That’s what my life has been like, how are you?

Work’s been so crazy the last six months that I’ve barely gotten time to draw anything. I can feel my creative juices drying up. ARGH.

Lots going on in life, though. We bought a house and are moving soon. Between that and work, It’s probably not surprising that arting and relaxing and not wanting to murder people has fallen by the wayside…

Wanna look at my new house, decorated by people that are more tasteful than me? I guarantee this is not how it’ll look once we move in.

HOUSE!

To sum up: work has been kinda terrible, but life has been pretty good.

Face the harsh eye of me, Nintendo!  I will show no mercy!  Let us begin!

Here’s the link to follow along: E3 Nintendo

• Mr. Miyamoto’s dressing room is filled with Pikmin.  I suspect this is true in real life.
• Pikmin are everywhere.  Pikmin on your head.  Pikmin under your seat.  PIKMIN!
• WiiU: You don’t need no stinking TV.  Don’t wait for your TV.  Use the WiiU controller!  Everyone wants a tiny TV to go with their big one, right?  Right?
• Pikmin 3: Look At All Dem Pikmins.  Soon, you will raise a Pikmin army and crush your enemies.
• New rock Pikmin.  These are not hair metal Pikmin, sadly.  They’re just rocks with feet and eyes.
• Man, they’re talking fast.  Holy crap, Pikmin everywhere.  Look, it’s Pikmin.  You know what it is.  Little tiny dudes gang up and wreck crap with a little spaceman.  It’s the story of my life.
• Four leaders at once, but no Captain Olimar.  What happened to him?  It’s a mystery.  I’m assuming crushing, existential malaise and several suicide attempts.
• This is like ten minutes on Pikmin.  Fuck my life.
• Miyamoto trolls the crowd by pretending to throw a Pikmin doll to them and not letting go.  That’s how your dogs feel, people.  Throw the fucking ball.
• Here comes Reggie.  He feels like a purple Pikmin.  I don’t know what that means, but I politely laugh in case Reggie can hear me, thousands of kilometres away.
• Reggie’s giving you the agenda.  I bet this dude runs a motherfucking meeting like a motherfucker, son.
• Netflix, Hulu, YouTube, Amazon Video.  This shit’s gonna change how you experience all this, but they’re not gonna tell you about it today.  If you don’t like it, talk to Reggie.
• Reggie literally just told you to go to E3.nintendo.com.  Are you gonna go or are you gonna go?
• Look, Nintendo has too much stuff to show you, so deal with it.
• WiiU will support two gamepadscreen things.  Maybe you wanna know what they do?  Okay, peep this: pen control, touchscreen, buttons, analog sticks, button sticks, triggers, bumpers, IR tranceiver, motion control, rumble, camera, microphone, stereo speakers, headphone jack, volume control, home button.  YOU GOT THAT?
• Polite, Reggie-fearing applause.
• MiiVerse.  Look at them Miis, running around like so many Pikmin.  Talking.  Always talking.
• This desktop thingy is super-social and totally browser-based (eventually).
• Nintendo’s going full-force at social interaction.  You better have friends, sucka.  I’ll be over here, staring at my empty MiiVerse.  God damn.
• Super Mario Bros. U: It’s Super Mario Bros.  What you expect?
• WIIU BATMAN!  Batman is on your WiiU.  Batman.  Batman.
• Harley introduces a dude.  He comes out and be all French and shit.  Reggie wants him to show us some serious shiznits.  HIT ME.
• Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition.  What’s it gonna have?  WiiU shit, yo, and armoured versions of Batman and Catwoman.  Catwoman hasn’t got her tits out in this costume, so that’s a step up already.
• Look, it’s Batman beating faces on the WiiU with fun gimmicks.  Either you love that idea or you’re some sort of asshole.
• Scribblenauts.  Now you can scribble on your WiiU pad!  The CEO of 5th Cell has boss red shoes.
• DOG CAR.  That just happened.  PUNK ROCK DOG CAR.  Shit just got realer.
