Too Awesome to be Played
I have GTA 4 in my hot little hand. I was seriously considering going to the midnight launch last night, but I like sleep more than I like video games, so I picked it up today.
The box looks nice. I won’t have time to play for the next few days because of rehearsal though. This is a sad turn of events, but I bought the thing as a reward for excellent behavior and productivity, so I suppose I can wait on it.
Geek Cred
Why is there now a certain subset of ladies that find nerds attractive? When did this happen? Apparently it’s something occurring in popular culture. Maybe nerds are more widespread due to the proliferation of FotC, anime, video games and technology.
Example: I’m talking to a friend of mine about Star Trek for this project and I mention that Grand Theft Auto is coming out and I have it pre-ordered. And she starts giggling. And not giggling in the way that I would giggle at a train wreck — this was “that is adorable” giggling.
There’s been some kind of sea change here. It’s weird and scary.
I think a lot of it has to do with accessibility. Nerds aren’t just basement dwellers anymore. There are good looking nerds. Good looking, mainstream people like video games and BSG. Everybody has to deal with computers now, so people who know more about them aren’t perceived as being arcane and slobbery — unless they’re into Linux or something.
It’s not that the core material (video games, computers, comic books, etc.) is nerdy — it’s that the population that embraces such material has gone from being nerdy to mainstream. That population has grown up, and all of those things have grown up with them.
There is still something fucked up about a girl playing video games though. I don’t think it’s a sexist thing in me — I don’t think it’s a exclusively male activity. I just think that if I’m with you, I don’t want to sit around playing video games.
I want to go do something.
Chik’n
After having been won over by the Morningstar sausage patties, I tried a bunch of their other products. The burgers are pretty darned good — they’re not a total substitute for red meat, but I could see myself craving them at times. The major plus is that veggie burgers don’t slow you down. They taste clean too.
The Chik’n patties (veggie “chicken” patties) are all right, not as big a hit as the burgers. They need hot sauce or kimchee or something additional to add flavor. The sausage links are a miss with me. Not enough flavor and they’re too turd-like.
The real hit are the chicken nuggets. They taste great — very chickeny yet clean. Next I’m going to hit up the buffalo wings and the corn dogs.
I’m seriously considering making a move to partial vegetarianism — fish and veggie protein backed up with lots of green vegetables. I’ve been on this sort of diet for the past week, and I feel pretty great.
I can’t cut out red meat completely. I had a steak and eggs on Thursday at this diner connected to the Best Western in Hollywood, and it was phenomenal. To remove that from my life would be criminal.
Grand Theft Golamco
So I have a Washington Monument in my pants for Grand Theft Auto 4 which is coming out on Tuesday. I pre-ordered it and have the sales slip safely nestled in my wallet. The store will be open on Monday at midnight, but I’m going to casually sashay in there on Tuesday to pick it up. I don’t like lines.
What do I love about it? The violence. The free-roaming aspect of it. The free-roaming violence. Last night at rehearsal we were talking about the differences between men and women, and how boys always want to play with guns. “Pew pew!” Before that, swords. Before that, rocks.
Rehearsal consists of me working in a roomful of ladies — I’m the only guy there since the cast of the piece is all women and the piece itself is all about women. So I told them my theory about guns/swords/rocks — men naturally gravitate toward phallic symbols, symbols of conquest and destruction. It’s natural and has a genetic foundation.
GTA has been described as a “murder simulator” by its detractors. I won’t go that far, but it fulfills a certain psychological fantasy: Committing crimes and getting away with them. Shoot-outs. Car chases. Funny, dick-joke dialogue spoken and heard. GTA puts you into the testosterone-injected core of the male mind, and that’s often a very fun place to be.
Men have a natural desire and need to destroy our enemies. In a time of law and nations, our enemies are a lot less clear than they used to be. In fact, when it comes down to it, we encounter no real enemies or predators to take down in our everyday lives. After millions of years of running and fighting for our lives, we’re suddenly fat and safe. So we have to find some other outlet to fulfill that need.
Now, there’s a lot to be said for embracing the feminine as well. The anima. I read this somewhere and I believe it: Like a marriage is a union between two people, an individual needs to go through a series of psychic, internal marriages between the male and female psyches inside himself. The male mind inside a person needs to be joined with its female aspects. Planning and problem solving needs to combine with emotional understanding and catharsis; Mars needs to join Venus. That is how you become a more complete person.
But to enable that psychic marriage to occur, a person needs to understand the male and the female parts of themselves.
And the best way to understand the male part is by blasting the fuck out of shit in GTA.
Amoeba
So I drove to Hollywood tonight for practice; I get to Sunset and Vine and parking’s nuts — there’s a giant crowd in front of Amoeba. Literally five people wide and going around the block, people waiting to get in.
I park up by Hollywood and Ivar, get to practice and as each person walks in, they mention the giant line in front of Amoeba. “I wonder what’s going on there?”
We pieced it together: Flight of the Conchords was appearing live there. That’s right, Bret and Jemaine were just across the street. I was joking that I was going to leave early and check it out, but a part of me was actually a little bit serious.
My new favorite thing: Usavich.
This is a weird series of cartoons made for Japanese MTV with no dialogue. It features two Russian rabbits living in a gulag in what appears to be 1961.
You must watch all of them.
Hollywood Ghost Story
I’m driving out to Hollywood again today. I like Hollywood — it’s the closest approximation you can get to being in a big city in LA: Tallish buildings, lots of people walking around. It’s a lot less dirty than it was before — the streets are cleaner and it’s much harder to buy heroin.
I remember once, years ago, I was waiting for a bus on Sunset. And I turned and there was this woman right in front of me — this elderly lady done up with too much makeup, like a perverse zombie version of a fallen Hollywood starlet. Caked on foundation. And she was wearing a 1920s Flapper sorta outfit. But that wasn’t the strange part.
She was missing an eye. And by “missing” I mean there was a big, ice-cream-scooped-out cavern where her eye should have been. And one of her arms had been torn off and healed over. There was just a fleshy nub there. It was like half of her body had been blown up and scarred over by time.
I literally jumped back when I saw her. I usually try to be polite and thoughtful when it comes to peoples’ handicaps, but the visual image was just too much. I was shocked. Scared.
And that moment the bus arrived, and I got on. And I looked back to still see her standing there, just sort of gaping off into the distance.
I’m a real scientist about stuff, but I wonder: Was she a ghost? Thrown up by the lonely, evil, unfulfilled memories of this city? A dead studio mogul’s mistress, crashed and burned on Sunset after she was denied a part?
I don’t know. I don’t know, I don’t know.
It’s Business Time
The Flight of the Conchords self-titled studio recorded album is out. Mini-review: It’s dynomite! My favorite track is “Ladies of the World”; the extended remix of “Bowie” comes in a close second. Of course, a standout is “Leggy Blonde” with Rhys Darby. Buy it now.
This will tide me over until GTA 4 comes out next week. With the recession going, I am extra stingy with my entertainment dollars.
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
