A PICTURE OF SUDA 51

"Before we begin, I just want to let you know that I'm a huge fan of killer7"

That's what I said to game developer Goichi Suda shortly before conducting the worst interview of all time. Suda heads up a Japanese development studio called 'grasshopper manufacture', who has made cult classic games such as No More Heroes and of course killer7, along with overseas-only titles like Flower, Sun, and Rain and Michigan. His style can be characterized as cartoony-stylish and hyperviolent, with plenty of cursing and ambiguous narrative in between.

This is not a review of the man himself. It is a review of this photograph of him:

This is a cropped photo of his entire development team, which consists of dozens of hapless Japanese men and women sitting stoically. However, Suda himself is all smiles. I'm not sure what he's happy about, or why everyone else is so sad. It may have something to do with him being the most enthusiastic person I have ever met.

Seriously, when I told him I liked killer7, he exploded so fiercly it was almost as if I was the first person to ever tell him that. Comparatively, when I told Yuji Naka that I enjoyed Sonic the Hedgehog, he brushed me off. I guarantee I was the first person to tell him that in ten years. Both of these men speak about the same amount of English (practically none).

Because it's not so clear why Suda is happy in this photo, I'm afraid I will have to knock it down a whole point. I give it two dots.

A BEAUTIFUL SMILE

To the girl who rang me up at Barnes & Nobles today:

I'm dedicating my first ever Midnight Review to your wonderful smile. I wish I had the chance to take a picture of how perfect your face was, but I decided at the very last moment that that would have seemed creepy. So here's a dramatization and, although it is a nice smile, it is not nearly as bright and pleasant as yours.

I'm telling you, reader, the road to heaven is paved with this girl's teeth. That actually sounds frightening, on second thought. But imagine it is a very sweet compliment.

You rubbed the cover of my copy of Bram Stoker's Dracula for a few seconds before informing me that it is your favorite book of all time. I smiled and agreed that it is a wonderful book, even though I've never read it in full, and don't even really enjoy it that much. I don't know why I did that. It's not like I had a chance with you.

Before you handed me my bag, you were smiling so hard I started getting a headache. Speechless I stood, bleeding out of my ears. I have seen many picture-perfect mouths in my day, but none quite as shining as what I witnessed today. I give this smile a perfect score. It is pace-setting.

MIDNIGHT REVIEWS

One thing I hope to accomplish with this new blog is getting a new review up every weekday at midnight. I'm calling these quick write-ups "Midnight Reviews", because that's what they are. I have a score system based on zero to three. To give you an example of what to expect, here's a review of my blog.

MY BLOG.

It sucks. Zero.

LABOR? I HARDLY KNOW HER

Happy Labor Day or whatever.

So my parents just went out to go check out an SUV they will probably be buying, which means I'll have a new car to drive this week, finally. For those not in the know, our poor old Beautiful Truck was involved in an accident earlier this summer, crippling our transportation outlook.

It's a GMC Jimmy, I think a 2001 or a 2002. So it might look like this:

Although I'm not really sure. That's kind of big, isn't it? Oh well. At least it doesn't look like this:

Yep, that was our 1990 Ford Ranger. Four-speed MT. I'm going to miss manual transmission so hard. So tenderly.

Now I'm waiting for our single car to get home so I can go to Barnes & Noble and buy a thousand books for this terrible course on gothic literature that I stupidly signed up for. After that, it is Labor Day with the fam. The meat-eating fam.

Being a vegetarian sucks. Never do it, especially if you're the only person in your family who doesn't eat meat. Because my family meats it up almost exclusively, every holiday. And I'm stuck with the crappy vegetable left-overs and potato salad.

In between now and my hammy doom, I have to read all of Shakespeare's Hamlet (hurrr), which also sucks. My life is a thousand yards of inconvenience. I have no real legitimate reason to complain, yet I do it anyway because... man, I really just don't want to read Hamlet again. I can't even find my copy of it.

Now I might answer the tons of e-mails in my backlog, which you might be able to read about here. My writing is bland today for some reason, so I'm going to stop now.

FOR THE BIRDS

Finally, a fun and exciting new way to transmit my thoughts over the internet.

I promise I will try to not let this blog be a confusing mess like the old one. I promise you, dear reader. I never break my promises.

Some of the few perks of working in a video game store are the pre-order bonuses ripe for the swiping, despite having not pre-ordered the game. Right now there are a chorus of nerds screaming in outrage at the lowly game clerk stealing the last of their special bonus figurine or something as equally lame.

I took this for my sister, because sometimes we do nice things for each other despite rarely speaking. We have one of those pleasantly silent relationships where we both understand our pathetic and ridiculous surroundings, but choose not to take action and change our lives for the better; it is comfortable apathy.

It's the pre-order bonus for a Nintendo DS game called Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness, which was fine for taking considering how nobody pre-ordered it or even came in to buy the game. I, generally, have a bit of shame compared to most clerks. But I have been in retail for so long that I'm never less or more shameful of what I do for pocket money.

Besides, compared to my quickly-turning-full-time job at Hunter dealing with the creative unwashed, retail seems like a nice vacation.