• Video package starts.  I literally forget this is a Nintendo console and have to rewind when I see Mass Effect 3, among others, like Ninja Gaiden, Aliens: Space Marines and such.  That’s pretty cool.
• Five years ago, the balance board.  Reggie heard you laughing at him.  HE HEARD YOU.
• WiiFit U: Balance board luge will shred your abs.  This might actually be smart, ‘cos you don’t have to have it on the TV.  Do it in a room with more space to move!
• Sing for WiiU puts lyrics on the pad, so you can karaoke it up without the screen.  I have no joke for this.  I think I’ve just stopped caring or something?
• Terrible acting to kick off a couple of minutes about 3DS stuff!  Thanks, exec dude!  YOUR CHARISMA LIGHTS UP MY LIFE.
• Nintendo literally said, “Fuck it.  We’re not having one conference.  We’re having conferences all week whenever we feel like.  Live with it.”
• Mario Bros. 2: Goldmember.  Mario loves GOLD.  (Insert Glenn Beck jokes here later.)
• Paper Mario Sticker Star.  Now we got stickers.  This is getting really meta here, guys.
• You know what we’re missing?  More Mario games.  Here comes Luigi into 3D mansions, filled with ghosts, and 3D giant spiders, and my palpable, 3D despair.
• Exec pauses for applause, is glad for the break in talking, sweat beading on his brow, throat dry, hands shaking… dear God, get me off this stage now.
• Third party 3DS lineup: GO!  Castlevania, Mickey Mouse, ScribbleNauts, Kingdom Hearts!  And that’s it.
• Reggie’s back.  Nervous guy is backstage, weeping audibly, hands clutching a tumbler of scotch.
• LEGO.  Let’s play with LEGOs on the TV some more.  LEGO City is LEGO!
• Mother of Pearl!  WHY WAS THAT EVEN THERE!?  I love you, self-aware LEGO secret agent dude.  Be my LEGO husband.
• Ubisoft: We’re on all your stages.  We don’t even give a shit.  We even have our own stage.  Suck it, EA.
• Yves Guillemot is French.  Bet you didn’t guess that from the name.
• Let’s see what games he has for us to play!  And by “us”, we mean, a dude on stage.
• Another dude promises not to make Reggie dance, but he will let him be the puppetmaster.  Reggie is down with that.  He tortures the dancers with glee.  I like Reggie.  He’s part evil, like me.
• You know what we don’t have enough of in popular culture these days?  Zombies.  ZombieU is gonna fix that.  WiiU pad works like sonar, x-ray, inventory, sniper scope, hacking, and GET OFF OF ME screens.  Zombies.
• Reggie gets zombiefied onscreen, enjoys it way too much, threatens to eat the French exec.  This isn’t a joke.  I’m just reporting facts now.  That’s what I do.
• Ubisoft clip reel.  They have games.
• When did Ubisoft get the Marvel license?
• Welcome to NintendoLand.  I don’t know what this means, but if Nintendo made a theme park, I might actually go to it, just to duck on a green pipe.
• Remember Ninja Gaiden’s ninjastar bonus stage?  That’s a NintendoLand thing now.  Old ideas are new again!
• In my living room, the person with the WiiU gamepad is the boss.  That’s our living room government.  There are no appeals, no mercy, only the harsh rule of the gamepad holder.
• Luigi’s Mansion multiplayer: one person is the ghost, the other players are lost in the mansion, stalked by an unseen, unforgiving, malevolent spirit.  I’m not even gonna lie, I’d play this.
• Some trailer played.  I don’t even know what the hell.
• I honestly don’t even understand what NintendoLand is at this point.  Some kind of online theme park.

Summing up: They spent an hour on WiiU games and I have no idea what’s going on with them.  I guess I have to go watch a bunch of other Nintendo presentations?  Basically, Nintendo made a console and it’s gonna totally change your life in ways they’re not going to tell you in this presentation.  Not blown away here, guys.  I guess I’m off to E3.nintendo.com?

Next up, Microsoft gets my tender caresses or savage beatings.

