Your End of the Line Quizo Update

We now join our regularly-scheduled Quizo update, already in progress.

- is freaking ridiculous,” I say. I told my father over and over again that I don’t like going to Caesar’s, that bad bad things happen at Caesars, but now I find myself not only at Caesar’s, but in a walkway suspended several stories ABOVE Caesar’s, blindingly turning my head to and fro trying to find my father so I can a) give him his stupid Koffee Kake, and b) get the fuck out of Caesar’s.

When’s he going to start talking about it?

“I’m on the walkway,” my father says.

“Dad, there’s like five walkways,” I say. “Telling me you’re on ‘the walkway’ is about as helpful as the traffic report on NPR.”

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” I say. The problem now is that not only am I at Caesars where bad bad things happen, which is enough to start giving me a panic attack in and of itself. I am also trapped in a glass walkway hanging over Pacific Avenue, which brings with it fears of heights, enclosed spaces, crowds, plexiglass, strangers, unsafe construction, gravity, and having cars driving under your feet. By now all of my neuroses are fighting each other for supremacy. I start to think it will be like Highlander. They will compete for The Prize, and there can be only one. I’m rooting for fear of unsafe construction.

He has to mention it eventually.

As I can feel what is most definitely a panic attack coming on I realize that given how often I go to Atlantic City a well-developed fear of unsafe construction will actually end up being quite

Come on, he can’t ignore it forever.

debilitating…

I’m sorry, can I help you?

We were just wondering when you were going to say something about the game.

Game? What game?

You know. Yesterday.

Game yesterday? Oh! You mean the MLS Cup Final. Oh. That was a great game. Really fantastic. I mean, I know I’ve knocked the MLS in the past but that was actually quite something. It wasn’t the Liverpool-West Ham FA Cup final or anything, but it was definitely the most entertaining MLS game I’ve ever seen. You gotta give up the love for Hey-Dude. Fantastic game. Loved it.

No, er, we don’t even know what sport that is you’re talking about there. We mean the Eagles game.

The what?

The Eagles game.

I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.

Yesterday? The Eagles played the Ravens?

Ee-gulls? Is that some kind of sports team? I really don’t know what you’re referring to here.

The Eagles!

Was it on at the same time as 24 last night? Because that was pretty good too. Not great, I mean, not like season 5 great, but it was better than the end of last year.

The Philadelphia Eagles! Our football team! They got embarrassed by the Ravens yesterday! You had to watch at least part of it!

I’m really sorry, but I honestly don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. Football? We don’t have a football team yet. It doesn’t start until 2010. I’m already signed up for season tickets.

AMERICAN football!

Sorry, I got nothing. “Eagles?” Never heard of them. Unless you mean the band that they mention in The Big Lebowski. “Man, I really hate the fucking Eagles!” Heh. Classic.

Ed Reed had the longest inter -

YES! FINE! ARE YOU FUCKING HAPPY? I admit it. I watched it. At least, I watched it until the end of Kevin Kolb’s second series. By then the MLS final was about to start and I couldn’t stand to watch anymore. It was like the end of a Lifetime movie, sitting by my young wife’s hospital bed as she died of Congolese Cattle Influenza or some other disease that Could Happen To Your Family, doing my best not to cry as she bravely tries and fails to cling to her last breath. Because the days of enjoying football are over. Oh, they’re over.

We have entered a new era, people, and let me be the first to say to all the Eagles fans/racist fucks in this city: congratulations. You got what you wanted. Welcome to life after Donovan McNabb. It is a dire, fetid swamp full of poisonous lichen and vengeful mediocrity. The sign over the gates of hell reads “abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” If there were a gate to this place it would read “be careful what you wish for,” though I suppose at the end of the day the underlying sentiments are largely the same.

Come on, now, that’s very negative.

Eagles fans are about to learn that the difference between not winning everything and not winning anything is like the difference between having robot-assisted micro-laser brain surgery and having a drunken veterinary assistant perform your appendectomy with a tuning fork. The next few years of Eagles football will be the latter. This isn’t so bad, though, since with the tuning fork around you’ll be able to keep your screams of agony from watching the Eagles on perfect pitch.

Okay, that’s some awfully unpleasant imagery, don’t you think?

The future, people, is bleak.

You’re very pessimistic, you know that?

Well, all right, not all of the future. There is one good thing to look forward to.

Oh, thank God! What is this impending ray of sunshine?

It’s next year. The first Sunday in February, 2010. Super Bowl Sunday.

