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A Fun Old (New) Stereo: The Looptone 9-in-1 Stereo

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I own maybe fifty albums on vinyl and less than a dozen cassette tapes. I don’t buy new releases on vinyl — everything I have is either belonged to my parents, is from my own childhood, or was purchased to tickle some nostalgic sense. I don’t think I paid more than a dollar or two for any of them. Most of them pop, hiss and crackle and I like it that way. I’m less nostalgic about cassette tapes. I digitized all my childhood radio recordings years ago and only have a handful of tapes from local bands that never made the leap to CD.

When it comes to digitizing this stuff, I have some pretty good gear. I have Kenwood tape deck and a decent turntable that I hooked up to my computer. This setup was good for digitizing stuff, but not great at listening to it.

Enter the Looptone 9-in-1 stereo system.

I was eyeing a similar system but in a “boombox” form factor at Sam’s Club the last time I was there, but this unit adds the ability to play records which is what pushed me over the edge.

Not only does this compact unit play records, it also plays cassettes, CDs, and has an AM/FM radio built in. It also plays mp3s off of a USB stick or an SD card, has a 3.5mm aux input, and supports Bluetooth. Unless you have a collection of music on 8-track, this thing should play it.

For outputs the unit has two speakers built-in to the sides, a 3,5mm headphone jack, and two RCA jacks on the rear for connecting to an amplifier or some powered speakers. The built-in speakers are “okay” for listening to music but for big room sound you’ll want to add some external speakers.

The unit also came with a remote which can be used to control the CD player and your digital files. The device also has the ability to record any input out to mp3 on either a USB stick or SD card… but with a catch. The mp3s are hard set to 128kbps. The best thing I can say is that if you don’t know what that means it probably won’t matter to you, and if you do know what that means, you’ll be disappinted.

(There was a time when 128kbps m3ps were considered to be “CD quality” and were a good compromise back when hard disk storage was more expensive, but today it’s not considered to be very good. If you’re Gen-X or older and/or not an audiophile you may not even be able to hear a difference, but… yeah. It’s a bit of a bummer and while it would work fine for capturing an old record or cassette tape, no real audiophile would use this for that purpose.)

The main reason none of that upsets me is that that’s not why I bought this device. What I was wanting was something to occasionally listen to old records and cassettes on in one compact form factor. This meets that goal perfectly. I occasionally purchase used records for sale to put in our toy booth and this will make it much easier for me to give them a listen and make sure they play and aren’t scratched.

This probably isn’t for the audiophile in your life (and that person probably already has a nice stereo), but this would make a cool little player for someone young or someone old.

If you want to check it out, here’s a link to it on Amazon: Looptune 9-in-1 Stereo

EDIT: Amazon has an updated version of this same unit with slightly different styling that also offers Bluetooth in AND out and, more importantly, is only sale for about $40 less. Looptone 10-in-1 (Updated Model)

Main, Reviews

I Watched All 79 Episodes of Star Trek So You Don’t Have To… But You Should

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Star Trek the Original Series with Captain Kirk, Dr. Bones McCoy, and Spock

Because I didn’t watch Star Trek as a child, a few months ago I decided to binge every episode of the show. Star Trek (today referred to as Star Trek: The Original Series or simply ST:TOS) originally aired on NBC from September 1966 through June 1969, and consisted of 79 episodes.

When I say I didn’t watch the show, I don’t mean to imply I had never seen it. It was nearly impossible to grow up in the 70s/80s without at least some exposure to the show. Although I grew up a Star Wars kid, I definitely remember the McDonald’s Star Trek-themed Happy Meals released in the late 1970s to promote the release of the first film. I remember one of the kids in my neighborhood owned the Mego Star Trek action figures, which we played with. So certainly Star Trek was around, it just wasn’t my thing.

Through general exposure I was familiar with the show’s major characters going in, along with some of its most popular tropes that have permeated pop culture. I knew enough to know that beaming down to a planet while wearing a red shirt was bad, that there had once been an Evil Spock with a beard, and that no female human, alien, or android is able to resist Captain Kirk’s charm. Other than that, the only episodes I could recall were “The Trouble with Tribbles” and “The City on the Edge of Forever.” Everything else was new to me.

After watching 79 episodes in about as many days, here’s what I learned.

First and foremost, this show was wacky. With so many writers and so many hands in the pot, the end result was a pretty uneven series. Episodes like “The City on the Edge of Forever” and “The Doomsday Machine” were solid, classic science-fiction. Great episodes such as those are sprinkled amongst a bunch of really weird ones, like the one where the Enterprise gets taken over by the alien spirit of Jack the Ripper, and the one where the crew picks up a group of hitchhiking space hippies who play terrible folk music and manage to take over the Enterprise. Speaking of which…

The crew of the Enterprise has to be the most gullible group of suckers ever corralled onto a single starship. Time after time, episode after episode, the entire crew gets tricks by aliens. It’s a good thing the crew members never played space chess with anyone outside the ship as they would have been slaughtered. In one episode, Spock beams down to a planet based on 1930s Chicago, gets kidnapped, escapes, returns, and gets immediately kidnapped a second time! In another episode, the crew gets outsmarted by a group of space hippies led by a guy who is declared legally insane. A few weeks later, Kirk beams down to an insane asylum being managed by a doctor, where he is quickly tricked by the insane inmates. The only enemy Kirk faced that didn’t outsmart him immediately was the Gorn, a big lizard intending to smash Kirk’s head open with a rock, and even that seemed like an even match. A few weeks later, Kirk — captain of the ship — is convinced he is being contacted by Abraham Lincoln.

