Greetings from the stage

Dear Reader,

I write to you this Saturday night from the Rock Band stage. My fellow bandmates and I are in the midst of the notorious Endless Setlist. Almost three hours in, we have yet to play the most challenging 20 of 58 songs.

Luckily, we prepared ourselves by calling in a spare rocker! This is actually Cyborg’s fault; he lent SMB’s Rock Band game and instruments to a friend while he studies for his MCAT. So TDH lugged his gear to my house. He, SMB, SMB’s BFF, and I are rotating on three instruments (when we should have had four): drums (hard), guitar (expert), and vocals (hard). I can do the vocals rather comfortably (except for unpitched phrases, apparently!), and fudge my way through the drums, but I can’t bring my fingers to move quickly enough for the guitar.

I think I love Rock Band mainly because I feel as though I can play the drums – a skill that never fails to impress me – even though I know nothing about actually playing them in real life. But the highlight of the night so far has been SMB singing “I’m So Sick” by Flyleaf in his signature falsetto. So classic.

It is probably clear to you now that as I write this blog, seated on my living room couch, I am neglecting my rockstar duties. Instead, I am bingeing on salted, shelled peanuts and being supremely lazy. But isn’t that what rockstardom is about? (The rest of the band is feasting on bubble tea, which one member so generously drove to the local BBT store to buy – during the set.)

Unfortunately, I’m fading fast… (So that’s how Liam Gallagher felt.) My eyelids are growing heavier by the minute, and I am excusing myself from play, citing early work tomorrow as the reason. However, this will not suffice; I have been granted a temporary leave to blog and take a nap, but my services will inevitably be required towards the end of the night, when the drums become so difficult that two people are needed not to fail (one does only the bass drum, which is killer on the shins).

And so I bid you adieu for the present time. If I don’t make it back, blame the sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll – and the five hour performance. I’m off for my nap…

Yours rockingly,

Roshena and the ABABs

PS I’ve also taken advantage of the money we’ve earned from gigs by purchasing a new wardrobe for my character. I love that the game also indulges my girly ways! (Of course, it also brings out my spendthrift tendencies; I chose not to purchase certain items despite liking them because they just weren’t worth the price.) A Vancouverite at heart, my character wears black yoga pants, a tank top, and bright yellow rainboots. Because you never know when it will rain. Just ask Radiohead.

Mama and Me at Mamma Mia!

Mama Bear and I finally went on a date last night to watch potential chick-flick-of-all-chick-flicks, Mamma Mia!  (The exclamation mark is part of the title, not just an indication of my excitement!)  Despite coming out 6 weeks ago, the theatre was still pretty packed.

We found a couple of empty seats on the aisle, towards the back.  And as if I wasn’t already challenged enough vertically, the lady directly in front of me wore a HUMONGOUS bun on the top of her head.

WHY, OH WHY, would you wear your hair in a bun on the top of your head to a movie theatre?!  That’s just mean.

The movie itself (or what I saw of it) was a real pleasure to watch – if you’re into girly movies – except for the poor casting in a couple of roles.  I actually couldn’t watch Pierce Brosnan’s distorted face as he attempted to sing (apparently, he wasn’t told to get thee to a bathroom before the take), and the young love interest was extremely slimy.  

But other than that, it was very enjoyable.  

Especially the BBC Pride and Prejudice throwback with Colin Firth in a wet, white dress shirt… even though I can’t decide if he’s officially entered way-too-old-man territory.

HolEy Underpants, (Bat)mEn!

I don’t understand men.

Why do they refuse to discard beaters (or “A Shirts”, as the package reads) with holes in them, even when their ladies buy them brand new ones… in the same size… from the same brand?  Some of the beaters of men-who-shall-remain-nameless have such big holes that it is no longer clear which side is up. 

Come on, I can’t be alone on this one.  (At least I have Mama Bear…)

Please enlighten me so I don’t continue to waste my money.*

*Note: this comment is in no way intended to necessarily implicate TDH.

Princess Liam

Forgive the poor guy.  He’s getting old and apparently very tired.

After only an hour onstage, Liam Gallagher announced that Oasis was about to play its last song of the night.  Hey, it was already ten o’clock.  Of course, this was met with much booing from the crowd, to which Liam responded – naturally -with profanity.  (Swears were just about the only words I could decipher from any of the bands tonight.  Apparently, they translate well despite accents.)

Turns out, Liam may have just needed a short nap.  During the first two songs of the band’s encore, older bro Noel took over lead vocal duties while Liam went offstage for what we could only assume to be a hissy fit… which no one cared to listen to, so he came back to finish off the last (for real this time) three songs of the night in an attempt to have people look at him once again.  And how could you not, with his strange old-lady-security-guard stance, away from the mic, in the middle of songs.

But I didn’t leave disappointed.  I didn’t know any of their new material, but sprinkled throughout the concert was Oasis’s old hits… though they didn’t play one of my favourite songs of all time, “Don’t Look Back In Anger”, until the encore.  This also included the epic Champagne Supernova (“We were right here the whole time you were getting high, by the way, waiting for you to do what we paid you to do!”) and a fun cover of the Beatles’s “I Am the Walrus”.

Yes, there was a group of a dozen security guards struggling to drag a drunken man out of the concert while he was kicking and screaming.  (What rock concert would have been complete without this?)  And seated in front of me was a drunken girl, whose flailing arms had a habit of hitting my purse and whose brittle, heat-damaged hair was constantly prickling my bare legs.  (So attractive.)  And I was obviously upset that the lineup for popcorn was, in fact, moving backwards – especially because the people to my left were smoking things that made me very hungry even though I had just eaten dinner.

But it was still a great night out – just no Pembe, that’s for sure.

It doesn’t hurt to have a CA, but…

…it hurts to get one.