Your Maturity Arrives Quizo Update

It's nice to know that I have finally advanced to a state where I can still hate Los Angeles - I mean seriously, deeply, intensely hate, like fondly remember the end of Transformers not just because it had giant robots but because they DESTROYED FUCKING LOS ANGELES YEAH! - but that I am now able to at least set that aside for a few days and have a good time out there. The sense that I essentially spent four days pillaging every remotely enjoyable thing in Los Angeles County helps. It makes me feel kinda like a pirate. Because, you know, they pillage stuff. Or is that Vikings? Eh, I'm fine with that too.

Of course, Chelsea beating the LA David Beckhams (nee Galaxy), Joe Cole autographing my jersey, sunny, 75 degrees, 10MPH breeze and no humidity every second of every day, getting kicked out of at least two bars, being interviewed on Australian television, and a free, private Paul Oakenfold show helped.

Pictures and video are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/john.kozempel/LosAngeles2007

I hope everyone is looking forward to hearing about this trip for the next five to six months, since it was so awesome it seems unlikely I'll talk about anything else.

JLK

Your Strength and Honor Quizo Update

I hope everyone has enjoyed their two-week vacation from the rigors of the competitive trivia world. For my part I have tried to take little mini-vacations the last two weekends and been thwarted at every turn. Ordinarily this would bother me, but since getting a new boss maybe 2 months back work has become such an untenable nightmare that I'm pretty much okay with being anyplace on earth so long as it isn't my office.

This past weekend my vacation lasted almost 12 hours, and I spent about 3 of them watching a late-night showing of Gladiator, a film which bears a number of important characteristics:

1) I have seen Gladiator, and I am not exaggerating for comic effect here, about 20 times. It has some kind of hypnotic effect on me. I distinctly remember seeing it three times in the theatre upon its original release, a record surpassed by only one film* and shared by only two**. If it is on television I cannot turn it off, nor can I stop watching television once I have discovered it is on. Add to this the four - FOUR! - separate times I've purchased it on DVD (once when it came out, once to replace that disc when it mysteriously vanished, once to replace the replacement that I loaned to a friend*** and never saw again, and finally the three-disc Super Tiger Dragon Edition that came out last year) and the fact that I watch said DVDs on the order of about twice a year at least and it becomes fairly clear that I am, suffice it to say, a fan.

2) Gladiator is one of only two films at the end of which I am absolutely guaranteed to weep like a little girl. ****

3) It is also near (if not at) the top of my list of Movies Which If You Do Not Think Are Great You Are Clearly Have Some Kind of Mental Disability, Or Possibly Have A Large Knife Sticking Out Of The Side Of Your Head. A while back Dan (of Das Boot, who we will get to in a moment) was asking around for people's lists of their Favorite/Best Movies in an admirable attempt to gain himself some culture to go along with all that medical book-learnin' of his, and he seemed surprised when I proclaimed Gladiator one of my all-time Top 5 favorite films.***** He should not have been. It is clearly a modern classic, and if you don't think so I suggest you keep such thoughts to yourself lest I find your handwriting has become inexplicably illegible and thus have to mark all of your answers wrong for the next five weeks.

In other news, after Das Boot's historic third win in a row two weeks ago, they have picked a speed round topic which I find perfectly acceptable. However, it will not actually be played until next week, as tonight's speed round will be our (slightly-delayed) classic Memorial Day topic "Dead or Alive." Everyone's favorite.

JLK


















* The Matrix
** Goldeneye and X-Men
*** his name is Jason, and if you're reading this, keep it, you thieving bastard
**** the other being The Return of the King
***** in no particular order: Gladiator, The Empire Strikes Back, The Lord of the Rings (which counts as one movie), The Big Lebowski, and Casablanca

Your No Quizo Non-Quizo Update

Just a reminder for anyone who wasn't there this past week - this Monday night, Memorial Day, there is in fact NO QUIZO. The bar will be closed and I will be at the shore, so don't even bother showing up.

Everyone enjoy the holiday weekend. Perhaps do what I did and catch a movie with some pirates in it. You will not be disappointed. Unless you're one of those people who don't have a soul, then you might be.

Have fun, all.

JLK

Your Life Is Awesome Quizo Update

Well, let's be honest, it is, isn't it? Not even the fact that I'm still sitting at a goddamned end table in someone else's office (and will be for the foreseeable future) can change that.

