Edward's April 2024 Monthly Mix

 

The year is rolling along. It’s already one third over. Ah, the beauty of aging, the only realm where time passes quicker the older one gets. Making each moment important, that’s the goal right? I had many such moments this past month, filled with the usual bevy of great books, music, games and real life experiences. All this, with a beautiful (albeit rainy) spring that was truncated directly into summer.

 

Ultimate General: The Civil War on PC: There are still a few mechanics of this game I don’t quite understand, and perhaps I really should watch a good YouTube Let’s Play, but I’m having lots of fun with this tactic based rendition of the US Civil War. It includes just about every battle there was with historical accuracy. Looking like a lavish board game brought to life, this game has you planning resources and manpower commitments. And after the battle, there are the spoils which you can sell or take into your own armory. Victories are awarded remuneration from the powers in office which you can use to replace men and weapons. I’m nearing the end of 1862, and playing on medium difficulty I have far more victories than I do losses. We’ll see if I can stay the course and ultimate win the whole war. 

 

 

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon: When I first read Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize winning, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Klay I thought this guy was destined for greatness. And then I read Wonder Boys (and saw the movie) and I KNEW this guy was great. Not only does he entertain me, but he sends me to the dictionary which is something I love when a writer accomplishes this. This is stolen from my own review on GoodReads: I've always considered Michael Chabon a genius in the use of language, pulling his ingredients from stainless steel cookery like a New York City five star chef. This book, actually his first, started out a bit precocious, I continued onward spellbound by his diction and sometimes over the top metaphors, and then I fell in love with the characters. I think I will be in love with Phlox until the end of my days. It's amazing Chabon wrote this book at such a young age, and only got better with each successive novel, but having said that, I can see this was the nascent spark that ignited it all. Arthur Bechstein is 25 years old, living the summer after college graduation. His life is intertwined by three relationships and a quest into his own uncertain sexuality, coupled with a zest for nostalgia in all things. Chabon used the pages of this novel to make us privy to a wonderful summer that would mark a man for the rest of his life, and I can't help but feel I didn't escape without a tiny mark of my own.

Hammer Films Evil of Frankenstein on Blu-Ray: Made in 1964, this English film was a co production of Universal Studios, so Hammer Studios, who up to this point had avoided using the typical Glenn Strange flat head Frankenstein monster look, embraced it in this movie. I, personally, thought the monster looked rather stony, as if someone had modeled his head out of Play-Doh. As much an action movie as a horror movie, this one moved fast. The Blu-Ray transfer was crisp and highlighted the opulent settings Hammer used in all of their films. It’s unfortunate they eventually folded. 

 

 Love Fame Tragedy Life is a Killer on Sirius XM: Driving around, listening to stuff at random, I stumbled upon a catchy song, by this unusual band. The singer reminds me of a 21^st century Al Stewart, but what makes the “band” so unusual is the band consists entirely of one man, Matthew Murphy. Born in 1985, he started playing guitar at age 5 at the behest of his dad. He seems to like the F word in his songs, but everything else is so clever, especially his hooks. I find it hard to gloss over his songs. He is an Englander who moved to the States and married an American, and who now lives in LA. His music is upbeat and speaks about the current human condition. Check out “Don’t You Want to Sleep with Someone Normal?”

One. More. Thing. by B.J. Novak: Watching B.J. Novak’s comedic seriousness on The Office made me instantly like him. When I heard he’d written a collection of short stories I knew I had to check it out. I was not disappointed. Novak looks at everyday things in such a different light so much that it made me look at the world in a different way when I closed the book. He seems to include profanity for the sake of it, as if it’s some cool toy to be played with and put into play, the last piece of a puzzle finalizing the finished product. I think his writing would benefit from eschewing this practice, but I enjoyed the read.

The Hunt for the Meteor by Jules Verne: One of the first Jules Verne novels published posthumously in 2008, this is Jules Verne at his finest. It’s a novel that speaks of taxi drivers and road rage. The story involves two amateur astronomers who discover the same meteor and go to crazy extremes to garner recognition for it. And then it’s discovered the meteor is mostly comprised of gold, and will crash into Earth! Despite this novel (like every Jules Verne novel ever written) being a translation into English from the French, I couldn’t help but recognize the brilliance behind it. This book could have easily been made into a great Walt Disney movie in the same vein as Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.  

