On Friday, at work, Matt tells me that there is a mysterious warehouse in Brooklyn where we can play Halo on four giant projection screens. Not only that, but the people there would ply us with food and beer while we played. Not only that, but it would all be free.

Needless to say, I didn't believe him.

Against my will I was taken to Brooklyn on Saturday night. Andy drove, and we picked up Fish on the way. They told me that it was some kind of metal/rock club; we would be playing XBox in the middle of the crowd while a band played and everyone watched our game on huge screens.

We drove down the road to the address we had, and noticed a line of people waiting to get into some nondescript, unmarked door. "Must be the place", we figured.

Fortunately, Matt -- who apparently knew more than we did about what was to happen -- met us outside and explained nothing.

There was a $10 cover, but once it was explained that we were "the players" we were ushered in and given tickets for beer. We went up a steep flight of steel stairs, lit by a single 40-watt bulb and some candles, into a room about the size of a generous living room.

In the center of the room was an arrangement of 3 enormous cloth screens walling off an area. There were four benches, one in front of each screen, and a fourth bench in front of a white wall. People were sitting ten to a bench, drinking beer and wine. Projectors were beaming images of people relaxing on a beach onto all four surfaces. In the center was a mattress, four XBoxes, four controllers, and some other equipment.

Montgomery, the guy running the show, the artist behind all this randomness, offered us beer while everything got set up. He told us to "try to pick a lot of outdoor scenes"; he wanted "variety". Off the main room, in a room that must have, at one time, been a bedroom, were a few men furiously preparing dishes of baked beans and vegatables and other things I don't remember. Video cameras were being set up in each of the four corners of the screen-area.

Montgomery asked us to begin playing..

Thanks to Amanda (wifey of Matt) for the pics..

As we played, the people surrounding us were served food. They ate and we played. We were facing them, and occasionally they would chat with us, but mostly they just watched. Someone started screwing around on a synth, or sampler, or something, and they were doing it LOUD. I thought it was just an artful waste of time because the band was running late. Eventually the disturbing cacophony of sound subsided and stopped. A minute later, Andy killed me and Fish killed Matt, and there was a round of applause. I was quite proud of myself until it gradually dawned on me that the noises I was hearing was in fact the band and that we were done.

All the "patrons" filed out, and everything got set up for the second group. We played a second time, and everything was exactly as with the first. Then we went home.

It is still beyond me why anyone would pay a ten dollar cover to watch us play Halo while eating dinner and listening to terrible noises.

One guy said he came all the way from California to hear the band play. I should call it a "band" (notice the quotes), because I didn't notice anything substantive happening. It might as well have been a CD or malfunctioning computer we were listening to.