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How could I forget this one?  This christmas seems to be the Video Game Christmas.  Between the Wii and Guitar Hero and Rockband, more people young and old are talking about, and playing, video games.  The Wii, as a console, is all about getting people together in a room and playing the games TOGETHER.  Multiple players at once, the making up of custom characters who look like you, and just the interaction of humans in the same room with you make the Wii a pretty addictive machine.  Dave R bought one of those for christmas.
Whitty bought Rockband.  Holy Norton, here’s another addictive-as-crack game to keep one up past their bedtime!   I play the guitar, and that’s a bad thing as far as this game is concerned.  It’s bad because I think too much about playing in time correctly, which actually makes me suck at the game!  I don’t know if you can change a setting in the options or something, but if you actually hit the notes in time with what you’re hearing from the music, you will have hit them too late for the machine to register and reward you for that.  So you have to hit all the notes a split-second before they sound, which as a player, I have a hard time doing.  As a gamer, I can do it, but because I’m holding a guitar-looking device, I’m a Player and no longer a Gamer.  It’s weird.  I was actually doing much better with the drums than the guitar.  I did get better on the guitar, but it took a number of gin/tonics to get there.  And the next morning, I was back to being better on the drums.  Frustrating as hell.  I’m DYING to get the high score on ANY of those songs, but it’s kinda hard to do when you’re getting booed off the stage and the game boots you back to the main menu.  DAMMIT JIM!

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My sister Nancy showed up in town today.  She’s here for a few days because my mom is here for a few days for a doctor’s appt.  So Nan and I were walking around downtown killing time, when I said “Let’s just go sit down somewhere and go to the airport and get Mom in a little bit.”  Nanny was cool with that, but where do we go?  I thought Gameworks would be good.  I said that the car was in a parking garage  in that same building and we could play Frogger and Centipede.  She looked at me like I said I had ice cream and cake in my pocket, “Okay, let’s go!”  I hadn’t played Frogger in YEARS.  Or Centipede for that matter.  It was hilarious.  Speaking of old skool video games…

www.svennys.com

He’s a Euro pro cyclist who seems like a cool guy. DP (frequent chewykolchuk.com comment poster) sent an email out saying that since Sven has video games on his site, he’s a little cooler in DPs mind. I’ll concur. Ain’t nothing wrong with a little video games. Unless Brent beats you on a Wii game. Which brings us to…

Dave R bought a Wii for christmas. He told a couple of us to come up and check it out, cuz his 6yr old daughter is a monster on the bowling game and we should come up and get crushed. Yeah right… Well, Brent and I rolled in and we started bowling, the four of us.  I wasn’t surprised that the daughter didn’t score better than I, because let’s face it, I’ve been playing for many years on many video game systems, and I ain’t about to start getting beaten by somebody’s kid now.  I wasn’t too surprised either, that Dave WAS scoring better than I did, because he has been sitting next to me for a good number of those aforementioned years of playing games.  What DID surprise me, however was the fact that Brent was beating all of us.  Now that there IS an oddity, let me tell you.  And it didn’t stop there.  He beat me in tennis and baseball too.  ???  Uh, Houston WTF!?!?  Consternation and bewilderment were the two things foremost in my mind that night.  But in 3rd place was the fact that I was psyched for Brent to be handing out the whoopass to somebody finally.  We all used to live together 10 yrs ago, and oh boy the Tekken tournaments we used to have.  Brent would hand the controller over to somebody after having been beaten, saying “I suck at video games!”  Well there you have it, every dog has his day.

Watch out for the Wii.  I think I blew out my rotator cuff trying to throw 100mph curveballs at him.

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Okay, it’s been almost two weeks since I’ve put a post up here. If I know what’s good for me, I’ll get more up before JHT gives me the what for.

What’s happened of note since Christmas? Well, the Seahawks won their first playoff game. HO LEE SHIT, what an event that was! I met Dave, Ben and Dean up at the local watering hole. I show up to a bar that is so packed, I can’t even find my boys. They’re stuck front and center directly UNDER the bigscreen TV, using the pool table as a kickstand. The bar owner had covered the pool table with plywood and people were sitting all around it, using it as a table. And here I am, with my guitar and a big ol’ bag on, cuz I’m supposed to jam with a buddy after the game. Little did I know…

I figured I’d get a beer and get started, so I put my stuff down by the wall and went up and ordered food and a beer. Saying the word “quesadilla” was going to be the closest I got to actually eating one, since the place was just so jam packed. But as I wasn’t armed with that knowledge, I started in with the “who’s round is it?” routine. At one point Dave says to me, “Dude, just get some pretzels or something. Anything.” So I went and got me a bowl of pretzels. As I was walking back to our little corner, some random dude hit the deck in front of me. I mean, he took a backwards header and took out most of his table, and just lay there on his back, staring at the ceiling, like he was waiting for the shuttle to launch. Luckily for me, I was the closest person to him at the time, so I was treated to a light misting of beer from head to toe. By ‘misting’, I of course mean a liberal dousing. But it’s a bar, and I’m not the type to freak out, so I just bent over and looked at him.

“Dude, are you okay?”

“Uhhhh, no.”

Which was funny as hell, cuz he had this incredulous look on his face that said “Did that just happen for real?” and “Wow, I’m getting pretty hammered!”.

Some people helped him up and I went back to my spot and took my shirt off, cuz it was wetter than my towel gets after drying up from a shower, and the poor guy just calmly put his jacket on and waltzed on outta there, to be immediately forgotten by the hundreds of rabid fans who ultimately were treated to an excellent and exciting game that ended in Seattle’s favor.

Me? I had to cancel my jam session with Delta Fox due to excessive inebriation and I ended up passed out at home by 9pm. Thanks Dave for making sure my guitar was safe.

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