BEST FAN OF OLD-WIZARD

The Nominees:

David MacPhail
David McLeod
Gamer Muzz
Real Zeromage
Master Barker

And the winner is… David MacPhail!

This guy loves to read our website the same way we jump out of bed on Saturday mornings to watch Pokemon. Actually we hate Pokemon and have never watched it. David here, on the other hand, loves this website. He reads every article and leaves a comment on almost all of them. Unfortunately, however, we recently had to take out a restraining order on him because he was seen parked out front of OWHQ way too often. And with our late nights we can’t have this psycho lurking around trying to kill us. So, for that reason he wasn’t able to attend the Wizzies this year, so we will be accepting his award for him and will pass it along through our lawyers and the appropriate authorities.

BEST COMMENT ON OLD-WIZARD.COM

The Nominees:

Master Barker on “Horoscope by DestructoMaximo”
PHill on “Mail Bag Aug 14, 2008”
gameraXis on “Top 10 Ways to Tell If You’re a Hardcore Gamer”
Delta on “Superman vs Thor”
Vintage Junkie on “Top 5 Girls From the Wonder Years”

And the winner is…Delta!

As everyone knows Old-Wizard has the greatest/strangest set of fans. They either love us or they hate us. We have yet to find someone who thinks we’re okay. Either way our best fans/haters leave rather long, rather well thought out arguments. One of the longest was by Delta. Unfortunately we have no idea who Delta is, so we’ll accept his award for him. To be honest, we didn’t read this whole comment. Its long, and if you’re a fan of the website you’re well aware of our laziness and general lack of a work ethic. In any case, congrats, Delta and good job. I’m sure in some very small way you’ve changed the world.

BEST ARTICLE

The Nominees:

Is this a Unified Theory of the Brain?

Sega Gate!

And the winner is…Sega Gate!

Sure a theory of the brain is good and all, but Sega Gate showed that the leader of the Sega fan-boys never even owned a Sega system. I mean how much more ground breaking can it get? Here are all these deluded, confused, and rather unintelligent folks running around thinking that Sega was a good company. Then, with a little research and a lot of elbow grease, we find out that their crazed leader doesn’t even own any of the Sega Systems, completely pulling the rug out from under them. This scandal, of course, sent the hordes of Sega fans into a descending spiral of chaos.  Many were mauled to death, some ran to the hills to start small shanty towns, others went into extreme shock therapy programs and eventually realized that Sega was just gigantic failure and are now doing well.  And it was all thanks to Old-Wizard’s groundbreaking investigative report.

BEST WRITER

The Nominees:

Stephen King
Tom Robbins
Zeromage
DestructoMaximo
Sage

And the winner is… A three way tie between ZM, DM and Sage!

Accepting the award will be ZM, no wait, it seems DM is coming too!  And not to be out-done, Sage is getting up out of his seat as well. Interestingly DM and ZM have locked eyes and are circling each other in a rather animalistic manner. Ahhh Sage has made it to the stage, oh my God ZM and DM have tackled Sage and the three of them are rolling around in a rather comic cloud of dust. Now it seems that DM has bashed the other two over the head and is walking off with the now blood stained Wizzie. Well I’m sure those crazy kids will work it out.

BEST AWARDS

The Nominees:

The Wizzies
The Grammies
The Oscars
The Tonys
The Nobel Prize

And the winner is… The Wizzies!

Of all the award shows out there, we here at OW and the Wizzies are so excited that we have won our own award. I mean these other awards are important, but the Wizzy is the only one that we just made up and decided was really important. Only the best win the Wizzies, and since the Wizzies won the Wizzies, it follows that the Wizzies are the most important awards of them all. Winning this award makes all the work we put into them worth it. Thanks again to the Wizzies, and better luck next year to the others.

WORST WEBSITE:

The Nominees:

InmatesForYou.com
hamsterdance.com
myspace.com
pokemon.com
Seganerds.com

And the winner is…Sega Nerds!

Seganerds.com is a lot like a support group for people who refuse to move on. You see Sega is largely a failed company that had 5 descent games total, and that’s counting games from all of their failed systems. Generally speaking, the only thing memorable about Sega is Sonic, and Sonic is an obvious copy of Mario. Sega is terrible waste of video gaming and these people are terrible wastes of gamers who sit and sulk about how no one likes Sega. These degenerates truly believe that Sega is good company and that it actually made good games.  Its sort of like thinking Yugos were good cars, Skids were cool pants, and Enron was a good investment. In any case, this is a terrible website for terrible people, and for some reason the Sega nerds didn’t show up to the awards so we will accept it for them.

