In a masterful tease designed to keep us on the edge of our collective seats, the Ferrett has promised the revelation of a great secret on Friday regarding the mysterious fate of John Rizzo. When I read the tease, I fell into his trap. My heart raced and my palms began to sweat; nothing compares to the primal rush of the fight or flight instinct.
Well, that must not be true because I am comparing it to the stress of not knowing what the future holds for John Rizzo.
That stress, in fact began to take its toll; my only solution was to put the energy into guessing what the announcement could be. Here are my guesses for the nature of the secret announcement; after you read mine, I invite you to add your own guesses to the list. Maybe the Ferrett will even ante up a prize in one of several, or many categories such as, Most Likely, Least Likely, Most Ridiculous, Most Repulsive, Funniest… etc. A great prize might be a Crap Rare signed by the J to the R to the Izzo himself.
- John has abandoned his”normal” life to run off with a Nightscape Familiar; the one in fact that John affectionately calls Sexual Chocolate. The lure of the familiar’s ability to speed things up and then regenerate for more action was too much for John to resist. When Rizzo was reminded that the Familiar was really nothing more that a small piece of cardboard, he became agitated and threatened to”…deliver a kicked rage to the dizome.”
- John has recently been diagnosed with a rare neurological condition where only every third word he conceives for a written thought actually makes it to the page. Somewhat miraculously, these symptoms have only caused John’s writing to drastically improve.*
- An editor for Details magazine stumbled across one of John’s pictorial tournament reports right here on Starcity.com (there must be a great backstory to explain how that ever happened). The editor was so impressed with John’s Mr. Clean look and street-wise hip ‘tude that he has been signed to do a photo shoot that will appear in an upcoming issue of the magazine.
- John is leaving the known civilized world in a shame-induced, self-imposed exile (rumor has it he is headed towards the backwoods of Alaska). What prompted this drastic measure? John recently entered a FNM tourney in which he registered and played a netdeck. To make matters worse, he ID’d into the top 8. How could anyone live with themselves after doing such a thing? Good riddance and sorry Alaska.
Thanks for reading, and start sending in your own guesses!
Michael Jay LaRue
Engineer Legend, and Casual Magic Player
[email protected]
* – This may sound harsh, but it is meant constructively. The fact is that Rizzo is an awesome raw talent with the gift of gab and an engaging conversational tone as a writer, not to mention his dedication to Magic as pastime, which is inarguable. However his anal-expulsive, stream-of-consciousness”literary techniques” contribute more to the quantity of his work than the quality of his work, as one would define quality in an English composition textbook. I’d really like to see how John’s work would evolve with greater discipline in writing technique.**
** – Sorry, only one footnote; uh, well… Make that only two footnotes ***.
*** – Two footnotes, and one PS; PS – In the spirit of the Ferrett’s call for anecdotes about how Rizzo has changed our lives I offer the following. I am indebted to Friggin’ Rizzo because of an e-mail exchange I had with him more than a year ago that helped encourage me to write a tournament report. I did in fact write a report for my Planeshift pre-release experience that was published here on Starcity.com. The exchange started because a snippet of a critique I wrote in response to John’s Seventh Edition”Review.” My response spoke to the long-windedness of the piece. So I am grateful to John for his encouragement, and appreciate his contributions to the Magic community through his writing here on StarCity.com.
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