Let’s put this under the heading of performance.
I don’t pretend to be any real fan of video games. I like NPR, I like the gym, I like cooking, I adore my own pretension, I love drinking and writing and Anne Carson and Bergman. I do not like video games.
I do, however, also like fantasizing about being a rock star.
And so I was overcome with enormous tension when a friend encouraged me to play Guitar Hero for PS2. Name that Curtis Mayfield song for 10 bonus points! And there is the performative event, spurred on by my desire to prove myself better than any machine, any machine beloved by Philistines who like Grey’s Anatomy and pizza and Rilo Kiley and who didn’t know that Pinkerton was Rivers Cuomo’s Madame Butterfly. I competed, plastic guitar in hand, lip instictively curled, leg raised like a pissing dog, and I rocked. Hard. Oh the agony. Oh the joy. Oh the shame. Guitar Hero, you brought me to my knees.