Mars Horizon on Steam: I don’t know how this popped up on my Steam store page suggestion, but suddenly there it was. I’d always admired from afar, Kerbel Space Program which depicted launching mankind into space and involved space science to such a degree that you would learn physics while being amused and entertained whilst sending your denizens into heroic glory as successful astronauts or heroes that reached for the stars but didn’t make it. And then enter, Mars Horizon, which is basically the same game dumbed down to the degree the astronauts you work with look like they were kidnapped from a Fisher-Price Fuzzy Pumper Barbershop Playset. Including a space race between five rival nations, and played largely through pull down menus and mini-games depicting astronauts performing space feats, this game has been so addicting I played it twelve hours straight the first time I sat down with it. 

 

 

Lost in Space Season Two on Blu-Ray: My favorite show as a kid, I remember when it was taken off the air, and it gave me my first sense of longing. It made me learn early on that life is a series of losses. I caught reruns in later years, but the pining had subsided. I had grown up. And then the series was released on Blu-Ray and I’m getting to experience the series with my grandson, Eric, and now diving into the second season, in living color I’m realizing maybe that old sense of longing for my favorite show had been lurking there all along I’m suddenly in 1966 again at the age of four years old. The first season was black and white, but the color palette used in the second season is so vibrant, it’s as if 20^th Century Fox, went on a vendetta to make up for the loss of color in the first season. Will Robinson has matured a year, as has sister, Penny. But Dr. Smith is still a miscreant. I used to feel sympathy for him, but he’s so nefarious, he probably would have been better off marooned. 

 

 

Solar Eclipse, April 8^th, 2024: Speaking of space, this year marks one of the most significant space spectacles I will ever have the pleasure of living through, the likes I shall never see again. The last total eclipse of the sun was something I’d not experienced since 1970, and I don’t remember it. This time I was prepared, however. I invested in a telephoto lens (100-400mm) to do it justice to accompany my Panasonic Lumix S5 (Netflix series approved.) When totality was reached and the ground around me succumbed to a weird twilight darkness, my long lens pointed upwards on the heavy tripod I was using, a great epiphany hit upon me. I remembered the little Kodak Brownie Fiesta camera my grandmother gave me as she introduced me to the wonderful idea of photography. I went on to join the Navy as an aspiring photographer’s mate, but failed,  probably miserably. Now, looking back, I don’t care. I was still true to my school. I’ve always been close to photography, and these, my rendition of the 2024 Solar Eclipse may be my best yet. 

 

 

 

 

Edward's March 2024 Mix

 

 Despite winter being mysteriously truncated, people mowing lawns already, robins out and about, and jeans and flannels giving way to shorts and wife beaters, I spent a lot of time indoors this month. But it wasn’t in vain. I broadened horizons through a variety of mediums and my amusement was boundless in the music, movies and gaming I jumped into. My GoodReads reading goal is 20 books this year. I’ve already knocked out 7, a pretty good start for the year. I only finished 8 PC games last year. I still have a few lingering games to finish, but so far, I’ve completed 6. That’s not a bad start on the PC gaming side of things. Oh, a little warning here: find your favorite bookmark, this one is a long one. But I promise I won’t bore you.

 

Battlefield 4 on PC: EA really let me down during Christmas last year when my email account was cracked and my EA account was compromised. I spoke with four different Indian agents to no avail. I supplied the information they needed to verify my account, but was told it wasn’t enough. So, I wrote it off with a polite but firm email explain EA was now dead to me. I would be making any further game purchases on other venues. I ended up installing Battlefield 4 which was on my Steam account for quite a while (I had just never installed/played it. Oddly, the game pointed to my now defunct EA account. My gaming buddy, Garrett Thrasher suggested I contact EA and have them unlink the game from that hacked account. I got on live chat with yet another agent from India. Lo and behold, this guy fixed me up. He got my old account back! I thanked him profusely and stroked his survey with all five stars. It’s like EA and I divorced and then realized what we missed. We came back together and remarried. Battlefield 4 has made it worth it. This is like the venerable Battlefield 2 I spent many hundreds of hours almost twenty years ago. I feel like a babe in the woods since I’m starting out at level 0. My guns are puny and my skills are lacking. Couple that with the reflexes of an old guy, and you can see how this could be quite frustrating. But maybe I just can’t pull the rose-colored glasses off. 

