A new hobby (one of several)

I've recently found myself with more time than I had planned for or really know what to do with. A luxury for a lot of people, but it's left me feeling useless and in fact a little depressed. My mind starts drifting and I begin obsessing over dumb, meaningless things. For example, nostalgia for 1970's audio equipment, which I've never felt before in the slightest. I've realized over the years that this is just my way of coping with boredom; maybe my mind's way of staying sharp and focused, on something. This is just one of several things I've got going on right now, none of which amount to anything to anyone but me.

I've set up a little workshop in the basement and decided to try my hand at repairing some of the vintage audio equipment I've been picking up here and there. That old silver-faced hifi stuff sounds great and looks amazing, but you know what? It's all broken. All of it. Unless somebody else fixed it first, you can pretty much guarantee that at least some part of every component out there is not going to work properly. And most of this stuff got replaced, not fixed, when it broke the last time. So it's all still broken, regardless of what some Ebay seller says.

So far I'm having mixed success, but I'm keeping at it at least until I get discouraged enough to give up. This cassette deck above, a Sony TC-K96R, came to me with a blaring left channel that I've sort of fixed but only with a kludge. (As mentioned, it was described as "working fine".) It's listenable now after two new transistors and a level adjustment, at least, but one channel's maxed out and the other's almost at minimum, so something's still not right. It also needs a new belt, like basically all cassette decks do.

In the background, my Sony TA-1010 amplifier awaits new transistors and capacitors.

Should keep me busy for a while.

The infamous "Atari Dump" - got my piece of it!

Yeah, today I want to show you some garbage. Historical and infamous garbage.

The first game console I ever played was the Atari VCS at my cousin's house in 1976. I grew up with Atari and I remember the video game crash of 1983 well. I personally remember the news reports of Atari dumping E.T. and other games in a giant landfill in New Mexico.

Over the years, this somehow became probably the biggest urban legend in all of video gaming. It was like the moon landing - many people swore that it never happened, and endless debates would take place all over the internet. Some of the claims did blow up into ridiculousness - that they buried "millions" of E.T. cartridges, for example. But most of the exaggerations actually seem to have been invented by those trying to prove that the landfill didn't exist. (It'd be kinda like saying the moon landings had to be faked because NASA said they got there at the speed of light.) And those exaggerations then became part of the debate.

But those of us who knew the dump existed never claimed Atari did anything but throw away a bunch of junk they couldn't sell. And not coincidentally, that included a lot of E.T. cartridges.

Finally, last year somebody set out to definitively prove that the Atari Dump is real:

You can watch that documentary in full on Netflix and various other places.

Spoiler: they did it. They found the dump. It's no legend anymore; it's fact, as it always really was. The first game they pulled out was E.T., just as the "rumors" suggested they would. Whole unopened cases of E.T. were found. Many other games were found as well - basically anything that didn't sell by the time of the industry crash.

The city of Alamagordo is still selling the spoils on Ebay (as they suggest in the documentary that they will!). The E.T.'s all seem to have been burned through, but they went for unreasonable amounts anyway - $300+ when I last checked. I picked up this copy of Defender for a much more reasonable $31, although at this point, it looks like prices are skyrocketing because there might not be much left.

My game came sealed up in a plastic bag with that metal City of Alamagordo property tag taped to it, with a separate manila folder containing a Certificate of Authenticity and photocopies of both some original 1983 news articles about the dump as well as a short written history of the dump and the dig. (I love the headline "Dump here utilized" - so straightforward, yet vague.)

I'm not going to show the Certificate of Authenticity (at least not until I heavily redact it) but it's signed by various city officials as well as Howard Warshaw, the designer of E.T., Yar's Revenge and many of Atari's most popular VCS/2600 games (and one of the guys featured in the video above).

I have not tried to play the game. I doubt it'd work; it seems pretty smashed up. But the box is unopened, and I can feel that everything's in there that should be. I find it interesting that there's a price tag on it - most likely, this game was returned from a store to Atari.

One thing I will say is that I was not prepared for the smell of this thing. The zip-lock bag does a good job of containing it, but man - when I took this game out to take the picture, I physically recoiled. It's not a smell I'm even familiar with. It's not like garbage, it's like what I imagine a compost heap smells like. It's like rotting organic matter. I quickly put it back in the baggie and opened all my windows. I doubt I'll ever take it out again. But I wonder if it's just going to continue to rot in there. I guess it's a fitting end if so.

Forgotten 70's films: Americathon

Look at this cast: John Ritter, Harvey Korman, Fred Willard, Peter Riegert, Meat Loaf, Elvis Costello, Howard Hesseman, Jay Leno, and George Carlin. It's like a who's who of 1970's comedy and musical talent.

