The great cheesesteak quest lasted about two and a half years. Out of those adventures, we came away with three cheesesteaks that we could all stand behind, but still argue their comparable merits vehemently. 4.0 was one of the last places discovered, being that it is also the furthest. That probably kept our visits from being more regular.

Behind the solid cheesesteak is a pretty strong stable of alternatives. The melty pastrami and the roast beef are my favorite backups(read:seconds). Portions are generous, though I'm a bit down on the fact that chips don't come with the sandwich. I guess times are tough.

I will not lie. The steady stream of nubile SDSU coeds doesn't hurt either. Though, you can only take so much conversation about how drunk we were last night, who was a bigger slut, and why next time we're going to stick together. Actually that's a lie, too. It's great entertainment and if you don't stop by 4.0 you're really missing out on a good sandwich and a snapshot of San Diego culture.

This final trip, we got a cheesesteak, of course, and a roast beef sandwich. Slim and I went half and half. Yeah yeah, I brought her. And of course, the state chicks were present in abnormal numbers. Still it was worth it because Slim declared that it was her favorite SD cheesesteak. Of course, the guys took exception and brought up their favorites, their eyes wandering from dolly to dolly all the while.

One summer, we discovered that 4.0 was closed for the season. Since we couldn't have them, we of course craved them obsessively and began to track their academic calendar hoping it would correlate to their return. When they did reopen, I went like three times in a week. It was great.

-tJ

The Cottage isn't really a place that I would have thought to ever go to. It's a place that I never would have thought that I'd like. It belongs to that family of breakfast joint that appears down-home, appears approachable, appears health conscious, but is not any one of those things.

The first time I went to the Cottage I was way too tired to notice. Thank goodness.

After a particularly turbulent poker bender, BH and I found ourselves exhausted, yet still restless, somewhere in the neighborhood of 4:30AM. I had to hang on tight to my consciousness to get all the way to their opening door. I almost didn't. I almost called it a day content and eager to just lay up into my bed. But I hung on.

In my dubiously reasonable state, I ordered waffles. I never order waffles. In the cosmic battle of waffles versus pancakes, I side with the pancake stack. Have you ever heard of a stack of waffles? No. If you order two waffles you get two waffles on two plates. That is stupid. And I don't typically take the side of something that I think is stupid.

Still, I ordered waffles. With fruit. With whipped cream. That is so unlike anything I would order that I can only conclude that it was under advisement from BH, but you'd have to ask him since I have no recollection of that morning besides how damnably good those waffles werethat waffle was.

So I usually order waffles when I go there. I think I ordered an omelet once. It was good. The caveat being that I really can't bring myself to order waffles from anywhere else. I've been disappointed with just about every other waffle I've ever ordered. Somehow, the waffles served at the complementary continental breakfast at the Flagstaff, Arizona Residence Inn are a respectable second.

So there you have it. The Cottage. The Waffles.

Come to think of it, I haven't really gotten pancakes for breakfast in a while...

One time, I ordered two waffles because I was really hungry. They fuckin came on two plates.

-tJ

Nestled in the heart of Convoy is a happy little Japanese noodle shop. This place is a lunch staple for the work gang. If you're hungry, the lunch specials are affordable and plentiful. You can start with a 6 dollar bowl of ramen and from there add in mabo tofu, stewed pork, or just extra meat for a few bucks. You can also add a bowl of rice with a helping of chopped pork. Or you can add Onigiri rice triangles, my personal favorite. They also have decent rice bowls and combo plates. The katsu is pretty good. So is the mackerel. Basically, you can destroy your appetite for about $10. And if you don't, you can still get away sizably satisfied for $6.

Now, what really makes this joint is that it is open to 3AM on weekends. Primarily servicing the post-karaoke armies it is a great place to grub after last call. With its liveliness and open and friendly clientele, it beats the crap out of any Mexican joint. If you're in the mood to try something new in your late night routine, give it a shot.

The first time I went to Tajima, it was with Sarah wide-eyes at the earlier stage of our history. It stands out in my mind because at the time I was Atkins and I pretty much hated eating there. Barred from carbs, I got some sort of hamburger dish that was okay, but just unsatisfying. I had a hard time ever going back. But! It came recommended by someone whose taste in food I imminently trust, so I went back and left grateful.

In my mind, my own personal history in San Diego, Tajima took the place of another noodle spot simply called Noodle House. They had a basic ramen that was just so rich and great. I never really forgave San Diego for letting that place close, but rediscovering Tajima nursed the wound.

We goto Taj whenever we don't know where else to go. It's a place that everyone likes and everyone can get something they want, especially if you want to eat happiness.

