Last Thursday I dropped in on E3 to see what's new. Because I'm an L.A. native I infiltrated the convention centre via a side street and avoided the traffic that locked down Figueroa Street. Let the fucking tourists sit in traffic. The death march from the parking lot was a cruel one and many geeks lay on the sidewalk gasping for Dr. Pepper. Marked by their absence, the homeless were nowhere to be seen. I guess the LAPD took time off from beating up minorities to run the homeless over to the east side of downtown so they wouldn't bother the geeks.

I avoided the registration area and waved my badge quickly at the security personnel hoping they wouldn't notice that the name on it was Deanna (I borrowed the badge from a friends wife who couldn't make the show that day).

The first hall I wandered into was primarily showing console crap. I was overwhelmed by a true cacophony, the hideous sound of a hundred booths blaring out bad synthesized music at top volume. My first few minutes were emblematic of E3: a throng of geeks were raptly staring at 5 or 6 skanky go-go dancers twitching randomly to a game soundtrack. I have no idea what they were selling. Once I realized that there was nothing to see in that room I began one of the popular local quests, Find the Exit. The god damn exhibit hall was large and the booths and displays blocked any view across the hall so it took me about 10 minutes find a way out.

Somewhere in the midst of all this Great Bob beeped me and we chatted. He was in a cab coming from Ontario Airport towards L.A. If I were him I'd hang my travel agent, he was about 60 miles east of L.A. Given the time of day I assumed he'd be caught in traffic and eaten by coyotes. I never heard from him again.

Eventually I found the hall with PC games (and more console crap). I'm sure there were maps of the hall showing what was where, but I never saw them. I wandered randomly, shouldering my way through the packed mass of sweaty bodies while throbbing music from dozens of booths blended into a meaningless pressure on my brain that formed a counterpoint to my aching feet. I found the EA booth, but there was no UO display (but they were showing Simville and The Sims: Living Large and some other crap I didn't care about). I went by to see Anarchy Online but their servers were down. I blundered into the Verant Booth where I found Raph Koster looking vaguely embarrassed in his Verant T-shirt. They had Ruins of Kunark on display and I must say it looked good. Gordon Wrinn was schmoozing the crowd. I asked him if they were going to split any more servers and he said probably not but they might migrate characters from other servers onto the new split servers. Rumour had it that Lum the Mad was somewhere to be found, but not by me. I found the Blizzard booth where they were showcasing Warcraft III and some game called Diablo II (let's just say that the two Diablo terminals looked lost amidst all the WCIII terminals). It looked great. Unfortunately the only characters running while I was there was the Warrior (or is it Barbarian?) so I didn't see much spell action. I hope I don't forget to keep my houses refreshed while I'm playing Diablo II. My official off-the-record source says it will be on the shelves by July. I went back to see Anarchy Online but their servers were down again.

UO2? Sorry, anyone with the clearance level of my badge who tried to see it was being drugged and their kidneys extracted for sale to some rich drug addict in Malibu.

Somewhere in the midst of all this I paid $8 for a bad cheeseburger and some chips and then spent some time on a loading dock sucking down cigarettes while I waited for my ears to stop ringing (I shit you not). The rest of the day blurred into strobing lights, noise pollution, and geeks drooling over booth babes. At some point I saw the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Computer Game booth featuring undead booth babes. The game itself looks to be an overhead view Mortal Combat and I'm sure it will sell at least eight or nine copies. Look for this one in the CompUSA discount bin later this year. I also saw some poor bastards sweating inside Homer and Marge Simpson outfits, but I'm not really sure what they were promoting. Those annoying twin girls that used to be TV have some computer games coming out, vigilante action may be called for in this case. I kept seeing obvious business professionals wandering through the crowd, nervous and eyeing the exits while flinching from the unwashed masses. My favourite T-shirt slogan of the day: Smoke Crack and Worship Satan.

Eventually I fled E3 for dinner. As the smog turned orange in the evening sun and the hookers emerged onto Hollywood Blvd., I took my usual shortcuts through the city (anyone who has seen L.A. Story with Steve Martin will know what I mean). I was supposed to meet some friends at what turned out to be a bad Japanese restaurant, but I think the toxic spill on the freeway got them.

I returned home knowing I had learned something important about our hobby, but I self-medicated that night and forgot what it was. All I found of my notes was a torn scrap of paper with the word 'tits' on it.