Unless you’ve got your finger on the pulse of department store news, Gobblepalooza will be nothing more than a really stupid name to you. In reality it’s a three day “festival” set up at your local Old Navy store. The focus of the promotion is Rock Band. 700+ stores across the country are filled to the brim with RB stuff. There are various podiums to play The Beatles: Rock Band with your family, RB t-shirts for sale, and store employees decked out in RB gear. More importantly are the deals associated with Gobblepalooza. If you purchase Rock Band 2 in-store, you get a free wireless guitar. Random cards handed out when you walk in the store may contain codes for a free song download. It’s a great idea: what better way to pander to the ever-popular casual gaming market than to set up shop in a place populated by tweens and soccer moms?
Best of all was the Black Friday deal: purchase $20 worth of merchandise, and you got LEGO: Rock Band…for free. Yep, $20 of fleece pullovers and overpriced soap netted you a $50 game for free. As can be expected, supplies of the game were extremely limited. Meaning that if you wanted to get a copy, you had to have gotten to the store way before its Black Friday opening time of 3:00 a.m. Guess where I was Friday morning? Yes, braving the cold wind and insane shoppers who want nothing more in life than $15 jeans. I waited in line to get my copy of LEGO:Rock Band, and it kinda sucked.
When I first heard about this amazing fucking deal, I knew I had to have a piece of it. So while many of you were spending Thanksgiving with family and food, I prepped. I set up a gameplan, set my mind to where it needed to be, and packed for a long three hour wait to get in. This was my first waiting-in-line-for-a-video-game experience: I’ve never been the kind of person to do midnight launches and the like, but this was different. There was a free game involved, dammit. So I prepared.
Earlier in the afternoon, my aunt, my mother and I went to Old Navy to scope out the place and take advantage of some early deals. My goal was to get a look at my surroundings and figure out where I would get my $20 of merchandise. I set my sights on a damn fine hat that was half-off at $13.50, a Capt. America shirt for five dollars and two bars of scented soap up at the register. If I ran in as soon as the doors were open, I could sweep into the first aisle, grab the hat, run to the clearance aisle in the back for the shirt, then be at the register before everyone else and finish with the soap. Then the game would be mine. ALL MINE! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
I also knew I would have to contend with the crowd itself. Normally a midnight launch would have me face hordes of greasy, unfit nerds: a class of people I could easily get around. This was different. I was to be up against fit soccer moms who have nothing better to do all day than Tae-Bo. These are the kinds of people who prepare for this day months in advanced. They keep the Black Friday ads up on a wall like some two-bit serial killer who tracks his crimes. They’re probably battle-scarred from previous Black Friday excursions. I had to have quick wits and quicker feet; those ovaries weren’t going to punch themselves. I’d have to be quick enough to get past the weaker women who’d be trampled under the feet of deal searchers. I’d have to be spry enough to wind my way through the aisles, picking up everything I needed. So I prepared.
Okay that’s a lie. I stuffed my face with turkey, gravy, and Oreo pie. Then I passed out for a few hours. But I was in the proper mindset. I wasn’t afraid to punch out some women, or throw little kids and strollers out of my way. I would be a fierce video game hunter. I would become what every other Black Friday shopper would eventually become: an animal. All that was left was to pack for a long night ahead of me. So I prepared.
I had my netbook and PSP ready to keep my mind sharp. I loaded in a big blanket and hat to battle the weather. I finished with a pillow and Chuck Palahniuk book, out of my love for Fight Club and padding for my ass. When all was said and done, I was ready to go at midnight: I was prepared.
Upon arrival to the store, I realized that I was tenth in line. A joyous wave rushed over me. I was going to get the game. Fucking score. Then another wave settled in, only this was worse. In attempting to beat the crazy bastards who wait in front of a store for three hours, I became one. A yearly tradition in the Pendelton household is to laugh at those crazy Black Friday people on the news. Now I was one. Thankfully there were people around who kept my mind off that horrible realization, and gave me some more info on the sale. Apparently, each store had only 75 copies to give out. It wasn’t known if that meant 75 of each system; the sale was advertising copies for the 360, PS3, and Wii. Regardless, if you didn’t get there super fucking early, you were not getting a copy.
