PixlBit

This week I'm celebrating 1988 in the arts. In retrospec, '88 was a pretty good year, but at the time I was not involved in consuming media all that much. I was at college in upstate New York kind of isolated from a lot of stuff. Plus, I was going through an anti-TV phase and steered away from any fellow students who watched their favorite shows everyday. I wanted to get away from the life I led at home: school, TV, homework, bed. Yuk! I grew to hate that routine, and I still do. But I'll try and remember the good stuff here below. 

THE MUSIC:

What I listened to back then was a lot of Thomas Dolby's Aliens Ate My Buick. This was his third album and he funked things up a bit with the help of Parliament leader George Clinton. Clinton must've been doing a lot of production work in the 80s. He also worked with The Red Hot Chili Peppers on their Freaky Styley album.

I also listened to Marillion's B-Sides Themselves, a collection of extras from their previous four albums. It was the last one, along with a live album that year, Thieving Magpie, with lead singer Fish. For me, it was the end of that band. Marillion have been making albums to this day, but I went with Fish's solo albums instead. Fish brought a lyrical style and imaginitiveness that was essential to that band. I even saw them live a year or so later with their new singer, but it wasn't the same at all. No theatrics. It's what I love progressive rock for. The drama. 

Finally, I saw this film at college, Decline of the Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years and got the soundtrack soon after. I saw the previous film on Punk music as well. I was fascinated with these other musical styles I'd never listened to before. It was a half decade or more before I really got into metal, and I still haven't gotten strongly into Punk, but I liked this album full of strange bands like Armored Saint and Lizzy Borden. 

THE GAMES:

I didn't play anything that came out that year. I had Flying Shark in the small pizza shop in my college town and Wizardry and Shadowgate on my Mac, but that was it. I didn't know about Splatterhouse, or Mega Man 2, or any of those PC RPGs like Ultima V and D&D: Pool of Radiance. I plan to revisit Splatterhouse this weekend. The original arcade game is on the 2010 Splatterhouse for Xbox 360. I also set aside all my arcade collections to look for anything I've missed. Also I can download Mega Man 2 on my 3DS. So I may do that. 

THE BOOKS: 

I decided the best thing to do with this media game of mine is to read comic collections first, because they can be read in a week. 1988 has a couple of good ones I'd like to read like: The Tick by Ben Edlund; Silver Surfer: Parable written by Stan Lee and drawn by. . . WTF. . . Moebius - oh I have to find this - ; and Doctor Strange, Sorcerer Supreme written by Peter Gillis. I think I'll reread The Tick first since I own the Complete Edlund Collection. Then I might search out the other two at my comic's store. 

If I had the time to read a whole book, or if I finish Hunt for Red October on audio this week, I'd like to read R.A. Salvatore's The Crystal Shard, which is the first book in the Icewind Dale series and probably has something to do with the 2000 PC game. I've never read his stuff either, so it would be interesting. 

THE FILM:

I watched a bunch of films in '88: Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Beetlejuice, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, A Fish Called Wanda, The Naked Gun, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Willow. No TV of course, but much later I would get into Myster Science Theater and Red Dwarf, both of which debuted in '88. There are a few Studio Ghibli movies, My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies I never saw, but I qued up this horror flick The Lair of the White Worm first because it's based on a Bram Stoker story. On the weekend I'll probably watch Die Hard with Mark because I don't remember ever seeing it and he owns it on DVD. 

And that's 1988. I'm going through my handheld arcade collections now to see if there's anything from this year (wiki doesn't have a comprehensive game list before the 90s), and I'm breaking up tracks from Britny Fox's debut album I ripped from a cassette tape years ago for my playlist. I hope I can find those comic books. I want to read them badly.

Toodle pipsy!