Vinyl Adventures in a Quieter Mode

I put together a second stereo for the OnceWereBachelor Pad.  This latest one is not as "totally awesome" as my first.  But in at least one way, it's particularly special to me, as it is partly comprised of my father's old sound system from his dark, solemn den in Manila.  While I found the Sansui 1000X receiver, manufactured in 1969, and the Kenwood KD-5077 turntable from the Seventies both on Craigslist (a place becoming for me more and more like an online heroin shooting gallery), the Standard Radio Corp. speakers in walnut and black and matte steel (very Bauhaus) were smuggled over from Tokyo by my dad in 1968 in a spare pilot's bag.  They are compact, well made, and absolutely beautiful.  They followed us over from the Philippines, along with my dad's own Sansui 5000x receiver and SD 7000 reel to reel.  The latter two pieces gave up the ghost in the Eighties, but my dear mom lovingly stored the surviving speakers away, for me to find decades later.

The whole system is not the powerhouse I have downstairs.  But I leave that for the punk rock.  This upstairs unit, just steps from my and my son's rooms, doesn't threaten the same wattage, but for things like Sinatra at the Sands with Count Basie & his Orchestra, conducted by Quincy Jones, a record pressed in mono in 1966, it's perfect.  I like to think of my upstairs system as a spiritual successor to Don Draper's stereophonic console.

An American Look Back

She & Him is the pop music duo of Zoey Deschanel (the uncertain rebel hippie of Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous) and guitarist/producer M. Ward (sorry, I got nothing on this guy; the world is full of unsung guitar talent).  Their aesthetic is decidedly retro-lux, and their presentation is reminiscent of my favourites the Style Council.  I discovered this video one night while obsessively searching for vintage stereophonic console cabinets.

I was instantly captivated and charmed.  I had to know more.  I had to hear more.  Thanks to the aforementioned obsessiveness, I quickly pieced together that their video was almost a direct cribbing of a Chevrolet film short from 1958 celebrating American Design.  Wow.

Vinyl Adventures Redux

The hit parade of vinyl continues, and consequently a Mood Room is developing.  I enjoyed the first couple of weeks of vinyl as played through my Eighties era Sony, when I suddenly got the hankering for analog knobs and buttons and the blue glow of Non Specific Warning Lights.  As luck would have it, a 1978 vintage Sansui G-6700 showed up on Craigslist and in two shakes of a lambs tail, said knobs, buttons, and NSWLs were mine.  It now serves as a 100 watt per channel traffic cop for all the audio signals my growing 70s and 80s record collection can produce.

Finding the Sansui was fortuitous for another reason.  As I was driving home from the purchase through an unfamiliar neighborhood, what should I spy but the often-replicated (often poorly) Eames lounge chair, waiting to be picked up by the bulky item sanitation crew, in a condition that can best be described as Not Quite Ready for the Dump.  It's sumptuous naugahyde was only a little sunbaked and cracked.  Shook that lambs tail again, a screech of the brakes, and it was in the back of my truck.  Only made the neighbors a little nervous.

Now, I know this particular chair was nowhere near an original example of the mid-century masterpiece by Charles and Ray Eames, manufactured by the Herman Miller Co., and extant in the dens of Mike Brady, Don Draper, Tom Corbett and his son Eddie, and Maj. Anthony Nelson and his Jeannie in a bottle.  It's armrests and base were all wrong, and the quality of the materials was barely residential grade.  In fact, I already have another one, also a copy, of much better accuracy, which I keep as a placeholder for when I have a spare five grand laying around for a real one.  So I could've taken a pass on this one.  But in an instant an alternative vision developed in my mind for this dumpster find.

Sometimes, with good fortune comes the blessing of freedom; the departure of limitation that zero overhead affords.  This vision fit in perfectly with my idea of the Mood Room, where I was already doing my most profound thinking, whilst listening to vintage New Wave.  The iconic lines and proportions of the Eames chair would serve as a framework for something edgy, and "out there" at least for the Reagan Era.  Something graffitied and hot pink, maybe, and that goes well with the post-apocalyptic simulacra of Billy Idol music in its very prime.  Something that the Warriors wouldn't be afraid to hide behind during their odyssey across New York's deadly five boroughs, while fleeing the Baseball Furies.   Something that Lord Humongous of the Wasteland could use as a campaign chair while laying siege to Mad Max and his friends.  You get where I'm going?  Something that rocked.

