PixlBit

Happy Friday Pixlpeeps! I’m currently sitting indoors because it is windy and I kind of feel bad for the kids coming in for Coachella who are going to sleep in tents. Have fun with that. Because of the sudden influx of music fans I will stay off the roads and hang out at home this weekend, possibly catch up on Netflix or just take naps. Anyways so how are you good people?  All ready for the weekend? I originally had some plans for a day trip but it fell through so I might try it again next weekend. We shall see. Anyways let’s get started with Quick Hits!

 

Chris Watches…

Billions – Showtime

 

The season finale happened last weekend I think it ended strong with the exception of the weird whisper argument at the end. Seriously why does Giamatti always whisper? I’m also beginning to think his character is slimier than Axe. Next season should be really good especially with the dynamic between Giamatti’s Chuck Rhoades and Maggie Siff’s Wendy Rhoades. I also think there needs to be more of the “Dollar” Bill character especially after his “I’m Keyser Soze, motherf***r” line.

 

Girls – HBO

I think the season finale is going to be a two part episode, but I thought most of the storylines ended well with this past weekend’s episode. Hannah found a new level of annoying, Marnie and Sosh are still lost, and Adam and Jessa had a fight because Jessa has resentment towards Adam’s relationship with Hannah. Once again the most interesting characters on this show, is Adam, and Ray. The quirky guys seem to have their priorities in order but still like the chaos that the other characters bring into their life.

 

As for other shows, I stopped watching Green Batman, I’m slowly taking in Season 2 of Daredevil, and at some point I will get back into Jessica Jones. I also need to catch up on WWE’s NXT. I haven’t seen the last two episodes.

 

Chris Listens To…

This past week I was in full music mode. I ordered some stuff on Amazon while waiting for my food at a restaurant (that Amazon app is dangerous), and I found some really good stuff in a restocked $4.99-9.99 section at Barnes & Noble (also a dangerous area).

I think it was Sunday night when I noticed on Slickdeals Amazon was giving away a bunch of different albums, kind of like when they released a bunch of Playlist: The Best Of CDs for free. I figured why not download them and add them to the collection. After a couple of hours it ended and most likely it was probably a glitch. I added 103 albums to the library

 

I owned a couple of them in physical format so it was nice to have a backup in the Amazon Cloud. Because of this sudden injection of new music into my library my unheard track list jumped and I am currently at

 

Compared to last week when I was at 11,356 unheard tracks. When I was adding this new music I went ahead and added the stuff I found on my external hard drive. It was about maybe over 200 tracks of mixtapes, mainly Wu-Tang Clan stuff. There was also a couple of tracks of mashup singles, and one track of Adam Carolla’s lecture at USC from 2012. I’ve listened to some of the mixtapes, I’ll listen to Carolla during a long car ride, and I currently have my Amazon playlist playing while I’m typing this blog. I’m currently on Aerosmith’s album, Draw The Line.

In other audio news, I’ve slimmed down my podcast list by dropping Live Audio Wrestling. At first it was nice to listen to their recap of Raw and Smackdown, but I became annoyed with the fact that I had to skip 15 minutes into the podcast to actually get worthwhile content instead of some forced banter. Their spot will be replaced with a soon to be named podcast from the Bill Simmons stable of podcasts.

 

Chris Goes Local Tourist Again

A couple of days ago I decided to check out the local Air Museum. The last time I was there it was for a summer school course at the local JC on digital photography. One of the docents was awesome. He saw my Deshaun Foster UCLA jersey, looked at this girl in my class and said she should talk to him (points at me) because he has good taste. Back to present day, I was back and this time I brought my swanky camera and it was time to take some pictures. The Air Museum grew and there was a lot more to check out than before.

 

One of my favorite planes of all time is the P-51 Mustang. It is such a cool looking aircraft because it would be a sports car of airplanes. I went back to this plane a couple of times just to look at it.

The next plane had its own hanger because it was huge but it is also an awesome and a big part of World War II, the B-17 Flying Fortress

 

For $5 you can take a tour of inside the Flying Fortress. The docent said the money goes to the upkeep of this plane because they still fly it for holidays and special events. It is insane how cramped the interior of this plane is.

This is the control panel in the cockpit.

 

This is the view from the radio guy’s seat next to the bottom of the ball turret under the plane looking past the bomb area into the cockpit. The docent inside the plane told us that if bombs got stuck it was up to one of the guys to unhook from their heater and oxygen, grab an oxygen tank walk onto the catwalk and kick the bomb. He also wore a parachute just in case.

My important question was where was the bathroom? I was told it was at the tail of the plane and it was a chemical toilet. Also the rule was whoever used it has to clean it.

Tons of respect to the men who flew in these airplanes. 

I didn’t know the name of this plane and I forgot to write it down, but here is a picture of its nose art

 

Here are some of the planes that live outside of the hangers

F-84 Thunderstreak. I believe that this was the second plane used by the Air Force Thunderbirds.

 

 

F-4 Phantom II. This plane is one of the first model kits I ever built and it was used by both the Blue Angels and The Thunderbirds at the same time.

 

The final image is from the front of the museum where they have a couple of jets on display. Everyone remembers this one, and the song You’ve Lost That Love And Feeling

 

On the way out we were talking to the docent who sold us our tickets, and we were talking about how we were coming back because I loved taking pictures of the airplanes. He handed me one of his guest passes. Awesome guy!

 

Pickups!

Games

Speaking of dangerous apps, Steam is up there. During a random sale one of the games on my wishlist was on sale so I checked it out, and it was bundled with a couple of other games. I also found another game that looked interesting and added it to my cart

 

I got four games for a total of $1.84. Freaking insane! My current favorite is Office Battle.

 

From the midweek sale I bought this bundle

 

I think I own the digital version of Darksiders on PS3, but never got far in the game. I figured both games along with a soundtrack and comic for $5 from my Steam credit isn’t bad. I started playing a bit of the original and it runs so smooth on Steam.

 

Music

The mom & pop shop was a bust during my last visit but Barnes & Noble was full of win.

 

I finally have a copy of Midnight Marauders and The Best of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

 

Astrud Gilberto’s Finest Hour. I found out about her husband through a Stan Getz album, and then I found out she sang on The Girl From Ipanema, and decided to give her solo stuff a listen. This was the first album I listened to and I loved it. I’m going to buy more of her albums.

 

From Amazon I picked up

 

Albums that remind me of college. I bought the Richie Rich single Let’s Ride my freshman year of college when I used to take walking trips to the local Warehouse Music. I never bought the album and now I found a new copy. Atomic Kitten is for their version of the Bangles Eternal Flame. I believe I found out about that song through a random website in college where you could download the “hottest” tracks. Thanks Dorm Cable Internet!

The last album I bought while waiting for my food at a restaurant

 

This one came with Amazon’s Instarip or whatever they call their free digital version of the album so I didn’t need to rip this once it came in.

 

Alright Pixlpeeps I am off. Have a good weekend!

That’s all for now, more later!

-Chris

 

For this week’s song of the week I decided to share the three songs. Two of them are the reason I bought the albums and one because it’s a song I found on an album that I really like. Have a good weekend!