The Last Time I Will Ever Write About Star Wars. (Ever.)

Two weeks ago I consumed all six Star Wars movies--the prequels, the tampered-with originals, the special features--in the span of 48 hours. Not by choice or because I'd temporarily lost my mind, but because I was reviewing the new Blu-rays for the show. I locked the doors, lowered the lights, and kept a pillow nearby in case I needed something to rain blows down upon and/or cry into. I pressed PLAY.

And so it began.

Along the way, I located an old friend who I'd presumed lost forever: the Star Wars fan within me. In the 10 years since I'd last seen him, he'd grown pale and gaunt. More animal than human now, he no longer wore clothes, or made attempts to cover his genitals or butt areas. He'd written the words "HAN SHOT FIRST" in poop on a nearby wall.

"Der?"

He peered at me out of the darkness. I peered at him. Then, to my surprise, he spoke. "Friend?" he croaked.

I decided I'd better finish watching the movies before I gave him my answer.

EPISODE I: THE PHANTOM MENACE

*Naboo = the most boring fictional place ever invented.

*Worst line of the movie Mace Windu: "I do not believe the Sith could return without us knowing." Doesn't look too bad on paper? Try saying it out loud. See? Terrible.

*OK, new worst line just in: Yoda (to Anakin who is being assessed by the Jedi Counsel): "How feel you?"

*Anakin/Jake Lloyd driving his pod during the seemingly nine hours-long pod race = looks like he's playing with a bunch of cheap-looking props.

*Ewan McGregor's ponytail = creepy.

*There's a petty cockiness to the whole thing. This movie is less about expanding a universe or telling any kind of a story, and more about Star Wars taking a victory lap--hooray for Star Wars, everyone! hooray!--while George passes the hat.

*More shit.

*Line that made me put my belt in my mouth and bite down like a cowboy does in movies when he is having a bullet removed from his leg by another cowboy who is using a rusty knife as his surgical instrument: Anakin says these words while flying in space and inadvertently destroying an entire battle station: "This is tense." I'm pretty sure the expression on my face in this moment could be described as woe. This is the moment, I think, when my Star Wars pilot light blew out.

*There is a Forrest Gump mentality to the whole thing: Simply having pluck--not skill or intelligence--is enough to destroy entire battle stations. Another example: at one point Jar Jar Binks gets the arm of a Clone droid, still wielding a blaster, stuck to his foot. As he tries to shake the arm off, he inadvertently shoots at least three other Clone droids. More appropriate title for this movie: Star Wars Episode I: The Inadvertent Menace.

*On their death beds, the staunchest of Star Wars fans will still utter the words, "But...Darth...Maul...was...cool." The truth is this: Darth Maul is not a real character. He is a man wearing scary makeup and devil horns who enjoys doing lightsaber dances with the Jedi. That's it.

EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE LIGHTSABER DANCE PARTIES

*Side note: Before the movie debuted, Harry Knowles "leaked" his review of Attack of the Clones, stating that Episode II would right all the wrongs of Phantom. (No Jar Jar, less Senate machinations, more action, etc.) Harry lied to me, and ever since I've discounted his opinion, and Ain't It Cool's opinions, to $0.000001.

*Ewan McGregor grows an impressive beard.

*Watching this movie is like watching the world's most powerful money hose spray at full bore for two and a half hours.

*More dog shit.

*Anakin's ponytail = looks like the back of his head is shitting.

*Everything feels small and inauthentic. Every vista feels plastic and manufactured, probably because every vista was created in the George Lucas Synthetic Vistas Lab. Why bother going to Tunisia when you can recreate a digital version of whatever you want with computers on your ranch in the woods?

*Mace Windu gets another terrible line: He shows up at Count Dooku's arena and says, "This party's over." (Yes, someone got served.)

*Another terrible Yoda line: While hovering in a ship above the gladiator arena, Yoda says, "Around the survivors a perimeter create."

*More lightsaber dance parties.

*Shit explosion.

*Boba Fett = now ruined forever. Both Phantom and Attack seem hellbent on stripping the Star Wars universe of every bit of mystique it once had.

*Yoda gets into a lightsaber fight. Now I'd been imagining this moment for more than 30 years. And it's so boring. He bounces all over the place like one of the Flea Men from the Castlevania games. That's his move: bounce, bounce, bounce, etc. What kind of bullshit fighting is that? I actually feel bad for Dooku in this fight because he must be so annoyed.

*These CG creatures all look like crappy toys I'd put underneath the wheels of my mom's car to see what they'd look like after she'd back over them on her way to work in the morning.

*Anakin and Padme's romance is the most bloodless relationship ever captured on film. Have two people ever been more neutered or had less chemistry? Man, you could practically see the erections on Luke, Han, and Chewie whenever Leia was around. Seriously, the erections were there; George later had them erased in his Synthetic Erection Erasing Lab. At the other end of the spectrum, when Anakin and Padme kiss, it practically creates a rift in time and space in which every love story ever written, including Romeo and Juliet and The Notebook and Love Story, gets sucked into, never to be seen again.

EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE OLD WOMAN LIPS

*Everyone is clenched in these damn movies. Ewan McGregor = clenched. Samuel Jackson = clenched. Natalie Portman = clenched. Hayden Christensen = so clenched. The only person not clenched is Ian McDiarmid as Senator Palpatine/The Emperor. He and his old woman lips scowl and whoop like he just finished his shift as the host of "Monster Movie Matinee" before reporting to the Star Wars set. He seems to be the only person who had any fun at all while making these movies.

*Mace Windu's death = shit.

*George Lucas was once a student of life, but he is no longer. [Side note: I wrote this down while watching the movies, though now I'm not exactly sure what I meant by it at the time.]

*More lightsaber dances.

*More shit.

*Hayden Christensen is supposed to look angry and evil throughout the movie--he's the personification of the struggle between the Light and Dark Sides--but instead he always looks like a varsity quarterback who is vaguely bitter about losing "the big game."

*Darth Vader operating scene: Do they not have access to morphine at Darth Vader Transformation General Hospital?

*Also: Why is Darth Vader so short? He towers over everyone in the old movies--except for Chewbacca, of course--but here he looks like a kid wearing his dad's Darth Vader outfit. The proportions are completely off. Not for one second do I believe that the real Darth Vader is inside that suit.

*It's over. And all I can think is this: what a wasteful enterprise. Even when I was a kid in the 70's and 80's I understood why someone might be tempted by the dark side, how a person could be potentially be corrupted. When Vader reveals that he's Luke's dad in Empire, part of me, even as a child, thought, "Jesus, Luke, just go be with your dad! Go rule the galaxy together. It might be fun. Plus, you'll be with your dad."

