March 26, 2005

Of Shows and Games

Kaiser Chiefs - Bowery Ballroom

Ok. The show was great last night - maybe not as crazy as the Mercury Lounge show because the lead singer hurt his leg recently and you could sort of see it in his face - but definitely a great great show. There is hardly a bad song on that album, Employment, and they ran through about an hour of the most energetic ones. Unfortunately, my current fav: Born to be a Dancer was excluded - but by this morning I have already forgiven them. They're just too damn good.

Ricky Wilson, the lead singer, was still jumping and hurling himself around on stage for the whole set. He didn't act like someone who was in pain - and maybe no one would have even noticed or thought about it had he not mentioned it during the show. Still, it did seem like he was being a bit more careful than when I saw them last month.

Nevertheless, the band was really tight and the crowd was very enthusiastic - warmed up nicely by the local NYC band, Morningwood. There is a lot of good press swirling around about the Kaiser Chiefs right now so it will be interesting to see where it goes. Someday I hope to bore any children I might have with the story about how I saw them back in '05 before they were anywhere.

AND THEN...

In other news, I am suddenly the only person in the office without a PSP. This happened practically overnight. Seriously, Friday morning three people came in with newly acquired PSPs and joined the ranks of the two that had already purchased and received theirs from Japan about a week and a half ago. I quickly found myself in a room of people hunched over little screens, connected wirelessly and shouting out games to play.

I'm a bit on the fence about it. On the one hand they are super cool, but on the other hand, I totally suck at video games (recent development... I was better once, oh, like 20 years ago). I'm not sure that I need a portable device to showcase this deterioration of my gaming skills in a public forum. I can play x-box at home and nobody needs to know that I can't get past the fucking tutorial in Splinter Cell II, thank you very much. Actually it's not that bad. close. But not that bad.

I'm not sure when this happened, or why, but I think it it got progressively worse as game controllers evolved from the simple "stick and button" to the current "mission-control-task-selection-yoke" that they have become now. I can get myself around a standard keyboard for a networked game of Halo or Quake and hold my own, but put a X-Box Controller in my hands and I might as well be holding a Cuisenart stand mixer and an accordian for all the effect it's having on my game play.

So, who knows? Perhaps the pressure will eventually get too great and I will crumble. Add another compulsion to my already busy schedule. At this point, I am content to observe and appreciate the PSP from afar... so far.