Radiohead's grammy award winning OK Computer is one of my favorite albums of all time. I frequently have it on autorepeat. I was elated when my guitar teacher, Michael Stevens, selected it for me to learn. It's given me a new respect for the band and the intricacies of their songs. Give "Let Down" a good listen and you'll see what I mean. This month also saw me returning to a game I played heavily over a decade ago. Playing it now makes me wonder why I ever left it in the first place. The only con being, now I'm not playing anything else. My backlog continues to grow. Winter is upon us, it's time to stay indoors. Maybe it's a good time to work on the backlog anyway.
Expo: Magic of the White City on DVD: Narrated by Gene Wilder, this is the story of the 1893 Columbian Exposition, aka The Chicago World’s Fair. It’s hard to believe the effect this spectacular event had on the entire United States after its showcase ended. Cracker Jacks, Juicy Fruit gum and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and the advent of the Ferris Wheel amongst other things. The event took over half a year to build and ran for six months straight. This documentary details the planning, construction and summarizes what a visit to the fair would be like. There’s never been another spectacle like it since, nor will there probably ever be again.
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt: Being a kid who grew up in rentals and houses with wheels, I lacked for wants much more than I did for needs and I complained a lot. After reading this bleak memoir about a boy in early twentieth century Irish slums, I have to wonder now what, if anything, did I really have to complain about? The book is as much of a recounting of the boy's life as it is story of his downtrodden mother and her hard life as seen through his eyes. I'm not often affected by a book like this, but after reading it, I visited Google Earth to see the actual Irish neighborhood where all of this occurred. I thought Dickens' London underbelly was bad!
Guild Wars 2 on
PC: Released in 2012, this remains one of the most popular MMOs out there, and
it’s enjoying a huge resurgence right now. I revisited it and now I can’t stop
playing it. It’s the friendliest MMO I’ve ever experienced. You’ll get no,
“Hey, you need to “git gud,” or
“learn to play” here. It’s the type of game you can leave for three years and
come back to and not feel like you’ve missed out on anything. The game has it
all: open world player VS environment, player VS player, word VS world, and
staged meta events open to all players. Loot showers are steady rewards for
anything you do, and the base game is free. I encourage you all to try the game
out; you won’t be disappointed.
Bite by Richard Laymon: You’ve seen me say it before, but a year or so ago I didn’t even know who this guy was, and now I’ve read two of his books and am working on this one, a third book. This one concerns a girl who enlists the aid of an old friend, a guy who crushed on her in high school, to get rid of a vampire who’s been pestering her. The two of them accomplish the deed, but that’s where the problems arise when they try to dispose of the body. It turns into a road trip with a maniac threatening to expose their dastardly deed, and the distraught couple begin to wonder if unwanted passenger is more dangerous than the vampire was. Laymon has a gift for plot motion and characterization.
Mary Poppins on Blu Ray: I found this on Blu Ray recently and decided to give it a rewatch over the double disk DVD collector set I’ve owned for years. Nominated for 13 Academy Awards, it ended up winning 5 of them including Best Actress, Best Visual Effects and Best Song. The making of the movie met with some impedance in the guise of P.L. Travers, herself, the author of the books the movie was based on. She insisted on being a creative consultant which was a condition upon which the movie was made and was nitpicky over everything that went into the film. (Oddly, the film was nominated for a Best Writing Award, despite Travers’ niggling.) She did not think Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke (who was picked because of his performances on The Dick Van Dyke Show) were suitable for the parts and did not want them cast. The Blu Ray version is the one to have with its impeccably good color transfer and crispness and the sound mix which is probably the best I’ve ever heard in a Disney film.
The Beaches Blame My Ex on Amazon Music: Not sure how this group popped up on my Amazon Music (or was it Sirius XM?), but I am pleasantly amazed. An all-girl band, this quad rocks! Starting out as a punk rock-ish type band, with this album, their second release, they traded the edgier riffs for more reverb and it paid off in record sales and sold out shows. Their song lyrics are original and ostensibly come from life experience and their music is catchy. Reminiscent of the 80s mixed with a tinge of the early aughts, give this a listen and you might find yourself a new pet owner, the recipient of an ear worm, the good kind.
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