Captain Kirk and Abraham Lincoln

Star Trek also features a lot of repetition. On at least four episodes members of the Enterprise beam down to planets only to be forced to fight other people. There are a lot of episodes where it is revealed that what we thought were people were really androids. There were two or three episodes in which computers or androids were defeated by Kirk putting them into “logic loops” that short circuited their brains. Another recycled idea on the show was that certain people from earth’s history were actually aliens. The Greek god Apollo was an alien, Jack the Ripper was an alien, and in a shocking turn of events, we learn that Brahms, Leonardo Da Vinci, and several other high profile historical figures were all the SAME alien!

There were a lot of things I didn’t know about the show before diving it. I did not know just how many women Kirk fell in love with and/or attempted to seduce (a lot). I also wasn’t aware of the animosity between Dr. McCoy and Spock, which seemed to grow stronger as the series went on (leading to my dad’s favorite Star Trek quote, “Spock, are you out of your Vulcan mind?”). I also didn’t realize just how many episodes took place on Earth-like planets. Throughout the series the crew visited (an alien version of) prohibition-era Chicago, (an alien version of) Nazi, German, (an alien version of) the Civil War, (an alien version of) the Great Depression, (an alien version of) Native Americans, (an alien version of) the old west, and a few other time periods. Oh, and in one episode, Kirk went back in time and got accused of being a witch.

Any time you binge watch a show, lots of repeated plot devices jump out at you. While I was well aware of the trope prior to my deep dive, I tried to warn every member of the Enterprise wearing a red shirt not to beam down. Likewise, I found the transporter to be pretty reliable, except when it wasn’t. More than once, the crew beamed down only to discover their weapons or other gear didn’t beam down with them. (Trivia fact: the transporter was invented as a plot device so that didn’t have to film the crew flying back and forth in the shuttle on every single episode.) Along the same lines, it didn’t seem to be particularly difficult to jam or disable the crew’s phasers (it happened a lot). For that matter, it didn’t seem to be that difficult to take over control of the Enterprise (it happened a lot). It also didn’t seem to be difficult to trick the crew into going into areas where the transporter couldn’t reach them (it happened a lot).

For a show with so many uneven episodes and so many flaws, you might wonder what the appeal was, or is — and that is, the show was great. I really enjoyed my romp through Star Trek: The Original Series. In historical context, it was a show about hope and wonder — a show that began during the space race and was inexplicably cancelled the same month man landed on the moon. At times it felt like the writers had run out of original (or logical) plot ideas, which is crazy as multiple reboots and spinoffs continue to be made even today. As long as there are planets to be explored, enemies to be defeated, and female aliens to be “conquered” (ahem), there will be a place for the starship Enterprise and her crew to boldly go where no man has gone before.

Food, Main, Reviews

The Olde Orchard: Old Restaurant, New Location

Live in the same town long enough and you’ll eventually start referring to houses by who used to live there, and buildings by what they used to be.

If I were giving directions to someone from out of town to The Olde Orchard, I’d tell them it’s located at 326 Elm Avenue in Yukon in the Old Mills Plaza, just off of Main Street. To anyone from around here, I’d just say it’s where the Miller Grill used to be — and to a real old timer, I might even call it the old Big Ed’s.

Pulling into the parking lot, it’s hard for me not to see the plaza as it existed in the 1980s. One of the stores on the left hand side of the plaza used to be home to my parents’ computer store, Yukon Software, which closed in 1986. Next door to our store was Video Rentals, the only rental store in town that offered both an indoor putt-putt golf course and free popcorn. Sometimes, I would wander from our store over to Big Ed’s to buy a fountain drink and take advantage of free refills while playing one of the arcade or pinball machines they had near the front door.

My wife and I arrived at the Old Orchard at the peak of their morning rush, which meant waiting a few minutes for a table. While this was our first visit to the Olde Orchard it was not our first time in the building, not by a longshot. Miller Grill’s old front counter, which is not being used by the current tenants, sits in the spot where the old coin-operated boat my son loved to ride in twenty years ago used to be. The bench we sat on while waiting for an available table is where our daughter set up her Girl Scout Cookie stand roughly a decade ago. I could have kept going but within just a few minutes a table opened up. If there’s one thing that goes well with breakfast, it’s nostalgia.

If the name Olde Orchard sounds familiar, you may remember its previous location in Bethany, just a stone’s throw from Western Oaks High School on NW 23rd street. Olde Orchard has been in business since 1974. Shortly after the Miller Grill closed up shop Olde Orchard moved in, bringing the family-style home cooking they’re known for to Yukon with them.

In a town where there help wanted signs hang on the door of every other restaurant, I was not surprised to find waitstaff running laps around the restaurant as if they were NASCAR drivers. I mentally prepared myself for a long wait, but was pleasantly surprised when menus arrived and our drink order had been taken in less than a minute. Normally my wife and I would have slowly sipped on our coffee while taking in our new surroundings, but our new surroundings consisted of thirty tables, every one of them full. There’s a time to soak up the scenery, and a time to know what you want to eat by the time the waitress comes back.

For expediency’s sake I ordered one of my breakfast go-to plates, a Western Omelet with grits, toast, and a side of bacon. My wife opted for biscuits and gravy in a bowl with hash browns and an egg on top. Other potential choices included the breakfast burrito, the mixed grill, and the Belgian waffle special — multiple reasons to return.

I cannot stress enough how unfounded my concerns of receiving poor or low service was. While being busy is a great problem for any restaurant to have, it doesn’t always make for the best customer experience. For the 30 minutes we were there, the waitstaff never stopped running, and we never saw the bottom of our coffee mugs. Within two mugs — our standard breakfast measurement of time — our breakfast had arrived.

Everything we ordered arrived warm and fresh. The ham inside the Western omelet was perfectly cooked, and not a cheap or tough cut of ham the breakfast cooks occasionally try to hide inside eggs. The grits were fine as-is and better with butter, sugar, and a little salt. Toast is toast, and the bacon was cooked to perfection.

