IN: Fisk was born in Bellows Falls, Vermont, but according to Fisk, that was only because Vermont had the nearest hospital to his hometown, Charlestown, New Hampshire. He grew up in Charlestown, across the Connecticut River from Bellows Falls, and attended Charlestown High School, where he played baseball and basketball. Because his family is from New Hampshire, he insisted that the organization remove from his plaque in the Red Sox Hall of Fame its characterization of him as a Vermont native. Fisk earned his longtime nickname, "Pudge", because he was a chubby youngster.

Fisk was known for his longstanding feud with New York Yankees catcher Thurman Munson. One particular incident that typified their feud, and the Yankees - Red Sox rivalry in general, occurred on August 1, 1973, at Fenway Park. With the score 2-2 in the top of the ninth inning, Munson, attempting to score on Gene Michael's missed bunt attempt, barreled into Fisk, triggering a 10-minute bench-clearing brawl in which both catchers were ejected. As John Curtis let his first pitch go, Munson broke for the plate. Michael tried to bunt, and missed. With Munson coming, the scrawny Yankees shortstop tried to step in Fisk's way, but Fisk elbowed him out of the way and braced for Munson, who crashed into him as hard as he could. Fisk held onto the ball, but Munson tried to lie on top of him to allow Felipe Alou to keep rounding the bases. Fisk kicked Munson off him and into the air, and swiped at him with his fist. Michael grabbed Fisk, and as Curtis grabbed Munson--his former Cape Cod League roommate--Fisk threw Michael down with his left arm and fell to the ground. "Fisk had his left arm right across Stick's throat and wouldn't let up", said Ralph Houk, the Yankees' manager at the time. "Michael couldn't breathe. I had to crawl underneath the pile to try to pry Fisk's arm off his throat to keep him from killing Stick. All the while he had Michael pinned down, he was punching Munson underneath the pile. I had no idea Fisk was that strong, but he was scary." In another incident typifying the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, Fisk was involved in an altercation with Lou Piniella during a May 20, 1976, game at Yankee Stadium. In the sixth inning of this game, Piniella barreled into Fisk trying to score on an Otto Velez single. Fisk and Piniella shoved each other at home plate, triggering another bench-clearing brawl. After order appeared to be restored, Red Sox pitcher Bill Lee and Yankees third baseman Graig Nettles began exchanging words and punches, igniting the brawl anew. Lee suffered a separated left shoulder in the altercation and missed much of the season. In an incident on May 22, 1990, NFL and MLB player Deion Sanders, then with the Yankees, hit a pop fly, and declined to run to first base, suspecting that the ball would be easily caught. Fisk yelled at Sanders to run the ball out and told Sanders during his next at-bat, "There is a right way and a wrong way to play this game. You're playing it the wrong way. And the rest of us don't like it. Someday, you're going to get this game shoved right down your throat."
QUESTION: Were there ever any injuries?
IN: P. D. Q. Bach is a fictitious composer invented by musical satirist "Professor" Peter Schickele. Schickele developed a five-decade-long career, performing the "discovered" works of the "only forgotten son" of the Bach family. Schickele's music combines parodies of musicological scholarship, the conventions of Baroque and classical music, and slapstick. The name "P. D. Q." is a parody of the three-part names given to some members of the Bach family that are commonly reduced to initials, such as C. P. E., for Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach.

Schickele's works attributed to P. D. Q. Bach often incorporate comical rearrangements of well-known works of other composers. The works use instruments not normally used in orchestras, such as the bagpipes, slide whistle, kazoo, and fictional or experimental instruments such as the pastaphone (made of uncooked manicotti), tromboon, hardart, lasso d'amore, and left-handed sewer flute. There is often a startling juxtaposition of styles within a single P. D. Q. Bach piece. The Prelude to Einstein on the Fritz, which alludes to Philip Glass' opera Einstein on the Beach, provides an example. The underlying music is J.S. Bach's first prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier, but at double the normal speed, with each phrase repeated interminably in a minimalist manner that parodies Glass's. On top of this mind-numbing structure is added everything from jazz phrases to snoring to heavily harmonized versions of "Three Blind Mice" to the chanting of a meaningless phrase ("Koy Hotsy-Totsy," alluding to the art film Koyaanisqatsi for which Glass wrote the score). Through all these mutilations, the piece never deviates from Bach's original harmonic structure. The humor in P. D. Q. Bach music often derives from violation of audience expectations, such as repeating a tune more than the usual number of times, resolving a musical chord later than usual or not at all, unusual key changes, excessive dissonance, or sudden switches from high art to low art. Further humor is obtained by replacing parts of certain classical pieces with similar common songs, such as the opening of Brahms' Symphony No. 2 with "Beautiful Dreamer", or rewriting Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture as the 1712 Overture, with "Yankee Doodle" replacing Tchaikovsky's melody, and "Pop Goes the Weasel" replacing "La Marseillaise".
QUESTION:
What was the pastaphone made of?