Well, this was a maimed phone posting. But I have come back to fix it, add to it, and include more pictures, the quality for which I make no apologies. These were all taken during set-up for the event, not during the event itself. I mean, you seen one Hollywood star-studded next-gen gaming console late-night launch party, you seen them all.

Tonight, following my third Walt Disney Concert Hall concert in under 2 weeks, I’ll be at a PS3 launch event in the street behind Best Buy West Hollywood.

I was there for part of the setup, and got to see Dave Navarro doing a sound test. Besides being one sexy mo-fo, he’s also a pretty good guitarist.

Disney was in the Blu-ray dome, where four studios showed off high-def movies playing from a PS3. Had the dome been a contest, we would have won, because we had an awesome set-up with costumes and props from the Pirates of the Caribbean movies beautifully displayed amongst plants and netting and all manner of piratey decoration.

PlayStation 3s were set up all around so you could play some of the games. PlayStation play stations, if you will.

The game makers had some pretty cool set-ups to show off their games. I have no pictures of those, though, because I obviously took pictures of the most boring stuff. So here’s one of the non-consumer test units, and a trailer with games inside and out.

Stan Lee and Tony Hawk were there. I saw Rick Schroder and Kevin Dillon, and Mr. Navarro, now shirtless, played with all kinds of famous people I didn’t really know. Except Slash.

And the food kicked ass. BBQ sandwiches, pie, corn dogs, Jamba Juice, Krispy Kreme, hot pretzels, chili bar…

I played some of the games, but they were all just about normal, and some of them were distinctly not high res. One driving game looked like it was playing off a PS2. (Maybe it was a PS2 game playing in the PS3?) Frankly, the best game I played was Loco Roco, and that was on a PSP in the trailer.

Part of me would love to have a PS3, mostly because it plays Blu-ray movies. But it does not play BD-R discs, which, like DVD-Rs, you burn from your own computer. Not that anyone can do that yet, but it’s a bad limitation that will one day cause distress. It’s being mumbled that the PS3 does not display 1080i. Since my TV is not 1080p, this would be bad. Maybe both these problems could be fixed with firmware updates, but why take that chance?

When the event was done and I took off, about 12:45, I walked by the line of people who had been waiting to get into Best Buy to buy their PS3s. There were still a lot of people there, but they were being let in, one-by-one, to buy their precious box.