How to Buy A Car According to Me

I just bought a new car. This was a new experience for me. My previous car endeavors were:

1) At 17, I had saved up about $1000 to put toward a car. Just after I got my license, I very quickly bought the first cheap, decent car I could find: a 1989 Ford Escort Pony. This was a two door hatch that was one level below the Economy model. It had no power windows, no power steering, no AC, and was a four speed manual. I couldn't drive manual at the time, so I couldn't test drive it. My mom lent me another $1000, and I bought it for $2000. She did the actual buying as a surprise. I drove that car until the wheels fell off. No, really, the suspension went at one point, and I was just kind of clunking around back there.

2) After the Escort died, I got a hand-me-down 1996 Dodge Caravan. Yup, I was the hip 20something cruising around in a sweet white minivan. It was handy for moving and for road trips, but didn't give me any actual buying experience.

So the time came a few weeks ago to buy a car on my own. Throughout this process, I was constantly amazed that They let me do adult things like buy a new car all on my own. I kept waiting for them to realize that there was no way I should be allowed to do stuff like this and send me home, but they didn't.

I had no idea of how the whole process worked. Having skillfully negotiated a 40% discount on the mattress I bought, I figured I was able to negotiate, but didn't really want to. I also had no clue about the mechanics of comparing actual prices, or even how you deal with getting plates and insurance on a car you don't own yet.

So I did what any enterprising geek would do: I consulted The Interweb. I learned a lot, and wound up feeling pretty confident that I got a good deal. I'm feeling magnanimous, so I want to pass my learning on to you. I'm a good guy like that. Here's what I now know, in a handy numbered list.

1) The Interweb Knows All, and is Your Best Friend

Seriously, plan on spending several days reading everything you can find about car buying. The two main sites I used were Edmunds and carbuyingtips. Edmunds is kind of a one-stop-shop for car buying. They have reviews on just about everything, and a million articles on every aspect of buying, financing, insuring, driving, and selling a car. They'll pretty much walk you though the process from beginning to end. Car Buying Tips is way less professional, but it's got a sort of beatnik charm, and even more good info on buying a car.

2) You Buy A Car on Your Terms, Not Theirs

When I first started this, I was extremely intimidated about dealing with salesmen and dealerships. As I read more, I realized that I was only intimidated about going into a situation where I didn't know enough to resist being taken. This is why you do #1. Once you've done #1, you'll have the confidence to know what questions to ask, what options are available, and what you can expect to pay.

Once you know those things, going to the dealership becomes a whole different experience. They're no longer going to get you to buy a car, you're going to allow them to sell you a car. Moreover, you're only going to allow them to sell you the car that you want, with the features you want, at a price that you find acceptable. If they can't or won't do these things, there is another dealership who will be happy to. The sales guys work for you, not the other way around, and they're way more interested in selling you a car than you are in buying one from them. If they do anything that makes you uncomfortable or feel like you need a shower, you can and should tell them to stop, or just walk away. You don't even have to feel bad about it.

3) Figure Out What You Need, What You Want, and What You Don't Care About

Do this step before you start looking at cars. Don't form the list based on what's on a specific car. Figure out what you want, and that will tell you what cars to look at. For example, my needs were good fuel economy, under $20,000, new, and able to handle an MP3 player with little fuss. My wants were something decent to drive, capable of carrying a moderate amount of crap occasionally, and something that looked good. I didn't care about being able to do a j-turn at 80, it being big, or being able to transport a full apartment's worth of stuff. Based on that list, I went back to Step 1 and started comparing vehicles on the interweb.

4) Narrow It Down to a List of ~5

There are a ton of cars out there. By using your list from #4, you should be able to immediately dismiss most of them. You can then look at the available cars in your price range, their reviews, and their available feature sets. Remember that the "starting price" that manufacturers advertise is usually for the super base model with a manual transmission. If you can't/won't drive stick, pretty much add $1000 to that right off to get an automatic. Then remember that if you, for example, want the hatchback version, that's usually more expensive too. The sweet sound system is probably extra, and sometimes there's even an extra charge for different paint colors.

Also be aware of which cars have "upgraded" versions that really have nothing of value. For example, I was looking at the Honda Fit. It came in base and sport models. The sport model added some body kit stuff like a spoiler (highly useful in stop and go traffic), alloy wheels, and fog lamps. This cost an extra $1000. Being able to write that kind of stuff off is very handy. When you're looking at options, make sure that the options you want don't push the price above your range.

The final result of this step should be a list of five or fewer cars, a rough idea of what options you'd want on each, and what options you don't want. Note that going price isn't really something you need to worry about quite yet. Since you're only looking at cars in your price range, you should be able to afford any of the ones you're interested in with the options you want.

5) Time to Drive Some Cars!

Here it is, the moment where you have to interact with a sales person. This should not intimidate you at this point. Why? Because you already know at least as much about the cars you're looking at as they do. If they're bullshitting you about something, you'll know. Using The Interweb, pull up a list of dealers for each of the cars on your list, use the contact info on the dealer website, and schedule a test drive. Try and schedule them all for the same day so that you can compare each of the cars while it's fresh in your head. Dealers should be happy to accommodate your schedule. If they're not, call a different dealer. Tell them exactly what type of car you're looking at, and if you have a manual/automatic preference, ask if your preferred type is available. Sometimes manuals are hard to find.

On the day of, remember one thing: You ARE NOT BUYING A CAR TODAY. You know this, and you should tell them as well. Even better, tell them you are looking at multiple cars today, but making a decision within X timeframe. You want them to know you're a For Real Buyer, let them know they're in active competition, and give them a chance to tell you why theirs is better than the others. Of course, you already know these differences, but this gives them a chance to offer to throw in extra stuff to make up the differences. However, remember: YOU ARE NOT BUYING A CAR TODAY. If one of them offers you a killer price, ask for it in writing, and tell them you'll think about it because YOU ARE NOT BUYING A CAR TODAY.

On the test drive, they're going to have a preferred route. This route may be a good mix of street and highway driving, allow you to get the car up to speed, and see how it handles. This route may be four right turns to go around the block. If the route sucks, ask to stay out and try it in Condition X. If they won't let you, finish your drive and car inspection, and then don't go back. On the test drive, play the radio, see how everything feels, stop short a time or two, accelerate fast, and take a corner too sharp. You want to get a good sense for how the car handles. After the drive, play with the electronics. If the car has fancy phone hookups, ask the salesdude to let you pair your phone to make sure it works. Sit in the back and make sure you're okay with subjecting passengers to it. Fold down seats, open trunks, etc. Basically, find anything that will bug you later. Ask about the availability of the combination of options you want. It's possible that the moon roof you want is really hard to find in the color you want. Find out what it would take to get the options you want. File all this info away.

