"I'm disappointed," Trevor laughs. "It doesn't tell me that I rock. But I'm pretty sure I do."
"You do. You totally do. You were actually singing."
"I just need the reassurance. A helpful reminder from time to time. That's all."
"You rock."
"Okay. Good enough."
"Where do we put in our high score?" Peter asks.
I shake my head. "No high scores."
"Nope," Trevor agrees. "He's right. Just for Xbox Live."
"Wait, what?" Jude says.
"There are no high scores."
"There has to be high scores. We just haven't gotten enough points yet."
"Nope. I'm telling you. No high scores."
"How could they leave that out?" Peter asks.
"Man, it really pisses me off when games are this close to being perfect," Jude says. "What the hell? What's the point of playing if there's no high score?"
So we get a legal pad and resolve to keep it near the TV. On it, we write our high scores for each song. Next to that, we write each band member and the difficulty he was on.
After Trevor takes a break because he's getting hoarse, Peter takes over singing. Mike takes the guitar and sets the difficulty to easy. The new guy asks if he can play drums yet, but Jude tells him he can be manager instead. The new guy isn't sure what that means, but he sits and waits patiently.
"Hey, could you maybe sit down, here in front," Jude asks Peter after a few songs, "so we could see over your head?"
"I'm the lead singer, bitch. I'm not going to sit down."
One of the challenges we face is frontage, which is a word I know from wargaming. It has to do with how many units can attack a single hex. For instance, you might have a million soldiers in your army, but if they're all in the same hex, you'd only have enough frontage for half a million of them to attack the enemy.
That's what it's like with Rock Band. There's only so much space for us to line up so we can each see the TV. The drummer, being a drummer, gets tucked in back. This is also because he makes so much racket that the rest of us have to be closer to the speakers. Plus, drummers. Who cares about drummers. Name a famous drummer. Okay, so you can name one. But try to name three. See what I mean?
Then there's the singer. He needs the least amount of space since he doesn't have the neck of a guitar protruding from his left side.
"Well, it's not like you're dancing or anything," Jude says to Peter. "And you don't have to hold an instrument. Why do you have to stand up?"
"Dude, careful," the new guy tells Peter. "You almost stepped on BioShock."
"See, you're out of control. Just sit down to sing."
Trevor steps in. "Okay, you know what, Jude?" he says. "You're not on drums anymore. No one can hear themselves fucking think with you clacking away on those things. You don't have to hit them so hard, you know. And spazzing out on drum fills just messes everyone up. You were so not a drummer in high school. Or if you were, you sucked. Why don't you play bass where you can do the least amount of damage?"
"Fuck that, I like playing drums," Jude says.
"Dude, there is no 'like' in 'team'. Or 'band'. And, Peter, don't make be-bop noises during the vocals star power. This isn't Scat Band. Just go like, 'ooh yeah' or 'whoa baby' or something."
