thisischris.com -- This is Chris dot Com -- the website of Christopher Grant Harris

"Of the Month" Archives: 2005

December 2005:

Link of the Month:
My Wish List
Merry Christmas to me! At least, it will be a merry Christmas if you give me something from my Amazon Wish List. That way you'll know that I'll be sure to love it! And you by association!

Game of the Month:
Mario Kart DS
At long last the Killer app for the Nintendo DS has arrived. Play with people from around the world! Or just play with your friends. It's got more tracks than any Mario Kart to date (32 total—and half of them are from the 4 previous Mario Kart games, which kicks total ass). My Mario Kart DS Friend Code: 004354 558412

Album of the Month:
Holiday Sing-Along with Mitch Miller
There's something just nice about a whole bunch of people singing holiday songs in as straight-ahead and unadorned a fashion as humanly possible. This album always reminds me of my childhood when we had it on actual vinyl. And how can you resist Mitch with his adorable VanDyke beard? You can't! Give in!

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November 2005:

Link of the Month:
Rotten Tomatoes
This site aggregates a tonne of critics reviews and then gives a "freshness" score based on the precentage of reviewers who gave a positive review to the film. Anything that scores under 60% is considered rotten. It's a really quick way to judge the critical consensus of a film. For example, Doom scored 18%, making it VERY rotten; Wallace & Gromit on the ther hand scored 95%.

DVD of the Month:
Home Movies - Season Two
One of the worst-looking and most horribly-animated cartoons ever also just happens to be one of the best voice-acted and most consistenly funny cartoons made in a long time.

Album of the Month:

Locust Street Taxi: Shut Up... The Grownups Are Talking

A great burst of fun, silly, eclectic, and at times surprisingly beautiful music. The traditional Guitar, Bass, and Drums are joined by Trumpet, Trombone, and Bongos, resulting in a kind of 60s lounge meets voodoo meets ska meets Barenaked Ladies sound.

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October 2005:

Link of the Month:
13th Track
What better way to get into the holiday spirit than by listening to streaming audio of Halloween music? There is no better way! This site offers a fantastic selection with some truly... unique songs.

DVD of the Month:
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Chosen Collection
One of the best shows ever on television all in one collection? Okay! Seriously, this is 40 DVDs for like 130 bucks. That's only $3.25 a disc!

Album of the Month:
Buckethead: Monsters and Robots
One of Buckethead's best, most self-coherent albums, with fantastic vocals by the inimitible Bootsy Collins and the great bass-work of the infamous Les Claypool. Features a song wherein Buckethead fights Michael Meyers from the Halloween movies.

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September 2005:

Link of the Month:
Fools Play Island
It's finally, finally, finally done! After some TWO YEARS of revisioning, the best freakin' website ever created is back and better than ever? Can you discover all the secrets of Fools Play Island? No friggin' way!

DVD of the Month:
Sin City
Quite possibly the best movie of the year so far? Robert Rodriguez manages to sustain what is essentially a one-note story for three full hours and make it fascinating and horrifying. Gritty and brilliant, with superb performances all around, this is the most faithful comic-book-to-movie adaptation ever. But the thing is, I didn't really like the comics, but I love this movie.

Album of the Month:
Xoc: SMW
A fascinating project: one man re-created the entire soundtrack to Super Mario World (SNES) using real instruments. Normally video game cover albums aren't very good—they're all about converting the songs to a new genre or making them sound like your band—but this one has to be listened to.

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August 2005:

Link of the Month:
Wikipedia

DVD of the Month:
The Adventures of Pete & Pete - Season 1

Game of the Month:
The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

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June 2005:

Link of the Month:
NationStates
This site has a funny little Nation simulation game played by thousands of people at once. You are the government of your nation, and you are periodically faced with political and social dillemmas. It's up to you to decide whose side you are on, and this will affect your nation.

