Record player

Alright, I want to buy a record player (for the sweet LP's I bought a week ago), but obviously have no idea what I should be looking for, so I'm going to do a running blog while I do about 30 minutes of research.

First thing I came across was this guide posted on eBay, which looks like a pretty well written article. (I will say that while I am doing this I am talking to Fake Lauren, trying to convince her that Sufjan Stevens is one of the best artists of our generation. For some reason she doesn't believe me.) I'm quickly realizing that even though this article dubs itself as a "layman friendly guide on how to select your next turntable", I'm seriously having some trouble figuring out what this all means. I just scanned it, and it doesn't get any easier to read. I'm moving on.

Article 2 has a great title - My first turntable - what should I buy? Now we are talking. But wait, what the hell is this? This guy wants to spend a grand on this thing? I'm not trying to get a bj from the machine, I just want it to spin my records around. I could get 4 iPods for that much. I finished the article, and realized it uses just as much wacky language, and the forum posters don't think you can get a record player for less than $1k that doesn't make you want to cut your ears off. Not the right stop. Again.

Third article and I'm finally getting to the good stuff: How to Decide if a Turntable is right for you. They are still talking about spending 500-600 on a table, but at least I can understand what all the words mean. I'm starting to feel like I'm going to end up finding the right thing, and I like the argument that if you are a classical or classic rock fan, due to the fact that records are so cheap you can actually save money switching to LPs.

Here we go! Subject: In need of a good turntable under $120. Now we are talking! First major question appears to be answered: buy direct drive and not belt driven. I'm pretty sure this is what Raz told me to do, but I couldn't remember. And this has what appears to be a decent recommendation: Accurian turntable from Radio Shack. I went to search for it, and the Audio-Technica AT-PL120 came up, which looks pretty good and is currently on sale at $250. Starting to look a lot better, this is definitely in the running for final purchase. It also got a great review from Crutchfield. And its down to $200 on Amazon. This might be the one, but I'll keep looking.

One of the turntables the Crutchfield article discribed was the Technics SL-1200. This looks great, but with a $519 price tag from Amazon (remember you still need to buy a needle), its just not what I'm looking for right now. I might have stumbled upon the right player already...

Alright, thats enough for tonight. If I end up picking anything up, I'll post a follow up note. And if anyone knows anything about record players, I'm all ears.

And FYI, I was able to make a convincing argument for Sufjan Stevens, after Sister Winter, The Transfiguration, and Chicago. Here's a quote from Fake Lauren (and something that a lot of people should try to remember): "Fake Lauren: I should have known better than to disagree with you."

Quick recap

One quick post tonight after a busy week, I'll go through and link this later.

Visited Darden for an interview on Wednesday, I think it went well, but when I talk for 45 minutes straight I always think it sounds good. Heard back from Wharton today, it was the standard denial letter, but now in internet form, so I felt good that my rejection was not harming the earth. Three more schools to go, and Harvard still hasn't even opened the application. This process sucks.

Got a lot of cool links this week. I'll try to group them all by general topic:

- Read an article in the Post entitled The Dumbing of America. The general thrust of the article is that not only is the American attention span waning and education focusing more on teaching to a test rather than learning, but that people are content on not knowing information, and to point this out is labeled as elitist. I don't think reading the authors entire book would be very interesting, but in a two page opinion form it seems pretty good.

- Another article from Business Week focused on Verizon's current offer of unlimited minutes for $100 a month, prompting at&t and T-Mobile to follow suit. The article said that all stocks lost ground in a fear that this singles new pricing wars, which is great now that I plan on leaving the Company cell phone plan.

- Debby sent me a link about an article on the modern woman, who has so many choices in front of her that her life is vastly different from her parents, and the desire to succeed is mostly based on the dearth of opportunities that are provided. Makes me feel like I haven't moved cities enough.

- Another article, from the New Yorker, entitled The Birthday Party, focused on Stephen Schawarzman, head of the Blackstone group. Great profile of a business leader, very fair presentation of his talents and faults.