Susan and I go out for breakfast every Saturday morning and we’ve dined at a lot of different restaurants around the metro. Some of those places, like Good Gravy! and the HunnyBunny Biscuit Company, serve unique and specialized items. Other places stick to the basics, and Olde Orchard is one of those. That being said, what they do, they do well. I do want to quantify that by saying I am commenting on their breakfast offerings only; their lunch and dinner menu appears to be more extensive,

The restaurant industry has taken a pummeling over the past two years. I’m glad Olde Orchard survived, I’m glad they relocated to Yukon, and I’m looking forward to returning in the near future.

Computers/Tech/Games, Main, Reviews

Pixoo-64: A Pixel-Pushing Art Display for Retro Fanatics

I’m a fan of old school digital artwork. For the past five years I’ve enjoyed viewing ANSI artwork (created in the 1990s for BBSes) in my office on a dedicated Raspberry Pi running PyAns. Another style of vintage art I really enjoy is pixel artwork. Pixel graphics are images drawn on a grid, one pixel at a time. These pictures can be very small, like characters from an old video game, or very large. The sprites that make up characters in most Commodore 64 games are only 24×21 pixels in size. Other pictures, like the backgrounds from those games or large pieces of art, could be several hundred pixels wide. Regardless of the size, pixel artwork has a unique aesthetic that I (and many others) happen to love. It evokes a sense of nostalgia for me. I’m a fan.

One problem with viewing pixel artwork on a modern computer is that computers are really good at smoothing things out, a feature that ruins pixel art. Taking those tiny pixel characters and increasing their sizes often makes them blurry. When viewed at their original resolution, pixel characters would appear almost microscopic on a modern computer. On my monitor, which is set to a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels, a 16×16 character would be unrecognizable. As a comparison, most of the icons on a Windows desktop are 96×96.

Introducing Divoom, the company behind a series of pixel art frames. Divoom’s first picture frame, the original Pixoo ($55.99), has a resolution of just 16×16 pixels. Each pixel is represented by its own LED. Divoom’s second frame, the Divoom Pixoo Max ($85.99), is a 32×32 frame. Their most recent offering, and the one I purchased, is the Pixoo-64 ($149.99), which has a resolution of 64×64 on a screen approximately 10″x10″. (Divoom also offers a several other devices, many of which combine their smaller screens with Bluetooth speakers.)

Let’s get this out of the way up front; to call the Pixoo-64 (or any of Divoom’s products) a niche item is an understatement. We’re literally talking about a very specific style of screen designed to display a specific style of ancient artwork. The moment I saw a picture of the Pixoo-64 I fell in love with it and knew I had to have one. If it doesn’t elicit the same level of excitement for you, you can exit the ride here. I can already tell you, this device is not for you.

Pixoo-64 displaying a Biker Scout from Star Wars

The Pixoo-64 looks like a picture frame — not unlike those digital picture frames that were all the rage a decade ago. It arrived in a square box roughly 12″x12″ and about an inch thick. Along with the device inside the box you’ll also find some mounting hardware, a kickstand, and a long USB power cable (no wall adapter included). The Pixoo-64 can hang on a wall or stand on a desk or shelf, but the device contains no internal battery so the USB cable is required for power. The frame has a single button on the side for turning the device off and on and cycling through options.

The Pixoo-64 displays both still and animated pictures 64×64 pixels in size. All pictures must be viewed on and transferred from Divoom’s app, available both for iOS and Android. The app’s layout is less than optimal and the options are confusing, but it’s required. If you purchase a Pixoo-64 I recommend spending an hour or two going through every feature of the app. The app can connect to the device using Bluetooth, or wirelessly if you connect the device to your WiFi router.

There are so many options and utilities within the app that it’s difficult to know where to begin. Along with displaying artwork, the Pixoo-64 can also display calendars, alarms, timers, and events entered into its embedded planner. There’s even a digital coloring book. There are audio visualizers that work with the device’s built-in microphone.

The app is also filled with “community” features, all of which feel like they were designed by someone unfamiliar with the definition of the word. You can chat (one-on-one) with other users of the app. There’s a music section with thousands of online streaming radio stations. The message area displays lists of everyone who liked the artwork you’ve uploaded, comments your pictures have received, your list of followers, and private messages. Another section is full of YouTube videos, all of which are about the Pixoo, many of those in Chinese. Somewhat confusingly, almost none of these features are grouped together inside the app. Divoom literally took every community feature and then separated them as if they weren’t a part of the same… what’s the word I’m looking for…

The most important feature is the artwork available for the Pixoo-64; the quality and sheer number of pictures available for the device is astounding. The available library is entirely user sourced, and hundreds (thousands?) of artists have uploaded (tens of?) thousands of pictures, most of which are good and some of which are great. The Galleria section has fifteen categories to scroll through, including “New” and “Recommended”. The Expert section has artwork grouped by artist. There’s also a search feature that’s limited to searching titles and hashtags, so it’s only as good as the original artist’s metadata. By default the app only displays 64×64 pictures to Pixoo-64 owners, but they’ve added the option to include earlier 32×32 and 16×16 images as well, which simply get resized to fit the Pixoo-64’s larger screen.

Adding your own artwork to the device is relatively simple, although you should forget about trying to create anything using the app’s built in editor. Although both the drawing studio and the animation studio have a small selection of drawing-related tools, it is literally impossible to accurately draw anything this small on your phone’s screen using your thumb or finger. Everything I drew looked like a five-year-old got a hold of MS-Paint. Fortunately, there’s a better solution.


Both studios allow importing pictures from your phone, which it will then resample to the correct resolution. I uploaded an iPhone picture of my wife with some roses and the Pixoo-64 instantly resized the picture to 64×64 pixels without making a complete mess of the picture. To create your own pixel artwork, you could draw a 64×64 picture in Photoshop and then import it into the device. I spent the past week cruising websites full of animated GIFs, downloading them to my phone, and sending them to the Pixoo-64 with mostly successful results. I found an online cache of animated enemies from the 1980s game Bard’s Tale for the Commodore 64, which I was able to upload into the animation studio and convert with success. I was also able to download a sprite character sheet from a website (a sheet that contains all the frames of animation from a game character), import the frames into Photoshop, and generate an animated GIF from the layers. The app’s import features worked better than expected. Just don’t plan on directly drawing anything stellar using the app itself.