6) Compare Notes

Okay, you're now home from the test drives. You've got a mental (or paper, if you're super organized) list of notes about each car. If you're lucky one or more had dealbreaker elements that will just remove them from your list. Hopefully one or two will kind of rise to the top. After my test drives, I realized that while the Fit did have enormous cargo capacity, I just didn't like the way it looked, and the electronics paled in comparison to the other cars I drove, so that got nixed.

Once you've got it down to one or two, review all your research. If necessary, schedule a second test drive. Make sure that you know what you're looking for. It may also be worth calling your insurance agent at this point to get rate quotes on the finalists. One might be much more expensive to insure than the other. Also compare some online rate quotes as a reality check.

7) Talkin' 'bout Benjamins

Now that you've got it down to one or two options (one is better, but two is okay too), it's time to figure out how much you should be expecting to actually spend. The two best resources I found were Edmunds again, and Drive Your Dream.

First, I'm going to give a quick lesson in car pricing, gleaned from Edmunds and other sources. Cars have multiple prices. First is sticker, or MSRP. This is what Ford, Toyota, etc want you to pay, and put the price in the window. You should not pay this in most cases. Next is invoice price. This is what the dealer pays to get the car on the lot. In broad terms, this is more like what you should pay (but not really). It's not advertised, but easy to find online, and the salesmen will frequently volunteer it. Third is holdback. This is (roughly) a percentage of invoice that the manufacturer gives to the dealer to cover interest on the car for the first 90 days it's on the lot. This is why dealers are willing to sell at or below invoice: the faster they can sell a car after getting it in inventory, the bigger chunk of that holdback they can pocket. It also means that after 90 days, it's costing them money for that car to sit there, so they may get more eager to clear it out and get another car (with a new holdback payment) in instead.

On to actual pricing research. Edmunds provides what they call True Market Value. You pull up the make and model of a car, add your desired options, and it checks against recent completed sales in your area to give you a range of what that car is actually selling for right now. It will also tell you the Invoice price, and will show you any active incentives that apply to the car. The end result is a nice round number that represents a good, achievable deal. This is a good target number to keep in mind when talking price, but it isn't a hard and fast rule. You can do better than this number.

Drive Your Dream is run by zag.com. Zag basically lets you avoid negotiation. You pick your car and options, and then zag will give you a list of dealers with pre-negotiated prices for each. The deal is that you can pick a price and dealer, print out a form from the website, walk in, and get that car for that price. The prices are generally pretty competitive, but the nice part is that they're guaranteed. You can definitely get that price from that dealer, which is a good card to have in your back pocket when talking to dealers.

8) Giving Them Your Money

Before you start talking money with dealers, figuring out how you're going to pay is a good idea. You can pay cash (if you're rich), you can get independent financing, or you can finance at the dealer. Leasing is another option, but I'm ignoring it because I'm only worrying about buying.

First is to figure out how much of a down payment you can afford. I think the general rule is to plan on 20% down at least. More is better. That combined with the target price from your research, plus tax/title/and fees will give you how much you're going to need to borrow.

Next, you need to know your credit score. If you don't have it already, go to Annual Credit Report, and run your free annual report from all three bureaus. This will give you your reports. You'll also have the option to pay cashy money to get your actual numerical score. This is probably a good idea to do. It doesn't cost much, and it's a pretty vital bit of info. Check over your reports and make sure nothing looks wonky. If it does, get it fixed, because your financing rate will be based on these reports.

Credit score in hand, check with your bank, credit union, online lenders, etc to get an idea of what kind of financing rates you can expect, and on what term loan. Do the math of dividing the amount you're borrowing by the number of months in the loan times the % rate to figure out what your monthly payment will be. Knowing both what you can afford and what payment you're expecting is important info. If one of the lenders has an attractive rate, go for a pre-approval as long as you have the option to not take the loan. You want to leave your options open.

Dealer financing can be better, worse, or on par with outside financing. It's possible they can give you an awesomely low rate, in which case go for it. It's possible they'll match the outside rates, but offer you additional cash incentives. It's possible their financing will be worse, at which point you can just use your preapproved loan to pay. Having options and knowledge can only help in price talk.

The trade in. I didn't trade in, so I don't have first-hand knowledge. However, prevailing wisdom is to deal with the trade in completely separately from the new vehicle price. The dealers you talk to will ask about your old car like vultures circling a fresh corpse. Stay non-committal. When you get to talking price, talk about the price for the new car, and once that's settled, talk about trade in price. Find out the blue book value for your trade in so you have an idea of what to expect when you start talking price, and factor that into your mental money wrangling.

9) An Offer You Can Certainly Refuse

Here comes the part I was initially dreading, but eventually found to be fine: negotiating a price. The most important thing to remember is that you are going to be negotiating price, NOT NOT NOT monthly payment. Negotiating monthly payment opens up all kinds of funny ways for them to adjust things in their favor. Talk price FIRST, and then deal with method of payment (ie financing) second.

Here's where we turn back to our friend The Interweb. Find a handful of dealers nearby, and look for the contact info for the Internet/Fleet Sales guy. If you can't find it, call and ask for it. This is the guy you want to talk to. He knows that people coming to him are both informed (from all your Interweb Reasearchin') and likely shopping for the best price. Email the various Internet guys, tell them that you're very close to purchasing Vehicle X with Options A, B, C, in Colors X, Y, Z, and you're looking for their best bottom line price. Make sure to include the dealer/salesman that gave you the test drive, because it's the nice thing to do (unless he was a slimy git, in which case ignore him).

This will hopefully result in several offers coming back to you. Assuming the best ones are at or below your mental Target Price, and include the features you want, email the guys with the #2 and 3 offers and tell them that Dealer Q gave you Price J, and can they beat that? Basically, play them off against each other. This is an awesome game to play because there is absolutely no downside for you. Continue this until you get to a price that nobody else is willing to beat. This is your price. Email the winner back and make sure that this is the actual out-the-door price with all fees included, and ask that the fees be itemized. Check the list for anything that looks funny and ask him about it. Sometimes there are junk fees on there that can be removed. Hopefully there aren't.

10) So Close and Yet...