The weather is beautiful, the Phillies are finally at .500, Chelsea won the FA Cup, and thanks to the strange fiscal schedule here at the hospital I have 6 three-day weekends in a row starting this week. This week it's actually FOUR days! Suh-weet.

I also watched Pan's Labyrinth this weekend, which is an outstanding movie, even if it is somewhat deceptively advertised. Suffice it to say that we should all be glad that Guillermo Del Toro passed on directing the Narnia movie. I also watched that two weeks ago and great googly moogly did it suck. But that was the week BEFORE this past week; before everything came up awesome.

Everything is truly coming up awesome because yesterday I had this conversation with my friend Chris.

Chris: So, they made the announcement yesterday.

Me: And?

Chris: Well..

Me: TELL ME! TELL ME NOW!

Chris: It's official. It's Starcraft 2.

Me: I see. (trying to remain dignified) Well, that's certainly good news.

Chris: Uh huh.

It is at this point that both of us start jumping up and down, waving our hands in the air and screaming like those teenaged girls you see on recordings of the Beatles first show on Ed Sullivan, "OH MY GOD STARCRAFT 2 OH MY GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

If you are not someone who is necessarily into video games let me try and explain. The announcement (and, by necessity, impending release) of Starcraft 2 is, essentially, the biggest news in video game history. The original Starcraft came out in 1998 and is STILL played online something like half a million times EVERY DAY. Ten years on I still play Starcraft. I will wager decent money that at least a couple people reading this e-mail still play Starcraft. Starcraft is a professional sport in Korea. I am not making this up. They show it on television. The best players are millionaires with money they made playing Starcraft.

Put yourself back in time - let's say about 1998 - when the actual release of the first new Star Wars movie was announced and you hadn't seen them yet and didn't know they were going to be absolute garbage that would take all your precious childhood memories, stomp them to death, set their corpses on fire, and then have a rabid dog piss on the ashes. The days when all that mattered was that new Star Wars movies were coming and they were going to be amazing and blow your mind and life would never be the same.

Now go forward a little bit to May 19, 1999 (and I am vaguely ashamed to admit I actually know that date from memory) to the release of The Phantom Menace, and instead of being the dreck that it was and ushering in 6 years of slaughtered hopes and dreams, it was everything you hoped it would be and more.

THAT is what Starcraft 2 finally coming out means. It is the Star Wars prequels of video games, only it's not going to suck. It's going to do far more than not suck. It's going to make life worth living again. I thought life was pretty amazing before - now that I know Starcraft 2 is actually coming, well, I can die happy. After I've played the game, at least.

It occurs to me that if you're not the sort of person who gets at least a little excited about things like new Star Wars movies (back before we knew that was a bad thing, at least) and the announcement of highly anticipated video games then Quizo may not be the game for you.

If you want some pictures of recent awesomeness, on the Quizo page - http://quizo.blogspot.com - there is a link to my online photo gallery, which has many things that are - you guessed it - awesome.

Also note - this week the boisterous trivia nerds of Das Boot will be going for their third win in a row, so be prepared to stop them. As a wise man once said: "My friends, this is our final hour. Not all of us may survive the coming conflict. Yet death may be a blessing should we fail here."

See you tonight.

JLK

Your Disturbingly Detailed Flashback Quizo Update

Apologies for length. This one got away from me a little bit, but it was worth it.

On my way to work every morning there is a light - at Ryan Avenue and the Boulevard, for those inexplicably keeping track of my route to work - that I have actually successfully driven through without stopping I believe four times in my entire life. It's one of those weird things. It's an intersection I end up at approximately 800 times a week, since you have to go through it to go essentially anywhere that isn't Center City. And I always get stuck at it. It's one of those things you get used to.

This morning, for whatever reason - Monday is usually the lightest traffic day of the week - the wait at the light was much, much longer than usual, stretching back a solid three blocks. While I was sitting there, for some reason, I had a flashback to another time I was sitting in traffic, although that one was much more weird and scary.

Many years ago me and a friend of mine, let's call him... say... "Patrick" decided to go to Boston for a long weekend to visit a friend of ours who had recently moved there. For some reason - this part is hazy, it may have possibly been because I didn't have a car at the time - Patrick was going to drive us up there on a Friday afternoon. This was a spectacularly bad idea for any number of reasons, the foremost among which is that Patrick was (and to an extent still is) completely incapable of successfully driving anywhere without laser-guided telemetry to get him there. The first time he tried to go to my house when we were in college he ended up at a bowling alley 21 miles past my house. TWENTY ONE MILES.

