For My Nephew: An Argument FOR Video Games

Please indulge me as I address a response to my tween-aged nephew who requested some advice on how to write a persuasive essay which would convince people to play video games.

“Not a good topic,” he wrote, “but they say stick to what you know.”

Oh, no. I would say that this is a freaking fabulous topic, my nephew. FAB-U-LOUS. In fact, I would say that there are actually two very compelling angles you can take with this topic. Allow me to elucidate:

Argue that playing video games can help keep you phyically fit AND promote family togetherness.

Booyah! Fact! Sort of!

With the emergence of games such as Dance, Dance, Revolution and Wii Sports and EA (Wii) Playground, you are no longer a passive participant in video game playage. No, indeed! Instead, you are working up a sweat getting down with your bad dancey self, and swinging that Wii remote around, bowling, batting, golfing, boxing, playing tetherball, skateboarding, and battling your friends and family in dodgeball. DODGEBALL, people. Without actual BALLS being hurled at you at warp speed by sadistic jocks who are only happy when they are inflicting pain upon those smaller than them in the form of dodgeball-sized welts all over said smaller people’s torsos. Do you hear me, Coach Carter?! DO YOU?! Welts! On TORSOS!

Plus, tetherball is way fun.

I confess, I was sore after I spent the afternoon playing Wii Sports with my friend Paige. (Yes, I play video games with my friends on my days off! While my kids are in school! Hoo! How do you like them apples?) I think it was the boxing that did it. Ouch. It was like an intense Tae Bo workout, but with sound effects and fits of giggles. And everyone knows that laughing is an AWESOME abs workout.

It is. Look it up. I can’t do everything. GOSH.

And don’t even get me started on the fun that is Rock Band, which is essentially Guitar Hero on crack, with not only guitar and bass, but drums and vocals. Oh, you got me started!  See, it’s educational, what with budgeting all the gig earnings so you can buy new songs, outfits, tattoos, instruments, you know, important rock band stuff. Not to mention the fact that many kids who play Rock Band are inspired to try out the REAL instruments, thus developing a previously untapped musical talent. Plus there’s the traveling, the practicing, and the working together to be the Best Rock Band EVER. That’s all I’m saying. These are valuable life skills. It’s the school of rock, baby! SCHOOL. OF. ROCK.

Basically, it’s all about family togetherness.

As an added bonus, playing some of the instruments–especially the drums, which, FUN!– are quite the workout. I’m not kidding here. You will sweat.

OF course, there’s the old standby of developing your hand-eye coordination blah blah blahdy blah, but whatever. Physical fitness! Family togetherness! Those are the key!

(An upcoming TechnoGeekery vidcast episode I am working on involves this very topic, so feel free to cite my show as a resource.)

There. I believe I have made my point. I rest my case.

Um, amen.

Street Cred

Crap.

I may have just been spotted–at work!–air guitaring along with the (wicked awesome) song playing on my iPod.

Hey! I can’t help it! The music is in my SOUL, so kindly step OFF me, yo?

Well. This can’t be good for my street cred with the urban cubicleland demographic.

Guitar Hero: Stars in Her Eyes

Nothing says family togetherness like Guitar Hero. Just sayin’.

Surrender

It’s wrong that I’m SUPER excited to hurry home and play Guitar Hero… right?

Time.

I had the house to myself. I decided to do a little meditating—indulge in quiet contemplation, if you will—before Alli came home from school and disrupted the stillness, so I lay back on my bed enjoying the view of the small patch of grayish blue sky I could see while staring through the slightly parted curtains of my bedroom window. It was soothing feeling the soft down duvet under me, and the smooth expanse of well-worn cotton against the palms of my hands while my thoughts were drawn upwards and out. Unfortunately, my thoughts never will stay elevated for any great length of time, and soon I lost myself in smug contemplation of my developing Guitar Hero skills and wondered if I ought to try out a new song before any of the kids came home. Frustrated, I closed my eyes, which I usually find particularly helpful in shutting out the inane. Peace. Gradually, however, my thoughts slipped into imagining what I would buy if I won the lottery—not that it mattered as I never play. I bought TGIM that American Stratocaster he’s been eyeing—after buying myself a snug little six-bedroom cottage with a large wraparound porch, naturally—and had almost settled on the widescreen LCD television for our bedroom…

I opened my eyes. The clock across the bedroom stared at me with silent condemnation: “Look at the time you wasted! LOOK!” It was time to join the line of parents at the elementary school Kiss and Ride. One second I was redecorating my newly purchased lottery home, spacious yet somehow tiny enough to feel safe and snug, much like a cathedral at the holidays; the next instant I was looking at my own little bedroom, small yet somehow big enough to hold all five of us on the bed, eating popcorn and watching cartoons.

