notes from a man who spends too much time playing video games   Archives << current   This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.

A Few Points Shy of the High Score   Monday, December 29, 2003   Christmas was awful. And I mean "awful" in the truest sense of the word. Simply thinking of the details turns my stomach. I don't even know where to begin..... I'm hoping to write about it this week, get some of it down on paper. Pick through the wreckage. Figure out how things got so terrible so quickly. I spoke with my brother today. He told me things only got worse after I left. He and my father nearly came to blows. My mother cried, etc. Like I said, it was a bad one. As bad as they come. I'm so angry and sad and bitterly disappointed. What I find most humiliating of all is that I actually used vacation days for this.... What horseshit. What utter fucking horseshit. 4:08 PM Thursday, December 18, 2003   Can't say enough good things about Return of the King. I'm in awe. Trample old ladies, knock down children--do whatever you have to do to see it. 9:03 AM Tuesday, December 16, 2003   Absurdly busy these days. I can't afford to feel unmotivated just now, but for some reason I am. I just can't seem to get things started this week.... It's an admittedly odd week--full of starts and stops, strange errands, strange comings and goings, etc. And last minute Christmas shopping, too. I'm mostly finished. It was surprisingly painless this year (thank you, Amazon) with the exception of trying to find something for my mother. She's the one with the highest expectations--the one most difficult to please. I bought her a Dr. Phil calendar yesterday, which I'm beginning to think was a terrible mistake. Joelle's birthday is tomorrow. I'm leaving town tonight, heading upstate so I can spend tomorrow with her (calling in sick; office Christmas party is tomorrow, which I'm not unhappy to miss). I'll take her to see Return of the King, then we'll meet up with some of her friends later for dinner at a Thai restaurant. Feeling the tiniest bit ill. Galvin phoned earlier to report that he'd survived some sort of vicious death flu yesterday. Praying I don't have anything remotely similar to what he had.... Please, not now. 3:04 PM Wednesday, December 10, 2003   Girl gets on the F train this morning. She's 25-30ish. Fairly well dressed. Expensive-looking scarf. Train is crowded. She takes out a compact and begins brushing makeup onto her face. Foundation or blush or something--I don't know the difference. And she does it with vigor. For some reason seeing women put makeup on on the subway always pisses me off. Grates on my nerves. Makes me feel like saying, Don't you have an ounce of self-consciousness in your body? Sometimes a little self-consciousness can be good for a person. Once the girl finishes with the foundation, she goes to work on her eyes, doing the eyeliner. It's an elaborate process, too, requiring skilled flicks of the wrist. The F was rocketing through the tunnels, jerking passengers from side to side, but this woman somehow maintained her balance and put on eyeliner at the same time. I kept hoping she'd poke her eye out. After the eyes, it was the lips. After the lips, it was her hair. She patted her hair, fussing with each strand. The train is always full by the time it reaches lower Manhattan. At Second Avenue, a small Chinese woman got on. The makeup girl, having finished her makeup, was standing in the middle of the subway door, and the Chinese woman was trying to squeeze around her. "...scuse me," the Chinese woman said. She was very old. Feeble. The girl didn't move. "...Scuse me, I try to get by..." "WHERE THE HELL WOULD YOU LIKE ME TO GO?" the makeup girl shouted. "...I try to get over there," the old woman said, pointing towards the empty spaces near me. "THERE'S NO PLACE TO GO," makeup girl said. "CAN'T YOU SEE?" Still the old woman tried to move past her. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU TRYING TO DO?" "...I need to get on..." The old woman tried to move around her the other way. "THAT'S RIGHT--GO THAT WAY, YOU FUCKING MORON." The old woman silently moved past the makeup girl, then stood close to me. I looked at the woman and thought, *Don't worry, I will protect you. You are safe with me.* "FUCKING MORON. JESUS!" the makeup girl said, looking in the other direction now. "...you...are...moron," the old woman said. A few more things were muttered, but that was the end of their interaction. I don't like seeing things like this, don't enjoy it. It brings my own anger up to the surface, my own primal rage that I'm always convinced is tucked away in a safe place inside me. (It's not.) I wanted to call the makeup girl a loud-mouthed cunt. A fat, ugly bitch. I wanted to lean in close and whisper in her ear, "Why don't you get off this train? No one likes you. No one...." I wanted to do something. Make a gesture of some kind. Make the old woman feel safe again. I did nothing. I stepped off at my usual stop and walked down 23rd street, my legs still buzzing from the adrenaline. An incident like this--all this drama so early in the morning--can color your whole day. 4:27 PM Tuesday, December 09, 2003   Snowed in over the weekend. The windows in my apartment look out over a fairly large section of south Brooklyn, and even a bit of Staten Island. I can see the Verrazano Bridge. When it snows, I spend the afternoon sitting at my window drinking hot coffee or eating soup, looking out at the cars creeping along the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, people shoveling sidewalks, kids tossing snowballs. That sight makes me so happy sometimes I could fucking weep. Really I could. I love the hush that falls over New York, the way the snow muffles everything. Joelle and I braved the elements just once, making our way over to a nearby restaurant, the freezing snow turning our faces and ears red, the strong winds pushing us around. We reached the restaurant and stamped the snow off our boots, peeled off our jackets and gloves. I had a cheeseburger. For some reason, food tastes better during snow storms. Especially cheeseburgers. It was one of the best goddamn cheeseburgers I've ever had. Joelle took a bite, and she agreed that it was fantastic. A few years back, on a blustery winter day near the skating rink in Central Park, I ate a hot dog. It was one of those awful hot dogs, sold from a cart, plucked from a pot of yellowish water. It cost one dollar. It was unbelievably good. To this day, I still think about that hot dog from time to time. I doubt I'll ever forget that hot dog. 4:06 PM Wednesday, December 03, 2003   My parents sold the house. It's gone.... The new owner is some young guy. Low-slung bluejeans. Ballcap. Cigarette. He lives in my old house now. The asshole. He moved some of his stuff into the garage over the weekend. He owns a samurai sword. No kidding. I watched him from the living room window, giving him the evil eye the whole time. Sunday was my last day in the house. I kept waiting to feel something--a sense of loss, or maybe a little anger. Nothing. I felt nothing. I showered and thought, Well, this is the last time I'll ever shower in this house. I shaved and thought, This is the last time I'll shave here. I looked at my reflection in the old bathroom mirror, looked at the way my face is aging. I meant to take some photos, but I just didn't feel like it. Kept thinking, What's the point? Pictures of boxes. Empty rooms. The hell with it. As I drove away Sunday afternoon, I took one last look at the house. The gray sky overhead. The curtain-less windows. The snow in the frontyard. My heart was frustratingly empty. I got a little mad at myself. I peeped the horn and some crows took off from a nearby tree. Who knows--maybe I'll feel whatever it is I'm supposed to feel in a few days, or weeks. Experience something dramatic, big, tangible. As it stands, the general state of unrest in my family seems to be taking a slyer, subtler toll on me. Here's a list of boneheaded things I've done in the past couple weeks: 1. Ordered lunch, couldn't finish it all, decided to bring it home with me. Instead of bringing it home, I left it sitting on my desk in my office. Found it the next morning, reeking. 2. Found an exploded beer in my freezer last week. I chill beer in the freezer on occasion (the local market only sells room temperature 12 packs), have been doing so for years and never once have I done this before. I cleaned up the frozen beer foam, cursing myself out, promising to never make such a jackass mistake again. 3. Next morning: another exploded beer. I could only laugh at my jackass folly. I must have moved one to the freezer late the previous night, then completely forgotten about it. Once again I set to work cleaning up the frozen foam, wondering where in the hell my head is at these days. Maybe my subconscious is trying to tell me something--trying to communicate with me via exploded beers and forgotten lunches. 4:09 PM Tuesday, November 25, 2003   Went upstate for my grandfather's funeral last weekend. My brother picked me up at the train station on Friday night. Mom and dad were having dinner in a nearby restaurant with some of their friends. "They want us to stop by," Sean said. He didn't want to go; he has a wife at home and wanted to get back to her. Me, I wanted to go to the restaurant, to see dad. "We'll just stop, have a quick beer, then get going," I said. Once we got to Coalyard Charlies, mom and dad badgered us into ordering something. Fish fry--we both ordered fish. The seat next to dad was open, so I sat down next to him. I felt grateful to be sitting so close to him. His loss had made him a kind of celebrity. I looked him over, trying to see if losing his father had taken any kind of visible toll on him. He looked a thinner, a little grayer--maybe a little smaller somehow--but otherwise intact. Later that night, dad and I sat up together watching TV, drinking beer. He enjoys a special brand of Polish beer--Okochim--so that's what we drank. I don't remember what we watched on TV, don't remember much about what we talked about during the commercials, but I do remember feeling that my dad was grateful to have me there with him. The next morning we got dressed, drove to the funeral home in Utica. Dad with his cheap suit, same one he wore to my brother's wedding last summer. Dad is stoic, rarely ever showing any emotion, but one of his brother's, my Uncle Dennis, was sobbing openly at the funeral home. My grandpa, in his coffin, looked fragile, thin, smaller than I'd remembered him. He wore so much makeup that he looked almost womanish, clownish--his lips a phony red, his cheeks heavily rouged. I don't want to tell this story. Fuck it. Suffice it to say that the day sucked. It was grueling, never-ending. I remember looking at my watch at one point, thinking hours must have gone by, then seeing that only about 20 minutes had actually elapsed. What I remember is how cheap and small and wrong everything looked. When the priest, clearly nervous, screwed up her opening remarks during the service, I wanted to kill her. The funeral parlor was small, clogged with half-assed flower arrangements. Granpa was a war veteran, and was promised to be buried with full military honors. "Full military honors" consisted of two bored-looking cadets from Fort Dix. They made an elaborate show of folding the flag that draped the coffin into an impossibly tiny triangle shape, then played taps on a boombox hidden behind a clump of weeds. Wrong, wrong, wrong. After the funeral, we all met at a local banquet hall called Roselawn. In order to get to our room, we had to pass through another hall where balloons were being tied to tables, crepe paper was being pinned to the walls and ceilings. It was a celebration for someone's 30th birthday party (a sign on the wall said LOOK WHO'S 30!!!!). I kissed lots of old women. I shook a lot hands. I found myself keeping an eye on my dad all day, trying to gauge his mood. I saw my grandmother--newly widowed--sitting alone in her wheelchair, her aide from the nursing home at her side. All day she'd been surrounded by people trying to comfort her, and this was her first brief moment alone. I sat by her side, put my arm around her shoulders. She's feeble, and her hair has almost completely fallen out, and she shakes terribly. She opened her mouth to say something to me, but no words came out. Tears welled up in her eyes, then streaked down her face. They were married for 60 years. In the face of that kind of unspeakable grief, what could I possibly say? "I know, gram," I said. "I know." 3:56 PM Friday, November 21, 2003   My grandpa died on Wednesday morning. He was old, nearly 90, and sick for a the last two years, so it was no great shock. I'm taking the train upstate this afternoon (Friday). The service is tomorrow. He was my dad's father. I want to be there for my dad, help him out if he needs it. Maybe dad might like it if I'm there to have a beer with him at night, sit together, watch TV, eat cheese and crackers together. There's never been a funeral in our family before. Grandpa is the first. I really don't know what to expect, don't know how to behave. 