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Sounds fun, right? That’s totally what we did there last night.
I went to the Denver Press Club for one of their semi-regular celebrity bartending events, where a local journalist (or two) jumps behind the bar for the evening, and guilts his or her friends, coworkers, and readers into throwing money into the tip jar for a chosen charity.
That's only $1 per issue!
Last night I had planned to spend some time catching up with a pal who writes for the Post, and so he suggested we hit the Press Club to support the Post’s gaming writer, David Thomas, and the Rocky’s gaming writer, Brian Crecente. (Crecente, btw, has not only his own blog and edits the Kotaku gaming blog for Gawker Media, he has his own bobblehead doll – seriously! He’s like a geek-chic gaming rock star.)
I’ve been to these events many times before, and it’s usually a fairly mellow scene, with a little schmoozing, a fair amount of gossip, and a decent amount of drinking. But last night it was an entirely different scene. Not entirely different, I suppose, but certainly unusual. Both of the guest bartenders arrived with stacks of video games. No surprise, really. But when they hooked the Guitar Hero game to the TV in the lounge area, I was suprised. For hours, the scattering of guests took turns playing air guitar to classic rock, and us onlookers couldn’t help but get sucked in.
Not being one to break out the air guitar in public, I opted in on the next game. I simply have to have this thing — it was video karaoke. I’m sure it’s been around for ages, but I’ve never seen it nor played it before, and it’s the first game that has ever given me even the slightest craving for a PlayStation 2. Of course, my rendition of “Son of a Preacher Man” didn’t win me the top honors against my opponent’s version of “It’s The End of the World As We Know It,” but still. I actually had fun playing a video game.
For me, that’s a first.
Now we’ll just have to wait and see how long it takes for these games to start popping up in bars all around town. Anybody else game for it?