The best and worst part about standing in a line like this is the other people involved. Thankfully I had an eclectic mix of folks ahead of and behind me. The gentleman in front of me was here for the same reason I was. As such he was a gamer and we talked shop about various parts of the industry. We both think the DSi LL is the dumbest fucking thing Nintendo has done in some time. He thought Modern Warfare 2 single player was a joke; all style, no substance. I’m not sure what else we talked about, but it was a good time.
Meanwhile the people behind me were the kind of people I loathed. When I asked them what system they were getting the game for, they looked at me with blank faces. Yep, these were the freak Black Friday shoppers who didn’t give a shit about the game, instead just wanting five dollar fleeces or whatever was on sale. Needless to say I didn’t talk to them much, only exchanging pleasantries about Black Friday itself. Hearing these people talk about their wait to get into Toys R Us was like listening to a Vietnam vet go on a rant on how Charlie took his legs in a rice paddy. Anything to save a few bucks, I guess.
You’ll never truly realize how long three hours can be until you spend them on cold concrete. The best way I can describe it is like being a fair-weather homeless person. I knew I had a home to return to, but I still got to experience all the fun of being destitute without any of the pain. All I needed was some Boone’s Farm and a poorly-made but snarky sign to make the illusion real.
Right before the store was to open, I had to witness a rather traumatizing sight. If you’ve seen the recent Old Navy commercials, you know about the Supermodelquins, the special brand of mannequins the store uses. These creepy bastards present themselves at the front of every Old Navy store. I had to stand in front of the store and watch the workers…change the Supermodelquins. Now I’ve seen mannequins naked before (don’t ask), but this was seven kinds of weird. I had to stare into their painted-on lifeless eyes as they were basically raped in front of me. You can’t unsee an Old Navy employee use a Supermodelquin’s tits as leverage to get her pants off. And don’t get me started on the young kid Supermodelquins they changed. Their eyes…so very, very sad…
Finally, 2:30 a.m. rolled around, and anticipation was high. For some strange reason, I couldn’t stop saying “motherfucker” over and over again. I don’t know if it was the cold, the sleep deprivation, the annoying fuckers behind me, or a mix of all three. But I just kept mumbling motherfucker. Right at 3:00 a.m. as soon as the doors opened, I scream out “LET’S DO THIS MOTHERFUCKERS” and charge right into the store. With my route all planned out, I performed what could only be described as a shopping ballet. I whipped over to the clearance t-shirts where I grabbed a bitchin’ Captain America shirt, ran over to the hats, and got to the register to pick up some soap I was eying. And I was first in line.
As soon as I had that game in my hand, I could feel some sort of happy energy collect in the base of my spine. I had done it: survived the boring line, intense cold, and throngs of capitalism lovers to get what I wanted. I was a great feeling. Now, for those that have played it, you know that it’s for the best that I got this free. LEGO: Rock Band, while fun at points, does not deserve to be as expensive as it is. The whole song export fiasco didn’t help it, some songs don’t deserve a spot here (Crocodile Rock? Are you fucking kidding me?), and half of my downloaded songs are unplayable through it. The look and humor is fantastic, but little things about it just bug me. No matter: if I had to do this all over again, I probably would. As long as I didn’t have to stare in the cold, dead eyes of those mannequins again…
Wow, your store didn’t give out wrist bands to people at the end of the line? Sounds awesome. I wish my experience had been somewhere close to that.
You’re one dedicated mofo, Jon. I took one look at their opening time and gave up immediately.
Tae-Bo is so 5 years ago, but luckily lines like this, “those ovaries weren’t going to punch themselves.” made this well worth the read. Thanks for suffering for my amusement.