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Hello gremmies.

Two things that cannot be missed by any self respecting gremmie this evening. The first, one of three debates between incumbent George W Bush and his long faced nemesis John Kerry. In the news recently, they could both be found lauding their respective opponents’ debating skills. Bush, telling the media that there hasn’t been a debater like Kerry since Cicero. A comment I find interesting since Bush probably thinks Cicero is a kind of pizza topping. And Kerry claiming respect for Bush (debate-wise) having bested both Al Gore and the free world. Minutes later Kerry was reported flip-flopping, recanting his respect for Bush claiming yet another digger for the ditch he’s been digging for himself.

Secondly, Pearl Jam will be playing Letterman tonight having just finished 2 shows in the Boston area whose setlists consisted of an inordinate amount of political themed cover songs including Steve Van Zandt’s “I Am A Patriot” and “The American in Me” by the Avengers. It’s wishful thinking that Ed, Stone, Matt, Jeff, Mike, and Boom will be playing new material as they have so frequently done on Letterman’s show in the past. However, since they seem to have ingested the political spirits of the current environment, chances are they’ll be belting out a few more covers. If we’re lucky they may play BushLeaguer, the scathing track about Bush’s sequacious character off their latest, Riot Act.

After a dismal trip to Battery Park City yesterday afternoon where I bore the wrath or God’s sideways rain, finally I made it to Grand Central and caught the 7:04 train to New Haven. At this time of day, the train is absolutely packed - and for added effect, the weather turned people into monsters. But, I managed to grab a seat in a four-seat section with 2 seats facing the other two seats. Like this:

X O

O X

I was on the bottom left (O) and a nice old lady, like Aunt May style, was on the top right (other O). We had enough room to put our respective bags down on the seats next to us and be comfortable. I could feel the air was tense and the commuters agitated; a sense you develop over time - guaging how pissy people are on their way home from work. This being the case, I was praying no one would sit down next to me or her because not only were people inordinately cranky, the space between both pairs of seats was tight and if someone sat in front of me we’d be knocking knees. As the train filled with wet and weary Wall St. workers headed home, one such person decided he didn’t want to stand the whole ride and sat down next to me. Ok, no problem - I moved my bag from the seat and let him sit beside me. I was still in good shape because I had leg room in front of me - Aunt May on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky as she was now playing footsie with a sweaty middle aged man (new O).

X O

O O

About 1 minute after departure a straggler who had obviously been searching the train cars for a seat had sadly given up and decided the seat in front of me - despite being loaded with 2 of the old ladies’ bags - was the perfect place to sit his tubby ass. You can spot these guys a mile away. There’s a distinct etiquette that exists while communting by train, especially on Metro North. Once the train starts moving, if you don’t have a seat already - you stand. You don’t go searching the length of the train for some difficult seat just because you can’t muster the strength to stand up straight for more than 5 minutes. Also, when the train is crowded and there’s a plethora of items on an ‘empty’ seat with people around it, you don’t ask to sit there, you just don’t. So this guy, we’ll call him ‘DickFuck’, pointed to the seat and gave the old lady a dirty look for not moving out of the way enough to let him through to the seat he so badly coveted and managed to piss off the three people - including myself - who were already sitting down before plunking his ass into to this decidely ‘Off Limits’ seat. As soon as DickFuck sat down we knocked knees.

DF O

O O

There was clearly not enough room for the both of us to sit face to face like this mainly because the closest this guy has ever gotten to a treadmill is sitting on a couch watching an infomercial for Nordic Trac eating Cheezy Poofs. What came next was grounds for capital punishment. This guy suddenly figured out that space was too tight (big mother fuckin’ surprise) and proceded to slouch backward in his seat making his chubby leg go between my knees. I felt like I was being fucked with a blindfold on. It was a feeling so uncomfortable that nausea began to set in on top of my already blossoming sinus infection. The train had only been enroute for some 10 minutes. So with 25 minutes to go, I turned up the volume on my iPod, closed my eyes and dreamt of being castrated, because chances are - that would have felt better.

Not to borrow a cliche line from the golden age of movies, but that’s exactly what was said before each round in Action Quake 2. “Lights, Camera, ACTION!” was the intense, albeit hackneyed, opener prior to the friendly blood bath I constantly played throughout my college career.

Action Quake 2 was a derivative of the popular game Quake 2 circa 1999; a “mod” if you will. Action Quake 2 is easily the game I have played most throughout my life, not including Virtual Jenna. Whereas Quake 2 was a fantasy, first-person perspective, shooter with laser guns and rocket launchers, Action Quake 2 took a far more realistic approach. AQ2 implemented realistic weaponry, a health system that required players to bandage themselves after being injured - less they bleed to death, and physics that made you think twice about jumping from building to building. My handle when playing AQ2 was ‘The Birthday Boy’, still is. I adopted the name because the first day I played AQ2 was on my birthday in 1998 - October 13th for all you novice gremmies.