- Finally, Roger did a bunch of research after we had questioned each other about the situation with Advanced Towing on Sunday. He found a bunch of really interesting information. Starting at Wikipedia, he found an article on predatory towing, which linked him to Virginia towing laws, "among the forefront of towing laws in America meant to protect vehicle owners from predatory towing practices". Apparently tow drivers are required to take pictures of a car prior to towing so they can't claim a car was damaged prior to being towed, and other restrictions. Of the counties in Virginia, Arlington has the toughest restrictions. From there, Roger found a bunch of other websites, including one blog which takes pictures of Arlington county vehicles illegally parked (but has been inactive for over a year), a review of Advance Towing, which also towed Scott's car and illegally charged him over the $95 maximum fee even though he was parked in his own garage, and a few stories of seriously pissed of people who got towed. One guy was pissed that kids sat in a parking lot waiting for people to park illegally so they could get towed, and one felt he was mistreated by Franks Towing, which ended up getting out of the towing business after the owner was arrested for tax fraud and ordered to pay $16,000 in fines for overcharging people. If you have time, read the Franks towing website, its hilarious.

Walking Arlington

Roger and I had a romantic day together today. After finishing Good Luck Chuck (probably one of the worst movies ever) and then watching Charlie Wilson's War (very, very good), we decided to grab some food. Without any idea where we wanted to go, we just started walking. I had my camera on me, so I just took a bunch of pictures of Arlington, figuring that almost everything we were looking at was going to change soon. We also decided to eat somewhere we had never eaten before, which ended up being a very good idea. We passed by El Pollo Rico, one of the three Peruvian chicken places in Arlington, and the current favorite of both DCist and my uncle Mark. I still argue that Super Pollo is better, where you can get chicken that tastes just as good, plus yuca. Anyway. Walking around Arlington made me notice a lot of things I never do when I walk by them. Like the flower painted on the side of a building, painted after September 11th, with the date painted like one of the clouds. Or the shoe repair place that seems to advertise that its open very well, would have a real bitch of a time changing the sign at closing, and for some reason is located in the corner of a parking lot.

The first place we actually stopped at was Orpheus Records, a small record store in Arlington that is currently going out of business. The Washington Post wrote an article on the store and the issues its having, mainly not being able to make the increasing rents as business decreases. Roger and I commented that the guy behind the counter (not the owner) seemed a lot like Comic Book Guy, both in appearance and condescending demeanor. Despite this, even though I dont have a record player yet (thats a subject for future posts), I picked up two Sufjan Stevens albums, Illinois and Michigan, and Bloc Party's Silent Alarm. Thanks to Raz for getting me into vinyl, mostly because of how cool the Bloc Party records look and the extra track on the Illinois album. Plus the covers will look great if I ever put anything on my walls.

We kept walking, turning into a few more stores (there's a porn shop in Arlington! score!), and finally got hungry around the end of Clarendon. We saw a place that we have passed a million times called Earl's. Roger made a quip about it probably being named after the Earl of Sandwich, which turned out to be true, then pointed to his head and said "This thing ain't just a hat rack". What a funny guy that Rog is. Earl's bills itself as just like homemade, but with less the hassle. Earl has obviously never been to my house. Earl turns out to be Steve Dugan, former employee at Rockland's and the guy that picked out my sandwich for me. Turns out he is cool as shit, knows his menu, and makes great sandwiches. I had the Pearl, which tasted like Thanksgiving on a roll, and the Rog got the Monty, which looked awesome other than the mayo based spread that was also included. We both got the gumbo, which was more like a stew but still really good, and I got the fries when I noticed they were fresh cut before I ordered them and Earls had Old Bay to put on them. I loved it, the Rog loved it, and the Washington Post loved it too. I will be back often.

At this point its about 2 and a half hours into our walk, and the Rog and I asked each other if we should feel gay (not that there's anything wrong with that) about the whole day. Without girlfriends or even girl friends, we decided that it wasn't gay, more of just a trip together by default. Then we went and got lattes together. Shit. Oh well, the coffee was good, and from a small place near Courthouse called the Java Shack. The place is very typical small coffee house, with a bunch of hippie ideals about people bringing in their own mugs and stuff, but the prices were really good and I would choose it over Starbucks any day. I think you can also see the place upstairs in the picture - its a massage parlor. I asked if it was the kind of massage parlor that gave happy endings and found out that (unfortunately) it isn't. This led Roger and I to begin discussing massage parlors, our friend Phil's plan on experiencing one in DC which takes the term happy ending to another level, and then about two brothers who "experienced" the same girl in the same night. This made us both feel much more manly - back on the "straight talk express" if you will - as we headed into Courthouse for the turn around point in our journey.

