Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Inside Coen Brothers' Inside Lewyn Davis
I haven't seen every Coen Brothers film but I've seen the big ones: Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, No Country for Old Men, True Grit, and now Inside Lewyn Davis.
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
The Last Generation Games of Personal Significance to Me.
The last generation of consoles (Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii, Sony Playstation 3) for the most part is over. I have no plans to purchase the new systems until the price drops and their libraries fill up with quality games. That is quality games I cannot buy on Steam during one of their sales for 50 percent less than retail price. This continues to become a smaller number as time goes on. If you do a quick google search you can see that most systems don't begin to hit their stride until a year after they come out.
I specifically own a Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii covered in dust but this isn't disparaging in anyway to Playstation 3. A lot of great games came out exclusively for the PS3 and some of the games on this list are also on that system but I never wanted to buy one. The Xbox 360 got me back into gaming that I had shied from in the early years of high school replacing it with a love of music, not realizing I could do both. An ex-girlfriend specifically got me back into gaming when she had me try Dead Rising, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Gears of War at her house. In 2007 I had only dated one other gamer five years before with all the exes in between either dismissing video games as childish or irritated that it took time away from spending with them. So when the assistant manager at my job was selling a barely used Xbox 360 I took it as an opportunity to buy one so we may share in something we both enjoyed doing. Unfortunately the relationship didn't last long enough to see that happen but that fall line-up of games for the 360 got me back into gaming at full throttle with the likes of Halo 3, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and The Orange Box.
The number of games I bought for the Xbox 360 matched the amount I had as a kid for Super Nintendo Entertainment System and doubled what I had for Nintendo 64 and Nintendo GameCube combined. These are the five that had the biggest impact on me. Impact is a bit vague as there is not set criteria in how I am judging these games. When I chose these five I'm thinking of the time I spent playing them, the world that the developers built and the stories and characters created and developed within that world. Two of these are a series of games. Be warned, there will be spoilers.
5. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
I wonder how many people besides me played Fallout 3 before Oblivion? As previously started, I first tried this game on my ex-girlfriend's Xbox 360 to which I wasted most of the time creating the ugliest character I could and then remember none of what I did when I actually bought the game two years later. I think she was frustrated I wasn't taking it as seriously as I should. She had hours into her saves on that game and I couldn't figure out what the big deal was. I would soon have saves with similar amount of hours. To go from the bleak landscape of the post-nuclear apocalypse to the lush lands of Cyrodiil was quite the change, a welcome one. This game was beautiful but insanely difficult for me compared to Fallout 3, mostly because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't even know you were supposed to repair your items until I had almost completed the game. I would end up saving before almost any encounter with an enemy because I was constantly being killed, needing to load my last save and try some other strategy. Most of those strategies involved running away to fight a lesser creature so I could level up. Navigating through the gates of Oblivion was a constant test of my skill and every quest I completed was done with little health left. While a lot of the faces were goofy looking in hindsight I still look back at this game with fond nostalgia.
4. Portal & Portal 2.
Games have tried before to be funny, mostly the hack kind of funny with jokes you expect a comedian from the 80's to make in front of a brick wall and then never to be seen again. Where Portal and its sequel succeed in not only being a hilarious video game by video game standards but other standards of comedy. That's great but this is a video game, what about the actual gameplay? The first person puzzle mechanic using a gun that creates portals takes baby steps from teaching you how to get to the exit then steps it up with teaching you how to use velocity to complete the puzzle. All of this is framed by the science fiction setting of a futuristic research facility in which you are the guinea pig in experiments by the psychopathic A.I. computer that makes quips and insults about your weight. Throw in your badass but silent female protagonist and you have a game that used all of its aspects to its full potential where other games couldn't even get one correct often sacrificing one for the other.
3. The Mass Effect series.
I'll get this out of the way now, I didn't hate the ending nor did I really love it. I thought it was wrong for them to change the ending due to fan backlash and I was well aware that my choices ultimately would not matter. It was BioWare's story to tell, not mine. What made Mass Effect so fun was the illusion of choice. There's only two other games on this list I played more than Mass Effect 2 and they fill the first and second position. I loved my customized Commander Shepard who thanks to EA's code they give you was able to tweak in the second game to fit the upgrade appearance. I loved the cast of characters (except Ashley due to her speciesism) they gave you and how you gained their friendship by talking to them, each with their own personal quirks, failures and personalities.