Boston, if you've never driven it, is roughly a six hour drive from here. Patrick picked me up at noon. We arrived at our friend's apartment on Beacon Hill at 10:30PM.

Here's how you make it take ten and a half hours to get to Boston:

First, you have someone drive you who, I am fairly certain, cannot always discern their right from their left. Then you have this person make only a cursory glance at a road atlas and think that this road here, yeah, 95, sure, that can take us the whole way, right?

So, instead of taking (if I'm remembering correctly) the New Jersey Turnpike up PAST New York City to... the Merritt Parkway? I honestly forget... you take the Turnpike INTO New York City and try to cross the GW and hack your way through the Bronx and suburban Connecticut on 95. Now years before we had them here they had those giant LCD signs on 95 in Connecticut, and once we get across the GW (elapsed bridge time: 45 minutes) and finally get moving, the sign says "HEAVY TRAFFIC APPROACHING DARIEN, CT"

When we see that sign Patrick begins rummaging in the space behind the seats with his right hand. Eventually he pulls out a map and says words that, to this day, echo in my nightmares:

"Find us a better way."

I find what I think is a way for us to get to the Merritt Parkway without undue distress. This, of course, does not happen. After taking the first exit we can, Patrick first turns west, i.e. AWAY from Boston, and after much screaming we finally make it onto this OTHER highway which is, of course, at a dead stop.

"This is all your fault," Patrick says.

"How is this MY fault?" I am neglecting to mention that while the actual ROUTE is entirely my fault, the idea to take it and the execution is all him.

"We were MOVING on 95," Patrick says.

"Fucking turkeys," I say.

"I, ah... I've never heard traffic described that way." Patrick sounds confused.

"No," I say, pointing at a flock of wild turkeys on the highway embankment. "Turkeys. Over there." Like 20 turkeys just sitting around watching the traffic. This is my first ever exposure to the state of Connecticut and between turkeys and traffic I am unthrilled to say the least.

"That's something you don't see every day."

"I don't get stuck on a random highway in the middle of Connecticut every day either."

"Shut up."

At this point we've been in the car for maybe three hours. Eventually we get to a point where what we're on is moving and it is determined -rightly or wrongly - that we need to get back onto 95. There is some kind of highway spur that goes to 95 through New Haven, which at that point I understood to be a slightly dingier place than Hell.

Traffic has been moving for a while and we're on this spur back to 95 when Patrick turns to me and says - I swear to God these were his exact words because they will be burned into my brain until the day I die - "I don't want to alarm anyone, but we don't have any brakes."

Despite Patrick's attempts to the contrary I am considerably alarmed.

We manage to limp off the highway and into a Pep Boys that was INCREDIBLY conveniently located right off the exit. It is now 5:30 in the afternoon on a Friday (5 and a half hours to New Haven, BTW). The mechanics have all gone home. The people working at the Pep Boys are telling us that we can leave the Jeep there and someone could possibly look at it Saturday morning, but that it's also possible the sun could explode on Saturday morning and the two things are about AS possible, and more than likely it will be Monday before someone looks at the brakes.

My vacation weekend in Boston is rapidly turning into my weekend sitting in a motel across the street from a Pep Boys in New Haven (which, until I would go to Los Angeles a few months later, was at that point the Worst Place On Earth I Had Ever Seen). Patrick is talking to the people at the service desk - god knows what he's talking about - and they're firmly saying no sir, we can't call in one of our mechanics, but there's a lovely Motel 6 just down the block when I notice a guy leaving the store with like 4 bags of auto parts.

I run outside and stop him in the parking lot. "Are you a mechanic?" I ask, desperate. He is. I ask him if he would PLEASE PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE OH GOD HELP US I'M GOING TO DIE IN NEW HAVEN just look under the hood of Patrick's jeep and let us know if there's something immediate we can do. This is how much I know about cars. I think the brakes are under the hood.

The guy actually agrees, opens the hood , and after approximately four and a half seconds says "you're out of brake fluid."

"That's it?" I ask.

"That's it. Cost you five bucks and you're back on the road."

"Wow. Thanks."

