Take a sad song and make it better

A few months ago after I had written about Lady Gaga a couple of times, a very young friend of mine commented something like: “That’s great. You’re keeping up.” (Insinuating “at YOUR age”)

That didn’t sound right, but I didn’t have a defense at the time. Now I realize it was simply the latest manifestation of a lifelong curiosity. I had heard of her and an opportunity came up to learn more about her and her music and I took it. I liked what I learned and the rest is history. I have never in my life felt like I had to keep up. As a matter of fact I have more often thought people had to keep up with me. After all I am probably the oldest Lil Monster in the world.

So, now curiosity has gotten the better of me again. Last winter I had thought, given the amount of time I spend alone in this house it might be fun to have one of the video game systems. They turned out to cost much more than I felt comfortable spending so I let it drop. Then a couple of weeks ago I was looking at my rewards points for a credit card and discovered I was about to see 6,000 points expire. I raced through the offerings until I came to something very close to the number of points I had. In a flash without thinking I had ordered an Xbox 360. It’s even new enough to be able to use the new Kinect image gaming hardware.

It was then I realized I haven’t been successful on a video game since beating the game Jaws on the original Nintendo in the early 80s. Since then as I’ve watched my kids play and tried it a time or two it has been one 15-minute exercise in frustration after another. Once I had the unit, I went looking for a game. All I want is a simple car racing game. When I asked the cute girl with the nose jewel which one would be a simple racing game she looked at me like I was way out of my league (I was) and said there are no simple Xbox games. I bought Grand Theft Auto IV mostly because I recognized the name and I thought at least I could create some mayhem. I should have saved my money.

That was yesterday. Today I woke up remembering what I wanted to get last year when I was looking: one of the Rock Band games, particularly the Beatles. So today I went looking. A Walmart, a Fred Meyer, a Target. No one had it. But, the guy at Target said try Game Stop over there.

So off I went. Another one of those almost goth girls... neat clean, not overly made up, but the nose stud, the dark makeup and the oh so cute eyes and tight striped top. I hated to bring up the Beatles with her. It took two or three tries but a guy in the store finally came up with the whole Beatles Rock Band package: guitar, drums, microphone (I won’t be using that) and of course the game. 

Now also instead of rap and a game I can’t seem to play, I get good music and a game I am pretty sure I can play. (A couple of years ago I played it for a few minutes with my son and his friend and at the easiest level I could almost keep up.) Plus, this purchase held a couple of bonuses: first it was less than half the price I would have paid for the same thing last year, and, second I bought it from a local store rather than one of those big boxes that ruin local entrepreneurs. And on top of that there was the beautiful smile from the almost goth girl which I chose to interpret as "you're cool" rather than "I have to smile at this old guy trying to be young."

But the best part was yet to come. I had quite a hike across the parking lot to my car given that I had parked in front of Target (Jeep, but that’s another story from today). In the lot I was accosted by a woman who is probably close to my age. She had one of those happy, loud, kind of blousy voices and saw me and my Beatles box and said wow, that is so cool, Where did you find it. I told her and that it was half the original price. That is so great she said, Then she asked, looking me over, is that for you or is it a gift. Rather embarrassed I said in a low voice, it’s for me. She laughed. OH man, you rock. You go have good time. Rock on! I promised to do that, now somehow more confident with my purchase.

What I should have done was invite her to come along. Wondering now if there is a Leon Russell Rock Band game or OOOO, Ra Ra a a a-a-a Lady Gaga.

ADDENDUM: OK, that was officially fun. Took a while to get things to work but once I got the guitar going, well, lost in it for an hour. I even had to sing one song. Best not do that again. But this will be fun.