88 Lines About 44 Anime Women

I posted this as a comment in one of chaoticmoth's posts, but I figured it merited its own amusing post, since it's so well done. See how many you recognize! :p

RTS Presents: Thirty Years and Thousands of Dollars Later...

Earlier this week I was chatting with my parents on the phone, when my dad informed me that the last batch of my record collection had finally been gotten rid of. Basically what this means is that, after thirty years, I'm back to where I started with my physical record collection: a handful of Beatles-related vinyl.

These were the first records I actively sought out back in the day and for the first few years of my music collecting. Some were bought new at a department store like Mars Bargainland or Bradlees, some at chain record stores at local malls. The other half were bought used at flea markets (I did most of my frantic searching--with frequent success--at Rietta Ranch in Hubbardston MA) and the annual church fair my local congregation put on, back when they did it at the Town Hall. By the late 80s I had all the Beatles' stuff, and was in the process of buying the solo stuff...and also the occasional bootleg that surfaced at the indie record stores.

And now, that's where the collection ended up--only that collection is sitting in the basement of my parents' house, on the other side of the country, and I don't own a turntable anymore. The bulk of my music collection is now digital, 98% of it sitting on one of two external hard drives, the other 2% direct downloads from eMusic, iTunes or Zune on the main hard drive. A lot more music, a lot less room.


My collection of vinyl grew slowly from the mid 80s, extending from the Beatles to other random bands, including many of which I'd heard on my then recently-discovered favorite college radio station, WAMH at Amherst College. From about late 1986 onward I began buying titles I couldn't easily find in regular chain stores. I frequented Al Bums, Main Street Records, For the Record, That's Entertainment...the small indie stores that carried all sorts of things that catered to my newfound tastes. And I also still frequented Rietta Ranch with my dad on weekends, finding some of the best deals in the least likely of places. And by that time, Columbia House and RCA had both sunk their claws into my bank account with their supposed cheap deals as well, though with them I mostly ordered cassettes only. And I was more of an album fan; most of what I was looking for was never released as singles, unless it was a rare b-side or 12" extended remix.

By senior year of high school, I believe I had at least six vinyl crates' worth of records, and it was a tough decision of what to bring with me when I went off to Boston. I didn't want to bring everything, but paring it down was hard. I ended up with one crate of Beatles-related titles and three crates of random things that stretched all different kinds of genres. It would only grow exponentially in college, when I began to frequent the used record stores in Kenmore Square and elsewhere, spending money I should have saved for other things on the album I hadn't seen anywhere else. I did occasionally do the sell-back, but very rarely, and only when I had titles that I ended up hating. Also by sheer luck, I'd managed to snag a rather extremely large amount of titles (a few hundred) when Emerson's AM station replaced their vinyl collection with cds.

By the time I was in my last year of living in Boston (1995), I was frequenting even more used stores like the ones up in Cambridge (In Your Ear, Looney Tunes, and so on), weeding through the dollar bins for albums I'd never had but had wanted or was curious about. It was here that I realized just how much money I'd spent on vinyl when I should have spent it on other things like bills and food, when I had to sell back titles twice in order to pay off some things. I backed down then...but by then I'd stopped obsessing over vinyl and had started frequenting the used cassette and cd bins. Away from one evil and into another. I still bought the occasional vinyl platter from the late 90s onward, but not nearly as often as the cds and tapes. I just didn't have the room.

I used to remember how much vinyl I had as of earlier this decade, but that number is now lost...by that time I was counting the full collection--albums, cds, cassettes, dub copies and all (and for the record, I believe it was somewhere around 6000+ titles--meager for a collector, but way more than the occasional music fan). And when in 2005 I decided to move down to New Jersey, I'd originally planned to bring my vinyl with me eventually, but that stopped when we were offered the chance to move to California. My era of vinyl ended in one quick afternoon, just before our move. In one hour I went through my entire vinyl collection, pulled all the Beatles-related titles (singles included), made a smaller separate pile of titles that had songs I had my sister put on cassette (which I still have and will eventually make into mp3s), and told my family that they could get rid of the rest. I didn't want any money for them--they could take whatever money was made off of them.


And now, here we are. No vinyl in the house, but a stash of Beatles stuff at home. And that's it.

The end of the vinyl era for me.

And currently headlong into the digital, with no end in sight.

I will say this--it's cheaper, and takes up a lot less room, and I can still collect to my heart's content, as long as I keep the spending under control. And over the course of the last few years, I think I've done a damn good job of it.

Le vinyle est mort, vive le musique. ;)

ATTENTION: We are under CANNON FIRE

Well, sort of.

The Festival of Sail (SF's version of the Tall Ships thing) has as part of its festivities, pirate ships, cruise ships, schooners, fireboats (the one that fought the Marina District fire during the '89 Loma Prieta quake is featured), and whatnot. Which means that this neighborhood is hoppin' with people this weekend.

About a half hour ago I thought I heard some loud booming noises--and I think this one, which actually has guns, was setting them off.

Took me a few moments to realize what it was... It's yet more proof that there's never a dull moment here in the city... :p



Of course, some of you out there know my past not-too-enjoyable experience with Tall Ships in Boston, but that's another post. ;)