You're almost done. Once you've got a sale price set, you may need to talk trade in. This is also when you can find out what the dealer can do for you on financing. Again, if you've done your research, there should be no surprises here: you know the approximate going % rate, you know your credit score, you know how long you're planning to borrow for, and you know the sale amount. If you get a better deal than you were expecting from dealer financing, take it, but don't be afraid to turn it down and take outside financing. How you're paying should not affect the sale price, and if it does, you leave and go to the #2 offer on your list.

At some point, you're going to have to sit down with the finance guy, who will try and sell you on extended warranties, undercoating, etc. There are a few ways to handle this. First, you can ask the sales guy ahead of time for a list of the things the finance guy is going to offer. If he hesitates, threaten to walk, and he'll probably give it up. Then do some research on each item and figure out if it's something you actually want. Second, you can go in, hear the pitch, and find out how long you have to add any interesting items on after the fact, since there is likely a window. Third, go with your gut.

Now, some stuff like undercoating is an obvious sucker bet. Extended warranties are much more subjective. If you expect to only drive the car for a few years, or if you have a reliable mechanic, the warranty may be a bad idea. If you lack those things, and would rather just have everything "taken care of", then it's a good idea. Like any insurance policy, buying one is you betting that the car will break down in the warranty period and cost more to fix than the cost of the warranty, and they're betting that it won't. Whether you make that bet is entirely up to you, but I don't think that the warranties are necessarily the snake oil some folk make them out to be.

The big thing is to not allow yourself to be pressured into making a decision on the spot. It's very unlikely that anything the finance guy offers you is a "now or never" proposition. If he really does say "now or never," pick "never", and see what happens. Either it suddenly won't be "now or never", or you probably didn't need it anyway.

If you go with dealer financing, make sure you take a careful look at all the numbers. Make sure the sale price is what you agreed to, make sure that your down payment is properly applied, that there are no surprise fees, the % rate is correct and for the right number of months, etc. Also verify that there's no early payment penalty. If you win the lottery or something, being able to pay off the loan early just saves you interest. If all the numbers look as you expected, congrats, you just bought a car.

11) The Details

Now it's down to paperwork. In MA, you need to give the dealer your insurance agent's name and number so that they can coordinate getting the car added to your policy. You'll want to contact the agent yourself to let them know that you're about to buy Car X so they'll be expecting the call from the dealer. The dealer will also likely take care of the DMV stuff for you. There's a fee to do this, or you can do it yourself, but I say the small amount of money is totally worth it to avoid DMV lines.

On the day you take delivery, plan on spending 30-60 minutes at least. You'll have about a billion pieces of paper to sign first off (including possibly one of the biggest checks you've written). The sales dude will also want to give you a final tour of the car, though it's very possible you already did this on the test drive. Take a walk around the car and make sure there's no dings or anything else, and if there are, get them to take care of it. This is now your very expensive thing, and why shouldn't it be perfect when you get it, Bob dammit. Then drive away. Try very hard not to crash it immediately as you pull it off the lot. Or at any point afterward, for that matter.

In Conclusion

The biggest surprise I had during this experience was how painless it was. I directly attribute that to going into every interaction with Sales Dudes armed to the teeth with info, and not being shy about letting them know that. Not all sales guys are slimy (and I actually found one who was very not slimy), but they are out to make money, and they can do that best when dealing with an uninformed customer. Once you make it clear that you are NOT one of those (by not being one of those), they're forced to deal with you differently.

The other major benefit of being well informed is that you know what a good deal looks like, due to your Magical Mental Price Number, and that you can always walk away from a bad deal and find a better deal. That said, if a really GOOD deal pops up, since you know it's a good deal, you'll be able to jump on it and make out like a bandit. The trick is to go in with a plan and a goal, but be flexible enough to take what's offered if it benefits you.

The end of my story was that I actually didn't need to do a bunch of internet price wars. After my round of test drives, I found the car I was looking for with the options I wanted on a dealer's website five miles from me and advertised with an already-attractive price around my Mental Number. Went in, drove it, liked it, and told the guy I was willing to talk price, but that my plan was to shop the deal around. Without any screwing around, he offered me a price that was $1100 below invoice, and $900 below what I was expecting to pay based on my researched price. I got the number in writing, and then next day gave the previous dealer I'd visited a chance to beat it. When he couldn't, I bought me a car.

Could I have gotten a better deal? Possibly, though I doubt a much better deal, since the price I got handily beat all the other numbers I'd seen. Basically, I got a price I was very happy with on the car I wanted. Ultimately, being able to brag to your buddies about how you totally took the dealer for a ride is a bad game. All you really need is to be able to say that you did your research, and got a deal that you're happy with. Here's the end result of all this for me:

Dr. Thinchuck or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Band

This is a hard thing for me to admit, especially in a public forum like this, but here goes:

I can no longer think of myself as a fat, out of shape tub of crap.

I'm probably more surprised than anyone. I've always been a non-active nerd. I never played sports in school, I never really paid much attention to what I ate, and I certainly never exercised regularly. Sure, I tried a few times over the years, but I always found some excuse to stop after a few weeks of working out. So how the hell did this happen?

It started last fall. Due to a bunch of different factors, I started a period of "accidental, bad weight loss." The exact reasons aren't worth getting into at this point, but I found that over a two month period or so, I dropped from about 210 lbs down to around 185.

Don't light into me about that. I'm totally aware that it's unhealthy, and I stopped dropping weight like that in January. What was important was that for the first time in forever, I saw an actual, visible difference in how I looked. This convinced me that if I could do that accidentally, I could probably get similar results if I actually put in some effort. I was also in a self improvement kick at the time. The result was that I bought a copy of one of those fitness video game programs (EA Sports Active 2, to be precise).

A few things I've learned about myself and exercising. I've never done well when I have to go somewhere to exercise. I also don't do well if I feel like exercise is replacing part of my regular routine. And I don't like having to research workouts and figure out what to do on my own.

What the game did was make it so I could work out in my living room, and had a built in set of exercise programs, so it functions like a workout video, but with variety. The last, vital bit was that I decided to start waking up earlier to do my workout so that my regular morning routine would remain mostly unchanged. I'd just be sweatier.

In mid January, I started using the game. The first thing it asks is whether you want to do a 3 week cardio program, or a 9 week full body program. I hesitated, and almost picked the 3 week one, figuring I was more likely to finish 3 weeks instead of 9. But I found myself saying "screw it, let's DO THIS!", and I picked the 9 week program. It then told me to pick four days for scheduled workouts, and then told me to get off my ass and start moving.

