And lo, Dave said "Let there be anecdote!"

Quite some time ago I was listening to the Colin Cowherd show on ESPN Radio.  He can be just as big a crank as anyone else on the dial, but he tends to approach stories from unique angles.  This is something I appreciate.  One day last fall, which I'm guessing must have been a slow sports day, he did a show revolving around the top twenty-five things all sports fans need to do before they die.  It was a pretty impressive list, but not very attuned to my personal sensibilities.  The core notion however, that there were these things I needed to do before I die stayed with me.  While stuck in traffic I would find myself thinking about this idea from afar.  I would formulate my list of must-see events, only to dismiss them to the ether as the light turned green.

I'm uncertain what catalyst prodded me to action, but I eventually emailed Clark and Tommy about possibly hitting up an event this year.  The idea resonated just as strongly with them as it did with me, and they were in without so much as a whimper.  A few more emails were exchanged and we were booked to see the University of Florida versus the University of Tennessee in Knoxville on September 16th.

Fast forward to last weekend.  Tommy, Clark and his friend Derek, and I were arriving at our hotel in Knoxville, TN right around dinner time.  After checking in we got some travel tips from the helpful employees at the hotel and we walked over to Calhoun's to grab some dinner.  The place was incredibly busy, but those of us that were hungry managed to grab some food and everyone enjoyed a few drinks.  The most notable aspect of Calhoun's is the fleet of boats tied up riverside next to the restaurant.  There were about twenty-five boats docked there.  A few were lashed to some pilings, and each one of those had a ship bound to its opposite broadside.  Boats were parked on the river like this five or six deep; it was quite a sight.  I found out later that this is what they call the "Vol Navy," and boats have been tailgating by Calhoun's for the better part of four decades.

We left Calhoun's around ten o'clock and hoofed it (bad decision) down to the main drag on campus.  Surprisingly, this whole area was pretty dead.  We wandered about in shock, waiting to stumble onto the "real" strip.  After walking from one end of campus to the other we stopped in a BW3 for some wings and drinks while we regrouped.  Clark eventually walked up to a Cop and asked him where all the action would be that night.  Thankfully, the officer affirmed previous (and forgotten) intel we had received from the hotel and he informed us to go to "Old Town" and hit up the bars there.  We bolted out of BW3 quickly and flagged down a cab, but we couldn't help but notice that the strip was starting to pick up just as we were leaving.  Perhaps things don't get jumping in Knoxville until around midnight?

We ended up at Hannah's in Old Town and as soon as we arrived we knew our fortunes had changed.  We quickly scored a table out on the patio just as the crowd started to file in.  It was certainly an odd mix of people at the bar.  Women there were dressed to the nines, while most of the guys were (at best) in polo shirts and shorts.  I don't want to alienate anyone here, but something needs to be stated.  I don't know where the ugly women in Knoxville go drinking on Friday nights, but it's most assuredly not Hannah's.  Holy crap were there a ton of drop-dead gorgeous chicks there.  Clark had a theory that they weren't really that hot, but that all twenty-oneish girls are at the peak of their hot curve, so to speak.  Keep in mind that Clark is the same guy who proclaimed a girl stuffing an endless supply of hot dogs in her pie hole at the game on Saturday "girl of the trip."  Consider the source, that's all I'm saying.  We shut Hannah's down and took a cab back to the hotel.

We didn't really take this into account before hand, but there is wisdom in 8:00 PM start times for college football games.  We didn't get moving until around one-thirty the next day, which actually worked out really well.  On our way out of the hotel a group of Tennessee fans joined us in the elevator.  One of the (once again, super-hot) girls on the elevator let us know that "she could be ours for the price of two tickets."  I don't want to speak for anyone else in our group, but were I not happily married the local authorities would have found Tom's and Derek's bodies in a dumpster the following morning.  We made our way down to the strip again, but this time with a purpose.  Clark and I wanted to score some Tennessee gear in hopes that this would allow us to travel in previously closed-off circles.  We grabbed our gear.  We looked good.  Polos on backs, we grabbed some lunch and pulled off a mini bar crawl up and down the strip.  We were told by the locals to make our way to the game two hours ahead of time so we would be sure to see the Vol Walk (this is where the players make there way through the crowd to the stadium).  Despite our best efforts we couldn't pull ourselves out of the bars quickly enough and sadly we arrived a bit late.

