Category archives for Music, movies, books, TV

Friday, December 7, 2007

Dude! Wait, what?

I talked about Twin Peaks DVDs a little bit before, but I never clearly mentioned that I did in fact buy the new definitive gold edition box set. Well I did, and it's awesome.

Image: Twin Peaks box set
Twin Peaks box set

Ten DVDs containing all 29 episodes from both seasons, plus the international pilot, documentaries, the Log Lady introductions, etc., etc. Nice! There's all kinds of goodness to be had here. In addition to what's on the discs themselves, there's also a curious inclusion inside the box: postcards.

Here's the sleeve they're stored in (sorry about the flash)…

Image: Twin Peaks postcard packet
Twin Peaks postcard packet

 
Here's my first batch…

Image: Twin Peaks postcards #1
Twin Peaks postcards #1

 
My second batch…

Image: Twin Peaks postcards #2
Twin Peaks postcards #2

 
And my third batch…

Image: Twin Peaks postcards #3
Twin Peaks postcards #3

 
Aside from the fact that they're all obviously different photos, the cards are differentiated by number. I have numbers 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 34, 44, 51, 53, 55, 60 and 61. There are 61 cards. They gave me 12. Additionally, there are limited edition bonus cards with foil or signatures or both. Trying to collect a full set would feel very much like building a set of baseball cards, except that each pack costs $70. It would be nice to have a full set of these, but for me it's not worth any additional time or effort.

I'm not writing this post out of frustration, but surprise. It seems odd that the people who made all the decisions regarding these postcards created a collectible that will require all collectors to seek the secondary market. There's no opportunity for repeat sales. Whoever came up with this idea wants collectors to scrounge eBay and fan forums to complete their set. Are they actually giving up potential profits in the name of strengthening their fan community?

I'm…

Uh…

I don't know what to say about that. It seems so outlandish. I'm not sure I believe it. I must be missing something.

posted at 12/07/2007 11:25 pm : Permalink
Categorized Music, movies, books, TV, Photo foolishness : Tagged , ,

Friday, October 26, 2007

Good gift, bad gift

I got my first Christmas present of the year last night. Little early? Yeah. But some people are really impatient. (Like me.)

The Bunny and The Chicken went shopping yesterday and Chicken found something he decided I absolutely had to have. He was all set to save it for Christmas. That lasted about 30 minutes. He was SO excited to get my reaction and for me to start enjoying it right now.

So, with a touch of ceremony in taking it out of the bag (Clark W. Griswold would have asked for a drumroll, but that's just not how we roll), it was revealed to be a snow globe. A snow globe? He thought I'd like this? Then I saw what was in the globe.

Image: penguin snow globe

 
Aw! How cute. He knows I loves me some penguins, and the parent and child image is so sweet. That is a pretty good gift. Unlike what my Sister gave me for my birthday.

Image: Hannah Montana books

 
It's not a bad gift. Not at all. Really, is there any such thing as a bad gift? My point is that those books are a gift designed to yank my chain. It's the kind of gift that really hits on "the joy of giving," and she certainly did enjoy giving them. The little shit.

And since the subject has been broached… yes, I like Hannah Montana. The tv show can be retarded, but I think she's as cute as a button (and Emily Osment is even cuter). Plus, the music is actually pretty good. As soon as you're done judging me over this, you should give it a listen.

posted at 10/26/2007 08:47 am : Permalink
Categorized General, Music, movies, books, TV, Photo foolishness : Tagged , , , ,

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Why, yes… I have always been this cool

So yesterday morning my friend Zeke was sitting on the couch rocking some Guitar Hero 80s. He was playing through The Police's "Synchronicity." That used to be one of my favorite albums. It was given to me for Christmas when I was… I dunno, 10? It was one of the first grown-up albums I ever owned. I wondered if I still had my old LP.

I went to the garage where my neglected vinyl collection is stashed. Despite the temperature and humidity extremes, they're all in great shape. And sure enough, there's my Police album.

Records

 
What a great record. "Every Breath You Take," "King of Pain" and "Wrapped Around Your Finger" are back-to-back-to-back on side 2. But I never did understand what the deal was with "Miss Gradenko." Stewart Copeland must've been stoned when he wrote that one.

And right next to Synchronicity was the other half of that particular Christmas present, Def Leppard's Pyromania.

Records

 
I loved that album. Def Leppard was pretty damn cool in 1983. I think I might have come close to wearing out the grooves on that one. Shut up. Def Leppard was cool.

And so was Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson was very cool. There was no one in the world cooler than Michael Jackson in 1983.

