Work hard, play harder.

During finals week at UCSD, Walter and I used to have a video game contest. We’d pick an arcade and play every game in the arcade – keeping score of who won each game. The winner won 33.33 and 1/3 of a penny. Over 3 academic quarters, if you swept, you’d get 100 bucks. Otherwise, if you won 2/3, you’d get the trophy of 1/3 of a penny.

I have that trophy.

But that’s not the point. The point was that the did it during finals week. We were able to find time during the stressful time to let loose and just play a wide variety of video games. I find I’m falling in that pattern right now.

Lots of stuff going on at work right now. And fortunately Ben started telling me about Guitar Hero II on Tuesday. By Wednesday we had it. Last night we got another guitar and the original Guitar Hero game for the PS2 because we recognized more songs on it. Chuck’s bought a version as well. For me, I think it was the timing – in another time, when I didn’t feel such a strong need for some sort of an outlet, I doubt I’d be humming Strutter. Or that Catherine would have to tell me that it’s not appropriate for me to be chanting “Shout at the Devil” with Sal at 6 in the morning.

But right now, it seems right.

What ain’t right is my ability to play the game. I’m playing left handed. At first, I thought, just train my brain to flip the screen/fret visualization and that’ll exercise my brain more. Then I found out I was significantly worse than other people. So I tried playing right handed. Nope. Didn’t help. So then I got the game to flip my frets for me visually, which seems to be helping a bit.

Though, I spend a good amount of time watching others play, and they all have right handed frets, so I dunno how much “untraining” that is doing to my own brainwork. But none of that seems to really hide the fact that I don’t need to learn coordination or even the songs as much as I need to learn rhythm. I’m starting to wonder if that’s even possible.

So I’m thinking now, maybe just work on my showmanship. Who cares if I’m playing an easy song – as long as I can play it behind my head, or with my hand upside down on the neck, or with my hands switched. Like this dude:

Yeah – look for my video coming soon…