I’ll be sitting there in front of the TV in my Chicago Bears #5 jersey. With my feet propped up in a recliner I’ll be popping some (non-alcoholic) champagne, smoking an expensive cigar, calling every single person who ever said they wanted Kevin Kolb or Jeff Garcia or AJ Feeley or whoever to start for the Eagles. I’ll be calling every one of them and laughing my ass off.

You are such a horrible person.

And then the next year, I’ll be doing it again.

single gunshot

THUMP

Remember – the price of getting what you want is having what you once wanted.

JLK

Your Divided We Fall Quizo Update

Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed the show from Pat Burrell yesterday, since it’s pretty likely his time as a Phillie is rapidly nearing its end. They’re sure as hell not going to pay him no 15 million bucks next year, and unless he’s willing to return for a lot less money he’ll be plying his slow-footed trade elsewhere come 2009. The Phillies re-signing The Bat certainly isn’t out of the realm of possibility – the numbers I most commonly hear bandied about are that the Phillies would be happy in the 5-7 million range – but I wouldn’t exactly ratchet my hopes all the way up.

For some inexplicable reason I have been a large fan of Pat the Bat ever since he arrived in Philadelphia. No one is quite sure why, although it might have been because I finally found a Phillies starter I could beat in a footrace. It certainly wasn’t for his, er, shall we say, extracurricular activities, which anyone who has been to a bar in the tri-state area the last 10 years can tell you a detailed story about. It’s interesting to note that since his engagement and marriage the Bat’s form has gotten much more consistent. Since the Bat had spent his previous years prosecuting… how to put this… an extremely exhaustive search for his one-and-only it makes perfect sense that his newfound contentment should provide such a soothing influence.

I, for one, am pleased by the fact that Pat the Bat has actually expressed a desire to stay in Philadelphia. I hope he does. They might replace him with someone who has actual speed, and that would make me sad.

Prior to the series I had predicted Phillies in 4 – I’m always right, in case you hadn’t heard – and I like the Phillies over the Dodgers and ManRam in 6. Beyond that, I shall not speculate.

While the Pat the Bat show and the attendant series-clinching goodness was going on, however, there was some OTHER sports stuff that involved a word just a single vowel away from “clinching” going down at the Linc. My thoughts on that debacle are documented elsewhere on the tubes (I’ll point you to it if you’re really interested), but suffice it to say that prospects are not looking good on the American football side of things. However, when one considers that Chelsea beat a very talented Aston Villa squad yesterday and the Phillies moved on to the NLCS, the Eagles’ buffoonery aside yesterday still has to count as a positive sporting day.

Moving on.

Last week while the House and Senate dithered over which version of the atrocious bank bailout bill to pass, this little exchange went on amongst the countries of the EU:

EU: The US banking crisis is going to spread over here! Sacre bleu! We must do something!

Ireland: Okay, we’re going to fully guarantee all deposits in our banks. That way our citizenry won’t run on them and cause a massive depression. Jesus fucking Christ are we sick of depressions in this country.

Greece: Hey, that’s not a bad idea. We’re gonna do that too!

Germany: What? What? You cannot do such a thing! This plan will destroy European banking! Nein! Achtung! Guten morgen!

Ireland: Okay, have you READ a history book? We really don’t handle hard times very well. We have this bad habit of “everyone dying” when this sort of shit goes on, and the United States isn’t exactly the “cheap starving refugee labor” market that it used to be.

Germany: You cannot! Ich bin ein Berliner! Mein lamen!

France: Perhaps if all the great nations of Europe got together and talked about this we could figure out a way to fix le market terrible!

Germany: Ja!

Italy: Si!

UK: I say, capital idea.

Spain: Hello? Hellloooo? Is anyone home? Hellllllooooooooooooooooooooo? (no answer) Fucking France.

France: So, how shall we prevent les disaster economique?

Germany: Well, we’re going to… er… (mumbles) have our federal government fully guarantee all bank deposits.

Ireland: I’m sorry, what was that?

Germany: Hm? What? We didn’t say anything.

Spain: (pounding on door) HELLO?! WE’RE STANDING RIGHT OUTSIDE, WILL YOU PLEASE LET US IN? HELLLLOOOOOOOOO?! (muttering) Fucking France.

It’s like a soap, only if Erica Kane had nuclear weapons. (And I spoke more German.)

Two more things to note before we go: one, Quizo attendance the last few weeks has moved past “just short of disastrous” into “actually disastrous.” I don’t know what the story is there, but we need to get some more bodies back on a regular basis and pronto. On a similar note, Alias Pseudonym Undercover is once again going for their third win in a row tonight, so please show up and stop them. It is a statistically-proven fact that the more teams there are the less likely it is that one specific team will win, or something. I don’t actually really know a single goddamn thing about statistics, but it sure sounds plausible.

JLK