Is your husband or boyfriend addicted to video games? Is this putting a strain on your love life? The cleanliness of your home? The well being of your children?
Would you like to shove his controller where the sun don't shine and then kick it, hard, just to make sure it's going to stay up there for a while? Wait, wait! There's one last hope.
No, no. We're not talking about some new sex video game. (Though that could be fun as long as real sex was somehow involved), we're talking about Rock Band, and how it saved one woman's marriage.
Rachel Shukert thought she had lost her husband, Ben, to his video game habit. After Googling the phrases "my husband" "addicted" "video games" "HELP" and finding hundreds of unhelpful links, including a few that suggested she walk around in sexy underwear, Ben surprised her with Rock Band, the video game that lets you pretend you're a rock star.
I often fantasize about sitting down in front of a musical instrument and magically being able to play it, but I have accepted that this would probably require some kind of unusual brain injury, like that episode of "House" in which Dave Matthews gets into a bus accident and becomes a piano prodigy. So I'm not sure what happened, if I had a small stroke or what, but when I sit down at those fake drums something transforms in me. All my fake-hate melts away. I am more than adequate -- I am good. Really good. It's as if all of those nights standing patiently in the corner at gigs, wondering if I was ever going to get to take a shower again, had taught me how to play the drums through osmosis. I know instinctively what to do, and miraculously, so does Ben. Note after blinking colored note on the screen explodes with our rock. The fake crowd roars. I fake drum faster. Our fake band, Sex Baby, embarks on a fake world tour on our fake jet, playing fake stadiums in all the fake capitals of Europe. Our fake selves grace the covers of fake magazines, and our fake fans number in the millions. When our fake manager calls to tell us we've been invited to play the fake Hall of Fame showcase in fake Stockholm, my real husband turns toward me, and smiles.
And then what do you think happened?
[Salon: How Rock band saved my marriage]
(Thanks, Salon Sarah!)