Wii!!!

Last night, Gabe's nieces brought over an early birthday present: the Nintendo Wii.

My verdict: What a ridiculous piece of crap. What an unncessary luxury. What a waste of time.

What a cool toy.

Probably my favorite thing about it -- aside from the fact that you might actually burn, say, a dozen calories during the course of a video game -- is that you can customize little individual players, and have them compete in a little universe of players with very distinctive facial features, but hands and feet that are mysteriously detached from the rest of their bodies.

Just as we're detached from our cartoon selves, our cartoon selves' extremities are detached from their bodies, making an entire shiny, scrubbed universe of tiny but crucial detachments from reality (just look at these people staring at their games and you can see how detached from reality we can become).

Much hilarity ensued last night, as the nieces worked with us to create players representing (and resembling) everyone in our family. My goateed, balding alter ego was trounced by Gabe's boyish, almond-eyed doppelganger in three out of four contests.

While the games were fun, it was the creation of alternative selves that was the highlight of the evening.

Now, if I could just get mine to hit a backhand...

--T.A.