Another old sci-fi novel by Heinlein that cares more about the concept than the story. Even at 120 some pages, it still felt too long. I guess fans of “hard” science fiction may appreciate the constant hammering of the main concept of a spaceship as the known universe to its inhabitants, but it gets old fast.
After years of releasing full-length surf records sprinkled with a few jokes and some schtick, The Phantom Surfers finally made a joke album sprinkled with a little surf music! The disc is filled with skits and guest appearanes by various filth luminaries like Rudy Ray Moore, Blowfly and post-Raw Neil Hamburger. The premise here is to be as dirty as possible and, to this end, the band succeeds wonderfully on tracks like “The Golden Turd” and “The Phantom Surfer’s Alphabet.” All records, CDs and daytime dramas should strive to be the XXX Party.
This is a surprisingly straightforward Phantom Surfers record. The premise behind this record is that it is with Dick Dale. That is half true. They include two actual 50s pre-surf music Dick Dale songs: “We’ll Never Hear the End of It” and “Fairest of Them All.” Both of these are pretty terrible and Dick Dale was none-to-pleased with their inclusion.
Dead Space Extraction is yet another “on-rails” Wii shooter game. The Wii, with its pointer controls, is the perfect platform for these kinds of games. House of the Dead: Overkill is probably the best in this genre and, coming from that arcade-tastic game to this, Extraction will take a bit of getting used to. For one thing, the controls don’t quite work with the Wii zapper as it was meant to be used. In addition to your basic shooting and changing weapons, you can use a beam to grab power-ups and items. That means you’ll need to get to those buttons on top of the Wiimote during the frantic firefights. Also, there’s a bit too much spaztic controller waggling for my tastes. However, in lieu of a point-based arcade game, you get a pretty engaging story-based game with lot of dialogue and character development and, when you are finally allowed to shoot stuff, the shooting mechanics are pretty solid.
This weekend the family dragged me to a scarecrow building contest. This is a contest intended to allow kids to be creative and show off their stuff as budding young artists. Of course, my wife decided it would be a great opportunity to kick some underaged-art-noob butt. Pictured here is her winning entry in the category “most likely to scare a crow.”
Nova is checking out the new wave neon streets in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Nova’s personal goal: don’t punch anyone and avoid the cops… and chase the roller skating guy in pink shorts.
This is probably only the second record ever made of instrumental surf music devoted to the hobby of slot car racing. The first was the 1965 classic, The Go Sound of the Slots by the Revells. As usual, the production quality is absolute crap but the schtick quality is top-notch. For the most part these are surf standards with slot car noises and the occasional slot car terminology vocal line. A handy glossary is provided in liner notes in case you don’t know what a turn marshall or flutter finger is.
Cutesy ukulele pop from Japan. Half the songs are just the two girls, their ukes and some sweet vocal harmonies. The rest of the songs are more fleshed-out with a full honky-tonk backing band.
Peter Thomas’ arrangements live somewhere between the wacky space-age pop of Esquivel and the brassy action movie scores of John Barry. Here is a collection of his soundtrack music from various German television show from the 60s. I love the crazy sound effects and vocal instrumentation. This is some swinging stuff. A really great CD!
After the first three rousing volumes of the Song of Fire and Ice series, this book is a huge disappointment. I get that it’s really only half of book four in the series, but even if you set aside the fact that it focuses on way too much on new characters and points of view (as a reader, I really only want to hear about the Stark kids and maybe Tyrion), the character arcs really don’t seem to go anywhere. I am assuming the book is more of a set up for future events and I may grow to care about the Martells and Ironmen. I may like this volume better when I’ve read the follow-up.
