Good morning Pixlpeeps! Today is the birthday of the inventor of the saxophone, Adolphe Sax. Without this guy I probably would have played the trumpet in marching band from grade 5 all the way through college.
So how are you good people? Currently here in sunny Southern California we are having a little cold spell (remember East Coast our cold is 70 degrees) and I got to use three different sweaters this past week. Two of them I bought when it was triple digits outside and another I picked up a week ago during the last bookstore sale at SDSU.
The weekend is here, my Aztecs are on a bye week, so I might avoid sports altogether and just play games this weekend. That excites me because I’ve wanted to try out a couple of games and maybe take down some from Mount Backlog. Any fun weekend plans? Let’s get started with this week’s Quick Hits with Chris
Chris Listens To…
I thought I’d change up the order of this QH, because I’m currently listening to something I usually don’t until the minute Thanksgiving Lunch/Dinner is finished and that is Christmas Music. This year I started the day after Halloween because I love Christmas music and I don’t get enough during the period between after Thanksgiving and right before New Year’s Eve. Currently I am listening to a Hawaiian Christmas CD. At some point I’d like to fill my entire iPod full of Christmas music and have that playing all the time. Currently in my Christmas portion of my iTunes library I think I have around 1,000 songs.
With the end of ESPN’s Grantland website I’ve been forced to look for new podcasts that can replace Cheap Heat (a wrestling podcast) and The Right Reasons (reality show podcast). Currently I lean on one from Canada that deals with all things wrestling, which is fine, but doesn’t have some of the comedy that Cheap Heat has. I have two on my iPod about reality TV, and hopefully they can be the temporary fix until hopefully Bill Simmons creates a new Grantland on HBO.
Chris Watches...
Vanderpump Rules: Oh as you know this is by far my favorite Reality Show (it’s a tie with MTV’s The Challenge), and this season of the folks at Sur is the usual of pretty people problems. It is trashy but I do love to sit and watch. The season starts out at Scheana’s birthday like last year, but this year there is no fight and everyone hates Kristen, including her boyfriend. I know you’re thinking, this is television gold, and it is.
Quantico: Ok so last week I said I have some theories, even though my favorite, The blond girl is the terrorist might not happen, I do have a new one. Alex’s parents were fighting because the father isn’t her father. He wanted the mother to tell her but she wouldn’t, Alex shot her father, and then she was shipped off to India. She was shipped off to be around family aka her real father…who was the guy who bombed Grand Central. Follow me here: Her FBI dad was a partner with her current professor who is working with the head guy who’s currently running the op to find her. They let her into the FBI hoping that she would at some point open up about her past and at the same time hoping that her real father would try some terrorist act. Yeah I still like my blond girl terrorist angle.
Green Batman (Arrow): Oh this episode is by far the best of the bunch because there are so many new things thrown at the viewer, and it seems like everything from the beginning of the season up until the first break will be in preparations for the new show Legends of Tomorrow.
Black Bar Section
I think the person in the grave that Ollie is mourning is probably the mother of his kid that he didn’t know abut. In this episode the campaign manager asked Ollie if he had any skeleton’s in the closet and he said no. At first it felt like a throwaway line that is part of usual dialogue but there was a conversation last season about how his family paid off a girlfriend of his who got pregnant to leave town. Ollie runs into her while on the Flash and I think Damien Darkh tries to kill her son but instead kills the mother. This will drive Ollie back to crazy killing guy from the first season.
The Muppets: Growing up I was never big into them so when this show started I avoided it. Luckily for my friend he kept telling me about it, and finally I decided to watch and it is freaking hilarious! It’s like The Office but with Muppets and there are a bunch of adult jokes.
Chris Reads…
I finished Year Two of Injustice and this was a fun read, to the lead up at the end, which I’m assuming it is going to spill over into Year Three. The storyline of Green Arrow and Canary is such a good side story that gives the reader a break from the Superman/Batman pissing match. I can’t wait to start on Year Three.