But then George has to go and give us eight more hours of movie explaining how one might be tempted, to show us in the most painstakingly banal and condescending way imaginable the good/bad duality that we're all born with. The prequels presume that the audience members, adults and kids alike, are all mush-brained simpletons; that we've never lived a day.

Because how could we possibly understand anything unless George spends eight hours and millions of dollars explaining it to us? "George," of course, being a man who has lived like Howard Hughes--minus the pee jars--in his secret woodland retreat for the past 25 years? Surely he knows everything about life and has plenty of wisdom to share with us? Yes? [Note: That's sarcasm.] [Note 2: I'm pretty sure it's this exact thought that resulted in me writing the "George was once a student of life" note from earlier.]

EPISODE IV: HOLY SHIT THOSE ARE THE SKELETONS OF UNCLE OWEN AND AUNT BERU

*I'm tired of everyone always heaping praise on Empire at the expense of Star Wars. Empire is a lot of fun, but Star Wars is the better, more human, more complete movie.

It's true.

EPISODE V: WHAT? WE ALL HAVE TO WAIT FOR THREE F***ING YEARS TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS TO EVERYONE?

*While Star Wars ends in a satisfying fashion, Empire leaves everyone and everything in jeopardy. One: Han is trapped in carbonite. Two: Luke learns that Vader is his father. Three: Luke now has two ghosts--Yoda and Obi-wan--in his ghost collection. True to its title, the Empire really did strike back in this movie.

*Now that I think about it, it's that three year wait between Empire and Jedi that probably turned so many of us into fans/nerds. I had three years, which at that point was approximately one third of my lifespan, to ponder the fate of these characters. Three years to go to bed at night thinking about them; three years to dream about them. That kind of intense wondering, that kind of extrapolation, especially for a kid, does something to a brain that can't easily be undone.

EPISODE VI: HA, HA, HA, WE'RE ALL MOVIE STARS NOW

*Yes, there's plenty of mugging and hey-now moments in Return of the Jedi. Yes, everyone was probably drunk and going to orgies at night and doing drugs while filming the movie, because they were all incredibly rich and famous at this point. But I don't care. I still love Jedi. The scenes between Luke and Vader are about as exciting as anything I've ever seen. And I've never understood all the hate for the Ewoks. They're in the movie for about 20 minutes. And they're not that bad. The only truly unforgivable moment for me is the inversion of the "I love you" moment. (Han says it to Leia in Jedi.) Otherwise, Jedi does an admirable job of wrapping up the storyline in a credible, exciting fashion.

And it's over.

Two more things before I wind this down.

One.

I remember the night in 1977 when my Uncle Jack--now dead for several years--took my brother and me to see Star Wars. (My father, never one for flights of fancy, wasn't interested in this kind of "horse shit.") We lived in the country at the time, on a damp acre of rural property, surrounded by miles of pine trees. Uncle Jack drove us to the nearby city of Rome in his El Camino--not unlike the way Obi-wan takes Luke to Mos Eisley--and showed us something that would, unbeknownst to me at the time, forever change who I was.

When he dropped us off later that night after the movie, I remember the image of my mother standing in the glow of the porch light in her white nightgown. She was waiting for my brother and me to come indoors. I remember walking towards her, towards the porch light, somehow knowing even then that, like Luke, I wouldn't always live here.

Two.

For months my brother and I coveted the two-album John Williams score for Star Wars with all our hearts. Each time we'd visit the local Western Auto--a chain of auto parts stores that also carried housewares, sporting goods, and, yes, records--we'd fondle the shrink wrapped album until the sales clerk would ask us to kindly cease doing so.

One October afternoon we came home from school to find our grandparents' car sitting in the driveway. When I walked into the house, I knew right away that something was different, that something was happening. The Star Wars theme was coming from the stereo speakers. A closer inspection of the stereo revealed that album one of the two-album set was indeed playing. Our grandparents--like Uncle Jack, also now dead for several years--had brought it to us as a gift.

My brother and I practically began shitting ourselves with joy. Which was an actual danger for me, as I had literally shit myself with excitement on Christmas morning only a year earlier.

Man. Sometimes I really miss that kid--the one who once could get so worked up about something that shit would involuntarily come out of him.

After my recent 48-hour Star Wars digression, to my surprise, the old pilot light flickered back to life again. What's surprising to me is how much time I've spent thinking about Star Wars since. I've had hours of conversations about the movies with friends and co-workers. For years now I've operated as if the Star Wars universe is no longer relevant to me. For better or worse, that's not entirely true.

Since revisiting the movies, I've located the untampered-with original trilogy on DVD. (It's the 2008 box set. I found it on Amazon. It wasn't cheap.) And, after acquiring said box set, I saw Han shoot first for the first time in about 20 years. It's absolutely cathartic seeing this footage again. And it's also oddly pornographic, as if you're watching something taboo, something that you're no longer supposed to be able to see.

I've also since purchased an action figure--a Darth Vader--from a terrific store called Toy Traders in Langley, BC. Vader joins the modest collection of Star Wars action figures that I currently keep in my guest bathroom in my apartment. There's a Luke, a Han, an Emperor, a C3PO, an Obi-wan, and even a vintage Boba Fett circa 1979.

All of which, I suppose, is my way of saying to the revolting, pathetic, poop-flinging Star Wars fan who still lives in me:

"Yes, old buddy. Friend."

Ode To That Crying Guy on the Subway Platform

I had an idea of how my life was going to turn out. I had a plan.

My plan was this: I was going to be a teacher. Preferably a college professor. Or, failing that, an instructor at a tony private school in the New England states, not unlike the one that Robin Williams teaches at in the movie Dead Poets Society. I would have my summers off, during which I would sip tea and tinker with my thousand-page novel in the afternoons and kiss my cute wife in the evenings. Each fall I'd select a turtleneck from my collection of turtlenecks--all shades of blues and blacks--and return to the campus where I'd resume my place in my creaking office chair while gazing profoundly out the window at the impossibly red leaves on the old maple tree in the Quad.

It was a good plan. Even now I get a little excited just thinking about it.

That plan obviously never came about for me.

I did go to graduate school, which was the first step in my plan. I mingled with other writers. I taught classes. I shopped for turtlenecks.

But three years later, when it was time for me to graduate, it dawned on me one day that I'd endured a dramatic change of heart. I no longer wanted to teach. I no longer had any romantic notions about colleges and universities.

