oh, ok, huh maybe yeah

Um um it depends on my weight whatever month, but ever since I started carrying all this weight in my jaw, "Julianne Moore," yeah

First off, RUDE. Second off, it depends whether you mean a real bicycle or a stationary one. Third, how did you know I dreamed about my mom's bike last night (I really did).

I stopped riding my bike when I moved to San Francisco, so 2006.

I haven't answered this question for TWO WHOLE MONTHS because I JUST DON'T KNOW. But probably A Fish Called Wanda. Et tu, Luana?

4.5 men's Converse

Smoking? Or pooping? (Actually, they go together, don't they)

Uh?

I mean, I am not into needless pain or self-flagellation, but I am a real clotheshorse anyway. But lately my clothes are mostly cheap and I can throw them away whenever.

The first class I took in college was an art history course on dadaism and surrealism. Our professor went on endlessly about the value of the artist's "pose," about being a "poseur." A lot of this coincides with how you choose to dress yourself -- how you choose to "fashion" yourself, if you will. At the time I really agreed with his argument.

And no matter how shallow that argument reads -- no matter how inauthentic, how disingenuous a person must be for buying into it -- there is something to be said for not showing up to your interview wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Or FOR showing up in a sweatshirt, if there's a value system you're so resolute about conveying to potential employers. I don't know! But for better or worse, no matter how unfair this is, I guess your appearance does say something about you. The one thing you can control about your own appearance, your own "message," is "fashion."

Full disclosure: I used to spend an incredible, inordinate, embarrassing amount of money on clothes -- a girl once shook my hand vigorously and said "I always wanted to meet you! You're the best-dressed girl on campus!" which seems, just, ugh now. But I was spending every dime I had on, just, one-of-a-kind stuff online, and maybe I'd still be wearing all that if I hadn't sized out of it in 2006. So by now I'm very "fuck it" and kind of a slob, since my size can change from week to week, but there is also a fundamental value shift that my sloppiness aesthetically imparts, too, I guess. Look, if we analyze it too much, it stops just being a hoodie and jeggings.

Ah! This is the type of trivia I like to play, except that I prefer to drink for free. OK! I will fly right over

I've never seen 'American Pie.' Similarly, I can't believe it when people haven't seen 'Rushmore.'

Knock, knock. Who's there? Ether. Ether who? Ether bunny. Knock, knock. Who's there? Samoa. Samoa who? Samoa ether bunnies! Knock, knock. Who's there? Consumption. Consumption who? CONSUMPTION BE DONE ABOUT ALL THESE ETHER BUNNIES

I like to think this joke is about rabbit sex

I work from home though?

Well, don't pick a random one at all! Pick a specific one!

OK: Take 'Sin City.' I read the comic, didn't like it. Thought it was very pretty; hated it. Right? So I already knew, going into the movie theater, that I wasn't going to enjoy the movie in that regard, because I already don't enjoy Frank Miller. (I'm not the hugest fan of the way Robert Rodriguez treats women in his movies, anyway.) Outcome: I enjoyed 'Sin City' HUGELY. After, I kept trying to understand why. And I realized the movie absolutely elevates "facsimile" to art.

A number of years ago a friend of mine was working on his Masters thesis in "themed environments" -- I think his research is still ongoing, actually, even though he has his degree -- and we talked a lot about simulacra, artifice, how the Tiki Room at Disney is like a video game, real surreal stuff. When he wasn't working on his Masters, though, this cinephile liked to collect or *make* reproduction-quality movie props. Once I saw them I was totally obsessed with them, the same way I am obsessed with action figures and scale miniatures. You absolutely could not have convinced him these handmade movie props weren't objets d'art, and as such I was not allowed to handle them.

You might think of any sports game as an attempt at a "scale miniature" -- this genre is classed as a type of "simulation," after all -- and so a very good sports game might impress the same way a working model train, with all the bells and the smoke and the tooting, and then the little trees and motorized signs, might be riveting.

But that's only facsimile, isn't it. What does it take to elevate "facsimile" to "art"?

The last sports game I played with any real depth was probably 'NBA Jam' on SNES*, so I'm pretty far out of my element. But a lot of that game's enjoyment comes from, it isn't really a simulation at all, is it? I mean, it appropriates the functional design vocabulary of a "sports game," but it hardly aspires to any sort of "realism."

What about 'Hot Shots Golf'? I've always called it a "Sunday game" because it is lazy and fun and nothing like a real PGA Tour. Then again, I'm not sure it constitutes "art," but you know, at least it's something different.

Similarly, while I like racing games, I do much better with games that delve into the fantastical -- something like 'Burnout,' maybe something with a lot of blood and guts -- than I do with, say, a NASCAR sim. These "fantastical" games willfully fudge the real-world physics of driving (which isn't to say I haven't managed to learn to execute a "drift" in my own car, because depending on the highway, I can, and good god I am probably going to kill myself sometime), but they do this while appropriating real-world architecture, like buildings and lights and sounds, all to ground the game in an accessible vocabulary. (Then you have F-Zero and wipEout which, ah, don't. They don't do this at all.)

So I don't play enough "hard" simulation to readily assess whether a "scale miniature" can be the same thing as "art," because I can't (and why would I want to?). I CAN say that I recently watched 'Moneyball' and began to wonder whether games already apply the same kind of math to sports games. Wow!

But -- and this is working from my experience as a person who avoids sports and "sports games" at any cost -- I think you can add new, unlikely dynamics unto a "sports game" that really fundamentally change the experience from "artifice" and "simulacrum" into this new thing. Is the new thing "art"? Well, now we'd have to talk again about what art "is" and what art "does," and no, thanks.

None of these ideas are very inventive, no, but that's because you can apply them to all sorts of media and environments.

*this is a lie; I actually play a lot of soccer sims; for illustrative purposes, I lied.

God I wish I were slightly more self-aware. Hat-tip!

Isn't this from that movie, the Fifth Element? So sure

Oh. Well you are correct that I love trivia and reasonably-priced beer. What is your town's trivia night like

Wow! Sure! I will pick a name that is super embarrassing. Are we already friends? How much I embarrass us hinges on whether I know you and/or how far I have to travel to get to trivia night.

"to be the eyes and ears and conscience of the creator of the universe"

Oh, OK. Hmm. This is really hard, but I'll try. 1) Super Metroid, 2) Metroid II: Return of Samus, 3) Metroid: Prime, 4) Fusion, 5) Pinball, 6) Zero Mission, 7) OG Metroid, 8) 3-D DS, 9) 3-D II, 10) 3-D III, 11) Other M

This isn't a question. OH. You want to be absolved, huh. OK, I will tell you a secret: you have played more Metroid than most people who "love" Metroid.

Your penance: play Return of Samus and Metroid Pinball