0 comments
Sunday Afternoon Coffee ‘n Tunes
The Beginning Of A Mellow Afternoon
Joey Alexander – Warna (2019)
And believe me, it’s needed.
I took Sophie in for her annual shots this morning.
She was such a good girl however, that we stopped for a pup cup on the way home.
Prior to leaving this morning, I was about to do my usual breakfast routine, but discovered I was out of the Kate Farms solution (haven’t received my monthly supply from the healthcare distributor and my most recent order from Amazon hadn’t arrived yet), so I combined my iced coffee with two cartons of isosource. All was well and good until right before I left for the vet and the most horrific reflux hit. Apparently I overdid it on the volume and my stomach didn’t like it one bit.
The worst part of not being able to swallow is when you get reflux. If everything were functioning properly, I’d whip up a glass of baking soda solution, swallow it, and everything would be right as rain. Unfortunately, that’s no longer an option. Yeah, I can still do the baking soda solution via the g-tube (after using the tube to drain the excess stomach contents) to quiet my stomach, but there’s no way of immediately relieving the burn left in my throat from the reflux. And of course there was a certain amount of aspiration, so my O2 (after being 98-100% for weeks now) took a—thankfully brief—nosedive to under 90%. It’s since recovered to the mid 90s, but damn…it wiped me out and I wanted nothing more upon returning home than to take a nap.
That’s passed now, but it’s still going to be a very low-key, quiet afternoon and Joey Alexander is a perfect accompaniment for that.
0 comments
“Eight Is Enough” Of Anything
Famous last words.
I suppose there are worst things to spend my money on, but collecting shit is a fun hobby no matter what you collect, be it antiques, Hummel figurines, Beanie Babies, Candlewick glassware (in the case of my sister), or in my case, portable CD/Minidisc players.
Yeah, I know I should be saving, saving, saving with all the uncertainty in the world right now, but let’s face it: with that madman in the White House everything could go up in a mushroom cloud at any moment because someone disrespected his fragile ego one too many times and the only solution in his addled brain was to start WWIII. And even if it doesn’t get that crazy, none of us has any guarantee of tomorrow—especially if you’re dealing with ongoing health issues—so find joy in what and where you can.
And these little nuggets bring the geek in me much joy.
I’ll admit there is a fine line between collecting and hoarding, however. Fortunately I don’t think I’ve crossed that line, nor have any of my living relatives. My late father, however, was not a collector. He was a hoarder, and no matter how many times we tried to help him declutter (or even so much suggesting that he move into a new apartment) we were met with incredible resistance to the point of outright meltdowns. When he went into skilled nursing and we knew he’d never be going home again, I spent a couple days cleaning his place while I was in town and ended up filling an entire residential dumpster. After he passed it was a Herculean task for my sister (I was back in Denver at the time) to clean the rest of his place out and get it ready for sale.
I hope that when my time comes, whoever has to go through all my shit doesn’t feel like I had crossed the line.
0 comments
Released 40 Years Ago Today
Madonna: True Blue (1986)
From Behind the Grooves: (sadly, link is broken as of 2026)
“True Blue”, the third album by Madonna is released. Produced by Madonna, Patrick Leonard and Stephen Bray, it is recorded at Channel Recording in Los Angeles, CA from December 1985 – April 1986. After the massive whirlwind success of the “Like A Virgin” album and “The Virgin Tour”, the pop superstar does not rest on her laurels, beginning work on the crucial follow up at the end of 1985. Working with long time collaborator Stephen Bray and new producer Patrick Leonard (Michael Jackson, Jody Watley), the album is praised upon its release as her strongest effort to date, and is widely regarded today as one of the best albums of her career. It spins off five top five hits including “Live To Tell” (#1 Pop), “Papa Don’t Preach” (#1 Pop), “Open Your Heart” (#1 Pop) and the title track (#3 Pop). “True Blue” also marks the beginning Madonna’s long association with famed fashion photographer Herb Ritts who shoots the LP’s iconic cover photo. The original LP package also includes a poster of the album cover shot. As a promotion for the album, MTV sponsors the “Make My Video” contest, inviting viewers to submit their own visual interpretations of the title track. The winning entry comes from Angel Gracia and Cliff Guest, whose black & white clip is rotated heavily on the video channel. The pair are awarded a check for $25,000 by the pop superstar herself at MTV’s New York studios. The alternate video directed by James Foley, featuring Madonna with close friends actress Debi Mazur and fashion designer Erika Belle is shown largely outside the US. Madonna also supports the album with the worldwide “Who’s That Girl Tour” beginning in June of 1987. It is remastered and reissued on CD in 2001, with the extended 12″ mixes of “La Isla Bonita” and the title track included as bonus tracks. The vinyl LP is reissued in Europe in 2012, including the original inner sleeve lyric sheet and poster featured in the original release. In October of 2016, a limited edition release of the LP pressed on blue vinyl, is issued as exclusive through the European supermarket chain Sainsbury’s. “True Blue” spends five weeks at number one on the Billboard Top 200, and is certified 7x Platinum in the US by the RIAA.
