I assure you, everything that is about to follow is a true story. This is the story of one of the most ridiculous series of events to ever be crammed in about a 12 hour period. Presented for the approval of the midnight society, or possibly just my viewing audience, I give you the tale of Frostbite '99.
It was a very, very brisk morning, sometime in December. Myself, Syd, Spanky, and several of our other friends packed
our bags and headed to the train station so we could go attend a Magic tournament. Back in those days, Magic tournaments in Boston
were held in the John Hancock building. We took the T in and got out at Back Bay, which is about 20 feet from the building. We walked
inside, and their was no tournament to be found anywhere. We asked the staff there and they had no idea what the fuck we were talking about.
Confused, we stood outside the building trying to figure out how this happened. Then our friend Scott realized he had a cell phone, and also
happened to have the business card for the store running the event in his wallet. Keep in mind that in 1998 cell phones were the size of
tractors and only the wealthiest one percent of Americans could afford them. The store's answering machine picked up and told us that
the tournament was actually being held at some hotel in Boston. After a needlessly long conversation with a subway employee, all of which
was spent trying to figure out what the fuck he was saying, we were directed back onto the T and hopefully in the right direction.
We got off at Government Center, and asked the guy selling tokens where this hotel was. He looked a bit confused for a bit, then told
us it was a few blocks "that way". I'm sure as we walked away, he then proceeded to mutter to himself "Or was it THAT way?".
It's important to note that none of us were prepared for any sort of outdoor excursion. Sure we had coats and such, but we didn't expect to
be outside, and the hold was taking quite a toll on us. There was talk of giving up, and we were ready to turn around until we saw someone carrying
a backpack. His backpack seemed to be weighing down half of his body approximately as much as ours were, and he looked just dorky enough to
also be heading to a Magic tournament. We asked him if he knew were the hotel was, and he simply smiled and replied "Don't worry, you're
almost there" and continued walked. I'd like to take a brief moment to mention that this is never a proper answer to such an inquiry. If
he wanted to just say "fuck off" that would have been fine, but he may as well have said "You just leave that to me" as he continued to walk
past us. It turned out, however, that he was correct and we were almost there. He walked past us about five feet and then turned to the right,
up the steps of the hotel. We all felt a little silly, but we went inside.
For the next few hours, the day was pretty uneventful. I'll spare you the details of the Urza's Saga sealed Pro Tour Qualifier, but there were a couple amusing
things. The way these tournaments work is that everyone opens a few packs, or a "sealed pool", and then marks the contents of the pool
on a checklist provided. The judges then collect everything and hand it back out, so that no one is actually building a deck from the sealed pool
they had to fill out. This is a pretty effective way to prevent cheating, but also a pain in the ass. After about an hour of filling out
the checklists, we were finally handing our sealed pools to start building our decks. Our friend, Soulz, started flipping through his
cards and saw that someone had written "You win" on the box of cards he received. At first he thought it was a preemptive congratulations
on receiving a ridiculous pile of cards, but apparently it was some sort of evil voodoo hex or something. It's basically the douchebag
equivalent of bringing a little good luck troll doll with you, like crazy old ladies playing bingo. Also during deck building, someone yelled out in
anger while looking at their sealed pool "I have two Okks!". If you're reading this blog, there's about a 50% chance that you understand that,
but if so you probably realize how funny it was to the rest of us. Anyway, none of us won the tournament so whatever. Back to the interesting stuff.
As we left the tournament, our friend Soulz decided it'd be fun to keep walking around in a circle through the revolving door that was the only
visible entrance to the hotel. He kept going around and around, and finally another one of our friends, decided to put an end to it. He got into one of the
other three chambers and attempted to walk the other way. At the time this was happening, Soulz was over 300 pounds, and our other friend was somewhere over 200.
That's a lot of force acting on that door, and suddenly instead of the revolving door looking like an X with four chambers, it suddenly folding in on
itself from all the pressure and because a T shape, with the long section completely sealing the door shut. I quick push showed that it would no longer rotate,
so we all ran as far and as fast as we could. Oddly enough, as far and as fast as we could was the Burger King right next door to the hotel. Since
this happened, I have been assured by a few different people that revolving doors are supposed to fold like that, but I much prefer to think
that they broke the door, thus trapping all the assholes he eliminated us from the tournament inside to fester and rot. If that were the case, the room
would not have smelled any different than it already did anyway. Our dinner was pretty uneventful, except for a couple rather amusing
signs in the Burger King. One of the joyfully proclaimed how the double whopper had "only 1800 calories". To this day I can't tell if the
sign was meant to be funny or not.
After eating, we made our way back to the subway. You would think at this point that the excitement would be over with, but such was not
the case. For some reason, and I will never understand why, we decided to take the blue line back to the orange line, because we thought
it would be faster. If you're unfamiliar with the Boston subway system, just know that the blue line smells like pee, and is where people go to die.
Had I known this before 1998, I would have protested this plan and said we should just wait, but I was young and foolish. Now I'm just young.
Anyway, we got on the urine soaked train and hang out near the door, as we're only going to be on for two stops anyway and are all a little afraid
of what we might sit in. Suddenly, an old lady hobbles over to us and yells "Sit down!". We all stare back, a little confused, and she
just repeats "Sit down! It's safer!". Rather than tempt fate, we all quickly sit down and hope the train will stop very, very soon. One of our friends,
however, had no interest in taking orders from this woman and simply answered back to her in his nasally, monotone voice, "Why don't YOU sit down?" The old woman
was dazed, but she still must have had the presence of mind to make the tag, because the next thing we knew hew tag team partner, crazy homeless guy,
was in our faces asking "You got any change?". It was going to be a long and unpleasant ride if somehow this group of eight kids were all
without change, so one of our friends took one for the team and forked over a blueberry muffin's worth of coinage. The train then stopped, and we
got out of there as fast as we fucking could.
And THAT is where babies come from. For machines.
© 2008 by Dr. Jeebus