“Of the Month” Archives: 2012

May 2012:

Link of the Month:
Geek and Sundry Geek and Sundry
From the mind of Felicia Day and her geeky friends is a new YouTube channel that produces hilarious and fun original content on a regular basis. My favorites are Felicia’s “Flog” (short for Felicia’s “Vlog,” which is short for Video “Blog,” which is short for “Web Log”), in which the adorable hostess goes out of her comfort zone and tries out some RL skills like blacksmithing and chainsaw ice carving; and Wil Wheaton’s “Tabletop,” which is a half-hour show that is like celebrity poker if the celebrities were all geek icons and the poker were a different type of board/card game every episode. Geek & Sundry is also now the online home of Felicia’s incredibly popular “The Guild.” It’s fun stuff.

Album of the Month:
The Jesus Rehab: Drunken Hillbilly Fight Bar
The first release from The Jesus Rehab’s new, focused, stripped-down (just guitar & drums) configuration, this EP is a rockin’, stompin’ good time. “Carry You” and “Holiday” are my favorites, full of damnably catchy hooks and fist-pumping energy. It’s amazing just how much sound Jared Cortese can get out of his guitar, and Dom Cortese (also of Julia Massey & the Five Finger Discount) is a virtuoso drummer. Be sure to also snag the “No More Tears For Me” single!

Movie of the Month:
The Muppets
My favorite movie of 2011 (though to be fair I still have not seen Hugo or M.I.:Ghost Protocol). You can read my full review here.

[Top]

April 2012:

In Memory

March 2012:

Link of the Month:
TNG Season 8 TNG Season 8
My link of the month is a Twitter account? You best believe! TNG Season 8 posts hypothetical plot synopses from a never-produced season 8 of Star Trek: The Next Generation in 144 characters or less. And they’re absolutely hilarious. They make me bust a danged gut! The formula is (almost) always the same: a first sentence describes the “A” plot, and a second sentence describes the “B” plot of the episode.

Here are a couple of my favorite examples:

But there are more than 90 more where that came from! And best of all you don’t have to have a Twitter account to read them!

Album of the Month:
Busdriver: Beaus$Eros
Pronounced “Bows and Arrows,” west-coast meistro Busdriver’s latest album is all over the place, pulling in insanely varied influences from a huge cross-section of music, yet somehow maintains a cohesive, haunting overall feel. Truly genre defying, Beaus$Eros is not easily classified as a “hip-hop” album. Known for his intense, rapid-fire delivery, Busdriver’s approach here is, well, I don’t wanna say “more relaxed” because the intensity is still there, but there is an ease and comfortability in his cartoon-villain voice, and a lot of straight-up singing. Beaus$Eros has some experimental stuff going on, but it is also highly polished and each song seems planned with utmost care and the voice and the music (brilliantly produced by Loden) meld like they were written for each other, which is often a problem with other experimental hip-hop. Busdriver is part of the same group that also produced Nocando, Open Mike Eagle, and Dumbfoundead. I don’t know what’s in the water down there, but I hope they all keep drinking. This is easily one of the best albums of the last five years.

TV Show of the Month:
Jeeves & Wooster: The Complete Series
If you’ve ever been not quite sure what someone means by a “Comedy of Manners,” you need to watch this series. Starring Stephen Fry & Hugh Laurie as the titular characters, this is a series about a proper (and brilliant) English valet who quietly and subtly uses his manners and influence to protect his wealthy (and dimwitted) employer. It may sound dry, but the episodes tend to spin quickly into wacky, but straight-played farce and ridiculousness. A rich and light and fun series all the way through. I’ve heard bad things about the video transfer, though (I haven’t watched this particular collection myself).

[Top]

February 2012:

Link of the Month:
Don Hertzfeldt's Bitter Films Don Hertzfeldt’s BitterFilms.com
Does the name Don Hertzfeldt sound familiar to you? It probably should. By the time he was 23 he’d already been nominated for an Academy Award and been included in the top 100 most influential animators of all time, and at 33 (just a couple of years ago) he’d won a lifetime achievement award. His deceptively simple stick-figure-animation films are shockingly funny and disturbing and profound. And they’re only available through him personally. I urge you to watch as many of them as you can (or can stomach).

Game of the Month:
Super Mario 3D Land
This 3D Mario game eschews the more open-world, mission-based gameplay of previous 3D Mario games like Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Galaxy. Instead, it takes a simple pose: what if you took the straight-ahead, level-based gameplay of New Super Mario Bros., but made it 3D? The result is a fascinating and very fun.

TV Show of the Month:
Stephen Fry in America
In 2008 Stephen Fry took a tiny, black, British taxi and drove it through all 48 lower states (then flew to Alaska and Hawaii). It is a very charming, witty, dry, and lovely travelogue in six hour-long episodes from the perspective of a very charming, witty, dry, and lovely British gentleman. True, some states get a bit of a short shrift (Ohio and Idaho come instantly to mind), and Florida doesn’t come out so well. But Mr. Fry stops in some delightfully unexpected places as well. In the end it seems a delightful but somehow all too brief visit from our darling neighbor from across the pond.

[Top]

January 2012:

Link of the Month:
SomaFM commercial free internet radio SomaFM
My favorite internet radio website, I’m particularly fond of the “Lush” and “Indie Pop Rocks!” stations. SomaFM is different in that each station actually has a programming director-slash-DJ who personally picks all the songs and when they play; it isn’t just some database of songs put on shuffle. And because the focus is on the indie and the unusual, you’re not going to hear very many of the songs that you’ll hear on real FM radio. I started listening to them because of their excellent Christmas station, and I’ve stayed on for the long haul now. Since it’s user-supported there are no commercial breaks (other than the occasional station ID break). It’s a great way to discover new and exciting musics.

Game of the Month:
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword
Nintendo has their Zelda formula down. Do you like the other Zelda games? Then you will probably like this one. The addition of the Wii Motion Plus makes it so that the fights require more skill than just button mashing; Link’s sword now mimics the Wiimote in your hand. It has a different feel than many of the other games, with a different set of friendly races you encounter and an overworld that consists of (sadly under-utilized) flying mechanics. Several standard Zelda tropes are given interesting spins. Listen, it’s a Zelda game, okay? Play it; you’ll like it.

TV Show of the Month:
Krazy Times With a “K” — The Complete Series
Okay, so the show is actually called NewsRadio, not Krazy Times With a “K” — but one time (back when the show was on the air) Dave Foley was interviewed by Conan O’Brien and they refused to call it anything but Krazy Times With a “K.” Anyhoo, NewsRadio is one of my very favorite 90s sitcoms, with characters who just get legitimately crazier and crazier as the seasons go on until by the end it’s more like a sneak peek inside an hilarious insane asylum than it is a traditional sitcom. I laugh a lot, at Bill’s increasingly nightmarish childhood (“Good times… good times…”) and Dave’s ever-increasing number of bizarre and unpopular skills he used to practice (like tap dancing, knife throwing, and playing Stargate: Defender), and of course Matthew’s masterful physical comedy. Good times… good times…

[Top]

[ "Of the Month" Archives List ]