 

 Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic by Paul Fussell: I'd never heard of Paul Fussell or knew how prolific of a writer he was until I stumbled upon this book in my collection of books. (I've got to clean out that closet of books one of these days!) The first half of this book conveys the adventures (and misadventures) of boyish Paul living an idyllic life in California and attending university. Upon graduation, he is commissioned as a 2nd Lt. and is sent to France at the end of the Battle of the Bulge where he is "ill-treated by members of the German Wehrmacht." After his service, he is sent home to the States and achieves his master's degree, teaching at university.      And so begins Fussell’s cynical disenchantment with all of the stilted patriotism and misplaced ideals that accompanied him to the shores of France when he saw how incompetent and inefficient the US Army was in Europe. Fussell's story resonated with me on a personal level as a US Navy veteran. In 2017 the USS John McCain collided with a civilian tanker in Singapore. Some weeks later the same ship almost had another collision. Later in that same year, yet another US Navy ship collided with a ship. When the top brass finally got down to the lowest ranking seamen on the USS John McCain to talk to them, it was revealed the men weren't getting sleep. It's amazing how some things don't change. I remember months at sea, working 8 hours on and 8 hours off. During the 8 hours off, one stood watch and endured countless emergency drills. That was peacetime Navy for me. I could only imagine what it would have been like in combat status. The book began to lose its way with me, however, when Fussell returned to civilian life. Not only did he vehemently denounce any kind of glory or real purpose in fighting a war, he became skeptical of the pop culture that grew out of the 1950s and 1960s, and conservatism in politics. The whole tone of this book generates the idea that great literature can save us from warfare. It's a noble idea, but as we all know, it just doesn't work that way. I don't agree with numerous of Paul Fussell's ideas, but I can't deny this book was written with great passion.

Reacher Season 2 on Amazon Prime: Talk about an oddity, this season is based on Lee Child’s Bad Luck and Trouble which is Child’s eleventh book in the series, which is the next book in the series for me. Ha! Talk about coincidences. This series involves illegal arms trading and lots of flashbacks to Reacher’s old special investigative unit in the Army. It was filled with the usual fistfights, gunfights, and Reacher’s personal responses to all sorts of injustices. And not to mention a nice cameo from a loved character from season one.

Aliens on Blu Ray: Of course, I’ve seen it before, numerous times. But this never gets old and it seems I pick up on something I missed in previous viewings when I watch it. Definitely eschews the horror aspect for a more adventurous tone than the original Alien. This is a movie filled with smart alecky one liners that have become tropes and memes that have surfaced in many other movies (and games) since. James Cameron handled this one just as efficiently as Ridley did the first movie, despite its different avenue. The Blu Ray version is crisp and beautiful in its own gun metal and CRT green way.

Batman: Arkham Asylum on PC: It’s not often I include something here from the previous month, but I had to detail the fact that I finally beat this game. It took me 37.5 hours, and the last 1/5 of the game turned into a horrible chore simulator. I never thought I was going to defeat Poison Ivy. She definitely brought back Dark Souls vibes, and not in a good way. She took me 48 attempts to finally best her. And then I had to take on Joker! He wasn’t easy, but compared to Poison Ivy, he was a cakewalk. I only wanted to play this one as a refresher because I was planning on playing the next game in the series, Batman: Arkham Asylum. Now I’m wondering if I should delve into that territory. 

 

 Cannons Heartbeat Highway on Amazon Music: Formed in 2013 by two childhood buddies soliciting for a vocalist on Craigslist, this dreampop band has recently become an addiction for me. The vocalist, Michelle Joy, reminds me a lot of Gwen Stefani with her sound and her looks. They drop catchy tunes that exude a 1980s vibe with Joy’s vocals and guitarist, Ryan Clapham’s chorus effects. Then there’s the song “Loving You” that almost has an Abba spin to it. I’ve not wanted to autorepeat an album so much as this one in a long time. Give the titular song, “Heartbeat Highway” a listen. You just might agree with me.

Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke: Much to my chagrin, I took this long to read anything by Arthur C. Clarke. Perhaps I was intimidated by the collaborative work he did (with Stanley Kubrick), 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I always found too cerebral to me (although the Blu Ray is stunningly gorgeous.) But I see having waited so long to be a slight of sorts. I missed out, well, almost missed out on what is one of the greatest SF books I've ever read. Despite Clarke's academic backing (majored in mathematics and physics), he has a literary delicacy that puts him up there with so many fine writers. His use of descriptive language and interesting characters instilled in me a sense of bitter-sweetness when the novel reached its end. (Plagiarized from my very own Goodreads review.) 

