Dallas, TX
040604-040606
getting out there and mixing it up with friends It's the competition Al Unser, Jr. |
and not as good as someone else William Saroyan |
0300. Wandering the halls. The crowd has thinned considerably. I open a door.
There is a wall of 25 TV screens all showing the same thing. A Japanese heavy metal band blasting out some unknown rock statement. No one is in the room.
Down another hallway. At the end is the Makoto machine.
This is a set of 3 6-foot poles arranged in a circle with armored lights on them. A muscular young man stands in the middle stripped to the waist. The lights on the poles flash and beep at 1 second intervals in a random sequence. The young man pounds on the active light with 1 of his 2 hard rubber clubs, spinning, lunging.
The sequence ends. The young man wakes up the guy at the console. Earlier, this guy had promised that he would hold the fort until 0500. Nobody is getting much sleep.
"Lemme see. OK! I got exactly half at level 4! Again!"
Wandering off again, I pass an open door. Inside is a bunch of arcade machines. I start to enter.
"Have to leave your bag here." 2 guys in chairs are monitoring the door. I drop my bag on the pile. "What's going on?", I inquire. "Halo tournament".
Inside, around the corner, is a semicircle of about 30 chairs in front of about 10 monitors. Some of the guys in the chairs have game controllers. Some have pals advising them. The screens show various split-screen views of ongoing firefights.
I pick up my bag and move on.
Inside, there are maybe 20 big round tables, most deserted but for empty soda cans, pizza boxes, and food wrappers.
At about 6 of them, there are groups of 3 to 6 people, all ages and genders. On the tables are big pieces of paper or maps with grids or drawings of terrain and little figures of warriors or creatures.
At 1 table is a grey-bearded guy with a vertical screen in front of him on the table, hiding a pad of paper. I wonder what the big secret is, so I drift over and look. There are a few scribbled words and numbers. What did I expect?
A woman laments "But I can't DO anything!". A kid replies "That's what you get for having so much armor."
I think I'll go home now.