The mechanic - aka The Nicest Man I Have Ever Met - walks away smiling. I go back into the Pep Boys to find Patrick now with approximately half of his upper body leaning across the counter, his feet now barely touching the floor, pleading with the person at the service counter. I consider letting him debase himself a little further before I remember that he is actually my friend and could, were he so inclined, leave me in New Haven.

"Come on," I say, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from the service desk. "I took care of it. We need brake fluid."

"You TOOK CARE OF IT? What does that MEAN?" he asks.

"Just find a couple bottles of brake fluid and let's get the fuck out of here."

"What does TOOK CARE OF IT mean? What did you DO?"

Knowing him and knowing me I imagine Patrick assumes I, Jack Bauer-like, tortured a perfect stranger into diagnosing the car. I tell him what actually did happen.

"Brake fluid? That's it?" he asks.

"That's it."

He pauses, then says, "we're really fucking stupid."

"No," I say, "we're smart, we just don't know anything about cars. There is no shame in that." I resist the urge to tell the story of the first time I tried to put motor oil in my car and put it in the transmission fluid.

"We know what BRAKE FLUID is, for god's sake. I mean, we've HEARD of it."

This argument essentially went on for the remaining five hours it took to get from New Haven to our friends apartment, 90 minutes of it spent actually IN Boston looking for it. Because calling someone from the Virgin Islands to help you navigate around a city he's lived in for like 3 months and never actually driven a car in - that, my friends, is intelligent behavior at its best.

As for what happened in Boston, well, that's another story, innit?

And, finally - highlight the next bit unless you don't want a major spoiler from Galactica last night - STARBUCK NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Cried like a little girl at that, I did.

JLK

Your "If You Build It, He Will Come" Quizo Update

Normally, once I'm done with a show (Medea - you may have heard about it) I like to take something of a mini-vacation to unwind. I couldn't do so last weekend because of Quizo Bowl 3 and the Rex Grossman Is the Worst Quarterback in the History of Everything Bowl, but I finally got my chance this past weekend, and oh what a vacation it was.

I slept. I watched season 2 of Battlestar Galactica on DVD. I played Guitar Hero.

That's pretty much it.

It was very restful

I got back sometime last night and was subjected to trying to watch television with my dad. In the past this has been... I would say "trying" experience but that doesn't quite cover it. "Excruciating" experience is a bit closer but still comes well short of the mark. Let's see what thesaurus.com can give me:

"acute, agonizing, burning, chastening, consuming, exquisite, extreme, grueling, harrowing, insufferable, intense, piercing, punishing, racking, rending, searing, severe, sharp, shooting, stabbing, tearing, tormenting, torturesome, torturing, torturous, unbearable, unendurable, violent"

Hmm... agonizing is good. Dunno about rending or stabbing necessarily, I don't think it ever actually broke the skin. Ooh, punishing, torturesome and unendurable, now THOSE are good.

So, as I was saying, for the longest time watching TV with my dad was punishing, torturesome (which GMail's spell check insists is not actually a word) and unendurable. He's one of those people who will constantly barrage (assail, bombard, batter, beset, beseige, ooh, cannonade) you with the most annoying questions while you're trying to watch something. "Who's that guy?" "What are they doing here?" "Is that guy somebody?" "What's going on?" "Now who's THAT guy?" "Why is that guy talking to that other guy?" "What are they talking about?"

And so forth.

This would go on the entire length of what you were watching, making actually viewing something almost impossible. At first I would remain calm and say "just watch the show, Dad" but he would never let up until a point a few months ago when I was trying to watch Lost and he started in on it and I finally just shouted "I WILL KILL YOU WITH THE FUCKING PLAYSTATION IF YOU DON'T STOP DOING THAT."

Now, at least, the questions have considerably lessened in output and have become somewhat relevant (accordant, applicatory, appurtenant, conformant... are those WORDS?) and, on occasion, can actually produce an amusing (agreeable, cheerful, comical, gladdening... gladdening? what the fuck is "gladdening?" I swear thesaurus.com is just screwing with me now) exchange. Take this from last night's Galactica:

Dad: Why does that guy have an eyepatch?

Me: The Cylons took his eye from him.

Dad: When did they do that?

Me: Uh.. for a while there the people were on this planet and they were, uh, occupied by the Cylons... it was kind of an Iraq allegory thing -

Dad: Eyepatch Dude is kind of a jerk.

Me: Yeah, well, he's still kinda pissy about killing his wife.

Dad: He killed his wife? Why?

