1:00pm: OK, so the press conference was a waste of time (and full of lies), but at least there's food. Lots of it. Good thing, too. There isn't a single restaurant between Culver City and the Fairmont hotel. Yes, I double checked. No, I do not understand it either.
1:55pm: I'm just in time for the EA press conference, which is, largely a waste of time. Unfortunately it's an entire hour of wasted time, and my next appointment is at 3:00pm, at another hotel - with EA. I skip out on the Rock Band back slapping to catch a shuttle bus the ten blocks or so to the Le Merigot. They're supposed to run every five minutes. "Supposed" is one of my favorite words.
3:15pm: Still waiting for the shuttle bus. I could have walked there by now.
3:30pm: Checking in for my appointment with EA. They weren't actually "waiting" for me, it seems. I simply get assigned to the next available handler and walked through the gauntlet of their suite in a group. My group consists of myself and that gal who licked a PSP once. I forget her name. She asks interesting questions. I wonder how it tasted?
4:45pm: I've played just about every game they have in here, including Rock Band. The Harmonix PR flak is asking me what I thought of it. I tell her the timing was off. Then she asks me what I thought of the interface. She's read my Microsoft Event write-up, apparently. I dodge the question and get an invite to their private party. Free booze and fake guitars. This is the first flashback to last year's E3 of many. I tell her I'm not sure I'll make it, but thanks anyway.
5:15pm: I'm late to my appointment with Eidos. Thankfully Joe and Dana made it on time and are holding down the fort. Double thankfully, our first session is with FunCom and Conan. I've seen it before, and it's an MMOG, so I really don't care. But they have great swag, and the beer is cold. Dizzy from one Corona? This is how you know you're working too hard.
5:45pm: I've moved on to IO's booth to see Kane & Lynch. They weren't expecting me either (in spite of the fact I registered with them a week ago), but there isn't exactly a line so they're still happy to see me. Then their TV dies. So we move to another room. At least the Xbox 360 still works.
6:30pm: Back at the hotel to do some writing and maybe post something before my East Coast audience goes to bed. I've been writing for about ten minutes when the power goes out. There is no upside to this.
10:00pm: My cunning plan to fetch dinner while waiting for the power to come back is both a success and a failure. The restaurant at the end of the pier still has power, thankfully, and damn fine margaritas. That's the good news. The bad news is the power has still not come back on at the hotel.
11:00pm: There are no hotels in Santa Monica with A) available rooms and B) electricity. There are plenty with either, but none with both. I know this because we've called them all. I have a two-hour charge in the laptop, and a borrowed Sprint broadband card. Time to get writing.
7:30am: Out of bed. The power has just come back on. My laptop is dead, I didn't get any sleep and I'm a half-day behind in posting my stories. But at least there's coffee. Time to start all over.
Final thoughts? Santa Monica is a great town to visit, but I don't want to work there. Next time the ESA plans a convention, I hope they have the balls to actually make it a convention and not a three-day experiment with the entire press corps and a mid-sized American city as unwitting butts of the joke.
**
Russ Pitts is an associate editor for The Escapist. His blog can be found at www.falsegravity.com.