-tJ

Celadon resides on 5th Avenue, next to the Tractor Room, up the street from Hash House. This is where Slim and I went on one of our first dates. I love the black and white decor, and the music usually isn't half bad. I think there's a piano in the front lounge, but I've never seen heads or tails of a pianist.

The menu is sizable with a really broad selection of authentic(I guess?) and cookie-cutter Thai dishes. OK, maybe I have no idea what authentic Thai dishes are, but there's stuff on there I've never seen anywhere else. I can only suppose they're out to suit the taste of John Q. Passerby. Today, we go with a pretty basic setup, Pineapple Fried Rice and Steamed Fish. These are favorites for us so we saw fit to use them as punctuation for our final visit. I am not a gigantic fan of fried rice, but as it goes, I really do enjoy this dish. There is a lot of shape and texture to it that doesn't bore me the way a typical fried rice would. The fish was tender and flavorful as ever, and it's nice to be able to depend on the consistency of it.

Celadon has a funny little place in my stable of favorites. As much as I like to go here, I don't go here that often. I mean, I don't think I've been here more than 5 times, but I've enjoyed it every single time. Part of it is just the venture into Hillcrest with its crappy parking and overwrought reputation. Maybe its because I always feel underdressed, but never feel up for dressing up to the decor. I don't really like going to Hillcrest simply because too many people go there, but I like going to Celadon because no one else goes there. The fact that it is, all things considered, reasonably priced doesn't hurt either.

-tJ

Hidden in the new polish of Little Italy is a hole in the wall with the tastiest italian sausage sanwiches in San Diego. Most likely, Pete himself will greet you upon entry, with a handshake if you're regular.

Their menu is a simple list of Sausage, Steak, Chicken, and Eggplant sandwiches. Within our retinue, it has been a sort of curse to order the Eggplant sandwich, as the only person to do so has been unable to live it down in the six some years after he ordered it. The sausage sandwich comes in spicy and mild varieties. Both are good. You can also order a combination steak and sausage sandwich if you're looking to go overboard. Those looking to go over-overboard have been known to order two sandwiches.

Today, we went pretty basic. Orders go directly to the grill man. One steak and one mild sausage. The both sandwiches with everything come with grilled onions and peppers, the steak with melted cheese. You can add salt, pepper, mustard, and hot sauce to taste. The sausage is hand made, daily from what I understand. Sweet and rich, without being over herby, it is unlike any store bought brat. The bread is crusty on the outside, tender and sweet on the inside, and caked with sesame seeds. Going by the honor system, you pay on the way out, the grill man as your cashier. You tell him what your order was and how many drinks you had and he'll ring you up. I've never tried to pull a fast one, not wanting to tempt Pete's wrath in the heart of his own territory. I mean, there's a dirt lot out back...

Little Italy is a place in between, on the way, and next to alot of things and as such, a good amount of time goes into the place. It's hard to say that I've actually done any duty as a regular there though. Still, it is a neighborhood rich with memories though. Sarah brighteyes used to live there. My strange adventure into the world of semi-underground night club propriety took a really strange turn there. For me, it all started with Pete's.

-tJ

I'm feeling kind of down tonight. Came out of Harry Potter a little disaffected. We left the 12, Slim and I, and cruised down Nobel, headed to Convoy by way of the 805. This is an old route for me from numerous bygone eras. Alot of memories came out and snapped into place, with a majority of them leaving me thinking what might have been. And so I started to think about this strange sequence of events that led me to this juncture and I became sortof overwhelmed by this deep melancholy.

It was nice to focus on food for a while. We ate at this Japanese place that plays decent jazz and has good service and food. I don't know the name of the place. We call it "That place that used to be K1 Yakitori". A little pricey, but the Scallop and Salmon ceviche was a treat for me. So I sat there, trying really hard not to think too hard about anything.

Ultimately I think it's just sinking in that I'll be leaving San Diego, and what might have been had we decided to stay. We picked up the keys to the apartment this past Saturday, and as we boarded the flight, I thought to myself, "This is what it feels like to leave paradise." Out of the ether, my imagination crafted a scaffolding for a story about these two separate lives, here and there. For a moment I felt a regret. But then I remembered how much time I feel I've wasted here, just to escape from... from what? I guess it's been the deserted paradise, unencumbered by much of any history, any of importance anyway. The most you can hope for out of such a paradise is loneliness. So I began to realize that my time here was finished. These lessons were completed.

I guess that's what has me so tied up, this feeling that I really didn't have much choice in the matter. Not the staying or going, but the endpoint. But endpoints are the kind of points where back is the only way to look. This endpoint is just really long, so I guess it was bound to get melancholy.

