PixlBit

Well hello Pixlpeeps! This is a special Saturday edition of Quick Hits because the family is visiting so much of the day is spent hanging out, playing games, and enjoying the company. So because of that here we are and yes I have some things to talk about. Let's get started.

Chris Watches...

WrestleMania 33 – WWE Network

Last week was WrestleMania and yes I watched the entire thing. I believe the kickoff show started at 3:30pm and the last match ended around 9pm, and I never left my seat. Yeah that was a lot of wrestling.

 

The Undertaker retired and since it is kind of a soap opera there was a proposal

 

The best comment was from a guy who said “How could she be engaged to him when she can't see him” (that's his tag line)

Overall it was a good show, there was a couple of slow spots, and the musical performance was not good. Sorry Pitbull fans, but I'm not a fan. Also that was a lot of wrestling to take in, but it had its share of surprises, fireworks, good amount of drama, fireworks, and some familiar faces came back...also a lot of fireworks. It was a little disappointing to not get the Shaq/Big Show match that was kind of teased last year. The next big pay per view is SummerSlam, but in the meantime there are a couple of smaller PPV events in between.

 

Chris Checks Out Art

So there is a valley wide exhibit going on right now of a bunch of installation pieces. Lots of folks are into it, but its not my thing (funny coming from a guy who studied art) but as it turns out one of the pieces was down the street from my house. Originally I thought it was a drug house because who puts a random shack out in the middle of the desert?

 

The shack. It was locked but if you text the name of the piece to a number you are given a code.

 

The little hallway in the shack. Still it looks a bit shady

 

The art piece! No not really but the whole thing runs on solar power.

 

It wasn't charged when I went. I was bummed but I did go grab some breakfast, take it back to the house, ate, read some Twitter, and then went back almost two hours later

 

And that's what the piece looks like. Unlike other folks I didn't stand on it but I did put my foot on it.

 

The marker letting all the touristy artsy folks know where they are at. What you don't see is behind the sign is a burm and one a canal taking some water from the Colorado River to the farmlands. Bonus the San Andreas fault off to the right of the sign.

 

Chris Listens To...

Last week on my quest to listen to everything in my iTunes library I was at 7,161 tracks with zero plays. As of yesterday I am at 6,772 tracks with zero plays. I've also slowed down my listening from the frantic 88 songs a day pace, back down to the manageable 50 tracks a day pace. At 88 it became a chore to listen to and enjoy the music. At 50 I can listen to 25 or more tracks in the morning, and then 25 in the afternoon without feeling that I need to hit some magic number and stressing about it. As dumb as it sounds, that is what it was starting to feel. Now as I type this I am just relaxing listening to my playlist. Anyways I'm still looking at three months before I finish my goal so here's to listening to more music and finding new favorite tracks!

 

Pickups!

Games

From a random trip to GameStop with the cousin I bought

 

because it was on sale for $25 which is $3 less than I had originally pre-ordered it from Amazon. I also bought this random DS game

 

I'm a sucker for football games.

From the Walmart in the same shopping center as GameStop I found the game I put down next to the TVs a month ago. Yep Walmart doesn't clean and it shows

 

The best part is, is that the game dropped an additional $2 down to $14 bucks. Thank you developers who also include a Steam code because there is no way I was going to sit at my laptop and install 9 DVDs worth of content. What was weird was that the original download said 70GB but the total installation was 37GB.

 

A Steam purchase

 

Yeah I don't get how a game originally released on the Wii U can be so buggy. I have more graphics intensive games that run buttery smooth on my laptop yet this one under performs and when anything “taxing” happens the framerate drops. I should have bought this on PS4. I saved $20 bucks but is that really worth the headache?

Final game is a freebie from Amazon/Twitch for being a Prime Member

 

I haven't tried it yet but I did install it.

I bought another fighting game because it was $2.99

 

It's looking like this summer will be me writing a lot about fighting games.

 

Music

From the local mom & pop there was a lack of new material so I focused on the Jazz section

 

Fantcha is apparently from Africa and this was a total blind buy. Turns out I enjoyed her music. Its upbeat, and a lot of fun. I want to check out more of her music. Nina Simone is also another solid buy

 

Bond is a girl group that plays classical music but with a mix of classical with a drum machine. It was good. The Charlie Brown album I was disappointed with. I thought it was going to be something similar to Wynton Marsalis' Joe Cool's Blues, which is a legit jazz album. This is that garbage smooth jazz (think of the crap you hear in outlet stores or trendy jazz radio stations that hipsters would listen to) I like to pride myself on being open to all types of music but I can't stand this stuff.

 

Bee Gees five track EP was solid, and yep the She Drives Me Crazy folks had a remix album. Surprisingly it wasn't bad.

 

All of a sudden in the jazz section there was a ton of Diana Krall stuff and I found an album I didn't own. American Hi-Fi had a single named Flavor of the Week, which is your typical pop punk music of the early 2000s where a guy sings about a girl he likes who likes someone else. I forgot to mention that American Hi-Fi was still sealed. 

From the regular used CD section (this is where they've been hinding all the rap CDs) I added these two albums that were $4 each

 

I had Let It Be...Naked as an old digital album on my old iTunes library. I like it because the last track is 20 minutes of the Beatles trying to figure out how to record a song. I'm not a huge Beatles fan but its cool to listen to what goes into creating a song. Encore isn't my favorite Eminem album but my copy was missing the album (it had the bonus disc) so now I have a complete album.

 

From Amazon

 

Earlier this week I saw that it was the anniversary of Selena's death so I went to listen to my favorite album of hers*

*so back in high school I went to a school where 99% of the folks in school spoke Spanish. I was part of the few who didn't but took Spanish for my foreign language requirement. I was struggling with it, and my friend at the time said to listen to Spanish music so I can get used to listening to the language. Yeah I never understood Spanish but I found an artist I liked.

Apparently somewhere along the way from high school, to now I lost the CD I bought way back when. This is a re-release where at the end of the album there is a 20 minute audio track where her husband, and family talk about the album and what went into the song writing.

Easy-E because I didn't have this album and it filled some holes in my playlist. I do want to get his other stuff including the older copied tapes I used to own as a happy high school kid.

 

Final CD was purchased at Walmart when I was buying my game

 

Can't go wrong with Metallica for $5

This is my current stack of stuff from the past three weeks that I haven't put away yet

 

I'll get around to it, eventually.

Final pickup of the day is back to the local clean Walmart (this has replaced Target for me) where I was picking up cleaning supplies, I hit the bargain bin full of blu-rays and I bought another movie for the iTunes code

 

I've never seen it, but hopefully its good and it comes with a book. The digital codes that the discs come with is pushing me to slowly build a blu-ray library.

Alright Pixlpeeps before the family wakes up I should get going to make some bacon. During the time it took me to write this latest entry and number my pictures I listened to 18 songs Not a bad 52 minutes. Have a good weekend Pixlpeeps!

 

That's all for now, more later!

-Chris

 

For the song of the week I am going with one that was a favorite for elementary school Chris and his first Radio Shack knockoff of a Walkman

 

I didn't have the ability to copy songs off the radio yet, but this was the point when all I would do is listen to the radio and when my favorite song came on, I would listen to it with the volume turned up a bit. My marching band tried playing this song for a parade but eventually ended up on Red Red Wine. Yeah we played pop tunes instead of stuffy marches.