BEST WEBSITE

The Nominees:

Old-Wizard.com
Google
CNN
Wikipedia
Yahoo
Ebay

And the winner is… Old-Wizard.com!

Wow this is truly an honor. First we would like to thank Old-Wizard.com for honoring us, Old-Wizard.com. It truly shows how great a website like O-W is to honor O-W the way they have. We would also like to thank the great websites we were competing against. Google, because we probably use it more than we do our own website. Special thanks also to Wikipedia, we love this site so much.  First because you can change the articles and make them say ridiculous things, and second because it’s the site we use to do all our fact checking. Which may have led to a number of errors because of the former. Thanks again to O-W but we have to go because we have some auctions ending on EBay and we have to make sure we win.

Doug writes: Just wondering what you guys think about that theory that the world will end in 2012. There are many cultures and authors that claim the world will either end or drastically change in 2012. The Maya predict the end of the world in 2012. And in the book “The Bible Code” by Michael Drosnin, he claims that, according to certain algorithms of the Bible code, an asteroid or comet will collide with the Earth. Also in the book “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl” by Daniel Pinchbeck, he discusses theories of a possible global awakening to psychic connection by the year 2012, creating a noosphere. Riley Martin claims that Biaviian aliens will allow passage aboard their ‘Great Mother Ship’ when the Earth is ‘transformed’ in 2012. And Terence McKenna’s numerological novelty theory suggests a point of singularity in which humankind will go through a great shift in consciousness.

Whatever you think of these sources, its a known scientific fact that on the winter solstice in 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years. This means that whatever energy typically streams to Earth from the center of the Milky Way will indeed be disrupted on 12/21/12 at 11:11 p.m. Universal Time. Anyway, just wondering what you guys think about this.

This, my friend, is one of the most thoroughly researched emails we have ever gotten. I don’t know who any of these people are but it sounds convincing. Plus if you look at the track record of the world ending theories, they always prove to be correct, right?. The global bank collapse of Y2k, I think there was something back in 1989 too, and now 2012. As for global awakenings, the return of Aztec gods, bible codes, and alignments of solar bodies, we here at OW are all for it. First we would finally be able to understand the confusing, and often times contradictory thoughts of our wives and girlfriends.

If any gods are to return, the Aztecs would be interesting, we all know math and the Bible go hand in hand, and who doesn’t love aligned solar bodies? Moreover if the Earth does transform, I hope its into a giant robot that eats other planets. Then we can just travel the universe consuming other planets, taking capitalism to a whole new, highly literal level. Just in case the the OWHQ bunker has been stocked with plenty of food, blankets, a hard wired internet connect, generators, and plenty of movies to get us through the long cold apocalypse in comfort. We feel that if anyone should be required to repopulate the planet it should be us.

However, since we are all betting men, we would put our money on nothing actually happening, mainly because nothing ever does. The apocalypse has been predicted since man was able to predict things, and we don’t have a great track record with it. Its almost as if we wanted to know the end as soon as everything started. Like renting a movie and fast forwarding to the end, or reading a book backwards. In any case we’ll see what happens in a few years, until then our bunker needs some up grades, we’re thinking a big a flat screen, some lazy boys, blue ray, deep fryers,….

I guess I’m in the minority, but I personally love the music articles you guys write. You’re Top 5 Worst Music Magazines and Top 10 Ways to Tell if You Don’t Know Anything About Music lists were funny and so true. I had a few music related questions for you guys:

Do you guys really think Oasis is better than the Beatles?

If we were basing this answer as if O-W were a pie chart, then cumulatively yes, Old Wizard thinks Oasis is better than the Beatles. HOWEVER, I am DestructoMaximo, and although a minority here at OW, I believe that the Beatles are the greatest band ever. Take away the fissionability, the suits, the hair, the lunchboxes, and even the star power of each member individually, and you are left with the greatest albums (IMnsHO) of all time. Leaving the fanaticism and glory of Sgt Pepper alone, you can take the white album or Abbey Road and place them up against any album that has come before or after it and it competes, then destroys. The white album is a double LP, but every single song on the album has been my favorite track at one point of my life. The Beatles were seemingly incapable of creating filler, and in my eyes they were the greatest band of all time.