So I resurrected some long dormant graphic design skills.  Wielded them poorly.  Took my time.  Two weeks later, I have this, the listening throne to go with my crown jewel Sansui.

Reduce.  Reuse.  REBEL YELL!

 

Vinyl Adventures in Super Mid-Fi

After probably 2 decades of incapacity, I am once again able to play record albums.  This is no small development for someone of my penchant for music.  We are now GO for vinyl in the OnceWereBachelorPad.  My new favorite saying is, "Come on over and let's listen to records!"

Billy Idol's Rebel Yell Spinning, Black Flag's Jealous Again On Deck

For years, I had been browsing Craigslist for a used system, but I couldn't find one complete that didn't smack of too much digitalia or oversensurroundsound.  No thanks.  Two channels, maybe a bank of levels.  Blue lights.  Finally, after driving Bill's MG, I also acquired his stereo receiver and awesome Bose 302 "bookshelf" speakers.  All I needed was a turntable, and for that I finally bit the bullet and simply ordered a basic one online, as well as a separate phono preamp.  If you're at all similarly inclined, stay away from the cheap self contained units that you find everywhere.  They're no better than the crappy plastic players we used to have as kids in the 70s, from Sears or worse.

I tell you all this not because I am a techie audiophile.  Lord no.  My music hardly calls for the highest fidelity.  With records, the journey's the thing, I think.  Besides putting the stereo components together, consider the act of accumulating record albums.  I've already waxed lyrical about sifting through album stacks at Tower Records.  Bringing out my old collection, which I've gathered since I was about 14 years old, the activity is downright autobiographical.  And now that I am again vinyl ready, I get to return to used record shops?  That's just a bonus to having the stereo.

Eames Fiberglass Shell Chair and Record Player

And what of the act of listening to record albums?  With CDs or iTunes or Pandora or Spotify, the experience is disposable.  One can skip past songs, assemble playlists, impose your own aesthetic on the artists whose songs you've downloaded.  It's also portable, in that one often does other things -- walk their dog, work out, read their email -- while listening to their iPod.  Those are not bad capabilities

Music Listening Space

by any means, but consider the alternative.  One occupies the same space as their stereo.  One has to set aside time to listen to the entire record because it isn't as easy to skip songs on an album.  Also, you'll have to listen to the songs in the order that the artist put them in on the record.  Do you think they put thought into that order?  I should think so.  And if you're going to listen to one record, you might as well listen to a bunch of them.  And what do you do while listening?  Maybe you could still clear your email, but just as likely, you could sit down, in your music listening space, and turn your attention to the cool stuff that came with the record album, the lyric sheet, the booklet.  Heck, even the picture on the album cover is reproduced in a stately, full size that lends itself to hours of scrutiny.  Don't think that it only holds the attention of teenagers.  It's happened to me since I got my stereo.  And I haven't been a teenager for decades.

5 LPs of Bruce Springsteen Live, and Collectible Booklet With Lyric Sheet 

Cheap Trick's In Color

Back Cover of Cheap Trick's In Color

Inside Foldout to Cheap Trick's In Color

This Calls For Super Mid Fi

Walter Cronkite's View of the 21st Century

I don't know if you realize it, I barely did, but we are fourteen years deep into the 21st Century.  At no time in my life have I felt like I lived in the future, but really at every point I in fact have.  Born in 1967 I am indubitably post-modern.

Especially from the Eighties on, I could've stopped, taken a breath, and looked around and said "this is science fiction I'm living in!"  First supersonic flight.  Remote controls.  Microwaves.  Power windows, power mirrors, and power antennas.  VCRs.  Then 24 hour news, 24 hour sports, 24 hour new wave music videos.  Desktop computers with the capacity to store half the information of the Encyclopedia Brittanica.  And it progressed from there.  Cellphones.  Laptops.  GPS.  Clones.  A black president (finally)!

But look at the view from the year I was born.  It all seems so quaint.

Magnus Walker: Early Porsche Aficionado and Life Architect

So everyone, especially the male of the species (which means bachelors and OnceWereBachelors), has a vision for their life formed early on, before the restraints of reason and common sense take hold.  If you were to ask boys what their ideal life would look like, I bet we can all speculate accurately about what answers we'd get.

