Edward's September 2025 Monthly Mix

 

Tipping. According to ChatGPT it’s substantial and expected in the United States, but not necessarily in other countries. I think it’s a shame that an employee is expected to gain his or her renumeration from the general public or clientele rather than the guy signing his or her paycheck. It’s getting to the point where I really have to watch my pennies, and a restaurant meal can easily run up to fifty bucks. My daughter (who has experience in the restaurant service industry) always frowns at me when she and I go somewhere and I leave a tip. I guess maybe I have adopted a stingy attitude toward it, but eating out for me has become somewhat of a rarity because I simply can’t afford to do it anymore. I guess being on permanent vacation I now have a lot of time to think piecemeal about weird stuff like this. Believe me, this is the stuff I think about when I’m sitting here amongst my music, my books, my movies and my guitar.  

 

TRON on Blu Ray: I’ve had the two disk DVD collector’s edition of this for decades now, but I figured it was time to give the Blu Ray a spin. I’m glad I did. The transfer is crisp and very clean. Scratches, blemishes and marks have been carefully removed, and the whole of the film has been rejuvenated and renewed. I’ve read that a comparison between the Blu-ray edition and its DVD counterpart reveals just how much of an upgrade fans should prepare for. Edges and textures are catalog-crisp and classically refined. Saturation, warm colors and rich blacks create a suitably pleasing series of scenes. On the Grid, bold blues, oranges and reds mingle with inky shadows and ghostly grays, all in support of Tron's once-groundbreaking visuals. Tron received nominations for Costume Design and Best Sound. Oddly it was disqualified from the Best Visual Effects category because at the time the Academy felt that using computer animation was "cheating." Oh my, how times have changed. The film, in case you’ve been living under a rock all of these years, stars “The Dude” (Jeff Bridges) as Kevin Flynn who searches for proof that he invented a hit video game and becomes digitized by a laser and finds himself inside "The Grid", where programs suffer under the tyrannical rule of the Master Control Program. With the help of a security program called "TRON", Flynn seeks to free The Grid from the MCP. It is rather a hokey movie, but Jeff Bridges great acting does step in to save the day. Best watched on a big screen with all of the lights out. 

 

 

 

 

 

Carpathian Castle by Jules Verne: Typical fun "science-y" story by visionary, Jules Verne. This one concerns a supposed haunted castle looming over a small Transylvanian city in the latter 1800s. Great characters compelled to seek out mysterious goings on at this strange decrepit castle, despite their better judgement to stay away because of supernatural occurrences emanating from the place. The book evolves into an adventurous tale trumping Disney shenanigans, but jolly good fun, anyway. (Stolen from my very own GoodReads review.)

No Man’s Sky on PC: My friend, Gene Clifford, convinced me to pick this one up and download it, so I could play with him and another mutual friend of ours. We were enduring scheduling time conflicts when I got around to playing it, and I ended up playing it with some other friends. I almost refunded the game. I like the concept, a complete open world, free to do pretty much what you want. You can even discover planets and name them! But the convoluted tutorial was enough to discourage me. I had a few friends pull me through and the game grew on me. I’m still a bit on the fence, however. I’m just not sure sandbox type games are really for me. 

 

  

Radiohead The Bends on Amazon Music:  Probably the most poppy of their CDs I’ve ever listened to, especially them being a band, they themselves, wanted to be referred to as a jazz band. Myself, I would liken them more to experimental being that every album they make is completely different than the one before it. Hearing “High and Dry” on here made me realize this was a Radiohead song that I had no idea they did. I remember hearing it in the usual grunge mix that populated the radio stations back in the mid 90s. Of course, OK Computer, will always be my favorite album by them, and that one, which released a year later after this one initiated their eternal plunge into a more experimental style, but The Bends is a really good album.

The Curse of the Dead Gods on Steam Deck: This had been sitting in my Steam Library for quite a while, so I thought I’d give it a ride between my sessions of Slay the Spire and Balatro. It’s brutal, and eternally fatal, but hey, each time you make it to the end of a level you get to keep your stuff. (It’s just making it to the end of a level!) Yes, I constantly keep dying, but I get right back up and give it another go. I’ve never had so much fun playing a rogue-like of this caliber. I’m not sure I’ll ever beat the game, but I’m sure going to have fun trying. The cell shaded art style on my Deck is absolutely gorgeous. Inspired by Darkest Dungeon and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the game’s French developers wanted something much darker than what is depicted in those games. 

 

  

Remember The Titans on DVD: My wife is the football fan in the family. I am not so much. I supposed I’ve cultivated a passing interest being married to her for decades, and my parents, bless their hearts, who had been consistently trying to get me to watch this movie with them finally won out. I watched it with them. Denzel Washington is one of my favorite actors, and he shines in this movie about a Virginia high school in 1971 newly desegregated and the effect it has on its undefeated state champion football team. Loosely based on real life events, the film is now considered to be one of the best American football films ever made. The movie showcases several great songs from the era, the real star of the show for me considering I’m not really a sports fan. 

