John Walker's Electronic House

Jim and Kieron have gone all suck-i-up and posted links to the new ish of Gamer.

So I go one stage further, and write the PCG blog entry about it. I AM BEST!

Hello everybody. I appreciated your attendance. Now, the reason I arranged this meeting was to make sure everyone was up to speed with how freaking awesome the new issue of PC Gamer is.

We all know how important these are for bringing in the ABC1 15 to 35s are, so it’s important that you get to know these carefully. The first important area is Crysis, where Tom’s only freaking gone and played the game, then written six pages on the Jeep-punching, foliage-generating, nano-besuited, explod-o-fest. Make special note of “OMG!”.

Let me tell you the story about the time I did the final race of Adventure mode in Mad Tracks. It was a single lap race, taking place on an “Oh God I so desperately want to be Micro Machines, why can’t I be Micro Machines?” track in a bedroom, littered with dominos and toy soldiers.

New review hidden away in the weekend embarrassments on EG.

One evening, sitting in Kim and Nick’s beautiful basement, Nick and I were flicking through channels, juggling the double-TiVo to keep track of the baseball, as well as the remarkable output of a gay channel we’d stumbled on. You know, like you do. At around 9pm, Kim came down and asked if we could flick over to the news to catch the headlines.

WGN’s news led with a story about a building that had caught fire somewhere on the west side of the city. We watched the exciting flames and billowing smoke, and Kim asked Nick, “Hey, where’s W. Caroll St? Nick looked blankly for a moment, and then both their faces burst with realisation at the same time. “That’s CPE!” they both exclaimed.

A few days before, Kim had been telling me about some friends of Nick’s who had set up a business, CPE. They offered unsigned bands recording studios at affordable rates, complete with loan of all the equipment they might need. They rented the fourth floor of a five storey building on… W. Carroll.

Nick gave them a call to see if all were alright, and beyond being shaken and somewhat devastated, no one was hurt. In fact, the fire (which looks deeply like arson) took place in the early morning – a time when no band, nor anyone working with a band, was likely to be around.

The next day, late afternoon, Nick’s phone rang. It was the CPE guys. The fire marshals had told them that if they wanted to go into the building, now was their only chance, as the next day the building inspectors would arrive and never allow anyone in again. They were phoning everyone to get a hand shifting stuff out before dark.

Why was there stuff? The fire had destroyed the two three-storey buildings next to the five-storey in which their business was housed, where it had started on the third floor. This had, I’m told, created a pocket of CO2 on the fourth floor that caused the fire to go around it and burn the fifth floor next. Boggling. Apparently a great deal of their equipment was recoverable, even if the building was not. Nick, motivated by helping his friends, leapt to action. Kim, motivated by getting some awesome photographs of the inside of a burned out building, leapt into action as much as someone six months pregnant can. I followed, because that’s what I do.

So here’s what had happened:

Next to the taller building, the two smaller ones were all but gone. Just half-walls and rubble. The five-storey stood more firmly, but without glass in the windows, and soot everywhere. A doorway led into a dark opening, and some wooden stairs, that had impossibly survived.

We cautiously made our way up, stopping on the third floor to have a look. A doorway from the stairwell looked into a vast, empty room, made almost entirely of embers. The floor was missing in huge areas, and a foot put down would remove an awful lot more. It looked amazing.

The fourth floor, while not burned to bits, was hardly undamaged. Lots had burned, and everything had been cooked by the intense heat from above and below. It looked an awful lot like this:

A sad story: On the way in a guy asked me to take his photograph in front of a poster that had survived on the stairwell wall. In the process of trying, I dropped my camera, causing the lens to smash into a million pieces. The good news is it meant I got to buy a new camera in the amazing Half Price America (“Everything’s 50% off! Buy now before the complete collapse of the economy!”). The bad news is I could take no pictures, and so what you see here are Kim’s excellent snappings.

We explored the rooms, checking the floors before putting our weight on them, each of them looking remarkable where the effects of the fire had decorated with elaborate patterns. It was peculiarly haunting, like discovering the entombed remains of a 2007 civilisation in the distant future. Regular, familiar objects reduced to ash-coloured ghosts.

Kim and I explored, rather than helped. She had the rather valid reason of being heavily pregnant (although one might argue such an excuse should probably have kept her from being in the building in the first place). I was just being amazed at the amazing sights, and pretending I was checking Kim was OK.