"I want to grow up to be a man of adventure, who travels the world, fights evil, makes lots of money, has a jet plane. And my mom makes me brownies and my favorite spaghetti and meatballs everyday."

"I want to be a scientist who has his own lab and invents things that help the world."

"I want to live on an island with my friends and hunt and fish for food and surf and swim all day."

Whatever that vision is, it involves an element of freedom and desire to be left alone by others - perhaps grown ups - to write one's own script, to be an architect of one's life.  No one envisions a life with a mortgage, private school tuition, and high overhead.

I wonder if, when Magnus Walker was a young kid he said "I want to live in a large warehouse with tastefully wild furniture, and a tattooed bombshell for a wife.  I want to make that warehouse available to Hollywood to use in edgy movies and music videos.  And I want to take the fabulous amount of money I make doing that, and spend it on restoring or modifying dozens of early Porsche 911s.  And I want to not have to bathe or observe norms of male hygiene too much."

If so, his dream came true.  If you have an odd half hour of free time, and you like old cars and interesting living spaces, watch this.

Woody Allen's Manhattan

Paragraph 1: George Gershwin's iconic Rhapsody in Blue plays over pristine black and white images of classic New York tableau ... (nah, too declarative. And "iconic" and "classic" in the same line? Bleah.).

Let's see ... Paragraph 1: If you could only choose one movie opening to say everything there is to say about a city and person who lived in it ... (mmm. Who am I, Bill Moyers?)

Uh. Paragraph 1: Woody Allen, in his day, was New York City's biggest fan and greatest ambassador. In his love letter to Gotham, Manhattan, he can be found making some bold, and pitch-perfect artistic choices, even within the first three minutes. (Oooh, I love this ...). Truly one of the great opening scenes in the history of cinema, we start with the New York Philharmonic playing Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. Need anything more be said about that piece? The voice over, often considered a sign of laziness in a screenwriter, here isn't really a voice over at all. It's just Isaac Davis struggling to come up with a paragraph to open his oft-promised, never-started novel. Black and white, was there ever a more flattering way to depict images seriously? (Wait, where the hell am I even going with this? Maybe I should try Queens).

I just learned that my favorite Woody Allen film, Manhattan, is being released on Blu-Ray. I am looking forward to sharper blacks, crisper whites, clearer jazz, and the same sharp crit of pseudo-intellectual bourgeoisie and urban male neuroses that I was so captivated by when I first watched it amongst other film geeks in college. But most of all, I am looking forward to this in high-definition:

Isaac Davis's darkened apartment, he descending a spiral staircase, and his 17 year old girlfriend, played by a sublime Mariel Hemingway, seated far to the left, thumbing through an oversized book. Both are bathed in the only light sources, reading lamps, in the room. Man I love that image, a portrait of a man wandering through his things, struggling to find his way through mid-life, destination known.

Now more than ever, I feel like I live in that darkened room.

Bottles I've Owned

When I was a bachelor, I sometimes found myself without someone to celebrate an occasion. Not so tough, that. I've had my share of alone holidays, but when you live in your home town, you're never really alone, especially when you're down with being with your family (which every man should be, by the way). But for meaningful little things, like your first not guilty jury verdict or the day you come home with Steely Dan's first new music after a 20 year recording hiatus, it's nice to have something to mark such an occasion.

I probably bought this bottle for just such a reason, although I don't remember now what it might have been. I probably opened it alone as well. Before I got married, I tended to accumulate these bottles and I have a small platoon of them in different brands and spirits now, left over from that time, emptied to different levels. I cared for them like treasured toys that would never find the Goodwill bin. They moved with me to homes bought and sold.

Mostly for no reason, I still open them and pour some into the appropriate drinking vessel. This bottle is Oban, one of many a single malt whisky I've acquired and enjoyed. A pally I cocktail with mentions the brand here and it is one of my favorites. It gets poured into a heavy rocks glass from a gal I fancy. I won't try to describe it, as my palate is not so refined. They all taste like a caramel of one sort or another to me, which is to say they all taste wonderful. When it runs out - and that may or may not be soon - I am certain to look for another of the same.

OnceWereBachelorPad Christmas

I had my son and my sister's kids (collectively referred to as "the Cousins") decorate my tree this year. They are seven, seven, and five years old. There's nothing like children to bring back that joy of Christmas.