Move I did. I was pretty well beat after the first workout. But I showed up for the second, getting up at 6:15am to do it. And the third, and the fourth. I quickly learned that the fourth workout of the week was always the Workout from Hell. It was a brutal combination of exercises that focused almost entirely on my legs that was frankly pretty frustrating by the end. Still, I showed up, cursing at my TV, but there and sweating.

Then, in mid-February, I got laid off. Now I had tons of time on my hands. I shocked myself by thinking "Well, now there's no reason I shouldn't do a workout every day." So I did. At the advice of a personal trainer friend, I saved a custom built workout that was designed to demolish my triceps and shoulders, and did that on my "off days" from the program.

You know what happened? I got into a habit. I actually managed to get past that wall of "oh God, this sucks and I just want to die, what if I just slashed my resistance band into itty bitty pieces that'd sure show it uppity resistance band" and into "oh God, this sucks, but there's only 20 minutes left, and I'll feel fine afterward" and finally into "man, I wish my arms felt more tired right now". I also started to notice that I was able to see results. I lost another few inches off my waist, and started to see a bit of definition. Holy crap. The most surprising thing about that though, was that my immediate reaction was to try and figure out how I could step things up to see more results.

So yesterday marked the last workout in my 9 week program. I actually managed to work out at least 4 times a week for 9 weeks straight. You know what I did to celebrate? Went out and bought some 10lb weights, and at the recommendation of a Trusted Advisor, ordered some protein shake mix. I'm not ready to call myself "in shape", but I'm not far off, and I fully plan on getting there.

Since numbers are fun, here's some stats according to the game (I can't vouch for their accuracy, but they seem reasonable):

Workouts completed: 54

Time spent exercising: 28 hours, 19 minutes

Calories burned: 10362

Distance run (in my living room, so boring): 35.92 miles

Average heart rate: 139

Current weight: 173

So there it is. I'm lighter than I've been in years, and definitely in better shape than I've ever been. I'm being conscious of what I'm eating. I'm stepping up my existing workout program, and am going to start running when the weather warms up. I may actually not be embarrassed to be seen in my bathing suit this summer. I feel pretty okay too.

Basically, this is fucking weird.

Please remain seated

This is going to be odd. I'm about to complain about something that I probably shouldn't. It's entirely possible that I come off like Andy Rooney sitting on his front porch yelling at the kids with their cell phones to get off his damn lawn. I apologize in advance.

There are way too many standing ovations given these days. Can you think of the last time you went to a concert where at least half the audience didn't stand at the end? I sure can't. It's just plain gotten out of hand.

It used to be that standing ovations were given for either extremely important people (the emperor enters), or for performances or feats that were so amazing that the audience was moved to rise from their seats and cheer. It took some kind of special performance to get that kind of reaction. I can't even remember the last time I was so impressed with something that I had to get out of my seat. Maybe I'm just lazy, but in my head, standing ovations are meant to be uncommon or even rare events.

These days though, you can't escape the standing ovation. It's almost expected. They're never the Hollywood "audience leaps to its feet as one" thing either. What usually happens is that one person eventually stands, then another, and another until most people are standing. I think the later people stand out of obligation, or maybe because they can't see now that the jerk in front of them stood up.

That kind of ovation just isn't the same. It seems like a combination of obligation, herd mentality, and wanting to be seen to appreciate art.

As a performer, I want to get a standing ovation. I want my performance to be so moving that the audience is compelled to stand when it's done. I don't want the audience to clap for a while, think about it, look around to see if anyone else is standing, then eventually stand because someone else is.

So next time you're at a performance, think before you stand. Maybe even close your eyes. If the performance moved you to, stand right away, no matter if anyone else is. But if you don't feel moved to stand, don't. Applaud as long and as loud as you want, but don't stand just because someone else is. Standing after a performance should say to the performer "you moved me". The performer won't mind not getting a standing ovation, I promise. Really, we're just glad that you came and liked it enough to clap in the first place.

I've become that which I hate

If you don't live in Boston or one of the other old-growth cities with narrow streets, few driveways, and lots of snow, you might be unfamiliar with the tradition of claiming your on street parking spot using a placed object. The traditional things are road cones or folding chairs, but weirder stuff like hockey sticks, kitchen garbage cans, or busts of Jesus are common too.

Actually, the Jesus bust is kind of brilliant. Who's gonna steal a spot from Jesus?

I generally dislike the whole thing. It's a street spot, right? Why do you get to keep it?

Well, now I know why. This is my first winter where I have to use street parking. Previously, I've always had a driveway, but no more. I've quickly learned that it's a different world, and today, I did what I swore I'd never do. I carried a porch chair to the street, pulled out, and gravely, solemnly, placed it in my vacated spot. A single tear rolled down my cheek as I drove away.

What could have driven me to such lengths? Such horror? Such depravity?

Two things. First, I've cleared that spot out many times now. Boston has gotten a metric ass ton of snow this year, and none of it has melted. Every time, I go out and clear the car out whether I plan on driving or not. This is because my fair city ticketed me once for not clearing my car off. It's frankly a pain to clear a street parking spot. You have to remove snow on the car, in front and behind, and then clear out all that compacted snow that the plows left all down the side. That's a special brand of crappy.

Aside from the physical labor, there's another problem that you don't have to deal with when you have a driveway: parking spaces vanish in the winter. If there's an empty spot when the snow hits, that spot is gone forever. Best case scenario, it doesn't get plowed. Either someone will drive into it, turning it into a mess of compacted, icy snow, or the snow will just pile up until someone wants it bad enough to shovel it. Worst case, it gets plowed under. Once a snow plow decides to push a pile of road snow into a space, it's gone forever until the snow all melts.

My street has currently lost about 70% of its available parking spots to mammoth snow drifts. That means that when I drive somewhere, there's a pretty good chance that when I come back, I simply won't have somewhere to park on my street. And since all the streets around are having the same problem, I can't guarantee that I'll be able to park anywhere.

So I save my spot with a chair while I run to the grocery store. It's not for convenience, or some sense of territoriality or ownership. I just want to be able to park somewhere when I get back. If you drive by and see my chair, don't be mad at me. I hate what I've had to resort to. We're both victims of a capricious god and a city that isn't able to handle comprehensive snow removal.

Maybe I should look for a Buddy Christ statue to hold my spot. Then at least my spot will be saved with a smile.

I'd like a re-torial, please

Sometime in the spring of last year, I finally started playing the excellent real time strategy game Dawn of War II. Then I stopped. I didn't stop because the game was bad, or got me angry, or any other reason. I just stopped. I probably got distracted by something else for a few weeks.