House of Cards Season 6 on Netflix: This ended a run of a show that had me captivated from the first episode of the first season. I’ll try to convey this without spoilers, so I’ll just say a death of a main character occurred with no details revealed. This season slowly unravels what happened. It’s like watching a movie in slow motion in reverse. It sounds gimmicky, but I have to tell you, it was quite clever. And in true literary fashion, it seems that all characters got what they deserved. I wouldn’t be surprised if this rather depraved tale of betrayal, blackmail and deception is simply a mirror of our own whacked political system.

Medal of Honor on PC: This is a gritty, first-person shooter, taking place in Afghanistan. It features combat through the eyes of a Navy Seal and eventually switches to US Army Special Forces soldiers. Using the Unreal 3 engine (which, despite its age, still looks gorgeous) and is the first EA Medal of Honor game to carry an M rating. I never did shake the uncanny feeling I got playing as a sniper, taking out Taliban with eerily realistic headshots. I understand Taliban were doing heinous things like hanging women from telephone poles for wearing make-up and tossing homosexual men from rooftops while shouting “Akbar Allah!” and even so I was shooting at pixels on a PC screen, I couldn’t help but think I was taking the lives of men who were once, someone’s infant son. The game was short, and I was glad. 

 

 

Live Aid Disc 2 on DVD: Thanks to my guitar Sensei, Michael Stevens, I’m getting to enjoy this great 4 disk time capsule in all of its 1985 glory. Just having completed the second disk, I’ve now come to see how classy David Bowie was, sweat exuding from his temples, while his bouffant hair still held strong, and that over-the-top power suit making him look like a world ruler, stepping down from his throne to grace us with a bit of entertainment. I never realized Freddie Mercury was such a showman. I was never a Queen fan, but man oh man, Freddie had such a stage presence. The Beach Boys were there, too, stepping out of my little boy-hood like a once forgotten memory. Some things never really do grow old. Dire Straits performed with an, I’m sure, unintentional comic relief in the guise of a rhythm guitarist who made the stage his own, despite Mark Knopfler’s guitar playing which was as fascinating to hear as quantum physics is to ponder. And then there was Simple Minds, who’s rendition of “Don’t You Forget About Me” suddenly made me 22 years old again.  

Project: Snowblind on PC:  Basically a Deus Ex ripoff, this game centers on a Steve Austin, kind of guy who is nearly obliterated, but comes off the operating table “better than before, better, stronger, faster,” full of augmented body parts and ready to kick some Chinese booty in a near future war involving a Chinese takeover. This game was a supposed 8 hour to beat game. Of course, silly me, having to do everything the hard way, ramped up the difficulty and struggled to knock it out in 18 hours. The game was okay, nothing special. It actually felt more like a rehash of Red Faction than it did its own intellectual property. I’m sure the game proudly owned its clout back in 2005 when it was released, but now it can be safely shelved as a been there done that. 

 

 

Edward's February 2024 Mix

 

 

February is the only month that can go without once having a full moon. I just know it’s typically an incredibly cold month in my neck of the woods, this year, though, not really. One dump of snow and lots of warm weather. Here I am again talking about the weather. What was that Oscar Wilde quote? Something about talking about the weather? Oh yeah, “Talking about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” Well, guess what. That’s wrong. Wilde never said that. He said this: “Inconsistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” It defies me how something like that could be so misconstrued. Anyway, I got to a lot of stuff in this, the shortest month of the year. Enjoy!

Enlist on PC: EA’s wonderful Battlefield 1942 will always hold a special place in my heart. I’ve longed for something similar ever since EA shut down the last of their servers where this special game lived. It was my first exposure to 32 vs 32 man battles involving ships, planes, tanks and boots on the ground grunts, and I lost many weekend nights to it, each battle creating its own story, absolutely no narrative needed. I will never forget shooting a plane out of the sky with a tank, talk about a lucky shot. Then suddenly seeing a parachute blossom, firing my turret machine gun, trying to pluck the guy out of the sky, and missing. He steered his chute to land on my tank and then knifed me to death. I think I must have fallen out of my chair with laughter. And now, I can somewhat live those days again with Gaijin’s Enlisted. But it’s even better with updated graphics and a choice of a multitude of armies. It’s utter chaos, men, screaming, hot lead flying unabashed, and those same Battlefield stories being created. It’s a bit of a grind, but the game itself is free. Grab some friends to play with, and you’ll be entertained all night long. 

