This was a brutal loss for me. I remember I was watching this game right up until it was about to go into overtime. Then my parents called me to dinner and as soon as I was finished I ran down to the basement and turned on the TV to see that the dolphins just won it in overtime. Another memory I have of this game is that there was a ram touchdown that they got after instant replay, a 25 yard pass to Kevin House. There was no time limit for replay back then, and it took like 5 or 10 minutes before they finished reviewing it and gave him the touchdown and the Anaheim crowd went crazy. Had the Rams won this game, they would have clinched the division. Instead, after a dominating season they ended up only getting in the playoffs as a wildcard after losing the final game of the regular season and the division to the 49ers.
Rhythm and soul singer, Joseph Konty, has a new album coming out, “LoveSpell.” Impressively, it’s his 10th studio album. The title track is peppy and upbeat, while extremely catchy and groovy and the video is even better. A lot of his songs have kind of a sophisticated 60’s pop feel, especially with the backing instrumentals. It kind of reminds me musically of a band called Majestic, that I saw play in Los Angeles in 2000. “Walk My Way” definitely gives off the happy day vibe more than the other songs and it’s my favorite of the bunch. His voice sounds like an indie Justin Timberlake, minus any attitude and posturing. There’s definitely some classic motown influence in there, and it shines through in all his recordings. Overall, he does a good job of delicately balancing retro styles and aesthetics with modern sounding music.
Some of his other songs are more on the mellow candlelit dinner side and romantic like “Dancing With Me.” That one is a little too mushy for my taste, but that’s okay because I’m probably not the target demographic. The song was dedicated to his wife, after all, and not aging hipster dudes who watch old NFL games on VHS. I feel as though women would really eat this stuff up.
No doubt about it, Joseph Konty is a passionate and prolific songwriter. It would be nice if this 10th album could earn him a more prevalent spot in the national scene. Songs like “LoveSpell” are definitely worthy of some attention.
Sources confirm Francheska Stone has reached a tentative Sci-Fi movie deal with a top London producer which may explain her upcoming arrival to San Diego for Comic-Con 2015. Talent Agent and CEO of Ethereal Talent Agency will be digging the very best in genre films that will be judged by a panel of industry luminaries.
The Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival
The Comic-Con International Independent Film Festival (CCI-IFF) returns as part of Comic-Con International for its 15th year. The CCI-IFF once again features a complete schedule of films from around the world, including the United States, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, Philippines, Russia, South Korea, Spain, and Trinidad and Tobago.
Intellivision was always my favorite video game system. In fact, to this day I feel guilty about my childhood self ditching it for the Nintendo in 1987. People always complain about the grown men of today who play video games, but I can recall in the early to mid 80’s all the older guys in my family who would get together and play Intellivision. It wasn’t uncommon to see my 55 year old grandpa(a Korean war veteran) and other relatives fire up a game of Tron Deadly Discs at a family get together. My uncle was especially skilled at games like Astrosmash and Space Armada, and I would eagerly watch him play just to get to see levels I would never make it to in a million years. My own personal favorite games were probably Treasure of Tarmin, Lock N’Chase, and Commando, games which I continued to play well into the mid 90’s. One thing I loved about these games was how merciless they were. No continues, no passcodes, nothing. You could play for hours and when you die, the screen freezes on game over, and it’s back to the title screen.
Intellivision got something of a re-release recently in the form of the “Intellivision Flashback” console, which comes with 60 built-in games. A lot of people worked very hard to get this thing, and it’s great! It even looks like the original.
The only major drawback is that you can’t plug in cartridges. That means you are limited to only the built in games, which include many crappy sports and education games and only a handful of the classics. The makers claim this is due to licensing issues, but that could have been overcome if one had the ability to plug in other original cartridges similar to other retro consoles for NES, Genesis, etc. If you buy this, you can’t play Commando, Lock N’ Chase, Donkey Kong Jr, Atlantis, Burgertime etc. There are still enough cool games to make it worth it though, as the original consoles are getting more expensive and harder to find(in good working order anyway.)
Chicago has become something of a rap music hub in the last few years with a lot of new artists emerging from the area. “Philosopha” with his new album, “Too Dope” seems to be focusing more on quality than involving himself in the drama and infighting idiocy that often plagues the Chicago hip hop scene. He has a unique delivery that is slow and deliberate, almost hypnotic…with a lot of well timed pauses and echos. The song “Trippin” is a good example of this.
If there’s one thing that really comes across with Philosopha’s jams, it is how casually upbeat they are. Not really a trace of anger or melancholy in the tone or the lyrics either. This is a guy who has it together and is making legit music. Just straightforward and chill throughout each jam.
The production on these tracks is smooth and professional, radio quality. There’s not much negative I could say about this although he has a strong voice and some of the electronic processing on it in certain parts seems unnecessary. My favorite track is probably “Used To” which has a strangely memorable phrase “chickens in my rearview” which conjurs up images of a guy driving through a farm on his way to hip hop stardom.
Archaeological excavator and rapper “P Digga” has a slick new jam out called “Grind Mode.” Part of the appeal to it is that some of the lyrics are kind of hard to understand. He has something of what I thought was a Caribbean/British accent, but he’s actually a US based Nigerian rapper. This made me want to listen to it multiple times to see if I could decipher parts of it, and each time I found some hidden nugget like “You can Kik me…You can Facebook me”(yeah he’s talking about the chat app “kik” i’m pretty sure.) This is big time club music, very well produced. Nothing shabby here at all. It actually reminds me of a lot of the rap/reggae stuff DJ David Orlando used to play at Dublin’s(long gone club) in West Hollywood in 1999/2000.
The song will be appearing in his upcoming EP “RIP OZO OMEIHE NZO,” an album title that looks like an old school Nintendo saved game code but probably means something important. I think out of all P Digga’s songs I prefer “Gyrate” as it’s incredibly catchy and has an entertaining video. Though the bizarre song “Homeless” is pretty unique. I’ve said it before, but it’s amazing how much more interesting these up and coming rappers are than the mainstream junk you hear on the radio, especially the foreign born rappers as they bring perspectives that don’t fall neatly into US rap cliches.
Aside from the fact that aliens from another star system could be millions of years more advanced and have space travel technology we are not evolved enough to even conceptualize, there’s something else to consider, and that is lifespan. If you compare a human’s life expectancy of about 75 years to an insect that may live only a few days or months, the lifespan of a human could be a fraction some alien creature’s exponentially longer life cycle. Therefore something that seems like a huge amount of time for us may be brief moment for some other life form. For example, what if their average lifespan is 250,000 years, or even a million years, whether due to advanced medical technology or simply different biology? Then the journey would not seem so long or unfathomable for them.
I have not seen any evidence that we have been visited(the stuff that passes for “proof” among UFO enthusiasts it mostly garbage,) so I’m not claiming that we have. However, based on what we KNOW about the wide variance in lifespans even within our own meager sampling of species on Earth, the length of time a voyage would take should not necessarily be considered a huge obstacle(for other lifeforms of course, as for us it’s a huge obstacle!)