This happens a lot with me. I've got the attention span of a small rodent most times. "Yeah, this game is awesome! I just found a new chainsword, new armor, now I'm gonna...OOH SHINY!" Then I put the game down for a while, and the death spiral begins. After a few weeks, I think "Oh, I should get back to that one." Then I think "Huh, I was about halfway through, and the missions were starting to get tough, and now I can't remember any of the controls." So I put off playing. A few weeks later, I have the same thought, except now I remember even less of the controls, so I wait again. Then it's a year later, and I barely remember what the game was about in the first place.

Most games these days start out with a tutorial. This is because most gamers are too lazy to read the manuals now. I'm not one of those, but publishers have realized that manuals are a waste, so most of them barely even include a manual. Hell, most gamers are too lazy to read two sentences on the screen, so designers have to figure out how to teach them using flashing lights and pictures. Yup, most gamers have to learn games the same way that you teach first graders to read.

After the tutorial, most games gradually ramp up the difficulty over the course of the levels, and usually add in new stuff. First you learn to jump, then how to swing a sword, then how to do a jumping slash, etc. By the middle of the game, the levels are designed with the expectation that you know how to do Things X, Y, and Z.

So what happens if you stop playing for a while, forget Y and Z and only have a hazy memory that X involved the A button? Well, most times you flail around for a while, probably get killed a few times, and hopefully most of it comes back to you. If not, you maybe consult the interwebz to figure out what you forgot. In extreme cases, it may be more worth it to just start over.

Here's where the re-torial comes in. In most serial TV dramas, there's a "previously on" to remind you what happened before since they know not everyone (who's not insane like me) will remember that tiny detail from three weeks ago that's about to be important. I want that for games too.

All the current consoles keep track of what day it is, and keeping track of the last time you played a game is pretty easy. What if the game checked how long it's been since you played last, and if it's been more than, say, two weeks, would offer you a recap? This could be both for the storyline and for controls. You set it up as a training room kind of thing, a menu of different moves you could re-learn, or a really basic mission to mess around in without interrupting your conquest of the universe.

Now, some games already offer something like this. At least a few RPGs have a "recap" section in their quest journals, and that's great. Other games offer a help section in their menus that lets you replay the tutorial sections, and that's also great. The game Alan Wake, already set up like a TV series, does a recap at the beginning of each chapter but, bizarrely, doesn't play it at the beginning of each play session.

So if you're making a game, remember us ADD gamers who might put your game down for several months, and give us a way to ease back in after we've forgotten how to play. I hate mixing up the button for "duck" with the one for "stab dude in the face so he doesn't kill me".

Two months now? Seems like the time's gone by too fast and not too fast enough. Things are different now.

I'm still standing on the edge of an expanse. The setting is different, but the emptiness is the same. I'm trying to fill it with what I can. I haven't had this much room to fill in...a long time. I'm not used to having to fill this space on my own. The possibilities should be exciting, but I'm finding them paralyzing. Too much choice can be a bad thing.

The new place is set up, and amazingly, does feel like a place I could stay for a while. That's good, and I like it there, I just wish I had someone to show it to and share it with. A victory that isn't shared isn't really a victory at all, at least in my head.

I want to fill that space with music. I'll be borrowing a friend's guitar in a few weeks, and hopefully that will give me something to do. My attention span has been almost nonexistent for the last few months, which does tend to put a crimp in filling time. I can't sit and read a book for the entire evening because I lose interest after a half hour. Same with movies, but at least with those I can let them run while my mind wanders, but even my interest in movies is pretty thin right now.

I want to make something. I want to create. I just don't have anything to say right now, which makes no sense.

I wonder why I don't take pictures. Some people take pictures all the time. I don't. At the time, I think "I'd rather just experience this than take pictures." Then I forget the experience and I'm left with nothing.

The great expanse

Here comes a post by one morose motherfucker. Feel free to eject now if you'd rather avoid that sort of thing.

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Sometimes, things change slowly. One bit of the riverbank is washed away, one snowflake shifts out of position. Slowly, over weeks, months, and years, things change. Sometimes, they never stop changing, and you only notice years later that the course of the river is different. But sometimes, the small changes add up, and the whole thing comes crashing down, altering everything in its path. The river overflows its banks, the snow comes down in an avalanche, and nothing can stop the rushing tide of change.

Sometimes, this happens in life. The rushing change may or may not be in our direct control, but sometimes they happen. I suppose the inevitability of change happening, of life happening, means that we have to be prepared when it happens.

After the flood, the landscape is different. Places that you used to know, paths you walked daily and thoughtlessly, are forever different, and some are unrecognizable. Things that you thought would always be there vanish in an instant, never to come back. The only certainty left is that you're not certain of anything any more.

I'm standing in the middle of a receding flood now. The reality of everything is still sinking in, even though the waters are still flowing. I'm not sure where to go or what to do when they're gone. There's a whole new expanse to explore. I'm human. I should want to go and explore, meet and experience. I don't though. Not yet. I want to find those old paths I used to walk, those places I loved, and stay there. I know that they're gone, washed away by the rushing waters, but my feet and my heart still look for them, because they can't do otherwise.

In time, I may convince them to stop, to finally accept, and go in search of new paths and new places. But, they tell me, we might find what we're looking for. So I'll let them look. Because part of me wants to believe that they may be right. So while I know that someday I'll stop looking, that day isn't here now. For now, I stand in this ruined place, waiting for the waters to recede, part of me clinging to a futile hope, knowing and embracing that even if I find those paths, it will take untold effort to clear and walk them again. The rest of me knows that the place I knew is gone, and that I can't stay here.

But all of me knows that during those weeks, months, and years that the river was carrying its bank away bit by bit, I sat. And watched it. And did nothing to stop it.

Captive Audiences, and the Things They Read

That thing I was working on? That thing that contributed to me assessing myself as "physically and emotionally shattered"? That thing? Yeah, that thing wrapped up last week. There was much rejoicing. The rejoicing looked and sounded very much like sleep.

Since I haven't had much time or energy to do anything since my last post, here goes a bunch of random thoughts. You, dear reader, get to deal with it. Ah, the power of the writer over his captive audience. You are captive, right? Not going anywhere?

Singing solos be hard. I'm still working on convincing myself that yeah, I really do know my part, and I should damn well sing it right, cuz nobody else is going to. I think it'll all work out in the end. Also, high E flats can go die. Everything should be at least an octave lower than that.