Only stands to get more so.
--tJ

The classic trip: all the way down to Lemon Grove to a place that specializes in the fried pork delicacy, Carnitas. Typically an hour of driving for lunch requires some kind of occasion, but a visit to the king of pork is an occasion all its own. Buried off the path, past the off brand shopping, past the trophy store, it is easy to miss unless you know what to look for. A sign bearing a smiling pig, swollen with the apparent joy of being the object of consumption. Don't go Monday or Tuesday, because you will also see a closed sign. One time we made that mistake and had to make due with the nearby Carl's Jr. That was the very apex of a certain kind of disappointment. It was quite possibly then that a seething and festering hatred for fast food began to unfurl and strike out to lay claim upon my appetite.

Again, we are talking about a place with that good ol' quality. There is no pretense of fancy or shmancy here. Pigs line the walls, glass, stuffed, porcelain, and plastic. While a menu exists, ordering is a simple affair. Carnitas for 10. Though I'm told the barbacoa is also excellent, I'd never taken the chance to find out. And this being LCC, I never will. It certainly looks delicious, though.

Servings come out family style, portioned out in three piles along our table for 10 along with beans, guac, flour and corn tortillas with more on the way by simply catching the eye of the proprietor and pointing down at the warming canister. No extra charge. They are good people. They drop down pitchers of every drink at the table. If you smile, they will smile back. They're happy when you leave holding your belly because they know you will be back.

You fill your tortillas with meat, onions, cilantro, beans, guac, rice, salsa, mirth, laughter, tall tales, and camaraderie. Then you simply fill yourself up until you cannot breathe without pain. Then you eat another helping and play chicken with a hospital visit. I usually feel guilty because we always split the check even, but I know I've eaten far more than my share. I'm almost certain their servings are designed for local highschool football linemen.

No trip to Carnitas is complete without a trip to the local discount general store, GTM. I don't know what GTM stands for and I don't care. They take overflow and cosmetic damages from Costco, most notably, and sell at a deep discount. Furthermore, on fortunate occasions they will have an excellent coupon, something like 35% off any item in the store. This triple discounting always reminds me of the triple application of the 80/20 rule, where you get 80%*80%*80%=51.2% of the result for 20%+20%+20%=60% of the effort. As an engineer, I interpret this as "Applying the 80/20 rule to anything that has 3 or more degrees of complexity(read: worth doing, or beyond grade school) results in a loss." Only here, you're just driving 20+20+20 minutes(total, both ways, at least from my house) to get a 50% discount, so it's worth it if you can beat the gas prices.

Their stock of giant TVs, appliances, and furniture tend to disappear on those coupon weeks. I was happy to complete the excursion by actually buying something from GTM. It was only a piece of luggage, but it's retail progression started a month ago at $120, on sale at Sears for $89, discounted at BedBath for $50($40 with your weekly 20% coupon), and finally here at GTM for $30. It was practically kismet, but for one thing. I should have had a coupon with me, and for these occasions where you are not diligent, you can drive 2 blocks to the library and print one out. The librarian has the link bookmarked, I'm told. But GTM, today you can keep this 25% off any 2 items and I will think of it as $23 luggage with an $8 tip. Go buy some hooch on me.

There is little misty eyed nostalgia here. Nothing ever happened here that wasn't about confederated exuberance and it will ever be so.

-tJ

Western Steak Burger is located in the bosom of University Heights and North Park. On University and Idaho, the place definitely has some of that good ol' quality to it. The fare is an amalgamation of burgers, greek, and east coastish. Their burgers are top notch, but that much is obvious since it merits mention. The real charm of the menu is that it is largely unfixed, and you may mix and match as you please without paying nickle and dime substitution fees. Their star is the Western Deluxe, a burger topped with greek gyro meat. The blue cheese burger also gets top marks. I typically order far off the menu. Some of my favorites are the fried shrimp and onion ring sandwich, the Western Deluxe philly style(add grilled onions pepper and mushrooms), and the choice of the day the pastrami philly. There's just something about the way they welcome the pastrami into the philly sandwich that I cannot get over. And it is substantial! For just over eight, I get more sandwich than I should eat in one sitting and fries. I was sorely tempted to try a new concoction, either a gyro philly or a pastrami bacon philly burger, but alas, I decided to keep it classic.

As is the case with most of my San Diego experience, food acts as a precursor to any given neighborhood. Just up the street are Cafe Luna and U31, which I only started frequenting in the past two years, probably 4 years after my introduction to the neighborhood by way of WSB. This trip started me thinking about how many people I've probably seen for the last time in this neighborhood. Add a dash of melancholy to this edition of Last Chance Chow.

