Friday, July 17, 2009

Wait Till You Play The Drums.....

I feel damaged by Guitar Hero. Until last night I'd never played it before and had no idea it was so brain damaging. I think it may have something to do with my lack of coordination. Hitting all the different coloured buttons at the right time, to music, just doesn't work with my brain. They said that creative people have issues with this and while I'd love to pretend that's my excuse, its more likely just because I am a malcoordinated fool. I've always had problems with things like that. I am still the only person I know who has forgotten how to ride a bike. Despite what they say, it is possible. And it took me far too long to pass my driving test because of working out doing the clutch and pedals and looking and steering all at once. Michael Knight just spoke to KITT and that worked so I had no clue cars would require more thought than that. Sadly it did. Not the computer test. I did that easily. After years of growing up playing the most basic of driving games I was almost sure I would get to the final level, collect an Uzi and kill the end of level boss. After avoiding the kid with the ball in the street obviously. Then finally when I had nailed the driving bit, I was failed for one test because an old man crossed the zebra crossing infront of me while an ambulance threw its lights on behind me. Was I to block the ambulance and save the man? Or kill the man and save the person in the ambulance. The test instructor said I took too long to think about it and failed me. I only realise years later that I should have hit the man as he could've got straight into the ambulance. It was like the fox, chicken, grain, boat riddle. Although really that's a shit riddle as why anyone would be transporting a fox anywhere along with a chicken and grain, I really don't know. I mean where are you going to with that apart from maybe an Aardman Animation venture? Chicken and grain, perhaps, but foxes are rarely carted around. They are either hunted by the aristocracy who are pretending not to hunt them, or they are presenting kids TV shows and saying 'Boom Boom'.


It was all hella fun though yesterday. It was an evening of manness. There were beers, barbequeing, talk about banal things, laughing at farts and xbox playing. You could have smelt the testosterone a mile away. I say testosterone, but probably more the smell of BBQ and farts. After the eating, where they all had meat and I quietly eat my quorn burger in the corner, we moved to Guitar Hero and this is when my brain died. Sam had brought the actual guitar controllers and I watched as him, and Stef jammed to Bon Jovi in a way that said 'gaming champions' or 'we don't go out much'. They knew when to lift the guitar up like they were rocking out and would occasionally even bop a bit. Then Mat stepped up and fairly quickly got to grips with it all playing to the Kravitz and other air guitar classics. Finally I gave it a go. Sticking the settings on easy, it only took about four goes before my brain felt dizzy from looking at all the moving colours and I was failing to hit the base notes for the Beastie Boys 'No Sleep Til' Brooklyn'. If you don't know that track, the base notes are pretty simple. In my defence I would like to think that real guitar experts are probably no good at Guitar Hero. I think that the way in which you can only play songs that already exist and not create your own original music destroys the creativity of those aspiring to be true guitar heroes. And what is a Guitar Hero anyway? Someone who saves guitars from the plight of scrap wood? A superhero who can't help civilians but knows the soundtrack to play while they are being attacked? In the game's defence I am also shit at real music and it does have a setting where people can make their own tracks. In conclusion, I am just shit at the game. Mat found you could download Stan Bush's 'The Touch' for free and while awesome that was my last straw. My fingers had some sort of seizure and I was hitting yellow instead of blue, blue instead of red. It left me feeling all a bit woozy. Although that could also have been beer. As we left Sam said that if I thought that was tough 'Wait till you play the drums'. I think I will never play the drums. It might cause some sort of seizure in my retina causing my eyes and brains to explode. When James Brown said 'Give the drummer some' he did not mean some sort of frontal lobe failure.


No gig again tonight, which means more social outings. First some squash with Tom again. We haven't played in over a week and since that time I've drunk a lot to deal with the Hyena and Guitar Hero mishaps. I have a feeling it may hurt, a lot. I'm also scared that my lack of coordination will carry through and I'll just end up hitting myself and others instead of the ball. I have a feeling today maybe the day I get banned from our local sports centre. Still its better its for this than peering at the women's tennis courts all day.....

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