Entries from April 2012 ↓

At age seven, my daughter Bella (“future girl Iron-Man”) is already a strategic genius. I know most parents generally overrate their children, but I came to this conclusion today after being lectured as to why she whooped me in chess (as a seven-year-old she pronounced her opening “The Italy-an Game” and criticized my early game bishop v. pawn sequencing. I was the president of my high school chess club.

“Legend” sections borrow liberally from each characters’ Wikipedia entries, with some obvious cropping and commentary by YT.

Daddy: Okay let’s draft great fighters. Do you want to go first or second?

Bella: You can go first.

Daddy: You sure?

Bella: Sure.

Daddy: I take Bruce Wayne.

Bella: Lady Shiva and Captain America.

Daddy: Wow, great picks! I guess I’ll take Iron Fist and… Karate Kid.

Bella: Okay. Super Boy Prime and Anti-Monitor!

Daddy: We’re done.

Bella: What do you mean?

Daddy: I mean we’re done. There is no indication either or those characters is even good at fighting!

Bella: You don’t really have to be that good at “fighting” if you can burn a planet down just by looking at it.

Legend:

Superboy-Prime
Superboy-Prime has all the basic abilities of a Kryptonian except at a much higher level, exposed to yellow sunlight: superhuman strength, speed, senses, agility, healing, endurance, superbreath, flight, x-ray vision, heat vision, and invulnerability. His power is close to that of the Silver Age “Earth-One” Superman’s, which makes him one of the most powerful characters in the universe. Superboy-Prime’s future self has complete control over time itself.

At the end of Infinite Crisis, it took the Supermans of two universes flying Superboy-Prime through a red sun to stop him. This defeat cost the life of the elder Superman as well as 32 Green Lanterns, where one copy of the Green Lantern ring is “the most powerful weapon in the universe”.

Anti-Monitor
Anti-Monitor was one of the most formidable foes ever faced by the heroes of the DC Universe (or “Multiverse”, as it was then and now). He is directly responsible for more deaths than any other known DC supervillain, having destroyed nearly all of an infinite number of universes.

… May not be as tough as Superboy-Prime.

(different draft)

Daddy: Okay we’re going to draft super scientists (which is something I think you will be more respectful of).

Bella: Okay.

Daddy: Ground rules — and even if someone can say grow or stretch (no hints here) no giants. No celestial beings.

Bella: So they at least started off at regular size?

Daddy: Sure. Okay do you want first pick or second pick?

Bella: Not sure.

Daddy: You’re trying to game me. I know you want Azmuth first but last time you took first pick Azmuth I took Valeria.

Bella: I want Valeria.

Daddy: I am not taking Valeria first pick.

Bella: I’ll take first pick.

Daddy: Do you want Valeria?

Bella: Yes.

Daddy: Okay, you can have Valeria. Go ahead.

Bella: Promise?

Daddy: I said so, didn’t I?

Bella: Okay… Azmuth.

Daddy: What!?! Well played.

Bella: For a seven-year-old. I assume because I am seven and you don’t want to set me up for a lifetime of not trusting men, you won’t go back on your word and take Valeria just because I tricked you and took Azmuth anyway *.

Daddy: Well, Valeria is only three, so you’re not that smart. I guess I’ll take Reed Richards and Brainiac Five.

Bella: Valeria Richards — or should I say VALERIA VON DOOM — and Victor Von Doom.

Daddy: I will wheel Lex Luthor and the SCIENTIST SUPREME Hank Pym.

Bella: Five man teams?

Daddy: Yeah. This is your last pick.

Bella: Iron Man and Nathaniel Richards.

Daddy: Remember the time you had all the Richards?

Bella: Make your last pick.

Daddy: I take Amadeus Cho.

Who do you think won the draft of the super scientists? Answer in the comments below!

Team MichaelJ:

• Reed Richards
• Brainiac Five
• Lex Luthor
• Henry Pym
• Amadeus Cho

Team Bella:

• Azmuth of Galvan
• Valeria Richards
• Victor Von Doom
• Anthony Stark
• Nathaniel Richards

Legend:

Azmuth
(Ben 10 Universe) Creator of the three greatest scientific achievements of the Ben 10 universe, including both the greatest weapon and the greatest instrument of peace. Called the smartest being in [his] universe, Azmuth disagrees, saying he is merely the smartest being in three, arguably five, galaxies.

Reed Richards
(Marvel Universe) Generally depicted as the most intelligent being in the Marvel universe.

