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.
No comments:
Post a Comment