In June I got an assignment to cover the twentieth Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, which is an annual trade show that celebrates / advertises video games. The assignment was given to me by Cara Ellison, a Scottish journalist / critic who had been living on my couch for six weeks. She asked me for a couple hundred words to tack onto the end of her own lengthy piece for Paste Magazine.

So I went to Los Angeles, and I got the “story,” whatever it was, and did a bunch of drugs with my cousin, and slept in the trunk of my car, and lived off coffee and bagels.

It was depressing as hell. We couldn’t even get into the Convention Center. The story I wrote, which I never delivered to her because it had ballooned to seven thousand words, was complete trash, and it was about nothing, since practically nothing had happened. The most fun we had was away from the Convention Center, when we explored Griffith Park at night, and the hills near the Hollywood sign by day, and Venice Beach and Santa Monica on mushrooms. (Also: I stayed at a bungalow with my friend Amy, and later met a girl at the Trader Joe’s in Silver Lake. I gave her my phone number, which she later used! We became good friends.)

I thought, hell, I can’t turn any of this in. She isn’t going to want this. It’s only funny to me, et cetera. And so I shelved it. I nearly destroyed it too.

Lately I have been working on it again. It is over fifteen thousand words. It is insane and stupid and bad. I can’t wait to publish it on the new website I have, which absolutely no one reads, and probably never will read. It’ll be great!

Anyway that’s my pitch. Love you, ghosts of the internet!!!!