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Vintage ads for NWA solo albums (1992)

Posted in advertising, music, pop culture, rap with tags advertising, nostalgia, NWA, pop culture on April 21, 2016 by Paxton

Here are some more scans from vintage hip-hop magazines.

Today I’m going to show you some ads for NWA member solo albums from late 1992.

Here’s an ad for Dre’s The Chronic from about a month before its release.

Here’s an ad for Ice Cube’s The Predator from right before its release. In fact, the album may have already been released by the time the ad dropped.

This ad is for Eazy-E’s 5150: home 4 tha sick EP. It had already been released when this ad ran. Note at the bottom the solicit for Eazy’s upcoming album, Temporary Insanity. That album was rumored for years and never released. I have no idea if the tracks are still out there or they were mostly used for the posthumous Str8 Off Tha Streets.

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Dr Dre in-depth interview with The Source (1992)

Posted in music, nostalgia, pop culture, rap with tags music, nostalgia, NWA, pop culture, rap on April 20, 2016 by Paxton

Continuing this week to show you scans of old rap/hip hop magazines featuring the members of NWA.

Today we are looking at the November 1992 issue of The Source magazine.

The magazine featured an in depth cover interview with Dr Dre promoting the upcoming release of his solo debut, The Chronic, on Death Row Records.

Dre talks about a lot of things in the article including his new album, the break up with NWA, his beef with Eazy-E and his brand new record label. Very interesting look into the head space of one Andre Young right before he’d change the face of rap with that aforementioned solo album.

He even gets candid about the “Dee Barnes” incident (mentioned in yesterday’s Rap Masters magazine scan), his buddy DOC’s car wreck and The World Class Wreckin’ Cru. It’s a good read.

The article also has two sidebars, both interviews. One is with DOC and the other is with Snoop Dogg who very recently made his debut on Dr Dre’s song Deep Cover and will soon come into prominence due to his heavy appearance on The Chronic.

Here’s the article.

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High Fantasy Month is back with a magical kingdom for sale and a crippled midget

Posted in books, pop culture, reviews with tags Book Report, books, High Fantasy Month, pop culture, reviews on March 7, 2016 by Paxton

Click the above banner to see my other High Fantasy Month reviews. I had recently picked up a new omnibus of a fantasy series and read the first book, so I thought I’d follow it up with a few more fantasy books and knock out another High Fantasy Month.

It’s interesting, the collection of books this month are all sort of similarly themed. I really didn’t even plan it out that way. Each of the books in this months collection are novels mostly set in a fantasy world, but have some twist to the story. They aren’t straight up fantasy, they have a little something extra. It’s an interesting mix this month.

Here are the reviews:

Magic Kingdom for Sale–Sold! (Landover Book 1) (1986) – Terry Brooks – The Magical Kingdom of Landover is a series, written by the great Terry Brooks, that has, currently, about 5 books. I’ve read only one other Brooks novel and that’s the Star Wars Episode I novelization. But it’s good, it really is and it made me want to read more Brooks. I thought I was going to start reading Brooks’ other magnum opus, which sort of spawned this whole idea of High Fantasy Month, The Sword of Shannara, however, I found the first three books of the Landover series in an omnibus for super cheap so I snapped it up and started reading without much thought. The basic premise is that a lawyer, disappointed with his life after his wife dies, finds an ad in a catalog to buy a magical fantasy land called Landover for $1 million. Spontaneously he decides to do it, but it doesn’t turn out to be exactly what he expects. Initially, that premise spoke “satire” to me. I fully expected a massively tongue-in-cheek parody of fantasy novels. What I got was surprising. The novel takes a while to really get started, but once it does, it’s really good. It takes the premise honestly and earnestly. It’s not a satire or a parody. It plays the entire plot straight and is a better novel for it. I liked it much more than I thought considering my expectations were completely wrong and the first 80 pages or so were kind of slow to get through. I’m definitely looking forward to the next book in the series.

