Fruits of The Harvest Trivia Quiz

Answer: What's Eating Gilbert Grape

"What's Eating Gilbert Grape" was set in Endora, Iowa, and starred Johnny Depp as the title character, Gilbert Grape. The movie chronicled Gilbert's story as he cared for his mentally-disabled younger brother, Arnie (who was nearing his 18th birthday), his morbidly-obese mother, Bonnie, and his sisters Amy and Ellen. Gilbert spent a lot of his time looking out for Arnie, who often wandered off and got into trouble. Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for his first Academy Award, for Best Supporting Actor, for his portrayal of young Arnie.

This visit to the "Movies" category was provided by kaddarsgirl.

Answer: Pears

Lizzie Borden was suspected in the crime because she was the only family member at home when her father and step-mother were brutally murdered, around 90 minutes apart. Lizzie had claimed that she didn't hear anything because she wasn't in the house. According to her testimony, she went outside and picked up some pears from the ground around the family pear tree before heading into the barn. There she sat by the window in the loft eating the pears and then looked for lead for fishing sinkers. She estimated that she was there for fifteen to twenty minutes and ate three pears. The prosecutor pestered her about the pears, particularly since she said she hadn't been feeling well that morning. Her testimony quote, "I was feeling well enough to eat the pears" became famous and can even be purchased on posters.

This bit of "People" trivia was provided by PDAZ.

Answer: Darryl Strawberry

Darryl Strawberry was a big name in New York sports (both on and off the field) during the last two decades of the 20th century. He debuted for the Mets in 1983 and, after posting 27 home runs that season, was named Rookie of the Year. He continued to excel through the rest of the decade leading the Mets to a World Series championship in 1986. Known for his big swing home runs, Strawberry was also an agile base runner, becoming one of the elite few to have had 30 home runs and 30 steals in a single season. After short stints with the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, Strawberry returned to New York to play for the Yankees in 1995 and went on to win three more championships in 1996, 1998 and 1999. Off the field, he battled drug addiction (was suspended in 1995 for testing positive for cocaine) and colon cancer which prematurely ended his career in 1999. While his time post-baseball was marred with multiple run-ins with the law, most New York baseball fans remember him fondly for his amazing time on the field.

This stop at the "Sports" category was provided by bottle_rocket.

Answer: Grapefruit

"Grapefruit Diet" was included on Yankovic's 1999 platinum album "Running with Scissors". The song "Zoot Suit Riot" was inspired by the real Zoot Suit Riots, a series of racial conflicts in Los Angeles in 1943 in which zoot suit-wearing youths were attacked for wasting too much fabric during war time rationing. Yankovic preferred to base his song on food with lyrics that brought to mind his Michael Jackson parody "Fat":

"Who's that waddlin' down the street
It's just me 'cause I love to eat
Fudge and twinkies and deviled ham
Who's real flabby, yes, I am"

By the way, the grapefruit diet is a real diet which calls for having grapefruit or grapefruit juice with each meal, based on the disputed belief that grapefruit burns fat.

This visit to the "Music" category was provided by PDAZ.

Answer: McIntosh

The McIntosh (sometimes called "McIntosh Red" or "Mac") apple has a red and green skin and a rather tart flavor. It ripens in late September and is popular in New England and parts of Canada. The apple was discovered by John McIntosh in 1811 on his farm in Dundela, Canada, and the original tree was said to have borne McIntosh apples for more than 90 years. Jef Raskin, an employee of Apple Inc. named the Macintosh computer after the McIntosh apple, deliberately misspelled to avoid a dispute with a manufacturing company called McIntosh Laboratory. Apple Inc. trademarked the name "Macintosh" for their line of personal computers in 1986.

A bit of "Sci/Tech" trivia provided by kaddarsgirl.

Answer: Plum

Professor Plum was the purple playing piece in the original Parker Brothers game; some versions have figurines instead of the pawn-like playing pieces, and like the game Monopoly, there are special versions of Clue with movie or TV themes which don't include the traditional characters like Professor Plum. His given name was originally Peter, and he started out in the 1949 version as an elderly scientist, but over the years, he grew younger, and in the 1980s Master Detective version, his name was changed to Edgar, and he became an archeologist. In the 2008 Discover the Secrets version, his name became Victor, and he was now a video game designer. But other than having the last name Plum, he doesn't have much to do with fruit.

Spending time in the "Hobbies" category with PDAZ.

Answer: Liz Lemon

Liz Lemon, the creator and head writer of the "The Girlie Show", was played by Tina Fey on the Emmy-Award winning comedy "30 Rock". Inspired by her own time as head writer of "Saturday Night Live", Tina Fey created "30 Rock" in 2006 and it ran for seven seasons despite poor ratings in the U.S. However, television critics loved it and the series took home the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series for three years straight. Playing nerdy, neurotic yet lovable Liz Lemon, Tina Fey also received tremendous praise. She won an Emmy, two Golden Globes and four Screen Actor Guild Awards for her acting.

Watching the "Television" category with bottle_rocket.

Answer: Orange

The 1,367 mile/2,200 kilometre Orange River originates in the Drakensberg Mountains in Lesotho where it is called the Senqu River. It then flows across South Africa to the Atlantic Ocean, providing the water for Augrabies Falls in the Northern Cape province and forming part of South Africa's border with Namibia along the way. Early settlers in the area called the river the Gariep or the Groote, but in 1779 it was named the Orange, not for the fruit but in honor of the Dutch House of Orange.

Studying the "Geography" category with PDAZ.

Answer: Peach

"James and the Giant Peach" was first published in 1961, and told the story of James's escape to New York City. James was an orphan who was sent to live with his aunts, two terrible women who treated him very poorly. To get through the long days at his aunts' house in England, James made friends with seven garden bugs: a centipede, an earthworm, a grasshopper, a ladybug, a spider, a glowworm, and a silkworm. One day, James crossed paths with a stranger who gave him magical green "crocodile tongues". James accidentally dropped the "crocodile tongues" on a peach tree, which started to grow an enormous peach. James and his friends subsequently escaped on the peach, flying away from England. The story of James and his giant peach was adapted into a feature film in 1996, which starred Paul Terry as James and was produced by Tim Burton and Denise Di Novi, with music by Randy Newman.

Hitting the "Literature" category with kaddarsgirl.

Answer: The Banana Wars

Also known as the Latin American Wars, the Banana Wars took place in the early twentieth century; the exact dates vary depending on the source but the Spanish-American War of 1898 is often listed as the beginning date and Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy of 1933/1934 is listed as the ending date. During that period, there were a number of revolutions, border clashes, civil wars, and labor strikes in the Central American and Caribbean region, where American companies such as United Fruit Company and Standard Fruit Company had operations. The U.S. military was dispatched for the purpose of protecting American business interests; as one veteran, U.S. Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler wrote in his autobiography: "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service, and during that period, I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers." The 1990s-2000s Banana War was a trade dispute between the U.S. and European Union over banana imports.

A bit of "History" provided by PDAZ.