Your Increasing Entropy Quizo Update

A friend of mine turns 30 today - happy birthday, Brian - and I was at his birthday party over the weekend and came to a strange realization.

There were, I dunno, maybe 15-20 people at this thing, including a couple married folks who had brought along their kids. It was about as grown-up a party as I've been to in a long time, no wanton stupidity was on offer like fighting with Norwegian shipwrights (my 28th birthday), or people drinking beer out of saucepans with straws (my 25th birthday). Suffice it to say this was not a party in which anyone would end up sleeping in a bathtub (my 30th birthday).

I'm at this party and I'm taking it all in; everyone is just standing/sitting around, talking with each other, eating Brian's Delicious Food - back when Brian and I and a bunch of other guys lived in a house in college the rule of thumb was that Brian's food was always delicious - generally having a pleasant time while the few little kids hung out with each other and did, I dunno, whatever the fuck little kids do at grown-up parties their parents take them to.

At one point I caught a glimpse of said kids and was very violently hit with this wave of memories of MY parents taking me and my sister to THEIR friends' houses for parties when we were young. In fact, a couple people reading this will actually also remember those parties, from both the tall and short perspectives, so to speak. You know who you are.

It's Saturday night and I'm having pleasant conversation - well, as pleasant as I get in conversation, which still tends to involve a lot of shouting - at a party with people who brought their kids.

Then, the realization:

Oh, God, I have turned into my parents.

This knowledge didn't get any easier to take after I considered it for a bit. You may recall I was pretty sanguine about turning 30, but this one hurts. This one really hurts. This shit makes me feel OLD. My friends and I are (for the most part) respectable adults. We have responsibilities beyond (but not without) acquiring video games. We have to plan our social lives more than three hours in advance. We bring our kids to our friends' houses.

I've turned into my parents. Except for, you know, having two kids and a house and something like 5 academic degrees between them, but in all the ways that matter to my warped brain at this particular moment, I've turned into my parents.

My little Zen moment was broken when one of the mothers at the party - Christ I can't believe I can say that about people I know - came into the room saying "Kylie? Kylie?"

I immediately jerked my head up and said, "where? WHERE?!"

My friend Justin said, a look of absolute pity on his face, "not THAT one."

It turns out that she actually was looking for her daughter named Kylie and my hopes were dashed. Hey, stranger things have happened. I once saw Paul McCartney at a rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike; Kylie Minogue at a birthday party in Fox Chase isn't much more unlikely.

And, finally, there is hope that the Patriots' despicable unbeaten season can finally be stopped, since the New York Football giants seem to have acquired some sort of foul magic - voodoo, perhaps - that makes good teams turn to crap when they play the Giants. If you had told me four months ago the NFC Championship would have been between the Packers and the Giants and that, what's worse, the Giants would actually win I (and just about anyone else) would have laughed in your face and said that you were clearly insane, or at the very least retarded. Because, folks, I'll tell you what - the Giants are NOT THAT GOOD. They're not. But somehow they have managed to tap into the arcane energies of the universe to turn other teams that ARE good into total crap. The hope now is that whatever hideous black magic the Patriots have worked is not as strong, or that Tom Brady's Faustian pact expires on February 2.

One cannot live without hope, after all. So, you know, go Giants.

Wow, that hurt more than I thought it would. Think I sprained something...

JLK

Your Year in Review Quizo Update

Hello, good morning, and a hearty first-email-of-2008-how-the-fuck-are-ya to all the folks out there in Quizo land. I hope everyone's holiday - pick and choose whichever you may or may not have celebrated - was as filled with awesomeness as mine was. We're back tonight for the first time in three weeks and I hope y'all are rested up and ready to game it up - I came up with the speed round on Friday night and it is fan-freaking-tastic. I've been threatening to do this one for a long time and now I'm finally pulling the trigger. It's going to be great.

As it is the beginning of a new year, I am going to fully embrace the zeitgeist and present a quick "Best Of" for 2007. All entries are entirely subjective. In the event that you should disagree with any of my choices, please refer to the Palestra Jon Rule.

VIDEO GAME OF THE YEAR: A lot of choices, to be sure. Bioshock is creepy and beautiful; Rock Band is, well, it's goddamn Rock Band; Halo 3 I played once and regarded as just as phenomenally stupid as its predecessors but sure is pretty; in the end, though, the choice is fairly obvious: Portal. Why? Any game that has a psychotic, pathological liar artificial intelligence telling you "any contact will result in an unsatisfactory mark on your official testing record, followed by death" has to be it. Absolutely the most fun thirty bucks can buy. Remember: the cake is a lie.