How will the series be looked at in the future? Will it be considering the original Star Wars trilogy of games or just another trilogy that introduced the trend of moral choices in games? What I do know is that the difference choices, however much they mattered to the overall story, were fun enough to keep me playing the game repeatedly, well, almost. While I repeatedly played and beat the first and second the third game felt so final that I have never played it again after beating. I haven't touched the downloadable content nor have I taking the varying paths possible that I could of. The third game wrapped up all the storylines so thoroughly for me that I do not know if I'll ever play it again. It was only after writing this that I realized I had lent my copy to one of best friends who had played the series through with me and that almost two years after it came out he still has my copy of it.
2. Red Dead Redemption
What the Grand Theft Auto series has always lacked since Grand Theft Auto 3 has been any heart to it's story with characters that you care about. Niko Belic's arc within Grand Theft Auto 4 came close but was just out of reach. So Rockstar Games is left asking the question of how can they create a realistic world with unrealistic high levels of violence with a well written story with fleshed out characters. There was no other choice but to make a western where protagonist John Marston struggles against the wilderness, the changing world and his past as an outlaw. Along with the story, the setting is perfect for gameplay, you shoot people, you hunt, you ride on horseback, bring in bounties, play card games and if you want, hogtie a woman and put her on the train tracks. All the while through blood and violence you develop a attachment to John Marston's stoic man-of-few-words personality only to get your heart broken at the end.
What Red Dead Redemption gets right is themes of westerns that no other Wild West game has gotten right before while keeping the create chaotic violence nature of the Grand Theft Auto series with cowboys and horses instead of mobsters and cars. It has the revenge story, the ranch story, the outlaw story and the marshall story all within one game. When you play this game you have fun but also get told a story worthy of the great Westerns of cinema. When they made this game you can feel Rockstar wasn't afraid to escape the tropes they were known for, with unexpected quiet moments along with the loud blood rushing moments. It's a shame this game has never come to PC dooming it to the die with the previous generations of systems.
1. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Skyrim is not perfect. The quests can become repetitive at times, there was many bugs, and you have to create your own exceptional loot rather than finding unique ones that you found in Oblivion. What kept me coming back to Skyrim and logging in over 200 hours on just my Xbox 360 copy alone was I never had to play the same way twice. I could be a Breton battlemage, wielding a sword in one hand and a fireball in the other completely aligned with the Stormcloaks but secretly head of the Dark Brotherhood. I could be an Orc dual-wielding axes who can turn into a werewolf completely taking out any person who gets in my way. I could be a High Elf mage, earning my way to head of the Mages' College while fighting the forces of the dragon Alduin. All of this plus there was no set path, once I went one way I didn't have to stay on that path I could just explore the wide and beautiful world of Skyrim that Bethesda has created. There is something very satisfying in earning the skills in whatever particular abilities your using, hearing that sound effect as you watch the blue bar increase towards your next level.
I think satisfying is the word that keeps me coming back to the game. Video games are pure escapism mixed with the illusion of achievement and Skyrim satisfies that in me more than most other games. It's a fantasy world filled with sword and sorcery which I am drawn to with mixes of humor, violence, the hero's journey, the byronic hero and the grand scale storytelling mixed with this system of achievement that satisfies my brain. It's so satisfying when you successfully sneak up on someone with a dagger, when you lockpick that chest with only one lockpick left in your inventory, when you get that slow motion scene of the arrow going into the giant finishing off his last bit of health, and when you successfully defeated a draugr deathlord when you're horrible outmatched simply by using the right dragon shout to delay him in order to heal. Other games have come and gone but Skyrim for me holds the most replay value for a game that I have played so far. Here's to hoping I won't be waiting long for Elder Scrolls VI.
Runners up: Street Fighter IV, Alan Wake, Batman: Arkham series and Bioshock.
This was written with the help of The Video Game Style Guide and Reference Manual by David Thoms, Kyle Orland and Scott Steinberg and the AP Style Handbook 2013
I specifically own a Xbox 360 and a Nintendo Wii covered in dust but this isn't disparaging in anyway to Playstation 3. A lot of great games came out exclusively for the PS3 and some of the games on this list are also on that system but I never wanted to buy one. The Xbox 360 got me back into gaming that I had shied from in the early years of high school replacing it with a love of music, not realizing I could do both. An ex-girlfriend specifically got me back into gaming when she had me try Dead Rising, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Gears of War at her house. In 2007 I had only dated one other gamer five years before with all the exes in between either dismissing video games as childish or irritated that it took time away from spending with them. So when the assistant manager at my job was selling a barely used Xbox 360 I took it as an opportunity to buy one so we may share in something we both enjoyed doing. Unfortunately the relationship didn't last long enough to see that happen but that fall line-up of games for the 360 got me back into gaming at full throttle with the likes of Halo 3, Bioshock, Mass Effect, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and The Orange Box.
