Yesterday, I talked about my first experience at Fogo de Chao, the amazing Brazilian meat house located in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, and Chicago. Today’s Fogo story takes place at Pro Tour Chicago, 2003.
I was part of the event coverage team in Chicago, and needless to say that where there’s a Fogo, there’s at least one night where I’m going to head there. I rounded up the usual suspects, starting with Alex Shvartsman and Gaming Jim. Alex had just started playing on team Your Move Games, and so he invited Justin Gary, Darwin Kastle, and Rob Dougherty to come along to Fogo. Rob passed on the invitation, as he’s a vegetarian. However, Zvi Mowshowitz and Alan Comer ended up coming along, as did one Geordie Tait.
Did I mention that today’s story is a story about Geordie?
I hadn’t ever physically met Geordie before Pro Tour Chicago, but I knew that he was an aspiring writer in the Magic community, who had written some draft articles I admired. This was before I had any affiliation with StarCityGames.com (how I got this job is a story for an entirely different day). I noticed that Geordie was kind of wandering the side event area, without really knowing anyone in particular at the event outside of his Canadian clique. I figured he could get to know some people, so first I invited him over to come chat with me, Mark Rosewater, and Gaming Jim – and then I invited him out to dinner to Fogo. He accepted the invitation, and a couple of cabs later we were off to downtown Chicago.
Now, I figure that most of our readers have not met most of our writers. Let me tell you some things about Geordie that you might not otherwise glean from his articles. First, Geordie was buff at the time of Pro Tour Chicago. He’d been working out a lot, and it showed. He always wore his sunglasses, indoors or outdoors. He shows a real interest in all things Magic, and has a drive to get ahead in the Magic world.
He’s also intense to a psychotic degree.
I like Geordie, I really do! And Geordie, when you read this, please don’t come after me. Please don’t stalk my cats. Please don’t slash the tires on my Chevy Venture. Please don’t jump me at Worlds, please don’t sign me up on mass mailing lists, and please don’t make Michael Moore come to my house to film lesbian Britney Spears sex while George Bush and John Kerry nude mud wrestle while reading Harry Potter and listening to the New York Yankees playing the Boston Red Sox as the war in Iraq rages in the Middle East.
Here’s the scene: We’re all at dinner, and the subject of Geordie’s rivalry with Jamie Wakefield came up somehow. Jamie and Geordie were both in an online clan called The Source in the Asheron’s Call MMORPG. There were a few Magic players in The Source, including myself and Britisher Alice Coggins. Jamie and Geordie were the leaders of The Source between servers – on the player killing server, Geordie’s character The Silent Spearman was leader. On the non-player killing server, it was Jamie’s Druss who was king.
Without going into the details, we’ll say that Jamie and Geordie had a falling out. Okay, that’s an understatement. They had a nuclear explosion, where China and the U.S. both launched all their tactical warheads at the same time, obliterating all life on Earth. To this day, Geordie can’t really talk about Jamie without blowing a gasket. In fact, Geordie couldn’t talk about Jamie that day without blowing a gasket.
Geordie retold the story about him and Jamie to the dinner table. I swear though, that the veins in Geordie’s head were bulging out about five feet as he got further and further into the story. His entire face turned redder than the rare meat we were eating, and his body language got more and more violent. Spittle began to form on his lips and he raved on and on about how much he hated Jamie, and how Jamie had dicked him over in game, and how he hated Jamie forever and ever.
This went on for over twenty minutes.
This wouldn’t ordinarily be a big deal – we all know that it’s good to be passionate about your hobbies, as long as nobody else is getting hurt. This story probably wouldn’t even be relayed to the outside world, except for what happened at the end of the meal. The waitress came and brought the check, and everyone threw in money. When the bill came back around to me, we were about twenty dollars short. Nobody would own up to owing that Jackson, and there was much grumbling going on as nobody really wanted to have to split the $20 when it was obvious someone owed the money. In the sake of preserving a really good meal (we were more amused than horrified by Geordie’s rant), I pitched the money in from my own pocket, and wrote it off.
It wasn’t until Geordie wrote his epic tournament report that I found out who exactly had welched on that money. It had been Geordie, who had not realized that there are not free refills in a high ticket restaurant. To this day, Geordie still owes me that money! I got him back at one point by posting as Jamie Wakefield on his Demolition Man article thread. Of course, Geordie could send a check for $20 (American!) to:
StarCityGames.com
C/O The Ben Bleiweiss Coca-Cola Foundation
5623 Williamson Road NW
Roanoke, VA 24012
Doing so would suppress next week’s Geordie story, which involves J. Edgar Hoover, Lenny Kravitz, and an inflatable sheep.
Tommorrow: The Fogo trilogy concludes in Hotlanta!