I’ve talked about music before — musicals, really — but what I haven’t told you is that I, like most grown men, have dirty, dark secrets hidden away in my music collection.

Secreted away, in places that even a competent government agency would struggle to find, I have music by artists such as William Shatner, Meatloaf and even, though I hesitate to admit this, Dashboard Confessional (that folder is hidden and encrypted, for obvious reasons…)

If that wasn’t dank and disturbing enough, you could dig even deeper. Delving further, you would find another directory; a directory with just a single file in it. The file is ominously titled ‘Unimportant-Dont-Click-Me-Please.mp3′. If you’d found this file, and saw through my epic ruse, you’d be be greeted with this:

Yes, I love Beyonce’s ‘If I were a boy’. Don’t ask me why… I just do! I don’t really want to discuss it, so I’ll just move on to the actual point of this entry — I’ve re-written the lyric to ‘If I were a boy’. A cute little American songwriter, upon reading the re-worked lyric blurted out that: ‘You have talent, Seb!’

I’m not too sure about that, but if you even laugh once, I’ll consider it time well spent. As the lyric is, er, geeky, I’ve hyperlinked some of the more esoteric terms, so you an understand it fully!

Press play and try to sing along… it fits… just about!

If I were a geek — sung by Beyonce Knowles, written by Tony Gad & BC Jean

If I were a geek even just for a day
I’d roll out of bed in the evening
And throw on a black t-shirt
And go ‘round  Sheldon’s with dice

And chase after elves
I’d roll dice as much as I wanted
And I’d never get a girlfriend but it
Doesn’t matter ‘cause neither does he

If I were a geek
I think I could understand
How it feels to love myself
I swear I’d be a better nerd

I’d listen to my GM
‘Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause a hacker got your password
And everything you had got destroyed

If I were a geek
I would turn on my iPhone
Tell everyone it’s awesome
‘ Cause I can watch porn when I’m alone

I’d swing my sword first
And read the rules as I go
‘Cause really, no one questions
A geek with a sword, and lightning bolts, lightning bolt!

If I were a geek
I think I could understand
How it feels to love myself
I swear I’d be a better nerd

I’d listen to my GM
‘Cause I know how it hurts
When you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause a hacker got your password
And everything you had got destroyed

It’s never too late for you to go back
Say it’s just a mistake
You should take it right back
If you thought Hilton hotter than Leia
You thought wrong

But you’re just a geek
You don’t understand
(And put the Gaiman book down, oh)
How it feels to love a girl
Someday you wish you went out more

You don’t listen to her
You don’t care how it hurts
Until you lose the ‘toon you levelled
‘Cause you took the chinaman for granted
And everything you had got destroyed
But you’re just a geek

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I am currently in talks with a talented singer to perform the song with my new lyric… I will of course post it, when she does so!

… it’s because I’m busy playing video games.

If, for some Godforsaken reason, you still don’t play video games, let me tell you something: Winter is gaming season. The summer blockbusters have been and gone. The warm, hazy friend-filled nights spent outdoors have dissipated with the first chills of September. Slowly but surely we retreat to our warm, cosy caves, fall to our sofas, plump our pillows and… turn on the TV! Autumn is when most big games and TV shows are released — no big surprise, considering that’s when the biggest, voluminous-backside-on-seat audience is available!

Now, historically this time of year wasn’t a problem — far from it! There used to only be 2 or 3 big games a year. I could stagger them and start one every few months. But now with the industry ballooning and game budgets growing to the size of feature films — because they are that profitable — there’s simply too many games. There used to be one big FPS a year, one or two RPGs, a sports simulator and… that would be it. There’d be other oddball games that could entertain you for a few hours, but nothing big. Some years you might not even play a single stand-out game!

That’s not the case nowadays though, and I suppose it never will be again. Just in September alone, I have the following games that I need to play through: Guitar Hero 5, Rockband: Beatles (well, I might give this one a miss…) AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! (really a game), Murumasa and Batman: Arkham Asylum. That’s just on the PC and Xbox360. If I include the DS/Wii… well… you would probably never see me again. I’ve never been able to pull myself away from the Cake Mania series of games…

October’s even worse, but I won’t bore you with the specifics. All I’m trying to say is: if you’re the kind of person that keeps track of at least five TV shows a week (or four, if you’re a True Blood fan and you’ve just watched the finale — please don’t spam me with comments on how you want to have Cullen’s babies. Wait, that’s Twilight! Ahh, I can’t keep up…) — anyway… if you watch a lot of TV, perhaps you will now understand why it will almost feel like hard work being a games player this Autumn. Think about it: an average, big-budget game takes between 20 and 60 hours to finish. That’s the same length as a standard 24-part drama season on the short end, and three seasons on the long! And I have to play three games a month if I want to keep up with all of the releases this Autumn/Winter! That’s a minimum of 60 hours a month, or as much as 180 — or 8 solid days of gaming…

But the best thing? The caveat and saving grace? It doens’t even make me a nerd any more! Video games are now part of popular culture. They are as much a consumable commodity as movie DVDs or TV box sets. In fact, I laugh derisively at those people with LoveFilm or NetFlix subscriptions! HAH!