The number of games I bought for the Xbox 360 matched the amount I had as a kid for Super Nintendo Entertainment System and doubled what I had for Nintendo 64 and Nintendo GameCube combined. These are the five that had the biggest impact on me. Impact is a bit vague as there is not set criteria in how I am judging these games. When I chose these five I'm thinking of the time I spent playing them, the world that the developers built and the stories and characters created and developed within that world. Two of these are a series of games. Be warned, there will be spoilers.
5. Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
I wonder how many people besides me played Fallout 3 before Oblivion? As previously started, I first tried this game on my ex-girlfriend's Xbox 360 to which I wasted most of the time creating the ugliest character I could and then remember none of what I did when I actually bought the game two years later. I think she was frustrated I wasn't taking it as seriously as I should. She had hours into her saves on that game and I couldn't figure out what the big deal was. I would soon have saves with similar amount of hours. To go from the bleak landscape of the post-nuclear apocalypse to the lush lands of Cyrodiil was quite the change, a welcome one. This game was beautiful but insanely difficult for me compared to Fallout 3, mostly because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't even know you were supposed to repair your items until I had almost completed the game. I would end up saving before almost any encounter with an enemy because I was constantly being killed, needing to load my last save and try some other strategy. Most of those strategies involved running away to fight a lesser creature so I could level up. Navigating through the gates of Oblivion was a constant test of my skill and every quest I completed was done with little health left. While a lot of the faces were goofy looking in hindsight I still look back at this game with fond nostalgia.
4. Portal & Portal 2.
Games have tried before to be funny, mostly the hack kind of funny with jokes you expect a comedian from the 80's to make in front of a brick wall and then never to be seen again. Where Portal and its sequel succeed in not only being a hilarious video game by video game standards but other standards of comedy. That's great but this is a video game, what about the actual gameplay? The first person puzzle mechanic using a gun that creates portals takes baby steps from teaching you how to get to the exit then steps it up with teaching you how to use velocity to complete the puzzle. All of this is framed by the science fiction setting of a futuristic research facility in which you are the guinea pig in experiments by the psychopathic A.I. computer that makes quips and insults about your weight. Throw in your badass but silent female protagonist and you have a game that used all of its aspects to its full potential where other games couldn't even get one correct often sacrificing one for the other.
3. The Mass Effect series.
I'll get this out of the way now, I didn't hate the ending nor did I really love it. I thought it was wrong for them to change the ending due to fan backlash and I was well aware that my choices ultimately would not matter. It was BioWare's story to tell, not mine. What made Mass Effect so fun was the illusion of choice. There's only two other games on this list I played more than Mass Effect 2 and they fill the first and second position. I loved my customized Commander Shepard who thanks to EA's code they give you was able to tweak in the second game to fit the upgrade appearance. I loved the cast of characters (except Ashley due to her speciesism) they gave you and how you gained their friendship by talking to them, each with their own personal quirks, failures and personalities.
How will the series be looked at in the future? Will it be considering the original Star Wars trilogy of games or just another trilogy that introduced the trend of moral choices in games? What I do know is that the difference choices, however much they mattered to the overall story, were fun enough to keep me playing the game repeatedly, well, almost. While I repeatedly played and beat the first and second the third game felt so final that I have never played it again after beating. I haven't touched the downloadable content nor have I taking the varying paths possible that I could of. The third game wrapped up all the storylines so thoroughly for me that I do not know if I'll ever play it again. It was only after writing this that I realized I had lent my copy to one of best friends who had played the series through with me and that almost two years after it came out he still has my copy of it.
2. Red Dead Redemption
What the Grand Theft Auto series has always lacked since Grand Theft Auto 3 has been any heart to it's story with characters that you care about. Niko Belic's arc within Grand Theft Auto 4 came close but was just out of reach. So Rockstar Games is left asking the question of how can they create a realistic world with unrealistic high levels of violence with a well written story with fleshed out characters. There was no other choice but to make a western where protagonist John Marston struggles against the wilderness, the changing world and his past as an outlaw. Along with the story, the setting is perfect for gameplay, you shoot people, you hunt, you ride on horseback, bring in bounties, play card games and if you want, hogtie a woman and put her on the train tracks. All the while through blood and violence you develop a attachment to John Marston's stoic man-of-few-words personality only to get your heart broken at the end.
