My “brother-in-law”:http://posegate.blogspot.com would like to write about his addiction to Guitar Hero II, but he’s still too busy trying to master that solo in “Psychobilly Freakout” at the Expert level, thankyouverymuch. We got a chance to develop some repetitive stress injury on their new wireless fender during our last trip into the frozen Ithaca tundra. It was a lot of fun, but what I’m really waiting for is Bluegrass Hero — I’ve already got my 37-button wireless mandolin on order at Amazon.

“Danny and Kim Iverson”:http://www.dannyiverson.com came over last weekend with their son DJ. They’re working on growing a church in one of the more impoverished areas of Newark, not more than a couple miles from our place: real, front lines, give away everything you’ve got and come follow me ministry work. Danny lit up when he saw the guitar case in our living room. “You play?” he beamed at me. “I hack,” I said, admitting that I had learned some chords to lead worship at our college Bible study.

I opened up the case and showed him the axe; the strings were embarrassingly old and the guitar out of tune. I toyed with it for a minute or two before handing it to him, watched him place the capo at the second fret _backwards_ leaving open the top E, B and bottom E strings (“for that alternate tuning, but open sound”, he explained), and noodle through a few things he had written. He held us captivated for a few minutes before handing it back.

Later that night I went back to my to-do list and added, “practice guitar more often”.