Andy Chase

My brother kindly gifted me an old Garrard GT12 turntable a while back, and this week I finally got hold of a new cartridge plus up a few albums to tide me over until I get my own old stash out of whatever closet it’s hiding in at our parents’ house.

There is nothing to compare to the physicality of vinyl records, both the discs themselves and all those gorgeous big sleeves… cover art used to be such a big part of the overall package. It’s been about 20 years since I had my own turntable… how I’ve missed it!

The new Audio Technica AT92E cartridge sounds great, but there’s noticable wow in the playback - time to hunt down a replacement belt too.

I've been using iTunes for over six years now, and I rely pretty heavily on ratings and playcounts to create any number of Smart Playlists, most of which revolve around finding music in a particular genre that is highly rated OR frequently played AND has not been played in a while.

The result is not unlike the mix tapes of favorite music that I used to make for myself, back when I had few enough albums that picking a mere 90 minutes' worth of faves was not a laughable notion.

But having one giant, never-ending Smart Playlist is depressing in some ways; I could start my "unrecent favorites" playlist and never reach the end, thanks to the "Live Updating" feature. The major thing missing from having a massive digital music library is that sense of deliberateness that used to accompany listing to music on physical media. In particular, cassettes and vinyl LP's, which required the listener to get up, flip sides, and resume playing.

For a while now I've been paying homage in the nerdliest possible way to the act of flipping over a humble 45-minute per side mix tape. I started with a smart playlist titled "Unrecent alt/rock Faves", limited it to 45 minutes, and then unchecked the 'Live Updating Box'; after all of the songs play, I edit the playlist, re-check 'Live Updating', click 'OK', then re-edit the playlist and un-check 'Live Updating' again. Kind of a pain, but it does break the music up into nice listenable chunks.

Just now I decided to bite the bullet and hack together an AppleScript that consolidated this silliness into one step, and managed to pull it off. You need two playlists: The aforementioned "Unrecent Alt/Rock Faves" smart playlist (limited to 45 minutes, with the 'Live Updating' option checked) and a new regular playlist called "Unrecent Faves Cassette". As far as I can tell, there's no way to alter the 'Live Updating' attribute of a Smart Playlist via AppleScript, so this method just copies from a Smart Playlist to a static one.

Here's the script:

tell application "iTunes"
	set theSmartPL to playlist "Unrecent Alt/Rock Faves"
	set theDumbPL to playlist "Unrecent Faves Cassette"
	
	delete every track of theDumbPL
	
	set selectedTracks to every track of theSmartPL
	
	repeat with aTrack in selectedTracks
		duplicate aTrack to theDumbPL
	end repeat
	
	reveal theDumbPL
	play theDumbPL
	
end tell

When saved in ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts it shows up in the iTunes Scripts Menu, and when run it wipes out the current contents of 'Unrecent Faves Cassette' playlist, replacing it with the newly updated contents of the 'Unrecent Alt/Rock Faves' playlist. It then selects and plays the Cassette playlist. I can even run the script from Quicksilver! The only thing that would make it better is have the script play a .wav file of a cassette being flipped over before re-starting, but I can't seem find a free one online.

You can download the .scpt file as an attachment, but if you want to name your playlists something else you'll need to open it in Script Editor.app and tweak it yourself.

For some reason this afternoon I’ve been thinking a lot about our temporary digs when Kim and I first hit California in 1996: the city of Brea in Orange County.

The things that stand out are cultural adjustment-type moments:

• Getting used to everything in sight being brown and dusty, not to mention having been built within the last 10-20 years

Sam Adams Honey Porter is back, at least for the time being, and I am pleasantly surprised to find that I like it just about as well as I did 10 or 11 years ago, which was probably the last time I had it.

I remember usually having a six pack of Samuel Adams’ Honey Porter or Scotch Ale in the fridge of my Racquet Club apartment, but after moving to L.A. I think I was either too poor to buy Sam Adams for a while, or too busy trying out other beers. By the time I got a hankering for Honey Porter again, they had stopped making it.

