...and Sarah broke out some KARAOKE VIDEO GAME she'd recently gotten! Some eventually figured out to take this game, combine it with Guitar Hero and add a drum set and it became Rock Band.
After dinner, we fired up Guitar Hero! Yes! Here's an action shot of Scott tuning up as he prepares to take on little miss Leigh Lezark (bonus points to Max and Meredith who are on opposite extremes of the "excitement spectrum" in this photo). Hahaha.
I closed out karaoke and on my late night walk home I ran into my neighbor Kathleen who I'd met for the first time just a few weeks earlier. She and her friend weren't ready for bed yet either, so I invited them in to play Guitar Hero (at 4:15am). Hahaha. I like living in New York because there are so many other crazy people here that it makes me feel less-crazy.
Then after the show, I went upstairs to sing karaoke and found that Guitar Hero had REPLACED karaoke for the night. WHOA! I also found that Shandi had dressed up (complete with face paint!!!) as Lars Ümlaüt, her favorite Guitar Hero character. Amazing.
A little past 1am all the bands finished playing downstairs. So Jasper busted out his Playstation and set up Guitar Hero on the big screen (with the audio patched through the club's PA system! Rock!) Here's Shandi.
GUITAR HERO IS THE NEW KARAOKE! Er, or at least it was for a few short weeks at Pianos! Late at night, after all the bands had finished playing, Jasper (the guy that books all the bands at Pianos) would bust out his Playstation and run the video to the bigscreen projector and the audio through the club's PA system! It was amazing.
Or at least he tried to play Guitar Hero. Antony joins Brandon in the "I'm a real guitar player who can't, for the life of me, figure out how to play a fake guitar that only has five buttons" Hall of Shame.
After karaoke, Amanda came over to play Guitar Hero (probably so she'd no longer have to listen to me say "DUDE! You HAVE to try it, it's so much fun!!!"). Here's Meerkat and Squinty, browsing and rocking respectively.
I'd been playing a lot of Wii bowling at home and figure I'd totally dominate, but it turns out that Leigh and Jackson were even more obsessed than I was and I totally got my ass handed to me.
After dinner, we headed back to my parents place and played Wii until the wee hours of the night! Here's my mom and Elyse squaring off in tennis. Happy 60th, Dad! I love you!
A few weeks prior to my dad's birthday, I called him and asked him what he wanted for his birthday. When I'd been home for the holiday in December, I'd brought my Wii along and my loved the golf game...so he told me he wanted a Wii for his birthday! (This was back when Wiis were pretty much impossible to find, but I put a couple of extra to dollars to work on eBay and managed to get one for the birthday boy!). We set it up immediately and got our Wii golf on! Here's the birthday boy getting ready to tee off!
On Saturday afternoon, Meredith and I took the train out to my parents house in NJ so that we could spend Christmas with my fam! I brought along the Wii so that the whole family could play (which we ended up doing for hours on end). Here's my mom and brother getting ready to square off in tennis. But before they played, we decided that we all needed to...
And then it was on like Donkey Kong! My mom's real-world tennis skills gave her an early advantage - but after two or three games, Brett's video-tennis skills kicked in and he dominated!
I spent Tuesday night hiding from holiday parties trying to wrap up Zelda so that I could stop obsessing over it! "Oh, over the Bridge of Eldin? Thanks, Goron!"
On Saturday night my parents came into town for the day! After walking around and having lunch in our neighborhood, we went back to our apartment so my parents could try out our new Wii! My mom actually played a video game and liked it!
Lawrence was waaaay to drunk to make it home from his party so he spent the night on our couch! We spent the next day working off our hangovers with a little Wii Bowling! Here's Lawrence showing off his bowling form!
...while I played Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess until 5am in the morning. (When I get into a video game, I pretty much get obsessed. I end up staying up all hours playing them just so I can beat them and get on with my life). I named my character's horse "Ponyhole" and when this gem of dialogue popped up on screen, I felt it merited a screenshot.
They had that golf simulator where the course is projected onto a big, plastic screen in front of you. You take a real club and real balls and hit them at the screen full force! They have sensors that detect the trajectory and speed of the ball hitting the screen and it shows you where your ball "went."
Then as more people started to arrive, we moved out into the living room and set up Dance Dance Revolution! I'd even gone out a few days earlier and bought a second "dance pad" so that two people could go head-to-head in a competitive DANCE OFF! Here's Meredith and Grant squaring off.
At this point in the night, Jay had racked up two triple buck bonuses (This is somethign that's seriously hard to do!) He promised us that if he managed to get a third triple buck bonus, something memorable would happen. Something more memorable than the worm? Ninja, please!
Then this is pretty much what I saw for the next oh, saaaaay, about eight straight hours. Knights of the Old Republic II! (Nerds, lemme hear you say "awww, yeah.") Eventually, Meredith managed to distract me by...
On Sunday afternoon I raced to the NerdStore to buy motherfucking Halo2! (While Mary's friend revealed her hidden inner-dork by stroking the MasterChief's, um, hardware.)
Then laughed like monkeys watching this super-serious guy play this samurai game where you have an electronic sword and you have to slash and thrust it in all these directions in order to kill the bad guys. It was so ridiculous...
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