If the staff of Level Up, like the Shakespearean villains of old, can be said to have a fatal flaw, it's an obsession with prognostication. We love to predict the future, and we're pathologically obsessed with being right. Given our track record, however--we said that a first-person shooter like Halo could never be a system-seller for a console; we believed that PSP would outstrip the DS; we assumed that more early adopters wouldn't blink at the PS3's high price--our forecasting abilities are currently hovering somewhere between those of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld (pre-war) and pundit William Kristol (post-war.)

Still, a stopped clock is right twice a day, and we correctly foretold that the pace of PSP shipments would match or exceed that of the PS2. This, then, was the basis of our notorious 2004 bet with Microsoft wunderkind James "J" Allard, of Pearl Harbor memo-Xbox-Zune fame. Yet despite our having emerged victorious, neither phone calls (yes, we've got his cell number), text messages (ditto), emails (thank goodness for the vast storage capacity of Gmail) nor blog posts ('sup, fellow bloggers) could persuade the elusive Allard to make good on the wager. So you can imagine our surprise, based on the collective wisdom of our blue ribbon panel, to get word that Allard had, in the words of Spike Lee, finally managed to "Do the Right Thing"--sort of. (For Allard's perspective on our bet, click here.)

Even though this Smoking Gun-ish photograph doesn't fulfill the letter of the bet in terms of duration (an entire month) or location (including the stage of Microsoft's E3 press conference), it captures the spirit of the wager with a certain Allard-esque elan (yep, that PSP is a nice touch.) It would therefore be churlish of us to insist on the former over the latter and demand, in full Shakespearean froth, our full pound of dreads. So J, consider our bet concluded. Also, consider this post a virtual IOU, good for one handshake, pound or man-hug--your choice, dude--along with, we hope, an interview about what's been keeping you so busy when you next emerge from your Salingerian self-imposed absence from the public eye. And with that, we wistfully consign Dread Watch to the dustbin of history.