1. The game, on the whole, is fucking awesome and maybe the best driving/racing game of all time. OF ALL TIME!

2. That being said, the menus need a bunch of work. Hopefully Criterion are making them a little more intuitive on the next Burnout game.

3. The bikes have an awesome feel to them, and for a free download and a last-minute addition, they’re great. Hopefully in the next game, you’ll be able to do more with them (Road Rash-esque punching, Stunt Runs, bikes on the same playing field as cars, and so forth).

4. The downloadable content deal Criterion has going until March 31st ($20 for all the add-ons or $30 for the game and all the add-ons) is well worth it. I don’t work for Criterion, but if they want to cut me a check for saying this, I won’t complain.

5. On the whole, online gamers have gotten a little more conscientious since the last time I played anything extensively, but the ones that suck, well, they REALLY suck. I did get a lot of great help from a bunch of people along the way to finishing the important parts of the game, though, and thanks go out to the following individuals (names shortened a bit so you’re less likely to annoy them online): dave, GAS, michael, cr9ck, Icky, Saleen, gary, Monte, BAUSS, Fluff, Noia, Varp, Rabbid, Ice, heather, Hell, mdom, Dan, CNB, kopp, jolly, WOODY, ash, hana, KingG, and anyone else I may have forgotten.

6. There were a few usernames that I have to share with you, though: “mrvargas”, “UN_Jefferson” and “meatnormous_1″ were all pretty classy. I also saw all manner of “yourmom” usernames, a lot of “420″s, some creative end-runs around the block on the word “fuck”, and so forth. Oh, and the whole NUTKRACKER crew (who use the PS 3 voice changer to sound like they’ve inhaled helium) are a hoot, too.

7. To that end, parents, if you’re reading this, you should probably keep at least somewhat of an eye around your kids if they’ve got their Playstation 3 Internet-enabled. Don’t be an asshole and forbid them from using the Internet, leaving them totally unprepared for modern life, but keep an eye on stuff and talk to them about what they run into. There was a really bittersweet moment on Saturday morning when a kid we’ll refer to as “lil(nameredacted)” showed up on one of my games. Immediately, a hush fell over the game, which had previously been full of people talking (well, mostly cursing) on microphones. He sounded about 8, if that. I told him that I was probably going to have to have him leave, because “we use a lot of words here that your parents use when they drop things on their feet”, and he enthusiastically responded, “Oh, I KNOW THOSE WORDS! FUCKIN’ SHIT-” at which point, I regrettably had to kick what was probably a parallel universe version of my younger self. I still feel guilty. And no, it’s not really my responsibility to babysit or parent anyone, but if you do actually have children, as I’ve said in the disclaimer for my web site, “Get involved, and be a parent. If you don’t, then people who are far worse than the people responsible for “My Big, Black Cock” will.” It’s highly unlikely that anyone playing a racing game on the Playstation is going to steal your kid and make them do it with old men before throwing them in a wood chipper and bathing in their entrails, but they’re probably going to teach “lil(nameredacted)” how to use “THOSE WORDS” a little more quickly and creatively than perhaps you’d care for.

8. Somehow, during the course of one of the online events I played, “goat” became a verb. “Oh, he goated me.”

9. The Diamond P12, which is the “Holy shit, I have to finish *everything* in the game” car, is REALLY ugly, but it handles nice and purdy. I think it was Shirley Manson who once said “Ugly girls make the best shags” or something to that effect. Plus, it’s fun to annoy both people who have no idea how you got the goddamn car (150 hours of my life that I’ll never get back, folks) and the people who have played WAY more than you have, who see driving the Diamond P12 as the highest form of wankery possible in the game.

10. If Criterion ever release another game where you can’t turn off the Guns N’ Roses song they use as the intro/menu music, an angry mob will show up at their doors armed with clubs, torches, boiling oil and probably that wood chipper I mentioned in item number 7.

I could probably write more, and maybe I will at some point, but I wanted to get the nuts and bolts out there before it faded.

2 pretty good ones this week.

First, the bank had my account royally fucked up for about 24 hours, in a way that, had it not been corrected, would have been crippling. When I saw this, it was about 5 AM (the worst time in the world to check a bank balance), so I momentarily flipped my shit, but then I dialed it back down, got myself to make peace with 1. the fact that there was nothing that could be done about it at 5 AM, nor did there need to be and 2. I had enough of a paper trail to correct it once I did get there. I still want the little shit teller that waited on me publicly flogged for being disrespectful and paying absolutely no attention to his job, but I managed to get myself to sleep despite a pretty huge anxiety-causing event, and when I woke up, the transit department of the bank had corrected their error.

Second, I took a baby step toward working on my recent and not-so-recent fear of getting involved with people. I’m not getting any more specific than that. Public and private speculation is probably a bad idea, and will probably be wrong anyway. If anyone who I’d actually tell stuff to when I’m not writing for my site wants to know, they’re more than welcome to ask about it, but for the rest of you, the Great Firewall Of My Personal Life endures on this one. I think I’m being candid enough in this series of articles.