Fool: A Novel (2009) – Christopher Moore – I have read two other Christopher Moore books and thought they were okay (A Dirty Job, Lamb). He has interesting premises, but sometimes he’s a little too droll for my tastes. Like the other Moore books I read, the premise of this book sounded pretty great. A satire of William Shakespeare’s King Lear told from the point of view of the fool. It has lots of mad kings, backstabbing daughters, witches, lusty maidens and, of course, a ghost (there’s always a damn ghost). After years of wanting it I finally grabbed the eBook for cheap a year or so ago but just couldn’t get myself to start it until this month. What did I think? Similar to Moore’s other books. Well written, very dry, sarcastic, British humor. This feels like a BBC mini-series. I wasn’t laughing out loud but I chuckled a lot and enjoyed the ride. For the most part. And now I can pretty much say I’ve read Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Sir Apropos of Nothing (2001) – Peter David – I love Peter David’s novels and for years I tried to read everything he’d written. I originally read this book back in 2005 when I randomly found it on eBay. I loved it. The story is a parody of fantasy books in general. It uses a lot of the tropes and has fun with them. Peter David is great at humorous dialogue and he doesn’t disappoint here. Essentially, it’s your traditional epic hero fantasy, except, instead of focusing on the hero, the story focuses on one of the side characters. And that side character is well aware he’s in a hero’s tale and that he’s not the hero. In fact, he prefers it. Lots of fun with the fantasy genre. Also, I’m surprised at how similar this book was to Moore’s Fool. I guess it’s sort of the same idea, except David’s idea goes a little more broad with the concept. And, honestly, I think it’s a better book.

The debut of new Western podcast Hellbent for Letterbox

Posted in Genres, movies, podcast, pop culture, Western with tags books, gunfighters and lawmen, Hellbent for Letterbox, movies, podcast, TV shows, westerns on February 11, 2016 by Paxton

Hell Bent for Letterbox cover art LG

My good friend (and Nerd Lunch Fourth Chair Army officer) Mr Michael May asked me to co-host a podcast with him. And I must be crazy because I said, “Sure, why not?” And let me tell you why I said that. First, Michael is awesome. We love him on Nerd Lunch, in fact, we just recently finished up several episodes in a row with him (Janu-May-ary). Second, Michael and I have a similar love for the Western genre. So, Michael asked if I wanted to start an all-Westerns podcast. There was no way I could say “no” to that.

So, this podcast is going to watch and review a different Western every month. We will probably also watch and review certain Western TV shows as well as discuss a few Western books. But the focus will be mostly movies. I’m really looking forward to it because I have a few holes in my Western viewing that need to be filled.

Which, for this first episode, Michael and I set the table for the podcast. We talk about our introduction to the Western genre. We talk about some of our favorite Western movies, stars and directors. We talk about what we hope to accomplish with this show and what types of movies and stars we want to “catch up” on. And, at the very end, Michael reveals what our first movie review will be in our second episode.

So come check out the beginning of Hell Bent for Letterbox. I don’t know if you can get it on iTunes just yet. but if not, it will be there soon. Maybe even Stitcher at some point.

Regardless, you can listen to the show right here.

If you’re super excited about subscribing in iTunes and it’s not showing up, here’s the RSS feed you can drop into iTunes to subscribe manually.

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Year End Book Report: The Best Books I Read in 2015

Posted in Batman, books, comic books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags Book Report, books, reviews, Star Wars, Year End Books on January 11, 2016 by Paxton

And here we are again, my year end wrap up articles.

Queue Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration”.

I say it every year, how did we get here already? The year just flies by. Anyway, the particulars: If you’ve read this year end round up before, you know I keep my book logs online in a Google Spreadsheet. I’ve been doing it since around 2009. Only “new to me” reads in 2015 are eligible, no re-reads.