Which reminds me, why are there so few baritone or bass rock singers? Hell, outside of classical or theater, there just aren't that many. The only bands I can think of with singers in my range are Type O Negative, Crash Test Dummies, Stone Temple Pilots, and Great Big Sea. Everyone else is a tenor. I can't sing along with that. I need to start my own band, or at least figure out how to play guitar and start transposing stuff down a few keys.

I finally got around to listening to Arcade Fire. I should've done this before. I also started re-listening to Great Big Sea and Counting Crows. Now I remember why they're two of my favorite bands. August and Everything After was also one of my very first CDs ever.

Chasing Amy is still a really good movie, but it shouldn't be. Back then, Kevin Smith would just set up a camera, put an actor in front of it, and have said actor rattle off this long soliloquy that no actual person would ever really say. Yet, once they get into the actual relationship between Holden and Alyssa, those soliloquies somehow manage to totally work. It's still a really good portrait of how humans being human will consistently manage to take something beautiful, and only figure out what they did wrong after they've already broken it. Silent Bob's speech is still one of the best scenes in anything, ever.

It's amazing how you can have so much stuff, think for years that you need it all to be complete somehow, and suddenly realize how little of it is really worth having. I guess the trick is to remember that when you see something new and shiny that you think you want to take home with you.

When games are art

This is one of those debates that's been running around in industry circles for a few years now. It was recently given a shot in the arm by Roger Ebert weighing in on the subject, first by flatly declaring they weren't, then eventually admitting that he didn't know (or care to know) enough about them to have an informed opinion. That's a extremely reasonable response, and one I can absolutely respect. I myself may not particularly enjoy Swedish Death Metal, but I also know that I know squat about it, so who the hell am I to go on about its merits as a medium.

Of course, the argument itself is a pretty defensive one from both sides. On the one side are game fans who passionately want their "new kid" artistic medium to be given the same weighty respect as visual art and literature. On the other side are the anti-gamers who see this new thing as loud, vulgar, and crass, and flatly deny that there's any way good can come of this. The people involved are fighting to keep control of their own little moral islands while taking over the other side's island.

The brilliant bit about the whole thing is that this has all happened before, and will all happen again. Let's make a non-comprehensive and thoroughly un-researched list:

-live theater

-photography

-film

-comics

-television

-rock and roll

Both sides are acting as though this fight is utterly unique, when it's really almost identical what happened to all the other mediums on that list. New medium shows up, spends ~30 years developing, many people during that time have this argument, and eventually it settles comfortably into the general cultural psyche until we get to the point that it feels like it's always been there in the form it's in now.

So do I think games art? Of course I do. Are all games art? Absolutely not. Neither are all films, all paintings, all TV shows, or all books. Do I really give a rat's ass if people like Ebert agree with me? Nope. What I do care about is that enough people think games are worth making that eventually we don't have to have this debate at all. What's great is that I think that'll be happening within the next ten years or so.

Now the whole reason that I started writing this post: why I think games are art. If pressed to give a single response to "what makes something art", it would be that something intentionally created is memorable. Plenty of things are memorable, like seeing a guy get hit in the nuts with a football, but that's not art, it's just funny. In order to be art, someone has to consciously create something that has such an impact on another human that it's remembered many years later.

Here's an example from my memory: the game Mafia. This game came out in 2002. It's, unsurprisingly, a game about a guy who accidentally finds himself wrapped up in the mob. In the game, you first see him as a cab driver who gets drafted as the getaway driver for two made men. After impressing them with your driving skill, you get "invited" into the family. The rest of the game charts your rise through the ranks as you kill and steal your way through a '30s era not-Chicago. Along the way, you fall for a girl, and eventually decide to get out by turning snitch on the mob. Miraculously, this works, and you escape with your family into the arms of suburban American to start your new life.

Here's where most games, and movies for that matter, would end. Mafia doesn't, and that's the vital bit. In the epilogue, you see your character as an old man. He seems happy, having made it out of the mob to live a good and happy life. He goes to the diner, and sits down for a meal. A man walks up to you, says "Salieri sends his regards", and shoots you in the head. But rather than being a cheap "oh, your character dies, ha HA" ending, it's actually bittersweet. Yes, you died. But from the moment you joined the mob, that was likely. You got a full life. You raised a family outside of the chaos they would have been in. Yes, the mob caught up to you, but did they win, or did you? It's bittersweet and complex in the way that great art is. And most importantly, I remember it eight years later. That's what art does.

The surfeit of options

You know what sucks about having unexpected time off? Too many damn options. Yup, I'm about to whine about something I shouldn't. Feel free to eject now if this sort of things gets your undies in a bunch.

I suck at decisions. I do much better if I get to choose between A and B rather than having to choose one letter from the entire Scrabble bag. In a way, working so much is good for that. If you know you've only got an hour to do something that doesn't make you want to blow your brains out, it focuses your options a bit. Exhaustion notwithstanding.

Give me an entire extra day though, and I'm just fucking lost. I've got a bunch of chores I should do. I've got a bunch of games I want to play. I've got a bunch of books I want to read. I've got a bunch of movies I want to watch. Enter the analysis paralysis. The stupid part? I usually wind up just dicking around on the internet. It's easier to do that than make a decision.

I think I don't like to pick one thing because when I pick something, my brain tells me "No, no, no, you're not choosing THAT thing, you're NOT choosing all those OTHER things! Think of all the missed opportunities!" So, in a beautifully-executed logical backflip, it decides that the more noble thing is to just not choose anything. That way, none of the inanimate objects feel offended. Huh?

So today, I made myself a list of chores. Then, I did them. Woah. This apparently was too much for me, so my stupid self decided to get really tired. So I had coffee. I might have more later and stay up til 4am. You know what I'm going to do tomorrow? Probably less than I could. Because I'm dumb.

Too drunk to fish...

Okay, so it's really more like too tired to _______ . Let me tell you, working 50-60 hour weeks is draining. I've been at this off and on, mostly on, since May. Now, this ain't my first time around this particular block, but it's hitting me pretty hard. When I get nights off, I have all these grand plans of "holy crap, I've got three hours to rub together, I'm gonna do all this stuff."

Then I get home, and all that stuff feels like a ton of work. I wind up watching whatever stupid movie I asked Netflix to send me, or worse, poking at the shit on the internet. By the way, resist the urge to watch Open Water. There's promises of folk getting eaten by sharks, but it takes 45 minutes to get there, and then the shark eating is incredibly underwhelming. Plus, all the pre-eating bits are poorly shot and even more poorly acted. Though I'm pretty sure Lou Ferrigno has an uncredited role as "annoying hairy diver guy", so there's that.

