Guitar Hero 2

S's best friend got him Guitar Hero 2 for X-mas and brought it over last night. S was so happy! When I got home from Job #2 last night he was upstairs in the baby's room playing it. (The baby's room serves double-duty as his gameroom.) I insisted that I could kick ass on the advanced stage, even without ever having played the game, due to my musical prowess. He took me up on my challenge and interrupted his easy stage game, to set me up. However, all the song choices were heavy-metal songs I did not know. I said, "I don't know all these boy songs! Hiddly-diddly, hiddly-diddly!" We finally settled on "You Really Got Me Now" which I guess is by Van Halen. I didn't do too well at first, but then immediately got the hang of it once I got the concept down. Still, I backtracked to the medium stage. Then I grew bored with it. That is pretty much my attitude with video games, that they really bore me and frankly, I'd much rather be reading my book. The only game I really liked was Jeopardy!, but S got sick of it after I kept winning. This a.m. S played a few more games before he had to go to work.

I am in a hurry to finish reading Amy Tan's autobiography The Opposite of Fate, which arrived for me via transfer last night at work. I've read it before, but it is so fascinating, and it's really for Ma, who I need to turn it over to next time I see her. I'm already on p. 87--only 310 more pages to go before Saturday! I can do it!

Last night S insisted on giving me one of my X-mas presents, and I was truly delighted. It was the soundtrack to School of Rock, the DVD of which was one of my b-day presents earlier this year. So this a.m. I decided to give him one of his X-mas presents early too, and I gave him the special edition DVD of Daddy Daycare (bought for $5.00 including shipping, from a vendor on amazon.com!), which we had rented last year and loved. The baby will probably like watching it, too.

This a.m. I listened to some of my new CD while driving S's car to our trusted mechanic for some small repair jobs. It got me wondering why Jack Black is so funny to me, and John Belushi was so funny to me, but I don't think Chris Farley was very funny. There's some kind of natural, organic quality that Black and Belushi have, whereas Farley just tried so hard and almost always overdid it. He does have his funny moments, but Black and Belushi just have a gift, and it seems to come so easy to them. I'm very critical when it comes to my comedians. I've read a lot of comedian biographies, and I remember one of them that I can't remember right now, where their father (whom they didn't get along with, natch) loved to watch comics on Ed Sullivan, or some such show, and criticized some of the comics by saying, "He's just an asshole with a couple of jokes" as opposed to the real comedians who made you think and made you really laugh.

From what I understand, my own father was a stand-up comedian for awhile in college. I can't imagine what that must've been like to see. My father is very funny to me, and does make me laugh often, but I wonder what he was like up onstage and what he joked about. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to asking him.