Your Monumental Quizo Update

As we all should know by now, tonight marks the 100th Dark Horse Quizo, an event commemorated by the phrase (as coined by Alias Pseudonym Undercover):

"It's Going To Be Great; Don't Tell Your Friends."

Let me tell you, I went back and forth for a long time on whether to use a comma or a semicolon there. I'm a big fan of the semicolon. When used properly it allows for the sorts of long, hideously complex sentences that we all know I am a large fan of. But in a Quizo slogan? There was a fierce internal debate about this one, but I eventually decided that strict grammatical accuracy had to win out over aesthetics.

What's on tap for tonight, then?

Well, in a new effort on my part to achieve if not 100% honesty than at least 80 or 85%, I have to say that I'm not entirely sure what just yet. The one thing I am sure of is that tonight's money round will be at the Special Quizo Rate of $10 a team, if for no other reason than to give the winning team a little more money. Also, after the fiasco last week of Das Boot and Sunshine Happy Face -

Side note, seriously, RC and crew, show up with that name again and MONDO BAD SHIT is gonna happen that will make the William McKinley thing look like a walk in the park -

After the money round fiasco last week of those two teams betting each other 20 bucks that they would win and then getting trounced by a team led by a friend of mine who was a Quizo first-timer and who I am not entirely certain has more than a sixth-grade education (he's from Florida), I'm tempted to put forth... not so much a "rule," necessarily, as a "strong suggestion" that "if you don't follow your team will almost certainly lose" that if you're going to make side bets on the money round you have to toss that money into the pot to make it interesting for everyone. Surely, if you think you're good enough to bet Team X that you're going to win you must think you're good enough to put that money up for grabs for everyone.

It is just as sure that by now everyone realizes that Quizo is not so much a trivia game as it is a chance for me to teach certain people a little humility. And by "a little" I mean "any." And by "certain people" I mean "Das Boot." And by "Das Boot" I mean "Fletcher."

So, yes, tonight will feature a $10 money round and some as-yet-undetermined other prize offerings. I don't know if tonight will be as well-attended as the Two-Year Anniversary Quizo, but then again the anniversary Quizo wasn't as well-attended as the game two weeks ago when we had 18 freaking teams, so who can guess at these things anymore? I would still recommend an early arrival, though.

Also be aware, for those of us who are Quizo beginners, that the Quizo website - http://quizo.blogspot.com - has the full text of this e-mail every week, along with a few links that, if carefully perused, are usually guaranteed to give you anywhere from one to four answers in a given week. So there's that.

Final note: driving home from the shore last night I stopped at a 7-11 (a non-Kwik-E-Mart 7-11, since apparently small towns in Central New Jersey don't rate this kind of promotion) for a drink, and after I paid for it the guy behind the counter handed me my change and said - I am not making this up - "have a day."

I thought, "how existential of him," then proceeded to spend most of the drive home trying very hard not to hit the VAST HORDES OF DEER that infest Routes 530 and 70. Cause that's, you know, fun.

JLK