xBox "Flashing" in Brooklyn

The other day a friend I've known since we were four ft. tall and I went on a drive down to Brooklyn, where a guy he'd contacted via Craigslist was operating a quasi-legal business out of his home to modify xBox gaming consoles. (Nerds!)

It proved to be a long trip from Westchester; traffic was clogged up from where we started and he had not chosen the most direct route, preferring to avoid toll roads instead of saving time (a strange boy, this one-- but I have a fondness for the strange ones). It was also in the afternoon, and getting close to rush hour. I was quickly reminded of how much I hated being inside a car for long periods of time, and how lucky I've been to live with easy access to public transportation.

I get restless within minutes of no progress and constantly fight the urge to jump out of the seat and walk alongside the plodding, smoky chain of cars. Getting stuck in traffic becomes something larger and more profound; I see us as pawns getting stuck in this weird and pointless journey whose destination in no way justifies the monotony we're willing to put up with behind the wheel. An analogy of life for the sad and passionless. My thoughts take me places.

But in addition to giving me some time to catch up with my buddy, this new update (for his xbox) was a good investment overall. And I'm not one to shy away from supporting good investments. After the modifiction, my friend would be able to play games burnt onto on blank CDs (say, games that he found off of the internet), as opposed to being forced to stick with over-priced games bought at the store.

For the trip I was dressed up in a shirt & tie because of a job interview earlier in the day. In other words I gave off some semblance of enforcement. Professionally dressed entourage usually translates into bad ass security. Or at least that was the message that I told myself this attire conveyed.

We exited off the highway onto what seemed like a neverending grid of small, single family dwellings, and drove through the part of Brooklyn that hipsters havent yet taken over and rappers never talk about. My friend and this business man had been communicating for a while on the cell phone and so we knew where to go and what apartment to enter.

Walking up the steps in his building and ringing his doorbell was a bit disconcerting. What type of person would let strangers enter his home for $30? I braced myself for what lay within, anticipating crack vials and huge bongs surrounded by grim, silent type fiends. But at the door we were greeted by a well dressed Italian-looking man in his late 20's with an untrimmed but not entirely gnarly beard. His accent placed him as a kid who has lived in the city for his entire life, and he immediately asked us to enter.

Inside was sitting this cute little girl, who I assumed was his daughter and was no more than 4 or 5. She was glued to a massive flat-screen TV playing some cartoon that showed Egyptian or Arabian princes, eating food and paid us no mind-- though offering furtive glances in between the occasional spoon fulls of rice.

The dude offered us chairs and my friend offered him his xbox, and this guy promptly went to work. Apparently Microsoft does not make it easy to open these things, and he had special tools that took him a good deal of time to get inside. Throughout this mechanical operation he was giving us the run down of what he was doing and the advantages of the modification my friend was going to receive.

In the other room I was hearing some movement and at one point a lady, presumably his partner, came out and greeted us as well. She left at one point for unknown reasons.

I tried to make small talk with the little girl but she just stared at me like I was speaking a foreign tongue. Then she got bored and started running around the apartment speaking gibberish to herself and playing with dolls. Young children are like aliens from the future who reflect adults' subconscious.

Final thoughts: The guy's professionalism and knowledge were impressive, but his willingness to have strangers into his home is either very stupid or very trustworthy, or both. But I know that with my family present, I'd make damn sure whoever I was opening the door to was not some psychopath with a penchant for finding people on Craigslist and robbing their asses blind.

His willingness to bring randoms into his life is a good sign for humanity, but I fear humanity lacks the capacity to refrain from exploiting this invitation and good will. For xbox players and the rest of us who find real life more interesting , I hope I'm wrong.