Me: Well, er, when he was in prison his wife collaborated with the Cylons to help him out. And then when he found out about it he killed her.

Dad: Why are they acting like he's so important? I've never seen him before.

Me: He's the XO of the ship, Dad, he's been around the whole time.

Dad: Even before the Cylons took his eye?

Me: Yes, before that.

Dad: These people all seem really upset all the time.

Me: Life on Battlestar Galactica is not pleasant, no.

(we watch in blissful silence for a few seconds)

Dad: Wait, I thought Cylons were robots.

Me: They are robots.

Dad: But they just called that chick a Cylon.

Me: She is a Cylon.

Dad: You just said Cylons were robots.

Me: They... well, they ARE robots. Most of them. But some of them are robots who look like people.

Dad: Robots that look like people.

Me: Yes.

Dad: Where did that guy come from? The one the other chick is talking to. Is she a robot who looks like a person?

Me: Yeah, she's a robot... the guy... okay, see, he's a real person, and you thought he was crazy cause he talks to this vision of that blonde chick that only he can see, but then you found out later that one version of the blonde robot chick actually sees HIM in her head, and so that's pretty cool. So that's not really him, okay, that's just the vision of him in her head that only that specific robot can see. Because, you see, there's lots of copies of each KIND of robot, but only that ONE copy can see the guy in her head, so -

Dad: I'm going to bed.

All these years of frustration (annoyance, contravention, dissatisfaction, impediment ) and all I had to do to get him to shut up was to answer his questions.

JLK

Your "Good News, Bad News" Quizo Update

Okay, the goddamned "f" key on my keyboard here at work isn't functioning properly - you really have to stab at it quite forcefully to make it work - so if it occasionally gets dropped please bear with me. Also bear with me while I try to compose an e-mail while avoiding the letter "f."

Are we all glad to be back? After a terribly long break for the holidays - which a quick OCD glance at my calendar reveals we'll have again this year - we are back in the Quizo swing of things tonight. And, in the spirit of the soon-ending holiday season, my gift to you is this: there is only one "clue" in this e-mail, and it's pretty simple. So don't wrack your brains. Enjoy.

Last night I was watching the Eagles at my friend Mike's house, and we are (literally, all of us) sitting on the edge of the couch as the Eagles line up a field goal with three seconds to go. After Eli Manning basically stopped being Eli Manning in the fourth quarter ( i.e. started regularly throwing the ball to his own team) and the New York Football Giants had clawed their way back into a game they had no right being in in the first place, it had come down to this.

My thought process while David Akers and Koy Detmer line up the kick:

"Well... if they win, that's a win in a playoff game. But if they win that also means that there will be a game during my show next Saturday night. A loss wouldn't be so bad. I'd get a good house on Saturday night. But I'd feel bad about it because the Eagles had to lose to get it. And no one wants to lose playoff games. And oh, god, on a field goal at the end. What if what happened last night happens here? Koy's better than that punk-ass in Dallas, no worries there. No blown snap here, no sir, not our Koy. I want the Eagles to win, but I want people to see the show on Saturday night..."

Then the kick went up and split the uprights, and my thought process became this:

"YEAH! Fuck. OH YEAH! Fuuuuuuuuuck . YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAHHHHH! Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!"

I was terribly conflicted about this whole thing until I realized that I know someone who lives quite literally around the corner from the theatre, so at worst I will miss the very beginning of the game (when the show starts) and a little bit near halftime (when I have to open the doors after the show ends.) So I still get to see the game, and my thinking is that there probably isn't TOO much overlap between the Eagles and Ancient Greek Drama fanbases, so I should still get a decent house for the show.

By the way, Chrissy, I'll be watching the Eagles game at your house on Saturday night.

Oh, and by now this should go without saying: Medea, opening THIS WEDNESDAY! at the Second Stage at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom Street, tickets $20. How to get tickets, you ask? There are two ways. The first is by calling the box office at 215-563-4330 and leaving a message. The second is by going to our website, at:

http://www.prosfromdovertheatre.com

I strongly recommend the website. The voicemail fills up very quickly and, frankly, I'm just too goddamned lazy to check it that often. Surely we all know this by now.

Plus it's got hot chicks with knives, what else do you want from the theatre?

(Please don't ask what she does with the knives.)

JLK

Your Quizo Update, A Day Late and a Dollar Short

I hope everyone has enjoyed the holiday weekend. I know I did.