The Pixoo-64 is Divoom’s first device to support wireless connectivity (all previous models were limited to Bluetooth). Earlier Pixoo models supported calendars, audio visualizers, alarms, timers, event notifications, and so on, but the Pixoo-64, once connected to the internet, has an API-driven section of screens. Now, you can display things like how many followers you have on YouTube or Twitch, display stock information, Bitcoin prices, and a short list of other things. You’re limited to the services they have developed APIs for, and at some point you’ll be typing in your social media credentials into a questionably-designed app from Hong Kong, so let the influencer beware. The “If This Then That” (IFTTT) website has a few connectivity scripts as well.

One downside to internet connectivity (and technically, this is another shortcoming of the app) is that when viewing artwork on the phone, the picture on the Pixoo-64 updates instantly. Viewing thumbnails of pictures doesn’t present a problem, but the moment you expand any picture in the app, the picture immediately updates the Pixoo-64’s screen. Multiple times I’ve had the perfect pictures displaying on my Pixoo-64, only to accidentally touch another thumbnail, accidentally update my Pixoo-64’s screen, and have no idea where I found the previously perfect picture. I wish they had added an optional “update your screen?” button.

The Pixoo-64 looks great but doesn’t feel finished. I’ve received two app updates and three firmware updates in the two weeks I’ve owned it. In the app, I have the options to “save to my local gallery”, “save to phone”, “upload to device”, and “share”, but I don’t really understand what all of these things do (the included manual is, shall we say, lacking). I don’t know how many pictures I can store on the device, and I don’t know how to tell how much free room I have left. The option to view pictures in your local gallery is broken — no matter which thumbnail you select, it defaults to the first one and you’re forced to scroll through them all. I’ve learned a lot about the Pixoo-64 and its app by watching tons of reviews on YouTube, and even more by simply playing around and exploring. It’s a neat device that comes with a learning curve. Patience required.

Pros:

– (Tens of?) Thousands of free pictures to choose from.

– Changing pictures is fast and simple.

– Importing your own artwork is fast and simple.

– Multiple display modes allow for building local slideshows or subscribing to other creators’ channels.

Cons:

– The app is convoluted and confusing. Features are not laid out logically. The community features seem tacked on and unintegrated.

– $150 for a low-resolution pixel picture frame is high.

– The app and device are closed source. Should the company shut down their servers, this thing becomes a $150 brick.

– The Pixoo-64’s colors do not match the colors as they appear on my phone. Some whites appear light blue, and some purples appear dark blue.

Summary:

The Pixoo-64 is an LED-powered pixel art frame that does indeed display pixel art, both still and animated. There are a seemingly unlimited number of pictures to choose from, with more being uploaded every day and the ability to add your own. The app, which is required to interface with the Pixoo-64, is a bit of a dumpster fire full of odd UI decisions and too many options. $150 may seem expensive for what it is, but if you enjoy pixel-style artwork, there’s nothing else like it.

Bard's Tale Creature on Divoom Pixoo-64

Main, Reviews

End of the Road: Kiss Farewell Tour

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I have to admit, I was originally on the fence when Susan asked if I wanted to see Kiss perform on their “End of the Road” world tour stop in Oklahoma City. While there are plenty of Kiss songs I enjoy, I’d be hard pressed to refer to myself a member of the band’s “Kiss Army.” Like most of the band’s casual fans, I enjoy a lot of their songs from the late 70s and early 80s, a few from the mid 80s, and almost nothing from the past thirty years. Still, it’s hard to say no when a legendary band you’ve never seen live before is playing in your town on their retirement tour — plus, nothing says “bonding time with your children” like watching a grown man breathe fire and spit blood while playing bass, so there’s that.

When it was time to leave for the show, Mason informed us he wasn’t going because he had a cold, and Morgan informed us that she wasn’t going if Mason didn’t have to go. This is the time (in every outing, really) where I turn into the dad from A Christmas Story and start yelling at everybody to get in the goddamn car before I start smashing everybody’s iPhones. So I guess the good news here is that all four of us arrived to the show on time, and also the ride was very quiet and peaceful since nobody was talking to me.

Tensions settled when Kiss took the stage around 9 p.m. The band kicked off the evening with “Detroit Rock City,” “Shout it out Loud,” and “Deuce,” three classic hits. I hadn’t looked up the set lists from any of the other tour stops and was afraid that the band might be playing some lesser known songs on their farewell tour, but if there’s one thing you can say about Kiss it’s that they give the fans what they want. Tuesday night the fans wanted to hear the band’s greatest hits, and that’s exactly what Kiss delivered.

This tour is not without its detractors. There are those who complain that Paul Stanley (who is 67) and Gene Simmons (who will turn 70 this summer) aren’t as nimble on stage as they once were. There are fans who desperately wanted the band’s original line up (with long-ousted members Peter Criss and Ace Frehley) to reunite, instead of performing with their current guitarist and drummer (who have been with Kiss for almost two decades). There have been accusations that the band performs to a backing track (and not completely live), that Paul Stanley can no longer sing, and, most recently, that the band ripped off much of its stage set from Motley Crue’s recent farewell tour.

Here’s what I have to say. Yes, the guys don’t jump as high or run as fast on stage as they did 40 years ago. And no, that wasn’t original members Ace Frehley or Peter Criss hiding under those costumes. Kiss would not be the first band to play over a backing track, and their stage did resembles Motley Crue’s from their farewell tour (we attended that one, too).

At the end of the day, none of that mattered — not to us, and not to the 18,000+ people in attendance Tuesday night. Either you enjoy watching a nearly 70-year-old man 40′ in the air spitting fake blood and shouting “GOD OF THUNDER!” or you don’t. In that moment, none of that other stuff seemed to matter.

