Ragu Spaghettisauce

Holy crap is Grand Theft Auto IV completely awesome.

I'm horrible at games, but this is really a lot of fun.

Given my lack of skill at things like driving in the game, it is unlikely I will actually beat it.

But that said, I can waste many hours doing things that the game wasn't really designed for.
Favorites so far:
When you are introduced to a new character (Michelle is the best example early on), you will frequently still have control over your own character, but the new character will be talking to you (on and on) to establish their backstory and to setup how you move forward with them.
Since this is a game, it is not at all important that you pay any attention to this, as they will remind you in other ways if it is necessary, as that will keep the game fun - all part of good game design, and this game is excellent.
So I will either:
a) run circles around the person
b) jump up and hang from something and stay there the whole time they talk to me (door frames, pipes, the display case behind the counter at the bowling alley, etc)
c) sprint away from them (they run to keep up)

Additionally, when you drive people places, they will talk to you. I like to drive on the sidewalk and mow down as many people as possible in this phase, as nobody will ever bat an eye at it (although later, on a date with Michelle, if you do that, she doesn't care - but if you sideswipe a car, she will freak out - if you really smash into a lot of things, she will literally bail out of the car - and then still go on dates with you later).

Also with Michelle, as soon as she gets into my car on dates, I will call her up - for some reason that is hilarious to me. As soon as the date is over, I will call her up again to try and get another date, and keep doing that waking her up. Just like real life.

Note that while the bridges are closed to you, you can swim to the other islands (once there, you can't get back to the regular island without swimming - although there are boats, I've only done this at night and haven't figured out if I can hot wire a boat yet since it was too dark at the time I tried).
This seems like a bug in the system, as the reason you cannot cross the bridge is to establish stages of progression throughout the game.
When on the other island, I stole a dump truck full of sand and tried to drive it back for a date with Michelle (she will comment on new cars you bring to her, so I wanted to see what a dump truck would get) - but I couldn't get over the bridges.

I think of anything in the game though, the most endlessly funny thing for me though is the "jump and hang from stuff while people are talking about important things to you" type action. I did it accidentally at first and it was hilarious - now I try to do it all of the time.