Here’s the link to follow along: E3 Microsoft

• Microsoft’s starting off with a live-action trailer!  It’s in space, so it must be Halo 4.  Brave move, Microsoft! Start off with the only thing people care about!
• In-game action being shown.  Looks like they might actually be running in HD for the first time ever!  I find myself still not giving a crap, despite the lushness of the foliage.
• Covenant got turned into flakes of light of flower petals!  Master Chief has finally achieved nirvana.  Or maybe the planet is evil.  I’m betting on evil planet.
• Man, that’s not fair.  The forerunners have grenade-catchers-and-hurler-backers and fancy guns with floating pieces.  We’re years away from floating piece technology!
• Sadly (?), no dubsteb for Master Chief.  How will he ever get down with his bad self?  Lame!
• Don Mattrick coming out, looking like a nebbish, unmade bed in a nice suit.
• Mattrick takes a cue from Mick Foley, goes for a cheap pop, mentioning “you the gamers”.
• Xbox is best-selling console now?  How did I miss the fanfare and announcements of that!?
• Next up: the most advanced dirt-village technology available, what could it be?  Splinter Cell?  Splinter Cell.  Sam Fisher just executed a bunch of mofos.  Now he’s happily torturing a dude for info.  Yay, American exceptionalism!  Good job, Ubisoft!  It’s like you’re not even French at all!
• Sam Fisher’s got action moves again, like in Conviction.  No more panicked flailing around when you’re not in stealth mode!
• STAB STAB SHOOT SHOOT STAB! WITH KINECT VOICE INTERACTION!
• Now Sam’s got a machine gun.  Ho ho ho.  He still decides to break a neck instead.
• Sam’s leader of Fourth Echelon?  Did I miss that in the last game?  He can call airstrikes and shit now, so that’s a step up.  Too bad he doesn’t sound like Michael Ironside.  UNACCEPTABLE.
• Fancy pants dude comes out to talk about two kinds of Football, FIFA (the real one) and Madden (American rugby) and how they work with Kinect.  Now you can yell out substitutions instead of using a menu or just ignoring that feature completely like everyone does.
• The game listens to you swear and the commentators may respond.  This is the most important advancement in videogames ever: the swear jar.
• Here comes Joe Montana, presumably to yell at the Xbox.  He instead confesses to the emptiness of his life without football.
• He’s telling players what to do, like in real life!  MONTANA WITH THE TOUCHDOWN!  MONTANA WITH THE TOUCHDOWN!
• Joe Montana just made a couple thousand bucks for pretending to know what an Xbox is.  Nice.
• Demo reel!  It’s Kinect Fable, a game that nobody wants or cares about!  Hooray!
• Seriously, what the hell.  This just looks like an on-rails shooter, a la Maddog McCree.  Nobody cheers.
• Spiky hair guy, here to talk about games!  Hooray, games!
• Grown men cheer for different game studios like middle-aged women for Justin Beiber.  Equally as sad and awkward.
• New Gears of War game!  I hope it has huge, overly-muscled dudes with sausage fingers!
• Good news, that guy from the other three games who I don’t remember the name of is in it and they’re shooting at things!
• Forza!  Look at them cars doing drivings and stuff!  Special Forza Horizon collector’s edition announced, comes with a Ferrari.
• And here comes the dubsteb!  Yes!  I was worried we wouldn’t get any in this press conference.  Can you imagine?
• The head of marketing and strategy is coming out, also in a fancy suit.  I bet this is going to be informative.
• He promises entertainment.  Claims Bing search made it 4x faster to find things on your Xbox.  That seems unlikely, given how often it finds things I don’t even ask for…
• The Bing search is now hooked up to the libraries of provider apps on your Xbox.  That’s nice.
• New entertainment providers!  He’s gonna mention 4 of the new ones.  Nickelodean, Paramount Movies, Machinima and Univision.  Can I watch Spanish soaps now?  I might do that.
• More sports and stuff to watch on the Xbox.  NHL, NBA, etc.  Hooray, sports.  *crickets*  Whoa, lead balloon.  Nerds hate sports.
• It’s not enough to tell us about sports.  Now we get to watch a video about sports!  Hooray, sports!  A multicultural group of friends enjoy their sports with also a couple of ladies.
• Now let’s talk about Xbox Music.  Not announced, the quiet sobbing of the person responsible for Zune music, alone at home with a razorblade and booze.
• Polite applause for music.  Nerds don’t hate music as much as sports.
• The future of fitness is the Kinect.  If you don’t have Kinect, you’ll just be fat forever.  Look at me, I have Kinect and I’m only mostly fat.  When this fitness thing comes out, I’ll be skinny.  NIKE SKINNY.  Hooray, Nike.
• Nike dude has weird Euro accent and weird Euro hair.  I can’t hear anything he’s saying anymore.  I’m lost in his hair and voice.  Nike me, Nike man.  Nike me.
