a crawl, like a computer that has no available RAM because you have a hundred tabs open and a bunch of apps running in the background. 

But at the last moment, the correct answer is inexplicably but undeniably there.  “Where I come from, nobody knows,” that answer sings to you as you scribble it down on the answer slip and run it up to the host.

Mirabile dictu!  (And how!)

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I enjoyed one such zen moment recently, when we were asked to answer the following question:

Katherine Ross starred in this 1975 movie that was set in a fictional Connecticut suburb, while the 2004 remake of that movie featured Nicole Kidman. 

Most of the teams playing that night were able to come up with the correct answer: The Stepford Wives.  (I had no idea the movie had a sequel, so I was no help.)

Katherine Ross

The zen moment came when the host read the bonus question:

What was the name of the author of the best-selling book that those movies were based on?

The Stepford Wives novel was published in 1972.  That was a l-o-n-g time ago, boys and girls.  

I was familiar with the basic plot of the book, but I never read it – nor did I see either movie version.  But for some reason, I was pretty sure that the author’s first name had only three letters – e.g., Ian, or Ari, or something similar.

I also had a feeling that the author had a Jewish last name.  

Although I never read the book, I certainly would have seen the book at the library or in bookstores back in the day.  I had a vague memory that the book’s cover was white, with the title and author’s name in large black letters.

Unfortunately, knowing what the book looked like or correctly identifying the ethnicity of the author wasn’t enough to win us any points.  We had to provide the actual name of that author.

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Earlier that night, I had a minor zen moment when answering a question that asked us to provide three two-word answers – the first word of each answer began with “B” and the second word began with “A.”

The first two questions – one was about a famous traitor (Benedict Arnold) and the other was about a famous “Massh*le” (Ben Affleck) – weren’t all that hard.

King of the Massh*les

But the third one – “What two-word phrase became popular as a result of its repeated usage by a New York Morning Telegraph reporter in the 1920s?” – had us stumped at first.

As we brainstormed, one of my teammates offered “bad apple” as a possible answer.

I suddenly had a flash of inspiration, and wrote down “Big Apple” on the answer slip.  There was no doubt in my mind about that answer, and I was correct. 

I don’t think anyone on my team would have pulled “Big Apple” if I hadn’t come up with it.  But I would never have thought of that answer if my teammate hadn’t thrown out “bad apple” as a possible answer.

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The author of The Stepford Wives is, of course, Ira Levin.  (Levin also penned Rosemary’s Baby and The Boys from Brazil, both of which were adapted into movies that did well at the box office.  I didn’t read either of those books either.) 

I can’t explain why his name sudden popped into my head any more than I can explain quantum physics or Thomas Pynchon’s novels.

But it did . . . which meant we were awarded two bonus points . . . which came in very handy considering that we finished in first place that night by exactly one point.

While finishing in first place is always very satisfying, what was much more satisfying for me was somehow coming up with Ira Levin’s name – forty-odd years after I last thought about it (assuming I ever really “thought about” it).

“God works in mysterious ways,” the saying goes.

And so does the brain of 2 or 3 lines.

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My original post about “Nobody Knows” by Destroy All Monsters appeared on April 8, 2016.

“Nobody Knows” was the 1000th record to be featured on 2 or 3 lines post, so it’s kind of a big deal to me.

As is the fact that my post featured an interview with Destroy All Monsters’ frontwoman, the inimitable Niagara – the ne plus ultra of punk-rock femme fatales:

Click here to read that post, which includes a link you can click on to hear “Nobody Knows.”

Click here to buy that record from Amazon: