The Soft Lounge Blog

The Friday Five: Good-Morning Moon.

Welcome to the Friday Five-Five things I liked that happened since last Friday.  It could be a news story or an album or a dinner I ate or…anything.  A good way to focus on the good going into the weekend.

The moon did not set it's clock back last week...

This week’s Day Time Moon:  I’ve seen it a few times this week, hanging up in the sky in the early morning-and I’ve always loved a day-time moon.  It’s one of the first things as a kid that you look up and say “that’s not right!”  Some of the earliest understandings of ”this is how the world works” clash with “but this isn’t how it is” and leave you to wonder.  And wonder is a good thing… (In case you were wondring why that happens.)

One Fast Move Or I’m Gone: Despite how pretentious the idea of an album being taken from the works of Jack Kerouac (Big Sur in this case) and despite the fact that I am just not a Death Cab for Cutie fan, Benjamin Gibbard and Jay Farrar do an excellent job on this album.  It’s a perfect mix of upbeat moody relaxed country music that doesn’t try to hard.  Which to me is the exact opposite of every experience with Kerouac I’ve ever had.  This is up your alley if you’re into Neil Halsted or Mojave 3 (maybe even My Morning Jacket).  Great for just ambling about or laying around.   

The Second Largest Aquiarium in the World-  My parents sent me this video of Kuroshio Sea in Japan and I have been mezmorized all day.  Click on HD and blow up to full screen if you can-then just relax and watch as whale sharks (they say four are in there) and other fish swim on by…(The largest aquarium is in Atlanta, GA by the way). 

Smallville Season 8- After a few very ho-hum seasons of Smallville on DVD (I’ve long since banished the idea of trying to watch them weekly) I gotta say that Season 8 delivered better than I had expected.  Much better.  Despite losing Lana Lang and Lex Luthor (for most of the season anyway) It still managed to be Superman (or the kid adventures thereof, anyway) and a lot of that stale feeling the past few years had been giving off wasn’t there.  It wasn’t meteor freak shows up, Clark storms in on Lex, Lex acts all pissed, the day is saved and Lex was behind it but we don’t know why mixed with a health dose of “OH LANA COME BACK!”  every episode.  (Which, for a rich guy-he’s mansion security sucked, because people just walk into his office every four seconds in that show.)  Not that there is anything wrong with Lex or Lana, but they are on a well deserved break-and it was nice to see Tess Mercer and Doomsday take center stage-an amazingly smart and refreshing take on the rockpile (one a bit superior to the original, IMHO) if I do say so myself.  The final battle was a bit lacking in the special effects department-but it is the CW, so one must forgive.  Definately rekindled the interest in this show I had just been waiting dutifully to end. 

I, for one, wouldn’t want to see “tights and flights” in season 9.  It’s still a great Superman story (probably a better Superman story, honestly) without it. Which lead me too…

Amazon Unbox- What can I say?  I wanted to watch more Smallville, and I’m about 6 episodes behind.  And yeah, I could have torrented the episodes, etc.-but I’m just past the whole “getting stuff for free”, “sticking it to the man” mentality.  If I, on the one hand, am going to complain about how unfair DRM locked downs are, and how consumer unfriendly content providers have been I am obligated to at least try a variety of legal means to find reasonable solutions to this problem.  I’m a fan of Itunes, it does deliver a crisp good product-but I wanted the ability to stream video (and music) to my TV-without having to buy an Apple TV.  The Amazon MP3 store has been good to me, and so far unbox (basically their TV and video service) has been really good as well.  2 computers and 2 portable devices can be authorized, and I can stream through media player/center to my xbox and get the show on my TV (not must the computer monitor) without too much hassle. So they get a thumbs up too.