We stood in one back room, staring in amazement at the bookshelves, and a clipboard on the wall that had been cooked brown but not burned. It was all hypnotising, as people busied around us, grabbing amps and drum kits and lugging them down the stairs. Kim looked up and nonchalantly said to me, “There’s a fire up there.” I looked up at where she was pointing, and indeed there it was. A little fire dancing in the rafters of the room we were in. How pretty. Waking up suddenly, I went to find a fire extinguisher. It was apparently on the bottom floor, and so I ran down the stairs alerting everyone I met. Maybe it was my odd accent, maybe it was their rock-addled brains, but no one seemed that phased by the news that the building we were in was currently on fire. Until I found Nick on the bottom floor, who flew into Action Hero mode, and learned that the fire extinguisher was apparently in the very room I’d started in. We ran back up, and Nick grabbed the extinguisher and aimed it at the flames, which had now spread further, and were very close to lighting a main beam in the room.

The extinguisher was empty. In a moment of fantastic madness, Nick became possessed by the spirit of every gunfight when the bullets are gone, and the only thing left to do is throw the gun. He threw the red canister like an American football, and perfectly nailed the shot, wedging the extinguisher into the beams on top of the fire. In fact, he almost snuffed them out. But, you know, didn’t. Sort of creating a big red bomb.

Nick got to cry, “Evacuate the building!”, as we attempted to shepherd people toward the stairs and down. This wasn’t easy. In complete reversal of every school fire drill, rather than being sternly told to leave everything we own in the rooms and file outside slowly, people yelled, “Grab an amp and run!”

So we all grabbed hold of something heavy to make one last run out the place, and called the fire brigade. Then people had to go back in and get the guy out who had decided he was going to rescue the last drum kit. The fire brigade turned up and ran in, and we all stood outside while the building’s owner, a twenty-something girl who had inherited it from her father, came down to watch. It was a sad story, really. She had hoped to fulfill her father’s wishes and use the building as an arts centre. However, others in the Italian family (Family?) had other ideas. This, of course, had nothing to do with the fire. Obviously.

The fire fighters told the group that they didn’t recommend going back in, but if they insisted they’d likely be fine. We decided to call it a night, since it was now night, and made out way home to unsuccessfully try and shower off the smell of fire. A rather remarkable evening.

All the photos are by Kim, and are rather amazing. Can be seen here.

Can whoever has my copy of The Perfect Fool by Stewart Lee (book) please return it?

Thanks!

The t-shirt reads, “Cuter than Baby Jesus”.

Thanks to Kim for the link.

TV reaches its absolute zenith this summer.

It can only go downhill from here.

Going through US Immigration is something I do with frightening regularity. Normally this is for work, where I’ve developed intricate skills for surviving the confusing ordeal. Under US Immigration laws, one is allowed into the country for a maximum of 90 days, either on business or, as it’s now so eloquently known, not business. For business, you’re only allowed in if you’re not going to earn any money while you’re there. By the nature of my job, this is the case, and as such I have no need for a visa. This, however, doesn’t stop the customs officers from putting journalists in cells and deporting them, so it’s all a little bit scary. I’ve never had a single problem though, and find it all relatively smooth, so long as I stress “writer”, rather than “evil spying reporter”.

(Aside: My first time through customs for work, I stared at the form in confusion (not even the green one asking if I’m a Nazi) and had no idea whether the tick “business” or “pleasure” (as the form said back then). I tried to explain thie situation to the large, menacing looking man with the gun on his hip in a blustered, Hugh-Grant-a-like British muddle, how I had no idea which to choose. He sighed wearily at me, and ticked business, and then glanced to the right. I’d not noticed the field for “male/female”. Without lifting his head he raised his eyes toward me, curled his nose and drawled, “Are you not sure about this one either?”)

So you need to know that Chicago is a city of divisions. As a recent television episode of This American Life noted, Chicago is so segregated that demographers had to invent a new term to describe it: hyper-segregation. There really are areas which are white, those that are black, another Hispanic, and so on. One of the more trivial divisions is the North/South divide over baseball. The North, by tradition, supports the Cubs. The South the White Sox. However, for reasons even I don’t understand, my team is the Sox, despite my Chicago hosts having always lived nearer the top than the bottom. So, as ever, I was wearing my White Sox cap as I entered the country. I got to a customs desk in astonishing time, thanks to the sudden decision by O’Hare airport to employ more than two customs officers at once, and explained that I was here on holiday.

The officer asked me to remove my cap for the photo they now take every time you visit the US (as well as collecting fingerprints), and then added, “You don’t want to wear that around me.”

“Oh no!” I replied. “You’re not a Cubs fan, are you?” He grimly nodded a yes. “I’m doomed!” I said too enthusiastically.