So I let go of my creaking office chair and my maple tree on the Quad. I would still keep my Latin textbooks on my bookshelves for a few more years, thinking that I still might go back, that I still might get a PhD in this or that eventually, that I still might wind up teaching Antigone to teenagers after all. But what I wound up actually doing was this: I moved to New York.

Which, I now realize, is what people do when they don't know what else to do with their lives.

I thought that in New York, no matter what happened to me--good or bad--at least I'd still be in New York, home of Papaya King, David Letterman, and The Place Where John Lennon Was Shot. I thought, If any place in the world can tell me what I'm made of, it's this place.

So my Latin textbooks, my turtlenecks and I moved to New York.

What followed, of course, were many years of abject despair. I lived in crummy apartments. I worked lousy jobs. I fell in love with the wrong girls.

Then I went through some medical woes in the late '90's. I suffered through things that I wouldn't wish on anyone. In the name of trying to at least slow the rapid downward spiral I was on, I saw a therapist a few times a week. It was Woody Allen-type therapy--me, on the couch, with the therapist, who bore a striking resemblance to Sigmund Freud, sitting in a nearby chair and quietly writing in his notebook.

After my original career had gone out the window--or, at this point, had flown out a series of windows, then fell to the street below where it lay in a mangled heap and then a large piano had fallen on top of it--I decided that I would be part of a new generation who didn't have traditional careers. Those people with careers? Like my college classmates who had taken jobs with Lehman Brothers and would be there until the end of time (or so they no doubt thought)? They were the suckers. They were the clueless.

Me? I'd be like the guy in that old Dion song, "The Wanderer."

"Oh well, I roam from town to town." (I would.) "I go through life without a care." (That's me.) "And I'm happy as a clown." (That sounds fun, right?) "With my two fists of iron and I'm going nowhere." (I have no idea what that last line means.)

Anyway, I distinctly remember one afternoon sitting in my office at the terrible magazine where I worked. I opened a dark red envelope from Fannie Mae, the student loan people. I'd recently missed a series of student loan payments. As Fannie Mae realized this, they began to send me color coded envelopes. At first the envelopes were, in retrospect, a concerned yellow. But when I ignored them, they turned orange. And now, I was up to red. I was pretty sure that the next envelope I received from Fannie Mae would be an extremely angry purple.

I opened the envelope. Though I was fully aware of what was coming, it never failed to completely shock me. I found a bill for more than thirty thousand dollars. I sat there, trying to breathe, wondering how in the world I would ever pay off this monstrous debt. Beyond that, I wondered if I'd heal, if I'd get better. And beyond that, I wondered if I'd ever get out of the terrible, miserable office where I was working at the time.

"You can always come home," my mother said to me over the phone when I told her what was going on. "New York isn't for everybody."

After work that night, I remember standing on the subway platform at the 36th Street and Sixth Avenue station. It was rush hour. People were so crammed on the platform that they were in danger of falling onto the tracks. My train, an uptown B, pulled into the station. It was filled to capacity.

The doors opened. No one got on and no one got off. The doors closed.

The next train was even more full than the previous train. Doors opened. Doors closed. No movement.

A third train was so full that it did not even bother to stop. It simply rolled straight on through the station--something that trains sometimes did during rush hour--with hundreds of bodies pressed against the windows.

I did my best to steel myself. I told myself, This is the universe testing you, seeing what you're made of. I thought, This is the best you've got, Universe? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I am laughing at you, Universe. Because you have a stupid look on your face right now, Universe. Well, you do.

But 10 minutes later, which equals approximately 100 years in subway time, when another train entered and left the station without stopping--this time without so much as even a tapping of brakes from the train operator--whatever steeling I'd done to myself, whatever bravado I'd been able to muster, was completely gone. Before I could do anything about it, I felt tears coming out of my eyes.

I could feel them running down my face. I couldn't believe it. I was standing on a subway platform in New York City and weeping like Ryan O'Neal does at the end of the classic 1970 movie, Love Story.

I was certain in this moment that nothing good would ever happen to me. I was sure--100-percent sure--that my life would be nothing but debt, and terrible jobs, and ruin, and a series of subway trains that wouldn't ever stop for me. What I didn't know that day is that I would eventually turn everything around.

Everything.

I would, in time--and it wasn't easy--get myself out of that mire. Oh, there would be other mires, and I'd get out of them, as well. (Fact: The mires never end, really.) Earlier this week I realized that I have been doing what I currently do for 10 full years now. And I realized, to my complete surprise, that though I never wanted one, I somehow, someway wound up with a career anyway. I wound up doing something that I'm proud of, something that I love to do. I'm not sure how this happened. But it did.

I've done things, and seen things, and gone places that the crying man on the subway platform couldn't even imagine.

If only I could go back to that time, back to that platform, and talk to that guy. I'd slip an arm around him, and say, "Hey, buddy. It's all going to turn out OK. I know it doesn't feel like it right now, but it is. Trust me. It is."

The Pablum Era

These days videogames tend to be fun, breezy little experiences. They are grin-inducing diversions that leave you feeling like a winner. Do the slightest thing, however banal, and suddenly the game is beeping and booping all over the place and raining virtual confetti down upon your laurel leaf-crowned head.

"Well, now! Look at you!" games seem to say. "What a spectacularly gifted human being you are! I know that you and I barely know each other, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and make a guess that you, Handsome Face--is it OK if I call you Handsome Face?--are something of a gaming savant. Aren't you? Come, now--no need to be humble. Now, go ahead and accept this oversized check made out in your name. And enjoy another four or five happy little ditties along with all these glorious rainbows shooting all over the f---ing place! IT'S ALL FOR YOU, CHOSEN ONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

But there was a time, not all that long ago, when games weren't afraid to be cruel exercises in dark agony (Cruel Exercises in Dark Agony = the title of my grad school poetry thesis); when they'd ask you to perform impossible task after impossible task and, upon completing said tasks, after dozens upon dozens of game-over screens, you'd be given the most meager of rewards for your effort. Games once said to us: "Hey, guess what? After all that bullshit you just went through, it turns out that the princess is actually in another castle. Oh man, if only you could see the dumb expression on your face right now. This is what you look like: 'Dur, dur, dur, dur, dur.' " Games said: "Every doubt you've ever had about yourself? About you sucking at everything and being a huge loser? All of that shit is absolutely f---ing true."

