Fajitas, Cervesas y FUEGO!!!

Tommy couldn't make it for the weekly production meeting (he's been traveling the globe -- Europe, specifically -- for work) and my baby's feeling ill (poor, sweet woman!) so she went to be early, so my brother and I had something of a party tonight!

My Tuesday started around 8:20 am when my body decided, quite arbitrarily, to wake up and be ready for the day. I had already talked to Gnomey before she went to work (several hours before she was supposed to, I might add, thanks to one of her co-workers) so there wasn't much to get me out of bed, despite the fact that I wasn't really sleepy.

I mean, yeah, yeah, I should be working on my script. But I've done 18,500+ words out of 20,000, so I'm taking a break.

But I HAD TO do laundry TODAY, or else I would have nothing worth wearing for work this coming week. But that's not the type of thought that motivates me to leave my bed.

The second thought was that this was the last day of my weekend and I hadn't gotten very far with Tomb Raider Anniversary!!!

I was up.

Once up, I decided to take care of the Need-To stuff first, so I got my laundry done. (FINALLY. I have and extra week work of underwear and socks and stuff, but it's npt the GOOD underwear and socks, you know? Don't act all superior, you TOTALLY know what I mean. :P ) I checked my email and all that while waiting for the clothes to be done.

I even made time to finish off Series 1 of MI5 (or SPOOKS if you live outside the States or Canada). DAMN!!! WHAT an ENDING!!! I'm dying to see how Series 2 starts off!!!

After the laundry was done I sat down to some serious gaming.

The way I used to play videogames when I first got into them a few years back (before my 2nd-hand Sega Saturn my gaming was relegated to Gameboy, then Gameboy Color... this coming off of Nintendo, which was my next system after Atari back in the 1980s) was to print out the Walkthrough and play a near-pristine game; then I could go back and replay from start to finish and really enjoy the experience because I not only knew what I was doing, but knew what I would have otherwise missed out on.

Look, I'm very careful not to call myself a Gamer. To me a Gamer is some genius who can sit down with a brand new videogame and shoot through it, discovering all the hidden sections along the way, in 24 hours or less. That's NOT me. I'm an Explorer. I like experiencing the world of the game and the experience of the game. And I tend to not enjoy either when I keep getting eaten by the friggin' Boss at the end of the Second Level!

And games aren't designed like movies or novels: You don't just sit back and watch it, then watch it again to repeat the experience. Games are designed so that (without the benefit of someone else's experience to guide you) you CAN NOT experience the whole thing the first time you go through it. Or even the second time, for that matter. (Unless you're a Gamer.)

So anyway...

The way I got to know how to game was by following the Walkthrough the first time I played RESIDENT EVIL 2, RESIDENT EVIL CODE: VERONICA, TOMB RAIDER, TOMB RAIDER: UNFINISHED BUSINESS, TOMB RAIDER 2, TOMB RAIDER: THE GOLDEN MASK, TOMB RAIDER III, TOMB RAIDER: THE LOST ARTIFACT and maybe a couple of others that slip my memory at the moment. And then, after I've experienced the game once, all the way through, the correct way I could go back and start at the beginning, and play by myself making my own mistakes, but with the vague memory of generally what I'm supposed to be doing. (It's the same process I use when I trained for any new job I ever did.) In this fashion, I'm able to really enjoy the experience of the artistry and craftsmanship of the game designers and writers and artsts, and the world itself.

Which is why I'm so much more suited to SecondLife: SL is about exploring the world, without threat of boulders or dinosaurs or zombie jumping out and forcing you to start all over. (Though those elements are SO COOL!!! hehe)

But this approach to gaming allowed me to eventually jst be able to pop in TOMB RAIDER: REVELATIONS, TOMB RAIDER: ANGEL OF DARKNESS, TOMB RAIDER: LEGEND, EVIL DEAD, SPIDER-MAN 2, SUPERMAN RETURNS, GHOST RIDER, DESTROY ALL HUMANS, DESTROY ALL HUMANS 2 and any number of toher games and play then without the benefit of a Walkthrough and thoroughly enjoy them. (Even finish some, lol.)