Thinking I should engratiate myself with him now, I added, “I might be going to see the Cubs play while I’m here.”

“See them lose, you mean.”

Then he complained to me about how awful they were, and stamped my passport.

Since then, the Cubs are currently riding a five game winning streak, getting their winning average over 500, which is better than the Sox can muster. So there you go, Mr Grumpy Customs Guy, cheer up.

I was chatting to my sister via instant message, gently mocking her for her daft fear of the potential reality of movie monsters. To worry about zombies smashing the windows and eating her brains, at 27 years old, seems just daft. Then she delivered her winning blow.

“It all started when a certain someone told me there were wolves in the trees at Newlands Corner.”

Newlands Corner was a local place filled with grassy hills ideal for rolypolying down, and woods perfect for losing your sister’s Aerobe within the high branches. We went there quite regularly with our parents, suited as it was to picnics, bike riding (especially the amazing deep craters in the woods caused by WW2 bombing – thanks Nazis for your excellent bike courses!) and the consumption of long-begged-for ice creams. I have no recollection of ever telling Catherine that there were wolves there. But apparently I did.

“[It was] when we were little. I remember cutting through the trees at Newlands Corner to get back to the path that leads to the carpark, hearing a rustling and you telling me it was a wolf and mum and dad telling you off. Then you told me that Woofle [my favourite toy – a dog glove puppet] would turn into a werewolf on a full moon and I told you he wouldn’t and you said I was right but there were werewolves out there and then you howled until I cried. Then you howled just too scare whenever you got the opportunity.”

My response to this revelation is confusing. I feel equal measures of guilt and pride. I do feel terrible to know that mean-spirited comments made under the age of 10 could have such a long-lasting, and apparently debilitating effect. But I also feel rather strongly that I met my responsibilities as an older brother with respectable vim. Surely we all have to have someone in our lives who is required to instill a fear of imaginary baddies in our tiny brains? I was recalling yesterday about my mad terror of catching rabies, after a school friend had told me all about how one of its more peculiar symptoms was a fear of water. Such a bizarre ailment was more than I could comprehend, and I became convinced that the only means by which I might ever die would be nuclear war, or a rabid dog bite. So surely I was only fulfilling my necessary brotherly duties for Catherine?

This, unfortunately, opened the gates for other forgotten childhood crimes. Apparently, a few years later, Phillip Kett (a very bad influence on me throughout my adolescence) and I told my sister to ask my mum what a blowjob was. I remember this incident arriving after Phillip said it in front of her, and my not wanting to explain. I think Catherine recalls it as all being much more malicious.

And then I mentioned the Boggle Crime. I was sure we’d already been over this. So much so that I even mentioned it in a review a while back.

“Boggle is perhaps most orientated for a single-player mode. I don’t have to have an opponent when challenging myself to extract as many words as I can from the grid of sixteen letters. In fact, after the way I treated my little sister as a child, I shouldn’t be allowed opponents. She would look up from furiously scribbling down words and ask, “How do you spell ‘COUNT’?” and I would tell her and then say, “But there’s no point in you writing that down now, cos I have it.” And she so naively would comply. Oh god, I feel terrible. I deserve this version of the game to be such a complete mess.”

I hadn’t told her.

“I’m slightly humiliated. When I read it, I can picture me sat on your bedroom floor desperate to find a word longer than 4 letters so you won’t take the piss out of me!”

And there, there’s no pride at all. It’s horrible to remember the abuse of power of being a bigger brother. It’s something over which I have no control. I can’t go back and not be pointlessly mean to my sister now I know not to. I can’t make sure she only has happy memories of our relationship. But I was a child too. It’s so unpleasant to realise now that she looked up to me, and that my brotherly horridness had a reaching effect. Although she reassures me that overall I was a decent brother.

I love my sister very much. It’s nice to say so.

(I should add, in the interests of balance, her greatest childhood crime. At an age far too young to be so ingenious, she would stand at the top of the stairs and shout, “Ow! John! Stop it! That hurts! Stop hitting me!” and then burst into tears and run into her bedroom. An angry parent would come into my room, where I sat innocently, bemused, and would be shouted at, and then moreso for “lying” about it. That racket lasted the good part of a year before she was rumbled).

I’ve come over all multimedia.

PC Gamer have officially launched their shiny new podcast, the first episode featuring cuddly little me. It’s remarkably fun. I fear that I might be a bit boring. (And in the game).

And I appear very briefly in the latest EGTV, sounding remarkably positive about a game for which I feel only apathy. Editing, eh?