12:17 PM Tuesday, November 18, 2003   Sunday morning I got dressed and went downstairs to the deli for the NY Times. I hadn't bought it in over a year--it's so goddamn large and intimidating that I wind up reading just a section or two from it, then it sits there all week long, making me feel guilty for not reading more of it. Sure enough, Sunday's paper was about the size of a compact car. The plastic sack that the cashier had squeezed it into was already splitting at the seams by the time I got back to my apartment. With my January deadline for leaving the office fast approaching, I figured the wise thing to do would be to read the classifieds. After studying the listings for a few minutes, my eyes felt tired from squinting at all the tiny type. I was a little discouraged by the bleak offerings (Blimpie Manager Wanted), so I comforted myself by leafing through sales ads for the local electronics stores--Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, etc. There's something soothing about those ads, something comforting to me. I could look at them for hours, inspecting all the various computers and TVs and gadgets, wondering how they work exactly, whether or not I can afford them, how dramatically those machines might improve my life. The ad for Circuit City listed the deluxe DVD of The Two Towers, along with the caption IN STORES TUESDAY! I decided that Tuesday morning I would go to the Circuit City on 14th Street and treat myself to the DVD. I can't afford it naturally, now now, not with unemployment on the horizon, but it always seems that I suffer these sorts of impulses (BUY!) during moments when my pockets are nearly empty. The store opens at 10 a.m., so this morning around 10:30, I informed the secretary that I needed to run an errand, then took the 6 train down to 14th Street. Inside the store, there was a bit of a line, maybe 10-11 people long. Skittish-looking people, all of them, who had, like me, obviously abandoned their posts mid-morning to make certain they secured their sale-priced copy of The Two Towers ($24.99--bargain!). A salesman led me to The Two Towers rack, which was located right next to the line of people at the cashier. "Here it is," the saleman said, picking a copy up and handing it to me. For some bizarre reason, I suddenly didn't want the copy he'd touched; I wanted to select my own. (Believe me, I don't understand this anymore than you do.) I waited for the salesman to go away, then proceeded to choose another copy. And no, there were no discernible differences between the two. Satisfied with my choice, I got in line. A few places in front of me was a man with unkempt blond hair, tiny glasses, thick sideburns, and a plaid scarf around his neck. He seemed nervous about something, uneasy. He kept shifting his weight from foot to foot. Just before it was his turn to cash out, he quickly stepped out of line and nonchalantly swapped the DVD copy of The Two Towers that he'd been holding for another copy. No, there were no discernible differences between the two copies. Once his transaction was complete, he clutched his purchase (I got a prize!) to his chest, pure happiness in his eyes. This moment was obviously the highlight of his day. And it was the highlight of my day, too, sorry-ass as that sounds. He and I, we're kindred spirits. We might not always understand our bizarre consumer rituals, but they must be honored nonetheless. 3:55 PM Friday, November 14, 2003   Thursday morning I got to the office around 8 a.m. I was the first to arrive, which always feels like a small victory to me. I made my way through the hallways switching on lights, enjoying the quietness, the solitude. The offices were still cold; the radiators hadn't come on yet. I was sitting at my desk, staring absent-mindedly at my computer, when a voice suddenly boomed out a few feet away from me. "SCOTT." It was R., the company president. He's the rarely seen/rarely heard from half of the two brothers who own the company. He spends much of his time in Florida, or in his house up in Canada. He's a golf-player; a steak-eater. His absentee status somehow makes him more powerful and terrible than his often-seen (and slightly shorter) brother. With his paunch and booming voice--honestly, considering the volume at which he speaks, I sometimes wonder if the man has a bona fide hearing problem--R. has the ability to put fear in my heart for reasons I've never quite understand. I think in some primal way I recognize him as an uneducated, egotistical sociopath, and my every instinct is to get as far away from this man as possible. In six years of working here, I've rarely ever seen R. outside of his own office. Most days the only evidence that he's even been here is the cloud of cigar smoke that originates in his office, then slowly travels the hallways like some kind of terrible fog. And not once--ever--has R. deigned to enter my office. This was an occasion. "MORNING," R. said, standing in my doorway. "Morning," I said, startled from my daze. "What are we working on today?" he asked. "Little bit of this, little bit of that," I said. "WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?" R. asked, clearly irritated. Truth is, I wasn't working on anything at the moment. I surveyed my desk, my mind scrambling to think of something to tell him. "Girl sets," I said. "February girl sets. I'm writing them." "And when are they going to be DONE?" "This morning," I said. "I hope." "Good..." he said. "I LIKE to know what's going on around HERE." Then he turned and walked down the hall. A few minutes later, I could smell cigar smoke. I felt a flash of anger--for fuckssakes, I was the only person in the entire office at that hour; most people don't even roll in until 9:15 or 9:30. I felt I deserved a bit of credit--not criticism--if only for getting here early. And if I didn't feel paranoid before--remember, my harddrive is full of drafts of resumes and cover letters at the moment--I certainly feel paranoid now. One other fact about R.: He has a lousy memory. He gets distracted easily, loses his train of thought. I knew I could probably bank on R. forgetting the entire incident within the hour. I pressed on with my day, tried to put it behind me. A few hours later, Chris stopped by my office, shut the door. Chris is technically my supervisor. "I don't know what's going on around here," he said, "but R. just called me in and said, 'Is Scott working up to speed?' I assured him you were. He said, 'Funny, I came by his office this morning and he was just sitting there...in a daze. Staring off into space.' " Chris explained to R. that writing this stuff, doing creative work, sometimes requires moments of staring off into space. "I covered for you," Chris said, whispering, "but he's got it in for you for some reason. He's watching you. Something is going on around here. Bad things are happening, and someone is trying to blame you." I felt a tightening in my chest. Sure, I've made the decision to quit--which makes me essentially bullet-proof--but I assumed I'd leave on my own terms, and of my own volition. I thought I'd leave gracefully, with dignity. Now it looks like there's the potential for things to turn ugly. Crazy as it sounds, part of me had hoped there would be a little office-wide mourning when I left. That people would say, "We really appreciate your efforts for the past six years." R. included. I know it's not realistic of me to expect this, but it's what I was privately hoping would happen. If anything, this incident reveals that nobody really knows--or appreciates--what anyone else is doing around here. Doesn't matter if I get here early or late--if R. decides to find fault with me, then he's going to find fault. I have to get the fuck out of here. Have to. 4:08 PM Tuesday, November 11, 2003   In an effort to feel productive on Saturday afternoon--and with job interviews (hopefully) in the offing--I dug what can only be described as my formal wear out of the closet. Old pieces of suits. Dress shirts. Ugly ties. Slacks. Thank Christ I rarely have to wear this stuff. Since the heat in my building is already turned up to Inferno, I was wearing what I call my weekend shorts at the time. Shorts--that's likely all I'll wear inside my apartment until the boiler goes off in the spring. Wearing the shorts made it easy for me to try my formal wear on. Feeling playful, I put on a sport coat, the one I once wore to formals in college, only to discover that the sleeves were too short. (Did my arms grow?) I tried on a canary yellow dress shirt that I bought in 1997 at a store called Today's Man. I found a stained tie with paisleys on it. I wondered if I could recall how to tie the tie, so I practiced and discovered that I could. I shoehorned my way into a pair of Italian dress shoes, the ones I wore to my brother's wedding last summer. I admired myself in the bathroom mirror. Dressed in the tie, jacket, dress shoes and shorts, I looked like a derelict, an escaped mental patient. I was in the process of taking the jacket off, when it occurred to me that it might be sort of fun to just kind of wear my outift around the apartment for little awhile. With the afternoon on the wane, and the shadows in the living room growing long, I sat on my couch wearing my formal wear and shorts and watched the fourth quarter of the Miami game on TV. It was an exciting game, with Miami (for the second straight week) losing in the final moments. After the game, I noticed that the sunset outside my window was spectacular--all reds and purples, fingers of clouds streaking the sky. The past few weekends I've gotten in the habit of going up to the rooftop in my building to watch the sunset from there. I didn't have much time--the sunset wouldn't last more than another minute or two--so wearing my derelict formal wear and shorts, I grabbed my keys and headed out into the hallway, then up the stairs to the roof. You're not supposed to be on the roof. House rules. The roof has several cell phone towers on it and expensive cables snaking everywhere, and Verizon has posted an intimidating sign on the rooftop door stating that radio waves from the cell phone towers might be hazardous to human health. No matter. I go up there anyway, radio waves be damned. The view is too beautiful--I can see all the way to Coney Island, and on clear days, I can see the ocean. And last Saturday, the sunset certainly didn't disappoint. With a final slow explosion of glorious oranges and reds, the sun sank into the horizon. On the opposite horizon, in the east, a full moon was coming up. I stood there between the sunset and the moonrise, the cold November wind goosebumping the skin on my bare knees, still wearing my threadbare formal wear, amidst the quiet hum of the cell phone towers--and I felt blessed, and humbled, and marvelously lonely. I don't know what's going to happen to me in