"Guitar Hero 5 has Johnny Cash in it!" "No." "It lets more than one person play the same instrument!" "No." "I get Guitar Hero Van Halen for free with it!" "Nope." "It lets you play as your Avatar..." "Really?"

And thus, Guitar Hero 5 was brought into our home.

It's funny to think that when I finally get my wife on board about a certain game, the plan usually backfires somewhat. In this case, buying Guitar Hero 5 on a whim came at the very particular cost of my wife playing every song as her Xbox Live Avatar. Imagine the total buzzkill of rocking out to Blur's "Song 2"...as a three-foot-tall cartoon.

Okay...I can see you're with me. Good.

Now, imagine my relief when a particular jam session ended, and she asked me, "How much is the drum set?"

Unfortunately, the set itself was too costly in both our opinions, so the matter ended there. As fate would have it, though, three weeks later my Guitar Hero World Tour Axe decided to stop responding, and while browsing for a replacement I came across the World Tour Complete Band kit's new low price. "Honey! I can get the drum set, a mic, and a replacement guitar for the same price as the drum kit!"

She agreed that the time was right to complete the band kit; I could simply get trade-in value for one of the extra game copies, and make the purchase that much more worthwhile. So I stopped at a Wal-Mart on the way home from an early-morning ship arrival...but they were out. In fact, they had taken the price tag completely off of the shelf. Okay, no big deal. There was another 24-hour Wal-Mart nearby. But a quick stop there yielded the same result -- it would have to wait until Sunday.

When the morning sun rose, I swung by GameStop on the way to Sunday morning church. "Sorry," they told me, "we're out, and we're not ordering more, according to the system. The closest store with them in stock is in Dallas."

As I really wasn't interested in driving for four hours for this kit, I tried the closest Best Buy. Nothing. At this point I was already late for church, so instead of visiting more locations, I just  starting Googling phone numbers and desperately calling. I called two Target stores, two more Best Buys, two GameCrazy stores, and three Toys R Us stores. Between the nine retailers, one Target had the kit for nearly double the price, and one Toys R Us thirty minutes away had three kits left. In my frustration, I implored the internet. I didn't get much sympathy.

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