Last night I got a new nickname, and that name is Jug-puncher. Jug as in jugular. Cause that’s where I hit someone last night.

It wasn’t much of a fight (I hit the guy and he fell down and that was it), but the funny thing is that one might consider it a fight over plastic instruments, cause we were playing Rock Band. See? Video games do encourage violence!

First, some backstory. One thing that irked me the night the other Chud editors and I saw The Who at an E3 afterparty (Devin’s fantastic article) was before the show, when everyone was playing Rock Band 2 on a smaller stage. It was set up beautifully, with monitors for each instrument and a massive crowd already filling up on drinks.

One of the cricial things missing to make it a perfect Rock Band experience though? Not being able to watching people fail.

Yes, the new Rock Band has a no-fail option for people who just want to play, but what’s the fun in that? I can see kids and women picking it but real people know the fun is in the competition, especially when you’re playing it in a bar.
At the local bar I’ve plugged on this site many times before I’ve been
going to their Rock Band nights pretty much every Wednesday I can. We all rip each other apart all the time- it’s part of the experience. Nothing like hearing an entire bar chant “YOU SUCK!” to some people who failed out. It’s all very good-natured and while we’re not all great friends we all get along and play songs with each other.

Yesterday I was playing drums with a few guys I knew when the guitarist fails out. My buddy, over at the bar, yells out something about us all being horrible. The guitarist, who I had never met before, throws his guitar to the ground and shouts in a threatening tone “Shut up, you fucking midget bitch!”

So, I stood up, took a few steps over to him and punched him right in the neck. He fell down on some nearby steps with a hysterical look of wide-eyed surprise.

I stood back, waiting to see what his response would be, while my bud ran up and told him to get the fuck out of here. Some people escorted him out to the back, and the bar owner came running over asking what happened. I’m good friends with him and I apologized and told him I had punched a guy in the neck. He was incredulous, as I’m generally the nicest guy in the world and have been careful in the past to not start anything out of respect for them. Meanwhile, my other friends came in from smoking cigarettes outside and saw that they’d missed some action. I paid my tab and left so there would be no more problems, and as I did one of the other guys I was playing with came running up apologizing for the guy I’d hit, saying that he’s a dick when he gets drunk and that they’d never bring him back again. I have no problems with his friends, but honestly it was the threat in the guy’s voice that made me react the way I did. You don’t fucking talk to my friends like that, especially when we’re all obviously fucking around and having a great time.

I’m still not sure why I hit him in the neck (“Really? The neck?” was my most asked question today), but I’m glad I did, cause it would have been a whole different thing if I’d broken his nose or something. I also didn’t hit him nearly as hard as I could’ve…. didn’t want to destroy the kid (he wouldn’t have had a chance to stand up if I did), I just wanted him to learn a lesson.

Hopefully he did. These kids who move to the city don’t know what the New York guys grew up like.

Anyway, no moral to the story here, but it just surprised me that the first time I’ve hit someone since high school (dozens of metal and hardcore shows aside) was during a friggin’ game.