Records

 
Don't hate! Don't judge me just because I still remember that Michael Jackson turned 25 on August 29th, 1983. And don't judge me because I walked to the store to buy a newspaper because I was absolutely certain it would be filled with flowery editorials and fan letters about the event. Why wouldn't it be? Michael Jackson was the biggest star in the world! His birthday was practically a holiday!

I bought the newspaper, certain that the news items on the front page would be replaced inside the paper with the Jackson coverage I craved. I was stunned, shocked!, to find not one single Jackson-related story in the entire Elgin Daily Courier News. WTF was wrong with those people?? Didn't they know it was International Michael Jackson Day?

You're judging me, aren't you? Then I'd best move on.

Records

 
Ok… BeeGees? Not necessarily the best way to deflect your judgment. But hey, at least it's the album with "Tragedy."

Ok, let's see what's next in the box.

Records

 
The Best of Disney? When did I get that? And why did I keep it? At some point I lost my copy of John Denver's Christmas with The Muppets, but I managed to hang on to The Best of Disney?

Ok, here's where I might start to regain your respect.

Records

Records

Records

 
The Rolling Stones, The Yardbirds, The Kinks. Right on. The guys in The Kinks look very "tonight let's all make love in London," don't they?

I don't know if this part is respectable or not: a Rick James collection that doesn't include "Superfreak."

Records

Records

Records

 
Say it with me now… "I'm Rick James, bitch!"

Check out the guy's unit on those album covers. Nice. You just don't see good codpieces in mainstream music anymore.

Ok, so when did I get so much Elvis? I wasn't even remotely interested in The King until long after the vinyl era ended, and yet I still have ten LPs. And hello… what's this now?

Records

Moody Blue, on blue vinyl! Sweet! No warps, no scratches. I'll bet that's worth a chunk.

And… that's a bet I would have lost. A quick eBay search for "elvis moody blue vinyl" reveals that this is not exactly scarce. There several copies listed. Nothing over $5 had a bid. Dammit. And here I was hoping it would be trading for $2,000 or so. I really need that $2,000 for… oh, I dunno. Can I have $2,000?

Back to the box.

I have some comedy records, some K-Tel stuff, about a dozen classical LPs in perfectly mint "never before played" condition.

I also have a very helpful cat. Mittens is helping me, she's sure of this.

Records

 
She is the essence of helpfulness.

heh. I have a few 8 Tracks. Awesome. Let's see… Charlie Daniels Band, Willie Nelson, Ozzy, Bill Cosby, Cheech & Chong, uh… ABBA, um… two Eddie Rabbit tapes…

Records

 
Ok, so I liked Eddie Rabbit. And you would too if you gave him a chance. There's no troubadour in the world who could capture the existential angst of the human condition quite like Rabbit did on "I Love a Rainy Night."

Ahem.

Anyway. On to the pile of singles. I have a handful of Beach Boys (with my father's name written on the label in pen), some Beatles, some Wings, Zeppelin, Elton John. Holy shit! I have Neil Young's "Heart of Gold?" How cool is that! Let's see, Prince's "When Doves Cry," Foreigner's "Feels Like The First Time," Sly and The Family Stone, some Creedence, um… some more Eddie Rabbit… shut up! I like Eddie Rabbit, ok? I know you're judging me. I can feel your eyes on me!

I also have two of the best stupid/fun songs of the whole 80s! Eddy Grant's "Electric Avenue" and Men Without Hats "Safety Dance." I could swear I also had Rick Dees "Disco Duck," but apparently some covetous, jealous hater stole it. Or something.

And now, for the piece de resistance! The crown jewels of my singles collection. USA for Africa's "We Are The World" and the 1985 Chicago Bears "Superbowl Shuffle."

Records

 
The fact that I own those two singles more than makes up for the bits about Michael Jackson and Eddie Rabbit, right?

Right?

posted at 10/16/2007 01:15 am : Permalink
Categorized Music, movies, books, TV, Photo foolishness : Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Monday, July 30, 2007

Bastards!

So the other day I was listening to a some music on my pda. I listened to a particular song and was reminded of the great annoyance behind it. Some time around 1995, a shiny new On Cue store opened near me. I visited during their grand opening and came away with a spiffy promo CD full of all sorts of musical goodness. I fell in love with one of the songs, Killing Joke's "Democracy."

Don't judge! That song seemed really, really cool 12 years ago. Anyway, after a few listens I liked it enough that I decided I had to buy the full album. I went back to that On Cue to buy the CD, which is of course exactly what they hoped for when they handed me the free promo.

I looked, but couldn't find any Killing Joke albums. I asked for help. The clerk couldn't find anything either. The clerk looked it up, but found nothing available at all. Hm. Curious.

So I went to a real record store to special order it, only to find it wasn't available yet. I advance ordered it through the record store and waited several months for it to arrive. When it did, there was a completely different version of the song on the album.