What Red Dead Redemption gets right is themes of westerns that no other Wild West game has gotten right before while keeping the create chaotic violence nature of the Grand Theft Auto series with cowboys and horses instead of mobsters and cars. It has the revenge story, the ranch story, the outlaw story and the marshall story all within one game. When you play this game you have fun but also get told a story worthy of the great Westerns of cinema. When they made this game you can feel Rockstar wasn't afraid to escape the tropes they were known for, with unexpected quiet moments along with the loud blood rushing moments. It's a shame this game has never come to PC dooming it to the die with the previous generations of systems.
1. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Skyrim is not perfect. The quests can become repetitive at times, there was many bugs, and you have to create your own exceptional loot rather than finding unique ones that you found in Oblivion. What kept me coming back to Skyrim and logging in over 200 hours on just my Xbox 360 copy alone was I never had to play the same way twice. I could be a Breton battlemage, wielding a sword in one hand and a fireball in the other completely aligned with the Stormcloaks but secretly head of the Dark Brotherhood. I could be an Orc dual-wielding axes who can turn into a werewolf completely taking out any person who gets in my way. I could be a High Elf mage, earning my way to head of the Mages' College while fighting the forces of the dragon Alduin. All of this plus there was no set path, once I went one way I didn't have to stay on that path I could just explore the wide and beautiful world of Skyrim that Bethesda has created. There is something very satisfying in earning the skills in whatever particular abilities your using, hearing that sound effect as you watch the blue bar increase towards your next level.
I think satisfying is the word that keeps me coming back to the game. Video games are pure escapism mixed with the illusion of achievement and Skyrim satisfies that in me more than most other games. It's a fantasy world filled with sword and sorcery which I am drawn to with mixes of humor, violence, the hero's journey, the byronic hero and the grand scale storytelling mixed with this system of achievement that satisfies my brain. It's so satisfying when you successfully sneak up on someone with a dagger, when you lockpick that chest with only one lockpick left in your inventory, when you get that slow motion scene of the arrow going into the giant finishing off his last bit of health, and when you successfully defeated a draugr deathlord when you're horrible outmatched simply by using the right dragon shout to delay him in order to heal. Other games have come and gone but Skyrim for me holds the most replay value for a game that I have played so far. Here's to hoping I won't be waiting long for Elder Scrolls VI.
Runners up: Street Fighter IV, Alan Wake, Batman: Arkham series and Bioshock.
This was written with the help of The Video Game Style Guide and Reference Manual by David Thoms, Kyle Orland and Scott Steinberg and the AP Style Handbook 2013
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Dear 2014: Make me care about movies again.
BREAKING - A 28-year-old man in Lake Ronkonkoma finds films in 2013 unmemorable, says local 28-year-old man.
Right now, Groundhog Day (1993) is playing next to me and it reminded me of all of these best of lists sites compose before the new year and my list of films fall short. Besides The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, I cannot think of movie from 2013 that I either want to see or want to rewatch. I love movies, I really do. I minored in film, more on the writing side than the producing kind and so my hope for 2014 is that there will be films that make me care again.
Maybe the issue is me. I mean people change, yes? Here's a list of movies from last year I thought I would care about, that I'd be dying to see. In fact, a lot of these movies I am pretty sure I saw the trailers for in 2012 or early 2013 and thought hey, I should go see that.
- Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues
- Elysium
- Man of Steel
- Kick-Ass 2
- The Great Gatsby
- The Wolverine (maybe...)
- Iron Man 3
- World War Z
- Oldboy
The biggest disappointment though was Edgar Wright's The World's End. I had so much hope for this movie, as Hot Fuzz is up there with one of my most watched and favorite movies of all time. So when Edgar Wright promises this film was Shaun of the Dead x Hot Fuzz I had high hopes for what I thought would be another British comedy exploring science fiction survival genre the way the other explored the zombie and buddy cop genre. The movie starts off slow, with Simon Pegg's narration from his unlikeable character. Shaun was a loser that made us laugh. Gary King is a loser who never moved on after high school and that's somehow supposed to be tragic. What actually happens is he comes off as annoying and unsympathetic. That's not what makes the movie a disappointment to me.