Now, add in a plot about a bankrupt America forced to stage a gigantic telethon in order to pay its debts, and the only reason I can think of that this film hasn't reached cult status today is that it's never been released on DVD. (It's also long out of print even on VHS.)

The basic story is this. In "the future" - which in this movie's parlance is 1998 - the United States is flat broke and out of oil. When a cartel of native Americans now running Nike, Inc. calls in a $400 billion loan (with the chief explaining "I have to eat too"), the bumbling president, played by John Ritter, has no choice but to beg for money from the nation's citizens. Harvey Korman is tapped to host a national telethon to raise money and keep the nation from being taken over by Nike.

There's only one scene currently on YouTube, but it's a good one - Meat Loaf fights a car:


I love when Meat Loaf launches himself about 30 feet into the air near the beginning of the clip.

I haven't seen this film for close to 30 years, but it was one of my favorites when I was a kid. I don't remember that much of it, but I do recall that John Ritter gets shot (but not killed) when he makes his telethon appearance at the end. It was pretty dark for what amounted to a screwball comedy, definitely reflecting the deep malaise that had set in by the end of the 1970's (very similar to the mood of the country right now, for the same reasons).

In fact, between the lines of ridiculous scenes like the one above, it actually raised a bunch of serious issues that are still relevant. Class warfare. Political ineptness. Cronyism. Economic and financial crises. The rise of corporate influence and modern media over government. The cult of personality.

This movie's ripe for a remake.

Anyone else remember this film?

I'm actually in the process of trying to grab myself a VHS copy - if I do, I'll try to update later this month with some more info, screenshots and potentially video clips. I'll develop that cult following myself if I have to.

1970's NYC Subway Graffiti

For anyone who doesn't live here, you should know that the subway is synonymous with New York. Millions of us ride it every single day, and we complain about it to each other just as often. Besides walking, it's the main method of transportation in this city. Well, the 70's weren't kind to the subway, or to most of us. I remember when I was a kid, I had a t-shirt that said "I rode the New York City subway... AND SURVIVED!" Being about eight, I thought that was really funny at the time. But it was true - the subways were dirty, dangerous, poorly maintained and covered in graffiti.

Graffiti exploded after the budget crisis of 1975 hit, when the agency basically ran out of money, was not allowed to raise fares (they already had, dramatically, earlier in the decade) and was faced with falling ridership at the same time. Everything got worse. Maintenance wasn't done to either the trains or the infrastructure and cleaning basically never happened. The whole system started looking ragged, worn and abused. Trains broke down routinely - I remember being stuck on a powerless (and therefore a/c-less) A train near Howard Beach in the dead of summer for 3 hours. There was a sense that the system was dying and that nobody cared about saving it, and out of that, the graffiti movement grew.

Crews formed that "bombed" the trains as they sat unprotected in the yards overnight. There were literally thousands of these crews, though a few like Lee, Futura 2000 and Crunch went on to infamy and even eventual legitimate fame. (Here's a list of more than 3,000 graffiti crews from the 1970's.) In the mornings, MTA workers would arrive to find their assigned, previously clean trains often covered front to back by graffiti. Including the windows!

Most of this graffiti was ugly - I've so far shown some of the nicer examples (the one above was by Futura 2000). Some teenagers these days see stuff like the photos above and romanticize the whole era. This was a more typical train:


It was just an ugly mess.

Interiors were not immune either. Most subway interiors were covered in tags - not the elaborate murals of the exteriors, just random names scrawled by kids with nothing better to do. These weren't painted as the cars sat idle, they were usually written on late-night trips in mostly empty cars, although sometimes you'd see kids writing graffiti right in broad daylight in a crowded car.

That advertisement on the wall strikes me as ironic on several different levels.

Graffiti was one of those crimes that added to the sense of disorder and anarchy that both encouraged other crimes and made New York kind of a scary place to be. Crime in general was rising in the 1970's, and it was exploding in the subway. By the end of the decade, the number of felonies recorded each day in the New York City subway - including rapes and murders - made it the most dangerous mass transit system in the country.

This went on until the mid-1980's, when the city, state and yes, federal government finally had had enough. Money started flowing into the system again - enough to finally combat graffiti. MTA honcho David Gunn instituted a zero tolerance policy - once a train was cleaned, any new graffiti would be removed immediately at the terminal stop or that train would be taken out of service. Laws were also strengthened, adding prison time to graffiti sentences and making the purchase of spray paint by a minor illegal. The cleanup happened very quickly once it began. By the late 1980's, graffiti in the NYC subway was pretty much gone. Given the scale of the problem, it was pretty amazing.

