This is basically a CD repackaging of New Clear Days with about a third of the songs from Magnets. The Vapors are a new wave band that doesn’t really get the love they deserve. There’s not a bad song on New Clear Days. Their hit, “Turning Japanese” only scratched the surface of what they were capable of creating. These are smart, high-energy power-pop songs that deserve to be played loud and often.
I remember being pretty excited when I bought this CD. I loved the earliest Vandals records and finally being able to get something new from that band was a big thing for me. Turns out something happened between Peace Thru Vandalism and this. A big part of that something was that all but one of the original members remained in the band, and that one original member was now playing a different instrument. They apparently didn’t admire Wire’s one line-up one name policy (they changed their name to Wir when the drummer left the band) like I did. The jokey lyrics are still there but their sound morphed into that cheesy radio friendly pop-punk sound that you hear from bands like Blink 182. On top of that are cringe worthy shredder guitar solos that just scream Southern California metal. What’s missing is that tinge of “I don’t care what you think” anger or aggression that, while never mean-spirited, really drove those early records.
As a kid growing up in Central Illinois Peace Thru Vandalism was one the first “punk rock” records I ever heard. I wasn’t a punk rocker (or corn-chip as was the Peoria slang for anyone who looked even remotely “goth” or “punky”) but I did like much of the music and this record was a great gateway point for someone who grew up listening to Dr. Demento and novelty music. Vandals’ songs are funny and never very serious. Even their anarchist’s anthem “Anarchy Burger” is a goof. Despite the light-hearted tone, the music is loud and fun and everything the punk rock episode of Quincy M.E. promised.
The other half of this CD is the band’s first full-length record, When In Rome. The irreverent sense of humor is still there with songs like “Viking Suit” and “Slap of Luv,” but the music is a bit less aggressive and a bit more diverse (there’s even some scratching on “Ladykiller”). I am not sure that’s a good thing, but it works here for the most part.
This book started off okay enough and was pretty interesting for the first hundred pages or so. The premise was that a man and wife lose their cat and proceed to hire a psychic to help them. Things start to get weird and I thought this was going to lead to something more but it never goes anywhere. It’s weird and dreamy without any real explanation. At best it’s just an excuse to tell small tales about World War II. These sub-stories can be good, but they never really get tied together in a way that clicked for me. This book was about 300 pages too long and not really worth the month’s long slog it took for me to get through it. Pretty writing isn’t enough. You need a plot!
This is a great collection of rarities from The Untamed Youth that I was hesitant to buy for a long time because I thought I owned all their singles. However, turns out that most of the songs aren’t on the band’s own singles. There’s a few alternate takes and plenty of tracks that came from various compilations. Missing from here is the band’s wonderful cover of “Tube City” from Ultra Punch Deluxe.
This is far from the best starting point if you want to listen to The Untamed Youth. It’s a live recording from Las Vegas that sounds like it was recorded on a handheld dicta-phone. The performance is fine, but I have a much, much better live recording from a show I saw in Bloomington, Illinois back in the late nineties.
The BioShock Infinite season pass DLC is a nice way to get a few extra hours out of the original game. The two Burial at Sea episodes a entertaining but not mind-blowing like the core game was. The return to Rapture is fun and the new emphasis on stealth changes things up enough to make this worth a play through.
The other section of the game is an arena combat mode with an emphasis on completing challenges. This sort of arcade-style game play is fun but I don’t think I will be finishing it to completion because there are just so many more story-driven gaming experiences out there to play. Ahem, Skyrim. See you in 120 hours…
I rather enjoyed this comedy about an angry tabletop gaming nerd who loses what little social standing he had when a hipster geek joins his gaming group. Scott is not a very likable character but the performance manages to capture a little humanity around his edges. I was also glad that, even though it has its share of nerd-mocking, the movie understands subject very well.
Mario Bava directed this early sixties Italian Hercules film and his colorful style is all over the place. It’s not his finest work but he keeps the silly, relatively dull story bearable and somewhat fun.
I guess they are rebooting Tomb Raider again? I really liked the last two games in the series and I don’t really think this is a franchise that needed to get dark and gritty. But, there you go. These days, f-bombs and blood are what the kids want in their action platformers.
That said, Tomb Raider is a great game and the focus on Lara’s character development during the first quarter of the game is satisfying (despite the frightened heavy breathing and constant utterances of, “I can do this!” by Lara). Eventually the tone shifts to the more familiar bad guys wanting a relic story cliche. But unlike its predecessors, there is a much greater emphasis on combat over puzzle rooms. There are still some optional tombs to raid that feel like Tomb Raider of old, but for the most part you are exploring the map looking for collectibles and shooting mercenaries. And you know what, that’s okay by me.