Coming soon: Carnitas Urupan

The impetus to write these things are fleeting at best. Oh, the ideas I have! But rarely do they coalesce into anything substantial enough for catharsis. I write these things for me, but I like that you read them too.

Gone is the entry where I wrote about trains. How one transitions from train-stop, to train-go, to blistering speed, to here-we-are. Right now, we are in blistering speed and will be in that state for months. I was looking back aghast at how much I felt I had wasted during the train-go phase. But as it is, in the course of intense scrutiny of the past weeks, I changed my mind about it mid-paragraph and began to feel that it was both well spent and not quite substantive enough to ever be wasted, but for the cost of opportunity.

I even concocted a rich scenario in which you are entering Best Buy and are given a penny. You are quizzical until you find that everything in the store costs exactly one penny...and your pocket has been picked...and you cannot leave until you buy something. You could not ever really waste that penny, but you would be remiss to walk out with a Wire DVD box set instead of the most riche piece of consumer technology they had in the store left.

Anyway, things are crazy. Contingency planning has gotten so contorted and I'm tempted to just leave it all behind and just let things happen. Since most of the important decisions are mostly out of my hands, I find my self cyclically over and under compensating. It is with a near equal exertion that I attempt to seize control and subsequently ambivilize, leading to just general exhaustion.

So I'm trying to find the medium on which to balance.

Work is on the knots (read: pretty much tied up) so I'm just showing people how to do things now.

Next week I'm off to Taiwan for some somber business. After that is formal goodbyes at work. After that is starting the move. After that is SDCCand then DM. After that is finishing the move. And then it's getting settled in the city.

I mean do I really care how well things go off? Especially when in a few months I'll pretty much have transplanted my routine?

Of course I do.

But you know this
-tJ

So the big news is that I am moving back to the Bay Area at the end of the summer! Slim has been accepted into UCSF pharmacy up there, so off we go! I feel all kinds of excitement about everything going on, but it is tempered by all the preparations that need to be made in the coming months. It feels strange, after agonizing for weeks over the decision, to be finally decided. In the interstice of being San Diegan and San Franciscan, I find that I'm reluctant to let my feelings coalesce into coherent thought. Better to enjoy the raw little twinges that pop up in off-guard moments: Things I'll be able to do. Things I'll finally be a part of again.

This is a little bitter-sweet since I have really built up a soft spot for San Diego. The San Diego that I have cooked down to a frond that suits my taste. I have been lucky to have made really good friends here, people of exceptional spirit and optimistic tenacity. I have learned here, over and over, that hardship and tragedy can be held at the door. You deal. You get yourself back. You go back to the party.

I haven't even figured out when I should start saying goodbyes. Part of it is the timing of it, since I don't want to be saying goodbyes for three months. But really, I think I just don't want to. Everything here has taken on a nostalgic haze, the dust of memories scattered forth with every outing.


So that's the news. You'll probably be sick of hearing about it come September since I have alot to say about it.
--tJ

I listened to Led Zeppelin all morning.

It was pretty awesome.

So Slim and I decided to jet off to LV more or less on a whim earlier last week. It was a wistful glance back to our youth. We continued our Vegas morning, lunch, and afternoon traditions. Night time is awkward for us there. As Slim begins to tire, my steady high-inertia first wind begins to kick in. The first wind will usually last until about 2am, and when managed correctly the second wind, under the moniker, "How's this night really gonna go...", will piggyback upon the first. By then, Slim has been taken beyond her typical limits.

Saturday's second wind took me into the poker room. I was lucky enough to sit down at a gracious table, where the conversation was lively and intelligent. Still, I had aces river'd by a gut shot, and queens no-called. I had a pretty good time, all told. We finished the trip with more craps and shopping and more craps.

The intelligent cruise control made the trip back a piece of cake, traffic and all. My back is in terrible shape from 10 hours of driving and 4 hours of card room duty, but that's nothing new.

Hey, have you guys seen Macross Frontier? If you're in the mood for a new space opera, you can't do much better. Not a whole lot of character development though.

--tJ

I dunno. Not much more to say than that, not for the time being anyway. Gonna go play now. Wee!

-tJ

I feel like trash today. My head feels a little thick and swollen, my body infected with a deep lethargy.