These days, NYC trains run clean. Even "scratchitti", where taggers would scratch their tags into the glass or the train interior walls using rocks or keys, has been brought under control with the use of replaceable mylar window covers and scratch-proof walls in the newest cars.

The unfortunate thing is that there are still some dumbasses out there, some from Europe and some from the United States, who either don't realize that this era has been over for 20 years, or want to revive it. Every once in a while somebody tries to graffiti bomb a train again. It's really more unfortunate for them, because the zero tolerance policy remains in place, so their work is never seen outside of their own photos. And subway graffiti is a crime NYC cops take seriously these days. These idiots do get caught.

By the way, if you're coming in to this post cold, I am a native New Yorker. I was born here. I rode the trains before there was graffiti on them and I ride them now after. I've been around longer than any of the taggers, and this is my city. These pictures are here because they're historically relevant and interesting in context, not because they're beautiful. So if you're going to argue against what I'm saying here, you'd better at least have as much ownership of the subway as I do. My taxes and fares paid for these trains, as did my parents'. My votes in favor of bond issues approved their purchase. If you can't at least say the same, then keep your arguments in favor of defacing the property I helped purchase to yourself.

And take heed of the comment rules.

Note: the pictures in this post are not mine, though I've had them for long enough that I don't remember exactly where they came from. I believe the first three are from the fascinating book Subway Art:

The others are probably from the site nycsubway.org. If anyone knows the actual photo credits, I'd be happy to add them.

Canceled 1970's TV: Supertrain!

The 1970's gave rise to one of the most insidious trends ever on network TV: intercut parallel plots. Intercutting was the enabler for such top-rated shows as "The Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island", which ruled the airwaves starting in the mid-1970's and running into the 80's. Both of these shows featured three sets of guest stars every week, who'd each arrive on the show with some sort of personal problem that seemed either ridiculously complex (a failing marriage) or deep-seated in the character's psyche (fear of heights or some such). In the end, though, all of these problems proved simple enough to be solved in the 12 or so minutes allotted to each character's plot line, making you wonder why they couldn't have figured it all out themselves while sitting on the couch at home.

What made both of these shows so successful were three things: a beautiful, romantic setting, a solid and trustworthy main cast, and an endless stream of B-list guest stars. Guests on "The Love Boat" included such 70's stalwarts as Richard Dawson, Tom Poston, John Ritter and Paul Williams, as well as new faces like Jamie Lee Curtis and a very young Courteney Cox. "Fantasy Island", being on the same network (ABC) and with similar ratings, had a similar guest list.

NBC, which at that time was even more of a joke than Fox is now, wanted in on some of this action. Remember, this was long before "The Cosby Show" or "Friends" or "Seinfeld". The network only had three shows in the top 20 ("Little House on the Prairie", "CHiPS" and "Diff'rent Strokes"), so they set out to create their own ripoff of "The Love Boat", this time set on a cross-country train. This would allow them to have various settings around the country, as well as the train itself (just like on "The Love Boat"), and it would give them the same rotating guest cast anchored by a few regulars working the train. What would set it apart from its ABC competitors? In the long tradition of train movies, it would be less a comedy/drama and more of a suspense thriller. The result: SUPERTRAIN.

But it didn't quite work out as planned. All you need to know about this show can be found in the first ten minutes of the first episode, which is absolutely hilarious.



It's almost impossible to know where to start with this.

First of all, this was, to that point, the most expensive television show ever made. NBC spent millions on a large number of massive new sets, several large and detailed train models (and their own in-scale sets to go with them), not to mention the giant cast. Whereas "The Love Boat" was able to use (and re-use) stock footage of the Pacific Princess whenever exterior shots were needed, NBC had to create sets for the "Supertrain" stations, had to film models rolling through the countryside, and had to use a lot of optical effects to make things seem bigger than they are. This needed to be a top 20 show just to even begin to pay for itself.

Secondly... a pool?! On a train?!

I do give the show props for the hot-pants clad female staff, and now that we're 30 years on I'm entertained by the faint whiff of sexual harassment as the lead service attendant tells "his girls" how he's in love with all of them (to a chorus of giggles!). Hey man, people weren't so uptight in those days.

The show ran for only nine episodes from February-May 1979, with a retooling in the middle that replaced about half of the regular cast. Its final change in the ninth episode was the addition of a laugh track in an attempt to make the unintentional humor seem otherwise. I'd love to see that, but unfortunately that episode hasn't made it to YouTube yet. Probably will eventually.

There's a great site here that goes more into detail on "Supertrain" than I ever could.

70's Crush - Olivia Newton-John

It's 70's month around here, and what better way to start than with the first crush of every 1970's man-child? I'm talking about the woman who blazed the trail for every Australian-raised blonde that conquered Hollywood after her. Who could resist this face?

