Ryan Adams, Video Game Columnist

08/27/09 4:10pm

by Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

Ryan Adams' latest project isn't musical, and is quite possibly the nerdiest thing he's ever done: He's become a video game reviewer.

Adams has a video game column called Long Player at The Awl, for whom he recently wrote a theme song (or so it's thought...). In his debut column, which has a byline of D.R. (David Ryan) Adams, he reviews old arcade game Gorf.

"Playing Gorf is like getting wasted, or what I remember about getting wasted: It's loud, it's confusing, there are a bunch of lights going off, people (robots) are shooting at you, you need pizza, etc., then its game over," he writes.

"Of course you just play the thing again but as my pops once told me 'You lose when you drop the quarter in.' What an ass. He obviously never heard the whole 'Don't hate the player, hate the game' thing, but then he never was much of a gangsta.

"When I think about my fucked up past and I get all sentimental for the good old days when it was funny to go to the mall. For some reason when I play really classic games I also think about Danzig. Everything is always about Danzig eventually. Danzig, good lovin' and pizza. Oh God."

Adams is right because eventually, everything really is all about Danzig. Right, Perez?

You don't actually get into the real review until the second page of the column because Adams spends paragraphs writing a stream-of-consciousness bellow about how Danzig lives in his neighbourhood and was rumoured to have a hole in his roof, but regardless, it's a pretty... um, interesting... read.

When he's not being a colossal nerd, Adams will be the artist-in-residence at New York's Morrison Gallery in September and is one of the songwriters on Norah Jones' upcoming as-yet-untitled fourth studio album, due out in November.

Adams also made a video blog of his review, which looks like it was shot by Mandy Moore. You can watch it below (please note the Slayer T-shirt, and we're not really sure what the weird lightning shit at the end is about):