• If you have a body, you’re an athlete.  Nike wants to measure you, track you, remind you, and match you up against other people to exercise.  What’s missing from my workouts is being compared to others and shamed by my slovenliness and sloth.
• Fat guy comes out to talk about how awesome smartphones are!  Way to put fat guy after fit, Euro guy, Microsoft!
• Xbox Smartglass.  The Xbox and tablet are joined up together.  You can pass your movie from the tablet to the Xbox, then the tablet shows you information about the movie while you watch it.  Finally, I don’t have to look up IMDB while watching!
• What will game developers do with this integration?  Has Microsoft stolen the WiiU’s thunder with tablet-based shenanigans?  Maybe!
• Dude says this will work with *any* mobile phone.  Does this mean any Window Mobile Phone or am I gonna make my Xbox and Adroid get it on?  I HOPE SO.
• Microsoft announces Internet Explorer for Xbox.  Viruses to be announced in a few hours.
• IE for Xbox looks tweaked for consoles, Bing, voice and phone integration.  Could be pretty rad.  Bookies taking bets on how right now!
• Now, let us see more games!  New Tomb Raider game looks very Uncharted.  Seems fair.  Every artist is a cannibal, after all.
• Where is Lara getting all these arrows from, anyway?  She’s not even got a quiver!  Oh, she has a shotgun, too.  Magic pockets.  You should always bring some if you’re planning on being shipwrecked or captured by pirates or whatever’s going on here.
• Don’t fall off that waterfall, Lara!  Too late.  At least she found a parachute.  Watch out for those trees… nevermind.  Jeez, they really like beating her up in this.  Poor Lara.
• Good news, they’re going to have DLC and you’ll get it first on Xbox.
• Spiky hair is back with his sweet Atari-graphic jumpman shirt.  Let’s see some world premier exclusives!
• Whoa.  “Persistent, asynchronous something something”.  That sounds fancy.
• Little dude climbs on big dude.  Now a comet fell.  Now devilman and angelman are fighting.  Shoulda brought your A-game, angelman.  You dead.
• Ascend: New Gods.  I predict this game is about climbing on big dudes.
• Meet Iris.  Iris is a motorcycle.  A motorcycle that assassinates people.  I don’t even have to make a joke about that.
• Gore Verbinski has made a game.  The game is Tron, I think?  Oh, Portal Tron.  Run, little orb, run!  Don’t let those cubes get you!  For Kinect, it’s “Matter”.  Now I’m confused.
• Here come two developers.  Oh man, that’s some broken English.  I’m not sure what that dude said besides his name is Kobayashi and his friend is… uh… something.
• Looks like Resident Evil 25: Leon Has A Bad Day.  What’s this, cover mechanics?  Third person shooter controls?  Why, this isn’t Resident Evil at all!  It’s some new game that doesn’t have controls that make me want to destroy the world!
• Run, Leon!  Run from that rolling explosion!  Raiders of the Lost Ark will never stop being an influence on videogames.  I hope.
• Ut oh.  Zombies.
• Chick from Xbox Live team has bitchin’ tattoo.  What you got for us, lady?  She says it’s rad.  Now you’re speaking my language!
• Game is called Wreckateer.  Animated Scotsman calls her a “rock polisher”.  That’s just rude, man!
• This game is basically Angry Birds, except it has a Scotsman and siege weaponry.  That means it’s RAD.  Kill that castle, yo!
• Don’t worry, we won’t have to wait long to play it.  It’s coming this summer.  You know, for people that actually want to play it.  Whoever they are.
• South Park game.  I expect crappy jokes by the bucketfull.  South Park: You play the new kid!  Pretty clever, really.
• Trey and Matt come out, make fun of Microsoft.  Nice.
• Dance Central 3: Presenting Usher… Raymond?  He has a last name now?!  When did that happen!?  Holy crap, I’m blown away by that.  Now he’s dancing!
• Wait, he just did a backflip thing!  You can’t make people do that in their living rooms!
• Wow, this is still going.  I don’t think this is Usher Raymond‘s target demo.
• BLOCKBUSTER GAME!  Oh, Call of Duty.  Wow.  CoD got less applause than Usher Raymond.  Unexpected.
• Yep, it’s a Call of Duty game, but this time it’s in America!  So, you know, that’s something different.  Now let’s see some shooting!
• Hooray, shooting!  First person shooting!
• Shooting down drones is pretty easy when your gun’s got automatic target tracking.  When I was a kid, we had to shoot things down with our own eyeballs!
• Your bullets can charge up and go through things.  This series is going to be a sci-fi game by 2015, I guarantee it.  Expect flying cars and bionics, with green-skinned chicks.
• There are drones all over the place.  You have drones.  The enemy has drones.  Drones.  Someone told them drones were the future of warfare and they listened!
• Now dude is in a plane, Protecting the president’s convoy.  I’m not sure why they didn’t just take the President in the VTOL.  Seems faster.
• “I’ll handle the drones!”  Will you handle ALL the drones, sir?  Will you?
• Drones.  Drones.  Drones drones.
• Drones.
• Drones drones.
• Drones.
• Droning applause.
• Drones.

