I might hit up the Poe house this afternoon to check out the new exhibit. I highly encourage you to celebrate his big day with at least reading one of his poems or short stories. Here’s a great site to read some of his stories. I’ve been hooked on Poe ever since I memorized The Raven in the 7th grade oratory contest (losing controversially). I was captivated by not just his works but by his tragic life, and how the two are tied in so personally in his work. His brilliance lie in writing about characters who were evil and of no redeeming value, and still he made us somehow relate with them, bringing us in contact with the darkest corners of our own minds. His poetry was as haunting as his short stories, and he believed that the death of beautiful women to be the “most poetical topic in the world”. A good example of this is one of my favorites, Annabel Lee.

Hey kids, we’re going to have a Super Bowling Party on January 24th at St. Monica’s Lanes at 16th and Shunk, from 7-11 p.m. It is all you can drink and all you can bowl for $20, and all of the proceeds will go toward the basketball and tutoring program I help with at the Marian Anderson Center. No, this is no bowlizzo, just good old fashioned bowling. Should be a lot of fun. Oh, and garish bowling outfits are highly encouraged. Ugliest bowling outfit wins a prize. I will have tickets for sale all next week at quizzo.

Both the Yankees and Mets are moving into new stadiums this year, so both have added special patches to the sleeves of their jerseys. The Yankees patch looks great. The Mets patch looks like a hotel key card at Howard Johnson’s. Here’s what uni-watch says: So let’s skip the metaphors and jokes and just proceed straight to the simple, declarative truth: This is the worst sleeve patch in MLB history.

Hey kids, thought I had a fill-in for quizzo tonight but it fell through, SO NO QUIZZO TONIGHT. Which is actually kind of cool cause Internet access down here isn’t real easy to come by and it would have been a pain to do questions. Plus I have more shopping to do. Yesterday, my sis and I hit up thrift stores in Virginia Beach and Norfolk, and let me be honest with you: IT WAS AWESOME. Seriously, it is so much more fun and less stress than regular Christmas shopping. I highly recommend it. (Though I did make a small concession and buy my niece a lawn mower at Toys ‘R’ Us. Not a real one, you dimwits. One that blows bubbles.) But like I said, Thrift Store Christmas* is the new Internet Christmas shopping.

*I can say “Christmas” now instead of “holidays” because I’m in the South and liberals haven’t won the War on Christmas down here yet.

I’m off to Virginia Beach to go shopping with my sister. To make shopping more interesting this year, we’ve decided that gifts have to be homeade or bought from a thrift store. I already completed my kick ass homeade project and now it’s time for the shopping part. In the meantime, here’s a couple of Christmas things you might like:

• New York Times last week had a piece about It’s a Miserable Life. Pretty interesting. Also brought to mind the great piece Slate did a few years ago about what a swingin’ place Bedford Falls was.
• In case you didn’t read it last year, do yourself a favor and read the Donspiracist piece on whether or not Santa Claus exists, and what the government is doing to suppress the truth about Santa. This is really a great piece.
• Finally, be sure to read the “Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” letter. Everybody knows the phrase, but have you read the letter. Good stuff.

Ok, so I’ve been working on making my Christmas present today, which has involved lots of old photos. If you’re wondering just how freaking adorable I was when I was a kid, I just posted a ton of old photos on Facebook. (I think you gotta friend me first to see ’em, though. Ok, ok, so maybe this is just a desperate attempt at getting more cyber friends. Whatever.) Anyways, where were we? Ah yes, doing what I love the most, talking about me. I have also posted some pretty good stuff on Totalphilly lately.

• Philadelphia Flyers crash a Temple Frat party.
• Lil’ Adolf Hitler discriminated against in New Jersey. This is an outrage!
• My thoughts on Nutter closing the libraries! My most self-righteous piece in a while.
• Finally, a few thoughts on Eagles fans.

It’s been a while since we heard from Quizmaster Chris, who does for righteous indignation what Babe Ruth did for the long ball. His blog posts lately have been few and far between, and most of them just had to do with quizzo. We thought that the days of reading his brilliant, angry diatribes against the likes of Dirty Franks and Big Daddy Graham were over. Which was a shame, because when Quizmaster Chris gets on a roll, he is a extremely entertaining writer. But fear not, QC is back on the warpath. A company named Centocor, who apparently didn’t pay him what he was owed for a private function he did, bears the full frontal force of an attack that contains all the subtlety of a Mack truck in a library. This one is a dandy. A few highlights:
The latest excuse that I “can’t” get paid is that they now want me to fill out a W-9 form, a brand new demand that as late as this past Friday was not being made, and had not been brought up from when I was contacted to do the quiz months ago until today.

I always love the use of the word “can’t” in an organization when someone chooses to do the wrong thing. See also Nuremburg defense. And note also the result of its use…I’ve made it very clear that Pennsylvania law states that I’m owed this money, and no amount of post-quiz mid-level-management office petty tyrant jiggerypokery un-makes their debt to me. I just want my damn money. The next step is I sue in Small Claims Court, with damages and costs, and win.

Centocor, one may learn through the information superduperhighway, is a bunch of morally challenged mother-stabbers and father-rapers. The public should avoid doing business with them and avoid their products.

Did he really just call them “Mother-stabbers and father-rapers”? Amazing. And did he really just pull the tried and true “small claims court” card? Quizmaster Chris, our worries about you missing a beat were thankfully misguided. Kepp fighting the good fight. Viva la quizolution!

This year, we are raising money for the Covenant House Pennsylvania, a program that provides homeless, runaway and at-risk youth with a number of services, including a Streets Outreach Program, a Crisis Center, and a transitional living program. The majority of youth who use the program are between the ages of 18 and 21, and many have nowhere else to turn after they age out of the foster care system. The teens then work with a youth advisor and a social worker to come up with a plan to get them in an apartment of their own or in a transitional housing program. In addition to the overhead costs, the money we raise will also go toward SEPTA tokens so they can go to job interviews, pay for college application fees, help them secure proper identification, and take them on field trips. I am asking each person to donate at least a dollar to play quizzo this week, with 100% of the proceeds going to this worthy cause. There is also a Wish List of things the program is looking for for Christmas. For a look at the items on the wish list, click below. If you have anything that you’d like to provide on the wish list, call 215-923-8350.

Continue reading “Quizzo For the Cause…Covenant House” →

Grandmaster Vassily Ivanchuck (No relation to Grandmaster Flash) refused to take a drug test after the Chess Olympiucs and now could face a two year ban for doping. Yes, doping, the kind of stuff bike riders do in the Tour de France. But how in the hell could this help a chess player? …when a chess player nears the end of a match and comes under mounting pressure, he can hyperventilate, and his pulse can shoot up to 160 and his arterial blood pressure to 200. In that situation, beta-blockers could help a player keep his head clear. Um, sure, whatever. This just sounds creepy and Big Brotherish. So does a chess player named Robert Hubner, once ranked third in the world. He considers doping tests to be a bureaucratic show of power, and he believes that the tests are degrading and deprive the individual of rights and responsibilities. Drug tests will be introduced into Germany’s federal chess league next year, and when that happens, says Hübner, he will give up his career immediately. What a badass. This is a hell of a story. There hasn’t been this much controversy in chess since the Turk.

Because I’ve seen it about 200 times and I still laugh every single time. “This is a farewell kiss, you dog” would be a great team name this week, by the way. Speaking of funny, this is pretty hilarious, though most certainly crude and not safe for work.