Happy 70th Birthday, Grandma!!

On this day in 1936, in the fair city of Cleveland, Ohio: Barbara Ann St. Hilaire was born Barbara Ann Sobodosh. She was married soon out of high school and had five children; Deb, Diane, Linda, Ralph, and Mark. Sometime during the mid seventies she discovered something at a bowling alley that resembled table tennis on a television.

On that day, that unrecorded yet monumental day: a new creature, "Old Grandma Hardcore," came into this world; kicking and screaming at everyone she could kick. She might not kick as hard anymore, but she can still fucking scream.

Today Grandma works for MTV as the senior games correspondent for "The G-Hole." She was featured in ESPN the magazine, Der Spiegel Online, FHM Germany, BusinessWeek Online, CNN, CBS Evening News, WKYC Channel 3 (NBC), Fox 8 Cleveland, Channel 5 Cleveland, The Washington Post, The Akron Beacon Journal, The Record Courier, The Sydney Morning Herald, Fark, countless radio stations across the globe, as well as hundreds of blogs, messageboards, and e-mails, all within the past six or seven months. Millions of people have heard of Grandma and her habits.

I am DEEPLY proud of Grandma and what she has achieved. When people ask me if I am surprised at the media attention I have to respond with simply "not anymore." As family, it's difficult to assess her character from an outside perspective, but it is not hard to see why she's special.

It's just after midnight here at the house, and if I look just to my left I can see the woman who helped raise me into the funny-looking jackass you see today, angrily trying to punish dinosaurs with bullets in Peter Jackson's King Kong for the XBox 360. I love the old girl! We've been close since always. I can't say I'm jealous or threatened by any of the hundreds of thousands of "new" grandchildren she's acquired since we started this blog. She has a huge, loving family- and it's only getting bigger.

I want to ask her what she thinks about all this; the attention, the free games, the advice, the assistance, the travel, the money, the love.... but right now she's a little preoccupied, and it's her birthday.

"It wouldn't be BAD if you could kill them with one shot, these...FLYING things, but- NO!!! ......Where the fuck did YOU come from?! SHIT!!! Right at the FUCKING end, too.... ....stupid motherfucker!!"
[Game Audio]: "50 magazines on backup!"
"Mister, you could have a thousand magazines on backup, you're still gonna fucking DIE."


Happy Birthday Grandma.

Game on!