Your Quizo Update, A Day Late and a Dollar Short

I hope everyone has enjoyed the holiday weekend. I know I did.

For Christmas I received the gift of warmth.

I mean this quite literally.

Christmas morning with the fam (aka "my parents"), we're opening gifts and I get to one of mine in a largish box. I rip the paper off and open her up to find a lovely Izod golf jacket, perfect for those early spring days. Not that I would ever actually PLAY golf in it, as whatever golf gene allowed both of my parents to coach the sport did not get passed on to me. While I can rip a 58 at St. Andrew's on Tiger Woods 2006, my actual golf skill is quite limited, and by quite limited I mean largely nonexistent.

(That reminds me; I need to pick up Tiger Woods 2007.)

Later on in the gift opening extravaganza I come across another large box, and upon opening it find a nice winter coat in a beautiful deep crimson.

"Your leather jacket isn't warm enough when it gets REALLY cold," my mother says. Fair enough. Quite thoughtful.

Towards the end of the present line I have one more large box left. Off goes the paper and the box lid and I find...

Another winter coat. Navy blue this time.

Now there are two interesting things about this coat:

1) The coat is made by a company the owners of which are guys I have, on occasion, played poker with in Atlantic City.

2) It is, by all observations, a second winter coat and third coat overall on the same Christmas morning.

I express my confusion.

"That's in case the first one doesn't fit you," my father says. "Plus, it's from a company called Double Down. That's funny. Because, you know, you play poker. And your mother's right, that leather jacket isn't warm enough when it gets super cold out."

It occurs to me at this point that the guys who make this coat, while nice and reasonably good manufacturers of clothing, are terrible card players. It also occurs to me that my parents are so worried that I will catch the vapors walking the mean winter streets of Philadelphia that they felt it necessary to get me not one, not two, but THREE coats for Christmas this year.

I then realize, after examination of the discarded wrapping paper and noticing the truly wretched wrapping job done on the boxes that my father actually got all three, so Inadvertent Parental Gift Duplication Theory does not apply here.

Funny old world sometimes, ain't it?

There were other gifts as well, all wonderful, but none frankly as funny as three coats.

Then the Eagles absolutely beat the living shit out of the Cowboys, which is about as nice a close to a Christmas as one could ask.

And HERE'S something of interest to at least two or three people. Tonight and tonight only I am honored - HONORED, I say - to be filling in for Quizo Legend Johnny Goodtimes whilst he vacations. I'll be taking over trivia duties at O'Neals (2nd and South) at 8 and The Bard's (20th and Walnut) at 10. I've never done two Quizos in one night, so this should be interesting, inasmuch as me going crazy would probably be something worth watching for sheer entertainment value.

If I don't see you tonight (or somewhere else along the line) everyone have a good New Year's weekend. We're off again Monday, so I'll see everyone in two weeks at the Dark Horse. Drive safe, be good, avoid evil.

JLK