I mean, the whole album is bangin’ and deserves to be played at 1 am disco-packed-with-big-sweaty-menz volume, but the title track especially moves me. It’s one of those songs that when it comes on I have to stop what I’m doing, crank the volume to angelic heaven-is-a-disco, make your ears bleed volume and DANCE. La Isla Bonita is a close second in that category.
My unbridled love for this album and the accompanying quest to acquire it on “true blue” vinyl has been well documented on this blog, so I won’t add anything more and instead will sign off and go listen to it.
0 comments
Audio Equipment Pr0n
Not mine, but gorgeous nonetheless. As I’ve said many times before, Sony certainly knew how to do color back in the day and Apple could certainly take a lesson from that.
0 comments
Green
I’ll say this about Sony: back in the day they certainly knew how to do green…and blue…and red…and orange—something Apple could take a lesson or two from now.
0 comments
Not Even Remotely Interested
It Arrived…And It’s Alive!
Very happy with my first foray into Japanese auctions! Upon arrival it powered up fine with an AA sidecar battery and/or power adapter, but wouldn’t recognize a perfectly good, fully charged internal gumstick battery—nor would it charge said gumstick. Even though the contacts on the external battery door looked okay, I knew there had to be corrosion inside, so after shining a flashlight in the battery compartment and confirming the internal contacts were caked with the infamous green corrosion, I gingerly removed the rear case. Armed with vinegar, an old toothbrush, q-tips, and isopropyl alcohol—and having watched numerous videos on how to do it—I set about removing the green gunk. Afterwards I put it all back together—and to my utter amazement, not only did it still work, but now it recognized the gumstick battery and even worked! And that color! Sony sure knew how to do orange!
0 comments
Sony Was Ahead Of Its Time But I’m Still Confused
But I have a question…do adult twins who live together sleep in the same room? Do they shower together? Despite the “twist” ending, there seem to be a whole lot of homoerotic undertones to this. Or am I just projecting my own (admittedly not uncommon) fantasies onto those boys?
1 comments
Not Mine, But Damn Sexy
Choose The Proper Tools For The Task At Hand
0 comments
Another Nugget Acquired
Why, you ask? Because the my other portable developed a very wonky disc release mechanism and stopped writing the TOC (table of contents) to the disc after editing it, rendering every disc (no matter what was recorded) as “BLANK DISC.”
When I reached the point I couldn’t deal with this any longer, there were no other decent MZ-S1’s showing up online, so I decided to try a different model. To be honest, it was the color that got me.
And wouldn’t you know, immediately after I hit the BUY IT NOW button, an auction for another pristine MZ-S1 showed up. I submitted the minimum bid, never expecting to actually win the auction. Of course, a week later, I did…
Both units arrived today.
To be honest, it is nice to have a fully functional S1 again. The S1 has always been my favorite Minidisc portable, since I originally owned one in the early 2000s. While some MD connoisseurs decry its large, chonky design, I personally love it. See: Quirky.
One aspect of buying used Minidisc equipment that seldom gets mentioned is that oftentimes the sellers will throw in a few discs to sweeten the deal—or to just get them out of the house. Almost always they’ve got stuff recorded on them—not an issue since they can be easily erased and reused—but occasionally you find a gem hidden among them.
The first S1 (the one with the wonky release mechanism) came with an unlabeled disc with no disc name or track titles recorded. Before I summarily dismissed it and erased it, I thought I’d give it a listen. I really liked the funky jazz beat, so I took a chance that it was more than just YouTube-friendly royalty-free fodder (a lot of times seller post videos of their wares on YouTube), and fired up Soundhound. It immediately identified it: Ernest Raglin – Below The Bassline. It’s been one of my go-to discs to listen to while falling asleep since getting it.
I know all this shit is boring as fuck to most of my readers—OLD MAN REDISCOVERS AND FINDS JOY IN OBSOLETE TECHNOLOGY AND WAXES POETIC ON ITS COOL FACTOR AS WORLD SLIDES INTO DYSTOPIAN HELLSCAPE—so thanks for sticking around in spite of it.
2 comments
Always Choose A Disc Appropriate To The Task
0 comments