Category: Media

This is a container category for media reviews and related drivel.

  • The Birthday That Was

    My birthday celebration was stretched over several days…

    • On Friday, Lil’ took me on a trip to the Beaverton Powell’s store; I came home with several books and the yin/yang devil ducky.
    • On Saturday, Kylanath and Erica gave me cards and ducks (two more from the pastel Bath & Body Works line) and a sweater. Also? We ate… this delightful confection that Kylanath put together for me (and that Erica had way too much fun beheading, hmm…):

    • Later on Saturday, I bought a new pair of shoes. They’d better last a long while; Doc Martens charges a pretty penny. Still, they’re incredibly comfortable and they’ve got to be more durable than the “cheap” ($50+) shoes I’ve been buying at Fred Meyer lately…
    • On Sunday, well, that day mostly consisted of vegging out and doing laundry and playing games. Nothing to complain about, really.
    • On the day itself? I got up early, went to work, and received the traditional signed-by-the-office-staff birthday card. Oh, and The Roomie foraged some grub so I didn’t end up just making a sandwich for dinner tonight (on account of being too brain-fried to put any kind of effort into food preparations).

    All in all? My entry into “being 38” didn’t go too badly, no, not too badly at all…

  • Shelf Spacing

    While Kylanath and I were out and about yesterday we picked up a set of shelves for her (“What do you get the girl who loves books?”) and a set of shelves for me. Thankfully Ikea now offers $20 65-pound-capable handcarts for those of us who take the MAX to and fro.

    Tonight I assembled my set of shelves…

    …and filled them full within five minutes of assembly. The new one’s on the left. Sadly, the ducks on the right are just for show: I have another box of books to unpack. Eventually I won’t have any books remaining in boxes, they’ll all be shelved! I figure that’ll be about five minutes before I found out I’m moving again, but hey, whatever.

  • They Grew On Me

    As I listen to Midnight Oil’s Redneck Wonderland album through (chosen to be the background music while I work on a software upgrade… yes, at 9:30pm…) I realize that back when I first picked up the CD, I didn’t actually like it very much. I thought it was too rough, too hard, too different from the Oils’ sound of the previous several albums.

    Now, however, I think of it as among their strongest work. It’s still as musically dense as I like things, but it has more vim and vigor than the softer, twangier material they’d been putting out for a while there. Really, if Diesel and Dust is the only Midnight Oil album you own and you’re wondering what else to pick up, you could do far worse than RW. (Uh, avoid Capricornia, though. Subsequent listening sessions have not endeared that record to my ears.)

    What other albums sound better now than when I first listened to them?

    Duran Duran’s Astronaut, most assuredly. I wrote a pretentious, faint-praise lump of a review back when the album came out (and there’s a reason I don’t do those anymore), and after those initial few full-record sessions I determined that the first four tracks were all that was worthwhile, there.

    Oh, how wrong! “Nice,” “Finest Hour,” “Taste the Summer.” I’d put those up against anything Duran Duran have done before or since, never mind those first four cuts (which I still love). Even “Chains” is a fairly decent little piece. Mind you, I’m still not overly fond of “Bedroom Toys” or “Still Breathing,” but to have written off the entire back two-thirds of the album? What the hell was I thinking? What was wrong with my head? Wow.

    I only have the one album from Filter but somehow, some time over the last few years Title Of Record went from being “that record with ‘Take A Picture’ on it” to “this is one of the best rock albums I’ve ever heard.” No, I’m not kidding. I don’t love every song unreservedly, but there’s not a track on there that I’ll skip under any circumstances (random playlist action, playing the album through, whatever). “It’s Gonna Kill Me,” “I Will Lead You,” “Skinny,” the nearly eight minutes of “Welcome To The Fold” to start things off… yeah. Great damned album.

    So, if anyone’s still with me after all this time: What albums started out “meh” and grew on you to the point of being all-time favorites now?

  • Hearing Red

    As I slowly work my way through tagging my digital music library with ratings marks to ease the process of making random playback of excellent music possible on any given PC, I’ve noticed that only two albums in my collection start with the word “red”, and they’re both by Midnight Oil: “Red Sails In The Sunset” and “Redneck Wonderland.”

    It occurs to me, in fact, that these are among the Oils’ strongest records, leaving aside the landmark smash-hit “Diesel & Dust.” So… what do you think? Am I nuts, or am I right?

  • Look! Up In The Sky!

    So, on the heels of my somewhat-down little posting yesterday, I offer what I consider to be one of the most beautiful skies I’ve seen in a long time:

    Most folks, I suppose, prefer a pristine blue, or maybe mostly-blue with an occasional white puffy cloud. Me? I want a lot of different shapes and shades of clouds as far as the eye can see. No, I’m no more fond of the solid mass of flat gray than most people, but this? This is lovely. Truly.

    Cheered me up, this morning, it did.

  • What’s this, the Iditarod?

    Here’s another dose of “English FAIL” for your amusement:

    Sometimes, the spellchecker isn’t enough to save a sign’s maker from embarrassment.

    These have been up on a residential block near Kyla’s place for months while an ugly-as-sin lump of condominiums goes in. I finally remembered to take a picture before construction completed…