CuriosityPoetry is just as much about exploring as driving across the country is. My husband and I took our two dogs on a cross-country road trip this holiday season from New Mexico to Pennsylvania in order to visit my parents in Lancaster County. On the way we listened to music, discussed history and pop culture and came up with a list of things we planned to look up when we got home.

Now our list of questions isn't earth-shattering but I think the important thing to keep in mind is that you should always have a list of some kind, always be looking to learn about random things, always have silly questions you need answering.

Here was our final list. I don’t know how our it ended up so gay-centric, but it did:

  1. Is Chris Daughtry still married? (Monsieur Big Bang had doubts but he is.)
  2. What did Peter Allen die of? (AIDs-related throat cancer. We love the song "Tenterfield Saddler.")
  3. How did Robert Palmer die? Was it onstage? (I was wrong; he died in his hotel room, not onstage, from a heart attack.)
  4. Are The Gossip Girls (the band) gay? (The kickass lead singer is out but I never found out about the others.)  
  5. How did Robert Reed (of the Brady Bunch) die? (AIDs-related colon cancer.)
  6. What is the kid from Deliverance doing now? (He’s a working actor and quite normal-looking, actually. Special effects were used to make him look so creepy.)
  7. What do people do for a living in El Reno, Oklahoma? (Never figured this one out but the town is unusually big. We got lost there looking for gas.)
  8. Who is singing with Miles Davis in the song “Blue Christmas.” (Turns out this is Bob Dorough, the composer and singer of the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons.)
  9. Whatever happened to producer David E. Kelly? (He married Michelle Pfeiffer and is now the producer of that awful-looking Robin Williams sitcom.)
  10. What hotel did Liberace play in? (The Hilton. We just watched Behind the Candelabra)
  11. Did Eric Clapton play lead on the Beatles song “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (I thought so but wanted to be sure. He is.)
  12. What was the Mason-Dixon line created for? (It settled a dispute between the colonies and the British in 1767. Later it was used to divide the North and South during the Civil War.)
  13. Why do we yawn? (They still don’t know! But there are many theories.)
  14. Do birds yawn? (Yes.)
  15. Is it me or does Zee Avi sound like Zooey Duchamel? Who sings the song in the movie Elf? (Zooey sings in the movie and there are many others who are confused by by this issue.)