Would you guys ever write a Top 10 or Top X all time best bands?

We have attempted to undertake this task several times, but keep in mind it is a matter of opinion. People feel music in their hearts, and their hearts are based on several factors that don’t take statistics into consideration, so it’s all objective. My top 10 bands change daily, so every time we make a list we end up revising it daily. If you were to ask me today, and just me, not OW collectively, it would look like this:

10. Radiohead
9. The Black Crows
8. Modest Mouse
7. Alice in Chains
6. Built to Spill
5. Wilco
4. Led Zeppelin
3. The Rolling Stones
2. Pavement
1. The Beatles

..But that will probably all change by the time you read this.

What do you guys think about American Idol type shows?

I think that they are a marketing tool that exposes the sludge of the current American recording industry. They hand pick a voice and a smile, use their own market tested people to mold those voices and smiles, force them to sing time-tested generic songs, dress them in generally accepted clothes, poll the largest focus group in history to see who will move the most records, back them with their own impersonal studio musicians, and then sell them like auditory slaves who are indentured to the industry by their once-in-a-lifetime contracts.

Why is Sweden ahead of the US on your music countries list?

The long answer is that we wanted to raise attention toward a mostly culturally forgotten country whose undeniable contributions to pop culture and music are grossly overshadowed by their geographical proximity to the north pole, funny accents, a Muppet, beautiful women, and Viking history. The short answer is: to piss you off.

And why isn’t Canada on the list (especially ahead of Germany)? You couldn’t even give it an honorable mention ahead of Iceland?! Do you guys like Rush?

OK, this is a 2 part question. Let me start by saying, no. I do not like Rush. Lee’s voice makes me want rip my ears off. Are they great musicians? Sure, but so am I and I didn’t put the US at #1 because I live here.

The next question is tough. I think you could argue that every country deserves to be on the list (except for maybe Vatican City and those countries who believe music and dancing is grounds for capitol punishment). Especially now, Canada is pumping out amazing and unique music. Bands like The Arcade Fire and The New Pornographers are rewriting our notions of what pop music can sound like. Plus, I was at Bonhomme last year in Quebec City and I saw some amazing bands from all over Canada that made me think my local scene was lame in comparison…but maybe that was all of the La Fin Du Monde and XXX I was drinking while I was up there (btw, Canadian readers, wtf is in Caribou? The drink, not the animal. It’s like Canadian Absinthe!).

Do you guys ever listen to any Asian music?

Sadly, the only Asian music I have heard it the Asian music that gets brought to the states as a novelty. Pizzicato 5 was a favorite of mine in this category. Truth be told, Americans do not get very many musical imports (that they aren’t sort-of making fun of). The most Asian music I’ve listened to was in France, when I shared a room at EM Lyon with 2 Lebanese kids.

Thanks, guys. I love your site. Keep doing music articles no matter what anyone says.

Thank you! ~DM

From Slapstic.com’s review of Old-Wizard.com:

“There can be no other introduction for the site that is both hated and loved by tens of thousands.”

“It’s amazing to me that exactly half of the comments on OW articles are from people who thought the article was fantastic, while the full other half of comments are from people who want to stab the author with a rusty butter knife. There is no in-between. You either think the guys at Old-Wizard are heroes to nerds everywhere, or the biggest bunch of morons that ever bashed their faces into a keyboard until a website popped out.”

“Not all of the articles are gaming-related, and the ones that aren’t always seem to come completely out of left field, with no regard for the established audience of the blog. Great examples of this are lists of The Top 5 Girls From The Wonder Years, The Top 10 ’80s Cartoons, or The Top 11 Reasons Not to Go to Your High School Reunion.”

“The authors’ love of English rock band Oasis has resulted in several articles devoted to the subject, all of which attempt to reinforce OW’s claim that Oasis is the single greatest band of all time. One particular, The Top 10 Reasons Oasis is Better than The Beatles, is one that I consider to be one of the most interesting music articles I’ve ever read, despite the fact that before discovering Old-Wizard, I had never even heard an Oasis song.”