the coming days and weeks, but I feel like that moment, there on the rooftop, was a clue of some kind. 3:44 PM Friday, November 07, 2003   I phoned my mother at her office this morning. She works as a nurse for an orthopedic surgeon in upstate New York. "Mrs. Jones...retired," the receptionist said. I've been calling her at that office, at that number, for the past 15 years. I asked her what she meant by "retired." "She left the office last week," the receptionist said. "Try calling her at home." I dialed the house. Mom laughed when she picked up the phone. "I'm an old woman now," she said. "Old women retire, you know." She was packing, clearing out the house. "Everything is such a mess around here. You know how much I hate it when everything is a mess," she said. My parents have sold the house, and have to be out by the end of the month. Hard for me to accept the reality that perfect strangers will be living there as of December 1. The house my dad built. The house I grew up in. Perfect strangers. Guess I really haven't prepared myself properly for this. Haven't even begun to prepare. My mother sounded fine for the most part, maybe a little harried, but fine. I still can't believe they're doing this. That they're finally going to Florida, after all the years of talking about going, they're really going. Can't believe how brave they're being, both of them. Can't be easy, especially for my mother. She loves the house. There's so much change right now--my brother moving into his house, my parents moving to Florida, my 88-year-old grandfather hanging on day to day. Everything is changing. I told my mother about my decision to leave the magazine, to leave porn. I thought she'd be happy. "What about your health insurance?" she asked. "I'll have to do without for a few months," I said. She was quiet. According to my mother, only a fool walks away from health insurance. I tried to make a case for myself. "Mom, this place is making me sick," I said. "It's killing me. I can't do this anymore. I feel sick all the time. And if the place where you work is unhealthy...then what's the point of staying there just to hang onto the health insurance? Besides, the health insurance here isn't even very good. It's just Aetna, the worst insurance of all." "You know what's best," she said. "You've always managed in the past, so why should I start worrying now?" Translated, this means, You've been promoted to the very top of my worry list. "I've got some money in the bank," I said, trying to comfort her, trying to bring her around to my way of thinking, "and I'll use it if I have to. I can't take the office any longer, Mom. If I stay here much longer, I don't know what I'll do. I'm really losing it over here." "Well, you have to do what you have to do, I guess," she said. I felt the old anger flare up. Just once I wish the woman would get behind me, support me at a time when I needed it. Her ambiguous comments don't build my confidence. Hell, I should know better than to look to her for this stuff, but what else am I supposed to do? I can't help but look to her for support during times when I feel vulnerable. She's my mother. Once I got off the phone, I sat here at my desk stewing for a few minutes. Then I let it all go--like water drained from a bathtub, I let it all go. I'll be fine, with or without Ma's support. I've managed fine in the past without it, and I'll manage now. Yes, I'm leaving the magazine. A series of events on Wednesday and Thursday convinced me that it's time for me to move on. I dropped my suit at the dry cleaners this morning. I've sent out a few resumes. I'm trying hard not to be terrified. 4:06 PM Tuesday, November 04, 2003   Took a sick day last Friday. Over the years, I've come up with a little system regarding sick days. 1. I always talk to Siohban when I call in; Siohban is so distracted and depressed that she usually forgets to inform the receptionist at the front desk that I'm out. 2. Since the receptionist has no idea I'm out, she doesn't mark anything down for me on the sign-in sheet (normally she'll write SICK in red marker). 3. If I get to the office early enough on Monday morning, the previous week's sign-in sheet will still be sitting up front. I make some illegible scratchings underneath the IN and OUT boxes (so it looks like I was actually here) and voila--I'm magically not charged for the sick day. Genius, right? It's little things like this--things that took me years to figure out--that have unfortunately worked to keep me at this job long past its expiration date. Enjoyed the day for the most part. Did some laundry, made some phone calls. Sick-day stuff. In the afternoon I decided to walk over to this bar/restaurant in my neighborhood to have a cheeseburger. The place is called Circles. Sounds like a gay bar, but trust me, it couldn't be more straight. A guy from the office once met me there for a beer, and after taking in the rather banal decor, he said, "I feel like we're sitting in a lounge in the Cleveland airport." He was exactly right--the place does have a distinct Cleveland-airport sort of feel to it. It was around two in the afternoon. The lunch rush--if there even was a lunch rush--is clearly over. The place was empty except for an old guy sitting at the far end of the bar. I tell the bartender I want a cheeseburger. "You want bacon on that?" he asks "Why not?" I tell him. Live a little. A few minutes later, the cheeseburger arrives. It's fucking great. Perfectly cooked, the cheese melted just so, the fries perfect, bacon perfect. The bun is an English muffin, which is great, too. I felt somewhat conspicuous while sitting there, a little paranoid, same way I always do when I eat in public. Some laughter went up at the far end of the bar. The old man had said something to the bartender and the waitress that I couldn't hear. A few minutes later, the old man gets off his stool, tucks his paper under his arm, says goodbye to the bartender, and walks out the door. Now the place is completely empty. Music is playing over the bar sound system. That Bette Midler song comes on, the "Wind Beneath My Wings" song. Now I'm sitting there eating my cheeseburger and listening to this song. "Did you ever know that you're my heeeeero...." And I suddenly realize that I'm crying. Tears are welling up in my eyes, running down my face. "You're everything I would like to beeee...." "Food OK?" It's the bartender. I'm dabbing at my eyes with a napkin, keeping my face down close to my plate so he can't see me crying. "Fine," I say into my plate. "Everything is fine." He goes away, and I feel grateful, almost happy in an odd way, to be left alone to cry and eat my cheeseburger. Who or what was I crying for? Hard to say. My parents, maybe. My brother. John. Joelle. Myself. My wasted life. My big, wasted life. The years are piling up, years spent calling in sick and eating cheeseburgers in empty bars. Loneliness--that's part of it. I get so goddamn lonely sometimes it makes me crazy, but I never know what to fucking do about it. I try being around people, try being social, tried last week going to a reading for a new literary magazine in Soho with my friend Sarah. I took two Xanaxes beforehand, hoping that would make things more bearable, but I still ended up leaving after just twenty minutes. I see people on the street, people who seem to have themselves sorted, and I can't help but wonder when I'm going to be able to join them. In the short-term, the lesson is: combine sick-days, empty bars, cheeseburgers, and Bette Midler songs at your own risk. 4:08 PM Wednesday, October 29, 2003   So the guy who works in the office next door to me put in his notice. Two weeks and he's gone. I'm envious. Wish to christ it was me. He's a quiet guy. A little strange. Quirky. Big into old cameras, always dealing for them on ebay. Have to say, his work habits around here weren't the greatest. He really hasn't made much of an effort to help out in nearly a year. We've all quietly complained about his laziness to one another, but nobody ever confronted him, so he kept getting away with doing next to nothing. Now he's leaving. The sonofabitch. Cleaning out his desk even as I type this. He's making it look easy, too. Just made the decision in his mind to walk out. Has no contingency plan whatsoever, just knows that he needs to get away from here. Says he's worried about being broke, about not having health insurance, but felt so fed up with this place that he's willing to take the risk. Those were his words. "I'm fed up with this place." And he's worked here about half as long as I have. He's in his 40s. Says he's going to become a yoga teacher, says it's always been a dream of his. "If I don't do it now," he said, "when am I going to do it?" Lately I've been waking up late at night feeling like there's a plaque growing on my soul, courtesy of this place. My system is getting corroded, corrupted--gummed up. I'm worried that this stuff has gotten into my blood, and that I won't be able to get it out. I'm sick of my co-workers too. Bitter spirits, all of them. Used to think of these as misfits, as the misunderstood, but now I'm starting to think they might all be budding sociopaths. Everyone around here is so goddamn bitter. Worried that I'm turning bitter too. Maybe this is what the end looks like. This certainly isn't the way I imagined it. But I don't think it ever looks the way we imagine it. I'm looking for a new job, trying to drum up some alternate sources of income. I'm going to try to sock a little money away the next couple months. Need to try selling DVDs again (got a possible lead on a website that might accomodate me). Need to follow up on that resume over at Rockstar games. And I need to work on getting myself fired. That's the proper route--to get fired. That way, at least I'll have the unemployment checks to fall back on. My plan is to be fired by January. If I'm not fired, then I'll walk. Because it's time for a fresh start. Time to clear the decks. Time to start showing myself a little self-respect. Time to pull myself together, once and for all.... Anything has to be more interesting than another year here. 3:50 PM Tuesday, October 28, 2003   Don't normally do things like this, but I read a passage in Jonathon Alter's column in Newsweek last week regarding the Red Sox-Cubs losses that I found interesting: The defining characterisitc of fanaticism--in the Middle East or the Middle West--is that it turns reality on its head. We convince ourselves that we somehow influence how superstars put runs on the board. But when it comes to something in our own lives, we assume we're powerless to change the outcome. We can control Pedro Martinez's pitching but can't possibly prevent ourselves from reaching for another potato chip. This is one reason "The Fan" in Chicago took so much abuse for the sixth-game fiasco that he may have to go into the Witness Protection Program. Instead of blaming Alex Gonzalez for booting a grounder or Mark Prior for throwing a wild pitch or even the umpire for not calling interference, Chicagoans settled on 26-year-old "Steve Bartman." ... In retrospect, I find it odd the way I found myself--as someone who's no fan of baseball--following the Red Sox-Yankees series. I hurried home each day after work to watch the games, feverishly discussing the outcomes the following day with my co-workers. I shut the game off--disgusted!