For Christmas I received the gift of warmth.

I mean this quite literally.

Christmas morning with the fam (aka "my parents"), we're opening gifts and I get to one of mine in a largish box. I rip the paper off and open her up to find a lovely Izod golf jacket, perfect for those early spring days. Not that I would ever actually PLAY golf in it, as whatever golf gene allowed both of my parents to coach the sport did not get passed on to me. While I can rip a 58 at St. Andrew's on Tiger Woods 2006, my actual golf skill is quite limited, and by quite limited I mean largely nonexistent.

(That reminds me; I need to pick up Tiger Woods 2007.)

Later on in the gift opening extravaganza I come across another large box, and upon opening it find a nice winter coat in a beautiful deep crimson.

"Your leather jacket isn't warm enough when it gets REALLY cold," my mother says. Fair enough. Quite thoughtful.

Towards the end of the present line I have one more large box left. Off goes the paper and the box lid and I find...

Another winter coat. Navy blue this time.

Now there are two interesting things about this coat:

1) The coat is made by a company the owners of which are guys I have, on occasion, played poker with in Atlantic City.

2) It is, by all observations, a second winter coat and third coat overall on the same Christmas morning.

I express my confusion.

"That's in case the first one doesn't fit you," my father says. "Plus, it's from a company called Double Down. That's funny. Because, you know, you play poker. And your mother's right, that leather jacket isn't warm enough when it gets super cold out."

It occurs to me at this point that the guys who make this coat, while nice and reasonably good manufacturers of clothing, are terrible card players. It also occurs to me that my parents are so worried that I will catch the vapors walking the mean winter streets of Philadelphia that they felt it necessary to get me not one, not two, but THREE coats for Christmas this year.

I then realize, after examination of the discarded wrapping paper and noticing the truly wretched wrapping job done on the boxes that my father actually got all three, so Inadvertent Parental Gift Duplication Theory does not apply here.

Funny old world sometimes, ain't it?

There were other gifts as well, all wonderful, but none frankly as funny as three coats.

Then the Eagles absolutely beat the living shit out of the Cowboys, which is about as nice a close to a Christmas as one could ask.

And HERE'S something of interest to at least two or three people. Tonight and tonight only I am honored - HONORED, I say - to be filling in for Quizo Legend Johnny Goodtimes whilst he vacations. I'll be taking over trivia duties at O'Neals (2nd and South) at 8 and The Bard's (20th and Walnut) at 10. I've never done two Quizos in one night, so this should be interesting, inasmuch as me going crazy would probably be something worth watching for sheer entertainment value.

If I don't see you tonight (or somewhere else along the line) everyone have a good New Year's weekend. We're off again Monday, so I'll see everyone in two weeks at the Dark Horse. Drive safe, be good, avoid evil.

JLK

Your On Location Quizo Update

I went to the shore this weekend - in fact I am still here, sending this from the confines of the lovely Ocean County Library - since I figured that if the temperature was going to drop to Hoth-like extremes, all things considered I'd rather freeze my ass off at the shore.

Spending a solo long weekend down here - that is, without freeloading friends or the rest of my family around - leads to a strange behavior pattern where I stay up until ungodly hours watching movies on TV that either a) I have seen many, many times before, or b) I would never watch under any other circumstances, including as an alternative to being tortured in a secret CIA prison in Uzbekistan. The general thought process goes: "oh, this movie sucks/is one I've seen a hundred times. Let's do something else. It IS 3:30 in the morning, I could just go to sleep.[pause] [pause] Ah, fuck it, the ashtray's right here, I don't feel like getting up. Ooh, The Bone Collector is on."

This is why, for instance, I watched Training Day in its entirety TWICE in the past three days (a film up until now I had seen probably about eleven times) and why I was weeping like a little girl in the very wee hours of Saturday night at the end of A Walk To Remember. Just thinking about it is starting to make me tear up, and the library people frown on crying on the computers.

Moving on to slightly-less-embarassing revelations...

I got word from the Darg Whores, who (if you didn't know) get to choose the speed round tonight after their historic third win in a row last week. So, yeah, blame them. I'm sure you will. While their choice was not as ridiculous as some things put forward by certain parties as possible winning selections (like, oh, say, "shoe designers") I'm sure there will be more than the usual share of groaning when the sheets go out this week.

Of course, if you people had tried a little harder the last three weeks we wouldn't have this problem, now, would we?

JLK