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Posts Tagged ‘Michael Jackson’

And the Rippy goes to…

Jul 1, 2009 Funny

As I enter my sixth day of apathy towards a talented, troubled, but completely crazy and over-indulged singer’s death, Jon Stewart is helping me deal with my lack of grief.

As with every sad event that’s happened in recent years, The Daily Show, knowing that it would be crass to make fun of the actual deaths and suffering, takes shots at the media coverage. Bravo.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c

The Rippy Awards for Outstanding Achievement in Obitutainment

www.thedailyshow.com

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Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

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Tags: Michael Jackson, The Daily Show, The Rippy Awards

I can’t seem to get emotional (for once)

Jun 26, 2009 Amy in the Morning

Originally posted on Selfish Mom. All opinions expressed on this website come straight from Amy unless otherwise noted. Please visit Amy’s Full Disclosure page for more information.

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Tags: Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson

Our family has been playing Rock Band since we got it last Christmas, and we love it. It’s one of the few things we all enjoy doing together – the kids never have to beg us to play. They just have to say “Wanna rock out?” and we’re there. For those of you new to Rock Band, it’s kind of a group music video game: guitar, bass, drums, and a singer (you don’t have to have all four, you can play with any number of players from 1 to 4). We’ve played our instruments hard for almost a year now and have gotten pretty good.

But one thing that never really materialized was having our friends and their kids over to play. We tried it a couple of times, but it was just too frustrating for all involved. You see, if one of the players is bad enough, that person can cause the whole song to end pretty quickly. And really, no there’s no kid who’s going to be able to pick up a guitar or sit at the drums and just get it right away. In fact, adults who don’t normally play video games can’t do that either. We had the luxury of learning in private, but people coming to our house had the very difficult task of learning how to play in a room full of people. They didn’t have fun because they would cause the song to end for everybody after about 30 seconds, and we didn’t have fun because our guests were holding us back from completing a song.

So I was very happy to learn recently at a Microsoft event that the new version of the game for the XBox 360, Rock Band 2, has a no fail mode! With the no fail mode on, the band can finish the song no matter how much one person is sucking! This would be unbelievably fantastic for parties and for kids. It also means that I can take more risks and try harder levels without making the rest of the band suffer. And finally, I’ll be able to play the drums with my hands while ignoring the kick pedal. I learned through Rock Band that while my hand-eye coordination is pretty good, my hand-foot-eye coordination sucks ass completely. Based on how I play drums, it’s a wonder I ever got a drivers license.

I played quite a bit of Rock Band today, both with Pasta Boy and by myself while The Ass took the kids to the playground (I had been planning on taking a nap, but decided that Rock Band was more important). I mostly played guitar but also did a few songs on drums and another couple on vocals. If anybody across the street was looking, they saw me bopping around the living room like an idiot. But I don’t care. I’m beyond the point of embarrassment with Rock Band – it’s too much fun.

At the Microsoft event I got a chance to try out the new drums for Rock Band 2, and they’re a big improvement over the old ones that we have. Actually, all of the instruments for RB2 are built sturdier and have some new features, such as the drums being velocity sensitive (the harder you hit them, the louder the sound) and the kick pedal being reinforced with a metal bar (I’ve heard stories about the old one snapping during really rough play). The strum bar on the guitar feels tighter (my biggest complaint about the old guitar). And the new drum kit and guitar are both wireless! No small thing, when you have a room full of people and four instruments tethered to the XBox 360.

Mad Catz has some really cool third-party add-ons that are officially licensed by Rock Band. They have cymbals that you can attach to the basic drum set. Frankly I have enough trouble just playing the regular drum set, but my husband is salivating over the cymbals. They also have a bass guitar. I’m not sure how exactly this is different from the regular guitar, but if I had to guess I’d guess that it’s bigger. And they have a really cool microphone that has the control buttons right on it (with the basic RB mic you also have to use a regular XBox controller to control the mic).

There are more than 80 news songs on the Rock Band 2 game, including songs from Duran Duran, Kansas, and Linkin Park, plus more songs with female vocals from Fleetwood Mac, Joan Jett, The Go-Go’s, and others. And here’s the best part: for a one-time fee of $5, you can burn all of the original Rock Band songs (except for three due to licensing problems) onto your hard drive and play them on RB2, so there’s no need to switch between the old game and the new one!

I must get this game. I’m not sure about getting the whole bundle with the new instruments. As much as I really really want them, our old instruments are less than a year old and will work with RB2. But the new ones are so much better! And Christmas is coming up…

However, over the summer Pasta Boy and I got to try Guitar Hero World Tour (we even got to play it with one of the game’s designers), which is basically Guitar Hero’s version of Rock Band. Basically the same instruments (although the GHWT drums have cymbals already), same idea, but different graphics and different songs. There are also some other things that differentiate GHWT from RB2, but unless you’re really into the game they’re not that major. If I were starting fresh, not already owning and loving Rock Band, I’m not quite sure which I would choose. I think all other things being similar, it comes down to the music, and while GHWT’s song list does include Michael Jackson and Coldplay, I just like the music for Rock Band way better. And with the recent news that Rock Band will be releasing an all-Beatles version of the game in late 2009, I really think that the Rock Band franchise is the way to go.