Honestly, I'm a little tired of being the Eggman...

Every Sunday night a small group of friends tries to get together for dinner and a movie. We've been doing this for over a year now, and it's been going off without a hitch. The dinners are great, the company equally {insert your own adjective}. We have the same taste in movies, and if we don't that night then the people who are wrong (not me) just shut up about it and get themselves a little culture (whatever I brought).

Up until recently we have attended what is simply called "sunday night" at one couple's house. And while they are the consummate hosts, between fantastic food and learning the best place to ride out the inevitable attack from teeming hordes of the living dead, it's the perfect way to end the weekend, and begin the long, awful wait 'till the next one. But lately we have been pulled somewhere else. It's hard to explain. Almost like a supernatural force has wriggled itself into our souls, making mere television bitter. It makes great movies as boring as anything with Matthew McConaughey, Jennifer Lopez, or Matthew Broderick after 1992... It lights up a child's eyes with wonder; it grants every adult their wildest dream.

It's called Japanese Anime Porn.

Shameless excuse to put Kristen Bell in a bikini in this post? Yes, but if you click the pic, you'll see the other google image search results for "wildest dream". And don't worry, it's the moderate safe search...

Oh wait, no, it's called Rock Band. Rock Band is a superduper video game. It's really just the bee's knees. Rock Band allows you to actually play your favorite songs!!.. and by play, I mean push color-coded buttons in time with a pattern set by the game. Now, I've never been very good at video games. I grew up with them, but they never really set in. I maintain that it's because of playing Mortal Kombat with my brother.

My brother is very good at video games. Like, a subscriber to Nintendo Power magazine good. So a typical round of Mortal Kombat would be me as Scorpion and him as Little Miss Muffet or Estelle Getty or whichever was the weakest character in the game. Once the round begun, he would kick me to the ground, and then continue to kick and punch until I was dead, never really giving me the opportunity to get up. But by that time I already had my hissy fit, thrown my controller, and stalked from the room. So my natural inability, combined with negative reinforcement, caused my video game development to stunt considerably. Friends ask if I've played the new Halo. What about the new wii mario kart? I'll save you time: if it's solitaire, spider solitaire, or freecell, then I've played it lately. "Oh, Assassin's Creed? Does that have red and black cards in it? No? Then no, I've never played it."

But not Rock Band! Rock Band opened up a new world of possibilities for me. In Rock Band I have a choice between drums, guitar, bass or vocals. And up to 4 people can play. It's like you and your friends are an actual rock group!! I mean, not really, of course, but you can see what I mean. Once you choose your song (and let me tell you, buddy, there are a ton. Between Rock Band and Rock Band 2 and the downloadable songs I'd estimate you could play 6,500 songs...maybe not. But there are a lot), and which instrument you wish to play you then get to choose your difficulty.

This is key. Do you have good hand-eye coordination? Then go ahead and bump that sucker on up to medium; soon you'll be working on hard. I on the other hand have two choices: easy and medium. And come on, even easy kicks my ass sometimes. That guitar can really make your fingers cramp up...of course that may just be my terrible body, but I choose to blame it on some undefined reason not in any way related to me...

So what I end up doing most of the time is vocals. It only requires I make noises that correspond to the "notes" it's looking for. (see above screen shot) And I mean noises...you really don't even have to sing those words, or be anywhere on key. This is a critical part to learn: somehow it doesn't know you're embarrassing the ever living shit out of yourself. This is key to your outcome. Of course, just being awful will get you an 80-90%, but to really get up in the upper 90's you have to actually know what you are doing. Already knowing the song is key to getting that 100%. Having it somewhere in your vocal register is also good. Which brings us to last night...

We played a few warm up songs, and I wasn't burning Capitol Records down or anything, but getting high 90's. Which is when we decide to make a 6 song playlist. And the good part is we just pushed the "down" button for a while and pressed "x". This had the benefit of a pretty random playlist. This list included The Trees from Rush, Heartbreaker from Pat Benatar, Young from Hollywood Undead (no clue about this one, all I know is it's awful...real bad), You Oughta Know from Alanis Morisette and 2 others I can't even remember. I even went through this list looking for them to no avail. And I got a full blown 100% on two of them.

I'll give you time to think which ones...



Yep. You're right: Pat Benatar and Alanis Morisette. So don't ever say I didn't use the internet to permanently embarrass myself in full view of the entire world, minus the Middle East and China, because they don't really have anything we would consider "the internet" or "rights".

I'll use the bottom to do a little product placement...well, more than has already occurred. We have also played the new Beatles Rock Band, and I'll tell you: this game has robo-bee's knees. It's the terminator-cat's pajamas. Just a ton of fun...I got a few 100's on this one as well (George Harrison, whatWHAT?!?). So if you own Rock Band but have not purchased the Beatles version, I suggest you do that.

I'll leave you with the crazy trailer thing from the Beatles Rock Band game. Make sure you have had your hit of acid. Of course, if you sat down to read this, you are probably already rolling pretty well, so happy travels!