Your Life Is Awesome Quizo Update

Well, let's be honest, it is, isn't it? Not even the fact that I'm still sitting at a goddamned end table in someone else's office (and will be for the foreseeable future) can change that.

The weather is beautiful, the Phillies are finally at .500, Chelsea won the FA Cup, and thanks to the strange fiscal schedule here at the hospital I have 6 three-day weekends in a row starting this week. This week it's actually FOUR days! Suh-weet.

I also watched Pan's Labyrinth this weekend, which is an outstanding movie, even if it is somewhat deceptively advertised. Suffice it to say that we should all be glad that Guillermo Del Toro passed on directing the Narnia movie. I also watched that two weeks ago and great googly moogly did it suck. But that was the week BEFORE this past week; before everything came up awesome.

Everything is truly coming up awesome because yesterday I had this conversation with my friend Chris.

Chris: So, they made the announcement yesterday.

Me: And?

Chris: Well..

Me: TELL ME! TELL ME NOW!

Chris: It's official. It's Starcraft 2.

Me: I see. (trying to remain dignified) Well, that's certainly good news.

Chris: Uh huh.

It is at this point that both of us start jumping up and down, waving our hands in the air and screaming like those teenaged girls you see on recordings of the Beatles first show on Ed Sullivan, "OH MY GOD STARCRAFT 2 OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

If you are not someone who is necessarily into video games let me try and explain. The announcement (and, by necessity, impending release) of Starcraft 2 is, essentially, the biggest news in video game history. The original Starcraft came out in 1998 and is STILL played online something like half a million times EVERY DAY. Ten years on I still play Starcraft. I will wager decent money that at least a couple people reading this e-mail still play Starcraft. Starcraft is a professional sport in Korea. I am not making this up. They show it on television. The best players are millionaires with money they made playing Starcraft.

Put yourself back in time - let's say about 1998 - when the actual release of the first new Star Wars movie was announced and you hadn't seen them yet and didn't know they were going to be absolute garbage that would take all your precious childhood memories, stomp them to death, set their corpses on fire, and then have a rabid dog piss on the ashes. The days when all that mattered was that new Star Wars movies were coming and they were going to be amazing and blow your mind and life would never be the same.

Now go forward a little bit to May 19, 1999 (and I am vaguely ashamed to admit I actually know that date from memory) to the release of The Phantom Menace, and instead of being the dreck that it was and ushering in 6 years of slaughtered hopes and dreams, it was everything you hoped it would be and more.

THAT is what Starcraft 2 finally coming out means. It is the Star Wars prequels of video games, only it's not going to suck. It's going to do far more than not suck. It's going to make life worth living again. I thought life was pretty amazing before - now that I know Starcraft 2 is actually coming, well, I can die happy. After I've played the game, at least.

It occurs to me that if you're not the sort of person who gets at least a little excited about things like new Star Wars movies (back before we knew that was a bad thing, at least) and the announcement of highly anticipated video games then Quizo may not be the game for you.

If you want some pictures of recent awesomeness, on the Quizo page - http://quizo.blogspot.com - there is a link to my online photo gallery, which has many things that are - you guessed it - awesome.

Also note - this week the boisterous trivia nerds of Das Boot will be going for their third win in a row, so be prepared to stop them. As a wise man once said: "My friends, this is our final hour. Not all of us may survive the coming conflict. Yet death may be a blessing should we fail here."

See you tonight.

JLK