Friday, September 12, 2003

Let's Kick It Back At My Virtual Crib I went to the Electronics Boutique at the mall today.  They sell videogames.  I can pretty much spend my lunch hour playing videogames there if I want to, but today was not a day to play.  Today was a day to buy.  I've been playing the EA Sports 2003 baseball game.  It's a fine game, best baseball game I've played.  And yet, I can't play another inning of that game.  Burnout has set in, and I have banished that game to a dark corner of the basement, only to be reconsidered on a lark or whenever I get tired of some other game. In the words of Hank Jr., I was ready for some football.  Football lends itself incredibly well to state-of-the-art video game consoles.  The graphics are great, the AI is pretty smart, and it plays and feels like real football.  I can't afford either Madden 2004 or the NCAA 2004 games, but I can pick up the 2003 versions for about $15 apiece.  I decided I wanted to build a college dynasty, so I went for the NCAA 2003 game.  It has the added bonus feature called Mascots, where I can have the mascots of any one of 50 major programs play an actual game.  If I want to have Willie the Wildcat, K-State's mascot, throw a deep bomb to the Georgia Bulldog, I can do that.  You can't cover the Bulldog! Anyway, I'm buying the game, and the kid behind the counter starts telling me how much he hates sports games.  He's all about fighting games and fantasy games and sporting a goth look and whatnot.  That's nice, dude.  Just sell me the game. Then he offers this little tidbit: "But if I was going to get one sports game, it sure wouldn't be the games you're looking at.  EA Sports is so yesterday.  ESPN Football is where it's at now."  I chafed at his choice of words.  Words like "yesterday", and "now".  It couldn't have been clearer that I was "yesterday" and he thought of himself as "now".  He might as well have called me "Pops". So I said, "Oh, yeah?  What's so hot about ESPN's game?"  And he goes, "Don't you know about the crib?  They got the crib." In fact, I did not know about the crib.  I mean, I know what a crib is, but what did that have to do with ESPN, and his claim that Madden, the absolute gold-standard of football games for over 10 years now, was yesterday's news?  I mean, this was not an inconsequential claim.  ESPN has a lot of rep, and if they decided to put out a big-time video game, they could probably do it right.  But take on Madden?  Fact was, I needed to know if ESPN had the goods.  But I wasn't just going to drop $50 on a new game that wasn't Madden, and I wasn't going to believe a 20 year-old goth wannabe's assessment of a style of game that he admittedly didn't care for. And plus, I needed to know about the crib. As luck would have it, they had the ESPN game all set up and ready to play on one of their consoles.  So me and Goth Boy stride over, and I get right into some hot and heavy action between the 2004 Buccaneers and a Vikings team of unknown vintage.  The game plays well enough, play books seem extensive, graphics are nice...But that's true of Madden as well.  Goth Boy stands beside me for a full five minutes, watching me play, with no comment whatsoever.  I don't know if there were no other customers in that time or what, but it's just me and him.  Suddenly, a graphic flashes on the screen, telling me that I've just recorded 10 tackles in the game with a certain player, and that entitles me to put a new trophy in my crib.  Goth Boy pipes up now--"Yeah!  Now you can check out your crib!" So I hit the appropriate button, and I leave the game and go direct to my crib, which is really just a glorified basement rec room with a bunch of trophies and a hip hop beat.  That's it, or at least that's all I saw.  Maybe there's a secret panel where I can move through the wall into a party where there's a lot of bling bling and Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg are kickin' it with Madonna and Mariah Carey and Warren Sapp or something, but I didn't see any of that.  It was just a room with trophies commemorating lame "accomplishments" like kicking a 50 yard field goal, or running back a kick for a TD. I had seen enough.  I looked at Goth Boy, who was still all amped from having been granted special access to the Crib.  I wanted to tell him that was the lamest crib I ever saw, but I ended up only saying "Thanks", and walking out. Listen, ESPN--I don't care about having a crib.  I want you to take the memory space you used for that BS and do something useful like put in the 1980 Chargers, or give us the ability to add or subtract weight from Bill Parcells on the sideline.  I want to be able to manipulate Bill Cowher's facial expressions as he goes off on the refs, and I want to hear the drunken slurred speech of the Lambeau Crazies yelling at Brett Favre.  I don't need lame fake trophies, I don't need Chris Berman or Stuart Scott yelling "Boo Ya!" every time I get a first down, and I sure as hell don't need some lame-ass crib, because I've already got one of those at home. 1:41:37 PM    Say what?[]

"Control-A, Space Bar" Is A Bad Combination I'm so angry.  I just spent too much time working on a piece, and now it's gone, just like that.  All it took was a lazy left pinky finger to miss the shift key, hit the "Ctrl" button instead, then simultaneously hit "A", then hit space.  Basically, I highlighted my entire essay, then erased, all in a nanosecond. Oh, and did I mention that it was quite possibly the Best Thing I Ever Wrote?  Well, it was.  It was about Stupidity, how we are all stupid when we are young.  Well, it wasn't really about that, so much as it was about how one way that I was stupid was that when I was young and buying records (tapes, more accurately), that I was too stupid to know to buy the actual Beatles or Hendrix or Pink Floyd records, and instead bought these incredibly lame anthologies put out by record labels to make some extra dough.  I even downloaded a nice picture of the kind of record I'm talking about: You see, only a stupid person would buy a record like that, instead of buying the White Album or Abbey Road or Revolver.  But no, I was stupid and only wanted to hear songs I had heard of.  I was the king of crappy anthologies. And there were lots of great jokes about things like my parents' record collection (4 records, total: Two Olivia Newton-John and two Eagles records), shoplifting, beef jerkey, you name it.  It was a Magnum Opus. But it's gone now, and I can't bring it back.  I won't even try.  1:13:47 PM    Say what?[]

Tribute Two of my favorite entertainers died yesterday.  John Ritter died at age 54, of heart complications.  Three's Company wasn't a great show, but I always thought John Ritter was pretty damn funny.  He could do slapstick, he could be a ham, and for whatever reason, he just always seemed to be enjoying his work.  He was also the voice of Clifford the Big Red Dog.  So long, John Ritter.  54 is too young. And, of course, Johnny Cash passed on yesterday, due to complications from diabetes.  Johnny Cash is one of those people who was popular my entire life, and for a time well before I ever arrived.  I can't think of too many people that my grandparents, parents and me could have sat down and talked about today. Cash spanned generations, and somehow maintained his credibility and dignity the entire way.  I only became interested in Cash in the last five years or so, but once I did I wondered why I hadn't figured out his greatness earlier.  The man just knew how to tell a story.  When it's a good story around a catchy tune, and you can do that for almost 50 years, you're going to win a lot of people over. Johnny Cash was one of the few people I had told myself I would go see on his next pass through town, regardless of venue or cost or prior obligation.  I knew that my chances of seeing Cash weren't good, in light of his health. To me, Johnny Cash is one of the great symbols of our country.  He sang about the railroads, about discrimination, about love, about redemption, and about his own struggles and mortality.  And then, he reinvented himself for a new generation, and brought his own spare sensibility to amazing covers of Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails songs, which he then made his own.  And above all, he sang about parts of society that couldn't necessarily speak for themselves. I have a feeling that Cash is going to be one of those artists who will only get more popular as the years go by.  I'm not sure his influence can ever be measured. So long, Man in Black.  10:00:21 AM    Say what?[]

© Copyright 2003 Doug Hennessee. Last update: 9/30/2003; 11:51:53 AM.