Weekender #51

• Birb watch: same ol’ birbs, different week.

• This week, I finished reading Eruption - Conversations with Eddie Van Halen by Brad Tolinski & Chris Gill. As a huge Eddie Van Halen (EVH) fan, I was looking forward to to reading this book. I was familiar with Tolinski’s work from the many great interviews he conducted for Guitar World magazine throughout the years, so I trusted that he’d do a good job with this. The book features a historical narrative of EVH’s life and career, along with various interviews that Tolinski and others had with EVH throughout the years. Scattered throughout the book are short spotlights on the guitars that EVH used during his career, as well as interviews with bassist Michael Anthony, Black Sabbath guitarist Tony Iomi, Toto guitarist Steve Lukather, guitarist Steve Vai, Extreme vocalist Gary Cherone and Wolfgang Van Halen. As an EVH nut, I didn’t think Eruption would provide as much insight into the man as it did. I really enjoyed the historical background that blended with the interviews with EVH to give them more context. Now, if only I could find my original copy of the Guitar World magazine from July 1985 which featured the first interview with EVH that I ever read. It’s still hard to believe that Eddie is gone.

• I started limiting my social media habits a few years ago to have more peace in my life. First was by quitting Facebook. Second, was using Twitter lists to see only accounts that are important to me in a chronological timeline. Using Twitter lists avoids having to unfollow anyone and avoiding any sort of drama that an unfollow could have. Instagram is different because they don’t offer any tools to control the timeline/feed. The only choices you have is to see everything in your feed using their algorithm and chronology or to not engage the app at all. I still enjoy a lot of the content from Instagram, but there are a few accounts that can be a bit much for me on a daily basis. I finally decided to do something about it by making use of the mute feature on specific Instagram accounts to give my timeline peace. It’s one of the best thing I’ve done so far in 2022.

• Stumbled across a cool looking X-Ray Mechanical Astro Boy that sort of looks like it could be a Lego set, but it’s not.

• Audra showed me this article where Studio Ghibli answered Spirited Away fan questions via Twitter while the movie played on Nippon TV in Japan. If you’re a fan of Spirited Away, you’ll find the Q & A insightful.

• As an person that grew up in the 80’s I found the article about “Why Are Some Zoomers So Wistful For the ’80s?” very entertaining.

• Audra and I got to watch a few movies this week, so here’s some quick thoughts on them:

  • Don’t Look Up is a movie that could only have be made after we’ve all lived through this pandemic and the chaos that it’s created.

  • The Eternals is a movie that probably didn’t have to be made.

  • TENET used non-conventional dialog as well as scenes that wouldn’t occur in real life and bent expectations and reality. Many of the cuts were specifically to explain what was going on to the movie viewer. The soundtrack was overpowering and the various accents made it difficult to decipher some of the dialog.

• I finally finished writing about my Favorite Albums of 2021. Please check it out if you’re looking for some tunes to listen to.