Summing up: Average, Microsoft.  It’s a good thing I play most multiplatform games on Xbox, ‘cos I didn’t care about anything exclusive you showed except SmartGlass.  Oh well.  Drones.  Usher Raymond.  Drones.

Okay, here we go: Highlights of the Sony Press Conference.  Expect sarcasm and swears!

Here’s the link to follow along: E3 Sony

• Sony has purchased all the TVs and put them on their stage.
• I suspect a critical shortage of dubsteb in the world after E3’s over. Game companies will have used it all up.
• Lots of video of upcoming games. Multiplatform vs. exclusive ratio still to be determined.
• Rapid fire images and clips. I have stopped caring. Start, dang it!
• Jack Tretton on stage. I hope he says something assholish and crazy. Immediately demands applause for himself. SCORE.
• Tretton takes a cue from Mick Foley, goes for a cheap pop, mentioning “you the gamers”.
• Tretton mentions Kaz Hirai, says he has a commitment to jaw-dropping entertainment. His accent makes it sound like “drawer-dropping”. I giggle.
• Quantic Dream has a new game. Fingers-crossed that I have to strip for a creepy mobster again!
• New game is called “Beyond”. Name gets a pop for some reason. Game is about death. Sounds cheery!
• Ellen Page to star in Beyond. Very cool. I look forward to being creeped out by the uncanny valley.
• Yup, there it is.
• Very excited about Page’s performance in this game. So far, she’s said one line and it was actingestly amazing ACTING!
• Tretton: the PS3 is shattering expectations in its sixth year. Hopefully, he’s not talking about finding new lows and has something amazing to reveal!
• Playstation All-Stars Battle Royale: It’s not just a rip-off of Smash Bros., it’s a way to shove all Sony’s IPs into one game for guaranteed success! Right? …right? …anybody?
• Good news, you can play this game on the PS3 and Vita at the same time: Most expensive controller ever.
• Nope, I was wrong. It’s just a rip-off of Smash Bros. Visually, this looks like a hodge-podge of art styles. How did Nintendo side-step that pitfall all these years? I never noticed that as an issue for Smash Bros.
• LIGHTS OUT. Dark and scary! BIOSHOCK! Mr. Bubbles in All-Stars?
• Talking about PlayStation network or something. I’m not sure. I’ve tuned out mentally. Look at my digital download game bias!
• PlayStation Plus still pumping out free games. Pretty cool. Five bucks a month might be worth it, y’know, if I ever turned my PS3 on.
• Sony gives away free year subscription to people in attendance. Fanboys watching online explode with jealousy.
• Sony’s online TV stuff sounds awesome. You know, if you’re in the US and can actually watch that shit. Screw you, media content providers! Y U NO GIVE ME TV!?
• PSVita Exclusive Assassin’s Creed. More stabbin’ and horse ridin’ than you can imagine! Nice. Features a lady assassin main character!
• Assassin’s Creed III! Stabbing on land and in the ocean! PIRATE’S CREED! Interest level: Increased.
• PIRATE’S CREED!
• New FarCry game. I expect fancy trees and water! I DEMAND MORE TREES!
• UbiSoft has a secret: they made two FarCry games. Regular FarCry and FarCry: Four Player Co-op! Hopefully this doesn’t mean you can buy two games instead of one game with two modes.