BOOK OF THE YEAR: I read so many goddamn books in a given calendar year - and limiting ourselves to strictly regular books here, not comics, we're talking about a hundred-something on average - it's tough to narrow down a list, much less remember everything I actually read. In trying to compile even a top ten list one book kept jumping to the front of my mind, which more than anything I think means it probably should rank at the top: William Gibson's "Spook Country." Over his last few books the mad prophet of the future has matured into a deliberative surgeon cutting into the present, stripping away the outer layer of meaningless crap that covers everything to show you what the world is really like. Plus Gibson is one of the few writers who actually makes ME feel inadequate; his prose is so pristine and delicate it will - to steal a phrase of his - make your teeth hurt. That has to count for something.

ALBUM OF THE YEAR: This one is less tough since in the entirety of 2007 I bought precisely two new albums, and as much as I love Kylie Minogue "X" is certainly not her strongest effort. "Magic," Bruce Springsteen, der.

TV SHOW OF THE YEAR: Fuck you, David Chase. Fuck you sideways. Combine that gigantic Charlie Foxtrot with 24 going completely off the rails almost from the beginning, Lost bungling its first 6-8 episodes, the inexplicably-popular Heroes continuing to be one of the worst television shows I've ever seen; and 30 Rock, despite it's constant hilarity, being sort of all over the map, the straight-up best show on television was - and still is - Battlestar Galactica. I've said it before and I'll say it again: you are stupid for not watching it. Weeks or months or years from now you will watch it and say, "oh my god, this show is incredible, I can't believe how stupid I was for not watching it," and I will agree that yes, it was pretty fucking stupid of you. WATCH THIS GODDAMN SHOW.

COMIC BOOK OF THE YEAR: Dear Mr. Lucas - please read The Sinestro Corps War to learn how to make space opera awesome. It has everything your crappy Star Wars prequels lack: interesting characters, great dialogue, a compelling villain (several of them, in fact), and a plot you don't have to excavate out of a Mayan ruin to understand. Basically it will knock your socks off for every page from beginning to end. Short of reading this fantastic story - basically the only good comic published in what was a shockingly dismal year for the medium across the board - please never make anything ever again. Signed, The World.

MOVIE OF THE YEAR: Seeing a lot of great movies over the last year makes this a tough choice, but the problem is I still haven't seen a whole bunch of the big "prestige" movies yet. In terms of provisional choices, though, I actually ended up with a tie between Gone Baby Gone and, in what came as a shock even to me, Eastern Promises. Odds are you haven't seen either of these movies yet (few people have). I've talked about Gone Baby Gone before, which you'll now probably have to wait for the DVD (February 12) to see if you haven't already, but I got the Eastern Promises DVD over the holidays and holy shit it's incredible. I mean, WOW. I don't know when David Cronenberg became an actual mature filmmaker but Jesus Christ on a flaming pogo stick this is an absolutely flawless film. It is top to bottom perfect. You will not be disappointed.

All are of course welcome to discuss any surely-farcical deviations from the above, but remember the rule.

I'll see you tonight, then.

JLK

Your Snappy Comeback Quizo Update

A friend of mine has, for some reason, always had trouble with people informing him that smoking is bad.

For starters, here's a general hint for all you obnoxious non-smoker types out there: WE KNOW. We are aware that smoking is bad for you. None of us believe in the health benefits of smoking. We may be dumb, but we're not stupid. Smoking is bad. Duh. WE FUCKING WELL GET IT. Denis Leary does a ten-minute bit about this. We're all in the know on the subject.

So my friend has a standard response to occurrences like this. Whenever a random person comes up to him and says, "smoking is bad for you," his flicks his cigarette at their feet and says, "so is talking to strangers." I usually try to be a little more polite than that, offering an apologetic shrug or whatnot, although the really holier-than-thou anti-smoker is too annoying for words. I'll always take my cigarette someplace else if you ask. Well, not YOU people specifically, but normal people. I try not to be rude.

Saturday I'm driving home from the pub after Chelsea's 4-0 win and I'm stopped at the light at 3rd and Lombard. I'm barely out of the parking lot, obviously. Now Saturday was, of course, a beautiful day, and I had the windows in the car open. While sitting at the intersection I light a cigarette.

Almost immediately after this happens some 20-something hippie punk yells at me from the corner, very loudly, "SMOKING KILLS!"

This is the kind of anti-smoking person I hate. A person who is too young to know anything about anything shouting epithets at random strangers who are just sitting in their car trying to enjoy a cigarette and the opening track of Ultimate Kylie. Get over yourself.

Before I can get really, really, REALLY angry at this - which is what probably would have happened nine times out of ten - I get a shot of instant inspiration, and just yell back at him:

"SO DO I!"

It was the greatest moment of my life.

JLK