The reward-to-effort ratio these days is, by my far-from-scientific estimates, around ten to one. In other words, gamers typically get around 10 cutscenes, 10 door-opening keys, 10 Achievements Unlocked or 10 variations on a confetti shower for every sole bit of effort that they invest into a game. During the '80's and '90's, the opposite was true. Gamers had to invest 10 times the effort and time into a game in order to squeeze out the smallest, stalest bread crumb of encouragement. (Stale Bread Crumbs of Encouragement = Another solid title for a graduate school poetry thesis.)

To be clear, I'm not waxing poetic for a golden age of thumb-busting gaming here. I'm not saying that one is better or worse. All I'm saying is that most of us are walking the earth thinking that we are better gamers--and, perhaps by extension better people--than we actually are.

Over the last five years or so, games have gone from being a niche hobby to having mass appeal. Part of the reason that the medium has achieved this kind of commercial success is that game makers have become incredibly savvy when it comes to making everyone--including your mom, a.k.a. the very person who once chastised you for playing games--feel like winners. In other words, if you build it, and you create a cleverly designed feedback loop that makes them feel awesome, they will come.

Exhibit A: Game Over screens are an endangered species these days. Think about it--when was the last time you saw a Game Over or You're Dead, or in the case of Bayonetta, the "Witch Hunts Are Over" screen?

Imagine if you could pleasure a lover--a complicated task, as most of us can attest--simply by touching her on the very tip of her nose. One little tiny tap--boop!--and suddenly she is in the throes of passion. Seeing the results of your tap-boop, you would no doubt think, Surely I must be counted among the world's most skilled and gifted lovers. Or, imagine if you merely wrote your name at the top of your SAT only to have an entire marching band suddenly enter the testing hall along with a bald man in jacket and tie offering you a full scholarship to any university--any school in the world--that you'd like go to. Or, imagine if you invested a mere $10 in the stock market only to have--well, you get the idea.

If these things actually happened, the direct result would be an over-developed and undeserved sense of confidence in one's self. Egos would be inflated to Macy's Thanksgiving Parade-balloon size. People would walk the streets thinking, I'm hot shit, even when they are in fact not even remotely close to being hot shit.

That's what's happening in videogames these days.

One of the first games with mass appeal was 1984's Tetris. Blocks would descend from the top of the screen, Russian MIDI music would play, and everyone--even casual gamers--had a high old time. It's interesting to note that there was never any sort of "winning" in Tetris; all you could do effectively in Tetris was stave off inevitable failure. Because no matter how skilled you were, every Tetris player on the planet is eventually overwhelmed by the bricks. If anyone technically wins in Tetris, it's not the player; it's the bricks.

Compare Tetris with 2007's Peggle, which requires minimal, if any, skill, and is nothing but winning. Fire a tiny ball into a row of dots, watch it bounce from dot to dot, then bask in the glow of the message "EXTREME FEVER!" appearing onscreen while Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" blares in the background. If you're feeling a little low today, take in a couple of quick games of Peggle. Peggle can turn your day around right quick.

Peggle marks the beginning of the Pablum Era in gaming. The bulk of what's offered to gamers these days, with rare exceptions, is sugar-coated and dumbed down and already chewed. Few games, if any, dare pose a bona fide challenge for fear that someone might find the game too challenging and stop playing. Games are inherently insecure entities. They show up in our lives all smiley and smelling good, hoping with all their hearts that we really, really like them.

Whenever a game does come along that's not afraid to make a gamer question his or her self-worth--examples include From Software's Demon's Souls, Retro's Donkey Kong Country Returns, and Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden games--said game garners a reputation as a "hard" game, or as a game that would appeal exclusively to "old school" or "retro" gamers.

I'm not against games that make people feel good about themselves. As I've said many times through the years, I play videogames to feel like a winner and a hero; I play games because I want to see things and do things and experience things that I can't see/do/experience in my regular litter box-scooping, bill-paying, laundry-doing life.

But when I play something like the acclaimed Jetpack Joyride, which everyone on the planet seems to be playing today, a game which requires me only to tap repeatedly on the iPad's touchscreen--no, it does not even matter where I tap; just tap anywhere--only to receive glorious explosions, spinning slot machines, and more coin-jangling sound effects than an Atlantic City casino for my "efforts," it's difficult sometimes not to feel like Pavlov's dopiest dog.

The Artwork of Toronto Hotel Rooms, Part 3

It's my last day in Toronto. There's still plenty to do before I can head to the airport--one more G4 booth hang-out (10 a.m. to noon), one more panel--yet I already I feel that vague it's-all-over melancholy that's an inevitable part of any trip. Make no mistake, going home will be great--it always is (hint: there are cats there)--but part of me wouldn't exactly be devastated if I had to stay put for another day or two.

Maybe that's because this is the closest I ever get to taking a proper vacation. I've never been very good at vacations. I've never mastered the art of rest and relaxation. People who have will tell you that, yes, it truly is an art. I have no desire to sink my toes into a white-sand beach in Bermuda and quaff a rum-based drink while saying something like, "Now this is the life!" I've been to the European Union a few times. I've looked at their old-time buildings and sipped their strong coffee. They're doing some good things over there. But I do not have a try-and-stop-me need to return. If I go back, fine. If not: also fine.

A few years ago, when I was still going out on a lot of dates, the first or second thing a date would often say to describe herself would be this: "I just love to travel!!!!!!!!!!" And I would always think, Well, I don't, while using all of my powers of concentration--and I mean all of my powers--to mitigate the frown that was attempting to unfold across the lower half of my face. (Yes, I was a joy to go out on dates with, ladies.)

Whenever someone shows me photos of their travels--"Here's Linda and me outside the Louvre!!!!!"--or worse still, when he or she shows me the glossy brochures and/or websites of the places that they intend to travel to, I immediately start banging pots and pans together hoping that the din will eventually drive this person away.

Part of the problem is that I've traveled an awful lot over the last 10 years. At one point I logged enough frequent flier miles to routinely qualify for first-class seats on American Airlines. I also recently relocated from one city to another (and, to go a step further, one country to another), which makes me still feel a bit like a vacationer in my new city. Fact: I need a passport to get into, and out of, my new country. Also: I lived in New York for 15 years, which is so massive and diverse that I always felt a bit like a tourist there. Even after 15 years, I could still get lost there, could still find myself wandering around and scratching my head, could still discover streets and even entire neighbourhoods that I'd never seen before. You can live in New York City for your entire life and never quite take in the scope of the whole damn thing.

The second part of the problem, which isn't really a problem at all, is that I enjoy what I do for a living. I love my job and the people who I work with to such an extreme degree that I never really feel any desire to take a time-out from it or from them. I have no desire to stick pins into a voodoo doll that looks like my boss; I don't spend a lot of time saying things like: "Barry in Accounts is just about the biggest asshole I've ever met in my life." For me, work days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, and suddenly it seems like it's always January and we're doing it all over again.

