p e n g u i n d e v i l

The trouble with music blogs is that once I start looking at them, their blogrolls look too tempting, and once I tread that way, I get lost in a maze of twisty little passages, just like in 1980 when I would stare at my endless Adventure games on the big rolls of teletype paper, trying to figure out how to get free of that darned maze and avoid that darned dwarf w/ axe.

Even the blogs filled with music I don’t like I am still fond of. I love to see all this stuff about all this music, especially things I’ve never heard of! I especially like blogs like (the sadly inactive) Something I Learned Today where he posted mp3’s of rare punk 7″ records. But what is the most interesting is anything about vinyl. Not that I listen to vinyl much, as I have lately been looking for interesting and new (to me) Death Metal, in non-vinyl format (such as: Abominattion, Mithras, Necrophagist and Spawn of Possession)… But my heart will always belong to LP’s. I are currently in a bad state in that regards, not only is 75% of my vinyl in storage, but the motor on my Rega Planar 2 died a slow death a year or two ago. While I’ve been waiting to feel like we have the money to fix it, I’ve been stuck with the Thorens TD-165 (I think), that was an irresistible yard sale buy for me a good number of years ago. While it is a fine and fun device (and more user friendly than the bare-bones Planar), I don’t really have a home environment that is appropriate for a deck with any kind of suspension. So keeping still while in the vicinity of the Thorens, when it is playing, is a must… And a bit of an inconvenience, with a dog and a toddler running around.

Regardless, it seems to have died as well, losing all desire to spin-round. Sigh. I am certainly still not in a spot where we feel like dropping three figures to get one of these (well, it would be the Rega, certainly) fixed… Means even more reliance on digital media, and no more converting LP’s to MP3’s for a while. Luckily, there is an endless stream of blogs where I can live the vinyl life vicariously.

Finally, an Alien vs Predator movie that is worth watching! I always thought that the original AvP graphic novel was boring and the AvP movie is easily on the the top 10 let-downs in filmic history list, it’s funny how the first AvP did twice the domestic box that this one did. Because Alien Vs Predator: Requiem is more like it. Sure, it’s not that great, as in it’s not as good as any of the first three Aliens or the first two Predator’s, but it is so much vastly better than AvP, I’ve got to give it props for that. A Predator ship carting around some Aliens gets, well, overtaken by the Aliens and crashes on earth, freeing a Preda-alien and a lot of little baby Aliens on an unsuspecting town. Obviously, the folks are mince-meat for the Aliens, but when the news gets back to Planet of the Predators, one of them makes his way to earth pronto to clean up the mess.

It’s got lots of face hugging, and great Predator effects, but then I’ve been a sucker  for Predator’s groovy technology and styles ever since the first one graced the screen some 20-odd years ago. Here, again, they’ve got bad ships and bad tools and a bad planet, plus there’s a big death toll, and I don’t feel like I’m giving much away to say that the final battle, between the Predator and the Preda-alien is a doozy. Yeah, the non-scifi elements of the movie aren’t that great, but they’re interesting enough. Our hero is the local pizza delivery guy who’s in love with some girl who’s seeing some jerky guy and that’s is what most of the story this takes place around, so of course, they come face to face with interstellar danger!

Anyway, I’ve been waiting for years for Aliens to descend on earth and start going crazy! And this movie is at least a start, though, sadly, the movie is too dark for most of the really choice screen captures.

Anyway, I shouldn’t stay on too long, as my DSL is still off (escalated to the “engineers”, at least) and I’v only got 20 hours of dial-up a month…