I've come to find that my stomach has an unpleasant reaction to salty foods. It engages a tight knotting reflex which seems to endure for a few days after making dietary intake adjustments. So it was that we ended up eating at Ikea. I don't know why it seemed like a good idea. I mean, it wasn't bad. But it wasn't good. Their cafeteria aside, I always step out of that place in a rotten mood. I know from experience that the happy gaud of Swedish charm is mostly an illusion, and that place is more accurately portrayed as the bleak, black, and gray home of Nordic death metal/rock/noise, or maybe death-rock-noise. You can configure your perspective as you see fit to accept either. Anyway, I feel that underpinning exists within the happy blue-and-yellow confines as some sort of atmosphere, or miasma. I walk out of there as unhappy as possible, especially, mind you, when I visit the as-is section by checkout.

I like to have one or two of an assortment of genres to fulfill my gaming hankerings. The 3D shooter held its apex with counter-strike, but is now filled by Gears of War 2. Originally, I sort of just tagged along in this genre. I played quake X or Unreal whatever whenever anyone else was playing. I never achieved any sort of proficiency, so I spent alot of time learning how to just have fun with them.

As you know, the embargo on fighting games was broken by Street Fighter 4. I get frustrated easily with my own on-the-spot strategy and execution failures. In the Tranquilo era I dedicated solid blocks of time practicing so that I could hold my own in a pond of bigger fish, but the practice never really translated into performance come gametime. Not following up with a maximum damage attack on a prone opponent was beyond embarassing. After a while, I got used to being a punching bag through the KOF 96-99 era, and finally just conceded that my shortcomings had to be accepted.

Strategy and RPG games fall under the same broad umbrella so usually it takes two or three games to fill the spot. Heavy hitters in this arena are pretty typical underground classics: Tactics Ogre, Ogre Battle, Ogre Battle 64, any Valkyrie Profile, I'm forgetting a bunch. Actually Dynasty Warriors Tactics, while not terribly good, did get a substantial amount of playtime due to its moderately complex and exploitable combo-tactics system. Right now, Valkyria Chronicles going it alone. Though having Ogre Battle on my phone helps alot. Puzzle Quest Galactrix also belongs here, but its NDS incarnation is ... ugly. I can't really find a new tactics game that is terribly enjoyable at the moment, not in English anyway. I find that I am looking for a fresh take on games that I have enjoyed in the past, but the industry long-ago discovered that it was not lucrative or unprogressive to continue, so you get alot of derivative rehash and combat systems that are too shallow to really enjoy digging into to find meaty nuggets to exploit. I think if the balance and character quality of the Ogre games could be combined with the top-view tactical management of DWT and further combined with the combat timing elements VP or Tales, it would be way fun, but too complex and unfriendly to find a substantial audience.

The shmup game falls under a slightly broader category of what I label as 'panic' games. I actually don't like playing shmups that are too focused on memorizing a script of where to be and where to shoot at any given time. R-type is like this, and actually neither is Gradius free of guilt on this point. They both have a charm to them that make them good shmups, but don't fall into the panic category. I'm talking about DonPachi, Raiden, 19XX, Psyvariar, Shikigame etc. Bullet hell shmups with a healthy robust system based on reflexes, timing, and execution. The stimulation is a big part of it, make no mistake. I get this tingle in the back of my forearms that signals sort of a magic synchronicity amongst eye, hand, and forebrain. My breathing relaxes and I become to exist. Geometry wars 2 is the current panic shmup, but it definitely carries a different flavor. Pacifism seems to require a similar relaxed focus, but the rapidly escalating difficulty requires a good deal of fore-brained strategic changes, first to fully exploit the generously lax opening, aggressively maximize scoring in the midgame while managing space for the eventual endgame which requires a finely focused balance between simply staying alive by staying clear of danger and getting as close as possible to danger to clear space and stay alive. Clearing space is itself a balance between aggressively pursuing large kills and taking every opportunity to score and chain. Play it too safe and you end up with a field crowded by dense rod regions and fast diamonds that will collapse upon you. Clear too many rods alone and you're left with nothing to kill diamonds. Chain too much and you miss out on geoms, deflating your future scoring, not to mention distracting from the endless rush of diamonds. You must quickly identify and pursue every opportunity to it's optimum, and only retreat when absolutely necessary and become immediately aggressive at the next opportunity. Good games will last a few minutes. Slim or I will promptly shut up and become very still the very moment nine digits scores appear for the other. I once held a sneeze for nearly thirty seconds just so she could take a fair stab at her current goal of two-hundred-million.

