I guess I should start this thing back at the beginning, though the actual narrative of this story is like a diary entry minus the i’s dotted with hearts and there’s a distinct lack of pages where “Mrs. Ted Kidman” is written two hundred times in various forms. In fact, just forget that I wrote that – there will be more than enough embarrassing items covered later in this abomination of a Worlds report that this opening paragraph might even be purged from your consciousness by the time you get to the end.
So technically, this all started when BDM decided he didn’t want to go to Beijing over Thanksgiving, leaving it to me to cover the first event in mainland China. Totally sweet. The China trip itself has been reasonably well catalogued in the coverage already, so to avoid repeating myself I will simply tell you to reread the coverage blogs from the last two weeks and help me validate that entire period of my life. The only thing I would add is that the Chinese definitely eat some things that should not be considered food. This includes bean curd that smells like diapers and gelled duck’s tongue, though I’m stone positive those are some of the least grievous offenses to the palette that one could find. Oh, and I’m an idiot who forgot to pack his camera for this trip, or else there’d be even more great pictures.
I ended up moving my flight from Monday morning to Tuesday in order to spend an extra day in Beijing and get a chance to see the Great Wall of China, an extensive piece of mortar work that lived up to every overblown expectation I originally had. The weather turned cold and windy on the day we went climbing, but the sun stayed in the sky and our exertions kept us warm. From China it was a short hop over to Japan, then a bus trip with the Ruel brothers to Yokohama, snacks at the player barbecue and then blissful sleep. Worlds is an absolute marathon of an event and partying the first night you are there is a recipe for disaster. In fact, I did very little partying at all until Friday night, choosing instead to mostly participate in the old man drafts with BDM, Buehler, etc and enjoy the company.
Friday however… wow.
Karaoke Night
So I now sit here at 1:45AM Saturday morning wondering if I have ruined the Japanese National team’s chances during the team competition of Worlds. Two of my favorite players of all time – Masashi Oiso and Kenji Tsumura – have gone to karaoke as part of the StarCityGames.com karaoke party and by the time Masashi left (perhaps the most important member of the Japanese National Team), it was 1AM Yokohama time and he was drunk off of his ass. The final bill for the karaoke room was something like 77,500 Yen (about 50,000 of which was unfunded by player contributions), or 2.5 times the price I told Pete it would be. And yet I would pay that price entirely myself to see the sights I have seen.
Eli Kaplan, absolutely destroying Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody? Check.
Raphael Levy proving to be a total metal head who could sing? Check.
Tim Aten turning in the best performances of the night by sacrificing his voice and his body to the Strokes and Linkin Park? Check again.
John Pelcak secretly puking in a corner like a runway model? Yeppers.
Masashi and Kenji blasting a drunken duet to some Japanese cover of a bad American pop song and then joining in on every song after that? Oh. My. God. Check.
Number of glasses broken? At least four.
Lifetime friends made from an evening of singing and drinking? Hopefully 19.
Seconds of video of yours truly performing “Sex Machine” rumored to be on Julien Nuijten camera: 20
Number of memories created? Infinite.
It all started a couple of months ago when I decided that I wanted hold a karaoke party at Worlds, but I wasn’t really sure how it would all go. American Magic players are notoriously cynical and jaded, so the likelihood of “Hey, do you want to come do karaoke?” being translated as, “Hey, would you like to come make a complete and utter fool out of yourself?” seemed very high. I eventually figured out that I should just make it a party for SCG writers, and even got Pete to sponsor it as a sort of employee Christmas party. An e-mail was sent out to the Featured Writer mailing list inviting everyone attending Worlds to let me know if they were interested, but aside from Eli Kaplan requesting we do it later in the weekend so that he could attend, I received few interested responses.
Long story short, interest was higher than I originally thought. Including the new writers that we recruited on the weekend seemed like a nice way of introducing them to the family, so by the time we all met in the lobby on Friday, there were 18 writers/translators, one editor, and one former SCG writer and current R&D member of Wizards of the Coast who managed to barn along with some of his friends, and I was suddenly rather concerned we would not find a room large enough to hold us all. I needn’t have worried – Taka Sato found a room for 32 and it was on.
