PixlBit

Good morning Pixlpeeps and Happy Friday! So earlier this morning in my little piece of Southern California we had an earthquake that was felt from San Diego to LA, and my little desert town was close to the epicenter so it was a bigger deal than normal. I have this weird knack for waking up right before earthquakes and I woke up looked for my phone to see the time and shaking

 

Yeah all that training of duck, cover, and hold goes out the window because let’s face it, Southern California resident has become lazy. We pride ourselves on not getting up unless it is a 5.0 or higher. So as I sat in bed in the dark the shaking kept going and I thought about maybe it was time to get up and stand in a door jam. Right before my feet hit the ground the shaking stopped so I did what any normal person does, checks Facebook and sure enough numerous updates about folks feeling the same thing I did (yay I’m not crazy!) I spent the next 30-40 minutes on Twitter finding out information, getting rid of the adrenaline, and finding out information. Turns out I got info from a reporter in Tucson Arizona. It was a 5.1 that was apparently a shallow earthquake, which is why it felt stronger than the usual rolling ones.

 

The shaker was not on the famed San Andreas Fault (in my Sarah Palin voice: “I can see it from my house”) it was on the San Jacinto fault which is the more active yet not as famous fault. Anyways everything is good here, there was some damage in the cities closer to the epicenter and by damage I mean fallen jars of spaghetti sauce at Walmart. The only thing in the house affected was a room divider panel moved a bit and one of the China cabinet doors opened.

So while typing that section I got through side A of this album

 

Yep I’m still in that groove to get my vinyl added to my iTunes library. Anyways let’s get officially started with Quick Hits!

 

Chris Watches

 

I had some free time earlier in the week so I watched X-Men: Jennifer Lawrence Is The Star. This is my favorite comic book movie of the summer, and hopefully Suicide Squad delivers on the hype and the fact they made Green Batman err Arrow stop using their Suicide Squad. As a standalone popcorn flick I thought it was good. For diehard comic fans I heard nothing but hate towards it and I understand. After all I refuse to watch the garbage being pushed out under the GI Joe and Transformers brands. Did I think it was great? Nope. I did think that it’s epic fight scene delivered and better than Civil War, and just blows Batman vs. Clark Kent out of the water.

 

I do love to watch pro wrestling, but my favorite brand out there is WWE’s NXT. NXT is supposed to be the minor leagues to their Raw and Smackdown brands (I don’t know anyone who watches Hulu’s Superstars) but in terms of quality, NXT’s one hour is better than Raw/Smackdown’s combined five hours.  NXT had their big PPV which really isn’t a pay per view but it’s where the current storylines end. The matches were solid and I think after the main event it is time for Finn Balor to make his move up to the main roster and join AJ Styles, and Gallows & Anderson in The Club. I like factions in wrestling and this one could be really good.

 *Am I the only one still having problems with .jpgs on this site? 

MTV's The Challenge

 

So last week the girl Tony’s been trying to get with gets kicked out, and not even three hours later he’s hooking up with Ashley, who’s partner has dubbed “Smashley”

*I’ve taken a break to split the two sides of the album into individual tracks, adding them to iTunes, and converting them into AAC files.

Ok back to The Challenge. Yeah so Tony decides to move on ASAP, which really doesn’t surprise me. As for the actual Challenge there was even more drama with Tony’s partner Camila that gets them tossed into The Jungle, which is the elimination round. One of the three teams goes home because Tom’s girlfriend is in the hospital and he needs to be with her. The only positive with this is that Tom’s teammate Simone, the girl who wants nothing but camera time is finally gone.

 

I’ve gone back to Daredevil, which by the way is so freaking good! Jessica Jones is still meh for me. I really do need to get back to watching the Americans from the beginning, and I think there is some new standup on Netflix I haven’t checked out. Oh also I've been watching a lot of my favorite reality show based on a yacht: Below Deck. Because of this I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos about life as a crew member on cruise ships. Wow their quarters are cramped!

 

Chris Listens To…

I’ve added a new podcast to my lineup, because apparently being at least a week behind on my other podcasts isn’t enough content to listen to. I added the Brain Candy podcast which is a podcast that reviews each episode of The Challenge and is hosted by two former Challenge contestants.

Last week the count of un-listened to tracks in my iTunes library was at 12,488 and the current standing without syncing my phone is at

 

I did remove around three mixtape albums because they have the obnoxious DJ yelling at the beginning. I’ve also been ripping vinyl in the mornings, putting them on my phone and giving them a listen throughout the day. Overall I’m surprised at the number of songs I’ve liked but also how much I really don’t care for the comedy albums I bought. I am not a fan of George Carlin’s Toledo Window Box, and the Kent Bowman Pidgin albums.  The pidgin albums were terrible. The comedian wasn’t funny at all and I’m pissed I’m out $4 for both albums.

 

Pickups

There were a couple of games I thought about buying like Saints Row The Third that was on sale at GameStop for .97 for PC, but in the end I knew I wasn’t going to play through it. I’m still waiting for the big Steam Sale.

As for music I went to the local thrift store that has .50 cent CDs, and $1.00 vinyl. There were at least a dozen records I would have bought until I checked the record and they were scratched to hell. Seriously why don’t people take care of their records/CDs? You paid good money for them, take care of them. Anyways this store has a bunch of audio cassettes including a couple of rap tapes. I want to buy a USB Cassette player so I can copy these tapes to my iTunes but I might just break down and buy the CDs. I need to check out Amazon’s used CDs. Anyways going back to this thrift store, it was a complete bust. I decided to go check the other store across the street before heading home and I found these albums for $2 each

 

Teena Marie’s Irons In The Fire. The cool part about this album is that it still has the Gemco tag

 

First thought was “wow records were cheap back in the day” and then I checked the price on with today’s inflation and this album would be $21 in today’s money. Why are some albums $30-40? Also Gemco is where Santa got my Voltron (the Lions and the Cars).

 

How do you not like Earth, Wind & Fire? Also it has a cool gatefold cover

 

It has That’s The Way of the World, Shining Star, and Reasons (Reasons is so freaking good!)

Both albums are clean because their former owner took care of their stuff. While I was checking out I spotted the next items behind the counter and asked how much they were. The employee said $4 each and I quickly said “SOLD!”

 

Oh 8^th Grade Chris would have been jumping for joy if he could score two sealed wax boxes for under $10. This was around the time I just got into hockey and my favorite team at the time was the Chicago Blackhawks because of Jeremy Roenick, Chris Chellos, and Ed Belfour, and I believe they lost the cup the season prior to the release of these boxes. I soon changed teams to the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim when they became a team a year later. I need to buy some storage boxes and I am so opening these wax boxes.

 

Alright Pixlpeeps I am off. It is my weekend and I need to continue to rip some records. Have a good weekend!

That’s all for now, more later!   

-Chris

 

For today’s song of the week, I went with a band from LA who’s debut album art was a play on the California State Flag and the title was fitting for the events of earlier this morning.