Puzzlers also fall into the panic category. I was okay at Puzzle Fighter and Puzzle Bobble. I never really played Puyo. Tetris was of course the inception, but there is this repeated theme where everyone who played Tetris was 'good' at it, and it was even competive. I take that to mean that everyone could get to and survive for a while on Level9 NES Tetris. Still, after watching super-plays of Tetris, I know that there is only one guy who is 'good' at Tetris and the rest of us just play. Personally, the puzzling greats are Magical Drop and Panel de Pon(or Tetris Attacks, or Pokemon/Planet Puzzle League). Both are panic games at their best incorporating planning into reflex and recognition of complex progressions. I would hazard that the two sit about equal for me. I wouldn't ever want to decide between the two. If we're talking desert island, I would just close my eyes and pick one and lament the loss of the other. I think Tetris Attacks might have a nudge more of a sentimental vote since I played that largely with good friends, and I played Magical Drop largely alone.

Loot whoring. A similar, but distinct animal from the RPG. I left behind the classic RPG formula of Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest behind somewhere around Dragon Quest 3. Sure, I played FF7, but I didn't enjoy it. I played it intensely to avoid losing a bet, also during the Tranquilo era. The last person of six who had Final Fantasy 7 unbeaten had to do something utterly despicable and unpleasant. I finished third. I would say that the loot whoring game is characterized by collecting items at its endgame, and they do not really end per-say. MMOs typically fall into this category. EQ then WoW predominant among those. Still, the king of Loot Whoring games in my personal history is Diablo II. Back when loot whoring was fun, I like to think to myself. Still, it also has quite a bit to do with having friends to play with, and being competitive in terms of ladder ranking progression in the months following release. Present day, I've found Phantasy Star uh worlds? on the PSP a good stand-in. It's short-session capable and there's a variety of ways to play it among the different classes and weapons. It's good enough of a game where too good can be a bad thing.

Rhythm games are another left-behind classification. Occupying a pretty substantial timeframe between 99 and, what 03?, Beatmania in its delirious number of incarnations, by far holds the most influence. In comparison, Guitar Hero and Rock Band are simply derivative technically and historically. You don't get scored on 'how accurately' you hit the notes in GH/RB. I don't want to understate it, so I'll just say that it was better when it was underground. Not because it was underground, but because the community was more vibrant and colorful and creative. I would hazard to say it was avant garde, then hazard to die of something terrible. People did crazy, but interesting shit to stand out. I think those of us who straddled the communities between Japan and US, California and Nevada, SoCal and NorCal were exposed to a really important developing subculture. But more than anything, it was fun to be a part of and I'm really sad that time has passed.

I'm going to be incensed now.

When I heard that Konami/Bemani is on the precipice of losing it's patent battle with Activision/RedOctane/Neversoft/Harmonix over Guitar Freaks vs Guitar Hero, I lost alot of faith in industry. Even just the idea of industry. It's one thing to say that Guitar Hero is a facsimile of Guitar Freaks with minor additions. While that is certainly true, it overshadows the work done by Bemani and the community they incubated towards making these games not only good, not only better, but fun and accessible and acceptable. I'm personally involved, so I obviously have a bias, but I also have a perspective that any typical Guitar Hero/Rock Bander doesn't have. In the end, doing it big is more important than doing it first. But Bemani didn't just do it first, they did it right and only after a long learning process. It is undermining that process yet benefiting from it that I take exception to. It's ungrateful and exemplifies their character. In the end, the suit settled out of court, undisclosed. By this time, my own fallout with Bemani had run tangent to it's reluctance to pursue a more high-profile lineup and mainstream audience. They are up to something like 16 iterations of DXII, and also 16 iterations of Guitar Freaks. I won't go as far as refusing to play GH/RB. They are fun games to play with other people, but I won't ever try to get better, or even good at them. It makes me melancholy every time I hear from people who are trying to beat whatever crazy song in GH/RB, because the echo will sound in another bygone voice.

What? You're still reading?

Games genres I miss are the dungeon crawling fighters like Tobal2 and Ergheiz. I would love another puzzle game renaissance. I wouldn't complain if they made another Ogre Battle.

Nothing on the conventional upcoming release lists are really piquing my interest. I'm looking forward to the opening of Valkyrie Sky, an MMO shmup(!). Of course, Diablo III is approaching. Otherwise I'm at a loss. I'm sure things will liven up with spring fast approaching.

Awash in the history of my youth.
-tJ

In less than a month, NFG has put together a selection of over 100 classic game fonts. I was surprised at the almost visceral reaction that came from looking at these letters which were so deeply rooted. I got a huge kick from looking at my name and work extension in the (of course) Gradius font. The UN Squadron font did alot for me too.


http://nfggames.com/games/fontmaker/
http://nfggames.com/games/fontmaker/lister.php

-tJ

I dunno, not really. Things are going wonderfully. Things are going so well, that Slim and I decided that, y'know, we didn't need to goto Vegas for the weekend.

