After playing about 15 hours of Grand Theft Auto IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony, my Xbox 360 hard drive died. The game is DLC ("DownLoadable Content") and requires over a gigabyte of hard drive space to play. No hard drive, no Gay Tony. All progress lost. Damn it.

The Xbox 360 drives have a 12 month warranty. That means I must have bought that drive on... yep. I still have the receipt right here: February 10, 2012. Like clockwork. I should probably be pleased I squeezed an extra month out of it.

I can't say I didn't get my money's worth. I play more than 20 hours of games a week on the Xbox. In the past year, that hard drive stored saves (and in many cases whole discs worth of game data) for 24 games other than Gay Tony, better than 2 per month!

• Alan Wake
• Alice: Madness Returns
• Batman: Arkham City
• Borderlands
• American Magee's Alice
• Deus Ex: Human Revolution
• Dragon Age: Origins
• Droplitz
• Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition
• The First Templar
• Gears of War 3
• L.A. Noire
• Modern Warfare 2
• Peggle
• Portal 2
• Rage
• Record of Agarest War
• Skyrim
• Star Wars: Force Unleashed II
• Tomb Raider: Legend
• Trials HD
• Tropico 4
• Two Worlds II
• X-Men: Destiny

(The games in bold above are the ones I was planning on playing some more. Losing my saves for Record of Agarest War is the only one that really hurts. That's an 80+ hour game, easy, that I was already nearly 20 hours or more into. I don't know if I have it in me to start it over. Maybe later.)

Grand Theft Auto is the franchise that got me to buy a PS2 way back in 2001. I have no qualms about buying a new hard drive to play it some more. Look out, Gay Tony; I'm coming for you!

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In the days before the Internet, it was a rare event to find someone who carried a mental inventory of the same childhood television experiences that you did. For years I tested potential friends by their remembered knowledge of 80s cartoons like the Bionic Six or M.A.S.K.. Like going to war together, the shared cherished memory of obscure cartoons could create an instant bond that was easily built into a friendship opportunity.

For example, while working at Chili's in the mid-1990s, my relationship with one of the other waiters was based entirely on our shared appreciation for Thundarr the Barbarian, a Saturday morning cartoon that ran for only 2 seasons starting in 1980. In addition to being twice my height and weight, he was a homosexual who really enjoyed recreational cocaine and alcohol use. It was so uncommon to find other people who remembered Thundarr (and his Chewbacca-inspired pal, Ookla the Mok), that the memory of the series alone was enough to create a kinship despite our differences.

Of course, these days, Wikipedia and YouTube can provide a quick primer for these sort of things so it's no longer so rare to find someone who remembers short-lived cartoons like Rubik, the Amazing Cube or Turbo Teen. Still, such a mention in pop culture is always sure to get me to pay attention.

Last week, I was playing pinball at a friend's house. (We used to go to video arcades to play those games, but now that arcades have gone the way of automats, we buy the machines and keep them in our houses.) Between the electronic screeches, I overheard an argument between my friend and his woman over the piece of music was played by a children's toy they had found. My friend claimed it was classical music; she insisted that it was playing the theme song from the mid-80s Inspector Gadget cartoon.

Naturally, I remembered the Inspector Gadget theme and was pretty sure that it was not the music played by the toy. Twenty years ago, I probably would have jumped into that conversation with both feet, but instead I waited until I was home alone to ask Wikipedia and YouTube to settle the issue. Oh, how the times have changed! Thank you, Internet?

For the record, the piece of music played by the toy was In the Hall of the Mountain King by Edvard Grieg. That music inspired Inspector Gadget Theme by Shuki Levy (who also wrote the theme to M.A.S.K.!), but they aren't quite the same piece.

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Last week, my favorite pair of jeans developed a hole in the seat. You can imagine my disappointment.

They were a 4-year old pair of Levi's 527™. The 527™, in case you were unaware, is very similar to the famous 501®, but a little looser in the seat with a boot cut flare on the leg. I used to wear 501®s until I discovered a pair of 527™ in a remainder bin at a discount department store. I find the 527™ to be more comfortable, but for some reason they just don't last as long. Eventually, my butt becomes just too much for them.

But they're just a pair of pants, right? Time to move on. I've still got 2 other pairs of Levi's 527â„¢ jeans that are functionally identical. Or so I thought until today. Now another pair of my jeans has developed a hole in the seat.

