RouseWorld | Wayward Packet -- For the Week of 2/20/05

For the Week of 2/20/05

Guitar Man --
Rouse finds the perfect
Guitar player poseur kit

(RouseWorld Labs) — Back in college I had a roommate who surfed. He threw his board and wetsuit into his Civic and went to the beach whenever conditions were the least bit favorable. There was a certain number of people at UNCW who bought into the surfing lifestyle (they had nice boards, board carriers on their cars, t-shirts, posters, etc.) who never seemed to do much surfing. My roommate called these guys (and they were nearly always guys) "Surf Men."

Poseurs.

Generally, you don't want to be a scenester, you want to be the real thing. Not just because you look like a tool, but you are wasting good gear and making the companies who build the gear turn into fashion and toy companies.

For example, when I decided not to maintain a dark room anymore I sold my Hasselblad. If you aren't doing photography professionally or artistically, there is no reason to let one of these cameras just lying around.

On the other hand, stop taking yourself so damn seriously.

A while back I was roaming around Best Buy, marveling at all the plasma TVs and DVDs and whatnot. I said to myself that I could probably run into the last thing I needed right now — then I turned the corner and there was an electric guitar.

Wow — exactly what I didn't need to buy! I love this country!

I didn't get the thing right then, I had already spent too much for a boxed set of Anime DVDs, but I kept thinking about it.

This weekend I went back and noticed that the guitar seemed kind of lonely. I asked the helpful sales chick if they had any more in stock and she said this was the very last one.

Well, then I had to have it.

As she was getting the guitar ready I noticed something kind of odd — it was a kit. You got the guitar (A Washburn HOB-E), a little 8 watt amp, a few picks, a bag to put it in and a CD to teach your dumb ass how to play and a display stand.

Then I realized, this was the guitar player poseur kit!

I mean, realistically, someone who is really interested in guitars is probably not going to buy one in Best Buy and is probably going to want to pick out his own amp and other gear. I still bought the thing. I figure as long as I don't take myself too seriously I can stand to be a Guitar Man for a while.

Besides a lot of those guitar players are really thin, maybe I will lose some weight...

Anyway, here is the guitar:

Pretty cool, eh?