What was the biggest disappointment is that it barely made me laugh, barely. Maybe three audible laughs compared to the holding my chest in laughter pain that both Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead gave me. Spoilers for the three funny parts, when Nick Frost's character Andy yells "I hate this town!", when Andy finally gets drunk and just walks through the glass window, and the fight scene in which Simon Pegg's character consistently keeps getting interrupted from drinking his beer. Everything else comes off as rushed and sloppy, the romantic tension, the disappearance of Martin Freeman's character, the chase through the forest, the big reveal about the town, and Gary King's emotional reveal towards the end. All of this topped off with the big climactic moment with the "villains" and the ending that I wish I could forget. I will give this movie two complements.
- All of the choreography for the fight scenes were very well done and very well entertaining.
- After mostly playing the funny man to Simon Pegg's straight man, Frost was great in this film as the straight man. Easily the only character in the film that was memorable, likeable and funny.
However, I didn't write this blog entry to mostly slam The World's End but to look towards the film of 2014 and hope they'll get me to buy a ticket. Looking at Most Popular Feature Films (to be) Released In 2014 these are the movies I am most hopeful about.
- The Amazing Spider-Man 2
- X-Men: Days of Future Past
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- How to Train Your Dragon 2
- Godzilla
- Captain America: The Winter Soldier
- Muppets Most Wanted
- Winter's Tale
- Her (getting a wide release this year)
- Interstellar
Mostly big pop-culture films, which I thought I wanted to see in 2013 so who knows what I'll end up actually seeing. My early prediction: either Her will be my favorite movie of the year or another movie I will hear about later will take it. I believe Guardians of the Galaxy will be a surprisingly good movie despite many people not recognizing the characters. The last thing I will say about 2013 is I still have not seen Inside Llewyn Davis and I cannot recall ever being disappointed with a Coen brothers movie. I obviously did not list The Hobbit: There and Back Again because I even enjoyed the first film, which most people disliked immensely so I believe liking the third one is probably a given. Here's hoping the films of 2014 make me care about new movies where 2013 failed.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
A Year in Books 2013.
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The Well of Ascension (Mistborn, #2) by Brandon Sanderson
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
A Feast for Crows (A Song of Ice and Fire, #4) by George R.R. Martin
Gun Machine by Warren Ellis
The Iceman Cometh by Eugene O'Neill
Long Day's Journey Into Night by Eugene O'Neill
Embassytown by China Mieville
Spun & Bite: A Writer's Guide to Bold Contemporary Style by Arthur Plotnik
A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams
The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
The Valley of Fear by Arthur Conan Doyle
Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit by Corey Olsen
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks
Make Good Art by Neil Gaiman
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling
A Dance with Dragons (A Song of Ice and Fire, #5) by George R.R. Martin
The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman
The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch
The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss
The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers by Christopher Vogler
The Odyssey by Homer
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R Tolkien
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
Aloha from Hell (Sandman Slim #3)
Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic by Henri Bergson
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
Menaechmi by Plautus
Tartuffe by Moliere
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare
Red Seas Under Red Skies (Gentleman Bastard, #2) by Scott Lynch
The Republic of Thieves (Gentlemen Bastard, #3) by Scott Lynch
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them by Howard Mittlemark
This list doesn't include the forty-two sources for my senior thesis. The largest disappointing read began in the beginning of the year with The Well of Ascension and The Magicians with both books leaving me hating the main characters by the time I finished them and have yet to pick up the follow ups. The biggest surprise was A Feast for Crows, which is notoriously hated by fans of George R.R. Martin for focusing on new or minor point of view characters but I still felt it was a strong book with events that'll be important for the final two books.
Easily the best reads I had this year, as far as new books I've read was Scott Lynch's Gentlemen Bastard series starting with The Lies of Locke Lamora. A lot of modernist plays in my reading list this year, which I find myself loving despite disliking a lot of modernist poetry and novels.My rereads this year, The Lord of the Rings and The Name of the Wind continue to maintain their place as two of my favorite books, while Neil Gaiman's new novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane did not disappoint despite it's short length.
Despite my love for Warren Ellis's writing, Gun Machine was your typical detective mystery in stark contrast to his previous novel Crooked Little Vein which I think I will reread this year. Discovering his podcast late last year, I had to pick up The Tolkien Professor, Corey Olsen's book Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit which made me appreciate the children's book a lot more. Embassytown by China Mieville is in my opinion his best book, exploring an alien race and language in a way I haven't read in science fiction yet, though I know he isn't the first to do so. Meanwhile, with the passing of Iain Banks I had to read two of his novels this year. The first one, his second Culture novel The Player of Games has easily become one of my favorite science fiction novels while The Wasp Factory was a disturbing look at rituals that I never would of thought of.