--when the Yankees were losing. (Something about the whole head-shaving deal and the catchphrase "Cowboy up" really turned me off to the Red Sox.) I got caught up in it for reasons I have yet to fully understand. The morning after the Red Sox lost, I walked to work whistling, a little spring in my step. I felt lucky. Blessed. Strange.... What I wanted to happen, happened. To some extent, I guess I felt in some small way personally responsible for the Yankees winning. I was pulling for them in my own quiet way. And they won. And I had something to do with it. Little old me. Derek Jeter should probably send me a frigging thank-you note. 4:37 PM Friday, October 24, 2003   So I was on TV this morning. ESPN2, their morning show, Cold Pizza. Last minute thing, obviously. The producer called me late yesterday afternoon as I was putting my jacket on to head home for the night. She needed help--needed someone to challenge their resident game expert (i.e. the guy who got the job I was angling for a couple months back) to some kind of showdown. Would I be interested? I said yes. What the hell. Got up at 4:30, showered, fixed coffee, dressed, then ran out the door. Got on a very slow F train (@#%&*), and sat there worrying that I might not make it to the show on time--the producer wanted me there by 6. I ended up sprinting down 34th Street at 6:10. I lost my wind at 8th Avenue, and twisted my knee a little, but managed to limp my way into the studio by 6:15. Was led into the green room, which was small and cold. They had a space heater going, and this morning's guests were huddled around it for warmth. The green room had a small window which looked out on the studio. I wanted to say witty things, establish my presence somehow, but mostly I felt nervous and dry-mouthed. My breath, I think, was bad from my nerves. I had one of those Listerine packets in my pocket, and I kept going to it. I got a little makeup--"to reduce the glare"--drank a bottled water, then...waited. There was a little TV in the room, and so we all sat around watching the show. It's a new show, and obviously still rough around the edges. Most of the segments just seemed designed to kill time--two hours is an awful lot of time to fill. There was another gamer there--a young, nerdy dude named Dan--and when they asked for a volunteer to go down to the studio, Dan jumped at the chance. I was content to sit still for awhile, to rest my twisted knee. People kept coming in and out of the green room every few minutes. They'd be sitting next to me one minute, then the next they'd be down there on the TV. Nobody particularly famous. A guy from one of the sports talk radio stations that I listen to. I tried being friendly with him, but he wasn't having it. Oh, and Tony Hawk was there, but he must have had his own green room, because he didn't use ours. I went to the window and could see the nerdy guy Dan playing against the show's "expert"--Sundance Giovanni. (That's what he calls himself--Sundance. No kidding.) Around 8:20 or so I was ushered into the studio. It was strange being down there. The room was smaller than I expected it to be. It was full of people, but felt disinfected, soundless, airless. It smelled like...nothing. Nothing at all. Dan reluctantly gave up his seat so I could take a few turns with the game before our segment. It was a snowboarding game called Amped 2. Real crap. And I couldn't seem to figure out the controls, so I asked Sundance to help me out. He was grinding a rail, and I asked him how he did the grind. "You, uh, kind of just do this," he said, holding his Xbox controller up. I had no idea what he was talking about. He didn't seem to like me. I asked him at one point if he moved to NYC for the job, and he said, "No, I live here. In Tribeca." End of conversation. I kept playing, kept trying to get the controls down. Usually the learning curve for a game is anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour. I had about 5-10 minutes to get it sorted out. I was supposed to pretend to be a viewer who'd accepted Sundance's Amped 2 challenge--which was, beat him and he'd shave his head. They had the clippers standing by and everything. After a few more minutes of practice, I was starting to get the controls down, starting to put together some good runs. It was time for our segment. The girl from the Road Rules is one of the hosts--Kit Hoover, funny name, something like that--and she came over and wedged herself between us, looking all bright and smiley and TV-like. Suddenly the lights went bright--every piece of equipment in the studio and every person, were suddenly focused on us. On me. I was on TV. The rest of it is kind of a blur. Kit Hoover peppered me with questions. I'd been beating Sundance, was in the lead, but answering the questions distracted me, and suddenly I was stuck between this rock and a big ramp. "Doesn't look like you're doing very good," Kit Hoover said. "I'm stuck," I said, sounding helpless, as my character snowboarded around in a tiny circle. "I'm stuck." "Well," Kit Hoover said, "how does Amped 2 compare to Amped 1?" I've never played Amped 1. I said, "The graphics are better, and some of the challenges seem more rich and varied." Some dead air. "And the game seems...more challenging overall." A few seconds later, the lights went down. It was over. I didn't beat Sundance. He kept his hair. Me, I didn't lose anything, except maybe some of my dignity. I wasn't really making any use of that dignity anyway.... After the segment, the producer came out of the control booth with a mad face. She thanked me, then one of her assistants led me to the exit. "No one leaves without a goodie bag," she said brightly, handing me a small glossy shopping bag. Outside the studio, 34th Street was filled with people hustling to work, wearing overcoats, newspapers stuffed under their arms. Whole armies of people. I pulled up my collar against the bitter October wind, took a deep breath, then joined the ranks. I wish I could say it was a success. I can't. I just did my best, nothing more. The whole time I was there, I kept hoping the extrovert in me would wake up suddenly and really light the place up, really set it ablaze. I wanted the producers to shout "We totally love you!" then fire Sundance on the spot and let me take over his job. That obviously didn't happen. I was just myself this morning--a little quiet, a little tired, a little nervous, a little hungover. Me--for better or worse. Ah, fuck TV anyway. 10:40 AM Wednesday, October 22, 2003   A porn star who we privately refer to as "Marty Feldman" stopped by the office yesterday. Most girls will phone a few days in advance to let me know when they're going to be in New York, but Marty Feldman always seems to show up out of the clear blue. She thinks of herself as an industry V.I.P., and assumes a kinship with the magazine, and with me, which makes me uncomfortable. She's also one of these porn stars who'll insist on a hug and a kiss each time she sees me, which I really can't bear. "Tell her I'm not in," I said to the receptionist. "I can't do that," the receptionist said. I asked her why she couldn't do this. "Because she barged right past me," she said. "She's on her way back to your office." I could already hear the sound of Marty Feldman's high heels stalking down the hall, coming towards me, sounding very much like hoof beats. For some reason I thought of the Minotaur in the labyrinth.... So I did something strange. I impulsively clicked off my desk lamp, then quickly tip-toed across my office and quietly closed the door. Outside the door, I could hear the high heels coming closer, winding their way through the halls. I crouched down on the floor of my office, my knees pressed into the gray, industrial carpeting. My plan: to hide until Marty Feldman went away. We call her Marty Feldman because she unfortunately suffers from an awful breast implant operation--a "Tijuana boob job," as we sometimes call them. To save a few dollars, the more budget-minded adult stars will actually travel to foreign countries to get second- and sometimes third-rate implants. The result of Marty Feldman's botched operation left her with a left nipple that points southwest and a right nipple that points northeast. Thus the name "Marty Feldman." She knocked on my door, gently at first, then with more urgency. "Dear, are you in there? They told me you were here. Scott, darling? I simply must see you. I have some rather important business to discuss...." Even through the door I could smell her suffocating perfume, like rotting orchids. It was really too much. Down on the floor, hiding from Marty Feldman, waiting for her to go away, I remembered something from my childhood. I must have been about eight years old. My mother was running the vacuum on a Saturday morning when she suddenly switched off the Electrolux and pulled my brother and me off the couch and down to the floor. "It's Helen," she said. She quickly locked the door, then got down on the floor with us. Helen was the Avon lady, though she didn't really look the part. She was hugely fat, and had a large strawberry birthmark covering half her face. She wore a blown-out winter coat and constantly smelled of dog food. My brother and I were hunched on the floor with mom when Helen began knocking on the door. "What are we doing, Mom?" I asked. "We're hiding," she whispered. "I can't deal with Helen right now. I've got too much to do today. She'll come in and drink coffee for hours and I won't be able to get rid of her." This was very much out of character for Mom. She was a church-goer, a Bible-reader, the one who constantly lobbied against lies and secrets of any kind. Not only did she reveal herself as a bit of hypocrite in that moment, this woman who was normally perfect and beyond reproach, she also let us see that she was fallible and human too. The message was, Sometimes it's OK to avoid people we aren't in the mood to see. Sometimes it's OK to hide. Helen kept knocking steadily for several minutes before finally giving up. We could hear her voice outside. "Funny," Helen said to herself, "the car's in the driveway, but no one's home." Then she got into her rusted-out Dodge and backfired her way down the road. "Has anyone around here seen Scott?" Marty Feldman said outside my door. She was talking to Siobhan, the managing editor. "He was here a little while ago," Siobhan said. "Maybe he stepped out." Marty Feldman stalked up and down the hall, trying to find someone willing to meet with her. "Then is Mark in?" she asked Siobhan. Mark is the art director for the magazine--or rather, the "creative director," as he calls himself. Like me, he's also no great fan of Marty Feldman. "I believe so," Siobhan said. Marty Feldman stalked off down the hall towards Mark's office. I crawled over to the phone and dialed Mark's extension. "Marty Feldman's here," I said. "And she's on her way down to see you." "Why aren't you meeting with her?" he asked. "I've got my door closed," I said. "You're hiding?" "I'm hiding." "Shit," he said. "Then I'm hiding too." He closed his door, then came back on the line, voice lowered to a hush. "She's right outside," he said, whispering. "I can't deal with that old bat today." "Neither can I," I said. I could hear Marty Feldman's voice faintly in the background. "Mark, dear, are you in there? Mark..." "We're a couple of classy guys, aren't we?" Mark whispered. "Oh, we're the classiest," I said. 10:07 AM Monday, October 20, 2003   Long, quiet weekend alone in my apartment. So long and so quiet that I was actually anxious to get back to work this morning. Suffered a touch of the old cabin fever, I think. Ended up leaving my apartment twice all weekend long. Once to bring a load of laundry to the basement, and once to see a Sunday morning showing of Kill Bill (which I still regret going to). Otherwise, I kept the door firmly bolted--kept the world out and kept myself in. Spent much of my time and energy trying not to think about Joelle. Tried not to think about the fact that she was out with another guy all weekend. For the most part, I was successful. Beer helped. And videogames. Hours of videogames. She told me one night last week that she had a date this weekend, that she was going out with someone else. Though we were probably never officially back together, I saw fit to break up with her when she informed me of this. Seemed like a reasonable response to me. Funny thing is, I felt so goddamn close to her when we were in Vermont last weekend. Felt real intimacy between us. I ate dinner with her parents. I slept on the couch in their living room, Joelle's high school photos sitting on the nearby mantle. And then this. I know she wasn't happy with our weekends-only arrangement, that it was driving her crazy. I'm not giving her what she wants, what she needs. Guess this was her way of forcing the issue. So she forced it. It's forced. Honestly, I don't feel malicious towards her, don't harbor any ill-will. She's doing what she needs to do. Had everything under control for much of the weekend. Then last night, around 2 am, I woke up and couldn't breathe. "She's gone," I thought. "I've lost her. I've really lost her. I'm such a fucking, no good fool. What a fuck-head I am." Took me awhile to get the images of her with someone else out of my head. (My subconscious always seems to attack me when I'm most vulnerable.) I've felt strange all day long, like I've got a head full of hot wires. I spent a little extra time in front of the bathroom mirror this morning, playing with my hair, which is what I tend to do when I'm feeling insecure about myself. What a crappy, nothing day this has been. What a fucking Monday. 