I found it entertaining to see just how excited everyone was that Kenji and Masashi were coming with us. Back when I first started attending events in 2003, there wasn’t much intermingling of friendships between the Japanese and everyone else (excepting the Ruels), but these two guys are deeply loved and many other Japanese are coming out of their shells as well. Money drafts aren’t just Non-Japanese vs. Japanese these days – it’s commonplace to see Morita, Shu Komuro, or Ichiro battling on the same squad as Richie Hoaen and Sam Gomersall and I think that’s probably a great thing for the game. One of the innovations that has made this new trend easier (though it would have happened, regardless) is the rapid improvement of most Japanese players’ English skills (which coincidentally makes my job easier as well). Making friends is a lot easier when everyone (quite literally) can speak the language, and English is the universal language of the Pro Tour.
Then again, maybe everyone’s just hoping to make better friends so they can get decent Constructed decks.
Where the hell was I? Oh yes, drunken Magic player karaoke. It happened. It was great. We have pictures to prove it and there are plenty more where those came from. I fully expect to see this mentioned in five or six reports outside of my own, and I highly suggest you run this tech yourself should you wind up in a place where this is a social bonding ritual. Avoid it, however, if it is a social bondage ritual – that’s just a recipe for pain.
It’s now Monday and I’m approaching San Francisco in this craptastic 747 (United crushed me on this flight, but I’ll get to that in a bit), so it should come as no surprise that many of the details of Friday evening have disappeared into a haze of drunkenness and post-Worlds exhaustion. I remember more concepts and ideas that I tried to lock into my brain than specific incidents from that night. For example, Taka Sato is a very hyper drunk who is completely insane and was likely the prime cause for our room having the supposedly unlimited alcohol supply cut off by management. Bad beat. I also remember that Billy Moreno digs hip hop, Eli Kaplan is all enthusiasm and no talent but is perhaps the greatest karaoke icebreaker ever, and blisterguy quietly sat in a corner all evening laughing at the idiocy but never actually participating. He did, however, say that – once he got past being appalled – he enjoyed himself a great deal. Here are the best pictures I took of the evening’s activities, though Julien Nuijten camera has a great many more that are generally better quality as well. (Feel free to caption them in the forums (be somewhat nice).)
Here is the list of songs that I can remember and who sang them:
Bohemian Rhapsody – Kaplan
Something by Hillary Duff – Maaten and Nassif
Hit Me One More Time by Britney Spears – Nassif and Waarmenhoven, though we missed out on the choreography this time
American Woman (Kravitz version) – Knutson
Something by Jet – Aten
Thong Song by Sisqo (Will Ferrell version) – Hoaen
Desire by U2 – Knutson
Something by Foreigner – Levy
Some Song by Pantera that got cancelled 3 times – Sottosanti
Daydream Believer – No Clue
Some Terrible Nickelback Song (This is How You Remind Me) – Unknown (Pelcak? Sato?)
Shady’s Back by Eminem – Moreno… I think
A Place for My Head by Linkin Park – Aten
Sex Machine by James Brown – Knutson
The Way I Am by Eminem – Hoaen
It’s Oh So Quiet by Bjork – Jonsson
Born in the USA by The Boss – All non-Americans (Hoaen)
YMCA – Nuijten
Twist and Shout (Beatles Version) – Knutson
There were also a number of stories that came out in the following couple of days that probably deserve mentioning. Masashi and Kenji left the festivities about an hour before they officially broke up, at least partly because Mr. Oiso needed to get some sleep so that he could draft in the morning. BDM apparently met them in the lobby where they decided to interrogate him about the meaning of “Stone Nuts” because it’s what Heroin (Jeroen Remie) added to Oiso’s player card. The mental image of two drunken Japanese kids badgering Brian for the meaning of poker slang at one in the morning is particularly refreshing. In fact, the very thought of Kenji saying, “What is… (hic) stone nuts?!?” sets me to giggling again.
I mentioned that fact that Pelcak was secretly puking in a corner earlier, but John’s tales of woe and bodily functions did not end there. No sir. Sometime during the night he whipped his Cak out to take a pee… on the curtains in his hotel room. His roommates were apparently sleeping, but notified him of this transgression the next morning, which he absolutely would not believe until they also showed him the puddle he left on the carpet and then whacked his nose with a rolled up newspaper. This prompted the whole lot of them to then check out of the room (presumably not notifying hotel staff what he did) and move their luggage to Magic Online Qualifier winner Adam Klein’s room.