My friend Otto buys wears Levi's that are decades old that he hunts down like a detective. He says the secret to making them last forever is to never wash them. If that's the price to keep my jeans in one piece, I guess I'm just going to have to get use to replacing my jeans every few years.

Two pairs of jeans, two holes in the seats, both in one week. If there's a moral to this story, it's that jeans, like everything else in life, will always let you down in the end. And that's news that you've just got to take sitting down. I'm going to take this as a sign that I should get off my ass... and go shopping for more jeans.

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Hungry and on the road, I stopped at a Dairy Queen. My timing must have been good, as I walked in the door just steps ahead of a soccer team that was meeting for an end-of-the-season trophy presentation. I rushed to the waiting cashier in order to avoid waiting for 30 kids to get their Blizzard®s before I could get my burger. Therein lay my first mistake.

When the girl at the counter asked me for my order, I panicked and got it wrong. I didn't want a FlameThrower® or anything with bacon, but based on what I saw on the menu, I seemed to be in the minority. Assuming that the simplest GrillBurger™ would be the most popular and therefore early on the menu board, I ordered a combo 1. Therein lay my second mistake.

As soon as the cashier handed me my change for the combo, I knew I was in trouble. Further investigation revealed that I had ordered a double-pattied burger, more than I could eat in one sitting. Assuming that it was too late to change my order, I got a little clever and decided that I would simply order a second bun, turning my double-pattied burger into two separate burgers, one to eat and one to save for later. Therein lay my third mistake.

It would seem that no one ever asks Dairy Queen for a just a bun. The cashier was dumbstruck. She called her manager, who looked at me like I was an alien. When the startled cook heard my request -- believe it or not, I'm not making this up -- he literally dropped the over-sized tray of burgers he was carrying. Trying to make things easier for everyone, I told the manager that he didn't need to wrap the bun in another to-go box; he could just hand it to me. Therein lay my fourth mistake.

It took a while for me to convince the manager that I was not pulling some elaborate prank on him. (Who in America doesn't want a double-pattied burger? Why would anyone want a bun with no meat? Who would let the employees touch the food with their hands?) Eventually, I got my burger and my bun, and I was able to create two very tasty cheeseburgers that lasted me the rest of the day. But next time I'm hungry and thinking about stopping by Dairy Queen, I'm probably just going to order a Peanut Buster® Parfait. At least then I'll know what I'm getting into.

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Tomorrow, my 20-year high school reunion will be held less than 2 miles from my house. I will not be going. Twenty years is a longer walk than I want to take.

I have exactly two friends from high school to whom I still speak, and neither one of them plans to attend this reunion either. That is not to say that I didn't have any other friends in high school that might be there. Some of them I stopped talking to because I am an asshole. (It didn't take much in high school to convince me that someone wasn't worth my time. Honestly, it still doesn't.) Others I stopped talking to because they were assholes. (I ended my relationship with one of my "best" friends when I heard that he and the girl I was dating at the time were having mutual oral sex. And yes, I'm still holding a grudge about that.)

I don't mean to suggest that there aren't people I went to high school with that I still remember fondly. What I do mean to suggest is that I don't remember any of them fondly enough to be bothered with going to a reunion to talk to them. I'm not in hiding, I'm just indifferent.

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Mark Richt came to my town on Tuesday as by coincidence I went to Athens. Richt was in town recruiting Newnan High School senior Trey Wiggins for the 2013 Georgia Bulldogs football team, and he took the time to visit with local schoolchildren at the elementary school where Wiggins' mother works. But what really seems to have stirred up the locals was Richt's dinner at the local Texas Roadhouse restaurant. Word on the street is that Richt is apparently "a really nice guy."

Mom and I had dinner at Texas Roadhouse on Wednesday. I wore my "G" hat and a "Dawgs" shirt. The waitstaff assumed that my attire marked someone who wanted to hear their stories of waiting on Richt the night before. Over the course of my main course, two waitresses approached me with their stories of meeting Richt. I sat patiently through an iPhone slideshow of Richt trying very hard to tolerate people interrupting him as he tried to eat his steak. At that moment, I knew what it felt like to be a famous head football coach.

I don't mean to be dismissive of their hero worship. I understand the appeal of meeting Coach Richt in person. I spent a decade in Athens, and the one time I bumped into him while walking across campus — in about 2004 — he asked to borrow my pen briefly to sign an autograph for a booster. As I recall, he was a really nice guy.

