Blast from the Past I: Beatles Night

As most of you will, presumably, be aware, there was, until recently, another post in the place of this one. Unfortunately, I was forced to pull it. Instead I have included my first ever 'Blast from the Past': something I actually typed up a long time ago, and have been waiting for an opportunity to use. This seems like a fairly good opportunity.

As long term readers of this blog will know – also anyone who knows us in person, which is all of you anyway – Marie-Clare, Giuseppe and I have long had a tradition of commemorating the Beatles’ memory with occasional ‘Beatles nights’. We sit around, listen to music, discuss how attractive Paul McCartney is (one of us, anyway, whose name I shall not mention), eat cake, write love letters to Beatles’ sons (again, only one of us, and it’s the same one. I still have one she wrote to James McCartney if anyone’s interested), play Beatles games, and collapse into a puddle of tears at the end of the night after watching the Concert For George (and, yes. Only one of us).

On this particular occasion we were celebrating at Marie-Clare’s house. We began by meeting at Civic and wandering around. Marie-Clare dragged Giuseppe and I into a clothing store, I forget which one, so she could try on a dress – which she later wore to Brandine’s party (see BLAST FROM THE PAST II: Brandine’s Party, available at some point in the near future when I’ve forgotten to post for some time and Marie-Clare’s paid lackeys are trying to set my house on fire). She bought it and then dragged us out again. On the way out, we were passing a clothing rack when something caught her eye and she doubled back. She pulled a garment out of the rack and displayed it before us. ‘Look at this!’

‘What?’

‘It looks exactly like the one Dhani Harrison was wearing in Concert For George!’ (Dhani Harrison is George Harrison’s son, by the way. He’s half Mexican. And fully awesome.)

‘No it doesn’t,’ I said, horrified.

‘Yes, all right, not exactly the same, but if you dyed this one purple then I don’t you’d be able to tell them apart.’

Giuseppe, who’d been choking with laughter up until this point, chipped in. ‘Marie-Clare, that’s a woman’s blouse.’

‘It’s not!’

‘Then why is it on a rack of women’s clothing?’

Marie-Clare paused, examined the blouse in question, and then put it back. ‘He might still wear it,’ she said defensively. At which point Giuseppe and I dragged her out of the store.

We went to Marie-Clare’s house shortly after that. We had the bottom floor to ourselves for the night. The bottom storey of Marie-Claire’s house is basically a separate flat. It has a kitchen, a bathroom, a bedroom, and a living room.

We began the night by playing Beatles Monopoly, which I lost at. Badly. Like, insanely badly. It was frankly embarrassing. We had dinner, ate the cake I’d made to commemorate John Lennon’s death day (despite the fact that John Lennon died in early December, and I was technically supposed to make the cake then. Well, I was busy at the time).

We followed this with Beatles Rockband. I should precede my description of this by a short explanation of my previous history with this kind of technology. Bascically, I have none. I don’t own an Xbox, a Playstation, a Gameboy, a Wii, or anything remotely like that, excepting only my blue iPod. I’m sure, if I owned any of the afore-mentioned consoles, I’d wouldn’t be too terrible at playing them. The only playable game on my blue iPod is Klondike – or Solitaire – and I am, if I say so myself, pretty good at it. I should be, after 1125 games. The problem is that I’ve never actually had the opportunity to learn how to play Rockband. And it shows.

Again, this deficit in my game-playing past might be quickly passed over if I had any musical ability. I mean, the game’s called Rockband for a reason, right? As it is, though, I didn’t have any chance this way either. In my time on this Earth I’ve attempted to learn to play eight different instruments. All of them I have failed at. I’ll never be a flautist, or a guitarist, or a mouth organ player or even a trumpet player. The French Horn is right out after that year I spent playing it in Year 6, I haven’t so much as touched my recorder since I was nine, I can’t read piano music to save my life, and the mouth organ was never more than a phase. Again. It shows.

I could have saved myself 250 words just now by utilising a single phrase, which describes my Rockband-playing ability as aptly as the above paragraphs have:

 

I FAIL AT IT

 

The first time I picked the guitar-like electric thing up I got it the wrong way round. I managed to get it the right way around at about the same time as Giuseppe managed to change the controls around for me. So we had to swap back again. Then we tried to play the first song, but it turns out that to play the Rockband guitar-like electric thing you not only have to press the colourful buttons going up the side to replace the frets with your left hand (or your left hand, if you’re (a) left handed or (b) like me and holding the guitar the wrong way around) but also depress a rectangular black switch-like button on the main body of previously mentioned guitar-thing to simulate strumming. Let’s just say that I didn’t know this. I won’t sadden and disappoint you any further by relating my actual score on that first song.

We moved on from there relatively successfully. I selected the easy level for everything we needed to play, and didn’t fail as badly as before, although I still did worse than Giuseppe, and far worse than Marie-Clare. I even managed to have a go at drums. I also tried singing for one song, but anyone who has actually heard my singing – most people I know, come to think of it – will understand why I decided not to persevere with that.

I was going well. That is to say, I was going well until Giuseppe decided to play Helter Skelter – the song with such appallingly complicated drumming that at the end you can hear Ringo yelling ‘I’ve got blisters on my fingers!’. I was on drums. Yeah. Not a wise decision.

Even that was better than when Giuseppe decided to play the same song again. On expert. We burned out after 17 seconds on the first try, 15 seconds on the second, and after that I just gave up and tried to remember what it was like to have feeling in my fingers.

We stopped after that, played Beatles Trivial Pursuit (which I won! I won! I actually won something!) and went to bed. Marie-Clare and I woke up first. Giuseppe woke up later, after Marie-Clare’s cat jumped on her.

We went home shortly after that. After all, we were busy the next day – we had Brandine’s party to go to, and Gwen’s the day after that. Those stories, sadly, are for another day – the next time I’m drowning in homework, similar to the way Andrew Hansen might have drowned in ‘Sanctum’ if he’d actually been one of the divers and not just a cave-oriented computer technician. When that time comes (knowing Senior School, it’ll probably be tomorrow) you’ll receive another of my artificially flavoured, pre-packaged posts (available in all good stores and retailers). Until then, however, it’s goodbye.

And, seeing as this post was all about her, maybe Marie-Clare will finally stop pestering me about this blog. And maybe I’ll suddenly become amazing at Beatles Rockband. They’re about as likely.