Pelcak wasn’t the only one that had some difficulties that evening – Billy Moreno did too. Moreno ended up staying with some New Jersey guys for the weekend, but couldn’t find his key when he got back to the room. He says he rang the doorbell once but no one answered (his roomies swore it never rang), so he just fell asleep in the hallway outside the room until hotel management woke him up at 6AM the next morning and let him in the room.
During team draft day, Frederic Boberg asked me if Anton had actually sung songs on Friday. I swore to him that it happened, and he responded, “Man, I would ship DI to hear Anton sing.” I mentioned that getting him drunk and taking him to karaoke might be less than DI and his eyes lit up.
Randy Buehler is the first person I know to sustain an actual karaoke injury. He was wailing on “Shook Me All Night Long” by AC/DC two nights later after the staff dinner and jumped into an air guitar solo just before realizing that our room was a little too small for that level of exuberance and slamming his forehead into the table. It was quite possibly the karaoke highlight of the weekend.
Speaking of staff karaoke night, a bunch of us ran into Jose Barbero coming out of a bar that evening and I attempted to confirm a rumor among the players that the virile Mr. Barbero had actually hooked up with a Japanese girl. His response went something like, “Oh yeah, it was crazy. I couldn’t tell if she was loving it or if I was killing her.” Police may or may not have been holding Mr. Barbero for questioning as we left the country
Can I Just Go Home Now?
On a personal level, this has been the most grueling trip I’ve ever taken for Magic. I did too many events in a row this summer and ended up a little worse for it, but at least I got to go home after each one of those and have some time to recharge. For this one I was essentially on the go for 13 days straight and I was really feeling it at the end. I’ve lost 13 pounds on this trip, probably half muscle mass due to not working out and half due to interaction with Chinese and Japanese cuisine. It’s much tougher to just snag a full, fattening meal there and the trip was so busy that I skipped a few meals. Don’t get me wrong, I had plenty of good food, I just didn’t fill in the space between with as much fattening crap as I normally do.
I mentioned earlier that United crushed me on this trip, and as of right now, they did it not once but thrice. Since I knew I would be exhausted, I called up their customer service line three weeks ago and asked for an upgrade on the flight back from Japan. The nice lady said no problem, it would cost me 30,000 miles and she’d take care of it. I got to Narita earlier today and found out my ticket was in a class that was unable to be upgraded and I’d be stuck in the cheap seats unless I wanted to pay $550 to fix it. Cheap seats it was, and cheap seats they were, since I somehow ended up on one of the old, awful 747s that lack modern conveniences like individual screens for movies. Frown. Next I got stuck in the second to last row on my flight from SFO to Dulles. Luckily there was no one in the center seat or else someone might have died.
To make matters worse, I got off the plane in Washington D.C. at 8:45PM only to find out that my area was blanketed in snow and I would need to either stay overnight in a hotel and fly in the morning or find other means of getting home. This is the third time this has happened to me in three months, but the other two times were in Atlanta so I didn’t really have any options. Dulles is only ninety miles away from my house and I was desperate, so I just told the lady at the customer service desk I was renting a car. Three car rental places later and desperation hung about my shoulders like a cold, wet, sinister blanket. Every single one of them was out of cars unless you had a reservation. No cell phone and no wireless hotspots meant I had no means to secure such a thing, nor could I find a customer service counter for United again so I could get my flight reinstated tomorrow and grab said hotel voucher. Blargh.
Things had now turned oddly reminiscent of trying to get home to Oklahoma last Christmas and getting stuck in Cincinnati during a blizzard. We went to customer service to see when we could change our flights to (this was on the 22nd) and they said they thought they could get us out by the 26th. Maybe. This prompted a mad scramble for rental cars where my wife finally secured the last one in the entire city for our usage. The snow was too terrible to drive out that night, so we hoteled it and woke up early the next morning to resume the journey. One hour down the road and I was sleeping in the fast lane because traffic stopped for three hours between Cincy and Louisville, a first-time experience I would have preferred to avoid. It then took us literally ten hours to pass through the state of Indiana going westbound, and we finally ended up getting to Oklahoma at 6AM on Christmas Eve day, or about 21 hours after we had started driving (and two days after we started traveling) for a trip that would usually take about 13.
The point of this rambling? It could always be worse.
