What I learned tonight:

It is as an indisputable, cardinal FACT that if a Quizmaster such as myself forgets to print off one of his handouts, and doesn’t realize it until 2 minutes before he has to drive to his venue to set up his P.A… yessir, it is a FACT, an Encyclopedic FACT, that his printer will choose THAT VERY MINUTE to stop working.

I learned this the hard way tonight. Upon realizing I’d forgotten part of my quiz, I panicked and pressed something I wasn’t supposed to, or tried to rush things or something, and suddenly the stupid *#@$%ing printer just… stopped working. It was like, “fuck this. Nobody treats me like that, understand? NOBODY,” and it just stopped. I turned it on and off, I unplugged it and plugged it back in again, I cursed its name and spit on it, I poured some red wine onto it and caressed it with my soft, romantic hands. None of these things worked. Then suddenly, arbitrarily, it decided to work again. It was all, “all right.. I guess I’ve tortured you enough. I can be merciful too, just like Jesus.” And then it started printing again. Just like that. I kid you not. I do not understand technology. I’m convinced it is pure magic. Some wizard dumps Essence of Dragon and Wormwood and other magical powders into a plastic box over in Taiwan and slaps the silly putty on there and sends the thing off to the Wal-Mart distributor who changes the price on it from 50 cents to $300, and sticks it on the shelf. There, its magical concoction begins to fester and the thing takes on a life of its own, and then, THEN… it’s anybody’s guess what it’ll do next. Just woo it the best you can and hope for the best.

Anyway, when the evil (I mean GOOD… GOOD… I love you printer-wizard-machine! I love you! Have mercy! Please!) machine finally got back into gear and printed my *&@*&@-ing handout, it was 6:30 and I still had a 20-minute drive to the Belmont Inn. By breaking several traffic laws I was able to cut this time to 18.7 minutes, and arrived in the venue, ready to start setting up by 6:46.

Here’s the amazing part: Best-Assistant-Ever Renee saved my ass ONCE AGAIN, snatching my laptop out of my sweaty mitts, and quickly opening up the scoring spreadsheet. She started entering the (pretty long… 73 peops tonight) teams in and collecting money while I frantically set up the (extremely cumbersome) P.A. unit, shoving people out of the way as I strung up a litany of wires and overall crap. Within minutes we had everything set up and everyone signed up (19 teams, mind you… 19!), and… amazingly… started the quiz ON TIME, at 7:01! Can you believe it? I can’t. You probably don’t care. But I can’t believe it, and that’s all that matters. Maybe the printer really IS magic…

Oh yeah, and Boners in Sweatpants won tonight in a very close, very tough, mean little Election Day themed quiz. And also, in case you haven’t heard, some guy by the name of Barack Obama won the Presidential election and our country is now headed in a stunning new direction that will change the face of everything, in a good way. Good job America! Good job Executive Assistant Renee! Good job, evil printer-wizard-machine! I hate you, but I gotta hand it to you. You sure know how to fuck me over! G’night!

JWS