Your "The World Is A Cauldron of Misery and Pain" Quizo Update

So yesterday we're at the pub for the League Cup final, which Chelsea did not win. Not only did we not win, we got our asses kicked. It was embarrassing. It was demoralizing.

After the game, this absolutely amazed me, I went outside for a cigarette, and when I came back inside - we're talking six minutes after the full-time whistle - ALL THE SPURS FANS WERE GONE. Every goddamn one of them. It was one of the strangest things I've ever seen.

As one of the Rangers guys said, "it's been so long since they won something they didn't remember you're supposed to stick around and celebrate."

The Chelsea guys - the hardcore group of us who are there more or less every week - stuck around for a solid couple hours, talking and hanging out and whatnot. I'm still pretty miserable about losing to FUCKING SPURS! but I'm trying to maintain a strong composure in the face of adversity when I go outside later for another cigarette. A couple of our guys are out there, also smoking, and they're talking to some woman. I've seen her around a couple times but I don't really know who she is. As I get down to the bottom of the steps and light my cigarette I hear her say, "so I'm on the couch at this bar and I'm hooking up with this chick," and I realize I have walked into precisely the right conversation to improve my mood.

For the next thirty minutes this woman goes into an extended dissertation about her preferred sexual practices that does not border on the pornographic. It transcends pornographic. Redefines it. Anything that might have once been considered pornography is now, in the face of this conversation, merely a vaguely engaging distraction.

This shit is HOT.

After a solid half hour of listening to this I think that the capricious and vindictive God that rules my existence has finally answered my prayers and sent me a single woman - and, believe me, I checked, no ring, no mention of boyfriend or whatever -  who, in addition to being a soccer fan, is clearly a raging nymphomaniac. I have completely forgotten about losing to Spurs. I have completely forgotten that my dry cleaner lost my jacket and I will be unable to attend our annual black-tie Oscar party that night. I have completely forgotten every cocktail waitress and dealer that I've ever had a one (or two, or three, or ten) night stand with in Atlantic City. I have completely forgotten everything in the entire universe and my brain is consumed only with the idea of somehow becoming a participant in one of the stories this woman is telling and how I would die happy - nay, blissful, contented, in glorious harmony with the whole of creation - if I could only get in on one-one-hundreth of the pure carnality that is apparently this woman's every waking moment.

Then she says, "so I guess that's why my husband married me."

Outwardly I say, "hmm, yes, seems so."

Inwardly I say, "WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK MAN! YOU GOTTA MENTION THAT AT THE FUCKING BEGINNING!"

There's burying the lead, folks, and then there's cutting the lead into lots of little bits and dropping them one by one out of an airplane flying over the deepest trench in the Atlantic Ocean where no one could ever hope to find all of them and reconstruct the lead into one solid piece ever again.

What's worse, I ask you: finally, after thirty years of (let's face it) mind-numbing insanity, seeing your dream come to life in front of you, or finally seeing said dream, and then having it yanked away a picometer from your grasp, and then getting kicked in the junk for good measure?

And - and and AND - we lost to fucking Spurs.

It's a miracle I haven't killed anyone today. It really is.

JLK

FUCKING SPURS!

Too depressed about the League Cup final to do an big explanatory post this week. Just the table.

Fucking Spurs...

After Week 4:

Team Name	Total Overall Points	Total Overall Quizo Points
Das Boot	19	165
Filipino Grigio	17	165
Alias Psuedonym Undercover	17	164
Oprah's Book Club	14	155
Rod Thorgelson's Armada	14	149
The Pros From Dover	4	73
Built Kozempel Tough	4	63
Two and a Half Years of Quizo Down the Drain	3	112
Darg Whores	2	37
The Apes of Wrath	2	22
Midgets In Heat	1	27
Girls On The Corner	1	23
We Put The Zero in Quizo	1	13
That's What Happens To Gay Cowboys	0	50
Cum From Behind	0	37
Ever The Twain Shall Meet	0	36
That's What She said	0	20
Reed Knives	0	14

Your "So, That Happened" Quizo Update

Well now.

We certainly can't say the last few days have been.... INTERESTING, at the least.

Thursday saw the long-awaited return of Lost, even if it is - at the moment - for a shortened eight-episode mini-season. There is talk now that this may not be the case much longer, that the WGA strike may in fact end as early as this week. It's too late to save most of the admittedly-limited television that I watch - even a settlement tomorrow would probably mean there wouldn't be new episodes of Lost or 24 until the summer at the earliest, more likely fall - but a resolution soon should save Battlestar Galactica (which doesn't start airing until March) and when it comes to television as long as Galactica finishes its run everything else can fuck off.

