Monday, April 17, 2006

Veronica Mars, The Beatles and Cranium

Just finished watching Veronica Mars Season One on DVD. I didn't really have very high expectations for the show early on, but I was surprised. I definitely recommend the show's first season, mainly for the strong characters. (And the actors aren't bad.) The writing is pretty good overall, although a careful watcher can frequently figure out what's going to happen by the end of most episodes. (Hey, if I can, most of you can.) Still, the show held several genuine surprises and was quite entertaining.

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With the release of the Beatles' The Capitol Albums Vol. 2 this past week, I decided to buy Vol. 1 first. For those of you old enough to remember, the Capitol recordings from 1964 were different in several ways from their British counterparts. This set includes the first four Beatle albums released in America: (Not counting A Hard Day's Night and The Beatles Story) Meet the Beatles, The Beatles' Second Album, Something New and Beatles 65. Now I'm not enough of an audiophile to know what makes Capitol's "fake stereo" fake; all I know is the discs sound great to me. (They're presented on the discs in both stereo and mono.) I haven't heard some of these versions in fifteen or twenty years and it really takes me back. I've been playing these suckers non-stop.

I'm glad they added the American version of Help! (with the full version of the title song) to Vol. 2. Help! also includes some of the actual orchestral soundtrack, which the British version does not. I wonder if Capitol will do the same with the Yellow Submarine album.

Part of this return to Beatlemania is the result of a party Cindy and I went to yesterday. One of the guys there is a huge Beatles' fan, but he's quite a bit younger than me. I was able to give him some "I was there when it happened" perspective on British version vs. American versions, the "death" of Paul and the pros/cons of Wings.

At this very same party, a group of about twelve of us played Cranium. I was on the guy team, which got smoked by one of the girl teams. You know, one girl can draw a curved line on a pad and the rest of their team correctly guesses The Leaning Tower of Pisa. Either that or they can name tunes in one note. And then I have to hum all the verses and choruses to "Hotel California" (including the drum parts on my knees) and they still don't get it. Guys just can't win.

And my wife won the game on a question about rap music!

That's messed up.

1 comment:

Dr. Phil (Physics) said...

Don't know if you get cable... but for a more passive game, and sadly something of a guilty pleasure, there's Distraction, where sometimes in order to "ring in" and answer a question, a contestant might have to "urinat(e) in a specially designed toilet to activate one's buzzer, (or) drink shots of hot sauce".

Now that'll seperate the men from the boys... (grin)

Dr. Phil