What the hell is that?

The album version isn't exactly terrible, but it's certainly not the post-punk British nu metal I was expecting. The promo version of the song is absolutely nothing like any of the songs on the album. Bastards. Such a dirty trick.

It's a good thing Shawn Fanning stole Napster from Seth Green just a few short years later so I could start stealing from artists and record companies to make myself feel better.

posted at 07/30/2007 07:35 am : Permalink
Categorized Music, movies, books, TV : Tagged ,

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Like a fish needs a bicycle

Do you remember last month when Maxim announced their 2007 Hot 100 list? If you're like me, you were just about outraged that someone (anyone!) still thought good ol' Lindsay "Firecrotch" Lohan was the hottest woman in the world. Clearly the editors of Maxim were just phoning in that list. They've surely spent the last two years obsessively watching Lost and just slapped a list together at the last minute. I'll bet they took a big pile of "guess the boobies" flash cards, threw them in the air, and built their list to match the order in which they picked them up.

Then today I check their site to find exactly when that ill-considered list was announced and I see this:

Image: screen grab from Maxim.com

 
"We know you naturally fear women?" What the fuck are these people talking about? I know they're trying to be funny, but even pretending to cater to readers who fear women erodes their credibility when they're proselytizing on what is, and is not, hot.

Fuck that. We need a better list than what those boners have come up with, like the new one from AfterEllen.com. After Ellen is billed as "News, Reviews & Commentary on Lesbian and Bisexual women in Entertainment and the Media." Right on! They don't fear women, they love women!

Let's check out their list:

More »

posted at 06/17/2007 07:13 pm : Permalink
Categorized Music, movies, books, TV : Tagged , ,

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Nuno Bettencourt is my god

Well, not really. But it's a fun sounding title.

As I've mentioned once or thrice, I'm a great fan of the Guitar Hero series of video games. I've just recently learned that there's a new installment due out in a few weeks: Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s. More Guitar Hero, all 80s. I'm having a full-on geekgasm over this.

Wikipedia has a partial listing of tracks, which include Winger, White Lion, Flock of Seagulls, Ratt, .38 Special and Extreme's "Play With Me." Play With Me? Holy fuckbuckets. I fully expect my hands to explode while trying to play through the solo on that song.

Fast forward to about 2:20 for the beginning of the solo. Sound familiar? Play With Me was never released as a single, but you might remember it as the song Beethoven "played" during the mall chase scene in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure.

I'm excited to play the new game, but that song makes me quivery and afraid.

posted at 06/16/2007 07:43 pm : Permalink
Categorized Music, movies, books, TV : Tagged , , ,

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

He's GQ smooth

Here's a photo of Jake Gyllenhaal, Chloe Sevigny and Mark Ruffalo at a promotional appearance for Zodiac.

Image: Jake Gyllenhaal, Chloe Sevigny and Mark Ruffalo

 

And here's a picture of Ruffalo being teh Ultimate Gentleman.

Image: Mark Ruffalo drooling

posted at 05/22/2007 08:02 am : Permalink
Categorized Music, movies, books, TV, Photo foolishness : Tagged , , ,

Saturday, May 12, 2007

100 things

12. Sometimes I mow the lawn. Sometimes Bunny does. Whenever I mow, I always have the same song stuck in my head: Judas Priest's "Breaking The Law." Only my lyrics are different. In my head its "Mowing The Lawn." And it's not Rob Halford singing it… it's Beavis. "Uh-huh, uh-huh… mowing the lawn, mowing the lawn (doot-doo!)"

I don't know if that show ever featured Beavis singing that song, but it seems like something that would fit in well.

So, yeah… I mowed the lawn today.

posted at 05/12/2007 10:25 pm : Permalink
Categorized 100 things, Music, movies, books, TV : Tagged , ,

Monday, April 30, 2007

Questions answered?

I'm really looking forward to Spider-Man 3, and not just because I want to watch the movie. I'm hoping that whatever way the filmmakers explain Venom will finally be satisfactory to The Chicken. I don't recall exactly how Chicken first discovered Venom. Perhaps it was a Spider-Man cartoon, or maybe looking through my old trading cards. However he learned of him, Venom quickly became Chicken's favorite.

Do you know anything about Venom's origin? It's not something easily explained to a little kid. In the mid 80s there was a comic book mini-series called "Secret Wars." In this story, all of Earth's greatest heroes and villains were transported to a constructed world at the edge of the universe to settle the good vs. evil debate with a grand battle royale. The God-like being who arranged this conflict provided fantastic machines for each side to use for various purposes, including costume repair. The folks at Marvel used this as an opportunity to introduce a lot of new costumes, including Spider-Man's sechsee black outfit.

