On January 30, 2002, Aaron posted Gig Matrix’s inaugural piece*, a lackluster recap of a lackluster season six episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. No one noticed.

His second post garnered him international fame and fortune, which led him down a dangerous path of drugs, whores and drugged-out whores. He spent the next five years writing 217 more posts but has failed to recapture his former glory. He hopes someday another show will rip off Buffy so he can recycle that fateful piece. In the meantime, he searches for gay subtext where it probably doesn’t exist and continues to write about his nerdy passions: Joss Whedon, fighting games and karaoke. If someone made a “Once More, With Feeling” fighting-karaoke game, his heart would explode.

Aaron serves as Gig Matrix’s managing editor, which basically means he tells everyone what to do. They rarely listen. If the group goes to see Superbad, he emails the next day asking who wants to write it up, in hopes that some sucker will bite. They rarely do.

He likes to invent brand new categories to accommodate the wacky ideas he has, but no one else seems to use them very much (see Potent Quotables, IMprov, 450px Reviews). But he is sure that High Five will be a big hit.

Aaron plans to blog on this about page regularly about the kind of things that no one else is interested in (the gay shit), old games he bought but has never gotten around to (there are dozens), and post pictures of his beloved cat (Owen). He hopes you will check back regularly or subscribe to his RSS feed.

*This was not the first-ever post, but it is the earliest one archived.

Often when I write on Gig Matrix, I start with what I think is a clever headline, which then leads to a thesis and eventually a first graf. After seeing all the delicious food and wine porn in Julie & Julia, my friend and I headed immediately to a wine bar in Hell’s Kitchen where we got red wine and paired it with a beautiful plate of … nachos. Don’t tell Julia!

Anyway, my mind instantly started testing out headlines involving food, wine, France, cooking, Streep, blogging, anything evoked by the movie. (Hey, last names can work. I was particularly proud of using “Streep Throat” to describe Meryl’s singing in Mamma Mia.) Then the most amazing thing happened: A dual-language pun materialized on the tip of my langue. Behold! Joie de livre!

me: i have a really good hed for Julie and Julia review: Joie de livre
(livre = book)
is that enough for a post? jk

Reuben: All our Francophones will love it

me: yes i will

Reuben: So is “joie de livre” a pun?

me: rhymes with vivre
the movie’s all about this woman writing a book about cooking
also kind of ties in with joy of cooking

Reuben: Right

me: also, a lot of it is set in france, when julia child was working on her art of mastering french cooking

Reuben: Is “vivre” French for “cooking?”

me: no, where’d you get that?

The pun requires you to know what joie de vivre means (I think most people do) but also that livre is the French word for book (most people don’t). Get it? The English equivalent would be like “Joy of Book-ing.” (Oooh, not bad!)

Anyway, so with that tiny basis, I went home and wrote:

Julie & Julia is a film entirely built around joie de vivre: The joy of cooking, the joy of writing and the joy of seeing Meryl Streep so utterly radiant as super chef Julia Child.

And I had nothing else to say. So here’s my official take on the movie: I had a huge grin on my face every time Meryl Streep burst onscreen. So if you like to smile, go see it.

I still don’t own a PS3, and there have been very few games so far that make me feel like I’m missing out. Wipeout HD for sure. Uncharted 2 looks spectacular. And I was curious about Killzone 2 after the ridiculous E3 video that Guerilla would never be able to match—but then almost did. So when my friend Sheng invited me over for a PS3-fest, I was eager to check it out.

I hate that game.

Seriously, it’s not very good. It certainly looks spectacular, easily surpassing anything I’ve seen on 360 in pure graphical oomph. But it’s kind of soul-less. The world doesn’t feel nearly as complete as Halo or Gears, its closest competitors. You fight the same string of red-eyed Helghast that barely behave differently. There’s one big guy with a lightning bolt gun that you fight a little differently. There was one shitty tank scene that made me miss Halo‘s Scorpion so much it hurt. A couple turret sections. That’s pretty much it.

The story is awful and incoherent, making Gears look good in comparison. All of the characters are unlikable assholes who scream “Fuck!” and make “your mom” jokes throughout. That might be awesome if I were half my age. (It still wouldn’t be.)

But mostly of all, the shooting just isn’t very good. If you’re going to base your gameplay on a cover system, please make sure the cover system works. It really doesn’t. The guns are dull, and as far as I found, there was only one type of grenade. Boring. Shouldn’t shooting people be, like, fun? It just isn’t in Killzone 2. It plays very much like a poor man’s Modern Warfare set in a pauper’s Gears of War. Guerilla should have spent a lot less time on the graphics and more time making it fun. I got to the penultimate level and don’t feel compelled to ever pick it up again.

Tonight I watched the Oscar-winning film Sideways, which my friend Jeremy described as the last good Alexander Payne movie. I’m kind of shocked I had never seen it, considering it features two of my favorite things: wine and Thomas Haden Church. It was good, but I definitely noticed that it was enhanced by the bottle of wine I was drinking.

In fact, I can’t imagine watching it without a glass of wine, as Paul Giamatti and THC spend a large portion of the movie discussing, swishing, sniffing, swirling and drinking wine. And although my less-than-refined palate doesn’t even know what “tannin” means, I certainly enjoyed pairing the movie with a $4 bottle of Tisdale cabernet sauvignon. I mean, I never spent more than 30 francs on a bottle of wine in France, n’est-ce pas?

This got me thinking, and I couldn’t help but wonder: sometimes is all we need just a really good complement? Ok, so I’ve been watching a lot of Sex and the City in preparation for the forthcoming movie. I ripped through season two this past weekend, and every time Carrie lit up, I felt obliged to do the same. Sometimes I actually had to pause the DVD, go out and have a smoke, and then continue from there. And she smokes a lot in season two.

Similarly, it’s almost impossible for me to watch Xtube and not masturbate furiously. I guess some things just go hand in … hand.

Samba de Amigo can’t hit Wii soon enough. I could never justify dropping $80 on maraca controllers (or even justify typing that sentence, really), so I can’t wait to finally experience the unbridled joy of shaking my Wiimote with a monkey.

I’ve been playing a lot of Rock Band, and if I don’t have three friends over, I often play guitar and strap on a headset so I can sing, too. It involves attaching a 360 controller to myself and it looks ridiculous, but it’s a lot of fun. It’s also really fucking hard if you don’t know the songs that well. And I don’t even wanna know how a douche like Phil Collins can sing while he plays the drums.

Anyway, this is all an elaborate excuse to post a video of Keren Ann, who sings, plays guitar and the harmonica simultaneously above. If I didn’t love her so much, I’d hate her. I’m going to see her Feb. 27 at the Black Cat, if anyone’s interested.

So Dumbledore was gay! Now I know why he was named “headmaster.” Oh Schnapps!

I’ve already logged a good 10 hours in Halo 3‘s campaign mode, and here is arguably my finest moment. Reuben and I died about 80 times in this Brute-packed section of Tsavo Highway and my hand actually kinda hurts, but it was worth it for the chance to meet this jetpack Brute in midair and shotgun him down. Behold the splendor, courtesy of the new screenshot capabilities of Halo 3.