Posts tagged “Amazon”

Link of the Month:
My Christmas Wish List
Merry Shameless Christmas to Me!

Album of the Month:
A Very She & Him Christmas
She & Him, aka Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward, have come out with a very simple, minimalist Christmas album. The vocal reverb is turned up, and the instruments are kept to a minimum. Sometimes it’s just a ukulele; sometimes just a guitar that sounds like it’s straight outta the 1950s. There are only a couple of songs that bring in a full band (one even has backing vocals). The result is a soothing, somewhat spacey and dreamy set of Christmas standards. I like it.

TV Special the Month:
A Muppet Family Christmas
A great 1987 Christmas special that combines the Muppets, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock, and even Muppet Babies (appearing as puppets) in one glorious, nostalgic feast of warm feelings and happy times. Problems with the rights to some songs have caused the “official” video & DVD releases of this movie to be edited all to Hell, but right now you can watch the unedited version on YouTube… before it gets taken down!

Link of the Month:
My Birfday Wish List
Yes, it’s that time of year again. My birfday is coming up, and I’m shamelessly asking for stuff. Hooray!

Album of the Month:
Julia Massey & The Five Finger Discount: I’m Not Hollow
Good stuff. Gooood stuff. The long-awaited album by the full Five Finger Discount is finally here, and it does not disappoint.

DVD of the Month:
Sherlock Holmes
A damnably fun movie, and probably my favorite screen version of the character. Read my full review here!

Link of the Month:
My Wish List
It’s that time of year again: Time for you to buy things for me for Christmas! BUY THINGS FOR ME! Don’t forget to sort the wish list by PRIORITY. Thanks in advance!

Album of the Month:
Tori Amos: Midwinter Graces
Tori Amos has released a holiday album! Gasp! This album is Tori’s delightfully weird takes on some holiday classics, with a couple of originals thrown into the mix. She slightly varies the melody, lyrics, and cadence on the most well-known songs, which is at first a little off-putting because you find yourself unable to sing along with the much-extended vowels or the arbitrarily changed or dropped words (for some reason she removes the word “bright” and the entire final line from the chorus of Star of Wonder), and the “Tori Amos Accent” is in full swing—vowels are randomly transposed to different vowel sounds, and she manages to make the word “torches” sound like, “to-ho-ah-chyezz.” But once you get used to her versions then you find that they’re wonderfully idiosyncratic and undeniably all hers.

Game of the Month:
New Super Mario Bros. Wii
A New Super Mario Bros. video game is like an old friend (one you are actually excited to see) coming to visit. It’s like a warm fire waiting for you in a home you love. You’re not going to have your world rocked by something new and exciting, but, by gum, you’re going to have a lot of familiar fun. So what if you’ve eaten this food before? This is one of your favorite foods, and you always enjoy another serving.

Link of the Month:
My Wish List
It’s that time of year again: Time for you to buy things for me for Christmas! BUY THINGS FOR ME! Don’t forget to sort the wish list by PRIORITY. Thanks in advance!

Game of the Month:
Mega Man 9
The original Mega Man series is tied with the Mario Kart series as my all-time favorite series of video games. Imagine my surprise and delight when suddenly out of nowhere Capcom released Mega Man 9 this year… with Mega Man II era graphics and sound effects! So far it’s only available as a WiiWare download (and it only costs ten bucks). Easily the best Mega Man game since Mega Man IV, Mega Man 9 is like a distillation of everything that made those original games so great 20 years ago. It proves you need not have 10,000 polygons per character and photo-realistic lighting effects to have a good game. All you need to have is A GOOD GAME. And it’s frikkin’ difficult, which I appreciated quite a bit. It actually took me several days to beat it! And with downloadable content, there are tonnes of reasons to go back and keep on playing it!

Album of the Month:
Sixpence None the Richer: The Dawn of Grace
I’m kind of a sucker for a good girl-pop/rock band, so I’ve always kinda liked Sixpence None the Richer. Even back when they were much more overtly a Christian band I didn’t find them terribly offensive; it was surprisingly catchy stuff. Leigh Nash has an endearingly quirky voice. Well, now they’ve released a Christmas album, so it’s okay that there are Christian songs on it. Surprisingly, there are only a few standards: Angels We Have Heard on High; O Come, O Come Emmanuel; Silent Night; and Carol of the Bells. The rest of the album is made up of very unusual choices like the old Spanish carol Riu Riu Chiu (in Spanish), the delightfully laconic Christmas Island, and the thoroughly bizarre Some Children See Him, which tells how children of different ethnicities all see Jesus looking like them.