Whadja give, whadja get?

[Rev. Rye]

Here's what I got.

DVDs:

• Over the Garden Wall. For those of us who don't know, it's one of the greatest (and likely one of the most heavily acclaimed) miniseries of recent years. Somehow, the people behind this made this story of two young boys being lost in the woods into the most epic fantasy adventure ever. Also, it stars Elijah Wood, John Cleese, Christopher Lloyd, and Kate Winslet's girlfriend in Heavenly Creatures.
  
• Robogeisha. I cannot explain this very well. It has to be seen to be believed: 
  
  
  

Blu-Rays:

• The Swimmer. This is probably the best film I discovered this year. It involves Burt Lancaster swimming a river running from the county line to his home consisting mainly of his friends' swimming pools, but things are not what they seem. Seriously, I've heard of this thing being compared to an episode of "The Twilight Zone", but there's no supernatural elements or even any inference of anything supernatural causing the strange atmosphere of the movie.
  
• Boogie Nights. Make no mistake, I am a huge fan of Paul Thomas Anderson, and now, I finally have Blu-Rays of his three early masterpieces. Granted, I still have quite a ways to go before I have a complete collection of his films (of course, I'm leaving out Hard Eight, because Jah knows PTA does), but at least now I have his undisputed masterpieces.
  
• Alfred Hitchcock: The Essential Collection. The five best films of Hitchcock. Or, at least, the best films that Universal was authorised to release as part of a boxed set. It's a shame the episodes of "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" from my DVDs didn't make it to the Blu-Rays, but at least we've got it on a more durable format. Also, i actually bought this a while back at Costco, but I decided to have Dad keep it for Christmas.
  
• Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This is my personal candidate for the most influential non-Griffith silent film ever; once Griffith refined the rudiments of standard cinematic language, it was this film that truly brought the more unusual aspects of art back into the art form.
  

Books:

• The Selected Works of Friedrich Durrenmatt, Vol. 2: Fictions. Durrenmatt is one of my favourite German-language writers, and my favourite postwar German writer; the breadth of his work covers surrealistic short stories like "The Tunnel" to detective stories that brutally deconstruct the conventions of the genre (like The Pledge), to exercises in grammar that still make interesting thrillers (like the 24-long-sentence-novel that is The Assignment), to absurdist darkly comedic Brechtian plays that are in Volume 1.
  
• Essays and Aphorisms by Arthur Schopenhauer. One of my favourite philosophers in his most famous contemporary english-language compilation in hardcover for the first time. Sadly, since it's not available in the USA, it was late and won't arrive until January.
  

CDs:

• An American Soldier's Tale by Igor Stravinsky and Kurt Vonnegut. It's an adaptation of the famous chamber opera (for lack of a better word) with a new libretto by one of America's top novelists, written with an actual soldier's experience in mind, specifically, Eddie Slovik, the only American soldier to be executed for desertion since the Civil War.
  
• Blind Lemon Jefferson. A collection of the best sides of the famous 20s Bluesman from Milestone Records.
  
• Ellington Uptown, one of the best studio albums of the Duke Ellington Orchestra, and, after Newport 1956, was the second album of his I ever listened to.
  

Guitar Gear:
 Here's a long story; when I originally compiled my wish list, I originally included a TC Electronic Skysurfer Reverb that I had heard would be sold by the end of the year for $50:



Alas, it was not to be, since bringing out your pedals on time would make sense. So, recently, Dad tried to get in touch with my local Guitar Center, and, apparently, after they called TC Electronic, it turned out it would be pushed back to March. We decided that would be too late, so, since that Guitar Center is just down the road from my Therapist, Dad asked me to go down to Guitar Center just before I went to her, and look around to see what I wanted. Surprisingly, the pickings weren't that appetising to me for the most part. Perhaps it's because as an Albert King-style (lefty strung righty) player, I preferred to look for more symmetrically shaped guitars, but there weren't that many symmetrical electrics; my long experience may have spoiled me to more standard acoustic guitars; Amps haven't been a terribly big priority for me in a long time; and knowing that most of the pedals there could be found online for much cheaper (many even had much cheaper, but apparently just as reliable clones online). Eventually, I settled on a small list, and Dad narrowed it down to one item:

• Hofner Ignition Series Violin Guitar. If you know the Beatles, you may get the idea for this. Basically, it's the same guitar Paul McCartney used (and still does, for the most part), except instead of a 4-string bass, it's a 6-string guitar. Dad even had the techs inspect the wiring when he heard a rattle inside. It plays very well and is light as hell.
  
• Joyo AC-Tone. Around the same time Dad asked me to go to Guitar Center, I made a remark about a pedal by Tech 21 that captured the sound of the Vox AC-30 (the whole spectrum from Hank Marvin to Brian May) which also had a much cheaper clone by Joyo. General consensus, by this point is that it actually sounds just as good as the more expensive pedal (since it's a point-for-point clone), this is as expected, and seems to have moved past its early shoddy workmanship. It's on its way. And since it has speaker emulation, if I use it live, I don't even need an amp; I can just plug it into the PA and it'll sound much the same. It also has clones of Fender, Marshall, and Mesa-Boogie Amps, for other guitarists, not to mention a host of other pedal clones (I have their Phase 90).
  

Also, I found a dollar bill with red stains consistent with a dye pack explosion. An interesting record of a crime I have no idea about.