Chris Takes Pictures…
A couple of nights ago I noticed that the sky was clear and you could see the stars (the neighborhood is one of those places where there isn’t a bunch of streetlights) so I decided to try and photograph the sky. The pictures that I took didn’t come out as expected but a couple of shots I took afterwards I found interesting.
While I was trying to get my camera in focus it kept getting blurry shots but I found this one interesting
It’s the neighborhood but I really like how it looks.
The next image is one of the plants in the front of the house I took in the dark
This one I cropped a bit and brought out some details, and I like the final product. The dark background really makes the leaves “pop”.
The next couple of shots are my usual clouds pictures, one of them I was trying a new technique to bring out details
The first being just regular clouds
And this is the one I was trying something new with
It was taken right around 7ish when it was not quite dark outside.
Thanks for looking at my pictures!
Pickups
Games
Since Black Friday and what I like to call Dark Gray Thursday is a couple of weeks away I’ve decided to hold off on buying any new games because there are going to be sales and hopefully a price drop on Guitar Hero.
Music
There was a couple of CDs purchased over the past week, and maybe later on today I will hit Best Buy for Sara Bareilles’ and Elle Goulding’s new albums. The local Target doesn’t have them in stock. Anyways the stuff from the local mom & pop as well as a thrift store
The Kiss Box Set was missing two CDs but I figure I can find those eventually and for now I’ll have these CDs and I will probably buy the digital version of the set online.
The only reason I bought Monster Jamz was because of three songs. Everything else I already own on in their original albums
Here are a bunch of Christmas Albums I picked up
The former owner of Imua album got it autographed by the two guys.
I’m just adding to my Christmas Music library, and finding some new songs to enjoy.
Toys
I found a couple of Batman Hot Wheels
The Batman Superman Batmobile I found at Walmart this morning and the one on the right my cousin picked up for me.
I found this Batman 5-Pack earlier this morning at Target while looking for my CDs.
Alright Pixlbit my weekend has started, my iPod is synced, charged, and filled with new stuff to listen to and its time to play some video games. Have a good weekend!
That’s all for now, more later!
-Chris
For my song of the week I decided to go with a song from high school
Yep another song that reminds me of riding on the bus with the band as we traveled to away games. When this song came out I was at the point where I was just starting to get into CDs, but I still taped a bunch of stuff off the radio.
I've been listening to Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, and Kim Deal. Trying to write music that is a combination of all three of those.
That should be an interesting mix
Didn't know it was the sax man's birthday. I'll have to listen to nothing but songs I like with sax solos today. Kenny G and Lady Gaga, here I come! And I guess I can find some saxy Christmas stuff as well.
I really need to watch The Muppets as well. They always had some risque stuff thrown in. Love them.
Not gonna lie, would have believed you if you told me some of those Christmas album covers were Google Image grabs of SNL fake ads. lol
Nice pics as always.
I'd love to drive around in a Batmobile with the top down with Roll to Me blaring.
There are lots of good sax music. I'm not a fan of Kenny G, but in high school I did figure out how to play one of his songs.
High School me always tried to figure this song out. At some point I should just look for the sheet music.
Last episode of Muppets was funny, and yeah those covers are really bad. Some folks should just stick to a simple picture, with some text.
Thank you sir!
Sounds like it'd be right at home on Cowboy Bebop. Pretty sure that song was inspiration for one of the songs in that show, can't remember name.
I wonder who invented the bass trombone. That's what I played in high school band.
The new Muppets show is all right. Only problem is I don't like how they created fake drama just to have a show about it, but oh well, it's just puppets.
That's a good question. My senior year in high school, my director let me try different instruments during class and I really enjoyed the Trombone because of the slide. Trombone and Susaphone were my two favorites.
I just got Bela Fleck and the Flecktones Jingle All The Way. It's a pretty good Christmas album.
Good stuff, and glad to see someone else getting Christmas music early.
It was kinda pure chance. It just happened to come out in 2009, the year I'm looking at this week. It's a really good album. That bass player Victor Wooten in his band, is like crazy good. They do the Linus & Lucy song and he plays both the rhythm and the lead on bass.