With the last of the Time Trotters riding off to the welcoming sunset of unemployment, I'm doing my best to stay ahead of the trend. On Monday I'll be starting up at my new gig, months of Call of Duty-filled joblessness finally coming to a close.

And while I will always remember the fall of 2007 as an enjoyable old mess of new video games, Boston life, and a roller coaster of job hunting, 2008 is looking to be pretty sweet.

Where will I be working, you ask? As a quick attempt at cross-site promotion, I encourage everybody to visit my internet blournal, DoofyCrap.com. Tomorrow I'll write about my rad new place of business over there. A quick hint: it perfectly combines so many of my interests it's scary. Not too many suspects to pick from, I bet some of you can figure it out in a hurry.

Best of luck to Ryan, and see you all at Doofy HQ!

- Rich

PS: If somebody at GameSpot Live wouldn't mind publishing the ol' Time Trotters to the site, I would greatly appreciate it. Too much of too many people's hard work in that baby to see it hidden away forever! I'm not asking for fanfare or anything, just put it up all sly-like to the Shaolin Style gamespace. My extended family (and of course the GameSpot faithful) would love to see it, thanks!

Hey y'all!

As is becoming the fashion around here, my internet words and thoughts have a new home. A little place I like to call DoofyCrap.com. I'm going to try and keep it structured with a general theme of internet doofiness. Stop on by, leave some comments, and check out the raddest Portal-themed Christmas present of all time.

I'll be updating the site daily, at least until I get a job.

See you there!

-Rich

Once upon a time, I heard Jeff Gerstmann introduce himself as "Jeff GameSpot." A simple slip of the tongue that occurred off-camera, yet will forever be preserved in my mind as a symbol of the man's love and dedication to this web site, his co-workers, and the trusting audience we shared.

Jeff (and Tim) Will Rock Again

We will probably never learn all of the facts that led to the "why" of his departure, but the timing of the "how" is egregious enough to warrant such an amazing uproar. Right after the big review push is over, just before the warm and fuzzy holiday break, and with no chance for a friendly send-off episode or two. It all feels mean, and sad.

Voiced by Jeff

Part of me wishes I was still there, but I'm positive there are plenty of my friends saying the things I would like to be saying in those inevitable managerial explanation sessions. Jeff will be fine, yet I sympathize greatly with those left with the difficult choice of "kicking" (following one's moral compass out the door) or "sticking" (paying that San Francisco rent in a tough economy).

Run!

That said, I can speak from personal experience that there is no better time for a gaming fan to be unemployed, and if anybody wants to join me for some therapeutic Call of Duty, I'll see you online.

-Rich

Chute Out!

I'm paraphrasing, but once upon a time a wise-ish man said "Only the jobless will have enough time to play all of 2007's great new games!" Well the onslaught has barely begun and I shall emphatically declare said statement untrue. My 360 and I have been working overtime through two runs of the pretty-much-what-I-expected-it-to-be Halo 3 (once on normal difficulty by myself, a second co-op playthrough on legendary with World Famous Ben Coello), a second completion (yes, all of it) of the always-addictive Puzzle Quest, and a too-brief evening with the Portals, yet the games keep coming!

Sprinkled throughout all of this, I have been inching my way through BioShock. The combination of a beautiful environment that demands study of every nook, cranny, and object with haunting sound, creepy lighting tricks, and an abundance of needle usage... let's just say that game is taking me forever. I would like to blame this crawl of time on my desire to explore through and gaze upon every corner of Rapture, but I'll admit to pausing the game for twenty minutes here and there for a much-needed cooling down period. That game makes me tense, like all the time!

I'll get through it soon, though, I have to. November's looming and a whole mess of games (and birthday presents) are coming with it. I'm almost upset that Call of Duty 4 is getting here first. Coello and I spent over 24 hours each just playing the beta, how will we ever put down the retail version? And horror of horrors, what will happen when I get a job?