 

 

Rocket Fighter by Mano Ziegler: Mano Ziegler's account of his days as an air combat trainer and warrior in Germany's bizarre rocket powered aircraft program is so amazingly narrated, you can't help but to think of the Luftwaffe as home to the "good guys." German airmen, despite fighting for an ignoble cause, took to the skies with chivalry, and determination, and many of them a certain grace respected by combat pilots from all sides. But the real hero of this story is the ME-163 Rocket Fighter itself. As Ziegler himself said, "We had failed to achieve our aim, but the fame of this fantastic warplane was not to rest on her successes. The number of victory stripes that bedecked her fuselage were small, but she had opened a new era in flying. A mettlesome creature as gentle as a dove one moment and a fiend at others, she was unique." (Plagiarized from my own review on GoodReads.) Truly a great book.

Northern Exposure – Season Six on DVD: I’ve always been slow when it comes to watching television series. I rarely binge watch anything. It’s taken me a decade to do it, but I finally finished all of Northern Exposure. I’ve always likened it to a more grown up version of Mayberry and Sheriff Andy Taylor’s stomping grounds, with just as much of a compelling and colorful cast of characters. The last of the episodes though made me realize it was time for the show to come to its fruition. Dr. Joel Fleischman had already departed the show, and romantic interests had come full circle and we realized who was going to end up with who. Still, this was a fun series of comedy mingled with heart warming antics. I will never forget “Chris in the morning” and the illuminating passages he would read on his radio show, or the literary quotes he would spew. It was a good run, and I’m glad I got to take it all in. Good news: I just heard it’s about to stream online for the first time.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng: Kind of a Leave it to Beaver story in an alternate universe, Celeste Ng is a remarkable writer. This book had me captivated from the first sentence. Ng's writing is ambitious and almost magical. As one reviewer said, "Ng is a powerful and poignant writer whose detail to attention is pitch perfect." I couldn't have said it better myself. I was tingling as I got to the last sentence. Here is a snippet of her incredible writing in this scene in which a girl who has just come home from school opens the door into the kitchen where her mother is sitting with a friend who has just lost a baby: “What happened?” she whispered, though she already knew. She had never heard an adult cry like that, with such an animal sound. Recklessly, as if there were nothing more to be lost. For years afterward, she would sometimes wake in the night, heart thumping, thinking she’d heard that agonizing cry again.” Rarely am I ever affected by a book in such a manner. It goes without saying, I'll be reading Celeste Ng's debut novel, and I am eagerly awaiting her next.

Batman: Arkham Asylum on PC: Slowly progressing in this fine action-adventure game made by Rocksteady back in 2009. I’d actually finished it once, but reading Evan Lahti talk about it again in a PC Gamer Magazine, made me want to revisit it. Lahti described the game’s setting as being the central character in the game, and he nailed it. Arkham Asylum looks like a place you’d want to go trick or treating at every night. Cutting the lights and donning the cans, it’s a lush eerie world I lose myself into. It’s precisely why Evan Lahti occasionally returns to it. The game is a bit hard to find my way around in at times, but hey I finished it once, right? I’m just about to fight Killer Croc. Wish me luck. 

 

 

The Lumineers Cleopatra on Amazon Music: Sirius XM introduced me to this band, and my first thought was, “goodness gracious, where have you boys been all my life?” Part folksy, part alternative, and all very good, it was love at first listen. Their sound reminds me of warm yellow light spilling onto honey colored wood floors in a brew pub on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Hailing from Denver, Colorado, their music is mostly a few guitars and a piano, beautifully accompanied by the soulful singing of Wesley Schultz. I recommend you check out the song, “Angela.”  

iRacing on PC: Imagine online racing where griefing, cheating, and bad sportsmanship simply doesn’t exist. David Kaemmer was the creator of Electronic Arts’ wonderful little gem, Indianapolis 500: The Simulation back in 1989. (Interestingly, he was also a former classmate of mine. We both graduated the same high school.) He went on to found Papyrus entertainment software that gave us the best NASCAR games of the 1990s and the venerable Grand Prix Legends that was notoriously difficult because of its level of realism. Then he created iRacing, an always online pay to play racing venue used by professional racers the world over. Always curious, I bought a 3 month subscription and joined the Rookie series., I’ve never experienced such adrenaline fueled racing online before, nor have I ever had so much fun online racing (and this comes with over 30 years’ experience.)  I graduated to a D Class license which gave me the opportunity to really peek under the covers. I didn’t like what I saw. I wanted to go the IndyCar oval route. In order to do so, I have to obtain a C Class license and I have to buy tracks and cars in addition to the monthly fee I pay. It’s unnecessarily expensive and you never get to keep what you buy; you’re merely renting it. I cancelled. But hey, curiosity sated, and now I know.