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Earlier this year, my father bought something like 40 acres in Fountain, Florida. He bought a camper so that he could sleep on the land while he worked on cleaning it up. Yesterday, his carefully laid plains went up in smoke.

It seems that Dad was clearing some brush with Prometheus' good friend, fire, when things got a little out of control. Soon his camper and his van were burnt to ruin, along with everything inside of them. By 5PM, the only things still intact were Dad and a rake.

A good Samaritan named Al lent Dad his cell phone so that Dad could call me to rush out on a 484-mile round trip to recover him to Georgia. It was my first trip to Dad's property. Too bad it was all in the dark.

I arrived in Fountain shortly after 11PM EST (10PM local time) to find the Fire Marshall still on the scene, looking for evidence to prove his theory that Dad had been cooking crystal meth. I'm sorry I wasn't there earlier, I could have saved that man a lot of trouble. Dad might do a lot of crazy things, but he's far too lazy to cook crystal meth.

Dad was a little worked up over being accused of making drugs in his electricity-free trailer in the woods that had just burnt up in a mysterious fire. He insisted that we drive straight back to Georgia once the Marshall let us go. I hadn't eaten anything since 2PM, so I stopped at a 24-hour McDonald's in Eufaula, Alabama. If a McDonald's hamburger doesn't taste great after you've fasted for 14 hours, it isn't ever going to taste great. Therefore, I can definitively say that a McDonald's hamburger is never going to taste great.

All in all, it could have been much worse. Dad's alive and I don't have to hear about how awesome it's going to be for him to camp out on his land in Florida anymore. I'll consider that a fair trade for my time.

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On Saturday, my father got in my car and put my sunglasses in his pocket. He doesn't have a sunglasses case like my case, and he didn't leave his sunglasses in my car. But he says he thought they might be his sunglasses anyway.

On Wednesday, my mother spent an hour making a shopping list and organizing the coupons in order by the product's location in our local Kroger. When we got in the car, she insisted that we go somewhere other than our local Kroger, making her organization system useless.

Those are my parents. Does that explain anything?

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I suspect that I first met Judge Dredd when he and Batman shared an adventure in 1991's Judgement on Gotham comic book. Dredd, a character appearing regularly in British comics, was a tough cop struggling to maintain order in a post-apocalyptic future that is equal parts terrifying, satirical, and absurd. Dredd and Batman both share a righteous morality, a utility belt of awesome technology, and a complete lack of any sense of humor, but the two are on opposite ends of the empathy spectrum. Naturally, I was instantly enchanted.

One afternoon in late June 1995, I rode with my friend Mark in his antique truck to the Northlake 8 AMC movie theater in Tucker, GA to buy advance tickets for opening night for the Sylvester Stallone Judge Dredd film. I was a bouncing bundle of pure enthusiasm, and something about that experience in my history has always stuck in my memory. Sorry to say, my memory has lasted far longer than my enthusiasm did. The movie sets and costumes looked good, but beyond the surface, it just didn't turn out to have much to do with the character of Judge Dredd.

After all these years, I felt I owed it to the character to give his new movie, cleverly titled Dredd, a fair shake. I'm pleased to say that the new Dredd movie treats the lawman better this time around. I was the only person in the building at yesterday's 4:30 showing at Newnan's Carmike 10 theater, and I can tell you that 100% of the audience was enthusiastically entertained. I even applauded appreciatively when Karl Urban as Dredd finally yelled "I am the law" the proper way: with his helmet on.

The movie is a small, day-in-the-life action story about what it must be like to be the toughest cop in a very violent world. The limited scope of the story is far more suited to the absurdist crime-story millieu historically associated with the characters than its big-budget predecessor. And though the limited budget did result in more limited costuming and visual effects (no robots or flying cars!), it added to a more claustrophobic environment which should be expected in Mega-City One, population 800 million.

The film may not have restored the lost enthusiasm of my youth, but I did enjoy it and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone who likes gory, stylish action films about foreign comic book characters. You know who you are.

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Last night in bed, Victoria decided to get my attention by poking me in the left eye. It worked.

Boy, howdy, that was (and remains) painful! I'm sure there's a lesson in this somewhere, but I just can't see it right now. Tonight I'll be sleeping in safety glasses.

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