The upshot is that I'm apparently not too tired to blog. Go figure. I guess sitting here and typing stuff is less work than moving pixel dudes around the screen. Whoda thunk that'd be the case?

And just to provide some continuity, by the end of Bioshock, I was more than capable of exploding heads. Though I usually just caved them in with my Monkey Wrench of Doom. I'm not even kidding. Though I may have taken some license by adding caps. Maybe.

More evidence that I'm old

I'm not as young as I once was. My rapidly-aging self has a hard time keeping up with action games these days. Not that I've ever been really good at games. In the old days, I used to have to pull my younger brother in to get past particularly tricky parts of games. Of course, that never worked out that well, because the parts that followed were usually harder, but no matter.

Basically, I suck at aiming. I can really only do it semi-well with a mouse. Since the things they have you aim at are usually shooting back at you, shooters can be pretty stressful for me.

I just finished playing the excellent Mass Effect 2. That game sort of plays like a shooter, except for the vital ability to pause the game mid-fight to assess the situation and set up your powers to fire off when you unpause. The fights are still action-y, but they were much more laid back because you can always stop and figure out what all is going on. Fallout 3 had a really similar system, except that after you queued up your shots, you got to watch your character make heads explode in sweet slow motion.

I just got done replaying the first hour or so of Bioshock. This one's also a shooter, but no pausing and heavy on the atmosphere. Way, way more stressful. I don't think I've really come close to dying yet, and even if you do die, there's handy resurrection stations set up all over, so you just pop up again like a Buddhist on speed (with guns). So death, not so much something to worry about, yet not being able to stop and look around during fights makes all the difference.

I could play Mass Effect for hours at a time and end up pretty relaxed. Bioshock, I find myself feeling pretty tense after I'm done. I think I need to figure out that getting killed ain't so bad. Also need more ways to make heads explode.

Line management 101

Or, how to annoy multiple people at midnight.

There's an indie horror movie making the festival/art house rounds right now called Paranormal Activity. The trailer makes it look like Ghost Hunters done by amateurs where they actually find something. I put it on my "to watch" list.

Then I noticed that the art house theater down the street was having a midnight screening tonight. It was the only screening in Boston, and it was one of the ones where you RSVP, but you're not guaranteed a seat. Those of you who notice timestamps on posts might guess where this is going.

Having done several midnight movies at this theater, showing up a half hour early is usually plenty to guarantee a good seat. So I wander over there at about 11:30. When I arrive, I notice that the line is coming out along the street instead of going back toward the parking lot. Chalking it up to stupid people, I get in line, pull out my phone, and start reading (did I mention that a nice Kindle feature is that you can also sync your last read page to the Kindle app on the iphone and keep reading it there?), content in my proximity to the door.

After about five minutes, a guy with postcards comes by. The guy ahead of me asks him if we'll all get in. Postcard guy says he doesn't know, but they were coming this way with wristbands. He then wanders off. A half hour goes by (it's now 12:10), and we hear a cheer from near the door. The line doesn't move. At around 12:25, we start going forward. As we draw even with the alley that contains the door, I realize that what's happened is that the line has wrapped completely around the block, and I'm on the wrong end of it.

It's about this time that a different official sounding guy starts yelling that if you don't have a wrist band, there isn't a seat. Turns out that they handed out all the wrist bands over a half hour ago, but they never bothered to come down the line and tell us unlucky folks that we weren't getting in.

Now, I have no problem with not getting in. I showed up late, that's my fault. But if you have 500 seats and 500 wrist bands, once you've attached those to 500 wrists, you know that your theater is full. Your next (and only) job is to continue walking down the line to tell the rest of the people waiting that they shouldn't bother. It's an incredibly basic part of line management, and they didn't bother to do it. So instead, I got to stand in line for nothing for a half hour too long.

It's minor, but it's really soured me on wanting to see this movie. If it ever gets a wide release, I'm actively not going to bother going to see it. I'll toss it on my Netflix queue, but it's going to be a low priority. It's a good example of how a poorly-run promotion can easily lose as many potential supporters as it gained. Instead of telling everyone how disappointed I am that I didn't get to see this sweet movie, I've now gone on for several hundred words about the annoying line practices. That won't get the asses in the seats. At least, not my ass.

And now I have to go occupy myself for another hour while I wait for the coffee I drank to stay awake through the movie to wear off.

We don't need no steenking paper!

I got a huge suprise on my birthday when kt got me a Kindle. I'd been wanting one for a while, but hadn't gotten up the gumption to get one. Turns out kt has 100% more gumption than I do. Probably due to her awesomeness. I've had this thing for almost two months now, so I figured I'd write up some thoughts.

First, it's damn small. I have it in a case, so it's slightly bulkier, but whenever I take the case off, I'm always amazed at how thin and light it is. That's awesome. The screen is exactly as paper-like as you've heard. When it arrived, it had a plastic film with a diagram of how to plug it in and turn it on. When I took the film off, the diagram stayed. It was being displayed by the screen, and completely looked like it was printed on the plastic. The screen is almost completely non-reflective. This is awesome when reading outside. Or really any time.

For those of us who sometimes ride on crowded trains or busses and have to hang on with one hand, reading can be tricky. Particularly when trying to wrestle a 1000 page Stephen King hardcover into submission. The Kindle has the "next page" button on either side, under your thumb, so one handed reading isn't a problem. Of course, it's also possible to bump it accidentally, and the "previous page" button is only on the left, so that can be kind of a pain.

Of course, the elephant in the room is that you basically have to start buying your books from Amazon, and the prices aren't a ton cheaper than the print versions. Personally, I have no problem with that, because I've never operated under the illusion that when I buy a book/movie/game that I'm paying for the physical component, but rather the creative effort that produced the content. Still, a lot of people feel like digital copies of things should be cheaper than physical copies. For those people, the Kindle isn't going to make you happy. However, I certainly don't mind having fewer books to sit on shelves. I can definitely see a future Chuck who has one bookshelf filled with elaborate leather-bound collector's editions of a select few books that are worth it (I'm hoping for a fully illuminated and illustrated version of Lord of the Rings), and everything else in electronic form.

