Edward's October 2013 Mix

October. It's been a cool one. And our harvest moon has been beautiful straight out of Westfall in Azeroth. Or maybe out of a classic Hammer horror film. My oldest daughter was home for the month which was good. You just can't help but feel that youthful zeal that exudes from her and floods the house. She just left for Chicago again with a brand new job. Good luck, Ginger. I wish her all of the best. She left her amazing cappuccino machine behind and on these cold nights on my PC with a hot mug of coffee I'm in my little piece of Heaven on Earth.  

  

1. Gas Guzzlers Extreme on PC

There really is no excuse for me to have played this (and beaten it.) I have so many other games on my plate now I'm trying to beat. When I saw it offered via a Steam sale I couldn't resist. Imagine a Twisted Metal/Mad Max environment updated for today's PCs? Heck yeah! Truly good stuff. The game sure gave my joystick a workout and I finished it in about 25 hours. The soundtrack was great, and the developers' sophomoric humor was the icing on the cake. I was racing along, hammering the guy ahead of me with my dual machine guns, and being nailed by a guy with a rail gun behind me when suddenly my trunk shattered and blew off. And lo and behold I had a blow up sex doll in the trunk. I almost lost the race due to sheer laughter alone.    

2. Sir, You are Being Hunted on PC

This is one of the more difficult games I've played this year, but also the more compelling. The right degree of difficulty in any game can usually drive me to ragequit. Oddly, despite the insane hardness of this game I know I'll never do that. Imagine, you're cast on a group of islands against Victorian era British robots with shotguns and mechanical foxhounds, and you're the prey. It's like being a living character in an H.G. Wells novel. There are elemental shards which you have to collect on each island (and of course each one is guarded by robots.) You use empty bottles and rocks to divert their attention. There's not much use in trying to fight them since you are wholly underpowered against them, although, fortunately you can scavenge some weaponry if you're thorough enough. This game is stealth/survival at its best. And it's still in beta. It's really interesting being part of a game like this that's still being developed.

 

3. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway 

I don't have much to say just yet. I've only started it, but it's a Pulitzer Prize winner. Of Hemingway I must say this. I recently read Charles Dickens, and  reading that was like putting on your best Sunday finery to attend an opera. Reading Hemingway, on the other hand is like putting on a favorite pair of khakis and comfortable old walking shoes, and going for a stroll though the park. He's just that easy to read. A writing teacher once told me Hemingway's favorite word was the conjunction "and." I believe it.

4. Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky

When I was playing through S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl on PC a long while back I endured a wealth of frustration. I ended up ragequitting the game twice over a period of two years. Finally, I reinstalled it and finished it. I just couldn't stop coming back to it. With its sad and lonely bleak environment, and its X-File overtones I couldn't resist. And then I found out the game was based on a novel. Of course I had to pick it up. The novel, penned by two brothers in Russia in 1972, travelled nearly the same difficult path I weathered while playing the game. Despite it's clearly a Sci-Fi novel, the Soviet censors would just not leave these boys alone as far as getting their novel out there. The book was simple enough; it reminded me of a modern Phillip K. Dick story, but what was fascinating for me was the afterword by Boris Strugatsky who basically wrote a nasty love letter to the former Communist regime telling them to go to Hell.

5. Band of Horses "Cease to Being" on CD

I first discovered BoH a few years back on Pandora. I was surprised I'd not heard of them before. I guess they're kind of like The Flaming Lips in that they have this huge following you've never heard of. Most of the members have been around for years in previous bands, but they have this great sound that reminds me a lot of My Morning Jacket. And if you want to try them on for size, simply go to Youtube and type in Band of Horses "Is there a Ghost?" Truly mesmerizing stuff.

6. The BoDeans "The Best of The BoDeans: Slash and Burn" on CD

Rolling Stone Magazine called this band 1987's "Best New Band." If you're familiar with them you can clearly see why. I lived in Austin, Texas for almost twenty years, and this band was synonymous with that wonderful live music capitol city. This album truly is a Best Of. There's not a bad song on it. You might be familiar with The BoDeans if you ever watched the hit TV show, Party of Five. They sang the theme song, "Closer to Free." And if not, well, they have a sort of upbeat acoustic rock twang to them that just borders on being "folksy," but not quite. This is good tuneage while imbibing your favorite ale, while sitting under yellow warm glow lights over hay colored hardwood floors, and don't forget your dress shirt, your favorite pair of Levis and a pair of cowboy boots.

7. Garden State on DVD

My daughter had this movie in her collection, and I wasn't familiar with it. It looked boring to be honest. But she told me the soundtrack was exceptional so I thought, what the heck, I'll check it out. The movie was written, directed, and starred by Zach Braff, who I'm not that familiar with, and co-starred Natalie Portman, who, I'm not really a fan of, but what got me was the writing. This young guy who's left his hometown in New Jersey for the glamour of becoming an actor in Hollywood, returns home for his mother's funeral. His gig in Hollywood is lackluster at best: a bit part playing a mentally challenged guy in a local short film. He returns home thinking his old friends are going to be overtly successful and all traces of their memories of him will be merely afterthoughts. To his surprise, he discovers this isn't the case at all. His old friends are for the most part washed up and living life running in one place. He meets Natalie Portman's character in a doctor's office waiting room and eventually realizes his true life is there in New Jersey with her and his old friends. Most haunting line in a movie ever though, is when he comments to her, "Maybe the true definition of family is the same group of people who miss the same imaginary places."