Toward the end of the show, spotlights revealed a small round stage on the far end of the concert arena. As the band pounded out the opening notes of “Love Gun,” Paul Stanley slung his guitar over his back, grabbed onto a motorized zip line, and zoomed over the crowd until he reached the smaller stage. Two songs later he was zipping back to the main stage, just before Gene Simmons and guitarist Tommy Thayer were hoisted into the air by cranes and sent out over the audience. At one point Susan said, “this is over the top!” and it was.

And that’s Kiss.

The night ended with confetti filling the air and balloons being dropped from the ceiling as the band broke into their biggest hit, “Rock and Roll All Nite” — and that’s what we did. I know I don’t have much credibility as a guy who also enjoyed Guns ‘N Roses’ most recent outing, but, naysayers be damned, Kiss went out with a bang Tuesday night in Oklahoma City. I hope someday someone asks my kids if they ever went to any cool concerns as a kid and they recall the times their mean ol’ dad made them go to one.

Setlist:

Detroit Rock City
Shout It Out Loud
Deuce
Say Yeah
Heaven’s on Fire
War Machine
Lick It Up (w/Won’t Get Fooled Again)
Calling Dr. Love
100,000 Years (w/drum solo)
Cold Gin (w/guitar solo)
God of Thunder (w/bass solo)
Psycho Circus
I Love It Loud
Let Me Go, Rock ‘N’ Roll
Love Gun
I Was Made for Lovin’ You
Black Diamond

Encore:

Beth (Eric Singer on piano)
Do You Love Me
Rock and Roll All Nite

Main, Reviews

Meow Wolf: Origin Story (Review)

My family and I discovered Meow Wolf’s interactive art installation “The House of Eternal Return” purely by accident. In the summer of 2016, the four of us decided to rent an RV and drive west on I-40, eventually stopping in Santa Fe, New Mexico. It was there, while looking for things to do, that Susan ran across a review of Meow Wolf, describing it as “part art installation, part interactive fun house.” On a whim, we decided to go check it out.

The four of us spent roughly four hours wandering through The House of Eternal Return, taking pictures and trying to solve a mystery that we didn’t really understand. We talked about the experience and compared notes the entire drive home, and couldn’t wait to tell our friends back in Oklahoma about this bizarre and magical place we had discovered. Unfortunately, describing (and photographing) The House turned out to be difficult. After describing the experience to a few of our friends, one of them asked, “so is this a video game?” Another one asked if, maybe by accident, we had ingested some mescaline from a local cactus during our road trip. Our descriptions of The House must have sounded like the ravings of a lunatic to them. Secret passages! A musical mammoth skeleton, inside a cave of ice, inside a Victorian house! A 30-foot-tall robot! A refrigerator that leads to an inter-dimensional travel agency! No wonder they thought we were crazy.

Meow Wolf’s House of Eternal Return left us with so many questions that the following year we went back, this time determined to understand “the incident” that turned a seemingly ordinary house into a portal to other dimensions — leaving behind, among other things, a ten-foot-tall snow owl that stares deep into your soul. (You see? I sound insane!) We spent hours digging through letters, newspapers, photographs and journal entries inside the fake house, soaking it all in. We left that time with more answers than before, but there was one burning question left in our minds: what kind of crazy maniacs would build such a place?

The answer to that question can be found in the 2018 documentary Meow Wolf: Origin Story, directed by Morgan Capps and Jilann Spitzmiller, now available on DVD, Blu-ray, or through Video on Demand via Meow Wolf’s website.

Meow Wolf

On our first visit, it wasn’t originally clear to us that the place we visited was called The House of Eternal Return, and that Meow Wolf is the name of the group of artists who created it. (The sign outside of building says “Meow Wolf,” which is what confused us.) And while The House of Eternal Return is certainly covered in the documentary, the scope of the film is the story of Meow Wolf, the artists themselves.

The group of Santa Fe artists that eventually became known as Meow Wolf originally bonded together over their love of unique art and mutual disdain of art “gatekeepers.” After outgrowing a small cluster of homes located on the same property, the original core of Meow Wolfers decided to split the rent for a warehouse that they could paint to their heart’s content. One of Meow Wolf’s core values is “radical inclusiveness,” and the more people who discovered Meow Wolf, the more artists, many feeling disenfranchised and excluded from the traditional art scene, joined the collective.

Long before The House of Eternal Return, the members of Meow Wolf put on all sorts of shows, created videos, built interactive art experiences, and performed concerts at a dizzying pace. Everyone in the group had an equal voice; anything and everything went. Over time, the chaotic energy that fueled the group’s artistic visions also began to drive them apart. One of Meow Wolf’s co-founders, Vince Kadlubek, was shunned after attempting to introduce organizational structure into the chaos. Others walked away when they felt their voices weren’t being heard. Not everyone initially involved remained with the group, but eventually they found the right amount of structure for their anarchy. From that, the current incarnation of Meow Wolf was born.

The group’s first large scale installation was The Due Return, a 6,000 square foot inter-dimensional ship that was on display for only three months. The project, which cost $50,000 to build, was the group’s first largely profitable installation. It’s success led to the Wolf’s largest project to date (and first permanent installation), the House of Eternal Return. The documentary ends with a group of the original co-founders scouting locations for new Meow Wolf installations in Austin and Denver, and dreams of taking Meow Wolf from what wasn’t a million dollar company three years ago into a billion dollar artistic power house.

Meow Wolf: Origin Story crams a lot of information and history into its 88-minute run time. Audio and videophiles should keep in mind that much of the archival footage presented throughout the film came from old handheld camcorders, so while all the modern footage and interviews are presented in HD and look stellar, the older footage is occasionally jarring in its low-fidelity. Accompanying the film is a killer soundtrack that had me searching the closing credits for song titles.