The point of this entry was actually to warn you that you may get an awful lot of games-related blog entries over the next few weeks and months. But that’s healthy. I’ve been ignoring the gamer side of me for much too long. And there are actually a lot of gamers that read this blog: so these months are for you, gentlemen (and lady).

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Incidentally, if you’re not a gamer, but you are interested in playing them, you should read my guide: A Beginner’s Guide to Gaming. It will walk you through from the very beginning (it doesn’t tell you how to hook up a console to your TV, but everything else!) Think of gaming as ‘interactive TV’, or ‘entertainment for the intellectual’, where you give a little of yourself to make it a much more interesting (and sometimes fulfilling!) experience.

There is a reason it’s the only growing segment of the media industry.

Yesterday, a massively eclectic list of every album I’ve bought and accrued over the last decade-and-a-half.

Today, as to give you a better idea of ‘where I am’ in the vast expanse of the percussive, chordal and tonal universe, I’ll give you a brief run-down of what I’m currently listening to on a daily basis. In fact, I’m going to listen to all three of these albums as I write this entry so that you get a nice dose of my raw, unfiltered emotions.

Prince – Purple Rain

This, apart from a secret love for Spandau Ballet (all my mother’s fault), is the only album from the 80s that I’ve ever listened to more than once. I’m serious. I hate the 80s. Abi, my 52 Weeks partner in crime, made me listen to it a few months ago. I’ve been listening to it almost day since. Purple Rain is a monumentally awesome album. Sure, it has some synths but it’s OK — they’re actual, honest-to-God good synths. Prince apparently crafted this album with the single intention of catapulting himself — his vast, world-encompassing ego — to stardom. And it worked. There’s something so incredibly sensual about his songs; I think he puts so much of himself into the writing process that it shows

I’ve listened through his entire discography now — and it’s hard work, let me tell you… there’s some real shit in there! — but the first 5 or 10 years of his career were truly awesome. It’s well worth listening to For You, Prince, Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999 and Purple Rain — his first 5 albums. If you can make it all the way to Sign of the Times, you’ll be duly rewarded too.

Maria Schneider Orchestra – Sky Blue

Ah, now this one’s meaty. Something to stick your teeth in to. Contemporary ‘avant garde’ jazz is a very, very small genre — in fact, Maria Schneider is really the only active and successful ‘modern classical’ music arranger. Funny, considering jazz used to rule the clubs and airwaves for some 30 or 40 years, but I guess we have the pop industry to thank for that. Maria Schneider is widely considered the protégé and spiritual successor of Gil Evans (she studied under him for a few years) and her music is really the ‘end of the line’ for the entire chain of  jazz orchestrations since their humble beginnings as ragtime and radio big bands. As such, some people might not appreciate Schneider’s ‘impure’ arrangements; they’re really a lot closer to classical than the jazz you might know and love from your childhood. We’re talking really damn epic pieces here — some are 25-minutes long! — but they are nowhere near as eclectic or random or jarring as ‘proper’ jazz, which will suit some people (such as myselF).

Her music is incredibly complicated, but magical and rewarding and uplifting if you stick with it. Her tunes are grandiose and wildly-sweeping, delving you into the shadowy pit of her childhood despair and then later propelling you up high with wings of cerulean clarity (I’m not just word-wanking, honest. One of her songs is called Cerulean Skies…!)

After cutting my teeth on Gil Evans, Mel Lewis and Miles Davis earlier in the year, Schneider’s compositions hit just the right spot when I’m in desperate need of something complicated and sticky.

Leonard Bernstein & Stephen Sondheim – West Side Story

Where to begin…? Should I start with its stand-out and steadfast brilliance as one of the greatest film — and musical theatre — scores of all time? Or perhaps I should celebrate it as the musical that launched Sondheim’s stellar and unmatched career as a composer, arranger and lyricist? (And a Jew!!) What about the fact that it’s based on the greatest love story of all time?

West Side Story is a modern day remake of Romeo and Juliet, just as Kiss Me, Kate retold The Taming of the Shrew and My Fair Lady was a musical rendition of Shaw’s Pygmalion. They’re all as good as each other — all as fantastic as each other at introducing new audiences to classic stories that might otherwise have gone unnoticed by younger generations. Only what you have here isn’t merely an adaptation of Shakespeare’s romantic tragedy — no, West Side Story is a towering masterpiece of stupendous, dazzlingly protean music and lyrics. And don’t forget the choreography: when you watch it you have to remember that it was produced in 1957! This thing basically invented and popularised the Latin and Jazz dance-and-music sequences that you see on stage and film today.

It also happens to feature my favourite ‘musical triplet’ of all time: Something’s Coming/Maria/Tonight.  ’Musical triplet’ is a phrase I coined, so don’t go Googling it — I did warn you I was a music nerd… (most good musicals have stand-out triplets… go find some!)

I wish I could give you links to the albums in MP3-format without getting into trouble, damnit. Just buy it, it’s easier. And buy Purple Rain too, if you don’t already own it — but I imagine most people are a lot more into the 80s than I… and you probably already own it. I’m such a late bloomer. Soon I’ll be listening to Duran Duran and Mötley Crüe… God help me.

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Tomorrow… some kind of photogasm. More of the kid that featured in yesterday’s 8 of 52.