Looking forward to Week 10, not a hell of a lot is going on. It’s quiet right now, and I’d kinda like it to stay that way, but eventually, it won’t be, and I’ll deal when the time comes.

Also: “Obsolete” is going to be posted very soon, I swear.

This week: Fear 1, Me 1
Current Score: Me 14, Fear 5

I was supposed to go into New York twice this week, and I made it in once That was its usual struggle to get me out of the house, even to do something fun. Well worth it, though, as, after 2 years of being open, I finally saw Andrew’s club, and it’s a great place, one I’d visit for the hell of it, which is rare these days for New York and I. However, I was also supposed to go see Ulrich Schnauss on Thursday, and that didn’t happen for a variety of reasons, some practical (It ended up snowing a little bit, didn’t it?), some a little selfish (There was a mixup over whether Kirsty Hawkshaw was originally supposed to be there or not between Kirsty and I, and without her there, I was less inclined to schlep to Brooklyn even if it meant wasting an 18 dollar ticket and missing a guy whose music I do dig, but am not obsessed with just yet) and some of it was just me being a worrywart about money. I should probably go easier on myself about the whole thing, but I’m trying to hold myself to the same standards week in, week out.

Other than that, it was a pretty quiet week. I’ve got some stuff coming up for Week 9, though. Stay tuned.

I saw a guy who, whether his problems are of his own making or not, seemed genuinely rattled by the prospect of the “Is he or isn’t he?” rumors undoing 10 years of his work, during which he got the world to believe that a man can party. Hard.

If it was or is all an act, then call me a poor judge of peoples’ acting ability.

Because I’ve written a fair deal about him, met him a couple times and interviewed him a number of years ago, I feel like a lot of people have come to me as the go-to guy as the “Steev Mike”-related rumors have been mounting. Simply put, I’m not enough of an insider to tell you much about them with any authority. By the time I was following Andrew’s career (late 2001 to early 2002, I can’t quite place when I got on board now), the things that people are speculating about now were already pretty far gone.

My strictly speculative impressions, based purely upon what I’ve observed first-hand and read, are as follows:

I think that Andrew made business decisions when he was younger, very early in his career, that still have ramifications on what he’s doing now, possibly legally, possibly otherwise, and that, either by virtue of his word or a non-disclosure agreement, he doesn’t feel that he’s at liberty to talk about them. It also seems like this drives him a little nuts (to the point where he was stammering and squirming last night in ways that were honestly uncomfortable for me to watch), because he’s all about inclusion, and to not be able to fill people in genuinely seems to bother him, especially when you have people crying “fraud” about his work because of this. For some reason, in technology, NDAs are an accepted part of doing business, but not so much in entertainment, even as the two have basically bled together.

The stuff about there being several Andrew W.K.s, at least as of early 2002, I can confirm as total bullshit. Every time I’ve seen Andrew (5 times, counting last night), met Andrew (3 times) or talked to Andrew at any length (twice, including that very long interview), it’s been the same guy. Without much hesitation at all, he recalled our interview last night: “Man, that was a long time ago, but I remember that! It was a great interview! I was standing outside near train tracks.” The location was fuzzy for him (he guessed Connecticut, it was Worcester, MA), but for a guy who does and has done a literal fuckton of interviews, even that much recall is pretty damned good.

As far as his music and who wrote or played it goes, his musical pedigree’s pretty easy to trace, and he’s played at least 3 instruments, possibly 4 (I’m blanking on whether I’ve seen him play guitar in public) on stage proficiently. He’s always referred to his records as “this music” rather than “my music”, which struck me as acknowledgement that it was something that he viewed, either from a practical, technical standpoint or a philosophical one, as something bigger than himself. By most of his own accounts and those of others, he played most if not all of the instruments on at least “I Get Wet” and “The Wolf”.

If there’s anything I’d guess that he’s had help with in the studio, particularly back then, it would be his vocal tracks (which of course gets people all riled up, because that’s somehow the benchmark of authenticity when musicians and producers have been using every trick in the book on vocals since the advent of modern recording; folks, it dates back quite a bit further than Autotune…), because his vocal style’s evolved quite a bit over the years (the man met his wife through his voice teacher, so obviously, he’s put the work in…), and live, he’s never sounded exactly like his recorded vocals. Not bad, but different. That’d suggest sweetening, and probably studio vocalists to fill out the sound, but I wouldn’t say an entirely different lead vocalist.

Writing? Producers butt in on that shit all the time when you’re a major label artist, for better or worse, and again, Andrew’s been about inclusion every step of the way from what I’ve observed, so unless I’m mistaken, it’d be his gut instinct to take advice.

I think the best parallel I can draw here is one to Andy Warhol, who had plenty of help as well, and had his share of similar rumblings from people he’d worked with (I’d say that they were more frequent and more valid in Warhol’s case, but the tone’s very similar). Both Andy Warhol and Andrew W.K.’s work could be called “pop art”. Both have carefully packaged and presented their work. The major difference between the two is that Warhol seemed to leave agenda out of it (at least to me; your art critic’s mileage may vary), whereas Andrew W.K.’s got a very clear agenda: he wants to enjoy the hell out of life, and wants to encourage others to do the same.