Back to the present and my brain has turned to mush, with sh***y Shakespeare adaptations like “To cab or not to cab, that is the question,” being the only thoughts running through my mostly vacant head. On one hand, getting all the way home could cost $200. On the other hand, not getting home tonight could cost me my sanity. I debated for about three seconds before realizing my psyche would be shattered in a thousand pieces if I had to walk back into an airport tomorrow, so I bit the bullet, told the cabbie where I wanted to go, and here I am adding to this report on the road, hoping the slushy conditions and awful Virginia winter drivers don’t cause my death before I reach sanctuary. Sheldon buddy, I don’t think I’ll be making your Christmas party this weekend – I might not even get out of bed before then…
Sody, my cab driver, says Hi.
We’re about 75 dollars into the meter when the road disappears and all that is left to follow are the two black lines of the automobile forefathers that have gone before us. I’m an expert snow driver, but even I know my limits and right about now I’m pretty glad I didn’t end up with a rental car. I have left fate in the hands of a professional and Sody has mad skills. He f***ing pounds the pavement like he was born to do it. I’m not quite sure where he’s from, but it ain’t from here and I find myself wondering – did they even have cars where he grew up? What about snow? Our vehicle is a big, heavy SUV, but the only thing adding up faster than the numbers on the meter is the accumulation of snow, and thus far this match appears to be a stalemate. Regardless, I’m at the point where exhausted ambivalence reigns supreme as to whether I live or die. Happiness for me is simply progress towards my own bed, damn the consequences.
90 dollars just went by on the meter, the miles are being chewed away at 55 per hour, but I think Sody just conceded game one and is bringing in his sideboard tech of four-wheel drive. We just have to pray that this freakish early December storm doesn’t know to bring in freezing rain, or this might just end up my last postcard from the edge.
The meter hits $110 and we’re the only car left on the road. Apparently everyone else had sense enough to just stop or stay home or not be gone for two weeks and then come back the day of a giant snowstorm. This whole thing is likely the result of some butterfly in China that I pissed off and who wanted to get back at me by flapping its wings. Or it could be the fault of global warming, or President Bush for not signing the Kyoto treaty, or maybe it’s John Rizzo’s fault for including strange political screes in his vehicles for broken Extended decklists. In truth, the world may never know, but Sody just slowed down to forty, and sh** got scary. What people who actually live in places that deal with snow don’t understand is that the Virginia Department of Transportation is incompetent when it comes to dealing with the stuff. To say they are slow in clearing major highways doesn’t do the term justice. Turtles are slow. VDOT is f***ing glacial, like a Frank Karsten Top 8 match. And yet I still find myself thinking that sleeping in a snowdrift would be an improvement over my last two experiences getting stuck in Atlanta. C’mon Sody, you SUV handling master, earn that two hundy.
My savior/driver/harbinger of death just cut an edge on the pavement like a snowboarder in Vail. This would be heartening it weren’t for the nagging fact that we’re still riding in a two-ton potential fireball. I put on my seatbelt and Sody gives me puppy dog eyes, quietly trying to tell me I just broke his heart. My confidence in you hasn’t wilted big guy, it’s just being prudent. I said I was ambivalent towards death, but this isn’t a courtship, you know what I mean? If I weren’t so tired, a quickie in the back seat of an SUV might sound great right now, but not with that particular date. I’ve still got my standards.
We stop at a gas station twenty miles away and I take a deep breath and recoup for the home stretch. The gas tank in this bo-hwee-moth is a supertanker and by the time Sody comes back with coffee and revs the beast up again, I’m almost passed out. Fifteen miles from home I pump the fist as the roads get better and now there’s definitely a light at the end of the tunnel despite the fact that most of the lights in Charlottesville are knocked out. Wal-Mart’s gone as black as their profit-mongering hearts. We pull into the driveway and the meter reads $170.45. I pay my fare, drop the tip on my boy, and wish him a safe drive on his two-hour trip back home. Sleep calls. Shower calls. My wife calls, and it’s about time that I answer. A small Motley Crue refrain plays in my head as I stumble down the driveway, finally achieving my goal. Home sweet hoooooome.
Join me again on Friday where I recap the actual Magical events from the World Championships and where I avoid telling you things like the following because it would be redundant:
There are few things more embarrassing than having to explain to the very cute, all-female Chinese housekeeping staff that you just clogged the toilet in their five-star hotel.
Cheers,
Teddy Card Game
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