In case anybody is curious on that front, although Wikipedia thinks I'm a media consultant, in reality I have had some interviews with various interesting (and interested) employers, with more scheduled for the days ahead. Weekend before last, in fact, I found myself surrounded by cameras and lights once again - completely on accident! Fellow New Englanders will recognize the above title of this entry as the slogan for the legendary chain of retail majesty known as the Christmas Tree Shops. I think the best way to describe the CTS would be a regional amalgam of Target, Pier 1, and those specialty decoration stores that show up during various holidays - yet in this case open year-round. Or in a word: Awesome.

For as long as I can remember, New England television has been home to an unchanging formula of Christmas Tree Shops commercials: Cameras follow customers around a store as they candidly shop. The customers share their amazement over how cheap everything is, and after thirty seconds somebody says "Don't You Just Love a Bargain!" Watch this, then imagine my special lady and me in place of the women shown, with picture frames and clothes hangers instead of cast iron birds and porch laundry baskets.

It was a bizarre experience, and I have no idea if we'll even make the final cut. One can only hope? We were plenty fun and enthusiastic throughout, but slightly underdressed. The funniest part of the whole experience was when I tried telling the on-scene producers that I had been on camera several times before. "Some stuff on the internet," I explained. They just laughed like I was joking. Or five years old. Oh well.

I've got to get back to BioShock (so I can finally have time for the rest of the Orange Box), but I'll keep you posted on my job status/budding commercial career. Maybe next time I'll tell you the story about how it might be my fault that Jack Black is starring in Tim Schafer/Double Fine's new game (I apologize for nothing), or share a list of movies that I finally started to like after seeing them on TV for the 300th time (quick preview: the new Star Warses are still trash)!

Go Sox!

Rich

Hey Everybody!

In between all the cardboard boxes that need unpacking, particle board furniture that needs assembling, and Call of Duty 4 beta-ers that need sniping, I figured I should take a break and share some pictures from my recent journey eastward. My special lady requested I maintain her secret identity, so all you're getting is a bunch of me and a bunch of stories. Our first leg was a sprint to Colorado:

This is Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes, Colorado. It was wicked tall. The elevation didn't seem like that much of a problem... after a small period of adjustment. My uncle let me in on the secret to the small informational signs placed every 50 feet along our trail - they're there so you can pretend to be reading about plants and birds and wind and whatnot, while using that as an opporunity to gasp for breath. Estes Park was also home to the hotel from The Shining. Not that big a fan of the movie, but the hotel is surprisingly not-remote. There's a Starbucks right across the street from it. We spent several days in Colorado, before heading up through Wyoming to Montana and then...

Outside the Buffalo City Grille in Jamestown, North Dakota. This might have been our favorite stop on the whole trip. After learning the Holiday Inn along the highway was booked, we drove into downtown Jamestown and discovered a nice lil' area. We stayed in the Lewis and Clark Outpost Suite at the Gladstone Inn & Suites. I'm serious. The aforementioned Grille was awesome, best restaurant of the trip. While eating a giant rib eye steak, our dinner entertainment was provided by Jamestown's lonely youth cruising by in their fast and furious dodge neons and camaros, while at the next table the chamber of commerce tried to convince Honda reps from Japan that they should bring a dealership to town. And they should! In the above picture I am ecstatic as the train that runs between our hotel and the restaurant flattens several pennies we had left on the tracks. Pretty exciting, right? Yet Jamestown had more to offer us the next morning...

The National Buffalo Museum! Home of the world's largest buffalo! Statue! And White Cloud, the world's only genetically confirmed albino buffalo! Apparently she gave birth to another albino buffalo a week or two ago and everything. We couldn't find her, so this all may be a lie. Don't get me wrong, Jamestown was way awesome, but we maybe spent three waking hours there. Four tops. Enough to buy a magnet and move on to South Dakota, southern Minnesota, and...