• IN YOUR FACE INSANITY! Just keep saying that like it means something!
• Tretton starts talking about PlayStation Move. Audience manages to suppress making an audible sigh.
• Sony smartly realizes that Move isn’t for everyone, so it’s mostly just an add-on mode to other games. We’ve won, fatties. We’ve won.
• Wonderbook: Sony makes a book interface for your PS3. They’ve partnered with J.K.Rowling to bring Satanism and un-Godliness to your TV!
• Good news: you can read a book on your TV now. Thanks, Sony! That’s what was missing from videogames: reading books.
• Bad news: the book is broken! Live demos are the bane of new technology!
• Sony is bringing PlayStation Mobile to Android. Has Sony done something ingenious and stepped outside of proprietary hardware? I hope so!
• Dismemberment for everyone! More blood! More quicktime! More severed limbs! Looking forward to the innovative God of War 4: Kratos Kills Again!
• Kratos uses the Sands of Time to rewind time and climb a broken wall and scaffold! Kratos does not use the Sands of Time to save two dudes that got speared by goatmonsters. Way to (still) be a dick, Kratos.
• Why you gotta kill an elephant man, Kratos? Don’t you know they’re endangered? Dick.
• Next up we have a game by Naughty Dog that’s totally not another Uncharted game! The Last of Us: not Nathan Drake and a female sidekick in a post apocalyptic world!
• If this is non-scripted gameplay, this could be a pretty cool game, really. Would be great if your sidekick could be another player.

Summing up: Pretty good, Sony. High hopes for Last of Us, PS: Mobile and Beyond.

Videogames’ biggest event of the year! The time when I watch press conferences by the big three and make fun of them! Hooray!

Sadly, I’m too busy to live-tweet, but that doesn’t mean I can’t still watch them and mock later! I will update as I go through the events, starting with Sony’s conference which I’ll post later today.

Hooray, games!

This week my ipod conspired against me, playing Elvis’ Love Me Tender and Sometimes You Can’t Make It On Your Own back to back.

Doesn’t seem possible it’s been a month. It feels like yesterday and forever ago. I miss you, dad.

When I was 17 or so, I stayed with my dad at his apartment part of the week since my mum had moved out to the suburbs, away from my school. This had two advantages: 1) it let me avoid an hour-long commute (or the need to change schools in my last years of high school) and 2) it meant I would eat like a king, as my dad would either bring home food they’d prepared at work, or big, juicy steaks.

One night, I come home and find my dad’s already there (rare!) sitting around in his underwear and undershirt, relaxing. That particular night, I’d told my buddy and girlfriend that they could come by and watch a movie or something (my dad loved premium cable, even though he was rarely off work enough to watch it). I let my dad know and he offered to go sit in the bedroom and read. I told him it wasn’t necessary, but he went anyway. He also put on trousers and a shirt, which was probably necessary. When my friends arrived, he went off to leave us to our own devices.