4:27 PM Friday, October 17, 2003   Recently had a situation with my downstairs neighbor. He's a smoker--a very heavy smoker I'd guess, since it's not uncommon for me to come home from the office to find my nice, new Brooklyn apartment foggy with second-hand smoke. As a life-long non-smoker, this was fairly upsetting (not to mention unsettling) to me. My towels smelled of smoke, my clothes smelled of smoke, my closets smelled--you get the idea. Kept hoping the problem would somehow go away, or at least dissipate to a point where it would become bearable. I didn't really feel comfortable with the idea of asking the guy to change his behavior, wasn't comfortable with the precedent that would set. After all, it's his home, he's free to do what he pleases. And I think I was probably more afraid of what his response to me would be, worried that he'd simply tell me to "Go fuck myself." Smokers, by nature, tend to be nihilistic creatures. If the man obviously has no respect for his lungs, how could I expect him to respect the air quality in my apartment? All this led to feelings of futility and despair. I grew to despise The Man Downstairs. He'd invaded my sanctuary, ruined my 700-sq.-feet of Brooklyn paradise. Last Friday, in a drunken fit, I cranked my TV up to the maximum volume. It's a pretty powerful TV. I wanted him to "feel my thunder from above." Then I picked up a shoe and began throwing it at the floor repeatedly. Like an insane person. Once my rage had been spent, I went to bed and woke up the next morning determined to do something more constructive than beat on floors and play my TV at full volume. I spent hours discussing the situation with Joelle, pushing her until she finally said, "Look, I don't want to hear anymore about the smoker. That's it." I talked to a woman on the co-op board. She said they would send the man a formal letter, threatening him in a formal, co-op board kind of way. Before having the co-op board do this, I decided I might try a more friendly approach first. I typed up a brief note, then early Wednesday morning I scampered downstairs and taped it to his door. The note read: Dear #4E Neighbor, I wanted to make you aware of the fact that second-hand smoke from your apartment is invading my apartment. It's rising up through my floorboards, radiators and closets; it's drifting in through my open windows. My towels and clothes constantly smell of stale cigarette smoke. As a non-smoker, this is troubling to me. Any effort on your part to alleviate this problem would be much appreciated. And should I ever offend you in any way, please let me know as soon as possible. Call me any time, at work or at home, and I'd be happy to accomodate you. Looking forward to many peaceful years together as neighbors. Sincerely, Scott Jones Apt. #4F I added my phone numbers at the end, both home and office, hoping he'd call me, so we wouldn't have to deal with this face to face. Last night, I'm sitting in my apartment in my undershirt and eating spaghetti from a big pot (this is how I eat my dinner) and watching the Yankee game when my doorbell suddenly rings. It's him. I knew it was him. He's out there, outside my door, and he wants to talk. The Man Downstairs. I muted the TV, found a shirt to cover myself with, then opened the door. He was a slight guy in his 40s, out of shape, a little stooped. He wore a forest-green windbreaker. "I got your note..." he said. "I have to apologize. I'm so sorry. I really wished that you'd told me about this sooner." Turns out the guy works as a prop guy on the Conan O'Brien show (he said he often appears on the show), and he couldn't have been nicer or more decent about the whole situation. He said he's actually tried to quit smoking, and failed, a few times. "But I have to quit, I'm really trying to, this is another incentive to do it," he said. I wished him luck with the quitting, and we shook hands a few times and agreed to have a beer sometime soon. Tell you the truth, I feel a little foolish now. A man that I'd spent weeks--months, actually--demonizing (at one point I said to Joelle "What if he's cooking crystal-meth in his bathtub?") turns out to be just a regular, decent guy. There really are good people out there, decent people who actually give a damn about their neighbors' comfort. Living in New York, where everyone is always elbowing everyone else out of the way, it's easy for me to forget that sometimes. 4:05 PM Wednesday, October 15, 2003   Past few days I've been playing quite a bit of Freedom Fighters (PS2) and enjoying every war-torn second of it. The premise of this poorly-titled game (could it be any more innocuous?) is that the Russians have invaded modern-day New York City, and it's my job--as a lowly plumber, a member of the proletariat ironically--to take it back. The gameplay is typical third-person action, with a few important twists thrown in to make the game feel fresh. For one, the game world is absolutely huge and very detailed. If there's a Russian sniper perched on a nearby rooftop, you can bet there's a back way up to the roof (which can be used to quietly sneak up behind him and "relieve him of his duties"). The other aspect of the Freedom Fighters that sets it apart from the genre is the fact that I can "recruit" fighters to join me. After the first level, I was able to assemble a nice little squad for myself. Squad-based shooters are typically plagued with overly complex commands, but controlling the recruits in Freedom Fighters is actually a snap: simply point at the spot on the battlefield where you want them to go to, hit the triangle button, and the guys head out, most ricky-tick. The first time I sent my guys into battle was truly an empowering moment. And unlike the A.I.-controlled teammates in other squad-based shooters, the recruits in Freedom Fighters are actually surprisingly effective. They shoot with great accuracy, and basically fight their balls off until the bitter end. (It's kind of heart-breaking when they go down, but fortunately you have the ability to heal them with medicine.) All that aside, the real reason why I'm spending so much time with Freedom Fighters is probably because it awakens something old in me, something boyish. It's evocative of the war games my brother and I played in the woods behind our house growing up. The way I feel playing Freedom Fighters is the way I felt out in the trees with my brother: we were two lone soldiers, facing impossible odds, feeling giddy that we were still somehow winning despite everything. It's a good game, and with all the high-powered releases rolling out in the coming weeks, it's bound to get lost in the shuffle. If you've got a spare $50, by all means pick it up. 4:04 PM Tuesday, October 14, 2003   Spent the weekend in Vermont with Joelle. That's right--we're back together. After four Joelle-less weeks, we met to ostensibly "exchange our stuff." One thing led to another and, well...heh, heh... here we are. Right back where we started from. She's still unhappy with our long-distance situation, still unhappy with seeing each other on weekends. Me, I'm not entirely happy...but I'm not entirely unhappy either. In a perverse way, our long-distance situation works for me. I require quite a bit of space; if I don't spend at least a couple hours alone at night, phone off the hook, blinds drawn, the world completely shut out, I tend to get cranky. But I know the truth is that I can't be single-and-loving-it forever. I've always romanticized single-dom, always envied the single person at dinner parties, always wanted to be that person. Single people seem mysterious. Interesting things happen to single people at dinner parties. The couples, well, they just go home together. Where's the drama in that? Funny thing is, I'm starting to long for more stability, more continuity in my life. I'm getting tired, in an existential way. Maybe I'm simply getting old. Or maybe all the uncertainty of being single is wearing me out, I think. I want to find a safe place where my heart can rest for little while. Joelle feels like a safe place. Still not sure how we're going to reconcile our differences--the abstract and literal differences. But for the first time in my life, I feel like I'm open to negotiation. And that has to be recognized as progress. Still, doubts persist.... A few weekends ago, Joelle and I watched The King of Comedy together, absolutely one of my favorite movies of all time. The movie didn't seem to really have much of an impact on her. I wondered how disappointed I should be in this, wondered if I needed a girl who could appreciate the nuances of The King of Comedy. Was this evidence of some deep-seated, fundamental, irreconciliable difference between us? Had I found a fatal flaw? While visiting her parents in Vermont last weekend, I noticed that her mother had taped About Schmidt. "Oh, I wanted to see that," I said. "It's not very good," Joelle's mom said. "He might like it, Mom," Joelle said. "He likes weird movies." I bristled at this, assuming she was referring to The King of Comedy. I thought, Doesn't she understand me at all? How can she *not* see the inherent greatness in that goddamn great movie? How can she be so goddamn narrow-minded? My anger faded eventually, and I started thinking more rationally again. No, we don't have to have identical values, don't have to celebrate the same movies and books and music. She has her things, I have mine. She doesn't need to understand my love of The King of Comedy, doesn't need to share in my love of videogames and beer and Woody Allen films and bacon and eggs and hot coffee on a Sunday morning. She only need to accept them as part of me. Which she does. Which, I think if my logic is correct, makes me kind of lucky. I think. 