Included with the film are a pile of extras. First up is a commentary track by directors Capps and Spitzmiller. In it, the two ladies discuss the source of some of the footage, things that were cut, and offer additional insights. There’s also a family-friendly audio track that omits the film’s salty language (artists love f-bombs). Also included are several full-length Meow Wolf performances that appear only as short clips throughout the documentary. Finally, there’s an interview with George R. R. Martin (who paid for the building that became Meow Wolf) and a longer Q&A panel session featuring Martin. It sounds like a lot, and it is, but if Meow Wolf captivates you the way they have my family, you’ll be digging through every last clip, embracing the weirdness.

In a way, Meow Wolf is not unlike the Island of Misfit Toys, that group of rag tag toys from the old Rudolph Christmas special that leave the North Pole because they were different. In the end of that special Rudolph returns to the North Pole, and his glowing nose, the very thing he was ostracized for, is celebrated. The rag tag members of Meow Wolf, once looked down upon by the Santa Fe art scene, now sit on top of a multi-million dollar empire, with plans of expanding to Austin, Denver, Las Vegas, and Washington D.C. over the next four years. I hope every kid who feels rejected because of the things they enjoy or the artwork they create gets a chance to see this film. I hope every kid who has ever bullied a kid like that gets to see it, too. Never before has the mantra “be yourself” rang more true. Five minutes into this film I found myself pulling for the members of Meow Wolf to “make it.” It’s nice every now and then to see the underdogs win.

Meow Wolf: Origin Story Trailer: https://originstory.mw
Meow Wolf: Origin Story DVD/Blu-Ray: https://shop.meowwolf.com/merch/origin-story-movie
Meow Wolf: Origin Story Video on Demand: https://meowwolf.com/explore/watch/origin-story

Apple II, Commodore 64, Computers/Tech/Games, Main, Reviews

SLLEA RCA Video Adapter – You Get What You Pay For

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The old saying “you get what you pay for” is usually true.

Recently I had a brilliant idea. Instead of hooking up my old computers and video game consoles to a large television, wouldn’t it be nice if I could hook them up to a small flat screen monitor? I have a couple of 4:3 ratio flat screen monitors out in the garage that could work for just such a project. The only hurdle is that those monitors only have VGA inputs, and my old computers and video game consoles all have RCA (composite) outputs. If only someone made a cheap RCA-to-VGA converter…

Enter SLLEA, who sells just such an adapter on Amazon for $20. Before I go any further, I must mention two things. One, SLLEA is one of a dozen companies selling essentially the exact same product. The external plastic cases of these devices are slightly different, but based on the layout of the inputs and outputs, inside, they’re all the same. And second, all of these devices hover around the $20 range.

In the top picture, you can see the ins and outs (literally) of the device. In the second picture, you can see the series of buttons that allow you to configure the device. The fact that the word “MENU” is misspelled on the label gives you some insight to the quality of the manual.

Without belaboring the point, here were my results with SLLEA’s adapter.

Yikes.

The first thing you’ll notice is that large rainbow-colored bar running across the top of the screen. That’s… not normal. I should also point out all the vertical “noise” lines running through the bottom half of the screen, and the blurry (and fading) text across the top portion. Sometimes phone cameras can introduce distortion into a photograph of a computer screen, but I can assure you, it looked just as bad in person.

For a thorough test, I decided to load up a game and see if it fared any better than plain text.

When I saw this screen, I got my hopes up. The distortion bar across the top is still there, but it’s barely visible. The Commodore 64 in particular has a border around the main portion of the screen. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all?

Unfortunately, once the game entered “full screen mode,” the bar returned.

I tried two additional systems for testing — an Apple IIe computer, and an original Nintendo Entertainment System — and got the same results. To be completely fair, I rescanned the device’s Amazon reviews and found several people who said it worked for systems newer than the Super Nintendo. Specifically, I read positive reviews from people who tried it with a Nintendo GameCube and a Sony PlayStation 2. If you’re looking for a Composite-to-VGA solution for one of those systems and feel adventurous, maybe you’ll have better luck with one of these devices. If, like me, you’re hoping to connect some old 8-bit systems up to a VGA monitor, this probably isn’t the device for you.

Main, Reviews

Beastie Boys Book (2018)

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Adam “King Ad-Rock” Horovitz and Mike “Mike D” Diamond — two founding members of the legendary Beastie Boys — spend the first hundred or so pages of the new voluminous Beastie Boys Book describing New York City as it appeared in the early 1980s. It’s a bit wild, with lots of (unsupervised) teens hanging out at clubs, causing mischief, and discovering music both before and of their time. It was in that setting that Horovitz and Diamond met Adam “MCA” Yauch, discovered and dabbled in the hardcore punk music scene, and eventually went on to form one of the most popular hip hop groups of all time. And while the Beastie Boys were active for three decades working with multiple DJs, producers, and musicians, if there was ever a permanent fourth member of the band, you might say it was New York City itself.

If you (like me) discovered the Beasties in 1987 shortly after MTV added “Fight For Your Right (To Party)” into heavy video rotation, you should be aware that the recording of the band’s debut Licensed to Ill doesn’t begin until shortly after page 200. The book covers a lot of historical ground before ramping up to the band’s mainstream breakthrough hit. The earliest incarnation of the Beastie Boys can be traced back to a hardcore band called The Young Aborigines, featuring Michael Diamond (and, notably, Kate Schellenbach from Luscious Jackson). It was in 1981 when Adam Yauch joined the band that the group adopted the Beastie Boy moniker. Around the time Adam Horovitz joined the group in 1982, the Boys had already begun to dip their toes in the newly emerging rap genre. Not long after, the guys recorded their first rap single (a prank phone call played a drum beat titled “Cooky Puss”). For a short period of time the band split their live sets between hardcore punk songs and feeble raps, but as the band’s infatuation with hip hop culture continued to blossom, Kate Schellenbach was left behind, Rick Rubin (co-founder of Def Jam Records and the band’s first DJ) was in, and the lineup that existed when the band broke big was officially set in place.

