The other busy time is the run-up to E3, which we’re right in the middle of right now. It’s less predictable than the first case, because it consists of a lot of pre-show events that spring up without quite as much notice as you’d like. On top of that, you’re trying to make sure you’ve got housing secured and doing a lot of logistical planning. It hasn’t been too bad this year, so far, but then, I’ve been mostly focusing on getting reviews done for the past few weeks.

This is usually how it all works. Things get busy and my mind starts to drift a bit. I start wanting to write songs and maybe cram a couple in here and there, around whatever madness springs up. I’m not sure what direction to go in with the music stuff right now. Part of me wants to do a lot of very filthy, very middling rap songs. Part of me wants to dive right into another batch of Midnight Brown stuff. I’ve been thinking about writing a lot of longer, instrumental tracks. Like those Nike running mixes or something, just a 45-minute mixtape or something. We’ve been so careful about not letting songs linger longer than three minutes or so that the thought of letting an instrumental go for more than 16 bars is kind of exciting. It’d probably also get me up on writing better, more interesting stuff, too. If you pay attention to the Midnight Brown tracks, you’ll notice that there usually isn’t much going on. Part of that’s deliberate in that I’m sort of writing the songs as if they were going to be played by a three-piece band. Part of it is that when we get going on a song, we get impatient and want to hear the finished product as soon as possible. Almost every recording session ends with me shrugging and saying “I think that’s done.”

…

After doing a bit of work-related travel recently, I’ve been bitten by some sort of travel bug. Mostly, I want to take a cross-country road trip and just kind of spend three weeks doing whatever comes naturally. I’d like to get back to Boston at some point, and I still keep telling myself that I’ll visit Virginia one of these days, too. I used to think that travel and tourism sounded like a huge waste of time. I’m not sure what changed. Actually, I think it’s the idea of rounding up a couple of friends and taking the country on as a team that makes it sound fun. You just need to find people that are the right mix of crazy and careful. Hopefully everyone’s schedules will line up at some point this summer and we can make it happen. Actually, I should probably take charge on that and start planning it out. Otherwise summer will be over before we know it.

…

Speaking of points, I now have 104,596 of them. That’s 57,690 more than Carrie has. It’s going to take more than some 6,000-point quick fix to help her now!

So, uh, since the people who might still be RSS’ing this blog are probably the only people who would care… probably going to shoot some sort of “points related” video with that camera in the near future and post it over on this giantbomb.com web site. You may have heard of it. It’s about video games and hamburgers and nudity and S-rank.

I don’t know if it’ll become a regular thing, because editorially, that entire site is like one big points report sort of thing for us. We’re a group of guys, saying what we mean about video games and having fun while doing so. Recording a video designed to be “frank discussion” becomes a little redundant at that point. But let’s see how it goes. If I can get some free time at home this week, I’ll try to at least get it recorded.

AW YEAH! Wait, are you saying it doesn’t mean that they’ll all just go away? And that I’ll probably have to keep paying money to the company that’s taking control of the old bank? Crap.

My receiver woes are at an end, and I’ve gone Onkyo. It’s the TX-SR606, brushed aluminum to be exact. It was an extra six bucks to get a shiny one, obviously totes worth it. Setting it up was crazy easy, and being able to go HDMI end-to-end eliminates a lot of unnecessary steps from the process. Between the new receiver and some new front speakers, games sound crazy. Totally hearing things I’ve never heard before, like more nuanced engine noises in Burnout Paradise. It’s pretty cool and feels like it’s worth the investment.

The only problem with all this is that it sets off a chain reaction of spending. I have a set of new front L/R speakers from Aperion Audio, and I have a new subwoofer on the way, as well. I think that by the end of all this, I’ll be able to shake the entire neighborhood apart with this setup, a move that will surely lower the property values in this neighborhood even more!

Gah, I’m talking about home prices just as much as I’m talking about hot speakers. If that’s not a clear sign that I’m slowly turning into an adult, I don’t know what is. Then again, it’s hard not to pay attention to all this stuff these days, since it’s everywhere. I bet it’s a really interesting time to be enrolled in an economics class. Lots of modern examples of things going bad to (hopefully) learn from.

That’s the IM-based cry for help I sent out to a friend this morning after finally realizing that I wouldn’t be able to come to any conclusion on my own. Here’s my situation:

I have a rapidly aging home-theater-in-a-box setup made by Kenwood. It’s a standard 5.1 deal, nothing ultra fancy. It’s done a fine job for the past, like, seven years or so. But I’m looking for something more, something that will handle 1080p video and has at least two HDMI inputs, as well as component ins (for my Wii) and perhaps an S-video (for my DirecTV receiver).

Right now, I have to run HDMI to the TV and use optical audio to my receiver. Since I only have one optical port there, I have to run the optical cables out of my 360 and PS3 into an A/V switcher that I used to use when everything was using component. It’s messy, using more cables than I’d like and making switching everything on take some time.

