Your Witnessing History Quizo Update

A bit of business first, folks.

I heard from Greg last week, and he swore by the name of Gym Shorts No Underwear - which is either very intense or blasphemous to the point of "hey, look out for that lightning bolt" - that he had nothing to do with the shenanigans involving my Barnes and Noble discount card. I believe him, especially when he mentioned that apparently anyone with the requisite information can affect a change like that online. I have recalled the exploding androids and put my vengeance on hold for a while and officially exonerated him.

Now, however, in light of this new information, you're all suspects. I wonder if I can still hire, like, Pinkerton detectives to track down which one of you is responsible. Because when I do, oh yes, boom.

Moving on to the meat of our discussion this week -

Though, as a Devils fan, I have seen the Flyers play the Devils several times at the Meadowlands over the years, the last time I saw the Flyers play the Devils in Philadelphia was in 1987. When I was that age I wasn't the Devils Fan that I would eventually grow up to be; at the time I just loved sports and watched whatever my Dad watched, which was the Flyers. For some reason, though - and even 20 years on I remember that at the time my reasons were murky at best - I had this strange, irrational hatred of Ron Hextall. I couldn't explain it. I hated the guy. Even though at the time he was the best goalie in the NHL that year - as as a rookie - and the next season would go on to be the first goalie ever to score a goal, I hated the guy. I hated watching him play. My father will back me up on this. For some reason I COULD NOT EVEN EXPLAIN AT THE TIME, at ten years old, I absolutely hated Ron Hextall.

Then, towards the end of the season, I found out (can't remember how) that Glenn "Chico" Resch was going to play an upcoming game against the Devils. As I hated Ron Hextall and Pelle Lindbergh had decided to drive home blowing a .24 the year before I was a huge Chico fan. I loved Chico Resch. He was old school. I begged my Dad to take me to the game. I probably didn't need to beg. My father is the person who taught me one of the abiding lessons of my existence, "life is good when you have the hook-up." I'm fairly certain he got those tickets for free from somebody, one of the unseen thousands of people he knows that can get you anything at any time. Except Phillies tickets, he always used to buy those from scalpers.

(Seriously, a .24, who gets that drunk at PRACTICE? I wonder how many people my age around here learned that drinking and driving is bad directly from that Swedish fuck.)

My memory of the game is remarkably specific. It was a Sunday afternoon, the Flyers won 7-5, and Tim Kerr (who at the time I was pretty sure was God, no matter what the parish priest said) and Peter Zezel scored 2 goals each. Dave Brown won a fight. And Chico Resch played. It was awesome. As it turns out that ended up being Chico's last game. After the Flyers got bounced out of the playoffs one game from winning the Stanley Cup he retired.

I've always thought it was pretty cool that I was at Chico Resch's last game. That, however, has been eclipsed.

Flash forward to now when I am given an early birthday present: front row tickets for Flyers-Devils at the Wachovia Center Saturday night, which is just ten different kinds of awesome wrapped up in one. I'd never been that close to a hockey game before.

Here's something you learn sitting in the front row that you don't from watching it on TV or up in the upper deck: hockey is very, very fast - much faster than you can imagine - and INCREDIBLY violent. When you're that close to it we're talking, like, Saving Private Ryan violent. Our seats were on the face-off circle in the Devils' attacking end in the first and third periods. About a minute into the game Patrik Elias slammed Jim Dowd into the glass directly in front of me and I just yelled "HOLY SHIT" because it hurt ME that much sitting there watching it. You see all the stuff that happens behind the play and you get a sense of how unbelievably fast they are and how hard these guys actually go at each other and you realize TV does not really do justice to how tough a game hockey is.

Going into the game I was worried that the Devils - who are not exactly having a stellar year - would get plastered by the Flyers - who are - and I would have to sit there in quiet consternation, simultaneously watching my favorite team get demolished by my second favorite team while trying to avoid getting my ass kicked by angry Flyers fans. We actually somehow luckily ended up sitting in a row full of old people and half a dozen Devils fans, and of course the demolition went the other way, the Devils ran to a 6-2 massacre, and me and the other away fans down there were up and screaming and high-fiving each other the whole game.

And - and and fucking AND - the game was Martin Brodeur's 500th career victory. FIVE HUNDRED WINS! (And, Flyers fans, how many Stanley Cups? Is it three? I think it's three.) He will almost certainly surpass Patrick Roy's record next seaon and then some. The next contender isn't close (and is so ancient the Ancients on Stargate are actually modeled after him).

Best. Birthday present. EVER.

Chico Resch's last game and Martin Brodeur's 500th win. Witnessing history indeed. Well, hockey history, at least.

JLK

Your "I Have Sworn Vengeance Upon Greg of Gym Shorts No Underwear" Quizo Update

This week's e-mail is going out a night early because I'm going to be busy all day tomorrow. More on that a little later.

For now, though, let me tell you another little story about the joys of shopping in New Jersey.

Last week I needed a new mouse and a cable to hook my iPod up to my laptop. I got myself over to the Ocean County Mall, where there is conveniently a B. Dalton - a subsidiary of Barnes and Noble, if you didn't know - right next to the Radio Shack.

Shopping at Radio Shack is always an excruciating experience - no, I don't want any batteries, just the mouse and the cable; no, I don't want the cable that lights up when it passes near a magnetic field, just the regular one; no, I don't want a replacement plan for a 12-dollar mouse; no, I'm not interested in new cell phone service; no, FOR CHRISSAKES I DO NOT WANT ANY FUCKING BATTERIES - but a bookstore (for me, at least) is a calming breath of fresh air after that kind of retail assault.

