Coachella Diary

(Page 3 of 3)

April 28, 2008

The next morning after breakfast, I could see the bags under Ricardo's bleary eyes, and he wasn't happy. He coughed a little and then he said of the party that ended mere hours ago, "We were in line for a cab and that (insert your favorite expletive) Nicky Hilton got in front of us, flashed a lot of money to the cab driver and took off." Why can't these rich folk leave the princes of gaming alone? I thought, aren't those Hilton girls a tad too old to be partying and acting like teenage assholes, already? They're like herpes: They just keep coming back for more.

In the air, the idiots and the angels hung around. As the SkyWest jet left Palm Springs, as the HD LCD monitors and PS3s were torn down and shipped out, as all the game journos were scattered across the country once again, as the hummingbirds flew microscopic 30,000 feet below and the ancient nadir of the Grand Canyon was like the gaping cut in my soul, I kept quietly singing Rilo Kiley's "Breakin' Up." You know that refrain, "Ooo. It. Feels good to be free. Ooo. It. Feels good to be free." Illusion is such a pleasure, the first one.