A couple hours later, he emerged from his room and offered them food and drink, yelling at me for not feeding them and reacting in horror when my buddy told him he was a vegetarian. I think he got some drinks for them, then went back to his room.

After the movie had finished, my friends left and my dad came out and asked me if I was hungry. I hadn’t properly eaten yet, so I said sure, and he went to make some steaks.

For those that don’t know how easy it is to make a proper steak, my dad taught me, and I’ll tell you right now:

Step 1) Buy a good steak. It doesn’t have to be some super-expensive Kobe beef or a premium cut like a filet mignon. The most important thing is the marbling. You need fat to make your steak taste good! (The steaks we’d get came from the supplier for the restaurant my dad ran, the 360 revolving restaurant at the CN Tower. These steaks were dry hung for a couple of weeks to age, which makes them more tender and tasty.) About 1.5″ thick is good.

Step 2) Season the steak properly. A good cut of meat needs almost nothing to taste good. Simply rub it in kosher salt and some cracked pepper. That’s it. Rub it in with your hands. No sauce. No marinade. Not necessary.

Step 3) Let it sit a bit. You want the steak near to room temperature, not cold.

Step 4) Cook it. If you have a grill, awesome. If not, it doesn’t matter. Put a little pat of butter in a frying pan and turn the heat up high. High heat is important! You want to eat a good steak rare or medium rare. More than that and you’re just wasting the meat, really. Medium rare is warm the whole way through, and seared on the surface. Let the steak cook about 3 minutes, then flip it. Let it cook another couple of minutes, then press the middle of the steak with your finger or a spatula.

A rare steak is really soft. A well-done steak is an abomination, hard and firm. The juices are gone and it’s dry and you’ve just ruined your whole meal and might as well buy a strip steak and put HP sauce on it or something. Why do you hate and torture yourself and cows?

Step 5) Serve? When the steak is ready, take it off the heat and put it on a plate. Leave it there. Go do something else for about five minutes. My dad would fry chip-sliced potatoes while cooking the steak and used this time to pat the chips dry with a paper towel to absorb some of the excess grease, then plate them. The important thing is that you let your steak sit for about as long as it took to cook. This lets it soak up the juices inside and stay moist.

Step 6) Eat. Some people put a sauce on the side or whatever. It’s not really necessary, if you ask me. Just eat your delicious steak.

So, back to my dad and I sitting down to eat steaks. He’d made fried potatoes to go with the steaks and plopped the plate down on the coffee table in front of of the TV so we could eat like men, on the couch.

As I tucked into the meal, I heard him mumble to my right, “So that’s your girlfriend, huh?”

“Yeah.”

He nodded and we continued to eat.

“You know about condoms, right?”

Suddenly, a piece of steak was lodged in my throat. I coughed it back up into my mouth.

I managed to exclaim, “Yes!”

He nodded again.

“Good… We don’t need a bunch of little yous running around.”

I think I stammered out something like, “No, that’s not going to happen.”

“Good steak.”

We ate the rest of the meal in silence, watching TV.

My dad worked at the theatre for a long time, almost until he left Singapore for England. This allowed him to meet some movie stars when they were doing premieres, including one of his idols, Frank Sinatra.

The most interesting one, however, was a young actress named Hayley Mills who had debuted in the 1959 picture Tiger Bay. (“You know that girl. The one from the movie. She always licked her lips,” he told me.) Assigned to shepherd her around the theatre during the premiere, he found himself escorting the 11 or 12-year-old when the fans and media busted through a side door and swarmed into the theatre. Thinking fast, he did what you might do with any other kid her age: he basically just scooped her up and ran.

He made for the elevator to the top floor, jostling through the crowd. I’m sure it looked very dramatic and heroic. Well, at least until the part where he got to the elevator door, then fell through into the waiting car, he and Ms. Mills landing in a pile on top of each other in the lift in their evening best.

Glamorous.