That’s basically what I’ve got at this point. Even putting aside the “don’t make friends with rock stars” mantra (and again, perhaps naively, I would call Andrew a friend), I do think he and his work are being misunderstood and unfairly judged, but I’ve thought that since I first really got to experience more than just his recorded output, so this is nothing new. “This guy can’t possibly be for real” was and is the first impression of just about anyone (yes, me included) who’s been around popular music for more than a week, but when you get to know the guy a bit and get to see what he does, your opinion changes pretty quickly. If that makes me a guy who wants to believe in Santa Claus, or a guy who fell for Andy Kaufman’s schtick a generation later, so be it.

I got through New York OK, though it took me a fuckton of effort to leave the house. I certainly wanted to see the people I saw, and I had a good time, but there was this huge internal struggle that took place to get me there, mostly centered around money worries. I look forward to a day when meeting friends for dinner does not involve this huge, anxiety-creating mental transaction with ripple effects far beyond what they should be, or a bunch of guilt when people choose to pay for me. Whether I have it or I don’t, “It’s only money”, right? Also: if the people I met for dinner on Monday are reading this, apologies if my writing about things this way makes you feel weird, bad or uncomfortable in any way, as that’s the last thing I’d want, but for posterity’s sake and in the interest of being honest with myself, these things merited mention here.

As for this week’s round of bureaucratic nonsense, while I’m still mentally exhausted from it (I got something around 15 hours’ sleep in the day after I finished dealing with this nonsense), and I probably could’ve handled some things more gracefully (to the point where I think my psychiatrist got passive-aggressive in one of the descriptions he wrote on a form I needed him to fill out out of his own frustrations in dealing with me, which is actually pretty hilarious, but warrants an apology on my part the next time I see him), I think I got through it alright, knock wood. In my defense, on the subject of grace, when people whose job it is to help those in need consistently perform less competently and responsibly than a person who’s come to them for help out of a genuine need for it, it gets to be a little difficult to be graceful (or even patient) when dealing with them.

“In this life
You’re on your own”
-Prince

Next week: more New York, more red tape, more money worries and more difficulty letting people get close to me! Same Bat-time! Same Bat-Channel!

This week: Me 2, Fear 0
Current Score: Me 11, Fear 4

The good:

I dealt with all kinds of snow. For most of the past 15 years, I’ve pretended to be a grown-up and not enjoyed it, dreaded it, even. I travelled (by train) in a blizzard and refused to cancel plans, I played in the snow (a rousing game of “throw snowballs at the crack house” that folks at the Prudential Center in Newark were playing while they were outside smoking or keeping the smokers company, as I was), I dealt with driving and parking in the snow just fine without having much trouble digging out, even though I have a far less snow-friendly car these days, and I even shovelled snow, because I wanted to, rather than because I had to. (In truth, I felt bad for the poor kids that my complex hired to clean the snow; people were being downright abusive to them.) My back paid for it a little, because I’m not used to those muscles being used, but I needed the exercise anyway. I also managed to just shut out the worries and all my usually-racing thoughts and just enjoy looking at how beautiful the snow was. Probably my best snow experience since the twin blizzards of ‘95-early ‘96.

I also managed to face a pretty bad medical diagnosis (osteoarthritis) with a pretty good attitude, even after hearing the words “I hope that God cures you” from the totally useless orthopedist I saw. It’s an initial diagnosis, and I’ll probably get some more opinions even though I’m pretty sure I’ve been dealing with this since the ’90s on some level, but I’m in good spirits because I have a good idea of what I’m dealing with now, what I’m not dealing with, and how to proceed. Not fun, but far from the end of the world.

The bad:

Just more procrastination. I’ve been inching toward getting some things done, but everything takes a lot longer than it should for me. No new points to deduct for this, as it’s the same shit I’ve been wading through for the previous 5 weeks.

(Side note, totally unrelated to this discussion: I dreamed about writing this at some point in the past couple years.)

On the horizon:

I’m supposed to travel to New York tonight to see friends, again with snow on the horizon. I love spending time with people, but I get so anxious about the process of doing it. Working out travel/parking, paying for things, dealing with the weather in this case, you name it.

I’ve also got some major, major bureaucratic fuckery on the plate for this week.

All of this happens by the end of the business day on Wednesday, so I’m going to have to resist the urge to accomplish nothing for the rest of the week once it’s done with. Stay tuned.

Hallmark:

Email: info@hallmark.com

Or call them at 1-800-HALLMARK

(While you’re at it, tell them that my mom is pissed as hell that they keep fucking with the Hallmark Channel line-up, especially because they took “The Waltons” and “Walker, Texas Ranger” off. Might be a different division, but that’s really not our problem, is it?)

De Beers:

clientservices@debeers.com

Or call them (toll-free this year!) at 1 (888) 376 9230

If you have suggestions for customer service emails/phone numbers of companies that belong in my annual announcement (I actually like florists and flowers, so I usually give them a pass), let me know.

Have fun!