In the comic, Spider-Man, his suit in tatters, wanders off to find this magic costume making machine. He finds something looking like a cross between an old school espresso machine and a jet engine that produces a little black globule. He touches it and it swarms over him like the blob. (The sci-fi movie blob, not the comic book Blob… sorry for switching streams like that on you.) This new costume is a smart costume. It produces its own webbing, it changes shape and color and it even responds to Spider-Man's thoughts. Plus, it looks awesome. The black costume is definitely my favorite.

But there's a problem, which isn't revealed until much later. It's not a smart costume. It's an alien life form and it's trying to bond with Spider-Man permanently. This is of course a Bad Thing.

Spider-Man learns this alien is vulnerable to sound. He sheds it once and for all by tearing it off his body in the bell tower of a cathedral while the bells are tolling. Initially Spider-Man thought this killed the alien, but not so. Also in the cathedral was Eddie Brock, a reporter who'd staked his career on a story Spider-Man proved to be false. United by their despair and their hatred of Spider-Man, Brock and the alien symbiote merged for good, creating the entity known as Venom. And that's the part where I lose Chicken.

Eddie Brock was a separate being. The alien was a separate being. They have now merged to create one being. Venom is Brock and the alien combined. Venom is not Brock in an alien costume. Brock no longer exists. The alien no longer exists. There is only Venom.

I have explained this to Chicken in dozens of different ways. I've come up with a new explanation about every two weeks for the past three or four years. I cannot find an explanation that leaves him truly understanding it. The newest explanation involves candy bar analogies.

 

Chicken: So, when Eddie Brock is wearing the Venom suit…

Me: It's not a suit, Chicken. Eddie and the alien are one thing. They are Venom.

Chicken: Uh… um…

Me: Ok, it's like a candy bar, right?

Chicken: I don't get it.

Me: Eddie Brock is like nougat.

Chicken: Ok.

Me: The alien is like chocolate.

Chicken: Ok.

Me: When they were separate, they were chocolate and nougat, Eddie and alien.

Chicken: Ok.

Me: Now they are combined. They are one thing. They are the candy bar. They are Venom.

Chicken: Ok…

Me: Do you see?

Chicken: So… Venom is like Eddie Brock covered in chocolate? Does Venom eat chocolate?

(pause)

Chicken: Can I have a candy bar?

 

I will be one happy Fish if Sam Raimi succeeds in explaining this damn thing.

posted at 04/30/2007 08:32 am : Permalink
Categorized Music, movies, books, TV, Snippets : Tagged , , ,

Monday, April 16, 2007

Zombielicious! (Updated)

So by now most of you know I'm a complete retard for all things zombie, right? (If you missed out on this so far, feel free to catch up on the subject.) My newest living dead obsession is Urban Dead, which is described on the website as "a free-to-play browser-based multi-player game where you play the survivor or victim of a zombie outbreak in a quarantined city centre, alongside tens of thousands of others." It's basically a low-tech zombie MUD.

I'm so loving it, but damn can it be tough to get started. Like any RPG, progress is centered around developing your character through experience. Your character performs actions, some of which grant experience points. When you've amassed enough points, you gain a level, which makes your character more powerful. Most RPGs will have beginning characters rising through low levels quickly, perhaps with something like "You squash the tiny little spider for 1 damage point. It dies. Level up!" Not so Urban Dead.

The key difference is the concept of "action points." Each character has 50 action points. Actions diminish those points. When your character reaches zero, you're done until your points recharge. Each character is given 1 point every 30 minutes, up to that 50 point maximum. So the key to surviving is to finish up your turn in a place where you're not likely to start your next turn dead.

You can play the game as either a zombie or one of several survivor types. Each character type starts with one skill. The big problem is that survivor characters generally need two or three skills to be really survivable. The zombies are the only class that's easy to play right from the start. I have several characters and despite the fact that my zombie character is the newest of the bunch, it's twice as advanced as any of the others.

Go figure. Either way, I still think it's great fun to play, especially after you get your survivors up to around level three.

 

It's less than a month to 28 Weeks Later. I'm geeking out a little about that. I'm leery of the fact that it's not made by the same creative team as 28 Days Later, but I'm keeping an open mind. After all, I would have never thought the Trainspotting guy would make a good zombie movie and look how that turned out.

A few weeks ago I was at Barnes and Noble when I stumbled across 28 Days Later: The Aftermath. Sweet!

It's a good time to be a zombie fan.

 

Update: I forgot to mention the best thing about Urban Dead. No one every really dies. If you're playing as a survivor, your death means you rise as a zombie. If you tire of playing as a zombie, you can be revived to play as a survivor again.

posted at 04/16/2007 08:40 am : Permalink
Categorized Music, movies, books, TV : Tagged , ,

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