For fear of not scoring a Nintendo Wii at launch, today I decided to wait outside of my local EBgames prior to the store opening. I couldn’t decide if I wanted there to be people there or not. I could sit by myself outside the store front, gazed upon by the mall walkers. Or I could sit with a few strangers who obviously share a single interest with myself.

I arrived this morning at EBgames at 9:20 to find two gentlemen sitting outside the gate. Whew! I stopped by Pretzel Plus for coffee, walked back to them, and attempted a joke as an ice breaker. They were quite startled by my introduction, but welcomed me a place on the indoor/outdoor carpet none the less. They were obviously together and obviously had no interest in chatting with a stranger. Although, it was nice to sit there with someone else so the security guard didn’t have to bitch at just me.

As it turns out, I wouldn’t have wanted to talk to these guys anyway. I consider myself a gamer, but after listening to this bumbling, I realize I’m not one at all. One had a laptop out with an Xbox game emulator and was playing some fighting game, while they both talked anime and imports. I just sat quietly to myself reading my horror mag, and waited through 40 minutes of conversation before the store front opened. Here are some of my favorite quotes:

“Yeah, I love going to that website because it’s so easy to own the boards there. You can flame anyone and always win.”

“Man, I hate rap. Especially that song that goes *sings entire chorus*. I never listen to it.”

10 o’clock, and a few magazines later, we’re in. I preordered the Wii, picked up the new Playstation Magazine for the Guitar Hero 2 demo, and snagged a new DS game as well. As long as the local EB gets 3 Wii’s in, one is mine.

A guaranteed system was worth the embarassment of the morning. Prior to that I stopped by the Elementary School to read with a few kids who’s parents didn’t show up for “Read With Your Parent Day”. It couldn’t have been a more productive Friday morning.

Last night was the 2006 Guitar Center Drum Off store finals, and my freakin’ little brother won. He goes on to Atlanta to compete the the district finals, then to regional, then national.

I was quite proud.

Unfortunately, I did not get to record the performance because corporate was very apprehensive about anyone videotaping or taking pictures of the event. They threatened to kick people out, so I didn’t record it. But MAN was it good. I did get this taped though:

This is his performance from LAST time. This it the performance that got him INTO the finals. It’s good, but not nearly as good as last night’s show. He would have won last night with the semi-final performance.

Anyway, my little brother freakin’ rocks, and it kills me that I don’t have his winning performance on video. It happened though, and that’s all that matters.

A few months ago, my roomate and I decided to make a rap song about Halo 2. It was very well received in the geek community and Bungie even blogged about it. Well, my roomate (this is Ethan I’m talking about here) found a fan video online! Unfortunately, they left out the best verse and apparently don’t know what the Fader Ure is. Other than that, I’m pleased. I don’t know who this kid is, but THANKS!

OH, and I beat Lifeforce for the NES over the weekend on the first try. Yum.

A few years ago I started building an arcade machine. I drug my wife (then girlfriend) out to Lowe’s, lugged particle board home, and slapped together an arcade cabinet to house my MAME cabinet. I laid out my controller, bought the parts to build with, and quickly realized that I had no place in my shoebox-of-a-house to put this thing. As I’m wont do, I pushed the project aside and never returned. Now, that cabinet resides in my old Asheville car port, waiting for someone to come by and finish the job. Hours of planning and $400 in parts, and it just never happened.

*sigh*

Forward to a few years later. As it turns out, these days all you need is a copy of the original Splinter Cell and an Action Replay to softmod your Xbox into a Media Center. The days of a soldered modchip are apparently over. Who knew?

After some serious headache yesterday (because I didn’t really know what I was doing), I have an officially modded Xbox. It’s completely region free, converts PAL to NTSC (so I can finally get rid of my crappy Lite-On DVD player that worked for a mere few months), and by the end of today, I should have emulators and roms installed for all NES, SNES, and Genesis games.

I have the ability to rip Xbox games and all, but I don’t ever see myself doing that. I plan on buying those. There’s still a chance of a company or two making a few bucks. Plus, I’d have to put in a larger hard drive, and I don’t think I’m ready to crack open the case yet. It’s not a bad upgrade for a measly $26. Plus, I have an Action Replay now, so I can play Burnout with infinite boost and Halo with space gravity, which should be fun. Actually, that will be very much fun!

