I haven't been blogging much. We recently splurged on a 42" TV and I've been spending a lot of time in front of the television. It's been a real eye-opening experience, one that I had resisted for a long time (in a previous post, I had said I would never spend more than 200 bucks on a TV... Ha!) but we do get a significant amount of our entertainment through the television and thought it was a sound buy (no not an investment but not everything in life necessarily grows in value ... some stuff you just get because everyone else has one).
Those Blu-ray discs are not cheap. Most of them are around 30 bucks, but the quality of the picture is definitely noticeable. Cox Phoenix doesn't really carry that many HD channels, but the ones we get are amazing. The nature shows are simply dazzling (and are driving poor LadyKitty crazy with the birds chirping and all). One of the first HD shows I watched that I really loved was on HD-Theater, a show called Romeo and Juliet: A Monkey's Tale. It's the age old story of two monkeys from the opposite side of the tracks. Juliet is from a troupe of monkeys inhabiting an ancient Buddhist temple. Romeo's troupe lives the exciting street life. Really very entertaining, especially the part where a heart-broken Romeo hops on a train and heads for the hillside, and Juliet leaps into the bed of a passing pickup truck to find him. No really, it is a nice story.
We're also watching a couple of Nature shows on Blu-ray: Planet Earth and Galapagos. Absolutely amazing. I watched the Planet Earth program "Deep Sea" with the lights out in the middle of the night, and was totally blown away.
Our older non-Blu-ray discs look great too. I watched Star Trek II: Chest Wrath of Khan and it looked really great and that's one of our older DVDs. The battle scene between the Enterprise and the Reliant in the Mutara Nebulla completely blew me away.
And, yes, I shed another tear when Spock died.
On a totally different note, my room mate bought the blu-ray version of Hairspray. Surprisingly, I LOVED it. I've downloaded all of the songs on iTunes, and he also bought me the soundtrack CD, which is on continuous play while I drive to and from work. It's definitely not my usual sci-fi fare, but the songs are great. My favorite tracks are Good Morning Baltimore, I Can Hear the Bells, You're Timeless to Me, and I Know Where I've Been. I'm also listening to the original broadway soundtrack, and hell, even Harvey Feirstein sounds good.
I know why I like the story -- I love stories that celebrate diversity and acceptance, and hate stories that make entertainment by making fun of people -- but the songs are not only beautifully written, but hilarious and at times politically incorrect. I mean, Queen Latifah singing Big, Blonde and Beautiful (here are the lyrics), or Run and Tell That's "the blacker the berry, the sweeter the juice... I mean, my goodness.
OK time for bed. Gotta work for the next 2 nights.
We probably could stand to improve our sound system, but every system that is "best" seems also to be "loud" and our neighbors probably want to kill us as it is :-) And the rental options (at least for the blockbusters and Hollywood Videos in Paradise Valley) are a bit thin. Not much on Netflix either. Definitely going to eat up some OT...
Posted by: Eric135 | March 05, 2008 at 07:15 AM
We just bought our first-ever big-picture TV and I also am impressed by HD broadcasts. Now I have to get some money together to purchase good sound for it... guess I'll be doing some OT shifts!
Posted by: shrimplate | March 02, 2008 at 10:27 PM