Edward's Monthly Mix October 2025

 

Halloween is always fitting for a viewing of The Creature from the Black Lagoon. And despite the price of candy exorbitating (yeah, I know, it’s not a word, but I just made it one) due to tariffs, people spent a record number on candy this year. It just goes to show, tradition dies hard. Good luck trying to kill the spirit of a holiday in America. Halloween is the one time of year when death takes center stage in the West. Skeletons hang from doors, jack o’ lanterns grin from porch banisters, and giant grim reapers show up in the seasonal aisle at Home Depot. For a few weeks, the thing we spend the rest of the year avoiding becomes incredibly visible. Speaking of incredible, it was an incredible busy month this month in my monthly mix world. Oh boy, that’s a tongue twister.

The Creature From the Black Lagoon on Blu Ray: I had a wonderful opportunity this month to revisit this classic, albeit in 3D. My sister has the setup, the glasses and the player. It was exciting to see the creature reach out with those oversized claws right into your face, or watch scuba equipped scientists swim toward you with their spear guns looking like they were going to poke your eyes out! I had no idea, the original movie was actually shot in 3D, and was released that way in limited venues. The 3D fad quickly died out about the same time this movie was made, hence, its rarity as a fully 3D feature. I took my grandson with me to my sister’s to watch it and now he’s obsessed. He wants all things Creature from the Black Lagoon. Oddly, I was the same way when I watched the movie for the first time when I was about twelve years old. Shoot, I wanted to grow up to be a professional scuba diver! Incidentally, in 2009 I got to meet Ricou Browning, who played the creature in the underwater scenes. He was white headed and aged, but short and quite powerfully built.

Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins: Reading a Tom Robbins novel is not only like taking a walking tour through a Richard Scarry Busytown book, but also a wonderful trip into the imagination (not to mention a little sidetrip into a dictionary or two.) His love for words, much like Robert Frost , utilizes delightfully clever metaphors and glimmery erudite usage that makes reading one of his books a true literary adventure. This book was no different. Robbins' main character is a woman and he does a fine job of writing the book through "her" eyes. And her cohort, Larry Diamond, flamboyantly confident despite bearing a debilitating affliction, were both memorable though hardly believable characters. Not the best Tom Robbins book I've read, but a jolly fun read.

Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines on PC: Released in 2007, here is a super little known fact for you. It was made in the Half Life Source engine and was released one day before Half Life, so it actually beat one of the most popular storied shooters out the door. Unfortunately, it was also buggy and rushed to fruition. It has since been patched up (mostly by fans) and is now a quite playable game. It’s dated, granted, but still a fun game. I’m in the front part of the game, but I wish I had played it earlier.

Borderlands on Steam: Randy Pitchford catches a lot of flak. He’s a wiseacre accused of possessing child pornography (for which he was not only exonerated, but countersued for the slander—and good for him!) and he’s personally impelled me to write him a letter (via Computer Gaming World Magazine accusing him of ageism. And he’s the scapegoat for the new Borderlands 4, despite, its system requirements, being a good game. Still, I find myself going back to the OG, and oddly, getting back into it for the sake of my old buddy, Vic Berwick (who quickly decided it was not his kind of game). Cartoony graphics based on a Mad Max motif make this a scratch itch game that’s funnier than it has any right to be. Thanks to my buddy, Garrett Thrasher, I’ll be able to get through it for a third time.

Lost in Space Season 3 on Blu Ray: I’m finally on the final season of my favorite television season of all time. This was the series that cleared the streets when I was a kid. Unfortunately, the show was on its way out this season, unbeknownst to the cast and crew. It had become campy and competitive with other network television shows (e.g. Batman) and obviously lost the race. I see now, the show’s campiness is what led to its demise. At this point, it was turning into a Saturday morning children’s show produced by Irwin Allen instead of Sid and Marty Kroft. There was a cool upgrade to the third season in that John Williams changed the theme music to make it more upbeat and adventurous, introducing the countdown pictogram of each cast member. Lost in Space being more of a storytelling platform where Star Trek was more of a philosophizing one prompted Gene Rodenberry to say it best: "That show accomplishes what it sets out to do. Star Trek is not the same thing". 

 

 

Little Nightmares on Steam:  Trying to get as many games knocked out as I can this year, I thought I would try to complete a simple little game. Little Nightmares came up in my list and I was like, why not? It’s a platformer, which I typically suck at. But I weathered on, despite the fact that it’s a 6 hour game that took me 11 hours to beat. Not sure I’ll ever play Little Nightmares 2, but it was an interesting game. The graphics and the music were interesting to say the least. I suppose the only thing keeping me going on was the fact that it was a 6 hour game. Go me! 

 

 

Paul Lynde’s Halloween Special ’76 on Youtube: Halloween 1976 I turned 14 years old. It was an important year. It was our Bicentennial, our 200^th year of declaration of freedom from the old motherland. Variety shows were still hip, The Carol Burnett Show anyone? My friend, Jeri Bragg, turned me onto this show and brought it to my attention that you could watch it in its entirety on YouTube. Talk about bringing back memories! We have Paul Lynde accompanied by Margaret Hamilton (reprising the role that made her by far the most famous) hosting a small array of television guests including Florence Henderson and Tim Conway. And no worries, Jeri, I won't forget Donny and Marie Osmond. LOL!) Of course, the main draw for me was KISS! They sang “Detroit Rock City,” (though it was obviously dubbed and sans Ace’s great solo) it was still fun to watch despite Peter’s lack of visibility tucked behind a drum set (although he got his comeuppance when he performed “Beth” on a piano.) Seeing them perform was cool, especially when Gene Simmons snuck in a very prominent fire blow. 

 

 

Secret Level Season One on Amazon Prime: My buddy, Vic Berwick, turned me onto this one. I was reluctant at first because . . . anime? But it really wasn’t, not at all. It’s rather CGI. And it’s all done in environments created from our favorite video games. I was flabbergasted by what I saw, and the good part? Each episode is 7-10 minutes long. What’s not to like about that? Not to mention the guest stars such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Keanu Reeves. If you want to see what your new 8K TV can do, watch this show. 

 

 

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.