4 Realz

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm sort of a nerd. And by 'sort of' I mean 'complete and utter'. I'm not a socially inept nerd, but don't let that fool you. I'm straight up geek to the core. But fuck it. 'Geek' is the new 'cool' and 'cool' is the new 'blasé'. As such, this five month hiatus away from most mass media has been killer. The lack of movies has been the easiest to swallow, but I definitely miss going to the theater. Nothing beats spending $20 on nachos and coke. My musical cravings have been mostly satisfied thanks to iTunes and Mastercard. Well, they were until my iPod decided to brick itself. Some would say "the fun machine took a shit and died". I would say I agree. Apple's getting a phone call.

However, the biggest media craving that cannot be satisfied is my love of video games. More specifically, I miss Rock Band. The fact that I'm devoting an entire post should tell you something since I usually talk about interesting experiences, questionable foods, giddy homosexuals and the occasional suicidal child. For those of you that aren't familiar with Rock Band allow me to elaborate. Rock Band is a video game that simulates the experience of playing in a ..... rock band. The game supports up to four players, each playing a different instrument: guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. If the player is playing the guitar or bass part, colored notes travel down the screen and the player responds by holding down the corresponding color on the neck of the guitar peripheral and strumming the strum bar. If the player is drumming, he or she must simply strike the drum pad of corresponding color and use the foot peddle to play straight bass notes. Singers sing. It sounds pretty straightforward, and is, but can get very complicated on the 'expert' setting. Playing the guitar and bass portions are a pretty exaggerated fascimile of actual guitar, but the drum portion is actually fairly similar to the motions a real drummer would go through.

In short, I miss the (pardon the language) fucking shit out of drumming in a fake rock band. Is this the only reason I'm a huge nerd? No.

Does it help? Absolutely.

Do I care? Not even a little.

I mean, it's the perfect goddamn game. It mixes my love of video games with my love of music. I'm not fighting level fifteen super cobras in World of Wizards. I'm melting faces and winning the hearts of millions of (imaginary) fans. What could be more fun? I don't think one person has ever not fantasied about playing in a rock band or at least being a singer. If you say you haven't I'm going to go ahead and call you liar. So let's leave it there.

Before I left I was getting to be quite the little drummer boy. Having no previous experience in drums makes me feel proud when I crank out a 5-star performance of Metallica's "Enter Sandman". To put it in perspective allow me to show you a video of what I plan to be able to do in a few weeks.



Epic.

Yup, sirs and madams, in a few short weeks I'll be home and melting imaginary faces with my real buddies and getting real drunk on real beer.

Fucking stoked?

For real.