Also: as is evident from the last few days in Toronto, there is never a shortage of hotels or airports in my life. So there's always the feeling that I'm perpetually on vacation, even when, technically speaking, I'm not.

A few places I wouldn't mind being dragged to: the Mohonk Mountain House in the Catskills, because it's a big, shambling Overlook-like hotel, which is equal parts beautiful and creepy; Bruges, Belgium, mostly because I liked the Martin McDonagh movie an awful lot; and Copenhagen, Denmark because I was there once in the mid '90's and, of the few places I visited in Europe, Copenhagen is the one I want to return to, namely because 1. it was a bit mysterious, 2. it was filled with tall people, 3. Tivoli Gardens is the closest I will ever come to actually being inside Willy Wonka's chocolate factory.

Now before you start banging pots and pans in my direction, which you have every right to do after the hypocritical nature of the previous paragraph, here's today's selection of artwork, carefully selected from the gallery that is room 2011 here at the Marriott Residence Inn in downtown Toronto.

TODAY'S ARTWORK: A tall, skinny photograph of a rocky mountaintop piercing skeins of cloud cover. This rather tasteful black-and-white photo--which seems even more tasteful when juxtaposed with yesterday's completely hideous "Jazz Jambalaya" painting--hangs directly above the toilet in my room. Each time I have used the toilet this weekend, I have studied the photograph. I have two observations to share:

1. This looks like a place that The Lord of the Rings Gang would pass through on their way to Minas Tirith. Or,

2. Kratos might shop for real estate here. (PRIVATE, WIND-BLOWN MOUNTAIN-TOP ABODE COMPLETE WITH MENACING ROCK FORMATIONS IDEAL FOR BBQ-ING & ENTERTAINING/HURLING THE CORPSES AND LIMBS OF YOUR ENEMIES FROM/ENJOYING THREESOMES WITH WANTON MAIDENS. MINUTES TO PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. PETS WELCOME.)

Artwork score: 6 out of 10.

Artist: Unknown.

Can I remove said artwork from hotel room wall? Answer: This one came off the wall quite easily.

The Artwork of Toronto Hotel Rooms, Part 2

I got up early this morning and went for a brisk walk around the block. The air was cool and damp. Surprise: it's another gray morning here in Toronto. Gray mornings seem to be a Toronto specialty.

While I was sleeping, a heavy fog was busy blowing in. It's out there now, even as I type this, blanketing the city. It's winding its way between the buildings, coiling around the CN Tower, pressing up against the side of my Marriott, kissing the window of my room.

Side note: Toronto Fog = OK name for a high school jazz quintet.

I love getting up early in strange cities and walking about while the streets are still quiet and vacant. Traffic lights change then change again without any cars around to heed them. Early on, before everyone else wakes up and starts moving about and making their noise? That's the best time of day to get to know a city.

I usually snap a few random photos of the empty streets, thinking that maybe years from now, when I'm in my dotage, in the landfill of god-awful photos that my iPhone seems to naturally accrue, I'll discover these particular photos and think, Remember that one time I got up really early in Toronto and went for a walk? Man. (Pause...) That was kind of a weird time.

A few years ago, when I was traveling more often, back when game publishers were still flying writers all over the place on silly, unnecessary trips, I had the idea that I would take a photo of every hotel room I had stayed in. When I had accumulated a few dozen of those photos, I would arrange them into a collage, have it framed, and give it a pretentious title like "Vacancy/No Vacancy," or "Loneliness #2," or "Tiny Free Soaps."

Side note: Tiny Free Soaps = also an OK name for a high school jazz quintet.

Who knows. I still might wind up doing that.

Another remarkable thing about my Toronto hotel room: There is no phone in the toilet. In fact, this has to be one of the first hotels I've ever stayed in that does not have the de rigueur telephone located in the can. I've never understood the toilet phone as a concept. Who makes calls on those things? If I need to order room service or extra towels, am I going to use the toilet phone to ring the front desk? Answer: I'm not. I'm going to choose the regular phone which, considering the limited square footage of the hotel rooms I have stayed in, is usually only an additional three or four steps away from the toilet phone.

One more thing: Considering the location of the toilet phone, i.e. the toilet, I'm not sure I'd be terribly anxious to make calls from a phone that previous guests, who were all presumably seated on the bowl at the time of their calls, have also used. Then again, anyone interested in using a toilet phone is not exactly obsessed with good hygiene.

The world, once again, can be divided into two kinds of people: those who are for toilet phones, a.k.a. THE ABSOLUTE PINNACLE OF MODERN LIVING, and those who are against them. The eHarmony people should probably query singles if they've ever used a toilet phone--check YES or NO--and save hundreds, maybe thousands of people from unnecessary heartbreak and ruin.

Imagine this: you are on a romantic getaway to a mountain lodge with someone for the first time. Suddenly you overhear this person, who you think has at least a modicum of potential to be the love of your life (no one goes to a mountain lodge unless there is a modicum of potential), placing a call from the toilet. "Hey Tim? It's Fred. How are you? Yep, I'm at the mountain lodge." Etc.

No one--no, not even terrible people--should have to discover this about a possible mate in this fashion.

Anyway, I'd better get to today's painting.

TODAY'S PAINTING: This one looks like a famished, loin-cloth-wearing giant put an entire jazz quintet--saxophone, clarinet, guitar, trumpet and piano--in his giant mouth, gave the quintet a couple of chews with his back molars, then spit the whole mess out on the ground where a terrible painter was standing by with an easel and oil paints ready to record the whole thing for posterity and/or Bed, Bath & Beyonds everywhere.

Painting Score: 2 out of 10.

Artist: The work is, not surprisingly, unsigned.

Can I remove the painting from the room wall? Answer: I cannot. (Though, I confess, I didn't try terribly hard to jigger this one loose.)

The Artwork of Toronto Hotel Rooms, Part 1

I woke up this morning in a hotel room on Wellington Street in Toronto. There are several nice things about my room. One: I have a view of the CN Tower. Two: Free Wi-fi. Three: Firm mattress. Four: One extra pillow on the bed.

While waking, I noticed a painting on the far wall of my room. This painting shows a man and a European-style bicycle. (How can I tell that it is a European bicycle? Because the seat is very small and is located at the very back of the bicycle.) The man, interestingly, is not riding the bicycle. Instead, he seems to be walking the bicycle. Maybe he has just finished a long ride and is tired. Maybe he stopped for a moment to take in the scenery. Or maybe his lover, only moments ago, ended their love affair, and now he is too sad to ride his bicycle. Regardless, his head is extremely thin, far more thin than a normal head would be, which is an example of the artist exercising his or her "Artistic License."

