Perpetually tired mental health counselor, sometimes retro game streamer, comedian, Mensan, coffee connoisseur, bacon lover, chronic pain survivor, nefarious pirate, and generally all-round nice dude…
The real obsolete media player.
The year is 1987, Christmas has just pasaed. This baby gets plugged in down in the finished basement. You and your older brother are sitting down on the carpet for the first time to check out this game, Super Mario Bros. Your only gaming experience so far has been the Atari 2600 and C64…
Yes, actually, some players had thicker spindles.
So here’s the story, at least as far as I understood it… 45s were created during a format war between Columbia records and RCA, a la betamax VS VHS, cd/dvd vs laser disc, or Blu-ray vs HD DVD. RCA’s 45s were designed to compete against Columbia’s 33s as both of them fought to create a sturdier successor to the old shellac 78 designs and bring a more reliable standard to the industry.
The larger hole was claimed to be a design feature that gave the records more stability, but really, RCA just wanted to make them incompatible with other players…
In the end, 33 LPs won. Turns out, people and musicians wanted whole albums, not just singles. Whoda thunk? However, 45s ended up being perfect for jukebox players. Plus, we got those nifty convertors, also called a spider, that ultimately made it so it didn’t matter as long as your player had a speed setting.
Fun fact, my first record player ever was actually a Fisher Price, and if you look, it’s got a built-in 45 adaptor that just popped up when you pressed it. It sounded about as good as you would expect, but I loved it.
I’m gonna go feel old now…
I’ll believe it when my CEO announces that our hiring freeze has been lifted and that we’re no longer under threat of closure. As of right now, we haven’t heard shit.
All fun and games until someone gets stuck in the autowash…
Read up on Ford and Hitler… People forgot about that one quick enough! BUILT FORD TOUGH!
I’ll take “Things a dictator says” for 800, Alex.
In a sane world, this would be articles of impeachment met with unanimous shouts from the rest of the government. In a sane world, the people wouldn’t have forgotten how batshit insane his first presidency was. In a sane world, he wouldn’t have gotten any further than “grab em by the pussy.” Fuck, in a sane world, Trump would have died years ago from a stroke and/or heart disease from a combination of the McDonald’s he constantly eats and the syphilis he undoubtedly has and the best legacy he’d have left behind is “You’re fired.” That is, of course, until we found out just how involved he was with Epstein and any scant trace of him or his celebrity was wiped off the face of the earth in disgust.
We don’t live in a sane world.
And hopefully, when he dies, he’s not allowed to lay in state, but instead is shoveled out with the rest of the toxic trash. We already have his epitaph ready.
Shoes came off and everything.