The band’s story, almost 600 pages of it, is relayed here by Diamond and Horovitz in a first-person and mostly-linear fashion. The chapters are small and bite-sized — many only two or three pages in length. Like the musical samples the band is famous for, the narrative is sprinkled with guest appearances, recollections, and sidebars. Just like “Bouillabaisse,” a spicy fish-based soup that the Beastie Boys once named a track after, the book contains everything from a comedic review of the band’s attire by fashion journalist Andre Leon Talley, to a series of wisecracks about their music videos by comedian and New York transplant Amy Poehler. With frequent changes in authors and even typography, the book’s style is more Paul’s Boutique than Licensed to Ill.

With so many stories thrown in, it’s interesting to note who and what weren’t included between the covers. DJ Hurricane’s name (the band’s touring DJ for more than a decade) appears exactly twice in the book: once in a short list of the band’s former DJs, and once in the following sentence: “Then DJ Hurricane played some kind of intro, and we went onstage…” Mix Master Mike, Hurricane’s replacement and the band’s permanent DJ since 1998, gets a single two-page article in the form of an odd interplanetary space diary entry. Again, this is a book that devotes twenty pages to the kid who designed the first Beastie Boys website, and gives Spike Jonze another twenty to add captions to a series of photographs taken during the “Sabotage” video shoot. The nearly complete absence of any discussion in regards to the band’s two primary DJs is a glaring hole.

Also missing for the most part, in case you were looking for some, is dirt. There’s no mention of the band’s flare up with Prodigy, or the 2015 lawsuit against Monster Energy Drinks for using their music without permission. Other than briefly touching on their well-publicized beef with 3rd Base’s MC Serch (the Boys once threw garbage from an upstairs window at Serch when he rang their doorbell and interrupted their hangover sleep), the book mostly side steps (or completely ignores) any conflicts the band may have experienced, both external and internal.

The one exception is their falling out with Rick Rubin, parts of which are covered in more detail here than ever before. The Boys, particularly Horovitz, pull no punches when it comes to documenting the parting of ways with the co-owner of their label, DJ, and at least at one time, kindred spirit. Horovitz paints Rubin as a control freak in the studio and a flake who jumped ship during the Beastie Boys tour, leaving them without a DJ. Details about withholding royalty payments from their debut album (which sold more than ten-million copies) are included. While Beastie Boys Book is obviously Horovitz’s and Diamond’s recollection of things, some of their criticism seems one-sided. Many well-established factors in the band’s split with Def Jam (including the fact that Rubin had pegged Horovitz for a solo act, while fellow Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons was looking the steal Yauch from the group) go unmentioned. Both Rhyming and Stealing: A History of the Beastie Boys by Angus Batey (1998) and The Men Behind Def Jam by Alex Ogg (2002) cite Rolling Stone interviews with the guys about the falling out that don’t appear here.

Other than the split with Def Jam (a beef I assumed had been long been buried, until I read this book), the band seems content to not only let sleeping dogs lie, but make amends where they can. Most of their poor decisions and falling outs are blamed on their own immaturity and alcohol abuse. The take the high road and make several heartfelt apologies within the book, going as far as to give the early-ousted Kate Schellenbach her own mini-chapter to comment on her departure.

The Beastie Boys Book is not the ultimate all-encompassing story of the band; instead, it’s 600 pages worth of memories from a couple of guys (and a few of their friends) recounting one of the most memorable and amazing musical trips through modern history. From requesting an inflatable penis as a stage prop for their first tour to organizing the Tibetan Freedom Concerts in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park (attended by more than 120,000 people), the Beastie Boys have grown a lot, seen a lot, and done a lot, and this book documents hundreds of moments that took place along the way.

Also included are dozens and dozens of candid photographs culled from the band’s personal collection. Everything from the pre-Beasties (decked out in hardcore gear) all the way to live shots from the band’s final tour are on display here, many in full color. Specific moments, like Mike D tweaking the sliders on a mixing board in the studio as Run-DMC look on, capture pivotal moments in time. In an era where celebrities post every meal on Instagram, it’s easy to forget how rare it was to take (and keep) so many photos in the 1980s, and it’s wonderful to see so many of them here on display.

If the book is missing anything at all, it’s Adam “MCA” Yauch’s unique voice. Yauch was often the glue that held the band together and frequently the guy steering the ship. Yauch passed away from cancer in 2012 at the age of 47, thus bringing an untimely close to the band’s career. Both Horovitz and Diamond have done a good job of both including Yaunch’s stories while being careful not to speak for him, but they readily admit upfront that his unique view of the world would have added a different flavor to the book.

If you’ve always wanted to know more about the real Tadrach and Johnny Ryall, the King Adrock’s thoughts on carrying cassette tapes around New York City (winter is better, because you have more pockets), what it was like to tour with Madonna, and a million other things, Beastie Boys Book is for you. It answers a lot of questions, poses a few new ones, and, sadly, is the closest thing to a new Beastie Boys album we’re likely to ever get.

Reviews

100 (Questionable) Movies for $15

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I love shopping on Amazon, I love bargains, and I love bad movies — so when I recently stumbled across Mill Creek’s latest 100 Movie DVD packs, knowing well and good that they were probably terrible, I bought them anyway (so you wouldn’t have to).

The three packs I purchased were 100 Greatest Cult Classics, 100 Greatest Sci-Fi Classics, and the one that originally hooked me, 100 Awesomely Cheesy Movies. Each pack sells for around $15 on Amazon, give or take a nickel.