Smiling ruefully, I rolled myself off the bed, cast one last wistful glance out the window, and went in search of my keys.

Yay, Mommycasters! *sigh* I knew them when…

I love it when good things come to good people, and this article about my friends Paige and Gretchen of Mommycast.com (Paige is also my Veronica Mars Rewind co-host, doncha know?) certainly seems to fit the bill.

Woo! You go, girls! Get down with your bad mommy selves! Or something! And I’m totally NOT jealous or anything! Much! Maybe a little!

Hey. You dang well better stow me in a suitcase and bring me along if you get to meet Oprah (or Ellen! I must dance with ELLEN!), or seriously? HEADS. WILL. ROLL.

No, really.

Heads? Rolling everywhere.

It all started with a pecan roll…

(DISCLAIMER: This post is blowhardy. Windbaggy in a BIG way. You have been warned.)

So there I was at Panera, totally doing my work-at-home thing. Er, while not a home, but it COUNTS, okay? I had just given myself wholly to the pleasure of eating– nay, savoring– an absolutely decadent pecan roll (that bad boy contained more fat calories than I normally consume in a week, but dude… it’s the culinary equivalent of sweet, sweet loving, that’s all I’m saying) when the loud, nasally voice of a short, youngish, stylishly suited-up dude interrupted me. He sat down a few tables from me and commenced loudly and insistently bloviating about an “exciting new business opportunity” that he felt “obligated to share” with this poor sucker he had more than likely accosted in the book aisle at Target or Walmart. Seriously. These network marketing people are EVERYWHERE. And they really, really like TGIM. A LOT. For whatever reason. It’s inexplicable.

A quick look around told me I wasn’t the only pastry-cum-free-internet customer sporting raised eyebrows and a Boy Howdy! Glad That’s Not Me grin. I toyed with the idea of breaking out the iPod and drowning the relentless hum of bromidic blather spewing like liquid hot magma from this slick little dude’s mouth, but I couldn’t help myself. It was like really bad performance art. Riveting.

In full-on Veronica Mars spy-girl mode, I cast several surreptitious glances their way. I could only see the back of the guy on the receiving end of this sales pitch– let’s call him Mark, shall we? (Hoo! Get it?! Do ya?! Thank you! I’m here ’til Thursday…)– but he was obviously putting a considerable amount of energy into scribbling down every platitudinous morsel this young man let drop.

(Hey. That is a GREAT word. Platitudinous. I shall use it more often. Fooyah! But I digress…)

I wondered what in the Sam Hill he could possibly be gleaning from the words, words, WORDS cascading over him like warm, gooey glaze over a Panera pecan roll. (Seriously. You need to taste one. Seriously.) Because there was no mention of any kind of company or product, mind you. Just “blah, blah, make money doing nothing, blahcakes.” So, what was there to write, really? “Why must he spit whilst he speaks?” “I can’t believe he didn’t even buy me a scone.” Or perhaps even “This guy is a total douchetard!”

Good golly, Miss Molly. I had to see that notepad. Curse my sudden but inevitable fit of curiosity! I mean, honestly, how did Mark’s notes stack up against my mental ones? Unfortunately, my work computer, PDA smartphone, and ginormous stack of document files prevented me from going all covert ops and scoring a peek, but I imagine the comparison would have looked much like this:

“…making money for almost no effort…” Oh, for the love of...

“…two thousand to four thousand a month…” The hell, you say? Er, I mean, ’shah…

“…residual income…” Uh-oh… wait for it…

“…exciting business opportunity!…” Thar she blows!

“…go into business with little or no start-up capital…” Call me Ishmael. Heh. Wait, what?