After missing the Vol Walk we cruised the tailgating area looking for partygoers to glom on to.  We didn't have to look too far, for at nearly every turn there were friendly Vol fans willing to share a beer or four with our group of merry men.  This was one of the more impressive aspects of the trip; everyone we met was impossibly friendly and civil.  Despite our Tennessee shirts the minute we opened our mouths people were painfully aware we didn't attend Tennessee, and this almost always brought about the same response.  A bit of shock, a small window of trepidation (fearing they had been hoodwinked by a Florida backer trying to mooch some beers), and finally complete acceptance after we told them where we all were from.  Most of the tailgaters got quite a kick out of the idea of a bunch of guys taking a "mancation" to check out Tennessee football.  I told one group of guys that part of my preparation for this trip was that I learned all the words to Rocky Top.  Upon hearing this news, one gentlemen calmly leaned into his car, hit play on his CD player, and invoked a rather stirring instrumental version of this venerated tune.  Such power on command, indeed.

After a bit of fun at the tailgate we headed into the stadium for the game.  Short version here, Neyland Stadium is extremely impressive.  It's much louder in person than it is on television, and the stadium itself is regal in a way.  We had great tickets (forty-five yard line,  3rd row behind the Florida bench), and the game was entertaining from start to finish.  Throughout the contest we amused ourselves by mocking the Florida players on the bench.  They had the last laugh (Carbone has a video of this), but it made for a good time.  I feel quite incapable of capturing the experience of watching a meaningful game at Neyland stadium in words, so I'll stop now.  Just know that you haven't fully experienced college football if you haven't seen a game on the banks of the Tennessee River.

Following the game we made our way back to the strip and started to wind down.  A few beers and pizzas later we walked back to the hotel and called it a trip.

Will we do something like this again?  Most certainly. We've never been to LSU, for example.

The (now infamous) Red Shirt Posse made a Chicagoland newspaper.  Here’s a scan (.pdf format) of the article. 

*Waits for you to read the article.*

We ended up at the Cobra Lounge after the Intonation Music Festival.  The choice of this bar was more out of utility than anything else; it was only a few blocks walk and this maximized our chances of sticking together.  At one point there were about eight of us there, and people slowly filtered out as the evening ran on.  While I take slight umbrage with us being described as "beefy guys," overall I'm pleased with the characterization rendered by the author.  Indeed, the irreverent tones and devil-may-care attitude rings very true to the actual proceedings, even if I can't remember them.

A few weeks ago I joined the "Red Shirt Posse."  What that entails I can only vaguely describe, as I recall the day's events in broken bits and pieces, much like some hand-me-down jig saw puzzle.  Here are the broad strokes of what being down with the Red Shirts involves, insofar as I can recall:

1. Everyone wears the identical, titular Red Shirt.  This year's variant seemed to be Hawaiian in origin.
2. Everyone starts drinking around lunch.  The strength of your fealty to the Posse is directly proportional to the amount you drink.
3. Everyone then goes bar hopping while keeping the entire Posse together.  This is much harder than it sounds.

Now, if you are asking yourself "why," then I regret to inform you that you are not Red Shirt material.  Sorry.  That bit of bad news out of the way, I am now free to explain.  In short, eleven lubed up, identically clad hipsters is a great icebreaker.  Each time we changed our location we would likewise alter our cover story.

"What's that?  Oh, why do we have the same shirt?  It's a bachelor party.  See that guy over there, the good looking fellow with the glasses?  Yeah, well that poor bastard is getting married in two hours.  Huh?  Oh yeah, two hours. I know, pretty crazy huh?  Yep, a limo is going to pick us up right over there in about an hour and we're going to change into our tuxes on the way.  Oh yeah, for sure.  We're all in the wedding party.  What's that about his fiancé?  Well, I wouldn't call his bride-to-be understanding so much as desperate.  He agreed to get married so long as he could show up drunk.  Great way to start the rest of your life together huh?"

"What's with the shirts you ask?  We're in a band and we've got a gig down at North Beach later tonight.  Oh, good question, we're called the "Modern Marvels," pretty great huh?  If you think we seem too trashed to play now you should come to our show tonight.  What's your name?  I'll put you on the will-call list."

As the night went on we slowly lost splinter cells of the Red Shirt Posse, usually in the vain pursuit of chicks but not always.  One of the slivers of time that isn't redacted from my memory is when Adam and I ended up by ourselves at the Intonation Music Festival.

"I'm sorry what was that?  Oh why yes, we are brothers.  I'm the good looking one and the brains.  Bad deal for him, huh?  Are we close?  Miss, pray tell why do you think we have the same shirt on?  It's not like this is a special occasion or anything, we roll like this every day.  You know what, oddly enough our parents are both really, really short.  Makes one wonder, no?"

Another odd phenomena was that groups of people, usually chicks, would run up on us and either want a picture of the entire group, or they wanted to pose in shots with us.  This is something I can't currently explain.

