Album Review : The Books – The Way Out

The Books - The Way Out was released on July 20th, 2010

Music is an intensely personal thing.  Each of us have wildly different reactions to the rhythms, words, and beats that someone else put together for us.  Sometimes we hear a song that connects with us, electrifies us, inspires us and we rush out to inform others that we’ve stumbled across the next great band.  Sometimes they agree, while other times we’re greeted with confused grimaces before our friends tell us they hate it.  It’s a mystery why one person can be entranced by a certain band and another person, similar to the first in a million ways, finds the music awful.  This is what I’m thinking about as I present you with my next musical offering: The Books – The Way Out.

The Books are an electronic/funk/folk/noise-pop/other-ill-fitting-labels duo from New York City that started working together in 1999.  The idea was simple, to utilize random vocal samples from various sources and incorporate them into synthesized beats.  The execution of that simple idea stradles the fine line between genius and madness, and I willingly give myself over to their insanity.  This band is one of the most exciting discoveries I’ve made in months.

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Miller-Coors Fakes Being Craft Brewed

Two bad tastes that taste bad together

There aren’t many companies in the big leagues of the beer game in the United States.  Truth be told, after the recent mergers there are only two major players in the game today: Anheuser-Busch InBev and Miller Coors.  Those two companies make up more then 80% of the beer sold in the USA.  You might think that’s enough for them, but they wouldn’t agree.  They want a piece of the Craft Brewer’s pie too!

The cold hard truth is that Americans are starting to pay attention to their taste buds, and they’re throwing their “Buds” in the trash.  The first half of this year, the big beer business was down 2.7% in sales while the independent market grew by 9%.  There is no way the mighty corporations would stand for this.  You might expect them to begin a smear campaign against independent breweries (like claiming the quality standards are bad) or running ads depicting people frowning as they drink “bitter” beers, but they haven’t gone down that road – yet.  Instead, they are doing something a bit more devious.  They’re pretending to be independent.

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Review: Monday Night Combat

First off, an introduction is needed. I’m Brent aka “Jambi Bum”. I’ll be your resident game reviewer here at TS, along with random comic book reviewer every now and then. When I do my reviews,  I give a rundown of how the game works and whether or not I think it is worth a purchase. Simple enough right? Now to the bacon of this post.

One of the MNC Arenas

Monday Night Combat is the newest installment in Microsoft’s Summer of Arcade lineup. There are two different game modes in MNC, Blitz and Crossfire. Blitz is the co operative mode that is a mix of tower defense and Horde mode. The point is to defend your “moneyball” against waves of AI robots. You have six classes to choose from; Assassin, Gunner, Tank, Support, Sniper, Assault. For the Blitz mode I would recommend Support, Gunner, and Assault. Although the lower tiers of the mode can be done with just about any class. You can set up turrets which are strategically placed around the map in key choke points as well.  Blitz is a fun mode but the core of MNC lies with Crossfire.

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Star Wars Blu-Ray 2011

George Lucas announced, while being interviewed by Jon Stewart of The Daily Show, that they will be releasing all six Star Wars films on Blu-Ray next year.Read More

Netflix Instant’s New Partner

Netflix just finalized a deal with Paramount, MGM, and LionsgateRead More

Preview : Borderlands 4th DLC

Today, August 11th, 2K Games announced the 4th DLC for my beloved Borderlands!Read More

Trailer : Centurion

Centurion is about a group of Roman soldiers that are hiding behind enemy lines after their squad is decimated by a barbarian attack.Read More

Courtney Proves She’s Horrible

A New Meaning For "Turtle Head"

Like it or not, more then Kurt Cobain’s legacy is being controlled by the drug addled walking train wreck known as Courtney Love.  Their daughter, Francis Bean, who is turning 18 on August 15th, has been scarred by this woman even more then her singing scarred us.

Last December, a restraining order was placed on Courtney to keep her away from her daughter – a good sign that Francis might be trying to maintain her sanity – but Courtney is doing everything she can to damage the 17 year old anyhow.  Courtney recently warned that she fears Francis will kill herself with drugs!  That’s a pretty strong thing to say.  What sort of proof does Courtney cite in this warning?  None.  She simply says that since Francis has so much money, it’s obvious she’s going to start doing enough drugs to kill herself.

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The Ultimate BMDD – Battlefield Earth

On September 1st the BMDD Gods have deemed us worthy of the greatest bad movie ever made.  Battlefield Earth will become available to Instant Watch on Netflix.

I have seen an unreasonable number of bad movies in my time.  Yet there is one that is so gleefully horrid that the first time I saw it, I sat in awe of the sheer shittitude that confronted me.  Battlefield Earth was released in 2000, and depicts the human race’s struggle against an alien race known as the Pschlos (seriously – Hubbard added an “L” to the word Psychos in an attempt to be clever.)  It stars John Travolta as the leader of the ridiculously named alien race, and it was based on Travolta’s religious icon, L Ron Hubbard’s book of the same name.

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The X-Men First Class Death Knell

He said this in a recent interview with the LA Times when asked about the genre he is currently directing in: “It’s been mined to death and in some cases the quality control is not what it’s supposed to be.  People are just going to get bored of it.”

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