Tae Bo
Well, I dusted off the old VHS set of Tae Bo tapes this morning and decided to give it “one last try,” which would amount to a third overall try in about three years. Not that I’m looking to get a sexy butt or anything, but I really just miss DDR and failed to bring my PS2 home with me for Christmas (big mistake). It sucked just about as much as last time, and not really because of strenuousness.
My big issue is the whole “left-right” mirror image thing, which is a big pain in the butt, especially since ol’ Billy seems unable to make a call for the next exercise any more than 30 microseconds before inception of the motion. You hear right, see left shortly thereafter, and are then expected to respond with a mirrored right action. Not good, even to an experienced band marcher (in band, there was always a left-turn, left-turn, pause, go kind of thing to let you process the instruction in advance of the move).
On the physical side, it’s really an ingenious system of moves to work several muscle groups, assuming the motions are done properly (which they rarely are in double-time reality). However, it really just reduces to a practiced, confused jumping around setup. I would much prefer DDR for simple gerbil-wheel activity.
DDR Max2 is now selling for $30, which is encouraging, but certainly is not $20 (my reservation price, as economists say).
This keyboard is so resistive. I can’t do my normal pound-to-oblivion 70 WPM on it. It would take a good year of *nix shell frustration to get this to proper spec.
With that bit of nonsense complaining, back to Thank You notes.