I've heard rumors that there are photos from this day/night/morning scattered about, but I have not yet seen them.  If I ever get them I will share with the group.  Instead I will leave you with a video.  Adam did the post-fx on the original film, so he gets the credit there.  I believe this was filmed at the St. Josaphat Summerfest, but as I've noted previously my recollections may in fact be flawed.  Shortly after filming stopped we had to leave the event altogether.  It will become obvious why that was required upon your viewing of the clip.  Enjoy.

I blame the parents.

I’ve had a few years off from attending E3 so I’m perhaps I’m not looking at the ’06 incarnation through overly-sentimental eyes, but I was really quite taken with lots of what I saw in LA this year. My personal favorites are as follows:

9) Warhawk (PS3) – It was more of a tech demo than a game, but what they had certainly got me pumped up for the full version.

8) Brother’s in Arms Hell’s Highway (X360) – Didn’t get to play this, but watched a live demo. War is hell, indeed.

7) Supreme Commander (PC) – If you see the trailer, bear in mind my troops are the blue ones, yours are the red ones.

6) Ninety-Nine Nights (X360) – Surprisingly fun when I got some time to play it. I wasn’t expecting much, but now I’m really looking forward to this being released.

5) Hellgate: London (PC) – No real surprise here. Diablo in a dystopian future? Where do I sign?

4) Dead Rising (X360) – This could end up being a disappointment as I’m not sure of the title’s lasting appeal, but it’s hard to get around the fact that mowing down hoards of zombies is always fun.

3) Company of Heroes (PC) – Played this in the Vista area in the MS booth. All that talking they are doing about the environment factoring into the gameplay isn’t just lip-service. It’s a game more about tactics than strategy, and I’m all about that.

2) Gears of War (X360) – The only disappointment is that I didn’t get to play it. Looks super hot.

1) Lost Planet: Extreme Condition (X360) – Capcom appears to have their stuff in order for next-gen. Lost Planet isn’t a revolutionary concept. Everything in that game you’ve seen before, but it’s all executed very well here.

Okay, so minor basement update.  I've built a bench upon which I keep all my "retired" video game consoles.  SNES, Atari 2600, 3DO just to name a few.  One of the unintended consequences of getting this set up was that I now feel the need to use all that stuff.  My original intent was to have all this gear out so the few times a year I feel like playing Doctor J. Versus Larry Bird there would be no artificial barriers to impede my will.  It's not really working out like that in practice.  Instead, now that all these weary soldiers of bygone console wars are reporting for a second tour of duty, I am feeling an overwhelming desire to make up for some major omissions in my game collection.  For example, this week I've bought Chrono Trigger, Act Raiser, and Chrono Cross.  About the only chance I had of nipping this in the bud was if, and this was something I actually deemed fairly probably, after auditioning these games I was to quickly lose interest.  If this ended up happening, then undoubtedly I would have probably stopped buying them up off of eBay. 

So, that leads me into part two.  Chrono Trigger is incredible.  I'm finding myself having a blast playing it for the first time, so I know there's no nostalgia at work here; the game is just rock solid.  Because the game is over a decade old I'll not shy away from spoilers in my reasoning here.  I turned the corner on the game, the corner that took me off of "Just Having Fun Street" and onto "Greatest.  Game.  Ever.  Boulevard,"  during a scene that takes place early (I'm currently at about two and half hours of playtime) in the game.  You're on trial, and the prosecutor starts asking you questions, like "Have you ever stolen?"  If you answer no, he brings in a witness that describes an act of larceny they watched you commit.  At this point the game cuts back to that point in the game, and plays back an instance of you stealing something from this witness.  That was pretty awesome, but the game keeps bringing out witness after witness.  Some vouching for your character ("He rescued my kitten!"), while others denounce your fine name ("He didn't check if the Princess was okay first, he just went straight for her pendant.").  The effect this had on me was pretty profound, and it definitely put me on notice for the rest of the game;  The game will be watching my every move, so I had best choose my actions carefully.

An odd day of work today. My boss got some tickets for the Cubs game, first pitch at 1:20, so I ended up going to that for a few hours, and then at five I had to high-tail it over to a focus test to find out what people who played a ton of Blitz did and didn't like about our last version of the game. The baseball game was about as fun as it could have been considering it was over by the third inning, and the focus test was very cool. You never want to read too much into sample sizes that small, but it's always interesting to see what consensus views, if any, emerge from the event.