The man and his bicycle appear to be passing through an old fishing village of some kind. I say "old" namely because the painting is rendered in a range of sepia tones. Whenever I see a sepia tone, or even see the word "sepia," boom, I inevitably think "old" and sometimes even start hearing faint clarinet music like the type that is played in fake old-time ice cream parlors.

The tide is clearly out at the moment in the painting. Three boats--two regular boats and a sailboat--are currently parked on the shore. Did the fishermen, who are absent in the painting, pull the boats ashore? If so, where are they now? Are they perhaps lunching inside the small, thin building on the lefthand side of the painting? Perhaps they are smoking cigarettes and telling one another off-color jokes about the bicyclist's lover who has jilted him. Jokes that include phrasings and words like "openings," "24-7," and "that laundromat sign that says 'Last load: 8 p.m.' "

Other points of interest in the piece: the angry-looking rock-formation jetty extending into the harbor, which threatens to cleave the painting in two, and the palm-tree frond which hangs down from the top left corner. At least, I think it is a palm tree frond. Because it looks strange for a frond.

At the horizon, the sepia tones are identical to the sepia tones of the earth beneath the tires of the thin-headed man's European bicycle. This implies that earth and sky are one, and perhaps thematically, that whatever we find here on earth is just as appealing as anything we might long for, or envy over the horizon.

Score for this painting: 4 out of 10.

Artist: The work is unsigned.

Can I remove the painting from the room wall? Answer: No, I cannot.

I Don't Know If I'm an Alcoholic (But I Quit Drinking Anyway)

If you know me, even a little, then you know that I've had my struggles with booze over the years. I never drank every day, or doctored my coffee with schnapps in the mornings, or kept a flask on my person. I never loitered in barrooms often enough to qualify as a barfly. That said, whenever I did drink--typically anywhere from two to five nights a week depending on the kind of week I was having--I always did so to an extreme, with a sense of great purpose. I always drank with the desire to arrive somewhere else, someplace far away from myself.

Those times are over now. At least, I hope they are. As of this Sunday, it'll be 63 days since I've had a drink.

Nearly every day on my walk home from the office, I pass the sun-flooded patio of Chill Winston in Gastown and observe people sipping from what appear to be the tallest, coldest, most spectacularly golden glasses of beer I have ever seen. I always think the same thing: Why can't I have one?

The reason why you can't have one, I patiently explain to my dumb self, is because you could never stop at one. My thinking was always this: Why have one when you can have six? Or ten? Or fifteen?

My appetite for beer has been insatiable since college. Whenever I shopped for beer, I'd always think of this line from True Romance: "It's better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it." Only I'd replace the word "gun" with "beer." This was my way of giving myself permission to purchase an extra six-pack or a spare tallboy, you know, just in case I needed it later. And if I didn't drink it tonight? It would be there tomorrow night, waiting for me.

When I moved to British Columbia in the summer of 2009, I dropped off my luggage at my furniture-less apartment then headed to the nearby 7-11 to buy beer. After a thorough investigation of the store's cooler sections and a brief interrogation of the cashier, I learned that convenience stores in B.C. do not carry alcohol of any kind. Over the next few days, I cased the neighborhood for liquor stores, only to deduce that there were none. The closest booze seller was a good sweat-inducing 15-minute walk away. I thought, Fine. This is the universe telling me that it's time to establish better habits, to start fresh here in this city. I hear you, Universe. And for a while, I was marginally booze-free and feeling pretty good about that.

Then three months later a beer and wine store opened its doors not more than a hundred steps from my apartment building. I anxiously peered through the front windows of the store wondering what, exactly, the universe was telling me now.

I became one of the store's first and no doubt best customers. I knew the owners of the store, and knew all the cashiers by name. And the money I spent there! A 12-pack of Alexander Keith's, which is pretty good beer, costs nearly $30. Six-packs range from $14 to $17 dollars for anything of quality. Trying to be a drunk in this province is no small investment.

It pains me now to do the math, thinking of all the cash I spent there. The store has only gotten fancier over the last two years. I can't help but think that some of the nicer additions, like the dimly lit wine alley on the far side of the store, wouldn't have been possible without my generous donations.

Though the amount of cash I've spent on beer is extraordinary, what galls me further, and makes me despair further, is the amount of time and energy I spent thinking about drinking, planning my drinking, and beyond that, being hungover from drinking. It's a truly staggering amount of time. I could have done plenty of other things with that time. I could have finished writing a book or two, could have gotten married and had a family, could have gotten married a second time and had a second family, could have been a better friend to my friends. I could have finally finished Fallout: New Vegas. I could have written more Jones Report entries, could have done more loads of laundry.

I could have learned to play the goddamn French horn. I could have called my mother more often.

Make no mistake: my life is fine. In some ways, considering all the self-destruction I've engaged in over the past two decades, it's borderline miraculous that things have turned out as well as they have for me. Still, it's hard not to wonder sometimes what I could have done, what path I might have taken, if I hadn't devoted so much time and energy to drinking.

At the back of my mind I suppose I've always fantasized what my life might be like if I really tried, you know, to be the best I could be, day in and day out. I've always wondered what I might be capable of, what fortune, glory or sense of self-satisfaction, if any at all, would come my way. Part of me has always been afraid to learn the answer to that question. I mean, what if I actually tried my best, tried to find out what I'm truly capable of, what I'm worth, only to learn that it's not really all that much?

That's a really shitty thing to learn about yourself. That said, I also know that if I don't at least attempt to learn the answer to that question, if I don't at least make a whole-hearted run at it, I'll never be able to forgive myself.

I went to a couple of AA meetings. It's an excellent organization, and it obviously works for a lot of people, but it's not for me. Maybe I'm being naive here, but I have a hard time accepting the I'm-helpless-in-the-face-of-this and addiction-as-disease approach. I believe you have a pretty clear choice when it comes to addiction: You choose to do it or choose not to do it. And that's it. (This article in Macleans deconstructs the addiction-as-disease way of thinking far more eloquently than I ever could.) (And if you're in the mood for one more booze-y click, it should be John Bowe's terrific story from the Lives section of the NY Times Magazine.)

So am I an alcoholic? Man, I don't know. A diagnosis really isn't even relevant anymore. All I know is this: I no longer liked the role that alcohol was playing in my life. That's all.

