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Ahh, entertainment. By this I mean films, books, music. FilmOne of the most fascinating places to visit on a regular basis is the Coming Attractions site. This is an extremely well organized site that talks about upcoming films, films in production, and rumors about films. Some of the items are hilarious - for example, all the rumors about the Star War prequels - and some are interesting because of the smuggled out pictures from high-security sets. MusicHere I profess a great liking for the Pet Shop Boys: Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe. Their music is intelligent, lyrics provocative and the whole is danceable to boot. The official site is part of Parlophone's site, but there are a couple of fairly good fan sites as well: Elusive (just started up and fairly thorough) and Virtually (a somewhat annoying framed site with some interesting information). A new limited edition compilation album was released in the US on 31-Mar-98 (Essential) which has some new mixes of old songs, and in April 98 there will be a PSB-produced many-artists Noel Coward album in the UK. I'm kind of catholic in my musical tastes, so don't assume that PSB's Euro-pop is the only thing I listen to. I'm a classical fan as well (I confess to listening to classical music at work - at the moment I write this it's Verdi's Requiem) and on the other end of the spectrum I'm learning about 1990's Techno, recently having purchased The Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole and Propellorheads' Decksandrumsandrockandroll. I get a lot of my CDs mail-order. For current pop releases I use CDNOW and for classical CDs, H&B Direct. For those rarer, second-hand, hard-to-find ones I use Esprit mail-order. BooksMy tastes in reading matter range widely (or should that be wildly?). To put it bluntly, I read a lot. Since I don't watch TV (I'm afraid that the American TV ads drive me crazy, both their content and when they're broadcast, meaning that TV shows become too disjoint, the line between program and ad too blurred), I'm either on the old PC, programming, or on the couch, reading. I tend to read science fiction, modern fiction (mainly British), programming and computer algorithm books, science and mathematics books, and anything else that grabs my fancy. I buy my reading matter from three places: the McKinzey-White bookstore here in Colorado Springs, Amazon.com when McKinzey's don't have it on their shelves, or Blackwell's of Oxford for those essential British books you can't get over here in the US. You may wonder why I don't just buy all my American stuff from Amazon. Two reasons, essentially. First, McKinzey-White is an independent bookstore and it's in a city with two Barnes and Noble and a Borders. To be honest, they're better than the chains, the staff are more friendly, the computer section is way better, and it's more relaxing. Granted, their prices are sometimes higher, but price isn't everything. I buy 5 to 10 books a month. If I have to pay another $5 for those books, it's worth it in my view. Secondly, nothing beats a bookstore for perusing and buying books. Browsing the shelves, reaching for something that catches your eye, reading the dust cover blurb, flipping through the pages. And, you get to take it home with you, immediately! McKinzey's special ordering takes a while, so if they don't have a certain book on the shelves, I'll go to Amazon. Amazon is also good for finding a particular book on a given subject, their searches are first rate. However, unless you buy several books at once, the shipping charges can swallow up any savings you make. Anyway, what I plan to do is to review books I've read, in any category. Over time I should build up a list of reviews that may aid you, dear reader, in choosing something to read, to use as reference, to prop the door open, whatever. <more to come> |
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