Is this heaven? No, it's just a cornfield. A cornfield full of awesome baseball playing ghosts! What you are gazing upon is the very spot from which Shoeless Joe Jackson emerged in the immortal film, Field of Dreams. Well, maybe not the exact spot. It's in the outfield, close enough. The baseball field created for the filming of the movie back in 1989 is still intact in Dyersville, Iowa. We stopped there, played some catch, quoted the movie... good times had by all. Here's a strange fact for ya: The infield, right field, and house are all owned by a mom and pop-type operation. Center and left field were owned by another farmer, who sold out to some investment group. Two different roads to the field, two different parking lots, and two different souvenir stands. Of course, the investment group's souvenir stand is indoors and air conditioned and full of nice stuff. Ma and pa, their place is a little more dusty, but it's got the charm and they have to pay more for upkeep! We bought some t-shirts from them, yet saw many people actually drive out of one parking lot and turn back down the other driveway to buy stuff from the bad guys. The driveways run parallel to each other and are maybe 10 feet apart. I'm serious. You know what they say: If you build it, people are dumb. Regardless, the field was an awful nice spot to play catch. Next stop:

The House on the Rock. Let's just say this place looked into our souls, and we blinked. Utterly fascinating/horrifying. If you are anywhere near Spring Green, Wisconsin, with many hours to kill and possess an iron will for crap, go there. Anybody else, just look at the web site. Or read American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Burned out on middle america's doofy crap, we made one last stop in Chicago before high-tailing to the sunny shores of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. We stopped in scenic Batavia, New York, looking for a cheap hotel/motel for a night, only to find the entire town was booked solid by the bands featured in the Warped Tour. Yes, it's still going on. No, I didn't know that either. And after looking at their site, I'm pretty sure I don't know any of the bands. Wait, that's a lie. I think K-os was in an SSX soundtrack, and MC Chris once closed for Midnight Brown. I saw that. So yeah, we made it to Massachusetts and the front of our car looked like this:

Those all bugs. Gross, right? The whole front of the car looked like that. And in case you were wondering how my road beard turned out:

Not bad for 2-3 weeks. I forgot what it was like to not shave. It's nice. And oh yeah, neon's making a comeback. You heard it here first. That t-shirt is from the Dakota Drive-In, located in bee-ootiful Hankinson, North Dakota. I recommend the California burger.

So that's the trip! 4,200 miles of California to Nevada to Utah to Wyoming to Colorado to Wyoming to North Dakota to South Dakota to Minnesota to Iowa to Wisconsin to Illinois to Indiana to Ohio to Pennsylvania to New York to Massachusetts. I recommend that every should drive across the country at least once in their lives, it makes the whole place seem a lot smaller. Live and die by those blue signs on the highway at each exit, the ones proclaiming food and lodging options. Make the time to follow silly billboards. How else would one find the Mustard Museum in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin? Besides clicking on that link, I guess.

Not too much to share with y'all otherwise! Special lady is enjoying law school, and I'm periously close to falling behind all that is video games. Just finished The Darkness, it was solid. Tried playing BioShock, but after ten minutes my guy had already injected himself with needles 5 times, something I'm not too cool with. I'll get back to it one day when I'm feeling up to it. For the moment I'm too busy looking for a job and playing the Call of Duty 4 beta with Ben Coello. Maybe a little too much of the latter, and not enough of the former. Probably. And hey, how bad is that Halo 3 ad? I hear there's more than one, but I finally saw my first one last night during the Patriots game. Just a bunch of slow motion camera over what looked like a fan-made diorama-rama. I had to go online to figure out what the heck was going on. Neat idea, I guess, but just an awful ad.

Back to the boxes for me. I'd like to thank everybody once again for all the well-wishes you sent my way back in July. Hope you liked the pictures, and I'll see you around!

-Rich

Bonus picture! Me with the giant animatronic Wally the Green Monster at Jordan's Furniture in Reading, Mass. Everybody from New England knows what I'm talking about. Everybody else, you don't know what you're missing...