PixlBit

Oh baby, yeah, library additions. How much more navel gazing can I do? Well, a lot apparently, and you all have to put up with it, or not. Believe me, I will go if asked. 

TV:

I was hooked on this series from the opening seconds. It utilizes the film noir roots of the character with a lot of darkness and shadow. The angular lines in the animations are very interesting. I believe the design crew also did Samurai Jack later on.

But, I haven't watched all the episodes yet. I started watching this series after I had read Paul Dini's Gotham City Sirens comic series around the early 2000s. I wanted to know the origins of Harley Quinn, and the episode which introduced her was great and made me a fast fan of the clown princess. Further film treatments of her have not continued the type of relationship with Joker described in this episode and the Gotham City Sirens comics. In both, Joker is indiferent to Harley while she is infatuated with him. I think this gives her a relatable depth to her character, but recent films, I think, want her to be invicibly strong and in control. I'm not a fan of that interpretation.

I want this series in my library and can't wait to binge watch everything I haven't seen. 

Film:

I struggled to come up with something I was over-the-top excited about, but this will do. I love the campy horror/action stuff and the nods to Ray Harryhausen in the special effects. It's like a fantasy, horror and action movie all rolled into one. I've been a fan of director Sam Raimi ever since. It's great fun to find things in his films, like his car and his brother in different minor roles. I could watch this any time, any amount of times, and enjoy it. It watches like a video game plays. 

Game:

Ah yeah, the Wolfy. A lot of great games out this year, but I can't avoid the obvious and my introduction to the FPS genre. At the time, I was a half PC, half console gamer. I'd sold my Apple Mac a year before and my friend Mark had gotten some pcs from work. I believe they had Pentium 75mhz processors in them. Can you believe that? Probably my phone puts that to shame now. Anyway, our Pentinum 75s became the place of FPS gaming goodness.

It's amazing how long this series has lasted. It was given over to Raven Software at some point and now Machine Games. There's hasn't been a single bad Wolfenstein game since (correct me if you can think of one). 

Music:

(Excuse me for any inacuracies, I'm going on memory here). This was my entry into all that is They Might Be Giants: their bizarely mundane lyrics, wildly eccentric influences, and no fluff production. It was a strange, sort of compelling, mix that I couldn't ignore even though it put a question mark on my face more often than not. What the "f" is going on on that cover, anyway; and what is the connection to Apollo 18? I want to look it up now. I'm in info-nerd heaven! Anyway, I am now a huge fan of theirs and have nearly all their albums.

I recall a joke made by a Gameinformer writer once that said, "there were more caucasians than at a They Might Be Giants concert." (I forget what the reference was). "Is that true?" I asked myself. I still ask myself that, but have no answer. Maybe the rhythms are less syncopated, more on the nose and the lyrics intellectual, abstract and with witty word play? It's a dangerous road I tread to seek the answer to this one. 

Book:

I could have choosen Michael Critchon's Jurassic Park in 1990 and Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire in 1991 and been seen as a consistent fantasy/scifi reader, but I didn't. I went with science and history instead, but I think I'll redeem myself with picking what was the most cutting edge subject in scifi at the time, cyberpunk, and Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash.

I read this first as an audiobook while I was delivering pizza for a living. My eyes opened wide as in the first chapters the main character, Hero Protagonist, is delivering future pizza in a future vehicle at break neck speed, fleeing cops and smashing through yards to get it there before the time limit ended and he'd have to give the pizza for free. This is directly out of Domino's Pizza's delivery promise of the time, 30 minutes or less or your pizza is free. I thank god I wasn't delivering for them at that time, only much later when the policy was revoked because of a law suit over an accident caused by a speeding delivery person (I wonder when this will happen with Amazon. I've almost been run over by those drivers). So right away I was laughing out loud at the coincidence and pulled into the story. 

Hero becomes a kind of cyber ninja and has sword fights online in the "metaverse". There is a grand conspiracy that he's pulled into and wild times ensue (I can't really remember the rest of the story). Just think, cyberpunk was a thing just as the internet was coming online. Makes sense, doesn't it? Speculative fiction is always just a little ahead of the present; although, I'm still not flying through cyberspace with a ninja sword 28 years later. Come on, already!