But that premiere on Thursday! Great googly moogly. When Lost is on its game - which is still most of the time - it's no worse than the second- or third-best show on television, the the fourth-season premiere shows it. The show has so many levels of awesomeness it's oftentimes hard to keep up with them. It's the little things that make a difference. For instance: when Hurley is hallucinating in the police station, his vision of Charlie swimming in the mirror puts his hand on the glass and it says "THEY NEED YOU." Or when Jack and Hurley are playing basketball and Jack only gets as far as H-O, which are the 8th and 15th letters of the alphabet (c.f. also Charlie "standing next to the Ho-Ho's").

Did you also happen to notice - I did not until my second viewing - that in the scene in the cabin it's Jack's father in the rocking chair? Oh yes.

Admittedly if you don't watch Lost this not only doesn't make sense but probably sounds pretty silly, but if you do watch it's FUCKING HUGE.

[Soccer content ahead]

Saturday saw some... well, I would say something like "quality soccer action," and the games themselves were great, but the results kinda pissed me off. Spurs (aka "fucking Spurs...") scored early against Manchester United and then actually played defense for almost an entire game, something relatively unheard of. Of course, the key word in that sentence is "almost" as they allowed a goal at the very end of the game, preventing Chelsea from closing the gap on United and Arsenal.

And, of course, Chelsea also chose not to help themselves in that regard, with an absolutely gorgeous goal from Nicolas Anelka - really, you should try to find it, it's quite something - cancelled out by giving up a soft one to Jermain Defoe, meaning that instead of us winning and United drawing and getting closer to first place, Chelsea drew when United drew and Arsenal won, meaning that by the end of the weekend we're actually FARTHER off the pace now. Of course, we are in the League Cup final in a few weeks and Arsenal is, let's say, decidedly not, so that's something.

[End soccer content]

Then there was the Super Bowl yesterday, which was... yeah.

Even the most ardent football fan has to admit that yesterday's game was three quarters of utter garbage. I mean, really, ugh. However, as I semi-predicted two weeks ago, some combination of a) whatever hideous black magic the Giants have wrought, and b) the expiration on Saturday of Tom Brady's Faustian pact meant that the New York Football Giants once again managed to eke out a win against a clearly-superior team and - inexplicably - win a Super Bowl in the process. Suffice it to say I don't think anyone really saw that coming, as the odds against either or both of those things happening had to be slim at best. Of course, revelations that the Patriots, hereafter referred to as "Cheaty McCheaterson," had been plying their rules-snubbing trade as far back as the Super Bowl in 2001 could, I suppose, have had something to do with it on some cosmic level. Karma's a bitch, yo.

Round 2 of the Tournament of Champions tonight. Results from last week are on the website. Let me tell you how much fun compiling all THAT was...

JLK

Your Return to Normal Quizo Update

After the... shall we say... generally adverse reaction to last week's e-mail I have once again returned to our regular format, providing you with your weekly dose of sarcasm and misery. This is not to say that I don't hope people occasionally laugh - though recent evidence indicates I am somewhat deficient in that specific area - but misery is more interesting, most of the time.

A brief wrapup of recent events:

Saturday morning saw Chelsea beat Charlton 1-0, which when you consider that Charlton may be the worst soccer team in the entire world (including, like, the Wissinoming under-11s) is not that great a result, especially when Andriy Shevchenko could have had about 4 goals if he would only remember that the key to scoring is to not kick the ball directly at the keeper. Chelsea's win did put us a scant three points behind Manchester United, though that certainly wouldn't last ( c.f. Sunday morning, a bit later)

Saturday night was Johnny Goodtimes Quizo Bowl 3, which my team would have won if I were not such a goddamned idiot. There was a time when I actually played Quizo quite regularly, but since it passed recently I have apparently gotten out of practice and am now subject to pathetic mistakes that cost me and my teammates many hundreds of dollars. I would hang my head in shame were I capable of shame or guilt; as it stands I merely get pissy at my teammates for not catching and correcting my wrong answers.

Sunday morning Manchester United was playing at Tottenham, who have an excellent record at home (9 wins of 12) and with a draw would close our gap on United to 4. Hell, a win would keep it at 3. Of course, neither of those things happened, Tottenham got absolutely thumped AT HOME 4-0 and drive United's goal difference into 6 figures. I spent most of Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon muttering "fucking Spurs..." to myself until just before the Super Bowl when I did my back carrying laundry, preventing me from going anyplace other than my couch for the game.

Then, of course, the game came on, and the Sex Cannon's antics made all the pain go away. We love you, Rex - never change. Not one bit.

Then Peyton Manning won the Super Bowl MVP and I got pissed again because he certainly doesn't deserve it. There's no justice, I swear.

JLK