So yeah, another jam-packed weekend. More so than usual, actually.
Friday night MK & I saw Borat It was pretty awesome! Its kinda hard for me to pinpoint why I liked it so much… though the hotel scene pretty much blew my mind, and others who’ve seen the film will know what I’m talking about. Afterwards I met with Jenny for a drink at a bar in the financial district, a place she wanted me to check out, to discuss some business, including Unlucky. Which reminds me, I’m such a shit-head since I so behind on sending out all the stories to folks I promised. Anyway, went home, had some food, and immediately went to bed since I had a major day ahead of me, so MK had to keep herself entertained with Chibi Robo.
Next morning, I got up super early (at least for me, on a Saturday) to head out to the city and met up with Mike Rovin and Mike Simses for a video shoot. As I’ve either eluded to or mentioned in recent posts, I’m now becoming more heavily involved with the Weekly World News, and my latest assignment put me in the role of a furry obsessed with meeting (and yiffing) the grand O.F., or the Original Furry, better known as Bigfoot. Which meant me walking around the Upper East Side and running around Central Park in a gorilla outfit. Keep your eyes peeled on the official WWN site for the video, which should be debuting very soon (or just wait for me for the head’s up).
Then, after some lunch and socializing, I went down to SVA to pick up some equipment (the evening demanded a camera superior to the dinky little piece of crap that I normally use), and headed back uptown, this time to Times Square to cover the Nintendo’s Wii’s release for GameSetWatch. And for those interested, you can check out what I had to say, as well as see all the pretty pictures I took right over here.
I was there for close to 10 hours straight, and was on my feet almost the entire time. By the end, I was a total zombie, but it so worth it… I said it already in my GSW report, but I’ll say it again: the entire launch, from top to bottom, was absolutely amazing. Nintendo did a phenomenal job of making pretty much every single gamer, at least on-hand at Toys R Us, totally jazzed and even proud to be a Nintendork. It was such a 180 from the Sony event from two days prior; everything from the flow of information and organization from Nintendo themselves (I even became buddy-buddy with some of the teamsters that they hired to handle security!), to all the people in line, who were so nice and happy to be there, and not at all… grumpy and surly like pretty much ever person waiting for PS3s that I rubbed shoulders with Thursday night.
The good feelings were so intense that I totally got swept up by them… which was the reason why, while standing in the middle of the sales floor of TRU, around 12:30 in the morning, and watching people running around with total glee, happy to finally have the Wii in their hands and smell that new video game system box smell, I found myself really wanting one. Granted, I’m supposed to get one eventually, I just don’t know when… it could take weeks. And it also felt as if I was going to buy a Wii, it was simply the time and place to do so. Hence why I called MK to seek some advice. And her response was: “What are you an idiot?! Aren’t you supposed to get one or something? Besides, you don’t have enough to play any of the games you already have! I play your games more than you do!!!” …. Which was true. At this point, she’s easily put in ten times the amount of time in Chibi Robo than I have, for example.
But then I got a call from both Joe Salina and Peter from Anamanaguchi, both of whom had arrived just a hair too late to make the line (Nintendo and TRU had to cut it off at 4,000…. yup, four thousand gamer dorks had wrapped around an entire Time Square block for the Wii), so what I did was buy their systems for them (along with copies of Twilight Princess of course), hence why I was able to join in the on the fun of being a consumer but not really spend my own money. And I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the second I stepped foot outside of TRU, some dude approached me to buy one of the Wii off of me. Then when Peter showed up to pick up his, another dude approached him to make a deal as well. But Peter, like everyone else in line, wasn’t interested in making a profit, he just wanted to play some damn video games! I also got some info regarding the card for the Blip Fest in two weeks, specifically some awesome news: I won’t be missing YMCK! Thank God. Granted, its not the worst thing in the world to miss their American debut for my best friend’s wedding, but still… its nice to know I won’t have to!
I was originally going to stop by the Nintendo World Store just a little bit to check out the action for an epilogue for my report, but when I ran into Nullsleep and Dave Mauro, and was then joined by Colin whom I had hung out with for a bit earlier, I figured what “what the fuck” and decided to stay till 6am, when that store opened its door. I even got the chance to hang out and chat with John Riccardi, who’s a super nice guy, and we talked about folks at Ziff Davis, mostly folks I used to work for during the days of GMR. Though by 6:30, I was dead tired, so after a cab ride to Penn Station (with perhaps the rudest fucking cabbie ever… so much so that I tipped him only ten cents, then he had the nerve to fucking complain about it, and said he didn’t want me money, so I took it back, which was something he was so NOT expecting), then a PATH ride to Hoboken, then a NJ Transit ride to MK’s town (and not sleeping the entire time… not only did I not want to miss any of my stops, but I had a super expensive camera from the school, plus over $800 in cash on me), then a ten minute walk from the station to her house, I crawled into bed at around 9 in the morning, a full 24 hours after waking up.
And then I was woke up only four or five hours later to have a birthday lunch with MK’s dad. Callahan’s of course, and it was my first time trying out their chili dogs. They were delicious! Afterwards MK drove me back to Hoboken, and at first I felt really bad since we got caught up right in the middle of a heavy jam, thanks to the Jets game that just ended, but the hassle was totally made worthwhile when we witness a limo pulled to an island in the middle of a major intersection and witnessed three huge guidos run up to a pillar, in the middle of the highway in plain daylight, then watch them all relieve themselves. One was still holding onto his beer, and another was wearing sweatpants with no trapdoor, so he had to pull them down slightly and we totally saw his pecker swinging in the breeze. And judging by how close they were to the pillar, at least one of them had to have peed all over his white Adidases. It was fucking hilarious. So much so that MK said immediately afterwards “You HAVE to call Mike [O'Connor]!” which I did, and he totall hit it on the nail by describing the scene as “deliciously Jersey!”
Can’t say that there’s much to report since then; once I got home last night, I pretty much immediately passed out. And all day today I’ve been mostly catching up on stuff that I had to miss while being out and about all weekend. Still haven’t checked on gaming news at all, nor gauge the reaction from others regarding Nintendo’s Wii launch. For all I know, every single unit they produced was at TRU Saturday night and everyone else got only 4 units and it’ll be sold out for the next six months. I haven’t even had any time to check out this documentary on Tetris that MK passed along last night. Though I did finally get to watch the vid that Katie’s friend Drew made when he tried getting a PS3. It’s pretty wild, and once again, thank God this past Saturday night had none of that bullshit.
Oh, there is one more thing: I picked up Sneak King, one of the new BK Xbox/Xbox 360 games starring the Burger King earlier today. And this time, I made damn sure that they gave me orange fruit punch instead of orange soda.