But with TOMB RAIDER ANNIVERSARY decided I wanted to go back to my Old School way of gaming, so that I could get a clean experience, and THEN just replay the game until the platform breaks down and become antiquated, lol.

I mean, at first I just popped th game in and started playing it. I couldn't help myself, hehe. And I got past 3 levels, too! But Sunday I began playing the game with a Walkthrough -- to enjoy the WHOLE experience -- and then I didn't play any Monday.

So today I got through Croft Manor with the walkthrough. I missed one Artifact, because it's a nigh-impossible maneuver, then when I did complete the maneuver I discovered that I had performed a step out of sequence and saved, so I bar I needed to swing on to get the Artifact was out of place. :(

Then I moved onto Level 1 and got into it a ways, but by then Brian and I had discovered that Tommy most likely wasn't coming over (and, in fact, he didn't) so I gave up the game in favor of some movie-viewing.

See, Brian made these "Fajita Hours d'Vours" and I prefer nopt to be playing a videogame when I'm eating tasty food. I asked what we should watch, and he's still obsessed with GHOST RIDER, so I asked if he'd mind watching it with the Writer/Director commentary track, and he was game. (It's the Director's Cut, no less, so I was hoping to find out what scenes didn't appear in the theatrical release: The Director's Cut flows the same, so the additional scenes must have really melded seamlessly! Besides, I like the writer/director's work on DAREDEVIL, particularly his extended cut of it!)

After Gnomey went to bed I cracked open a couple of beers and just played my previous, willy-nilly game of TOMB RAIDER ANNIVERSARY, and I advanced to the Lost Valley and the part where I'm just blasting away at veloceraptors. I finally put down enough raptors that I was faced with the Big Dawg: The T-Rex!!! I dodged and ducked and shot and shot and shot and died, and died, until I finally decided he was killing my buzz.

And then I turned off the PS2 and turned the dvd player on, and Brian had just finsihed creating his EPIC fuckin' Fajitas! OMG!!! The next half-hour was devoted to listening to a great filmmaker talk about how he does what he does while eating Fajitas that BEND PERCEPTION!!! I am SERIOUS! I was once chatting with my baby and told her I was going to go eat, and she asked what I was having and I told her Fajitas, and she said she wanted to come live with me NOW. But the secret is that if she could taste Brian's Fajitas she would dump my worthless ass IMMEDIATELY and fall in love with him, lol! When we attended our friend Chuck's wedding, Chuck made some Spaghetti that made everyone in the room orgasm involuntarily, and Brian couldn't stop commenting on Chuck's culinary prowess for weeks. But if Chuck ate some of my brother's Fajitas, those two would be making out in a corner before the night was through, lol.

(Sorry, that was a weird mental image. Let's pretend it didn't happen.)

So anyway, I'm devouring these DIVINE Fajitas and watching GHOST RIDER with the audio commentary and downing beer, and at one point I swear I SAW GOD! It was AMAZING, lol! I don't think I'll experience anything NEAR as mind-bending until that first kiss I share with my Gnomey Goddess.

It was a good day for Ray Jay! :D

And now I'm about to watch Episode 4 of Series 1 of ROBIN HOOD! :D

OOH! Have I told you about ROBIN HOOD?!! It's this BAD-ASS BBC TV show!!! My baby loves it, and I caught the first 3 episodes yesterday, and it's AMAZING!!! I mean, it has it's flaws, but DAMN!!! I've been a HUGE fan of the Robin Hood character since I was a boy! (I love all the classic anti-heroes: Zorro, The Lone Ranger, Batman, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Phantom of the Opera, etc.) And so to find out that there is a British-produced series based on the character (he is from Nottingham, after all, lol) blew me away! AND MY BABY LOVES IT!!! So that makes me feel just a little bit closer to her, too!

So I watched the first episode AND HAD TO watch the second and third episode immediately!

It's a GOOD SHOW!

The first series came out here in the States earlier this month, so if you have $70 to spair, I SO recommend it!

So anyway... I plan to watch a couple more episodes of ROBIN HOOD before drifting peacefully off to Dream Land.

PEACE, LOVE & HAPPINESS TO ALL!!!

:D