Even if you’re not familiar with Mill Creek, you may have seen some of their compilations before. I know I have seen some of their 4-movie packs at Walmart and Dollar General, and maybe some of their 20-movie packs at Sam’s Club. Upon removing the wrapping from each one of these 100-pack collections, two 50-pack movie collections fell out. Apparently Mill Creek is bundling two of their previously-released 50-movie packs and marketing them as a single 100-movie pack. What’s odd is, the 50-movie packs have an MSRP of around $30, so bundling two of them together and selling them as a single $15 package makes about as much sense as, well, most of the included films.

In case you already have some of the 50-movie packs, the 100 Greatest Cult Classics pack consists of 50 B-Movie Blast and 50 Drive-in Movie Classics. 100 Greatest Sci-Fi Classics contains 50 SciFi Classics and 50 Sci-Fi Invasion. Finally, 100 Awesomely Cheesy Movies is actually 50 The Swinging Seventies and 50 The Excellent Eighties.

Each separate 50 pack of movies comes in its own thick clamshell case. There are 13 DVDs in each case; 12 of the DVDs are double-sided and contain two movies per side. Each DVD comes in a black paper sleeve with a clear plastic window. If you have your glasses nearby, you may be able to make out the titles of the films printed around the center hub of each disc. There’s no way to flip through the discs without removing all of the paper sleeves from the plastic case, which means if the movie you want to watch is on the last DVD, you’re going to be removing them all to get to it.

Fortunately, most of these movies are so bad you will likely have poked your own eyeballs out long before you get to the last DVD.

While only a fool would complain about the quality of 100 movies purchased for $15, I do feel compelled to question Mill Creek’s use of the terms “greatest” and “classics.” I can almost guarantee you that your personal list of the 100 greatest science fiction films of all time does not match Mill Creek’s, unless your list contains films such as Bride of the Gorilla, She Gods of Shark Reef, and the perennial sci-fi classic that makes everybody’s list, Eegah.

If you were expecting Close Encounters of the Third Kind or Star Wars, you may have chosen poorly.

Likewise, if you were hoping for any extra features — and I mean any — these are not the packs for you. These discs don’t contain subtitles. They don’t contain commentary tracks. They don’t even contain trailers. You get a menu that allows you to pick one movie, or the other. There are also scene selections — four per film.

Again, I’m not complaining — merely setting expectations. The movies are not remastered, there are no extras… I mean literally, it’s a bunch of movies in paper sleeves stuffed inside a big fat plastic case. So what exactly are you getting here?

Quantity. If you like b-movies, boy, you had better stock up on the popcorn, mister. We’re talking The Kidnapping of the President quality, starring William Shatner. We’re talking Death Machines, and Deathrow Gameshow. We’re talking Women of Devil’s Island, Voodoo Black Exorcist, and My Mom’s a Werewolf.

We’re talkin’ 1974’s Jive Turkey, you jive turkeys.

Some of these movies are available on YouTube. Most of them are terrible. None of them are “the greatest classics” by any standard imaginable. And yet, here they are — 100 movies for $15. Or, if you’re me, 300 movies for $45.

Videophiles, nitpickers, and people who know what wine goes with which dessert can safely pass these by. On the other hand, if you listen to the How Did This Get Made? podcast, enjoy watching films that make you feel like you may have had a stroke, or wish the guys on Mystery Science Theater 3000 would “pipe down” so you could hear the movie, well, buckle up solder, and get ready for hundreds of hours of terrible entertainment.

(For those who are interested, below is the complete list of movies included on each of these packages.)

Continue reading 100 (Questionable) Movies for $15 →

College, Main, Reviews, Writing

The Fantasy Fiction Formula (Book and Podcast)

When I tell my friends that my writing professor (Deborah Chester) wrote the book on writing genre fiction, I’m being quite literal. Okay, so maybe she didn’t write the book on writing genre fiction, but she wrote a book on the subject, and a darned good one too. It’s called The Fantasy Fiction Formula, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. In 264 pages, Chester walks you step-by-step through the process of writing a fiction novel.

If you have stared at a blank computer screen wondering where to start, or started writing a novel only to hit a dead end and wonder what to do next, this is the book you are looking for. This book walks you through the entire process of writing a fictional novel from beginning to end, from creating characters and plots to writing dramatic openings and grand climaxes. This book won’t tell you what to write about, but if you have an idea and don’t know how to begin (or end), this book will help you, guaranteed. As someone who has both read the book and attended Ms. Chester’s novel writing class, I can tell you that this book and her class are very similar. I would never trade the opportunity of having a published author read my work and offer me feedback and advice in person, but if taking a graduate level course on writing in Norman, Oklahoma isn’t in the cards for you, this book is the next best thing.

As I stated in my review of the book on Amazon.com, my only minor quibble is with the book’s name. From my Amazon review:

My only (very minor) complaint with the book is with its title — specifically, the word “fantasy.” While most of Deborah Chester’s books are works of fantasy and science-fiction, the techniques included here apply to every genre of fiction writing. If you’re not specifically writing fantasy, don’t let the title scare you away. No matter what type of genre fiction you are writing, the formulas presented here will work for you!

Deborah Chester recently did a six-part podcast interview with the Manchester University Press, who (for some unknown reason) has buried the links to the podcast deep within the bowels of their website. Here are the links:

  • Fantasy Fiction Formula interview with Deborah Chester: Part 1
  • Fantasy Fiction Formula interview with Deborah Chester: Part 2
  • Fantasy Fiction Formula interview with Deborah Chester: Part 3
  • Fantasy Fiction Formula interview with Deborah Chester: Part 4
  • Fantasy Fiction Formula interview with Deborah Chester: Part 5
  • Fantasy Fiction Formula interview with Deborah Chester: Part 6

    Each episode is about ten minutes long and touches on one of the subjects covered in the book. They’re not a substitute for reading the book, but they’ll give you an idea as to whether or not the book is right for you.

    Congratulations to my professor on her book and the podcast interviews! I know that in a few years after I have forgotten everything I learned in class, I will still have this book for reference material!

    fantasy