What if You Held a Treasure Hunt and No One Cared?

I’m not usually one to write about local events in Washington, DC, preferring to leave that task in the capable hands of this blogger. But it came to my attention recently that The Washington Post was holding a big treasure hunt, called [stop to check] the Washington Post Hunt. Yeah, that was name and, apparently, it involved going into DC to some staging area or something, where Dave Barry, Tom Shroder (I’m sorry — am I supposed to know you?) and Gene Weingarten would be onstage, providing the Opening Questions.

Then, armed with a copy of the Washington Post Magazine (don’t leave home without it), a cellphone, a pen and some paper, you’d be ready to walk all over the damn city looking for answers to the questions. (They were all supposed to be within easy walking distance, whatever that means.)

There were even more instructions that followed, but I didn’t read them. Why? Because I skimmed through the questions and couldn’t find the answer to the most important one: what do I win?

I scanned the article over and over, but in vain. It seems you only win the ability to play Trivial Pursuit (DC edition) plus some cardiovascular benefit from walking. That’s nice, but I’m seriously not that interested.

I mean, it’s Sunday morning and I’m lazing on my porch reading this. I’m still in my pajamas, drinking cappuccino — all unwashed and smelly (and loving it). Now if you think the prospect of seeing Dave Barry, Gene Weingarten and some other guy try to upstage each other with jokes while giving out clues in some lame-ass treasure hunt that doesn’t even have a prize for winning is going to pry my lazy ass off that porch and into the shower (assuming I bother bathing), then provoke me to schlep said ass way into DC in the bargain, think again.

And, if you think that scenario’s bad, try reading the article itself. Okay, I know it’s popular these days to be cute and edgy. But sometimes you can get too cute and not nearly edgy enough. Or something. All I know is there’s something seriously wrong with the way this article is written. It’s like someone was trying really, REALLY hard to be hip, cute and edgy, all at once.

But the nice thing about reading it online is that you don’t have to look at all the pictures with the article, one of which shows a family on the treasure hunt, wearing T-shirts reading (and I sh*t you not) “The Awesome Family.”

Yet another reason not to drag my lazy ass off the porch.

ADDENDUM: Sadly, I must report I made an error in this post. For those of you who are too busy or lazy to read the article or the comments (you know who you are), I totally f*cked up a fact. There were actually prizes given out for first, second and third place in the Washington Post Hunt. They were, respectively, $2,000, $500 and $500 (yes, I double-checked the numbers — and don’t even ask how I managed to miss them before, because I couldn’t tell you).

Being the sort of person I am, I have no wish to add further to the amazing amount of misinformation on the Internet. And, normally, I read things really closely (especially, if I’m being paid to do it, which I’m not in this case — but none of those things really matter do they?).

Now, I could have simply deleted the post and pretended it never happened. But I got a comment that you can read for yourself taking me (rightly) to task for my error. So, at this point, I consider it part of the public record and to simply delete it smacks too much of historical revision for my comfort.

Anyway, bottom line (took you long enough — I know, I know) is I screwed up. And I just wanted to set the record straight, in case you didn’t read the article or comments. Plus (again, to keep the record straight) I never meant to imply that Tom Shroder was any less worthy of a human being just because I hadn’t heard of him. There are loads of worthy people I’ve never heard of. And vice versa.

In any case, other than my major f*ck up and my rash opinions on people I never heard of, I stand by my opinions on the remainder.