  

Friday Night Lights on Blu Ray: So, is it the influences of my wife, or is it something in the water this time of the year? Here this is, another football film. This one, being a little more dearer to me being that I like Billy Bob Thornton and this being a movie that was filmed in a place I once lived, a suburb of Austin, TX. This one involves a small oil town, seemingly dried up, (Odessa, TX, which in reality is far from dried up) putting whole city stock in their 1988 State Champion high school football team, and their new coach assigned to keep them on that level. The movie was received well enough it inspired a long standing television series. But for me, the real star, like the aforementioned Remember The Titans was the music. Explosions in the Sky and Daniel Lanois are both major crushes for me. Oh, and the film, it wasn’t bad. Film critic Roger Ebert awarded the film three and a half out of four stars, writing, "The movie demonstrates the power of sports to involve us; we don't live in Odessa, Texas, but we’re watching a game played 16 years ago, and we get all wound up." 

 

  

A&W Ice Cream Sundae Soda: I am not influenced by ads. I don’t watch ads, nor do I watch network TV BECAUSE of the ads. I’ll even go so far as to say: I hate ads. But this one . . . this one got to me. Adverts for A&W Ice Cream Sundae Soda kept popping up on my browser pages. I fell for it. I went to a local Kroger store, and no surprise, “We don’t stock it, and this store is kind of late getting such things. Check back in a month,” I was told. So, on a weekend jaunt to Indianapolis I found it. And boy is it good! It’s a little bit chocolate forward, but it’s truly a liquid summer evening. One reviewer called it “dessert in a can.” I’d say that about sums it up perfectly. I drank them all, but writing this right now makes me wish I had one. 

 

 

IKKO OPAL OH2 White Dynamic In-Ear Monitor: My $150 BVGD earbuds finally took a dump, well, one of them did, anyway. I jumped online looking for a used set from which I could cannibalize a replacement, but no joy. Instead, I found these Ikkos on eBay. I read reviews and they seemed decent enough, especially for less than $50 factory sealed. When they arrived, I was astonished to see all of the accouterments they shipped with, including a fancy faux leather carrying case. Shoot, they even came with a snazzy refrigerator magnet! The ear buds are housed in a combination of metal and transparent polycarbonate, allowing you to see the PCB inside, which gives it a "futuristic" touch, along with the 8mm driver featuring a nano carbon diaphragm. Its shape is quite peculiar, almost triangular, and it features oval-shaped nozzles, which are not common. But who cares about that stuff. What do they sound like? The mid bass is punchy and stands out in EDM songs. It's quite suitable for electronic genres and makes kick drums and bass guitar prominent enough. But the mids are the highlight of the show, both male and female vocals sound silky and without any hint of aggression or artificial metallic tone. The sense of smoothness also extends to certain instruments. Winds like trumpets and clarinets are very pleasant to listen to because the OH2 manages to reproduce them harmoniously, smoothing out their rough edges at the cost of losing some details. However, pianos and electric guitars retain their details intact, with a better-defined texture. Their sound accompanied by their coolness factory in their packaging alone make these a steal of a deal for how inexpensive they are now.

 

Edward's August 2025 Monthly Mix

 

I watch YouTube movies about living the retired life. A lot of the information being put out now in these videos is instructing us to scrap our friendships, friends are meaningless, you could and SHOULD go it alone. It’s cool to fly solo. Friends always let you down. I’ve even been prompted to comment on some of these videos with retorts like, “seems you’ve been picking the wrong friends.” I even listened to a Billy Graham sermon in which Graham admonishes friendships, stating God chose his prophets to act alone. That may be, but man, we’re social creatures. I wholeheartedly disagree. Get out, hang with friends, or make friends. Yes, the Pandemic did change things, but we can’t let it get the better of us. Barbara Streisand was right, people who need people are the luckiest people. If you don’t have friends, what are you going to do? Stay inside and watch movies, read books, and listen to music?  

 

Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix: A critically acclaimed adult animated series penned “to look like a moving painting,” per its creators, husband and wife team, Amber Noizumi^[ and Michael Green. The show involves a half-Japanese, half white girl named Mizu who is seeking vengeance against four white men, one being her father. Her experiences of discrimination as a mixed-race Japanese child has left her cold, bitter, and vengeful. Forced by her mother to disguise herself as a boy so as not to be found, she chooses to maintain her disguise into adulthood to pursue her path of revenge more freely. Who would have thought I’d be so captivated by an animated series? I’m not even a fan of animation! Apparently, I’m not alone: 88 on Metacritic and 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

 

 