And there's nothing like a new beginning to bring back optimism. Merry Christmas to all and a Happy New Year.

North Shore Beach House in the Winter

"No matter how fabulous your beach house is, you still need to erect a tent on the sand." - Anonymous (2011).

"Go, Mordechai!"

Something immediately struck me about this advertisement when it came on in the middle of my Hawaii Five-O. What may have resonated was that it features one of those fantasy Jetsons' domiciles that I love so much. The mid-century modern furniture wired with automation. In fact the title of this beer commercial is "Apartomatic". The clunky toggle-switched control box commanding the Rube Goldberg contraptions that finish off with the self-pouring beer tap are all exactly what I'd want in my place. As are the concealed fish tanks and cathode ray tube TV monitors. So retro cool. So neato.

But that wasn't really it. I couldn't yet put my finger on what it was that struck a chord with me about the commercial. I searched for it so I could post it here as some sort of Bachelor Pad Redux. Instead, I discovered that the commercial was directed by Wes Anderson, and it all made sense. You know Anderson, the auteur responsible for one of my favorite movies, Rushmore, as well as The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and The Fantastic Mr. Fox.

What really charmed me about the Stella commercial then, was what charmed me about Anderson's best-conceived and best-received film, The Royal Tennenbaums. It is on display here in one of the Great Movie Opening Sequences, Anderson's ability to craft a complete and engrossing universe, top to bottom, soup to nuts, word and song.

Yeah. I wish. The Playboy Townhouse.

I've been looking at alternatives to the suburban home of late. I wonder if I could swing something like this on a lawyer's booty. Some of us perhaps, but not me. I'm neither dishonest nor excessively lucky. Just a regular, skilled combatant.

Anyway, I know I've posted a bit about this before, but I just realized I had the whole article from Playboy's stylish (i.e. non-gold chain, exposed hairy chest) era. And it bears sharing in full. If I look closely I see my favorite Eames chair, some tulips and Saarinens (a paltry $165), and all the right proportions. Of course , as the author says, a "high-performance gran turismo" in the garage. I've googled "Playboy's Penthouse" (an article from the aforementioned non-tacky era, not a crossover with the magazine's skeevier competitor), "The Playboy Bed" (a sidebar about Hef's rotating bed with built in bar), and other similar artifacts. The Playboy Townhouse was the only one I could find in full, and, luckily for us, it is the best.

Anyway, enjoy.

Me.

But with these chairs.


Otherwise it's just a tacky space to park your Maserati.

Bachelor Pad

What self respecting bachelor would fail to find himself a bachelor pad to come home to and entertain in? Perhaps iconic to me were those depictions in Playboy, cutaway watercolor images of a luxe living room or a fabulous den equipped with a round bed which lowered from the ceiling.

It had better have a bar, a place to fix cocktails, and no we're not talking about a place to park the kegerator. It needs to have all kinds of hi-tech, like a hi-fi and a clock radio. It needs a television, and although nowadays large plasma screens are all the rage, howsabout one of those all-picture-tube-no-cabinet jobs that George and Elroy Jetson watched the Space Race on back when the early sixties was all Tomorrow. And while you're at it, make it lower out of the ceiling too. Indoor reflecting pools are in, lap pools are out; nevermind that Mark Spitz was one of the great bachelors of his time. The Bachelor Pad is not the place to exert oneself. In fact, you can also forget about the Bachelor Pad ever being a fixer-upper; I don't think James Bond could pull off the Bob Villa schtick. No home repairs, then.

Which brings me to what I've been doing these past few days while the wife and son were away. I performed some bathroom repairs of a commodal nature. I moved some large items into our small attic, to make room for other items, yet to be acquired by the Mrs. But in a true act of OnceWereBachelorship, brother-in-law Captain Mike, who is flying the LAX-HNL-LAX route this month, showed me how to hang ceiling fans, which we hung in my living room, family room, and the master bedroom. What a guy. Luckily, we didn't have any round beds to dismantle. Good thing we had ribeyes and cigars at DK Steakhouse in Waikiki the night before.

So the next time we have guests over to the suburbs for cocktails and jazz, they can cool off under the whip-fast blades of my brushed-nickel aero-fans.