Two things I did at the beach

Perhaps I should say, two unobvious things I did while we were at the beach.

I played Super Mario Kart on a Wii. I suck at Super Mario Kart. In fact, I think I just suck at most fast-twitch games, period. They just move too fast for me. In SMK this manifested as a tendency to run into walls and off the road. Oh, well. Just as in college, where I would happily drink beer and watch Patrick and Joe play Sonic the Hedgehog, I was perfectly content to watch and enjoy.

I also played Rock Band. I suck at Rock Band, too. Interestingly, I suck at Rock Band because I'm unable to disengage from the music and play it as a game. I know too much about how to play, I end up far too attuned to trying to figure out the actual music, and thus lose sight of the real task, pressing buttons in time with lights on screen.

In fact, on the couple of songs that I had never heard, I was able to do OK. On the songs I was familiar with, I could do decent once I had the patterns of the song down. On songs I am intimately familiar with–those that I actually play myself–I was a disaster.