Then again, the trip I'm proposing is the one day, no hotel trip. I think she's scared that it will turn into our personal Leaving Las Vegas or Fear and Loathing, even though she hasn't seen either movie.

My Geometry Wars pacifism high score, 494,137,750 has stood for over three months now. I've taken some pretty serious stabs at beating it to no avail. When I put that score up, I wasn't even under pressure. I just ran into some shit by accident. I think my highest score since was in the mid 200millions. Anyway, it's nagging me. Slim however, has clocked just over 100 million so her skill level shot up rapidly in the past months. It's fun to see how elements of my gameplay have leaked into hers. We usually play side by side. Amidst back-and-forthing the controller, sometimes we talk, sometimes we read. Sometimes, though, we each partake of some other gaming device, a phone or an NDS, during our off-time. I wonder how hilarious this looks to an outsider, but to me, it's a small dream come true.

Gears of War 2 has become mainstay in terms of time killing. After grinding out the campaign, most playtime is spent in horde mode. The campaign was quite a ride, but anyone who says the "story" is "good" needs to partake of some literature. Slim makes fun of me when I play with strangers and they friend-vite me after a good round. "Look! You make a new friend!" I do indeed.

Now, a new compound type of phenomenon has taken place where I'm gaming with non-gaming-type friends. One of the main oddities is the strange feeling of accountability I have towards the things I reflexively want to say. I cannot, for example, call BH a kill stealing bitch without some infinitesimal, yet perceivable, possibility of repercussion. As it stands, I choose not to verbally lash out in these crossfire incidents, mainly because, well, the points really don't matter. I guess this sort of thing happens to gamers who only rarely venture into the triple-A landscape where fratboy-halo-jockeys and weed-gamers cavort. I remember when I was invited to a party by my Counter-Strike "Clan" many years ago. It was a strange process, making the decision to go or not. Caty-corner to this one in a way. As I recall, I ultimately bailed on the party for a card game. My, my, how times have changed.

I've also been delving into Valkyria Chronicles, which is pretty much the only reason I want to own a PS3 at this point. It feels alot like one of my classically favorite PS2 games, Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter. Shit, there's another PS2 game I want to revisit now. The replay value is pretty hefty. Given that I really like the system, that's not a terribly large statement, but I think it speaks for the level design and balance. Every turn has to be aggressive, efficient, and well closed to obtain the most positive results. The PS3 as a whole, I am still on the fence about. There are other sources for Hi-Def video. The online content is, from my perspective, anemic. Since they pulled PS2 back-comp, I've harbored an ember of contempt. I suppose I could seek out original-issue (not-re-released-underlined. I watched High Fidelity again just recently) hardware.

I'm going to digress here, and I mean digress around the house. Actually, that back-comp bullet-point is more than a one sentence issue. It speaks for the general trend of giving us a powerful, but shackled piece of hardware. I don't mean powerful in the sense of transistor count or flops or polyspeed. These things are the first salvo of appliances that take the geekery of maintaining a PC out of the mass-connectivity experience. That is powerful. It enables me to ponder BH's KS-bitchery, which is not an insignificant category of someone's character. As fucking lame as that sounds, it's important. To the point. It enables an experience outside of the typical day-to-day environment. It enables another facet of someone to come into view. Fantasy and imagination completely aside, your behavior in these contexts are a part of you and their expression is important.

I'm not shy about saying how much you can learn about a person from playing cards with them. How they behave when they're up, down, or even. When they get brave. When they get shy. When they cheat and when they lie. (Didn't mean for that to come out as cheap poetry, i will go start my rap career now). You can get the same thing out of gaming with them. Putting aside the window into the soul statement, the corollary is that these are all things you can express. Yes, Gears of War 2 is a medium of expression. Middling the onus of the human experience, I know, I know. I will say that I indeed have learned a little something, something important, while playing, but I'm not going to say what.

I was talking about back-comp. Dismissing back-comp is like only allowing new books be checked out at the library. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the PS2 catalog will turn out to be historically significant, tantamount to the SNES library. Restricting access to that bars the etymology of the genre from entering the discussion. It bars the history of the genre from being incorporated into it's present expression.

Speaking of the SNES library, I've been playing through tons of old favorites. Magical Drop 2, Act Raiser, Gradius III, and currently Ogre Battle. Gosh I love Ogre Battle. The latter two have put the revisitation of Gradius IV and V, along with Ogre Battle 64 and Soul Nomad firmly in mind.

