Now I'm on the run.

I'm an outlaw in this town.

I duck into a back door at the LA Convention center to lose them, and lo and behold it's E3--the video game industry's biggest expo. 50-cent towers over me, as the crowd whirls through the million-dollar diplays set up by Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Activision, Vivendi Universal, Electronic Arts. Doom, Half Life, Unreal, and GTA--they're all there.

And nobody gets it.

I'm the only one playing this game.

I duck on by the Unreal exhibit, and I run straight into a chain-link fence, hop it, and press up against a bus. It's got the Grand Theft Auto logo--I'm in Rock Star's hood.

The chicks are beautiful.

They're all dressed like strippers and fantasy fest vixens.

She walks amongst them.

I need her in order to win this game.

And so I begin talking to them.

"Hey--I'm Elliot."

"Hey."

"You play video games?"

"I hate video games," she laughs.

"You look like what's her face--Tomb Raider."

"Lara Croft."

"So what you do in Hollywood?"

"I'm trying to get my own TV show--I wanna be the Martha Stewart for my generation, but where she specialized in party favors, I'm gonna specialize in sex."

She's not the one.

Don't get me wrong--there was a time in my life when I'd Tucker Max on her at this point, but not tonight. Tucker Max is so 2003, and Richard Dawkins dictated that we must evolve.

The objective of this game is not to take her home.

Picking up women is all too easy these days. You remember that whole sexual revolution thing--well it totally backfired on women. And men. We're all in this together. Ask not for whom the bell tolls--it tolls for thee. "What God has joined together, let not man put assunder." Saying stuff like that makes me a wanted man in NY, LA, and DC.

I could go into it how our pump & dump economy is fundamentally tied to the disintegration of the family and the pornification of society, but that stuff bores me. Go read the Tipping Point or Freakonomics if you think God is dead and economics is the end all be all--they both miss the nature of decline, but that's the point--to enjoy yourself on the way down. And you can think you're smarter than everyone else because you've read the tipping point and now know that little things can make a big difference, people tend to like things that they like, and fashions and fads come and go.

But enough on that already--these days when you go out you have to duck to avoid women. Women were rasied on Sex and the City and hiphop. They were raised without fathers, and were then liberted from the patriarchy in college. They were commanded from the commercial pulpits on high to venture forth and conquer. I have let more than a few conquer me--in that ironic Dave Eggers sort of way, if you know what I mean.

Hooking up is easy--it's amazin they still write books on it.

But I'll tell you what's hard.

It's to find the girl who will write you a poem the next day.

It's hard to find someone who still believes.

In love.

Especially in LA.

At E3.

But that's what I'm looking for.

I live for high adventure games.

And there is none higher.

You can frag a million Unreal monsters, but that's for the kids.

A renaissance is what men live for.

And that's why I'm looking for her.

"So how'd you land this gig?"

"My agent called me--they're payin' me a thousand dollars."

What nobody else seemed to realize was that girls have hearts and souls. They actually want to be talkled to as human beings. They weren't just some unobtainable geek fantasy. And until game creators realize this, they'll never render story within a video game.

You can't have story without love.

You can't have love without higher ideals.

Take away higher ideals, and there goes Lord of the Rings. There goes Dante's Inferno with blessed Beatirce. There goes the Great Gatsby, Romeo and Juliet, and Hamlet. There goes Moby Dick.

You can still hire hookers and shoot them without higher ideals, but forget story. Forget everlasting memorable brands.

Grand Theft Auto has no staying power.

I know this, because she did not play it.

And this is what she wrorte:

thoughts Thoughts of you running inside and out, Still wondering, thinking, not really wanting to figure this one out. How marvelous this mystery will be, Me knowing you, Perhaps you knowing me. A tale that maybe we'll never know, Catch it in your sails and gently let it blow. This could truly be something, Anything, Nothing at all, wouldn't you agree? Destiny, fate, mistake, Me finding you, You finding me. ~tina Too tired to get the creative juices flowing, but you get the idea.. more later A rare picture of an E3 girl in her natural habitat.

"Without ideals there can be no character. Without character there can be no plot. Without plot, character, and ideals there can be no story. Without story, there ain't nuthin'. You gonna play or not?" --Autumn Wests from Autumn Rangers

Just as the great books and classics have endured because of deeper meaning, and just as movies are buoyed by story, so too shall games endure via classic storytelling.