The Xbox comes with a 5 gig hard drive, and after all Emulators are loaded I should have about a gig and a half left. If I ever plan on including arcade games a la MAME cabinet, I’d have to do the drive upgrade. So in a way I’m getting my arcade machine after all – just in a much smaller package (and with no trackball… boo…)

If there WAS a downside, it’s that I’ll never play Xbox Live again… heh, I think I’ll live. My experiences with Live weren’t happy ones.

September has been a refreshing month for musical discoveries.  Here are a few that I guarantee none of you will enjoy (I’m linking to myspace pages, because it’s so easy to hear sample tracks):

Channels - Contains former Alum of Jawbox, and is one of the coolest things I’ve heard from the east coast in a while.  Perfect major melodies on the vocal front and dissonance on the guitar front.
Unexpect - This satisfies the carnie in me.  Not since Sleepytime Gorilla Museum have I heard such organized uproar.
Bulb - Great instrumental polyrhythmic metal.  It’s like Meshuggah without the “screaming and carrying on”.
Crotchduster - Comedic genre jumping at it’s finest.  It’s like a cross between Green Jello and Bloodhoung Gang, but more talented than both.  I almost wish Mammal Sauce was real.
Disastertron - Some of the best songwriting you’ll ever hear, but all in chiptunes (8-bit Nintendo voices).

For the first time, I’m having a professional artist come in and put art together for one of my albums. I’m not a very good graphic artist at all, but I’ve been the most capable and assigned the task in every band I’ve been a part of. I’m lucky enough to have the Assistant Art Director of Rockstar Games (GTA) doing it, which was an accident to say the least. I met him, and had no idea what his stature was until after we’d gotten started.

The idea of someone creating a visual piece based on what they think my music sounds like is a strange concept to me.  Hopefully, he doesn’t come back with portraiture of a dog turd.

Anyway, after more discussion this afternoon, I couldn’t be more hyped for the Stemage album artwork. To show off a bit of his character creation skill, check out his work at http://www.fourthwish.com/.

On top of all this, I have ANOTHER artist putting together the next Metroid Metal t-shirt design.  Man, I think I’m stressed.

Even people who aren’t addicted to web videos got a taste of the Numa Numa guy a few years ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60og9gwKh1o

Well, in an attempt to capitalize on the webcam sensation, a company called Jaeter Corporation has signed Numa Boy on, and is trying to see what money they can squeeze out of his fluke web popularity. The company has launched a new website (http://newnuma.com/), and has created a professional Part 2 video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gg5LOd_Zus

Not only is the video boring, sloppily put together, and JUST NOT FUNNY, but the NewNuma.com site is even worse.  It’s glazed with a web-comic design, contests, and it attempts to actually SELL the new song on iTunes. Maybe there are people who are biting into this, but I find it insulting and comical.  Viral marketing is no longer new, and it will be fun to see how different companies attempt to captilize on rich media in the years to come.  Here’s Jaeter Corporation’s little PR:

Jaeter Corporation is a Minneapolis, Minn.-based new media company on the forefront of economizing viral marketing.  Pioneering news ways to bring old and new marketing models together and coining the phrases “turn back points” and “e-shepherding” with their relative philosophies, Jaeter is innovating the way consumers make decisions via the internet.

I’m sorry, what?

My good buddies E and E minor have once again broken down the boundaries of independent film and comedy…. Well not really, but they did made this interview with Ethan and stuff?  And yeah, it’s really funny. Have a gander:

Man, I love that themesong.

Last night, I played soundman for my father’s gospel bluegrass band. I can’t recall the last time I played that role actually. I love it though. It doesn’t matter how the band performs - you’re totally in control of what the people in the audience hear, which is a nice power trip. I don’t think this audience was particularly picky, but it was still nice to tweak to my heart’s delight. Anyway, they played a little back country church about 30 miles into rural South Carolina. There were no lines on the road for the last half of the trip, and the little shoebox labeled “Hospital” was comical at best. They played a fabulous show to a group of about 25 men (the 25 men of the church), the low country food was amazing, and we made it home alive.

I always tell people that I’m, “all about the music,” and have friends that echo the same cliché. However, when you travel with a few guys over 50 to a little SC Baptist group to play old fashioned music, CD’s aren’t even mentioned, and fellowship exchanges hands instead of merch and money, you really see what it’s like to be all about the music.

“Dad, can I be a roadie?”