Brainiac 5
(DC Universe, 31st Century) Brainiac 5 possesses a Twelfth Level Intellect, which grants him superhuman calculation skills, amazing memory and exceptional technical knowledge. By comparison, 20th century Earth as a whole constitutes a Sixth Level Intellect, and most of his fellow Coluans have an Eighth Level Intellect. 31st century Earth as a whole is a Ninth Level Intellect. His incredible memory allows him to retain knowledge of events that all other characters forget[.]

Valeria Richards
(Marvel Universe) Daughter to Reed and Sue Richards. At age three, Valeria claims to be her father’s intellectual superior. [whether or not this is true you can probably see why a seven-year-old girl would want to draft her high]

Victor Von Doom
(Marvel Universe) Doctor Doom is a polymath scientific genius. Throughout most of his publication history, he has been depicted as one of the most intelligent humans in the Marvel Universe — comparable to arch rival Reed Richards.

Lex Luthor
(DC Universe) The most intelligent human in the DC Universe, and as one of the most intelligent beings of any planet or species. He has mastered seemingly every known form of science, and considers Brainiac his only intellectual rival.

Henry Pym
(Marvel Universe) Scientist Supreme of the Marvel Universe (basically the opposite number to deus ex machina Dr. Strange).

Anthony Stark
(Marvel Universe) Inventive genius whose expertise in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computer science almost rivals that of Reed Richards, Hank Pym, and Bruce Banner, and his expertise in electrical engineering and mechanical engineering surpasses even theirs. He is regarded as one of the most intelligent characters in the Marvel Universe. Also Bella’s hero and the reason she (too) wants to attend MIT.

Nathaniel Richards
(Marvel Universe) Time traveler, scientific genius; father to Reed Richards and grandfather to Valeria Richards (also in this list).

Amadeus Cho
(Marvel Universe) Rated 7th smartest person in the world by Reed Richards, eighth by Hank Pym, and 10th by Bruce Banner. Likely smarter than Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom. Regardless, a brilliant teenager.

So…

Who won?

LOVE
MIKE

* Okay, the (emphasized) second part of that only took place in my head. But you can see where either of us was going on this 🙂

Interlude:

I just started to play Draw Some on my iPhone.

Apparently Draw Some is the new Words With Friends.

I was going to write a version of this story anyway, as the spoken-word version had Josh Ravitz about peeing in his pants on the way home from Baltimore *

The very first round of Draw Some I played was with Shark (an important character in the story), and this was the picture I guessed:

/ end interlude

So this is a story from my first year of marriage, about 10 Block Constructed PTQ seasons ago. Shark and I were (supposedly) both Q’d for the PT on rating (something that would never happen today) with me having beaten him in the finals of a big cash tournament at Neutral Ground.

No idea WTF we were doing in the car. Maybe Shark was going to trade; I guess I was just going to deny my newlywed 10 wife the company of my pleasure ** for the day.

BDM had just discovered his love of U/G Werebears (rather than Arrogant Wurms), and our chauffer for the day, Justin, was coming off back-to-back losses in PTQ finals (with BDM’s U/G deck if I recall).

Fast forward a million hours.

BDM loses the win-and-in round to a Circular Logic, apparently forgetting (and apparently like his opponent) that Werebears tap for mana.

Justin loses in the finals, again.

I lose literally all my [ADJECTIVE REDACTED] drafts, prompting then-GP superstar (and YMG scum) Danny “MonkeyPants” Mandell to puzzle over the swingy-ness of my brilliant-or-brainfart in-game play.

So basically we are all of us tired and tilted, except maybe Shark… Still no idea what he was doing there.

It’s getting late and we are some hours still from NYC.

Justin decides he is too tired to go on.

BDM and I call our wives; one is cooler than the other about it (not naming any names).

In a stark reversal, Shark is now the one who starts going on tilt. Shark, in those years, lived in Connecticut rather than Manhattan, and we were like one highway stop from his apartment.

“No…” stutters Justin. “… too tired to go on… ”

We take an immediate exit that has a hotel icon and venture into what can only be described as “the setting of every low budget horror movie, ever.”

The woods, the smell, the seemingly innumerable miles between the exit and the supposed hotel in the middle of the Connecticut night… All of us have the exact same reaction:

THERE ARE DEFINITELY WEREWOLVES HERE DON’T STOP THE CAR, JUSTIN.
(-all of us)

We eventually make it to some “hotel”, which is basically a series of barns. I spit you not, light-blue barns. At this point I am weighing the certainty of a regular-old Michael Myers-esque machete maniac [bumpkin] killing me versus my heretofore reasonable skepticism around the existence of men turning into slavering canine murderers under the light of the full moon. Justin is a member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, and I am pretty sure Shark and BDM are atheists, but not one of us isn’t terrified of a spontaneous werewolf attack. WEREWOLVES, I tell you. You can shake your head all you want but if you were there you would definitely have been clamoring for silver I am not really interested in dissenting opinions.