I’m fairly certain that I would not have played the game for as long as I have had it not been for my nemesis whose knife throwing abilities are matched only by his penchant for name change. Goof, aka Teo, aka Artemis, aka Moose Cock was a man with a mission. His mission: to consistently win against me in “Game to 25″ matches hosted by yours truly. I’m happy to say he never accomplished his goal - though I’m sure he’d tell you otherwise. Frequently challenges would erupt in the wee hours of the morning, around 4am or so. The mp3 playlist would be chosen and we’d set the locale for one of the following:
URBAN HIGHRISE CLIFF 2

I always cleaned house on Cliff 2. Goof would constantly fall off and accidentally kill himself. I won on Highrise about 70% of the time. It was Urban that was the battleground. This sprawling map of cityscape served as the host for the greatest AQ2 battles of all time. Goof could throw a knife from the bottom of the far building with a slight arc and kill me who was on the roof. It was stunning. We played Urban more than any other map on the list. We also joined infrequent team matches with other Albany alumni, none of whom were any good, especially that Chris Anderson - he would always slam the mouse when he got killed.

In closing, it has been decided by Fates greater than myself that AQ2 will be reborn. Its hiatus of several years has been far too long for my tastes and I’m feeling limber. If any of you gremmies want to join up, email me and let me know, we could always use another practice dummy.

I had decided with great certainty to get McDonald’s for lunch today. I figured that with working out 4 or 5 days a week, I had certainly earned the right to chow down on some righteous and terribly unhealthy grub. I had it all planned since my meeting this morning at 8am. A 10 Piece Chicken McNugget meal (Now with ALL white meat! What was in there before?). So I trudged downstairs and met with a couple of co-workers in the Bear Stearns lobby. They suggested the Pizza Truck on Vanderbilt. I told them I had planned to have McDonald’s, but they ended up convincing me otherwise.

To realize this pint sized truck in the middle of Gotham pump out slice after slice of cheeseless pizza was to marvel at the evolution of Darwin’s Evolution theory. I felt instantly proud to be human and associated to this truck and miracle men by at least that distinction. The Pizza is great, and the fact that it’s cheeseless made for some refreshingly tasty slices. The crust is thick and crispy and the sauce and chunk tomatoes make your mouth water before each bite! So, if you’re ever on Vanderbilt and 47th during the lunch hour gremmies, stop by Jianetto’s and pick up some bliss.

Do you gremmies remember that famous blog post from a couple of weeks ago about the avant garde romantic zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead? So do I. Well, here’s my shameless plug of the movie once again.

I’m sure by now you must have seen commercials for Shaun of the Dead on TV between reruns of Friends and Everybody Loves Raymond (2 shows gremmies should NOT be watching). The movie is set to release this Friday, September 24th. You would be doing yourself a tremendous dis-service if you missed this movie. It has everything, but not like the way Ed Wood described his movies as having everything, this movie actually does have everything that gremmies holds near and dear to their hearts. It has Zombies, it has romance, it has heartbreak, it has action, it has humor that ushers in the theater will loathe as pee stains are hard to get out. So if you happen to have a small bladder and enjoy gut-busting comedy, go see Shaun of the Dead. Tell them Gremmie sent you, they’ll have no idea who you’re talking about.

Let us harken back to the days of Cook’s.

Cook’s was a landmark building in Westchester County; the place where I currently, and soon will not, reside. Landmark buildings generally are officiated as such, usually with a small ceremony given by a mayor who has better things to do than cut ribbons. Cook’s wasn’t that kind of place. It wasn’t an official Landmark. It didn’t have ceremony on its belt and it wasn’t lauded. But what it did have was a dedicated mythology.

Mythology is what you make it and I had been going to Cook’s since I was in the 1st grade. We used to go there on “special trips” to eat hamburgers and french fries out of oddly ridged white carboard trays. The main draw to the building with the white wind mill was the arcade. Nowadays arcades barely exist. The technology that has been developed for the home market vastly outperforms what could once only be accomplished in large arcades. The arcade is now obsolete and has become a shell of its former self with game prices as high as a few bucks and numerous sprawling contraptions of Dance Dance Revolution, the glory that once played king to kids and teens alike, is now jester merely meant to pass time and slightly entertain.

At Cook’s the arcade room was the center of the mythos. I remember my brother and I would race to finish our burgers just so we could get to play arcade games. Burgers half-falling out of our mouths, our mom yelling at us to slow down, we rushed to the arcade room with reckless abandon. The moment we turned the corner and the first game caught our eyes we were instantly transported into a world where oversized monsters destroyed buildings for points, one on one street fights created a nerd heirarchy, and Michael Jackson could kills bad guys with his dance moves. There were rumors that if you beat every opponent in Mortal Kombat without getting hit AND beat Reptile that the Skeleton in Goro’s chamber(nicknamed Devil) would come alive and rip off Shang Tsung’s head before the final match was to begin. The fervor of being a part of all this and discovering things no one else had ever discovered made you feel like you belonged to a club of uber-hipsters. And at 9 years old what more could a kid ask for?

I don’t know where this post is going and since I’ve been backtracking through excel spreadsheets while writing this I’ve lost my initial train of thought. As I read back through what I’ve written, I realize that all I wanted to do was extoll the merits of a childhood wonderland and maybe get you gremmies to do the same.