Guitar Hero

Yesterday, Sunny and I went to Walmart.

The reason for our visit was that Sunny wanted new underwear, and as every male knows, it’s against the law for a man to be in the women’s underwear section. All the guys out there know why. You get the feeling the assistants are looking at the sex-offender register behind the counter and are just trying to match up your picture.

Then, of course, we come to shopping equivalent of swallowing a dozen live hand grenades while sitting on top of a nuclear bomb that’s about to go off in a two million megaton blast of pure, white-hot embarrassment…the part where your significant other hands you a few pieces of lingerie to hold, along with her purse, before mysteriously vanishing for a few minutes.

Despite the fact that the most obvious explanation to anyone around you is that you’re simply shopping with your wife/girlfriend…you can’t help but shake the feeling that you need to explicitly explain to everyone that, no, the panties aren’t for your own personal use, will not be worn (or worse, sniffed) by you, and that purse doesn’t actually belong to you, nor do any of it’s contents…and red lace isn’t really your thing anyway.

So, standing in the aisle in front of the lingerie section (the internationally agreed ‘de-militarized zone’ of the underwear shopping experience), I said “Meet you at the checkout” and went to look at something a little more manly.

As will probably come as no surprise to the people that know me, I found myself in the electronics section.

Slightly off topic, but have you been to the PC Games section in Walmart recently? Apparently the only games PC gamers are interested in are MMO’s or ‘Tycoon’ games. What’s up with that?

Well, as I was walking around, I saw they had Guitar Hero for the PS2 set up on one of the display machines.

Yep, I was one of the few people left alive who had never played Guitar Hero. (My defense is that I can actually play the guitar, to me, Guitar Hero just seems to be a ‘Simon Says’ game on steroids). If I want the rock star experience, I’ll play a guitar, not just press a colored button on a fake guitar when the screen tells me to.

(Before I get blasted by the Guitar Hero fans, I’m not saying it’s a bad game, it looks like a hell of a lot of fun actually.)

Now, I think any real guitar player has the same reaction when seeing Guitar Hero. You assume that, because you can play the guitar, you’re going to be awesome at it.

Heh, I can do a Bar-chord B sharp like that! How hard can it be to press a freaking button and strum in time to the music? Hand me that guitar shaped object peon, and let me show you how it’s done!

You’d think that…and… you’d be wrong.

Suffice to say, I sucked. In fact, I didn’t just suck, I sucked so much that the nearest black hole shifted its gaze towards Earth, and with millennia-old contempt thought: “Damn, dude…you suck”

The thing was…it’s, well, tough, and takes some getting used to.

I made the mistake of picking a song I knew how to play, and despite the screen was telling me to press the blue button, and strum the widget thingy…every synapse in my head was screaming at me to play the actual chord, and hit the strings that didn’t actually exist.

The only way I can describe it is trying to drive a car with all the controls reversed. You turn the wheel left, it goes right, you push the gas and the brakes come on.

This lead me to think…what if this goes both ways?

What if an accomplished guitar played buys Guitar Hero, gets used to it…and at their next performance starts looking for buttons instead of frets.

Eric Clapton : How Guitar Hero Ruined My Career

“I just kept reaching for the buttons and found myself looking for the screen!” Said Clapton today. “All I could think was ‘where have all these damn strings come from?’”

I look forward to hearing about the lawsuits.