So we park. In a barn. Again, literally “a barn” … As in “there is straw on the ground”.

Our hotel room is a converted barn also. I mean obviously it is a barn. It smells funny (I can only assume this is the scent of ammonia being used to cover up the entrails-ridden stench of previous werewolf massacres), and the air conditioning is weird we all agree… Stuffy even as it is supposed to be freshening us.

So we were all dying of exhaustion fifteen seconds earlier but you know how it goes: sharp enough to Drafto as soon as we found carpet to lay cardboard to (I am sure Shark was overjoyed at this) . We gamble on Beds v. Floor (and possibly more? … it’s been ten years). I assume I was on Shark’s team on account of I remember winning.

So BDM grabbed a biology class-stained comforter and burrowed himself a little rat’s nest in the corner. Justin, having gimped had no warmth to look forward to except maybe cozying into the blood-soaked fur of his yellow-eyed soon-to-be killer.

Yawn.

If only for a moment in this victorious draft I can forget my troubles and the impending doom by lycanthrope lips.

Zzzzz…

I wake up first to find Justin (expectedly) lying on the floor by the door.

And unexpectedly…

… WITH HIS HEAD OUTSIDE THE DOOR!

Or what should be his head!

Justin is such a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy fathead that his big nogs was enough to sate any murderous werewolf attackers… with brains enough to sate the inevitable wandering Zombie Apocalypse.

… Or that’s what I would have seen… You know, if there was such a thing as justice in the world. But because there is no justice, Justin was still alive, just with his head halfway out the door, out into barn-land. The dumb motherfucker literally spent the night half-in and half-out of our room!

I go from being restfully sedate to (I think, understandably) monkey tilted in one nanosecond.

“Justin WTF!?! We are in the middle of werewolf country!”

Everyone wakes.

I mean forget about the safety concern of LEAVING YOUR RURAL HOTEL ROOM DOOR OPEN ALL NIGHT… Justin did so, dangling himself out deliciously… IN THR MIDDLE OF AN IMPENDING WEREWOLF ATTACK.

“Sorry Michaelj,” said my sometimes writing partner. “The air conditioning was kind of weird and I had trouble breathing.”

LOVE
MIKE

Aftermath:
I guess on the bright side, we were not torn to shreds by werewolves (or even just robbed or whatever).

But…

Because this is The End of Justice, the cash tournament Shark and I split was downgraded from 36K to 24K based on attendance after the fact, and I lost my ratings Q with just one PTQ weekend and one PT (which I was thankfully qualified for) left.

I didn’t get there.

* In case you missed it, Josh and I podcasted on that trip. You can check that at MTGCast and the follow-up with BDM here

** Katherine and I both caught the reversal in diction; we decided to let it stand 🙂

I woke up Friday morning and found the following set of Tweets waiting for me:

It is true my eighth round opponent in the Star City Invitational, Jon Wood, generously tried to scoop me into Day Two (he was unsuccessful).

So I suppose that if I were in Jon’s spot, I would have been at least a little surprised at finding no mention in last week’s Flores Friday, Citizen and Sir.

And while I am obviously guilty of failing to make Jon “SCG-famous” — in my own defense, and before getting to that point — on the way home from Baltimore, Invitational Top 8 competitor Josh Ravitz and I did give him props in our ride-home podcast.

Podcast? Podcast did you say?

So I posted not one, but two new Top 8 Magic podcasts on MTGCast this past week. The first was with Josh, and the second was with the usual gang of BDM and Steve Sadin. You can check them out here:

Part One: Ravitz
Part Two: BDM [though it is listed as “BMD” :)]

Anyway, “Top 8 Magic-famous” doesn’t exactly suck, though, again, I can understand Jon’s drop of consternation given the Flores Friday not-mention. So do me a solid and help me lift the day of a player who tried to lift my day last week.

Tweet Jon at [the unfortunate handle of] @TimPowersisGay

Some examples of Tweets you might throw him are:

• michaelj h8s ur Twitter handle but sez u r a GM anywayz,
• Congratulations! You are both Top 8 Magic-famous and blog-famous (if not SCG-famous), or…
• (the ever popular) High Five!

So please Please PLEASE… Tweet Jon

Okay!

Important takeaways from this blog post:

• Even when some crappy crap hits you on the bottom of the shoe (or right between the eyes) the universe will often surprise you.
• There are new podcasts to be had! Listen to them here…
• … and here!

That’s it /

LOVE
MIKE