No Experience to Speak Of

So I'm enjoying Austin and the fambly. Funnel cakes were good except where they bubbled up the oil all over the stove. Twice. I've got pictures, but no way to upload them, so all the fun stuff will have to wait, but I wanted to blog while the topics were still relevant. Mom & Dad were flying standby, and tomorrow's flights filled up, so they decided to go fly back this evening. After a quick stop for bubble tea, and to answer grandma's new cell phone (soooo cute! My 91 yr old grandma and her 87 yr old newer man have a cell phone. And already can use it better than my parents.), the bro and I dropped them at the aeroporto. Thankfully, they made their flight.

Then we meandered around taking in the Austin scenes. I got to go look at Bull Creek, near the bro's old place, we picked up hot bevrege from Mozart's coffee roasters, and saw Hitman at the Alamo Drafthouse Theater with the accompaniment of chips, queso, and several drafts. Tried to hit the local ones but snuck in a belgian beer in a fancy glass too. The movie was fun, but not deep. I had some questions about character motivation and plot that were answered when I noticed that Vin Diesel is the Executive Producer.

Which finally brings me to my topic of the day. Guitar Hero. My brother fired it up as soon as we walked in the door, and on the strength of 2 beers (over two hours, plus coffee) managed to rack up 2 perfect scores! Exciting stuff. Eventually, after I got the jeans and shoes with cheese on them into the washer, he turned the control over to me. I did pretty well too!

I am inclined to like Guitar Hero on principle because I know one of the original game designers. I used to live with ten guys, most of whom worked in the gaming industry. Due to carpal tunnel issues, I rarely played games, but knew much about them due to shop talk and watching them play. It turns out that it's super fun (for me, anyway) to watch game designers play video games - they're really, really good at what they do. So most of my gaming experience is from watching or listening to people extol the virtues of their favorite WoW strategies. When I do risk the wrists, I do best with the geometry based games like Tetris and Klax (board 100, baby).

Despite going to the original GH game release party, I didn't pay a ton of attention to the game as I went for the live bands. Later, my Boston friends and I tossed around the idea of playing GH2. Now that GH3 is blazing off the shelves, I finally got a chance to see it up close and personal because my brother owns it and looovesss it. Imagine my surprise to find out that guitar hero looks a LOT like Klax! I thought I could do well with it right out of the gate. Not so fast there, otter grrl. I got booed off the stage a few times.

My primary mistakes are hitting the bar more than once on a held note, confusing the middle row (yellow notes) with the middle finger... and not being in synch with the timing. (I was told in the 5th grade, after testing, to play any instrument but drums, and the advice is still relevant.) I tried out a tutorial, and while I didn't learn anything new, it seemed to help me coordinate myself a little better. I also stopped tuning out the music to watch the notes, and synched up with the song rhythms. After that, I started making it all the way through some songs.

Fortunately, my brother had already pounded through all the songs on the Easy level, so I could pick and choose where I wanted because I didn't do as well sticking with the first couple groupings. While supposedly easier, I was doing 80-ish percents. The songs I was more familiar with were further down, and when I had songs that I've been listening to since 1990 to pick from, I did A-OK. My best (after beer also) was my fine job on Social D's "The Story of My Life" where I 100%ed most of the first half of the song and had 3 50-note streaks! Go Me! I got my best streak of 84 notes on Weezer's "My Name is Jonah" because the rhythm was so familiar. I also rocked out pretty hard to "Miss Mur.der" a song I know well, but never knew the title artist.

Good things:

1. Saw the Fambly; we're all still standing (we get along GREAT over the phone).
   
2. I'm feeling more culturally relevant now, and my brother and I rocked out for a couple hours to something a friend had a hand in designing.
   
3. We then popped in disc 3 of firefly (if I could only choose one, it would be this disc) after getting the 'rents grooving on discs 1&2 on previous nights.
   
4. And I haven't been hungry in 3 solid days. The harvest was good.