Sixty-plus days in, I'll confess: there's a pretty big hole in my life, and in my personality, that beer had occupied for decades. I've realized that I don't know who I am, or what I'm going to look like, or feel like, without beer in my life.

But I'm figuring that out now as fast as I can. In the meantime, I'll put in another load of laundry, then telephone my mom, then get busy attempting to realize my full potential.

Oh, beer-free life: I haven't completely figured out your appeal yet. But I will.

I will.

The Joys of Life at 35,000 Feet

I'm away for the next week or so, in Upstate New York visiting my parents and my brother's family for a few days before heading south to New York City to see some friends there and tend to some business.

Yes, there's a plane involved--two of them, in fact--and a train (Amtrak between Utica and New York Penn Station, and at least one automobile (my parents will pick me up at the airport tonight, in Syracuse, as usual later tonight). Pictured above: the actual plane that will take me from Chicago to Syracuse later on today.

I also understand that I'm flying into what appears to be a sinister, world-class heat wave. If you happen to see a man sweating--and I mean dripping-from-the-tip-of-his-nose sweating--in an airport or train station over the next few days, chances are good that it's me. The heat and I are old enemies.

Packing this morning, as usual, I realize that I'm carrying an absurd amount of game machines. Here's what will pass through customs with me this morning: x1 3DS, x1 second generation DS (I can't live without the GBA cartridge slot), x1 PSP go (Pixeljunk Monsters: you are coming with me), x1 iPhone, and x1 iPad. No one, and I mean no one travels with more gaming opportunities on his person at any given moment that I do. (Except for maybe Victor Lucas. He carries around this amount gaming hardware practically every day, not just on travel days.) (Vic: You're weird.) (And I heart you.) (And Vic's also at the airport this morning, only he's enroute to Comic Con in San Diego. Godspeed, my friend.)

I especially love the moment--or rather, The Moment--when the plane finally levels off after its initial ascent, and the rotund fellow in the seat next to me starts to doze, and all my worries, anxieties, qualms, etc. are left behind me, back there, on the ground, and I reach into my duffel for the first time, as excited as an 8 year old on Christmas morning, trying to decide what system and what game to play first.

Man, I'm getting giddy over here just thinking about it.

I have plans to chime in and write while traveling. But the truth is, I'll likely be M.I.A. for a bit. Try not to miss me too much.

Happy Thursday.

The Offline Lifestyle

As you know, Xbox 360's have failed me for the last time more often than Admirals failed Darth Vader in the Star Wars movies. Most recently, after my Xbox 360 Slim gave up its ghost making it the fourth 360 (and counting) to fail me, I tried to suss out a way to transfer my data from the hard drive of my busted Slim to my older model Elite 360.

Realizing that this process was both complex and risky, I decided to plug in the old Elite and simply start a brand new Xbox Live profile from scratch on the Elite's wiped hard drive. With my Gamer Score set all the way back to zero, no friends on my My Friends list, and that dopey golden retriever picture as my default gamer tag photo, I finally--finally--got back to gaming.

I thought: "I have to remember to let people know that I'm over here, temporarily at least, at this new Xbox Live handle."

But I didn't. Instead, I eased into a few races in Midnight Club: Los Angeles, starting the entire game over again from the beginning. The next night, I powered on the Elite again--man, this damn thing wheezes and gasps at start-up like an emphysema patient--to play Ms. Splosion Man, again planning to friend a few people.

But I didn't.

Nearly a week has passed now. And I still have yet to friend anyone.

It's oddly refreshing to look at my Gamer Profile and observe that I have exactly zero points. I had no idea the degree to which I was using my Gamer Score as a measure of personal self-worth. Like a Stockholm Syndrome survivor, I puzzled over how I ever got seduced into thinking of it as some kind of important metric in my life.

But an even bigger part of the appeal of my new XBL profile is the hermetically sealed isolation of it all. The most indelible gaming memories that I have from the last three decades aren't centered around that one time I pulled off a headshot on Crazzzy8888s1989 in a Wager match on the Silo map in Black Ops. My fondest memories historically involve long, drawn-out single-player games like Shadow of the Colossus, BioShock, and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. My favorite games have always been very quiet, private, and personal journeys away from the sturm and drang of the rest of my life.

I've never been a fan of turning games into social, people-oriented experiences. Exhibit A: the multiplayer in BioShock 2. Games, of course, can be a conduit for social experiences, like the aforementioned headshot moment on Crazzzy8888s1989. But when I game, I'm not looking for way to connect with other people--I already do enough of that throughout my workday. What I want to do, more than anything, is to connect with the people who created the game.

Same way that I enjoy locking psyches with an author when I read a book, when I play BioShock my greatest desire is to connect with the very people who made BioShock. I want to understand how their brains work, what their aesthetic values are, and what their sense of logic is. (Or, in the case of Resident Evil 4, another terrific and completely isolating experience, the developer's complete disregard for logic. Exhibit B: killing a snake leaves an egg behind which you can eat for a health boost.)

In the old days, whenever I would power up the 360, which has been in my life since launch in late 2005, I was in the habit of doing two things: 1. I'd check to see who was online at the moment, and 2. I'd then check to see what those people were doing or playing. I'd study the row of dancing, preening (or, in most cases, napping) avatars. I'd notice things like this: my friend Steve who lives in New York, which is two time zones away from me, is still awake at 3 a.m. playing Trenched. I'd sit on my couch here on the West Coast, thinking to myself, "Huh. I wonder why Steve is awake at 3 a.m.? Did he wake up to feed the baby, then wander into the living room and decide to play Trenched? Is he fighting with Margo again? Maybe she made him sleep on the couch. They have been fighting a lot these days. Man, I hope he's not drinking. He really shouldn't be drinking anymore..."

At this point I inevitably have two further thoughts: 1. I hope that my friend Steve is OK, and 2. why must I go down this sort of digression hole every goddamn time I look at the dancing, preening row of avatars? How did real life and all of its concerns and complications and brow-furrowing and messiness and crying babies and fights with Margo get jungled up with my gaming?

Often I'd observe still other online friends who were, like good gamers should, consuming quality content that I should probably also be consuming. Friends always seem to be playing literate, artful offerings like Fallout: New Vegas, Dragon Age II, and Red Dead Redemption night after night after night. And I'd experience hot-faced shame knowing that they'd be able to see whatever lowbrow tripe I had selected to play for the evening, like Bayonetta (again), or The Bigs 2 (again), or Vanquish (again). "Good for you and your terrific taste, everyone," I'd think bitterly.