Okay, been crazy busy.  Here's a brief rundown:

1) Gaming.  Finished Need For Speed.  It was really solid, and towards the end of the game I got a tip from a friend that really aided in my overall enjoyment of the title.  The key to learning the city, as it turns out, is to use the map.  Duh.  Since I've polished that off I've been playing a lot of Perfect Dark Zero online with friends from work.  The online is very solid and I can recommend it whole-heartedly.  For single player I've been focusing on Oblivion and I'm still enjoying that as much as ever.  About the only catch with that game is that I can't play it for long stretches at once or I start to get bored.  Today I picked up Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter.  Only on mission #2, but so far its as-advertised awesome.  I picked it up for online with friends, but so far I'm very pleased to find the single player is fun too.

2) Work.  The project I'm currently on is switching studios.  They are giving everyone the option of moving to the new location if they want to keep working on it, which is cool.  I'm just kind of laying low to see what shakes out, as all the fallout from this is far from over.  In other work news, the other day I went to DeVry's Tinley Park campus for the launching of the Games and Simulation Programming curriculum.  I was there representing Midway, in hopes of establishing some kind of relationship with the school for future recruting.  The turnout was very good, but after seeing what Carbone has going on where he works, let's just say they have their work cut out for them.

3) Home.  I was doing pretty good with the housework for a few weeks there, but I've fallen off the wagon.  I got about 1/2 the electrical done in the basement, and I built some tables for my office.  Everything has turned out really well so far, I just need to get back to it.

My parents left town this morning. This was one of the better trips they’ve probably had. They got to spend a lot of time with Sydney, first and foremost, but above and beyond that they didn’t seem so rushed to do a whole bunch of other stuff for whatever reason; they were just happy to be hanging out with the family.

I’m getting towards the end of Need For Speed Most Wanted. Overall I really like the game a lot. About the only knock on the game I have is that the city’s layout doesn’t really lend itself to being memorized, and as such anytime I stumble upon anything of interest (pursuit breaker, hideout, etc.) while being chased more often than not it’s just dumb luck. Because of this I feel less like this bad-ass street racer and more like a confused tourist. Here’s hoping I figure it out before I roll the final Boss into a tight little ball and punt him into the ocean.

Hmmm, where to start? The internet problem at the house ended up being a combination of two problems, and therefore, especially difficult to diagnose. First off, the router stopped taking DHCP info from the cable modem. The second problem was that I had to do a hard reset on the modem itself. This was problematic because the reset switch was concealed under a sticker. Makes a lot of sense huh?

On the gaming front I've been playing exclusively Oblivion since it came out. I'm not really doing the main quest, and I'm not particularly inclined to get to it anytime soon. There's about a billion and half words already on the internet about how great the game is, all I can really add to the discussion is to confirm those reports as all true.

My parents are coming to town this week. They got sick of missing Sydney so they decided to hop on a plane for a week long trip. It's been a few months so it will be good to see them again.

Gamespot is doing something really cool right now.  They are doing a webcast of a 12 hour play through session of Elder Scrolls:  Oblivion.  If nothing else it's providing me with insight into how a reviewer's mind works.  Ironically, though, I've seen nothing to change my opinion of the game whatsoever.  I've always planned on getting the game (I love Morrowind), but this hasn't made me any more or less eager to run out and buy it.

The trip to Florida was 100% awesome.  We hit up five different baseball games while I was down there, but my favorite was seeing the Dominican Republic play Australia in the WBC.  The crowd was about 95 % from the Dominican, and by the end of the game the stadium was like a scene out of a movie.  The ushers decided to stop worrying about people running up and down aisles, banging on drums, and blasting air horns at 150 dB.  Non-baseball highlights included playing 2-player Fight Night on Tom's 110" projector, the weather, The Ale House, and the run to the EA company store.  Between the copy of Amped 3 Rich hooked me up with, and the three EA games I scored I should be in Achievement Point heaven shortly.

I'm pretty torn about the Illinois game tonight.  On balance the year was much better than I expected, but as I've alluded to before that provides little consolation in times like these.  I think Weber got out-coached something fierce; Augustine was the only one that had anything going on offense and we didn't really adjust to take advantage of that (I don't think he took a shot in the final ten minutes of the game).  Washington kept switching up their defense, which completely left us out of sorts each time it happened.  Why Jamar Smith played so many minutes when he's not shooting the ball well is beyond me, what's wrong with giving Chester those minutes?  The players themselves didn't help matters much either.  They made it easy for the refs to get us in foul trouble with several stupid and obvious fouls early in the second half.  For some reason we can no longer guard man-to-man anymore; everyone was getting beat off the dribble.  It didn't seem like anyone wanted to take a shot near the end of the game.  And the refs?  Well, we got ourselves in trouble with really dumb fouls early, and it seems like the refs came to expect that for the rest of the game, whether it was there or not.