I also don’t want to spend a zillion dollars. Last time I looked, something like this was around 700 bucks, which seems too high of a price to pay for mere convenience. I figure I’ll save my money for when I want to get some new home theater speakers instead. I’m pretty sure I blew out my subwoofer at some point and figure I might as well replace everything while I’m at it.

I’m sort of surprised that there isn’t some sort of big gaming-focused article or section of a site out there devoted to addressing this topic comprehensively. You’d think that a retailer would put something like this together, even if all us gaming-focused sites are too busy covering games to really nail the peripheral stuff.

“You can even get married and have children or take Smokey Robinson’s advice and shop around.”

You know, it wasn’t until someone injected Smokey Robinson into the conversation that Fable 2 made any sense to me at all. THANKS for putting it all in such a clear and relevant perspective, EB!

Of course, all this is coming from a guy building a site where most headlines are even more obscure references than that one… hmm…

Speaking of said site, it’s awesome. It’s coming together so, so well. And quickly, too. It seems like there are like five or ten new things about it that blow me away every day. And everything I think of and worry about, the guys building the site have almost always thought of already. Like we said on the podcast this week, look for something to show up the week after E3.

A handful of you have been posting comments here asking about Points! videos. We are effectively building a site where the editorial tone makes the whole thing like one big installment of Points!. It’s freewheeling and from the heart, but respectfully so. I don’t really see me recording any videos at home in the near future, because anything I would say here, I can say on Giant Bomb instead.

Though I was thinking of maybe doing a live stream from my bedroom. That might be funny. And by funny I mean sad. Funny/sad is funnier than funny every single time.

Next week I’ll be in Los Angeles for E3, which is actually pretty thrilling. After covering this trade show in a very specific way for the past several years, it’s going to be fun to try something different.

Of course, there are games there, too. Maybe I’ll write up a list of games I desperately want to see more of at some point, but I can tell you that any such list starts with Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. Apparently MKvDC will also be at Comic-Con. That was almost enough to make me go to San Diego, but this whole “putting a site on the Internet” thing is pretty important, too.

Oh, last thing. I got this via a Kane’s Wrath press release earlier today and thought it was pretty awesome.

• Game with Developers – Sign onto Xbox Live Friday night from 7 PM – 10 PM ET and show off your multiplayer skills against members of the EALA development team, including:

·         KWDevJim: Jim Vessella, Lead Producer

·         KWDevAlan: Alan Newton, Tester

·         KWDevJason: Jason Savopolos, Tester

·         KWDevJeremy: Jeremy Feasel, Designer

·         KWDevKeith: Keith Schaefer, Producer

·         KWDevWes: Wes Eckhart, Development Director

·         KWDevNick: Nick Clifford, Lead Tester

·         KWDevGreg: Greg Kasavin, Producer

·         KWDevMario: Mario Grimani, Development Director

Now that’s a Game With Fame if I ever saw one. 

Yeah, it’s awesome.

- Scanning the airport’s free wi-fi network for shared files.

- Hoping my 7:35 flight doesn’t get delayed.

- Noticing some stiffness in my left thumb, which indicates that I don’t play arcade games nearly often enough anymore.

- Wishing I didn’t throw away the Burger King cup I had, so that I could go get a refill.

My house likes to retain heat. So it’s 83 degrees outside right now, but it’s probably more like 85-88 inside. Naturally, that makes this the perfect day for me to start playing Wii Fit, right?

I should have bought a house with a pool when I had the chance.

But first I need to play more Boom Blox.

I’m sure there’s something to it, as the dorks who would be most likely to go see Iron Man are probably the same dorks who would have more fun staying in and playing more GTA, but when people try to pin the woes of the movie exhibition business on games, it’s almost as pathetic as the music industry’s excuses for its own downturn.

1. Movie theaters have become an awful way to see a movie. Unless you hold some nostalgia for sticky seats and popcorn–you know, the “theater experience” or whatever–actually going to a movie theater has felt like an awful waste of time to me for years. Even if I didn’t have a sizable TV and a passable sound system, I’d rather gather up some friends and watch a movie at home. Since I’ve laid out the cash for decent equipment, I usually end up getting a better-looking, better-sounding movie than what most theaters offer these days.

2. Dude, it’s Iron Man. Hardly an A-lister in the Marvel world, unless things have somehow changed since I last followed comics. If Iron Man tanks, it’s probably because MOST PEOPLE HAVE NO CLUE WHAT THE HELL AN “IRON MAN” IS. Though as a counterpoint, if someone told me “hey, there’s a movie coming out where Robert Downey Jr. drinks and flies around fighting dudes,” I’d probably want to know more about it.

3. I once urinated on a seat in the back of a movie theater out of spite. To my knowledge, no one has urinated on my couch (yet).

So, yeah, I’ll probably stay in and play GTA, but not at the expense of Iron Man. I already didn’t care about that.