Late last year I heard that it was available again, but only in one of their variety 12 packs. I was pleasantly surprised to see a six pack of it last week, and today I finally gave in to temptation.

It’s not the best porter I’ve ever had —that honor would have to go to a bottle of Samuel Smith’s Tadcaster I had at Bishop’s Lounge about three years ago— but it’s good, and the nostalgia factor counts for a lot in my book.

Here’s hoping they start selling Scotch Ale by the six pack again.

McDonald’s old-school deep-fried Apple Pies.

Apparently there was one McDonald’s in Allston, Massachusetts that kept selling them well into the 1990’s, but then it burned down.

Pizza Hut Priazzo

I believe they used to market it as “stuffed pizza”. The usual Pizza Hut ingredients in an inch-deep, crackery sort of crust, with more crust and cheese on top.

Hostess Pudding Pies

But not the green Ninja Turtle ones.

Snapple Soda

Tru Root Beer was the best, but I seem to recall a nice Raspberry-Lime flavor too.

Mister Donut

They had the coolest logo. We hardly ever actually bought donuts from the one that used to be in Gardner because they had a counter where all the old timers would go and smoke cigarettes, giving the all of the donuts a nice ashtray aftertaste.

The Pewter Pot

I can’t remember ever actually eating at one, but I was always fascinated by the anachronistic, heavy, dark colonial theme when you’d walk by one in the middle of a shopping mall.

Polar Orange Bitter

It was more or less like the “Orange Dry” they still sell, except it had quinine in it.

Friendly Cola

Friendly restaurants (back when they were “Friendly”, not “Friendly’s”) used to sell their own cola, which actually tasted like cola.

Fribbles

Speaking of Friendly’s, am I the only person on the planet who remembers when the Fribble was the super-thick, almost-too-thick-for-a-straw milk shake? That was the whole point of calling it something other than a regular old milkshake. I don’t know when they changed it, but I’ll never forgive them.

Deering Ice Cream

They were a lot like Friendly Restaurants, but just around Portland, Maine. They had their own green lemon-lime soda.

While poking around online for an old book for somebody else, it occurred to me to see if there were any copies of Three To Get Ready, one of my favorite childhood books that I probably checked out of the Princeton Library 2 dozen times over the years.

Sure enough, used copies of the book are available at decent prices. I never paid attention to the writer and illustrator when I was a kid, but it was written by Betty Boegehold and illustrated by Mary Chalmers. The book contains three stories about three different kittens learning basic life lessons (all that stuff about being nice to one another and minding your parents) from their mother. The stories are nice, but what I liked best about the book were the illustrations.

Then I decided to see if I could dig anything up about one of my other favorite books that I still have, which is actually here in California. Now, my fellow Generation X-ers will no doubt snort derisively at the title of this one. (wow, according to this page both my older brother and my younger sister belong to gen-x, too) It's called The Snuggle Bunny, by Nancy Jewell. And, as I realized tonight for the first time, illustrated by Mary Chalmers.

It's not surprising that two of my favorite childhood books would be illustrated by the same person, but it gave me the same spine-tingling feeling I got when I first saw the Dire Straits video for Calling Elvis back around 1990. The video used footage from Gerry Anderson's Thunderbirds. By the time I saw the video I had completely forgotten about Thunderbirds, but in a flash I remembered many early childhood Saturdays spent watching Thunderbirds on some UHF station out of Boston.

It's like Deja Vu, only stronger because you really did experience the stuff you suddenly feel like you've seen/heard/watched before.

Music does this to me all the time.Time for a rambling non sequitur before bed.

Sometime around 1989 or 1990 (I suspect it was the summer of '89, between ninth and tenth grade), I picked up an LP - (a Vinyl LP, can you believe record stores still sold vinyl as late as 1989?) Jazz From Hell, by Frank Zappa.

My brother, who became a Zappa fanatic at Berklee, quickly made a convert out of me. He made me quite a few tapes of Zappa's stuff from the 70's through the early 80's, and they've received so much play over the years that I suspect the magnetic particles are getting worn away from the base.

