mistermainevent

With the exception of spending an hour and change on a conference call in the middle of the afternoon, yesterday was a great day.

I had gone to bed early the night before - not by design, but just because i dozed off around 8:00pm and slept for about seven hours. I awoke in the wee hours of the morning, fixed myself a bowl of Cheerios, played around on the computer for about an hour, and then went back to sleep.

I was up around 9:00am or so, and after another bowl of cereal (so good), i spent the rest of the morning playing "The Darkness," marveling at the copious amounts of blood and gore and practically trembling every time i heard Mike Patton's voice. If you have an Xbox 360, you need to be playing this game. End of story.

I grabbed a shower in the afternoon, tossed some clothes into my overnight bag, and headed into town for the aforementioned conference call, which didn't start until about fifteen minutes past the scheduled time. We went over some of the expectations the new DM has for our market, and briefly discussed travel and lodging arrangements for our forthcoming meeting in Chicago. Looks like i'm driving into the Windy City on the evening of the 9th, then having the meeting on the 10th before driving back. Fun times.

After the conference call, i headed down to the south side to hang out with The Andychrist for a few hours. We talked comics, movies, and comic movies, watch bad television, and made a trip to the mall to take Gina an ice cream cone since she was apparently having an extremely shitty day. After a bite to eat for us menfolk, it was back to Casa del Andy for awhile.

I broke camp (always wanted to say that) around 9:30pm to head downtown to Champps (yes, there's an extra "p" for some fucking reason) for their weekly Guitar Hero II tournament. The exquisitely beautiful Miss Sheena was there waiting for me, and we shared a couple of ridiculously overpriced drinks, waiting for Captain Sleeve to join us, who rolled in not long after i arrived.

The PS2 was hooked up to an HD projector, which resulted in a small amount of lag, but Sleeve and i both nailed some pretty good practice runs - he ripped through "Thunderhorse" and hit something like 97% of the notes, and i racked up about 350,000 points on "Monkey Wrench." There didn't seem to be much competition - only one other guy was playing on the Expert setting.

However, neither of us had any idea that the two wireless guitars would interfere with each other's signals. I was up first, playing the STP song (which, under normal circumstances, i would just crush completely) against the other cat who was playing on Expert. I was off to a good start, and then my guitar just seemed to cut out completely - i was hitting the notes spot-on, but they weren't registering. The other guy was having similar issues, and there wasn't much either of us could do except keep right on playing. I mounted a small comeback during the solo, but then lost my 4x multiplier right as i activated my Star Power, which pretty much put the last nail in the coffin. The guy beat my by about 30,000 points, and it was the worst score i have EVER, EVER posted on that song.

EVER.

I sat at the bar with Dave, Nate, and Sheena, drinking beer (which i usually don't do, but it was about the only goddamn thing i could afford in that place), and watching the rest of the tournament. Sleeve had a lot of the same problems that i had, but he discovered that moving to the far end of the little stage/platform thing and angling his guitar away from the other helped to improve the signal. Even so, he was still posting scores that were far below what i'm used to seeing from him, but he still went on to win the tournament, taking home $100 in cold, hard cash.

We discussed the possibility of being able to use wired controllers for next week's tournament, and there were enough of us complaining about the signal problems that i think we were able to get our point across to the manager. It was still a good time, but it would've been a lot more fun if the equipment was working properly.

After leaving the tournament, it was off to Kelly's Pub on the west side. Sheena and i got there before everyone else, and amused ourselves by playing a videogame where the object was to look at two pictures of a naked broad and find the subtle differences between the two. More difficult than it sounds, i assure you.

Randy and Lisa showed up shortly after we arrived, and it wasn't long before Nate and Sleeve were there as well. After a round of drinks, Randy and Lisa recruited Sleeve for a game of Silver Ball (i think that was the name - it's an arcade bowling game), and Nate joined Sheena and myself in the picture hunt game. Between the three of us we nearly set a new high score - but hey, second place isn't all that bad, right?

After last call, i made sure to give everyone a hug and tell them all how much i loved them. Sheena tried to convince me that i needed to come to her place with Nate and Sleeve so we could keep drinking and stay up all night, but i had to decline - as much fun as it would've been, i never would've been able to make it through today if i had gone with them. Damn those responsibilities.

But seriously - i've got the best friends in the world. Damn good people, all of them.

I was planning on going out to The Vogue tonight to see Margot and the Nuclear So and So's, but i'm not sure if that's still going to happen. I couldn't find anyone to go with me, since Sheena is working and Sleeve will be out of town - plus, Dad and Jan are leaving early tomorrow morning for a two-week vacation, and i feel bad about not spending a lot of time with the old man. I'll be moving out the weekend after they get home, so i feel somewhat obligated to hang out with him as much as i can, because i know he gets lonely being in that house by himself.

The rest of the weekend is pretty typical. I open the store tomorrow, and then i'll probably grab a nap in the evening, and then pop into Sheena's bar for a drink or two before heading off to Poker Night. I'm working Sunday, as well, so it'll probably be a short night for me. Opening again on Monday, and after that it's a complete overload of action-movie goodness - Sheena and i are seeing "Transformers" with Andy and Gina and whoever else decides to come with us, and then we're following up with a late showing of "Live Free or Die Hard." Nearly five hours of cinematic goodness wherein a lot of shit is getting blown up? Yeah, i'm there.

Be good, kids. I've gotta go to work.