I Love You, SONY... but...

Bought a Walkman MP3 player last evening. Like the Walkman products of old, the venerable cassette Walkmans (Walkmen?), the quality is outstanding. As far as mp3 players go, the sound quality on this little 2G player (the now-discontinued NWZ-B135) is far better than that of any other player I've owned so far (and I've had a few). Better than the iPod Shuffle? Check. Better than the RCA Lyra? Hell, yeah. I bought and returned a Lyra about a year ago because the sound quality was so flat and tinny. Not this little SONY baby, though.

But, SONY, oh SONY, why do you insist (why does anyone even make?) in-ear headphones where the cable to one of the earbuds is shorter? I guess the assumption is that you will put the longer cable around the back of your neck. But I don't wanna! I hate wearing headphones that way! What's wrong with the nice, symmetrical pairs you still make and sell separately? Why package sub-standard headphones (I'm talking design, not sound quality hear) with your players? A bit of creative splicing/soldering is in order.

Overall review: a great little machine for $59.99. Not bad at all when you consider I paid $212.99 in 1987 (or the about 1/4 of my university tution that year, or nearly $400.00 in today's dollars) for a compact cassette Walkman which I must have played for a couple of hours every day for nearly 2-1/2 years. Another nice feature is the rechargeable battery on this new device. I don't even want to contemplate how much I spent on AAs for the cassette Walkman, nor how much mercury I've put into the landfills and the water table.

The Lap of Luxury?

May I present the Petiole Hammock... only $35,000.

I dunno about you, but I think sleeping on a huge pile of money would be more comfortable.

NIGHT(not)WATCH(ed)

I tried watching NIGHTWATCH, the "Russian Matrix" as it's been called. Terrible. Twenty-five minutes in I ejected the disc and that was the end of that.

It looked like it was made by someone who'd never seen a film in their life, and was full of all sorts of stupid, stupid details. Example. A guy starts his truck. Zoom into CGI of the crankshaft and ignition and the drive train as the motor turns over. What the FUCK?! That's not cool. That's just bad filmmaking. And the fight scenes I saw were edited to the point of being incomprehensible. Whatever happened to a few well-composed shots and some solid fight choreography?! (That's what the new STAR TREK had going for it in spades. The story and the cinematography were clear and uncluttered. There wasn't a billion things onscreen at once or confusing closeups or cut-aways. This was real filmmaking.)

Needless to say I won't be watching the sequel, DAYWATCH. Thankfully they were loaners from a friend. I'm glad I didn't waste money on renting or buying these.