guitar center

i had such a positive experience at guitar center yesterday, i really wanted to give them a shout out. i went there looking for a guitar tuner. i am a little tone deaf and it takes me literally a half hour to tune my guitar because i can never tell if its tuned properly. anyways, the only guitar tuners that i know of, are the ones where you plug in the guitar into a foot pedal and when you play the guitar it lets you know what note is being played and how sharp or flat it is to that note. not sure if that made sense, but i get in there and ask them for a guitar tuner and the guy shows me one that they have. he told me it was $99 and that it was really reliable and that they havnt received any complaints about it etc. it sounds expensive and it was, but im not really a guitar player, at all, and im really sick of playing an out of tune guitar. so im ready just to suck it up and make the purchase and get out. and i told him that if that was it, then ill take it, but then he lets me know that there is another one that is $75. i asked him how it was different and he said that it is also a very reliable one and that while the other one perhaps can get a more precise note etc, this one is a lesser known brand that is trying to make a name for itself and would be just as good. so i was sold.

i told him i needed a cable as well and he took me over to the cables. he showed me a cable that he thought would be good. he said it had a lifetime guarantee and that it is reliable etc. i pointed to some others and asked about them and he said that i could get that brand if i wanted. he said that they have a warranty where i could literally walk out into the parking lot, cut the cable with scissors and come back into the store and they would have to give me another cable. but he said that the brand is of course more expensive and so unless i thought i would be cutting the cable in the parking lot, i should just go with the cheaper one, because it was just as good.

so we go to check out and i mention that i need some picks. he asks what kind. i didnt know that there were various kinds. he asked if i wanted light or heavy etc. i said, 'light. i suppose.' he picked out some picks for me that he thought would be good for me. at this point, or much earlier, i think he understood my amount of guitar experience and he told me that if i wanted, they have guitar tuners where you dont have to plug it in. they have just a built in microphone and if you place it close to the string, then it picks up the note and tells you how close you are. he said that they arent the most precise thing, but they are pretty good, and they are only $15.50. i couldnt believe it. i was ready to check out and be on my way. i had no idea that these other tuners even existed. they only had them on display behind the checkout counter, but in an area where i never would have seen them, and here was this guy, downselling. and it was so refreshing. i of course took the cheaper tuner because it very much suited my purposes. having such a small knowledge about guitar stuff, i thought my only option was the plug in tuners that i see used by guys in bands.

anyways, i got out of there with what i needed and i didnt even have to pay over $40. it was so refreshing to be downsold for once. after going to countless places like jiffy lube where you spend 45 minutes of your hour long experience saying 'no' to their countless upsell attempts, this was a phenomenal experience. and what made it so good was that he had me. he never tried to upsell me from the start. but i was fully prepared, with credit card out, to but the more expensive tuner. yet, he still bothered to stop me and offer me items that were better suited for what i needed. i got what i needed and wanted, not what he wanted me to need because its more expensive. so i salute you guitar center. thanks for caring about me more than 'the man.'

riddle me this...

so about 10 years ago 'batman forever' came out which introduced jim carrey as the riddler dressed like this:

then, when i was in high school, i remember joe thoits dressing as the riddler one year for halloween. i always thought it was a great costume. this year i decided to at least pursue the idea and see if i could somehow pull it off. i did some web based research and found the riddler costume for about $250 which was a little more than i wanted to spend on a halloween costume. so i did a google search for full body spandex suits, which admittedly could have brought some scandalous results, but not nearly as many as anticipated. anyways, after searching through some junk, the chinese and ebay provided me with more or less what i was looking for, and for only $7.
granted, shipping was four times that amount, but i still felt it was a deal worth taking. so only 4 days later i received it in the mail. its pretty amazing. it is full body, as advertised. it was made for a woman that was between 5'10 and 6'2 so it stretched a bit and i had to cut off the fingers because they were too skinny for my hands. and no, this isnt on backwards. it has a zipper in the back that zips all the way up from the lower back to the top of the head. you can see through it, not well, but i suppose well enough if you were wanting to rob a liquor store or something.
anyways, it didnt have any question marks on it, so i went over to my friend becki's house and she suggested that the best thing to do would be just to paint them on. so we made a few stencils and bought some sharpies and began coloring. it actually took us 4 hours. by the end im pretty sure i had a contact high from inhaling sharpie scent for so long. my head hurt the whole rest of the night. but the question marks turned out surprisingly well.
add in some pink hair spray and some little mermaid glasses that i found at a cvc pharmacy and i think the costume turned out looking pretty good.

there were some obvious problems that needed to be dealt with whenever a guy puts on a full body spandex suit. not sure if i completely solved the problem, but i figured it was only for a night and not a permanent or daily outfit. here are some photos from the evening:

this is mindy, who painted on the majority of hte question marks, myself, zach, and becki, a real life troll doll.

here we are at a party in costa mesa. this is britney, one of zach's many ex-lovers. she is now dating another guy, only to try and make zach jealous though.
and here is dave (justin timberlake), zach (an urban cowboy), me, and our friend sean who was a creepy nudist guy. i thought my full body suit was bad, his was flesh colored. every time i saw him throughout the night i always did a double take. i would catch him out of the corner of my eye and think i saw a naked body running around. thankfully, it was just a fellow friend cruising around in a spandex suit. its nice to have added support from friends when wearing spandex.