xtcian

11/12/02 Today's blog is brought

11/12/02

Today's blog is brought to you by a Fisher-Price Record Player and the song "She's a Beauty" by the Tubes.

This particular record player is a replica of my first one (which was white plastic) given to me for my fifth birthday or thereabouts. I had three 45rpm singles: "Love is Blue" by Paul Mariat and his Orchestra, "Sunny," and the Fifth Dimension's "Up, Up and Away." I played these songs so incessantly that the babysitters usually took them away. By the time I was 8 or so, I'd figured out how to rig the record player to play LP's (it involved a soldering iron on the sly), and put on Vince Guaraldi's Oh, Good Grief! until the locals went nuts.

Last year, while I was biding my time at That Internet Job and drifting into impenetrable lapses of afternoon-long glumness, I would hop on eBay and start bidding on all the things that made me feel giddy when I was young. Among the cooler purchases were a Fisher-Price Happy Houseboat (actually floats!) for Michelle, and an original Gnip-Gnop game for Sean, complete with ping-pong balls I painted the appropriate day-glo colors. One of these purchases was this Fisher-Price Record Player, which came with a selection of really bad 45rpm singles.

Anyway, yesterday I heard "She's a Beauty" on the 80s XM Satellite Radio station (you know the song: "step right up, and don't be shy") and today I broke out the F-P player and found my single of the very same. Thus over the last two days I heard the Tubes song in the newest possible way, and the oldest possible way. Not to be a sentimental drag or anything, but young kids do miss out on the physical quality of albums; just to feel your young fingerprints against a 45 of your favorite band... of course, CDs make so much more sense. We were playing an old album on the ancient Phillips turntable upstate last week, and I was stunned at how quickly a side ends. Just for the hassle of constantly turning records over, I'd like to thank the digital revolution.

Oh yeah, and thanks for Zaxxon too. That game was awesome!