Of all the writing books I've read this year I thought The Writer's Journey would of come out as the best but with a second half that drags How Not to Write a Novel's brevity as well as it's hilarious way of showing bad writing made it the top writing book for me of 2013. I don't have much to say about the Harry Potter series, I like the books as I read them and they are indeed fun books to read but that's about where it ends for me, and To Kill a Mockingbird I don't really need to comment on that always has been written before. The book and Atticus continue to be amazing. That was my 2013 in books.
For 2014 in books I hope there books from my favorite authors are announced, to reread J.R.R Tolkien's The Silmarillion, and to read ten more books than I've read in 2013.
Wednesday, December 18, 2013
Jackson's The Desolation of Smaug expands Tolkien's The Hobbit for Film
The director of The Hobbit film trilogy expands the film version of Middle-Earth for it's second outing. While some have called turning the children's novel into a three part film a stretch, Jackson manages to flush out the Tolkien's world and characters. In the second part of the film trilogy Jackson continues to do without the slow pace some critics complained about in An Unexpected Journey.
Tuesday, November 19, 2013
Did I just...? A story about getting hit by car.
This is story based on a true one that my friend Chris and I went through a year ago today. Obviously writing a story in hindsight will be slightly exaggerated especially considering the events. However, this story is based upon what I immediately wrote down upon arriving at the hospital which I wanted to do to preserve everything that I had remember about the accident. This is the story from my perspective about how we were hit by a car.
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Spoiled by Digital Music While Traveling
I don't listen to the radio. I haven't for years. I got my driver's license in spring of '03 and my car stereo with a CD player that Christmas.
Then in '06 my family surprised me with an iPod nano and I quickly looked for a way to get it working in my car. By the time I bought one of those receivers that plugs into the cigarette lighter I had dropped the iPod nano at school, essentially breaking it.
Come April '06 I managed to scrap the money together to buy an iPod Video, an iPod would have until it finally crashed and burned in April of 2012.
In January of 2011 my car was destroyed in a car accident. The car I was given and still drive was not as good as the car I had owned but it had one advantage over my former car. It had a line in. No longer was I bound by shoddy radio signal to pick up my iPod on it nor was I bound by the eighty minute limit of CD's.
In April of 2012 that iPod Video finally stopped working. I went on to replace that with an iPod classic and then replaced my Droid X with an iPhone 4S. In hindsight, I should of replaced my iPod Video with a larger iPhone instead of buying a smaller iPhone 4S and an iPod Classic. I honestly did not think I would love my iPhone as much as I do now.
This brings us to last week when we discovered my car had a leak of brake fluid and I had to use my father's car to get around. He had a audiobook in his stereo in the exact spot he left off so I did not want to remove the CD. Instead I pressed the function button to the radio.
I want to make this clear. Yes, I've heard the radio in other people's cars but in the time since I owned a car, a car stereo, an iPod, and a smart phone I never turn the radio on.
I also want to make it clear, I'm not stupid, I know how a radio works. I didn't look at this machine and I think "How do I work this device?" like a luddite. I had in fact, been in the passenger seat for years trying to wrestle control over the radio from my father just as my sister did before me.
Also, we're talking about analog radio not any kind of satellite radio. So when I turned the radio on, searching the station for something to listen to I was blown away how terrible it was.
They just play the same songs over and over again, I thought. Why would anyone choose to listen to the radio when they could play music of their own choosing on so many devices. Don't even get me started about the quality. I was better off turning off the radio and just placing my iPhone in a cupholder playing music.
I did just that. Which led me to conclusions that I've been spoiled by digital music. Sure, some people have even better car stereo that have USB slot to plug their devices in but there are probably still people driving around listening to analog radio.
I'm sure too, that there are great radio stations out there in areas with great reception but it's not anywhere I live. Some people wanting to hear the same songs over and over again, browsing the stations for their favorite songs. Sometimes too many choices, which digital music can give you, is overwhelming so why not let someone else be in control?
Think about it. iTunes, Last.FM, Pandora, Amazon... I'm sure there are others I can't think of right now. For someone like my mother, who has difficulty with technology that can be mindblowing. Turning on the radio? Simple, hasn't changed in years. I, however, like a choice and quality music while I drive. The Radio is not for me.
Don't even get me started with talk radio. Google "top" or "best" with "podcasts" and tell me to listened to talk radio. I'm covered.
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