I had rented Video From Hell, and found the Synclavier tidbits interesting, especially the pseudo-video for G-Spot Tornado.

By the end of the 80's I wanted to vomit from the overuse of shitty synthesizers in much of the music of that decade, and had developed a general aversion to all things synthesized, especially percussion. (Hey, my brother's a drummer... what do you expect?)

But a synthesizer like the Synclavier in the hands of Frank Zappa... my God. G-Spot Tornado fairly rocked! There was also concert footage of St. Etienne, the only track on the album performed by humans. When I ran across a copy of Jazz From Hell at the Greendale Mall Record Town, I decided to buy it.

I wasn't quite prepared for the rest of the album, which gets into some extremely complex and abstract territory, and I never listened to it a whole lot... but the first track, Night School is probably the most accessible tune. It's an instrumental (like the rest of the tracks on the album), and it's a great example of what a great composer Zappa was. I've always found it to be a little bit sad, and in the years since Frank Zappa's death it's gotten that much more poignant.

Not too long ago I hunted down an MP3 of Night School (Hey, I own the LP - I count that as fair use) and I've been listening to it fairly often. Tonight, staying up too late, my wife and all the critters already asleep, it really got to me.

When we were working in a special effects shop after moving out here in 1996, there was hardly a day that went by that I wouldn't think to myself or say out loud, "If you had told the miserable sixth grader I was 10 years ago that I'd be working on costumes for Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5, I would never have believed you!" As the novelty of working in effects wore off and my dislike of L.A. grew, I fell out of that pattern of thought. As I seem to keep saying lately, I've been trying to stop dwelling on the past and get on with things.

But listening to that song tonight, I thought to myself "If you had told me Frank Zappa would be dead, and I'd be married and living on the other side of the continent away from my family and old friends when I start listening to this album again, I wouldn't have believed you!" Bittersweet. Being married certainly doesn't make me sad, but I hate feeling so disconnected from the past sometimes. Music does this to me all the time.

I think I need to go to bed.

The Empty Bowl

I haven't spent a lot of time there yet, but I was impressed to find a reference to General Mills' Buckwheats cereal, of which I have fond childhood memories. And I was happy to read that Booberry and Frankenberry are still in production, just harder to find than they used to be.

Damn, and a post on the message board just reminded me of "Ice Cream Cones" cereal, which came in two flavors: Vanilla and Chocolate. Damn! I guess they can't get away with making new cereals like that anymore. The old standbys like Cookie Crisp got grandfathered in, but gone are the days of innovative cereals like Ice Cream Cones and Dinky Donuts.

A Google search for Dinky Donuts just turned up this page, which may also be of nostalgic interest.

Every once in a while I'll get misty eyed as I view those 16 colors and listen to those three SID voices.Every once in a while I'll get all nostalgic for my old Commodore 64 computer, head out to the internet, download an emulator and some disk images, and get misty eyed as I view those 16 colors and listen to those three SID voices. Then I get frustrated because I don't have a joystick, and forget about my small C64 emulation setup until the next time... it either gets lost in a sub-sub-directory on a current partition, or lost altogether when I reformat a drive.

On a tip from a friend I checked out www.c64.com, which led me to an emulator I'd never tried before, CCS64. Support for Cartridges, multiple virtual 1541 drives, all kinds of goodies.

One game that I was never able to find in emulator form was Gateway To Apshai, but happily I found it tonight - the version I found seems to be from a floppy disk, but I had it as a cartridge - the first game (of many) my parents ever bought me for the Commodore.

Beach Head soon followed, as did Fort Apocalypse and other favorites suddenly remembered as I scrolled through the listings... and I haven't even looked at 1/4 of them yet.
Only problem is, I really need a joystick to get back into this stuff. Fortunately, it looks like joysticks are cheap on e-bay. Of course, if the kids selling their old joysticks on Ebay treated them anything like my brother and I treated ours (Decathalon, anyone?) I would probably be better off buying a new one.