This past year was an interesting year for my book/comics list. I really had an off year for books. It was really hard to get a good list of 5 books that I really enjoyed. This year as I combed through my list of books I realized I had been in a slump of “didn’t like” and “meh” books that I just didn’t feel comfortable forcing into this year’s “best” list.

Conversely, this was a phenomenal year for comics. I had SO MANY comics I read that I just LOVED that it became very hard for me to pare it down to only five. So, I think this year I’m going to cut the book list to maybe three and increase the comic list to 8. This would be a better representation of the good stuff I’ve read this year.

Looking at the log I see I read around 106 books and comics over the course of the year. That total includes books/comics I’ve read for the first time as well as any re-reads I did this year which I’ll do from time to time. Also, I see, after two years of reading 4 books released in the current year, I uptick to 5 books I read this year that were current releases. Wow. And none of them are going to make this list. One of them almost did, but, in the end, I decided no.

Here’s the list!

Books

Memoirs of an Invisible Man (1987) by H. F. Saint – I read and reviewed this book for AWESOME-tober-fest this year. See my full review there. But this hands down makes my best of year list and looking at my book log, it’s probably the best book I read all year.

Troll Mountain (2014) by Matthew Reilly – Matthew Reilly is no stranger to my “best of” books list. His Scarecrow and James West Jr novels have both made it on here. I read this fantasy novel back in February for the second installment of High Fantasy Month. It was a serial novel in three parts, each part about 55 pages long. And it’s junior fantasy, aimed at a younger audience. But like I said in my review, I really enjoyed it. The story reminded me of L Frank Baum. Lots of fun and adventure, full of hope, believing in yourself and believing that good will triumph over evil. Definitely worth a read.

Mistborn: The Final Empire (Book 1) (2006) – Brandon Sanderson – I really had trouble picking this final spot. A few things could’ve gone here. Rick Riordan’s tenth Percy Jackson book, The Force Awakens novelization, Stephen King’s Needful Things or Brad Meltzer’s The Inner Circle. And I liked all of these choices but I didn’t love them. So, I flipped a coin and the first book in Sanderson’s fantasy series gets the nod. It’s a great piece of fantasy world building with a cleverly different system of magic. Like Troll Mountain, I reviewed it for the second High Fantasy Month back in February. I just felt that this book runs a little long. But I liked it and I plan on reading the second book, even if I’m hearing that the second book is even longer. And unnecessarily so.

Now, let’s move on to the comics I read this year that I LOVED. And there are lots of them.

Comic Books/Graphic Novels

Aquaman (The New 52) by Geoff Johns and Jeff Parker – I’m including all six of the currently released collections of this title. This first entry was probably the most relevatory comic I read all year. I’ve never been an Aquaman fan, even with the Peter David series and the hook hand/long hair iterations. I just didn’t like the character. However, I heard such good things about this take on Aquaman that I decided to read the first trade. The next thing I know, I’ve read all six of the trade paperback collections encompassing the first 40 issues or so plus annuals. Geoff Johns writes the first four collections and Jeff Parker takes over for the next two. And they are AWESOME. All of a sudden, I’m an Aquaman fan. I even dove into and read the entire side series, Aquaman and the Others, which is not as good, but still enjoyable to read. I can’t recommend this title enough. I think Cullen Bunn has taken over the writing from Jeff Parker as of issue 40 or so. I look forward to more adventures with the King of Atlantis.

Avengers vs. X-Men (2012) – This is the 12 issue maxi-series Marvel event from 2012. It launched the Marvel NOW! line of comics. It’s written by a murder’s row of my favorite comic writers; Matt Fraction, Brian Michael Bendis, Johnathan Hickman, Ed Brubaker and Jason Aaron with lots of awesome art by John Romita Jr and Adam Kubert. The story is epic, it’s awesome, it’s everything you want in an Avengers vs X-men title. I loved it. And the conclusion of this entry leads directly into…