4:09 PM Wednesday, October 08, 2003   A few months ago this guy at the office loaned me his copy of Ninja Scroll. He's a Puerto Rican guy who lives in Sunset Park. Richie. Anyway, Richie and I got talking about anime one day, and he brought in the dvd because, according to him, "Ninja Scroll is a good place to start." His plan was to educate me on the wonderful world of anime. I kept the dvd for weeks and just could never seem to find the time to sit down and watch it. The thing became a kind of albatross. I started feeling guilty over keeping it for so long, yet never quite guilty enough to actually watch it. "Did you watch it yet?" Richie would ask anxiously each day. "No," I'd say, and give him some weak excuse. Got to the point where I started avoiding him at work. If I spotted him walking towards me down the hall, I'd quickly turn a corner and hide, just so I wouldn't have to deal with him. Finally, one night I watched the dvd. It wasn't half bad, either. I enjoyed all the fights, though I couldn't make much sense of the plot. I was shocked by how explicitly sexual and violent it was. The next morning I proudly returned the dvd to Richie. "Here it is!" I said. I spent a few minutes talking about it. "I liked it," I said, "but I couldn't really make any sense of the narrative." He looked at me like I was insane, then launched into a point-by-point explanation of the movie's events. Honestly, even with his help, I still couldn't understand it. I thanked him for sharing the dvd with me, and apologized for keeping it for so long. I also told him that if he had any other animes he'd like to share, I'd be interested in seeing them. A couple weeks have passed now and Richie has yet to offer any other dvds to me. I guess that's the end of my anime education. I'm a little relieved, actually. Small victory this week: My Xbox is unfortunately one the infamous "dirty disc error" machines that Bill Gates foisted upon the masses. Was watching a dvd recently (no, it wasn't Ninja Scroll) when it started hiccuping and finally froze. Arrrgh. This happens all too regularly with games and dvds on the Xbox, and every time it does, I swear a blue streak and vow to get revenge on Bill Gates and Microsoft for making me spend $299 this piece of utter junk. Anyway, each time this happens I entertain a little fantasy of 1. driving a sledgehammer through the top of the Xbox, 2. taking a shit on top of it and 3. boxing up said sledgehammered-and-shat-upon Xbox and mailing it directly to Bill himself. Let me tell you, that fantasy got me through some tough moments.... While running through this fantasy again over the weekend, I actually came up with a more practical solution: I could sell the faulty machine back to the store. Eureka--why the hell hadn't I thought of this before? Game stores are always offering to buy old machines and games. Monday I had the day off for Yom Kippur. I phoned the local GameSpot on 7th Avenue and asked how much they paid for an Xbox. "If it has all the cords and the controller," the guys said, "100 dollars." A hundred dollars? This was far more than I could have hoped for. (Game stores are famous for low-balling.) I promptly gathered up my Xbox, wound up all the cords, boxed it up nicely (always save those boxes, kids!), and headed out for the GameSpot. The Xbox is fucking heavy, and within a few blocks I was heaving and gasping for air. I had to stop and take rests a few times. Twenty minutes later, I finally made it to the store. "I'm the guy who called about the Xbox," I said, huffing as I put the huge green box on the counter. The guy eyed me suspiciously. "Well..." he said, already unpacking the box, "I'll need to see if it actually works." "Oh sure, fine by me," I said as I casually strolled off down the aisles, trying not to show how worried I was. My concern was that he'd get the "dirty disc error," which would ruin the whole deal. Be just my luck if I had to haul this heavy bastard all the way back to my apartment again.... I pretended to browse (they had some old N64 titles that I was interested in), but kept nonchalantly glancing at the guy as he hooked my old Xbox up to one of the in-store TVs. A few moments later, he hit the power switch. This was the moment of truth.... To my relief, it worked fine. The guy loaded up Halo, one of the few games that actually worked consistently on my old, flawed Xbox. A stroke of good luck. Moments later, I walked out of the store with a cool 100 bucks (but in store credit). I wanted to shout "Suckers!" and kick up my heels. Ethically, I do feel sort of bad for whatever poor soul who winds up buying my old Xbox.... Still, those GameStop bastards sold me a lemon, and I did nothing more than sell their lemon right back to them. Yesterday, on my way home from the office, I stopped at the nearby GameStop (obviously I couldn't go back to the same store where I sold my old Xbox) and picked up a brand-spanking-new, non-crashing Xbox. (Price is $180, so minus the store credit, I'm really only out $80. Plus I get two free games out of the deal, though they're really suck-ass games--The Clone Wars and Tetris Worlds.) New Xbox seems to be working fine so far, though I do keep my fingers crossed every time I power her up.... You know, it's nice to have reasonable response to a completely unreasonable situation for a change. If you've got a dirty disc error Xbox, do what I did! Don't give into your base impulses to destroy then defecate on it! Take the high road! I'm telling you, it's the better way to go! 4:04 PM Friday, October 03, 2003   The East Coast Video Show was this week down in Atlantic City. I had plans to go—C. and I were going to go down together, split a room at the Tropicana—but at the last minute, as usual, the plans went to hell. This happens every damn year. For one reason or another, something always comes along and I end up not going. It's probably for the best anyway. I have no love for Atlantic City, or gambling, and the porn stars would have been everywhere. (Porn stars make me nervous.) I inevitably would have spent my time down there walking alone on the boardwalk, hands buried in my pockets, maybe visiting the old run-down Ripley's Believe It Or Not! museum. M. from the office went down. He fancies himself a bit of a gambler, a wheeler-dealer, a card shark. He left on Tuesday morning, then returned Wednesday afternoon. When he passed through the art room, I started singing, "...And the Gambler he broke even, and in his final words I found an ace that I could keep." "No," he said soberly. "The gambler didn't break even. The gambler didn't even come close to breaking even." Whole rest of the week he's been moping around the office. Probably gambled away his rent money, poor bastard. Each day around five or six boxes of new porn are delivered to the office—videos, DVDs—and I noticed that M. had rummaged through them all, looking for the DVDs, no doubt. When any of us are in financial trouble, we sell the DVDs. I used to be able to get five dollars a DVD a year ago, but with the crappy economy, the DVD market is pretty much all but dried up. I've got a place on St. Marks where I sell them, this cruddy little used record shop. I'd take a batch of them down once a month or so, and the guy behind the counter would gladly hand over the cash on the spot. I went down a couple weeks back to try to move some, and first thing the guy says to me is, "I'm only paying three a piece for DVDs now. Hope that's cool with you." I've never been much of a haggler, so I take a second to process this change of affairs--once the price goes down, I'm thinking, there's little chance it will ever go up again. I'm about to say, "That's fine" to the guy's offer when he suddenly blurts out, "OK, four a piece. But that's my final, final offer." He's sort of a nervous, hippie guy, who usually wears a daishiki and puffy denim engineer's cap. "That's fine," I say. Unfortunately, the guy doesn't have any cash at the moment, and asks if I'd mind an I.O.U. He's given me I.O.U.s in the past, and always made good on them, so I don't mind. Instead of cash, now I've got I.O.U.s in my wallet--from a guy named "Seth"--totalling over sixty dollars. M. says that he's also having trouble moving DVDs. "You can't give this shit away anymore!" he said this afternoon while rifling through today's delivery of boxes. M. is much more of an operator than I am, and if he can't sell them, then things must be really bad out there. Funny, because I always thought porn was recession-proof, like liquor. No matter how bad things get, people would always need porn, right? Guess that's not the case. If you don't have any money, you can always look at your old porn. That's what people must be doing these days--looking at their old porn. Because you can always look at the same old porn over and over, but you certainly can't drink the same old booze over and over. 3:29 PM Wednesday, October 01, 2003   It's gotten a little brisk in New York lately, and frankly I don't mind at all. Far as I'm concerned this is the very best time of the year here. I was happy to put an extra blanket on the bed last night, happy to wear a jacket to the office this morning. Another couple weeks and the radiators will no doubt be clanging, and it will sound like music to me.... A few days ago someone began papering my Brooklyn neighborhood with signs that read: Lost Large Blue Parrot! Bird is on medication! Will not survive! All of this handwritten in a desperate, frantic script, with lots of exclamation points and everything underlined several times. Since seeing those signs, each night when I walk home from the subway I find myself subconsciously scanning the trees along my block, thinking of that large blue parrot, so big and beautiful and utterly foreign, wondering what became of him, wondering--I know it's a long shot--if just maybe I might be the one who finds him. In the early 90s I worked as a waiter in a restaurant in Chicago where one of my fellow waiters lost a bird. The bird owner was a 40-year-old black woman named Vanessa. We privately referred to her as "Aunt Nester." The day she lost her bird, she came to work crying. "Frankie flew out the window," she said. "We need to find him. He's out there somewhere." She asked us to help her, to go out and walk the streets, to look for him. I think we all knew how completely futile this was. Once Vanessa left the kitchen, one of the other waiters said, "It probably flew out the window to get the hell away from her." And we all broke up laughing. I always felt bad about not helping Vanessa. A few weeks later I quit that particular restaurant and went to work for another restaurant, one of those expensive dinner-cruise boats that floats on Lake Michigan. It was a bad move on my part. The job turned out to be terrible, much worse than the previous job. Several months later, on one of my final nights in Chicago, I spotted Vanessa in an Osco drugstore. She was a few aisles away and didn't see me. It was very late at night and cold, like it is now in New York. I was on my way to my girlfriend's small apartment in Lincoln Park and had stopped to pick up some ice cream. Vanessa, still wearing her white shirt and bow tie and nametag from the restaurant, made a beeline for the liquour department. She pulled a huge jug of chilled rose out of the cooler--the biggest bottle they sold--and hauled it up to the register. I considered saying hello to Vanessa, to ask her if she ever found Frankie, to see how she was doing, how she was making out in life, but I knew her well enough to know that she was in a bad mood. I could see quite clearly that the skin between her eyes was pinched, and when it was pinched it was best to stay clear of Vanessa. She could be mean. Vanessa, with her bottle of rose in a paper bag and cradled in her arms, hustled through the pneumatic doors and into the night. 