We popped into Olsson's Books and Records, mostly because I wanted to see if they actually sold records (they do, kind of. They had three. So I guess that counts). There were a lot of different types of books, not as big as a Barnes and Nobel, but with a much more local feel. They had a good list of recommended reads, including one of the funnier reviews I have ever read. The Rog also found a book that from the outside seemed to be written about TSNIFB, but as the old saying goes, you can't judge a book from its cover (although I'm thinking about suing for false advertising, they are obviously making money off people expecting to read about Glenn). I picked up one book, signed by the author: The Redskins Encyclopedia, for EJ and Katie as an engagement present, then we started back towards Ballston.

On the way back, we almost got run over by a group of hashers, people who run a 5k to get to a keg at the end (my kind of people), and an Enviorcab, then actually did run into BRJ, looking as straight as ever. He was out with his boyfriend / roommate buying wine to celebrate Presidents Day, and to try to get a woman drunk enough to look past his flaming homosexuality and play patty cake with him. They picked up $140 worth of wine, wasting about $130 when two $5 roofies will do the trick, and posed for one picture. Surprisingly, he didn't realize that Roger was farting on him the entire time until it was too late. We passed a car getting towed, which I laughed at and snapped a picture of. What was weird, after I took the picture the two tow truck passengers took pictures of me (why the hell did they both have cameras) from the parking lot and again while they sped by us, without towing the car. Very strange. We passed the remains of another building getting torn down, hopefully for more condos, grabbed a beer, and called it a day.

Quite a Sunday.

Wow. I can't believe people are this dumb

How awesome am I?

Sunday morning, I woke up on a love seat, my neck hurts a lot. Roger and I walked to Starbucks and got breakfast and coffee, and made a friend along the way. And by friend, I mean we hollered at a babe and she waved at us on the walk home. I'll take what I can get. Especially after dinner last night, when I walked to 7-11 and bought a 12 pack of Natty and a half gallon of milk. It even looks pathetic in pictures.

So now we are hanging out watching Good Luck Chuck. The movie kind of sucks, and by sucks I mean the acting is bad, the plot is stupid, and the dialog is terrible. But there are a ton of boobies in it, which makes it definitely worth watching. There are also a few good lines, such as the following, from an overweight plastic surgeon to a hot babe at a wedding:

"Here I am. What are your other two wishes?"

If you are hungover / still drunk, that line is pretty funny. Really, thats the only way you should watch this movie. Have nothing else to do, have drank heavily either the night before or during the movie, and have someone to watch it with and make fun of it. Anyway, the line from the movie made me think of another great line I heard recently. Its from the Taco Bell commercial with the two 9's talking to each other:

"I don't have an ego. I just love how awesome I am."

For some reason, I can not figure out why I can't find the video online. Why wouldn't companies put all ads online? I fast forward through all commercials on tv, and the one time that I actually want to watch a commercial I can't find it. Stupid.

One last good line:

"Why do you want to take me out to dinner so bad?"
"Because you look hungry"

I need to say that to fat chicks when I hit on them.

Europe!

I booked my ticket for Europe today! June 9th to June 24th, I will have much style and worldliness. Popcorn and I are going to hang out in Paris for a week where I'm flying in, then Debby and I head to Florence for a week in an Italian villa. Its probably going to be the most romantically awkward trip ever, between traveling with a friend who has been confused as my boyfriend (Good guys? We're great guys!), and taking in the amazing Italian countryside... with my extended family. Oh well, its still going to be amazing.

A few things I want to accomplish on this trip (so far) - spend a full day at the Louvre, visit both the Uffizi and the Accademia, and if possible, learn to cook an Italian dish I haven't made before.

Valentines Day part 2

Ok, so I got over the shock of Harrisonburg restaurants closing early for Valentines Day. It helped that we went to El Charro for dinner and I got to see couples going out to dinner together in their nicest outfits, which were Coors Light shirts, camo hats, and flannel shirt jackets. It also helped that we went to Wal Mart at lunch and I got a fucking bad ass tiger print mouse pad. Check it out! This thing is fucking fierce. People had been messing with me all day, then after lunch I put this thing down, and no one even came near me. It was pretty sweet.

Valentines Day also has a lot of good ecards associated with it. I sent one to Blackie Blackburn, which I though was really the perfect card and I'm sure she loved it too. Some other great cards here, here and here. And who doesnt remember Ralph Wiggum's card to Lisa? It made a great card, it makes an even better shirt.