DVD of the Month:
Star Wars: Clone Wars - Volume 1
Genndy Tartakovsky succeeded in making a Star Wars movie that takes place in between Episode II and III. This is the first half. Done in the Samurai Jack style, it is almost completely a series of action sequences. By far the standout moment is the duel between Anakin and that evil Ventress lady trained by Dooku.

Book of the Month:
Bone: One Volume Edition by Jeff Smith
An entire run of a comic book collected in one volume and running over 1,300 pages. I read it in two days. Bone is a fascinating book, combining childish, cartoony character designs with life-and-death drama and cow racing wackiness all at once.

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May 2005:

Link of the Month:
Video Game Museum
This site has just a ton of cool stuff to browse through, particularly the Video Game Endings section. Lots and lots of sections to dig through, and a ton of really cool information.

DVD of the Month:
Equilibrium
This is a fascinating Orwellian sci-fi feature that slipped by without hardly anyone noticing. It takes place in a post-apocolyptic city wherein the populace takes a drug that suppresses all emotions, the idea being that if you eliminate passion you eliminate violence, and therefore war. Christian Bale stars as John Preston, the #1 hunter ("Grammaton Cleric") of people guilty of "sense crimes," until (of course) one day he misses a dose of his medicine and starts to experience emotions himself. This may all sound rather standard, but it is the ideas and philosophy behind the action of the movie that really sets it apart, particularly the idea behind the "gun katas." Christian Bale's excellent performance makes me very excited to see what he can do with Bruce Wayne in the upcoming Batman Begins.

Album of the Month:
Pleaseeasaur: The Yellow Pages
Pleaseeasaur, the master of purposefully-horrible music, releases this masterpiece that is comprised mostly of fake commercial jingles for companies such as "No Prob Limo" and "Pizza Brothers and Sons Incorporated." The midi-sounding music and Pleaseeasaur's distinctive singing style are at the their best. This album is just freakin' hilarious. If you've never heard Pleaseeasaur before, you really should. Nothing quite like it.

Game of the Month:
Roller Coaster Tycoon 3
A big shout-out to Neighbory Gary for giving this game to me. While I was in the hospital Geoff let me borrow his laptop, and playing this game helped keep me sane during the last couple weeks of the ordeal. Plus it's really fun to be able to design your own theme park and make rollercoasters that are completely unsafe and that everyone hates to ride!

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April 2005:

Link of the Month:
My Wish List!
It's that time of year again: Time for you to buy things for me for my birthday!

DVD of the Month:
The Incredibles
The best picture of 2004. I watched this DVD probably five times the first week I got it.

Album of the Month:
Jonathan Coulton: Smoking Monkey
Much as Tenacious D is a parody of Rock 'n' Roll, Jonathan Coulton is a parody of alt-folk style of music: incredibly skillfully written and performed music with horribly weird and inappropriate lyrics. The highlight of the album is easily "First of May," which manages to rhyme "sky above" with "f--king outside." Truly hilarious, and still relatively unknown.

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March 2005:

Link of the Month:
The Drawing Board
My new favorite online community message board! Set up by the inimitible Shane Glanes, this is where aspiring artists and cartoonists can go and share their work with other artists for feedback, comments, praise, or just to put it out there. Look for posts by ANGRY BEEF and you'll know that's me!

DVD of the Month:
Napoleon Dynamite
This film is sweet. It's got numchuck skillz... bo-staff skillz. God! You haven't seen it? Idiot. Can you bring me my chap stick? But my lips really hurt!

Book of the Month:
For Us, the Living: A Comedy of Customs by Robert A. Heinlein
This is Heinlein's first and never-before-published "novel." It's really just a Utopian essay with some characters and, well, not really any plot thrown in. But it's a fascinating look at the proto-Heinlein. This is the first thing he ever wrote, and if you read his entire body of work (like I have) you can see how he extracted all the ideas in this book and put small pieces here and there in his other stories. It's like this book is a rough draft for everything he would ever later write. It isn't very good as a straight literary read, but it's fascinating as a monumentally important piece of Heinlein (and SF) history.