It Ain't Christmas if You Don't Rock Out Loud

Another Christmas has come and gone-- I had a lot of trouble getting in the spirit this year, mostly because in the wake of all the wedding hub-bub, I kind of forgot that I had to continue on with the remainder of life's tasks (what? I had to organize a wedding and pick out presents for every member of my family? This excuse also works well with getting your teeth cleaned, paying your bills, and vacuuming your carpet).

But around one o'clock on Christmas afternoon, my cousin Katie broke out her newest game-- Guitar Hero II for the PS2-- and the Christmas Spirit struck. And it turns out the Christmas Spirit is remarkably like the basist for Foghat.

All I know is, this game is the video equivalent of crack-- I would gladly have remained at my parents' house for up to eighty hours, helping Katie promote our new band, Grubmonkey, to new levels of success. Sadly, I was actually kind of a hindrance to Grubmonkey, as I routinely forgot to actually strum the guitar, or got confused between red and yellow, or realized that "Surrender" is not actually the song I thought it was. But I think she was still all right with me being in the band, as kind of a Ringo character, only without the awesome haircut.

Luckily for me, there's a version for the Wii, and it includes two of my all-time favorite songs: "My Name is Jonas," by Weezer, and "Rock and Roll All Nite" by KISS (which I played in marching band, so that's bound to give me a leg up on the competition). However, this game is not available ANYWHERE in the nation, except maybe at K-Mart, and, having solemnly vowed to let K-Mart die with dignity, I cannot spend any more money there, at least until they get wise to Sears' soul-crushing succubus nature.

So it's officially on my birthday list, but I was kind of hoping we could pretend that my birthday is today, and that I would magically find a copy lying in the bushes outside my house, so that I could turn it into the rock temple that it deserves to be.

In the meantime, I suppose I could go and get the ACTUAL guitar my parents gave me out of the basement and play that to take some of the edge off. But it seems like kind of a downer if I can't use it to interpret "Heart Shaped Box," which I can't, because I never learned to play it, and there may or may not be mice living in the guitar case.