things kevin hates

People can be irrational sometimes. Especially women. One inexplicable disease which seems to strike almost every member of the female sex is a pathological obsession with guys who play the guitar. Now, if they were only going to obsess over some brilliant guitarist playing for a famous band, that would be one thing. But if they see a guy strumming a three-chord song on a guitar, he’s some kind of artistic genius. Never mind the fact that he can barely play the damn instrument. And if he writes his own music, even better. Then he’s “sensitive” and “artistic.” Even if said song involves three chords and trite, cliched lyrics about how his last girlfriend dumped him. Congratulations, anybody can spew crap like that out. You know the sort of guy I’m talking about. Perpetually stoned. Unkempt hair and a scruffy beard, unless he’s still at his private high school, in which case he keeps his hair as long as he possibly can without getting a detention. Wears band t-shirts and a pair of jeans all the time. Women would not consider him attractive at all, except when he plays the one song he knows on the guitar. Then they throw themselves upon him as if he were a overstuffed shopping cart from Sam’s and they were a bunch of emaciated, swollen-bellied six-year-old Ethiopians.

Now, at this point, you, dear reader, may be saying to yourself, “Kevin, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” Well, there’s something to be said for that. And I am trying to learn the guitar. (Just to be clear, I have nothing against the guitar as a musical instrument, just the inordinate amount of female attention devoted to shitty guitarists.) But I’d much rather play the piano. It’s one of my favorite hobbies, and while I’m no professional, I consider myself decent for a self-taught amateur who fakes his way through it. I’m certainly better at playing piano than many of those pathetic guitarists are at their instrument.

And the piano is way cooler anyway. Let’s see some crappy-ass guitarist play a song in D-flat. Not gonna happen. All they can play is G, C, and D. (Maybe E minor, too.) Let’s see them play a melody in octaves with one hand and chords in the other. Or chords in one hand and bass notes in the other. That’s what I thought. I guess I need to work more on making myself look like I’m caught up in the music and being all “sensitive” and crap and less on actually, y’know, playing the damn instrument. Because my look when I’m playing the piano is usually one of frantic determination to remember what comes next and move my fingers to the next notes as I hammer away at the keyboard. So I should probably work on that, too. But I guess I just need to suck it up and pick up a guitar. Somebody should have told me that ten years ago and I could’ve saved a lot of time messing around with that damn piano.