Men have no defenses against eyes like that.

And the smile!

Now that's... that's just not playing fair. She was Twiggy, Farrah Fawcett and the girl next door all in one.

Olivia was beautiful, multi-talented and multimedia, before there even was such a word. She was a singer first, and a pretty successful one in what they used to call the "country and western" genre, reaching #1 on the charts with "Have You Never Been Mellow" in 1975 and eventually winning four Grammy awards in the 1970's alone. I didn't appreciate her voice at the time, but listening to her now gives me chills sometimes. Her voice is both unique and flawless.

But you can't keep that face off the big screen.

I was vaguely aware of Olivia from her music - I may have been a kid, but she was popular enough that everybody knew her name - but it was the movies that made her a universal object of desire. And of course I mean "Grease."


It was 1978 and I was six years old. I didn't even know what this feeling was, I just knew I wanted to keep looking at the pretty lady. And in that final scene, I think my jaw hit the floor along with every other guy in the theater, whatever the age.

But you know what? Maybe it was the extra two years or maybe it was something else, but it was actually her next movie that I remember her best for. Yeah, the movie some have called the worst ever made. I love it. I'm talking about "Xanadu".

I know, "Xanadu" came out in 1980. Well, it was conceived and shot in the 1970's, and it's definitely of that era. One of its issues is that its production was delayed and it was released too late - it missed the roller disco fad and seemed laughably dated already on its release. It is a late 1970's film, even moreso than "Grease" was.

The plot's your typical boy-meets-girl-who-doesn't-really-exist, boy-falls-in-love-with-girl-who-doesn't-really-exist, girl-who-doesn't-really-exist-helps-boy-open-a-roller-disco, boy-loses-girl-who-doesn't-really-exist (or does he??) story. Along the way there's a lot of singing and dancing, much of it on roller skates, and a bit part obviously written specifically for Gene Kelly so he can get one more musical under his belt before he dies. (And he did, unfortunately.) The soundtrack was written by John Farrar and E.L.O.'s Jeff Lynne, and it's usually called the one bright spot of the film. (And that's kind of a big bright spot, considering it's a musical.)

Nowadays there's of course a Broadway version of "Xanadu", which is I guess sort of a cheeky and ironic telling of the story, although that's a little redundant because the film is already kind of making fun of itself. And I've seen the female lead at work in the Broadway version and let me tell you, she's no Olivia Newton-John.

Anyway, this is a horribly condensed version of the final scene in the film version, with Olivia and her stupifyingly awesome feathered hair. (Why did feathered hair ever go out of style?) This scene basically mirrors the final scene in "Grease" - it is a similar situation in the film - but I like it better because it's so heavy on the now-stereotypical 1970's disco kitsch but so legitimately good at the same time:


I swear, every time I see this scene I'm just like poor Michael Beck there, with a big grin on my face, staring wistfully.

Since the 1970's, Olivia's definitely had her ups and downs. She moved from country to pop music in the early 80's and had some successes with cheesy songs like "Let's Get Physical" before fading a bit from the public eye. In the 1990's, she fought a public battle with breast cancer and became something of an activist. Then in 2005, her long-time boyfriend was lost at sea. (She's now found someone else.) She still records music, but mostly releases her albums in Australia, not here. I was never one to buy her albums anyway - except for the "Xanadu" soundtrack, which I have both digitally and on vinyl! (It was actually a gift from a friend a few years ago.)

She does still tour in front of some big crowds and she pretty recently had a concert special on one of the big cable movie channels, which I watched out of hopeless devotion to my first crush - and she sounds as good as ever.

She's also done a couple guest judging stints on "American Idol" and she still looked pretty amazing on both.


Ryan Seacrest has aged more in six years than she has in close to thirty.

December is 1970's month

Hey hey hey, let's all go back to a time of free love, baggy pants and shaggy hair. I want to talk about the 1970's. All month long.

The music. The movies. The teen idols. The fashions. The stuff I lived through and the stuff I wish I was old enough to live through. I grew up in that decade - that's me up there, in the foreground, sitting next to my brother, ready to celebrate Christmas sometime in the mid-70's.

I'll try not to duplicate VH1's "I love the 70's" series too much. The thing about that show is that it's a bunch of people trying to be funny about stuff they don't remember. Well, I want to talk about the stuff that I remember, either because I experienced it, or because I watched other people experience it and was jealous. The 1970's was a time when we all celebrated freedom, independence, and doing what we wanted to do.

I can't promise I'll post something every night. But I've got a lot of stuff saved up, waiting for the right moment. This is that moment. Can you dig it?