Last year, a game came out. A righteous game. A metal game. A game whose hero… was a roadie.
The game is Brütal Legend, and between its focus on heavy metal and the fact that its main character is voiced by and reminiscent of Jack Black (one of my fav actors), it was a match made in heaven. I adored it — all the more because its hero’s occasional philosophical ramblings about the duties of a roadie really appealed to me.
Last year I attended Ümloud,a charity event focused on Rock Band and similar music games. It happened right after Brütal Legend came out, so there was plenty of related stuff — costumes and so on — including one of a limited edition run of statues of the roadie hero himself, Eddie Riggs, up for bid in the silent auction. I’d been drooling over the things for months, trying and failing to win them in all sorts of weird contests, so I set myself a bid cap and went after it.
I managed to get it, partly by bluffing the crap out of the other guy who was bidding at the last minute.
Him: [outbids me].
Me: [outbids him with my maximum allowable expense]
Him: [reads the paper]
Me: [with a “make my day” expression] You wanna go for it? It’s for charity…
Him: Uh, you can have him.
I was overjoyed, even though when I got home, I discovered the statue had been damaged. The organizers of the auction had been carrying him around all evening and broken off the horns on his buckle and cracked the neck of his guitar.
Lucky me, though: I have an uncle who builds miniatures professionally. As in, has credits in movies for his work on them. He graciously agreed to take time out of his busy schedule to fix the poor guy up for me, and now he’s back in my possession! Look at that gorgeous guy.
Eddie’s determination and abilities really helped put into words what I’m striving to do here at The Book Roadie. He’s actually the reason I realized that what I was looking to be was a roadie… just, for books. It makes me smile every time I see him watching over my book collection.