My 2.5"x1.5" plastic crutch

I opened my wallet last night to pay for a delicious sushi dinner and had the wind knocked out of me. Glancing down at my open wallet, I am accustomed to seeing the little red strip of my Visa Sharecheck Card peeking out at me from inside its leather pouch home; but not this time. My small rectangle of happiness which allows me to procure all the goods and services I require was nowhere to be found. I must have looked like a wacko the way I tore through my wallet and displayed its contents all over the counter where I sat. Numerous business, membership, and discount cards all littered the surface in front of me, but my trusty red Visa was MIA. Lucky for me, I keep company with people who keep cash.

When I arrived home I ran to my phone and called my bank to report my lost card. I am relieved to say, the representative I spoke to was more than nice and eased my immediate concerns. I successfully cancelled my card and had a new one mailed to me. I was informed I will receive it in seven to ten business days, but we all know what that means. I should have a new card by the end of January.

In the meantime I will be hobbling around without my red crutch; using the archaic method of paying for things with green paper known as cash. This will also put a stop to most of my online purchases for the time being... but I guess that would be a good thing.

So many games, so little time!

All summer long there was a drought, a nearly unbearable drought. Not of water, but games! The games that quench my thirst for hand-eye coordinated enjoyment! "What are all the developers doing?" I thought.

Well I'll tell you. They were all waiting to release everything they had this holiday season. This may have been great for marketing and sales; however, this was horrible for me and my fellow game junkies. When you are compelled to purchase all the good games being released, regardless of their timing, it can put a serious dent in your wallet when the stores are flooded with them all at once. The worst of it is yet to come.

Once you get all of these spankin' new titles home; what now? For the normal nine to five zombie, there are only so many hours before you are in your wheeled cage on your way back into indentured servitude. This was the question I was faced with and I almost had a meltdown!

Then the disciplinarian in me took over. Like a mother forcing her child to stay at the table until he finishes all his potatoes al gratin; I was forcing myself to finish all the games I had purchased until I could excuse myself to buy more. With having to fulfill forty hours a week at my job and participating in holiday activities narrowing my window of opportunity to play, this task should take me a while... at least until the next good releases in January!

So peppered among my posts I am going to throw in reviews and experiences with these games.
Here's a few I'll be going over: Metroid Prime 2, GTA 2, Halo 2, Need for Speed Underground 2, Nintendo DS, Metal Gear Solid 3, and more.

-Garry

The devil's haircut...

I’ve been trying to grow my hair out. I’ve always had it short and finally decided, “I’m in a band, so I should have band hair.” I guess I had fallen victim to the idea of needing to dress the part to validate that I’m a musician. I also just wanted a change from the same haircut I’ve been getting for the past eight years. I’ve come to regret this decision.

My first step to getting my long rock & roll hair was to do nothing. I said to my hair, “Hey, you do your thing and I’ll do mine.. we just need a little break from each other for a while.” My hair understood completely. After almost two months of cropping negligence it was starting to get a little shaggy. By shaggy I mean, I was starting to get a mullet. Seeing my goal was to have rock hair and not “rock the mullet” hair, I needed to get a trim.

Here is where my series of larger mistakes began…

Deciding that I would go get it trimmed, I drove down to Supercuts. This was mistake number one. After arriving, I placed my name on the list and began reading a Newsweek magazine. It had a good article about the end of the war in Iraq and the coming election between Bush and Clinton in ’92. Needless to say, their periodicals were a little outdated. When I was done thumbing through the magazine, a friendly looking woman walked up to the Supercuts podium of authority and called out my name. When I realized that she was talking to me, because there was no other Garry’s there let alone I was the only person waiting, I responded. She asked if I could wait just a few more minutes while she cleaned up a little. “No” I thought to myself, but replied with, “Okay.” That was mistake number two. You’re about to find out why.

I was patiently waiting for the nice lady to finish mopping up the globs of hair off the floor; however, I was screaming for her to speed it up inside my head. The reason was not only because of my growing frustration with having to listen to the country station they were piping through the sound system, but also my fear of getting the guy who was just about to finish with his customer.

This older fellow was a very short man, built like a bulldog. A balding bulldog with tons of old green arm tattoos. I don’t have anything against tattoos or men who look like this, but it was akin to the sesame street game “one of these things is not like the other.” I am sure you’ve been to Supercuts, admit it! You know the type of people who work there and this just didn’t fit. Sure enough, he finishes with his customer and walks over to the same Supercuts podium of authority and calls out, “Garry, ready for your haircut?” Stupid me.. I replied, “Sure.” That was mistake number three. What I should have done was turned and ran out the door.

He sat me down in the chair and I began to describe how I didn’t want him to touch the top at all. Just trim the sides and the back so it’s all even. He looked at me like I was crazy and said, “Okay” while shrugging his shoulders. “A lot of people have requested this haircut lately," he said. Apparently there are a lot of people who wanted their hair butchered too. When he cut the sides everything looked okay. I wasn’t too worried anymore. When he was done he handed me a small mirror to inspect my haircut. Looking through that hand mirror is pointless as it shows how the back of your head looks if you were standing fifteen feet behind yourself. Not being able to gauge the total quality of his work without a wide angle 10x zoom camera lens I said, “Looks good to me.” That was the final mistake.

When I got home I walked into the bathroom to take a shower and get those hundreds of loose hairs off my neck and shoulders (That flogging they give your neck with their little towel never works). When I checked out the back of my head in front of my own mirror I recoiled in shock. I noticed the bastard had cut two inches too high, effectively making my rock & roll hair look like a bowl cut! I was devastated. My visions of Kurt Cobain like hair had changed to something from the early days of The Beatles.

I’m wearing hats a lot now. I wear beanies every now and then, but it makes me look like Michael Nesmith from The Monkees.

Soon I plan on ending this humiliation by bending over a trash can and enlisting Hoser to take all the hair on my head down to a buzz. I think I may stick with my usual short hair for another eight years.

-Garry

There's a first time for everything

Hello all and welcome to my small dark corner of the web. Before I go any further, let me introduce myself.

My name is Garry (yes, with two r's) and I am of the video game generation. I was raised with Nintendo and everything in between. Now I am an adult ,by legal measure, and my love for games lives on. I admonish the ones who call themselves gamers because they have purchased Madden for the PS2 four years in a row; giving you a puzzled look on their face when you ask if they know who Justin Bailey is.

I may have been raised with Nintendo, but I was nourished by music. My musical taste has encompassed everything from The Temptations to Bad Religion. I am not only a lover of music, but a musician as well. I play guitar and sing in a local San Diego band Dogmatic. We have enjoyed some minor successes and hope to build a following large enough to further our goals of world domination.

Well, I should be going now...

Check back soon as I have much to tell you about.

-Garry