Rubbing his bushy sideburns with one hand and holding his clove cigarette in the other, Sparks seems to look back on that time with a certain fondness. I would go to sleep at 9 at night, then sleep until 2 in the morning, then 4 a.m., then 6 a.m., then 8 a.m., then noon. It was a very surreal kind of thing. Now it's a little better. I don't work those 17-hour days.
Sparks does seem relaxed.
Well, he does now . Half an hour ago when I showed up at his San Francisco office, he wasn't. With that he runs upstairs, and I can hear him shuffling things around, like a little kid shoving toys under the bed before mom came banging at the door for the inspection. The Pop Rocket office, located in the artsy neighborhood of the Inner Sunset, is decorated with various rock posters, video game awards, and boxes of Total Distortion stacked up in neat pyramids on the tables. There are computers everywhere, fan mail on the walls and goofy pictures of the staff, which includes his wife Maura, his best friend Kent, and another childhood friend Kevin, pinned on a bulletin board near the door.