Yet for those who crave cheap books, or those who want to convert their already-purchased physical books to electronic format, all isn't lost. There are hundreds of completely free public domain works both on Amazon and at various other websites that are totally legit. I've got the complete Sherlock Holmes waiting to be read. The other option is to locate "alternative download sites" that can provide copies of the books that you already own. You've paid for them, so as long as you maintain possession of them, I feel you're entitled to an electronic copy. The Kindle also lets you download the first ~30 pages of any book they sell as a trial, which is a pretty good way to find new books. Amazon also gives away free current books from time to time. Long story short is that through various means, I have 43 books on my Kindle, of which I've paid money for two.

Since I have that many books, including all the books from the series I'm currently reading, I haven't had to make use of one of the major features, which is the free wireless. You can shop and buy books directly from the Kindle, and they automatically download. You can also shop on a PC, and then have any books you buy delivered directly to your Kindle. It's very slick, and could be handy if you somehow finish your last unread book on the thing.

So is it worth the $300 price? I think of it like the iPod. You didn't buy an iPod to save money, you bought it for the convenience of being able to carry and listen to music wherever, and do it more conveniently than you could with a CD player. This serves the same purpose. It's smaller than most books, and easier to use in certain situations. Like with mp3s, you lose the nice bits of physical media. There's no cover art, no big shelf of books/music to impress guests with, and it's certainly not as romantic to curl up with the Kindle in front of a fire with a cup of tea to read. But it's sure as hell easier to travel with, which is definitely something I'm looking for right now.

As a lifetime bibliophile, it kind of pains me to write this. In my own small way, I'm contributing to the inevitable demise of the physically printed word, and that's certainly very sad. But in a way, the transition to digital media might actually bring the status of a physical book back to where it was in the days before Gutenberg. Back then, a book was an almost revered object, something rare, to be treasured. Now, books are basically disposeable, sometimes more useful for propping up a broken table than for their intended purpose. Would it be such a bad thing to keep the written word accessible while returning the physical book to it's past glory? Not in my book.

It was a hard day's night

We had our unofficial Beatles release party the other night. It could be differentiated from the official release party because it had 100% fewer white russians made with Bailey's instead of milk, and 100% fewer tequila shots. However, the lack of tequila shots meant that the unofficial party had 100% fewer extremely bad ideas.

So we had the party. We started playing the game at around 6:15pm. I turned it off at around 2am. Kt's dad sang for the entire time, along with everyone else at various points. We did ever song in the game at least twice.

It was an awesome time. I really liked seeing everyone finally getting to see this thing, and everyone seemed to have a really good time. So that was pretty awesome.

The Beatles have landed

It's finally arrived, and it's been a long time coming. There's good vibes all over the office today. Heck, even Deval Patrick thinks we're awesome.

I'm really looking forward to the mini-release party on Saturday. After spending so long looking at a game during production, finding every little thing that's wrong with it, it's easy to lose perspective and forget about all the many things that are right with it. You guys playing it for the first time are my fresh set of eyes. Really, for me, a game isn't officially out until I've gotten to play it with the folks that I care about. (Hopefully) seeing all of you excited, happy, and having a good time is the point where all the incredibly long hours of frustration when it's all coming together pays off.

So I can't wait to get everyone over and give this thing a shot. Hopefully it doesn't suck.

After the party

I just got home from our release party. I stumbled off the train at about quarter past midnight. As I made my way home, I happened to look up, and saw a bus headed toward me. Through the window, I could see a guy cradling a Beatles: Rock Band bundle in his lap.

I smiled the rest of the way home. Yup, The Beatles is officially out. Holy crap.

Kurt is rolling over in his grave

The new Guitar Hero game comes out today. Their new thing is to include actual musicians that you can choose to play as. That's a bit strange, but fine.

The trouble is that when they create the animations for the musicians, they hard code the animations for the song. Which can also be fine, and means that the musicians move exactly the same way every time you play the song.

The trouble happens when you combine those two things. Since you can have any character play any instrument on any song, you get some really strange things going on. Here's some examples from Youtube.

Kurt does a mean Flava Flav, and also loves him some Bon Jovi.

Kurt and Johnny Cash both love them some Elton John. Did you know that Cash can wail on the drums, or that Kurt only played lefty by choice?

Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but there's something very strange about seeing Cobain in something like this game in the first place, and even stranger seeing him miming Flava Flav.

Just flew in from Germany, and boy are my arms...

I got back from Germany last week. The convention we were at pulled in a hair under 250,000 people over the course of five days. The days were incredibly long. We had a bunch of stages with both Beatles and RB2 set up, and people could come up and play. Our job was to facilitate the rocking, and fill in for anybody that was missing. That mostly meant that we were singing the whole time.

Of course, another part of the job is to make the games look awesome, which meant putting on a performance. So I was singing in full-on rock voice for five days. I made it 3.5 days before blowing out my voice.

Generally it was awesome, but really tiring. Some things about the trip, in bullet point format:

- Germans bring the metal. I sang Run to the Hills at least a dozen times per day. They also have some kind of fascination with Papa Roach, and Last Resort was the most-played single song on the RB2 stages all week. Second place was Linkin Park. Third place was Metal as a category.

- Germans really like Yellow Submarine. On the Beatles stages, they couldn't play metal, so they defaulted to Yellow Submarine. I think this had something to do with them being less comfortable singing in English, and 90% of that song is "We all live in a yellow submarine." One day's count had that song played 46 times on a single stage.

- Our main stage was 7.5 feet high. It was ridiculous, and also stupidly loud.

- We handed out shirts, but by the last day, we had a bunch left that we didn't want to take back. So we started what I called T-shirt Apocalypse. We'd get all of us Harmonix folks on stage. We'd play "Birthday", and everyone without an instrument would run around, dance, work the crowd up, and throw shirts. It was a ton of fun, and really got the crowd going. Slightly more scary was the time when we knocked over an amp from one of the piles at the front of the stage. It fell backwards onto the stage, which is good, because if it had fallen forward (off the 7.5') stage, someone would have died.

- Turns out I like wiener schnitzel. I don't know about sausages, as I had no wurst of any kind.

-I had no idea my feet could hurt that much, and I worked a lot of retail.

- If I sing loud enough, I can actually sing AC/DC in the correct octave. I'm not sure when I'll be able to replicate that feat.

- Lufthansa seats become solid after four hours, and actually grow spikes after six.

So that's Germany. In other news, The Beatles: Rock Band comes out in a week and a half. That's nuts.

Leaving on a jet plane

I'm going to Cologne, Deutchland for a week starting Monday to work a convention. What should I bring that I'm forgetting?