The Fugitive on 4K Blu-Ray: I don’t remember much about the TV series that was on when I was a kid, but I was told when this released at the movies back in 1993, my boss at the time, went to see it and said the movie made the TV show look like a high school play. After 8 different writers and three years of discouragement from Warner Bros., the movie almost didn’t come to fruition. When I watched the movie for the first time, I thought it was phenomenally good. It’s a movie that’s all characters, all story, and no special effects. Tommy Lee Jones was brilliant in his role as the marshal spearheading the manhunt for. . . a fugitive. And that fugitive, Harrison Ford was one of the best misunderstood “bad” guys I’d ever watched up to that point. The action is non-stop, it’s definitely an action movie with intelligence. As one of the movie’s staffers said, “even watching Tommy Lee Jones think in the film, was almost an action shot.” Film critic Chris Hicks of the Deseret News, said, the movie “has holes in its plotting that are easy to pick apart and characters that are pretty thin, bolstered by the performances of seasoned vets who know how to lend heft to their roles." But in summary he stated, "the film is so stylish, so funny and so heart-stopping in its suspense that the audience simply doesn't care about flaws". This is a perfect take on a movie that should have garnered a Best Picture Academy Award, but did not. (However, Tommy Lee Jones did receive the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the movie carried 7 Academy Award nominations.) Stronger color values such as the bold prison uniforms, police lights, and urban signage show a bit more variety and subtle gradient detail, while the better-managed contrast values reveal deeper shadows, brighter light sources, and bolster a few of the more expressively-shot moments while avoiding the almost inevitable blooming or black crush that might arrive with a less dialed-in 4K redo. 

 

 Panasonic Lumix S5 full frame mirrorless camera: I wanted something better than my mobile phone to record guitar videos, so I went all out, unloaded my faithful Sony DSLR and bought into an altogether new technology: a mirrorless hybrid. Hybrid because it not only takes stunning 24 megapixel photographs, but also 4K video approved by Netflix Studios for submission. This means, yes, you could film a Netflix series with this camera. Lenses are pricey and not as plentiful as the usual fare from Canon or Nikon (or even Sony, for that matter), but the lenses on offer are superb lenses. I’ve had the camera for a while, but I’ve not been able to use it much. Now I have the time. I plan to change that.  

All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr: Two simple characters, a blind French girl whose father is a locksmith for a prominent Parisian museum and an orphaned German boy indoctrinated into Hitler Youth are the central focus of this powerfully descriptive World War II novel. Anthony Doerr writes in a way that makes me constantly stop and reread entire sentences again simply because of their beauty. I gave this one five stars on my GoodReads, which is rarely bestowed by me to any book. It’s the best book I’ve read this year, and I’m going to have to read a lot more to find a book that’s its equal.

Mass Effect The Legendary Edition on PC: My first time playthrough of this one was way back in 2009 and it cost me 70 hours of life. Knowing so many people who sing the game’s high praises and that have played it multiple times, I thought, why not be one of those people? So here I am, revisiting the game through the revamped “remastered” legendary edition. Enough changes were made (not to mention the graphical overhaul) that I don’t remember half of these story missions. It’s like playing the game for the first time. Could this be a simple product of old age senility? Actually, I think not. They did such a good job with this remake, I can do nothing but jump on the haywagon and drink the same Kool-Aid as my fellow Mass Effect fans. If you really want to command a starship in the same vein as Captain Picard, this is about as close as I’ve gotten. This contains storylines on par with anything George Lucas penned. 

 

 Oblivion on 4K Blu-Ray:  This is a beautiful film that reminded me of an old Robert Heinlein book translated to film. Heavy science fiction melded with amazing state of the art special effects and 4K cameras mixed in Dolby Atmos. You hear this from me about every 4K Blu Ray I watch, but I mean it this time: this is my 4K movie of the year. Just as remarkable as the end product of the movie itself is all that went into it. The “bubble ship” (heavily based on the Bell 47 helicopter) that Tom Cruise’s character uses to patrol and investigate anomalies that occur on the planet is an engineering marvel. Watching it being designed and built in the disc extras was as entertaining as the movie itself. And as far as admiration, I have new found respect for Tom Cruise. I’d always heard he did most of his own stunts and action scenes. I watched him attempt a couple of motorcycle jumps on the behind the scenes segment. He fell both times, simply rolled, got up and held his hands up, laughing, shouting, “I’m alright! I’m alright!” Then he got right back on the bike until he got it right. Best watched on a big screen TV with the lights out and a good sound system. This is such a fun movie to watch! 

 

 

 

The The Mind Bomb on CD: Matt Johnson has always been a hard working man. On many of his albums, he wore all of the hats. A few albums he’s the only guy on it, but carried the moniker the The, intimating the album was created by a whole band rather than a single guy playing all of the instruments. Johnson, however, did form a band to create Mind Bomb, his third album which hit paydirt and was a top ten in Britain when it was released (mostly due to “The Beat(en) Generation.” Featuring Johnny Marr as the lead guitarist certainly didn’t hurt either. The Los Angeles Times called it "an embarrassing exercise in breast-beating," writing that "this bloated record is doubly distressing considering that it’s the work of the same man who turned out one of the most mysterious and lovely pop tunes of the ‘80s, 'Uncertain Smile'." Personally, I was intrigued by Johnson’s song writing abilities. His lyrics are profound, and I’d place a bet that Matt Johnson is a man who likes to read.