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May 01, 2007
"Stop" Me
A few thoughts as I pray for the ringing in my ears to eventually subside. (You know, on the first day, it was a bit of a badge of pride, and now? Yea, I’m pretty much all ready for 100% hearing again, thanks for coming.)
As mentioned, immediately upon returning from the Wolfmother show the other night, I downloaded their album from iTunes. Uploaded the tracks to my iPod shuffle and was on my way to work the next day. And let me tell you, my shuffle HATES Wolfmother. It flat-out refused to play any of the new songs yesterday. However, it loves itself some Police. Good gravy. I have over 350 songs on the Shuffle at the current time, and maybe 20 of those are Police songs, and I’ll be damned if I hear 18 of those each day after recharging the machine. Remember that article “My TiVo Thinks I’m Gay?” I’m going to write the follow-up: “My iPod Thinks I’m a New Waver”. I mean, I like me some “Message in a Bottle”, but I’m really into “Woman” at the current moment, thankee kindly.
When I went to the concert, as mentioned, I didn’t get carded. Just shuffled me on through without verfying my age. Slapped a bracelet on my wrist and sent me on my merry way. But today, I got carded. In frickin’ GameStop. Seriously. I picked up a few used games (they had a “buy 2, get 1 free” deal), of which one was “Devil May Cry”. Apparently that’s a “mature content” title, and thus necessitated me pulling out my driver’s license in order to purchase. Unbelievable. And since a game I originally wanted was actually out of stock, I had to get out of line, get back in, and get carded by a SECOND employee. Unreal. I haven’t been carded twice in the last 18 months. GameStop employees are more vigilant than Patrick Swayze in “Road House”. I was just praying I didn’t suddenly receive a fatal Wii-Mote strike to the neck.
While in GameStop, this well-meaning employee (read: teenage dork) saw my three used games and suggested that I pick up a PlayStation 3. Like I was willingly buying bargain games more than two years after they originally came out because I have the money to invest in a PS3. That would be like me parking my ’98 Camry in a parking lot and having the attendant tell me I should really buy a Bentley. Really, you don’t say?
And while paying for these aforementioned games, the cashier (after verifying my age, as if the hairline wasn’t a giveaway, good gravy), asked me if there were any upcoming games I wanted to reserve. Dude, I’m buying games that game out in 2004, what do you think? So I say, “Nah, I tend to wait until they come down in price, got a budget and all.” He looked at me as if I’d just told him that Super Mario was a fictional character. He just didn’t understand the words coming out of my mouth. I’m not sure he was offended by my frugality; he just couldn’t grasp the concept that I could wait 6-9 months for a $50 game to come down to $20. In short, there was no one I didn’t offend in my 15 minutes at GameStop.
I’m gonna assume you’re all old enough to watch this. And trust me, if you liked “The 40-Year Old Virgin”, but wished it was about teenagers and starred the kid from “Arrested Development”, you want to watch this.
Posted by Ryan McGee at May 1, 2007 09:32 PM
Comments
I can't stand GameStop. It's not uncommon to find they are no longer carrying a new game two weeks after it was released. They want everyone to preorder games so that they don't have any extra copies lying around. Meanwhile, they make their real money on giving people a couple of bucks for a used game and then turing around and selling it for 5 times that. Really can't stand that company.
Posted by: Mike Travers at May 2, 2007 03:34 PM