“…home-based business franchising…” Mayday! Mayday!

“…retire younger and richer…” The Captain goes down with the ship! The Captain goes down with the ship!

“…attend opportunity meeting…” All systems fail! Abort mission! Eject! For the love of God, EJECT!

Yes, my mind is a very intense place to be sometimes. Um, most of the time.

I must say that at this point I would not have stuttered a keystroke if the slick little dude suddenly tossed aside his half-eaten bagel, jumped up on the table, and shouted “How many of you want to be rich, rich, RICH?!” while dancing the Running Man. Yawn. Nor would I have batted an eyelash if he then proceeded to invite any Panera patrons interested in becoming a cog in his downline to join hands with him and sing a chorus or two of Kumbaya. Because, honestly? Dude was on FIRE.

Sure, you could tell his sales pitch was canned– he’d obviously rehearsed it, complete with pauses for effect and creepy, unwavering eye-contact– but he was a born salesman. He laid out the whole plan. And Mark, bless him– with the nods and the wide, trusting eyes– was kindling to his flame.

In the interest of full disclosure, when he came to the sticking point, I may have been completely sucked in to his spiel. Perhaps. I’m not really sure. It’s all a blur now, but MAYBE. Even though I already have a good job that I enjoy. And a family consisting of one TGIM and three high-maintenance kiddos. And a brand-new side business of my very own. And no free time. And Guitar Hero practice. And common sense.

So when he asked Mark, with the hint of a smirk and a dare in his eyes, “Are you ready to learn how to go into business for yourself with little or no start-up capital so you can retire young with plenty of cash?” I was all, “Heck, YES, I’m ready! Throw in a some gum and a pony and you’ve got yourself a deal!”

Okay, I didn’t say that. But I THOUGHT it, so points for effort, even if I didn’t actually say it aloud. Dang. I hate it when I miss an opportunity to be obnoxious, especially when it coincides with an opportunity to show a network sales person the error of his ways and possibly save said sales person from a life of thwarted purpose.

Man. I bet William would have said it. Right out loud. William! Where are you when I need you?!

I’d like to say there’s a happy ending to this story, but alas. Slick little dude wound down his spiel, entered all of Mark’s personal information in his slick little phone, and they stood to shake hands, the best of good friends. I imagine they are together right now, at the aforementioned “opportunity meeting,” swaying in unison while chanting “Mo-NEY! Mo-NEY! Mo-NEY!” with one hundred other network marketers, who will then go out and accost me in the linens aisle at Target.

“Hi! Those are some really nice bath towels you’ve selected there. Yes, ma’am. Nice. Soooo, you seem to like the finer things… how would you like the opportunity to find out how to make more money and retire young…”

Heaven help us all.

Amen.

New Year’s Resolutions (NYR) for 2007

NYR #1: Stop procrastinating! Timeliness is key.

NYR #2: Spend more time with my children. Mostly via Guitar Hero. See, it’s educational, what with budgeting all the gig-earnings so we can buy new songs– like Strong Bad’s “Trogdor” and Amazing Royal Crowns’ “Mr. Fix It”– and killer new outfits, not to even mention all the traveling across the countryside and whatnot. I mean, we can play STONEHENGE, people. In ENGLAND. That’s all I’m saying. These are valuable life skills. It’s the school of rock, baby! SCHOOL. OF. ROCK.

Basically, it’s all about family togetherness.

NYR #3: Eat more pie. Preferably boysenberry. Self explanatory.

NYR #4: Stick to a budget. Any budget will do.

NYR #5: Retire “booyah!” Coin a new phrase. Perhaps something like “hooyah!” Or possibly “fooyah!” Be original.

NYR #6: Buy more fabric. Because you can never have enough of that stuff. Oh, and hoodies! Buy more hoodies.

Okay, I’ll finish this later.

How to ROCK My Socks Off

Phone rings.

Cat: Hello?

Paige: Dude. Are you off work today?

Cat: Yep.

Paige: And all our kids are in school, right?

Cat: Heck, yes!

Paige: Cool! Come over and we’ll play Guitar Hero.

Cat: Sweet! Let’s “Shout at the Devil,” yo?

Paige: Okay, but hurry. I’ve got to pick Lola up from preschool in an hour.