Love Bath Daredevil Dungeon

As I was approaching my twenty-ninth birthday last year, I compiled a bucket list of things to do before I turn thirty. The list has seventy items on it, but I only have to do thirty of them.

One of the items on the list is a very hipster thing: get a record player. Now, I put this on the list not because I'm a hipster, or because I'm some kind of music snob, but rather because it might be a fun, random thing to do.

As I began thinking about whether I wanted to get a record player, it came up in conversation that my dad still had his old record player stored underneath our stairs.

So, rather than buy a new record player, I pulled out a bunch of our boxes of Christmas decorations so I could access the old one.

We don't often go that deep into our Cupboard under the Stairs, so I was amused at some of the things I found under there. Written on the stairs themselves was child graffiti, including "Love Bath Dare Devil Dungen [sic]." (It might have been "Love Bat's.")

There were hearts that said "Tammy + Dave R." and "Jennifer + Troy." I don't know who any of these people are, so this graffiti is most certainly from before we moved in in 1991. (I do have a cousin named Tammy, but I doubt it's her.)

There were some bits of trash that did belong to us: a MacFrugal's receipt from December 1, 1994,

MacFrugal's became Big Lots! and was next to Kmart. Which is now Smith's.

 a piece of a comics page from December 20, 1992,

This strip was used in the 2002 special Charlie Brown's Christmas Tales.

 and a Thanksgiving feather of things my brother was thankful for in elementary school.

"Plants to get oxegen from." Of course my scientist brother would say that.

(I put all these antiques in the recycling bin. Sorry.)

Then I pulled out the record player, and my dad helped me get it set up and working. My parents have conflicting opinions on how old it is, but it is certainly more than thirty years old, possibly more than forty.

I got out my dad's old records from the garage. He told me that most of them weren't very good because he bought them for cheap, but there were a few I recognized. I was excited to see Abbey Road in there, but it was a different record inside the sleeve; my dad says his siblings misplaced it. So the first record I heard on this record player was Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. (I have faint memories of listening to records as a small child, but it was on a different player.) It was a little strange to realize I had heard some of the songs before, yet here I was listening to them in their original medium.

I wasn't super impressed. But I figured that in order to judge it fairly, I had to get an album I was familiar with.

So on Thursday I stopped at Graywhale Entertainment to buy my first record. I wanted Lady Gaga's Joanne, but it was out of stock. But I was shocked and delighted that they had Kites Are Fun by the Free Design, a charming album of 1960s sunshine pop I found (and bought digitally) last year. They rereleased the album for its fiftieth anniversary. 

I love the music, but the album art is terrible.

I will admit, it did have a nicer sound to it than I was accustomed to. But that might have been because I was using real (but old) speakers, instead of just my computer's speakers or my Amazon Echo.

Then it turned out that yesterday (April 21) was Record Store Day, so I decided to go to a different Graywhale to get another record. I got the soundtrack to Mad Monster Party?, which I actually bought used on CD on eBay four years ago. (I spent way too much on the CD, so the new vinyl was actually cheaper, especially since it was on sale.)

This one didn't sound as nice; maybe because it was mono instead of stereo?

Anyway, here is my verdict:

Dear hipsters: There is a reason records died out. You can only listen to them in one place. You have to flip the record over halfway through the album. You cannot rip digital copies to your computer to listen to anywhere, like you can with CDs. They are more expensive than downloads or CDs. You tell me that you love the crackling and the skipping, but you cannot stand there and tell me music sounds better when it sounds worse. You have to find a place to put the player.

Nevertheless, it is fun to open a record sleeve and read the liner notes, and you can fiddle with speed. Still, I don't think it's really worth it. But I will experiment with keeping the record player out for a time, and I need to listen to all of my dad's collection before I buy more of my own. I just thought it would be a fun thing to try.

I also had an interview in Park City this week (for a job I won't take). Last year a friend told me about a sock store there and told me I had to go. So I did. It was super expensive. But I had to buy five new pairs of holiday socks. (I even had to hold back. The selection was impressive. Just costly.)

I now have five pairs of Thanksgiving socks. Six if you count the pumpkins that also work for Halloween.

Lower priority items on my bucket list are to visit every county seat and every state park, so while I was in Summit County, I went to Coalville and Echo Reservoir, Utah's newest state park. (The part run by state parks wasn't open, but I still count it.)

Other items on my bucket list were to pick up litter and to celebrate Earth Day. The other day I did a short run on the lower, inferior portion of the Wild Rose Trail, which goes between houses and by NSL's landslide. I was amazed at the amount of trash on that lesser-used portion, so I decided to pick up litter there. (My guess is most of it came from blown-over trash cans.) I took one kitchen trash bag with me and filled it up in no time. But I remembered that I had seen an identical trash bag lying on the ground as litter, so I picked it up and filled it as well.

I brought it home and divided it into recycling and trash; most of it was recyclable. There's still a lot of trash there, but there's less than there was.

I only have to do eight more things on my list, and I still have five months. But my free time will be reduced again, as my unemployed days will be coming to an end. More information to come.