On a quick side note, in case you are wondering, they push them so hard because the retail markup on batteries is so high that it transcends into the realm of the obscene and the profane. Few people can even comprehend the high-level mathematics necessary to calculate said markup. Back in the 17th Century the Vatican tried to ban the teaching of that kind of math, calling it the work of the Devil. To give an actual, real-world example, back when I worked at the Death Star and employee pricing was store cost plus ten percent, the Jumbo Super Pack of 96 AA batteries retailed for about $75. The employee price was LESS THAN TWO DOLLARS. I am not making this up. This is why they want so badly for you to buy batteries. It is the retail equivalent of punching you in the kidneys and taking your wallet. It is as close as you can get to stealing in a legitimate economic setting.

Anyway, after escaping from the Radio Shack with my mouse and cable I headed into the B. Dalton and proceeded to browse for a solid 45 minutes. I already knew what I wanted - the Star Wars book which had come out back in August but I hadn't managed to find time to read yet, because I am both incredibly busy (up until recently, at least) and I am a gigantic nerd - but I basically checked out every shelf in the store anyway. You never know when you might find something else that looked interesting that you wanted to read. In point of fact I found about 14 things I wanted to read, but in the interest of occasionally sleeping and not spending 200 bucks at B. Dalton (that's WITH my discount) I just grabbed my Star Wars book and headed for the register.

When I got there the young lady working was very nice, polite, efficient without being annoying or prying - basically the perfect retail employee and the antithesis of the Cro-Magnon scum at Radio Shack. Also fairly attractive in a cute, bookish sort of way. Chicks with glasses...

Anyway.

When I handed her the book she said, "oh, this is great! You're going to love it. There's this great part where Jacen... oh, well, I'm not going to ruin it for you."

And she reads trashy Star Wars books!

Love at first sight? Could be, could be...

"Do you have a discount card?" she asks.

I tell her I do but I don't have it on me. I am well-versed in this drill, as even though I have had a Barnes and Noble discount card since roughly the time of the Crusades, since I lost in in a move years ago they have never bothered to replace it. I give her my phone number as per the standard lookup procedure, and congratulate myself for thinking of such a cunning way to give women my number, i.e. losing a bookstore discount card years ago.

"Okay..." she taps on the register a few times, then frowns at it. She gives me what can only be described as an odd look. "Is your..." she says. "Is your name... Goku?"

"I... what? No, it isn't. Goku?" I say.

Now, bear in mind, in case you aren't aware, "Goku" is a character from the anime Dragonball Z. He is a guy who walks around in an orange bathrobe fighting aliens, or something. I hate DBZ. I hate it. It is like the Criminal Minds of anime, giving the rest of the genre a bad name. How a character from Dragonball Z's name got on my account at Barnes and Noble is a mystery.

"Yeah, it says your name is 'Goku.' Is..." she reads my old address. "your address?"

"That's my address, yeah, but I can't figure how that name could get on there..."

My voice drifted off as I finally realized how it happened.

Greg.

A couple months back I was at the Barnes and Noble where Greg, late of the team Gym Shorts No Underwear works. I was buying a DVD - a new copy of Gettysburg, as I recall. He was working in the video section at the time, we chatted a bit, and when he rung me up he mentioned that my discount card was about to expire and do I want to renew it? I knew that getting people to obtain or renew discount cards was a fairly big deal for folks who work at such places (having been one myself once upon a time), and he's a pal, might as well give him the sale rather than the bitchy old lady who works the front register at that particular store. So I toss him my licence so he can put all the information back in the system.

And, lo and behold, here I am at another B&N store and my name on their system comes up as "Goku."

I think, there will be blood for this.

"Oooohhhhhh, I know how it happened," I say, realizing too late that the whole "blood" thing may have seeped into my voice more than was probably smart.

"Do you want me to update it?" the cute bookstore girl who now obviously thinks I'm some sort of psychopath says.

"No," I say. "I'll take care of this personally."

So, Greg, as a great man once said, I will have my vengeance in this life or the next. We're talking the full monty here. Assassins. Ninjas. Boxes of plagued rats. Killer exploding androids. Orbital death lasers. THE WORKS. I am coming for you and yours and nothing can stop me. My beautiful moment with a chick I talked to for 19 seconds at a bookstore was ruined and I WILL HAVE VENGEANCE! VENGEANCE SHALL BE MINE, GREG, THUS SAYETH THE QUIZO GUY!

Unless Greg didn't actually do it, in which case, well... it's probably too late for that sentiment. Those orbital death lasers don't re-task themselves, you know.

In closing, note that one of the things keeping me busy tomorrow is the showing of the Battlestar Galactica movie at the Riverview before the game - gigantic nerd, remember - which MAY cause me to be SLIGHTLY late for Quizo tomorrow night. We're talking five, ten minutes tops, nothing of, say, Johnny Goodtimes proportions.

(Just kidding, Johnny is the best.)

See you tomorrow night, then, when I'll be on my post-Galactica high.

JLK

Because, deep down, I'm a giver

And, frankly, an awful lot of you could stand to read some more. Yes, LaSalle kids, I'm looking at you.

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/thisweek/store.asp?r=1&PID=14864

JLK