I have actually received messages via Xbox Live from online friends--or rather, "friends"--asking me, "Why on earth are you playing THAT shitty game again?" Which only makes me want to bellow the following three words directly into my TV screen:

LEAVE ME ALONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But with my new, completely anonymous profile, which no one, no, not even Victor Lucas, shall know the name of, I can now game again in complete, people-free privacy, with no worry whatsoever that I'll be interrupted mid-game to be informed that, yes, glory be, "Crazzzzy8888's1989 is now online." Worse still, whenever Crazzzzy8888's1989 loads up a game in need of a programming update or patch, Crazzzzy8888's1989 will be booted offline for the update, then ushered back online once said update takes, which means that I'll get a second, even less welcome notice that, yes, Crazzzzy8888's1989 is online, at which point I will usually once again bellow at the TV screen one of the following three things:

1. "I KNOW!" or,

2. "GOOD FOR YOU!" or,

3. "F*** YOU, CRAZZZZY8888S1989. I RUE THE F***ING DAY THAT I EVER ACCEPTED YOUR XBOX LIVE FRIENDSHIP REQUEST." (By the way, Crazzzzy8888s1989 is Steve.) (Hi, Steve.)

My other least-favorite Xbox Live moment is whenever I receive notifications that "friends are playing this game." This can actually sully a game for me before I have even started to play it. Suddenly, this "friend" (Steve) is showing up in my leaderboards. Suddenly, I'm simply doing something that Steve already did last night at 3 a.m., and who, according to the extremely helpful leaderboard, apparently did it 8.2 seconds faster than I did it. It's akin to finding a lost, lonely cave that you assumed was unexplored and that you briefly considered naming Scott's Cave for all of posterity, only to realize that someone has already opened up one of those weird KFC/Taco Bell hybrid counters inside. Whatever mystery, and more importantly whatever anticipation of mystery, there might have been for me has already been drained out of the experience.

Another thing: Why must I be informed that other people are using Netflix whenever I'm using Netflix? (Exhibit C: Friends using this App.) How is this helpful or useful information? If I'm in the middle of watching a blurry stream of David Cronenberg's The Fly, why is *that* designated as a fine time to notify me, usually mid Brundlefly transformation, that Crazzzzy8888's1989 is online yet again? (F*** you, Steve. Try playing less Xbox and kissing your baby and talking to Margo more. Seriously, man.)

Yes, I am fully aware of the fact that I can switch off all notifications. But Microsoft clearly does not want me to do this, as navigating the murky fathoms of menus and sub-menus is a very long way from being as transparent as it could, or should be.

Right now, it's really quiet where I am. The blinds are drawn. The outside world is where it belongs: outside. I'm gaming these days with a new-found sense of focus and passion that I haven't felt in ages. When I click over to the My Friends section of Xbox Live, I see nothing but that non-dancing, non-preening, grayed out ghost friend thing with the plus sign on its right shoulder.

And I'm feeling pretty good about that.

Red-ringing: Part 2

My friend, John Teti, who is a very passionate and very lovely man (see for yourself here), apparently tapped out an ambitious comment that expounded on the reasons why we remain faithful to the 360 despite its tendency have more breakdowns than Liza Minnelli.

Unfortunately, Blogger, in all of its unstable glory, decided to jettison the comment into the void where all ambitious comments seem to go. (Blogger has jettisoned more than a few of my ambitious comments in my lifetime.) (Why it does this, we may never know.)

Anyway, John somehow found the time and energy to recreate the comment. He emailed it to me privately, because, to quote him, "I don't care to have my time FUCKING WASTED all over again."

So, without further pomp or circumstance, here's the recreated comment, in all of its uncensored, passionate glory:

"The reason we always go back to the 360 is that we semi-consciously anthropomorphize consoles, and the Xbox 360 is a friendly sort.

"What do you see when you turn on the 360? A bright, colorful screen that says 'Welcome.' A smiling, dancing cartoon version of yourself, maybe playing with a pet. A seemingly endless, verdant tableau of games, video, and other fun stretching off the right side of the screen into eternity.

"What do you see when you turn on the PS3? A gloomy background occupied by a tiny strip of bland icons. About a million features you will never use, each with their own barely readable text label. Perhaps an advertisement fades into the screen, reminding you to buy some Sony film from the Sony PSN Store brought to you by Sony. (Don't just stand there, kid; buy something.) Everything is so goddamn corporate, like you are clocking into work instead of getting ready to play a game.

"But all of that is relatively tolerable. What really makes the PS3 so irritating is the attitude.

"I have a spare Xbox 360 hooked up to my computer that I use for video capture. Last week I started it up for the first time in a year. I knew I would have to update the system software, and install the requisite updates to the game that I was playing (L.A. Noire.) Do you know how long it took me to get up and running? THREE MINUTES. That's it. That's the 360: 'Hey, buddy, happy to see you!' It's almost embarrassed that it has to tidy up a little bit before the two of you can get down to FUN!

"Meanwhile, the PS3's attitude is 'Where the hell have YOU been?' Can you imagine what this experience would have been like if this were my spare PS3? I think we all know: it would be an ALL-CONSUMING INFERNO OF BOREDOM. The PS3 fucking PUNISHES you if you ignore it for even a couple of weeks. 'What's that, you want to play that new downloadable game you heard about on the TV? How about you sit there and FUCKING WAIT while I update my firmware; I have to delete some of my features because Sony thinks you don't deserve them, and you know what? I THINK THEY'RE RIGHT!!!'

"So you sit there while it updates or upgrades or installs or whatever the fuck this umpteenth progress bar is supposed to be doing -- you don't even know what the progress bar MEANS anymore; by this point the very concept of a progress bar has lost all ability to signify -- and the PS3 is just loving every minute of your misery. Because it's like an insanely possessive friend whom you can never, ever please. 'This is what you get when you don't pay attention to my every need! How DARE you do anything but play with your PlayStation? DON'T YOU LOVE ME?????'

"No, I don't love you at all. I hate turning on my PS3. I'm not talking about the games. The games for the console are great, every bit as good as those on the Xbox 360 (since they are mostly the same games, after all). Gaming on the PS3 is, though, like eating at a restaurant where the food is fantastic but the manager is a total prick. You know you'll enjoy yourself in the end, but the guy running the show has such a bad attitude, you don't want to give him the satisfaction.

"As for the Wii, who gives a shit.

"So yes, of course we keep going back to the 360. He may be a sickly little guy, prone to keel over at a moment's notice. But dadgum it, he's always been our friend, greeting us with an easy, natural smile every time we drop by for a visit. And when you have friends like that, you stick by them."

Thanks, John.