1:38 PM Monday, September 29, 2003   Was walking to the office last Friday morning, cutting through Madison Square Park as I always do, when something strange happened. There's a fountain at the north end of the park, and I was passing near the fountain, self-possessed and half out of it as I always am in the mornings, when something small and hard struck me square in the chest. I stopped and tried to figure out what had just happened. The projectile--a penny--was on the asphalt at my feet. Took me a few moments to process this: someone had thrown a penny and it had hit me in the chest. I wasn't sure how to respond to this, couldn't be certain whether the penny was thrown maliciously or not. I turned in the direction that I guessed the penny had been thrown from and saw a well-dressed man looking sheepishly at me from about 10 yards away. "Sorry," he said. "I was, um, aiming for the fountain and--" I didn't respond, just gave him a dirty look--it was a scowl; scowls aren't terribly hard for me to conjure in the mornings--then hurried on my way. Once I arrived at the office, I drank coffee and checked my email, but for an hour or so that morning I could still feel the dull ache in my chest where the man's misfired penny had hit me. Once, on my birthday two years ago, my office mates offered to take me out to lunch to celebrate. I sat in my office, passing the time, certain someone would fetch me when it was time to go to the restaurant. Around 12:30 I noticed that my office mates were missing. The phone on my desk rang. "Where the hell are you?" It was Mark, the art director. "We're all at the restaurant, waiting for you." "I thought you guys were going to get me when it was time to go...." I sounded desperate, whiny. I couldn't believe they'd left without me--wasn't I the fucking guest of honor? Then Mark's voice got muffled, and I could tell he was covering the receiver on his cell phone. "We forgot to get Scott," he said. All at once, the whole table, all my office mates, erupted with laughter. Then Mark came back on the line. "Just get your ass over here." I hung up the phone and sat at my desk, feeling lousy, hollow. Was I fucking invisible? Some days I really do feel invisible, like people can't see me. I pulled my coat on and crossed the street to the restaurant. I did my best to be a good sport about the whole thing. I ordered a couple lunch-time beers which helped take the edge off the situation, and made me feel better all around. Later, when I was recounting the story for John, he said, "That sounds like a Dilbert cartoon." And we both laughed, because he was right, it really was exactly the sort of situation that seems to happen to Dilbert. Getting hit in the chest with a make-a-wish penny while passing near a fountain--that sounds like a goddamn Dilbert cartoon, too. 3:58 PM Thursday, September 25, 2003   Smells like smoke in here...and I'm starting to think it might be me. Feeling burned out on the weblog the past couple days, so I'm taking the rest of the week off. Back Monday. 2:00 PM Monday, September 22, 2003   I met this guy named Brian during the blackout last month. Tall, affable guy. Newsweek reporter. By chance, he and I wound up sitting next to each other in a candle-lit barroom just off 7th Avenue in Brooklyn. He scribbled down a few of my pithier quotes regarding the blackout in his reporter's notebook, but explicity told me that he couldn't make any promises about my words winding up in the magazine. (They didn't.) Brian and I sort of hit it off and made tentative plans to get together to visit some of the Irish bars in Kensington, the neighborhood south of where I live. He gave me his various phone numbers, we shook hands, and I staggered off into the night, trying to find my way home. About a week after the blackout, I decided to phone his office number at Newsweek. A woman answered the phone. "I'm sorry," she said in a woeful voice, "but Brian doesn't work here any longer." This was curious. Newsweek wasn't the sort of place a young reporter just walks away from. I still had his cell and home numbers, but for some reason I put off calling. The days soon turned into weeks, and now an entire month has passed and I still haven't called. I can't even imagine how I'd go about it at this point. "Hi Brian, this is Scott. We, uh, met during the blackout. Remember?" Honestly, it was so damn dark in the bar, I can't even really recall what he looked like. I probably wouldn't know him if I passed him on the street. I have the little scrap of paper with his phone numbers on it here on my desk. I look at the scrap every damn day and I think, Today I'll make the call. Today is the day, goddammit. But I never do. 3:52 PM Thursday, September 18, 2003   Wrote girl copy today. I'm telling you, nothing saps my chi quite like girl copy. It's the most Bartleby-like thing I do. I actually have learned to do it quickly, just burn through it, getting it over with as fast as humanly possible. Lord knows if I sit around dreading it for too long, hours will go by and the stacks of girl sets will still be sitting on my desk at five o'clock, and nothing will have been accomplished. So I just burn rubber, get through them, pull the bandage off, endure the pain. Girl copy is the bit of text that accompanies each pictorial. It's all fake, all fiction, with absolutely no basis in reality whatsoever. It's always written in the voice of the girl. If the pictorial is a boy/girl, or a boy/boy/girl, it's still written in the voice of the girl. In the case of a boy/girl/girl, I pick one of the two girls and write it in her voice. Try to imagine writing a plausible (or even semi-plausible) story about how a woman ended up nude (except for a straw hat) and spread-eagled in a vegetable garden with cucumbers protruding from every one of her orifi and you'll begin to understand why I dread writing this stuff so much. Honestly, what the hell can you say, really? Don't the photos pretty much say it all? For years I've actually lobbied for the banishment of girl copy at the magazine, using that same exact argument. No one listens to me. Girl copy is a moldy leftover from another era, an era when the girl copy was actual biographical information about the girl. Now, with so much of the stuff we buy coming from European photographers, the girls in the photo sets are empty vessels, unknown quantities. Sometimes they'll give us a fake name to use--girl's real name is Svetlana Glatshossinklavo (actual name), but she wants to be known as "Daisy" in the States. Most of the time, they don't even give us the name, and I'll have to sit here and eyeball the photos of the girl and think things like, "She sort of looks like a Michelle. Or maybe a Margo...." I used to take girl copy seriously, used to spend hours trying to make it sound convincing and credible, crafting the stuff. I used to care about the girls, and care about the identities I was creating for them. That route burned me out fairly quickly. Lately my girl copy has gotten increasingly absurd. I mean, it's completely absurd that a woman would be lying prone in a vegetable garden (wearing only a straw hat) with a cucumber occupying her every opening, so why shouldn't my girl copy be a reflection of that absurdity? I actually think my absurdity has served the magazine well in a strange, back-handed kind of way.... Reconciling these bizarre elements--straw hat, nude woman, vegetable garden, cumcumbers, etc.--is really the key. Here's a few other girl sets I've had to write in recent months, just in case you'd like to try your hand at this: blonde/Mexican hat/phallic-shaped morroccos brunette/chef hat/turkey baster blonde/dirty garage/assorted wrenches redhead/police uniform/bowling ball blonde/bee-keeper outfit/removes all clothes (except for netted hat) Today I wrote one for a boy/boy/girl/girl, only I tried something a little different and wrote it from one of the guy's perspectives (daring!). The pictorial had something to do with a food service table on a film shoot, and the girls start kissing at some point and the guys get involved. Here's what I wrote (warning, this gets a little raw in spots, you must be this tall to ride this ride, etc.): I got a job for one of the catering companies out in L.A. The boss was this dude named Silvio. He kept telling me that crazy shit went down on the back lot all the time. “You’ll see, you’ll see,” he kept saying with a wink. Boy, was Silvio ever right. We were working on this low-budget action movie when the two female stars—get this—started making out right in front of us! Silvio dropped his spatula, elbowed me once, and whispered, “It’s showtime, honey.” He just walked right up to the kissing girls, whipped out his ham (and it was a nasty-looking piece of ham, if I do say so) and said, “You girls mind pulling my goddamn pud for me?” To my amazement, they did! Silvio was waving me over, trying to get me in on the action, but I was feeling shy. “Matt, get your ass over here and get your damn ham out,” he shouted. So, I walked over to the girls, took out my ham, and sure enough, the girls sucked on my ham, too. Silvio and I pounded their pussies for hours, blew our loads all over them. It was fucking great. I couldn’t believe things like this ever really happened. Once the girls were gone, Silvio and I were alone again. He fussed with his belt buckle and said, “These uptight Hollywood bitches get stressed out sometimes. A little bit of ham keeps them sane.” We high-fived, then broke down the catering tables and called it a day. Voila. Looks easy enough, right? Well, I'm telling you, this stuff is killing me. Everytime I write one of these, a little part of me dies. And you wonder why I drink. 4:01 PM Wednesday, September 17, 2003   My F-Zero GX review was posted on gamecritics.com today. People who know me know how difficult it is for me to say this, but I'm actually kind of proud of the review. No, not "kind of;" I'm proud. One hundred percent, full-on, grade-A proud. Feels good to be proud of something. Damn good. Reminds me of the fact that I've had very little to be proud of over the past five, six years.... Christ, I really need to find myself more things to be proud of, maybe make this into a habit of some kind. 4:04 PM Tuesday, September 16, 2003   Went home two weeks ago, my first visit upstate since last Christmas. I'd been promising to make the trip for months, but could never quite get it together enough to actually go. Feels like the end of an era up there, what with my brother and his wife building a house, my grandparents deathly ill in a nursing home, and my parents selling their house and moving to Florida this November. The visit represented the beginning of the end of something, which is no doubt why I'd put it off for so long. My brother proudly showed me around his half-finished house, the floors strewn with stray nails and sheetrock dust. "This is going to be the nursery," he said, leading me into a corner bedroom room, pink insulation hanging from the walls. "Hopefully, you'll have some nieces and nephews soon." I stood there, hungover, looking out the window at the pine trees blowing in the wind, not knowing what to say to this. "It's nice," I said in a weak voice. He also showed me another room, which he described as "your room." "My room?" I said. "For what?" "Whenever you visit," he said, "you'll stay here. With us." That broke my heart a little, to tell you the truth. I felt comforted by this. Taken care of. By my younger brother. Aren't I supposed to take care of him? Maybe he senses that I need a little caring for these days. I felt grateful for this. Even his wife referred to the room as "Scott's room" in conversation several times, which meant this was something they'd determined well in advance of my visit. There's a maturity about my brother these days. Every time I see him, he seems older to me now, more grown up. Guess getting married and building a house will have that effect on you.... I'm proud of him. The little fucker. There was one small moment that stands out in my memory for some reason. We were standing together in the hallway of his house, when he handed me a lightbulb and asked me to screw it into a socket in the ceiling for him. "Can't you do it?" I said, getting up on tip-toe, straining to reach the socket. "You're taller than me," he said. I said, "I always thought we were the same size." And it's true; I've always thought we were about the same height. "No," he said, correcting me, "you're the taller one." I think the subtext of what he was saying was, Let's recognize who we are, and what we are capable of, once and for all. A few years ago, when he was younger, more proud, I'm pretty sure he would not have asked me to do this; he would've simply gotten something to stand on and done it himself. I've never really appreciated my brother much, always summing up our relationship with "we're as different as night and day," but I'm starting to. I'm learning to appreciate him. And it feels good. Seeing my grandparents was pure hell. Their tiny cell-like room in the nursing home, with the hideous green walls. The frustration on their faces. My grandmother can't wear her wig anymore, and the sight of her always startles me now, her fringe of dry white hair flying in all directions, like a terrible clown. Grandpa wears a neck brace and can't hear or see very well. They both sit in wheelchairs. I sat close to Grandpa, tried to talk/shout with him. "The other day, your grandmother had to wait