Fuckin’ With Kilroy (not porn, I promise)

It was way early in the morning and we were fucking with Kilroy. You may remember Kilroy del Dancefighter Estallion the Third from when I fired his ass unceremoniously from the Injun for suggesting that my output was lacking and that he had to pick up the slack. That’s just something you don’t tell the editor, motherfucker.

I had a few things to tell Kilroy. “You suck at time shadows,” I half-croaked. After all the coffee, and cigarettes, and yelling things at people, my usually impressive voice was taxed and totally punk rock. “Look, he’s sad, you fucked it up.”

“Stop failing!” shouts another friend, as Kilroy misses the puzzle piece again. I started to think that Kilroy wasn’t as much of a time travel understander as I previously thought, and decided to drag my laptop outside so I could smoke.

On the way out, I heard Kilroy say “I’m going to make this jump just to spite you guys,” followed by more screeches from the peanut gallery.

Outside was cold and colder, thanks to the constant wind that goes through the city. I sat on the yellow scooter just outside the shop, one bought for transportation that found more utility as a place to sit and smoke. Or in my case, a place to sit and smoke and write.

We spent the entire day at our home away from home, a little place on the far eastern side of the city known as Game On!, exclamation point and everything. I’m not exactly good at sitting still, and Game On! is one of the few places in town that I could actually do so for more than a few hours. We were on hour nine or so, which is extraordinary, mind-blowing, and typically Saturday behavior.

I looked through the window and watched Kilroy deftly manuever through a puzzle that I once saw him trip up on for over an hour. As he tripped up on the boss in the next level, the manager of the store yelled something I couldn’t quite hear. I wanted to, though, and I was done typing anyway, so I stomped out my cigarette butt and headed back in.

I’ve been off the gaming beat lately, folks. Yesterday marked the first time in a little while that I could actually dedicate some time to it. It’s not that I haven’t tried, it’s just that my usual raging boner for video games seems to have gone, err, soft. Seriously, this has never happened to me before, not in the nineteen years I can remember hating Bugs Bunny’s Birthday Blowout.

It’s been a nice break, though; not gaming has made me really appreciate the times I get to toss my hat in and wreck shit. I played the Brutal Legend* demo that night, and elevated its status from ‘probably one of the best games ever’ to ‘probably the most fucking important thing to ever happen to humanity, and yes I’m including the invention of the nuclear missile’. I also got to watch some people fool around on Scribblenauts, which is a joy for someone so in love with words as myself.

(the best part of that one was when mothman ended up driving an anti-air vehicle around and shooting indiscriminately at the player)

So, in the terms of cutting-edge games journalism**, I’m down but not out. I’ll be sure to sound the sirens if anything important happens, but for now I’m out living like a goddamn alive motherfucker.

*umlauts omitted on account of a raid by the Umlaut Police

**something that has never been, and never will be done on the Injun

Don’t Dream It

This.

Anyway, Kilroy and I were way up north when I got a call from a good friend of mine. He told me to head to a Best Buy further south and I immediately forced Kilroy to quit playing Dead Rising and drive us down there immediately, god damn it.

After a few calls, I managed to figure out why we were going to Best Buy; they were having a contest or something. On Rock Band, a game that’s become something of an obsession with most of the people I know. There’s probably something similar going on with your friends, too.

But do any of them cart a gigantic sound system, several flat screens, a projector, and backup microphones to different bars in town to play it?

The people we were meeting at the Best Buy were three other folks from said group, generally known as the roadies since we show up at as many Rock Band nights as possible and help with setup and breakdown.

(We don’t run a merch booth, though.)

One member of the band was there already. We had to wait an annoyingly long time for the other two to show up, since they had to battle work and traffic. We all came ready to pull out the hardest songs we could possibly do on expert difficulty with unerring accuracy and our usual rockstar mannerisms. The contest, however, called for everyone to play on easy, so we ended up doing this.

(In my opinion, it’s not exactly epic, and Kilroy’s singing along ruins the video completely. But we only had one other band to compete against and they were completely outclassed in both style and accuracy.)

So they gave us a limo ride up north for the concert going on, and we psyched ourselves up to play in front of thousands of people in between some actual band’s sets. It’s a pretty clever idea, having something like that in between bands, considering the stupid amount of time it takes any band bigger than, say, Animo, to set up all their equipment.

Despite the sideshow mentality behind everything, we went out there and gave our all on the stage, getting more of a reaction from the crowd than the actual bands seemed to*. Naturally, Kilroy’s camera completely failed to work during the performance, so you’ll just have to take my word for it, it was awesome. Our vocalist hit the guide button on the horribly-designed new mic and everyone (including us) kept singing along regardless. A quality performance, all around.

Once we got off the stage and into the hall, I realized that, in an odd way, we’d made it. Every person who plays Rock Band dreams of playing in a real band on a stage somewhere, melting faces in a way only a live performance can. Well, we played as a fake band on a stage in front of a ton of people, so we got it a little over half right.

Afterwards, we hit the limo back into town and I sent a text message to the guy who runs Rock Band night…

Now that we’re famous, we’re heading up to the bar for a special appearance! No autographs, please.

Shows at smaller venues are better, anyway.

*actually true!