Your "This Station WILL Be Completed On Schedule" Quizo Update

Very little this week again, I'm afraid. And I know the tournament results haven't been posted yet. I will bring them tonight and give them out to everyone. There is a reason for all this, though.

The reason is that I learned last week that I got a new job, starting this morning, at Lockheed Martin. Something to do with making spaceships and satellites and such. Yes, it's true, now I will finally have access to the orbital death lasers I have been threatening people with. As one person put it, "you'll be fine at work as long as you don't push the red button." Good timing, too, as I was just starting to get sick of playing poker so much. But the mad preparations for said job transition have taken up pretty much all of the last few days.

I will make up for these egregious errors in some way. Probably by bribing you all with candy. You seem to enjoy that. And rightfully so. Candy is quite delicious, after all.

Very quick tournament update: Alias Pseudonym Undercover is currently in first place, followed by Das Boot, followed by Oprah's Book Club. More details tonight.

All right, then, I'm off to build the Death Star. Gotta remember to mention that whole "exhaust port" thing in my first meeting.

JLK

Your Happy Holidays Quizo Update

Well, folks, tonight is our last Quizo for three solid weeks - I don't care how much Fletcher and Palestra Jon bitch and moan, I am not repeat not spending Christmas Eve with you lot - and as is our standard custom, tonight is our special Holiday Quizo. Bear in mind, however, that tonight's speed round will NOT be the Twelve Days of Christmas. I don't want a repeat of last year and certain people... let's call them, say... "Steven of the De-SEPTA-Cons" showing up with a pre-made speed round answer sheet.

So, yes, tonight is our big holiday bonanza. And I'll even have presents, though whether "presents" means "candy" or "insults" is something I have not decided yet.

Over the weekend I heard one of the songs from the new Sweeney Todd movie and suffice it to say I am underwhelmed. I am not a fan of Tim Burton movies to begin with, and having him turn one of the best (and one of my personal favorite) musicals ever into a cinematic train wreck does not exactly make my cup runneth over with anticipatory excitement. When you have two leads who while outstanding actors are not, shall we say, amongst the upper echelons of the world's great singers (which you basically have to be to even have an outside shot at performing Sweeney Todd remotely successfully), and you add to that the garish, emotionally-malnourished, utterly-without-subtlety hackery of Tim Burton, and those of us of a theatrical bent - if not the rest of the world at large - are in for a severe dose of disappointment.

I think I'm going to go watch The English Patient just to get the taste of Tim Burton's Sweeney out of my brain.

I will, however, before tonight's festivations, give you an early Christmas present:

http://tinyurl.com/3dq8m5

Just watch it. Trust me. It will make you weep with joy. If it doesn't, well, I hear there's a Tim Burton movie coming out that may be right up your alley.

JLK

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

Your Futher Deckage of the Halls Quizo Super-Update

Did I mention that I would have actual Christmas presents to give out tonight? I haven't decided on actual criteria as to who will receive them yet (not least because at this moment they number precisely two), but they will be there, to be sure.

Because - say it with me - I'm a giver.

JLK