over an hour to use the toilet," he said. "The aid wouldn't come." "Oh," I said. "When the aid did come, I said to her, 'How would you like it if you had to wait an hour to use the toilet?' " Grandma kept smiling at me across the room, this big, goofy smile. My Dad had brought Grandpa a lottery ticket, his one vice, but he said he couldn't see well enough anymore to scratch it off. So the duty fell to my brother. We all sat there, waiting and watching as Sean scratched away at the ticket. Finally, he said, "It's a loser." My Dad asked for the ticket, studied it to make sure Sean had read it correctly, then quietly slipped it into a nearby trash can. "Yep, a loser," Dad said. Grandpa didn't seem terribly surprised by this news. I kissed my grandmother goodbye, shook Grandpa's hand. I lingered in the doorway while my father tended to them (they're his parents), trying to help them out of their wheelchairs, back into their beds. I looked at them, so frail, so small, so drained, so utterly devoid of life. I felt lousy that this is what they get, this is where they end up, in this half-assed nursing home, after living all these years. This is why I didn't want to come home--I didn't want to have to bear witness to this, didn't want to come to terms with it. I looked at the two of them, covered to their necks with blankets, like children, and I wondered if I'd ever see them again. Mostly I feel bad for dad. He drove the car home aggressively, revving the engine, which I know from my childhood means he's upset, angry. My mother and I sat in the backseat. She tried making small talk with me. "Are you using the coffee maker we bought you?" she asked. "Only when I have company," I said. "How do you make your coffee in the mornings?" "The press-pot. Like always." "Do you like it like that?" I glared at her for a few seconds. It's not hard for me to lose patience with my mother. "Of course I like it like that. That's why I make it like that." "Well, I can't drink it like that," she said. "Too strong. I don't like strong coffee." A few seconds later she dug a pack of gum out of her purse and offered me a stick. I took one. "Take the whole pack," she said. "Go ahead." "I don't want the whole pack," I said. "Take it. I don't want it. I can't even stand that gum. I don't even know why I bought it." I took the goddamn pack. I looked out the window and chewed my gum in silence, hoping she'd leave me alone for awhile. They dropped me at the train station on Sunday morning. Mom wandered off by herself, as she always does when it's time to say goodbye. Dad stood close, talked to me for a few minutes. I told him about the ESPN interview, and generally tried to give him the impression that I had things together, that I was a guy on the make. Finally, my train came. I got on board, and intended to look for the two of them out the window, give them a final wave, but I got tangled up with the conductor, some problem with my ticket, and before I had a chance, I was already pulling out of the station and picking up speed, already moving back towards New York. 3:27 PM Friday, September 12, 2003   I saw a giant girl on 32nd Street today over by Macy's. She wasn't attractive or anything, just remarkably huge, an Amazon. I'm huge too--almost 6'4", 200-plus pounds--and when we passed one another, our eyes met briefly and we exchanged a knowing glance. It wasn't a flirtation, but merely an acknowledgement of our mutual hugeness. "Hello, fellow huge person," my glance said. "Nice to see you, huge person," her glance said in return. Huge people are freaks in New York. I'm forever bumping my head on things, as if the whole city wasn't built to my scale. I don't often see other huge people here, so whenever I do, I'm comforted by them, I'm glad to know they exist. We're like aliens, us huge people, aliens from a distant planet where everything is just a few sizes bigger. Games I've been playing, and enjoying, this week: Dynasty Warriors 4 (PS2), Wipeout Fusion (PS2), Alter Echo (PS2), Otogi (Xbox), F-Zero GX (GC). And I'm thinking about buying a new Xbox. I've got one of those dreaded "dirty disc error" Xboxes, which means the fucking thing crashes on a regular basis. My instincts tell me to hold out until the holidays, wait and see if there's another price drop. (New Xbox goes for $180, and I'd like it to drop down to about a $100.) Hate having to spend money on a machine I use so infrequently... but when I need it, especially if I'm reviewing something, I need the damn thing to work. I've complained to Microsoft, but they aren't in the least bit interested in making me happy. I have great relationships with 99% of the gaming companies out there, but Bill Gates and his minions for some reason has always given me the big cold shoulder.... 4:03 PM Thursday, September 11, 2003   It's 9/11, but I don't really feel like talking about 9/11. Mostly I just wish it wasn't 9/11, that it didn't mean the things that it now means. And I wish my jackass co-worker who still has a yellowed Osama bin Laden WANTED poster taped to his door would fucking take the goddamned thing down, please. Once and for all, take the thing down, man. Because I can't look at it anymore. 4:09 PM Tuesday, September 09, 2003   Coverline meeting at the office today. We all sat down in the conference room with the sales and marketing departments, and together tried to hammer out the lines for the December issue. The meetings are, at best, antagonistic; it's a classic case of creative types versus MBA grads. At worst, they're painfully dull, though I do admit that I always look forward to the meetings for the same reason I always looked forward to assemblies in elementary school: they're a welcome respite from our otherwise prosaic workdays. Part of my job is to come up with a few ideas before the meeting, and I arrived, as usual, with a list of proposed coverlines--about a page long--and proudly distributed copies to everyone around the conference room table. Much to my chagrin, everyone gave my lines a cursory glance, set them aside, then began shouting out their own ideas for lines. Let me say that my lines have long been revered at the magazine--I have a real knack for writing these things--but lately I seem to have fallen out of favor. I have no idea why. When I saw that my lines were once again being dismissed--this has happened at the last three meetings-- I felt angry, frustrated, pissed off. Sure, I didn't spend a lot of time on them--10, 15 minutes tops--but I did do some work here, and I wanted to be praised for it. If not praised, at least acknowledged. Can I get a little acknowledgement over here? Please? When I saw that wasn't going to happen, that the tide was turning against me once again, I got punchy. My co-workers were trying to come up with a description for the cover model's ample breasts, but soon found themselves in a creative jam. "What about this," I said, waiting for two, three beats until I had everyone's attention. "Wonder Tits." The room was silent. I said it again. "Wonder Tits." Still no one said anything. "So, no one likes 'Wonder Tits'?" I asked. One of the marketing reps spoke up. " 'Wonder Tits.' I know it sounds crazy, but I actually like it." "Sounds kind of like a super hero," another rep said. A few people laughed. "Wonder Tits," a third rep said. "Let's go with it." I meant "Wonder Tits" to be a joke, never thinking anyone would take it seriously, not for a second. I was simply trying to remind the room that I was there--me, the formerly revered coverline writer who has lately fallen out of favor. Hey, maybe "Wonder Tits" represents a comeback of some kind. Maybe "Wonder Tits" officially puts me back on the map, and makes me a contender again.... Anyway, that's the story of how "Wonder Tits" ended up on the December cover. Be sure to look for it at newsstands everywhere. 5:01 PM Monday, September 08, 2003   About a week and a half ago I wrote the Soul Calibur 2 second opinion for gamecritics.com and got into a bit of hot water. (Gamecritics has a Siskel/Ebert dynamic; one critic writes the main review, another does the "second op," as we call it.) The main review for the game read like a love letter, and the critic very generously awarded the game a 9.5. My feelings towards Soul Calibur 2 were more ambivalent, so I decided to lowball the game a little--a mistake, in retrospect--and pinned a 6.5 to my review. I sent the review off, then left town for Labor Day weekend. When I returned, I found a 100-message-long thread on the website debating the validity of my Soul Calibur 2 review...among other things. I obviously couldn't defend myself properly since I was out of town, and posters intepreted my silence as a dis, and quickly turned bitter. "Maybe he'll come down from Mt. Sinai or wherever the hell he is and explain this 6.5 for us," one poster wrote. Eventually, another poster wisely pointed out that it was indeed a holiday weekend, and that there was a good chance that I was away. (...And had better things to do than read videogame message boards.) A postage-stamp size photo of myself--it's quite handsome--is now attached to my reviews, and soon the message board community, frustrated by my silence, began commenting on my eyeglass frames. My bio on the site says that I work at a "men's sophisticate" magazine, and many posters were speculating on the meaning of the term "men's sophisticate." "Perhaps it has something to do with those glasses...they look quite 'sophisticated,' don't they?" a poster wrote. My email address is also listed on the site, and a few members quietly sent me unnerving, stalker-ish emails, saying things like, "dude, your review is getting ripped to fucking shreds on the boards. where the hell are you? you need to respond. we're all waiting." I felt flattered in a strange way--it was gratifying to think of all these strangers not only reading my writing, but also attributing so much importance to it. I've oftened wondered if anybody gives any of the things I write a second thought. And what I found was a community of people deconstructing my writing with a passion. I ended up revising the review (but keeping the 6.5), trying to address some of the posters' legitimate criticisms. When I posted my revision, and proudly announced it on the boards, I waited to see if I could polarize the community again. I couldn't. Aside from a few stray posts, there was nothing but the sound of crickets chirping out there. All the posters had gone off to debate other reviews, other games, other reviewers eyeglass frames. I was old news. My vanity had me scanning the boards, hoping to see my name, wondering if anyone was still paying attention to me. No one was. I felt humbled for a few days, then slowly returned to playing and writing about games, happily working in obscurity again. 5:03 PM Tuesday, September 02, 2003   Went to Lorenzo's for a lunch-time haircut today. He really gave me one too, the mad man, going wild with his razors and scissors. This is probably the shortest my hair has been since that ill-conceived buzz-cut I got in college. I hate it when my hair is too short because it makes my face look too goddamn big. I need more hair to off-set my huge face. Now I have no choice but to go around the rest of the week with my big fucking face hanging out, just flapping in the fucking breeze.... Fell out of touch with everything last week, what with preparing for the ESPN thing on Friday, filing my Soul Calibur 2 review, etc. I'm usually not this busy, and in a perverse way, I'm sort of enjoying it. Suffice it to say that the ESPN thing went well. Well enough. Though I could easily comb over the event and locate all the things I did wrong, I'm trying like hell not to do that. In fact, I'm trying like hell to recall all the things that I did right. And I did a lot of right things. I truly did. In an odd, long-shot kind of way, I feel like I'm going to get the job. I feel it in my stomach, my heart. Then again, my stomach and heart haven't always been one-hundred percent truthful with me.... 4:50 PM