“For any gaming fan, or any “nerd”, really, Old-Wizard is simply a must-see site. You’re sure to disagree with plenty of the content that the authors put out, but that’s a good thing, since that’s exactly what the goal seems to be. SlapStic is, has been, and will continue to be a big fan for a very long time. We give Old-Wizard.com a very controversial tip of the hat.”

Be sure to check the whole review out:

Old-Wizard.com Review

It really bothers me that this site has grown so large. It shows just how low gaming culture has sunk that a bunch of idiots who don’t know anything about video games…who make fun of REAL gamers.…and generally only talk about games from a decade or two ago (probably because you can’t afford any new consoles) have become bigger than high quality sites like Girls Don’t Game or Seganerds.

Girls Don’t Game is a site made up of actual gamers…and sorry their site looks better than yours too. Oh, and they don’t make fun of true gamers. They also don’t make fun of America or Americans. You guys are assholes. You’re probably from England. And I’ll tell you another thing, you think your tough guys??? I’ll bet you I could kick all of your asses (I was in the Marines by the way). Anyway, continue to have fun hiding behind your computer making fun of people. One day someone like me will find you and teach you a lesson.

-Justin

Dear sir,

We appreciate your letter and candor. Let me start by saying that you make a number of very relevant points, which speaks both to your ability as a man of letters and as a former soldier in this nation’s great army. We too are surprised how large our website has grown. As we’ve stated many times before this, our site was created only for us, and based mainly on conversations we have with each other that we find particularly humorous. I must, however, object to the label, and labels in general, that we are a gaming website. Many readers have tried to force this label on us and we have rejected it time and time again. We strive to combat both labels and the stereotypes that come with them and do so through humor.

Moreover we are particularly interested when people apply labels to themselves and often times purposefully live to these stereotypes. It is these people we like to target with aour jokes, as brash as they might be. Though we all enjoy playing video games I doubt that anyone of us would willing accept the label gamer, nor for that matter, accept the label of anything in general. Furthermore we are all proud Americans born and raised in New England, arguably the most patriotic area of the nation. We were, of course, the leaders of the rebellion. Also I would like to point out what we not only make fun of gamers, we make fun of everyone, including ourselves.

Girls Don’t Game is a great website that we visit often and encourage our readers to visit as well. I can’t agree with you on Seganerds. In our collective opinion, which we are entitled to have, and which you, as a Marine, fought for us to have. Sega, Segannerds, and Sega fan boys are lost, confused, and sad people. Sega was a terrible system in the ’90s and time has not fixed that problem. We have spoken at length about this topic and I refuse to address this issue further. It is dead as far as we are concerned.

Despite your threat of violence we will continue to publish whatever we want and are disappointed that an intelligent person such as yourself would stoop that low. If you feel that “kicking our asses” will change anything about us or this website you are sadly mistaken. We aren’t hiding behind our computers but we also enjoy the anonymity the internet provides, as we all have jobs and would not want certain friends and co-workers to know more about us then we permit. Should your passion out weigh your sense, I have left at least one clue directing you to our whereabouts. Your training and intelligence should allow you to figure out the rest on your own. What I truly hope is that you have seen the error in your ways and came to an understanding about us and our writing. In doing so have been converted to a fan. I will leave you with one last bit of advice, there is an old saying that goes something to the effect as “he who cannot laugh at himself does not deserve to laugh” or something like that. We can, do, and encourage others to laugh at us when ever the occasion should strike them. You should take a hard look in the mirror and do the same.

-Sage

Is it true that there is a metallic strip that runs down the center of the 20 bill? What is this for? Is it a tracking device?

Its mainly because the government is out to get you. That’s right! By tracking where every single twenty dollar bill is in the entire world the CIA can secretly read your mind to be sure you love America in perfect proportions (loving America too much is a little gay, not enough and you’re a commie pinko bastard). It also gives the government’s super computers something to do, and what do you think all those satellites are for? Not google maps that’s for sure. Actually all government agents have special devices that scan your wallet and tells them exactly how money you have, your credit rating, and how many children you have. Simultaneously and in conjunction with the advertisement agencies they change signs and commercials in your immediate area in a capitalistic conspiracy to part you from said money.

I mean it has nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with prevention of counterfeit money. That’s for sure. That would be a waste of time, it makes more sense to make millions of tracking devices. Especially since most of the twenties are in banks, with direct deposit and all.

Listen to the episode here.