Street Fighter IV is very fun, but I'm lacking the requisite population of competition to fully enjoy it. It brings back alot of memories of the Tranquilo era, a period of about five years when I rented two consecutive condos in the same complex. We concocted elaborate month-long tournament formats. We had seven computers, five televisions, six distinct consoles with multiples of several. We had a pool table and never played pool. The SFIV online matching system has to be improved. It's just paltry, sad, and barely functional. I spend 3-5 minutes hitting A over and over just to get into a game, only to find out that this guy XxTurboGodSuperxX does not know how to block. So I get to practice meaty combos on him, yeah, but when I match up into a game against PlainBagel who doesn't make mistakes and punishes me as much as possible for mine, I'm not in the groove at all. It's broken. I guess it harkens back to the era when the local arcadegoers were pretty well stratified into distinct skill blocks, but I don't really need that. I played against Josh and Boyan and Dion and Gerald all of whom possessed better timing, execution, and frame counting abilities. I learned to get beat alot, but I learned how to appreciate the brutally deft shit when it happened. I don't appreciate the guy who falls for wakeup super-cancels every time. Dion actually has SFIv, but for PS3. I can understand not putting in the effort to allow for cross-platform same-content matchmaking, but it makes me wonder if a platform like that is really worth protecting. If we're lucky, maybe this industry won't become like the other entertainment industries.

Here's to Hoping
-tJ

Yesterday I beat Castle Crashers.

Gosh it was fun.

I am wearing my crashers t-shirt today.

And I have crasher's music stuck in my head.

-tJ

So, on random impulse, Slim and I visited the local grocers for samples of their root beer offerings. Looking for single bottles only, we visited Vons, 76 Gas Station, CVS, Whole Foods, St. Germaines, and Bristol Farms where we picked up respectively, 0, 1, 1, 0, 1, and 8 bottles of root beer.

Actually, we went to the wrong aisle at Whole Foods. I had forgotten about the cold drinks they keep near the hot food section. Normally I despise Bristol Farms as a grocery store. I've just never found that they had particularly good anything, with the exception of a root beer selection.

We each tasted in two groups of four and one group of three, and a final group of the best of each from the first round. It looks like this.

Boylan: Too Fizzy, more caramel flavor
A&W: Good Balance, Group 1 winner
Sprecher: Worst. Ew
Thomas Kemper: less flavor

Henry Weinhards: isn't good
Mug: too sweet
Sioux City: It Group 2 winner
Faygo: Flay, lacks complexity

Stewarts: It Group 3 winner
Virgil: worst
Dads: close to A, but tastes old

Slim took a long time to pick amongst the finalists, saying that they all taste the same. She eventually picked Stewart's.


Dad's: Peppery, weird tasting(must've been the oldness
A&W: nice and soft, but nost as much flavor
Stewart's: Good, rich Group 1 winner
Thomas Kemper: mediciny Worst

Weinhard's: Sweet, like creaminess
Sioux City: Bittery, like it, good bubbles, group 2 winner
Sprecher: too fruity, doesn't taste like root beer
Faygo: similar to Sioux city, but the bubbles are more harsh

Virgil's tastes like food, not like soda
Mug: Good, Group three winner
Boylan: eww, tastes like wierd chinese food sauce.

I finally picked Mug from the group winners. Go figure.

So, the lesson here is, root beer shouldn't taste like food.

-tJ

I've been reading Giant in the Playground for some time now. It's a great amalgamation of pop-culture and web-culture, turn based strategy games, tabletop gaming, and just good ol' storytelling and character development. If you like any of the aforementioned things, I hasten you to take a look.

I have here a link to the first panel, but I warn you, it takes a bit of getting into. I somehow, after years, nay decades, of slogging through the slow starts of countless books, movies, TV, and anime serials, have become immune to the slow start. Often enough, it just happens to pay off. I think you should read through the first two skirmishes before passing judgement.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/erf0001.html

Today's panel raises the bar, quite considerably, but it is hard to understand the substance of it without the proper background.

Choi!
-tJ

Lately I have this nervous twitch in my middle finger on my left hand. It kicks in randomly when my hand is open and fairly relaxed, leading to some annoyance when typing. It kicks in less randomly when I close my hand, remaining at an awkward curl, when the rest of my fingers are closing into my palm. The result is the appearance that I am telegraphing the desire to give the middle finger as my middle finger struggles and lags to comply.

Taking note of what the back of my hand is facing when the twitch kicks in is giving me deep insight to what I subconsciously carry deep contempt for: Myself, boxes, chapstick, my computer(s), my phone(s), birds, books

Grah
-tJ