Currently Pygmy By Chuck Palahniuk see related

26 November 1976-14 June 2009

können Sie im Frieden stillstehen....

On a cold November day, Black Friday 1976  to be exact, my father stood on line at a CMC store (yeah, any of you St. Louisans of a certain age will know what I'm talking about) to get first crack at a new kickass Technics turntable.  The regular price was $150, which in 1976 dollars was...$150, but for some reason, the store was selling them for about an hour at $80!  Now, there are many things that I've forgotten: people's names, their faces, who that girl was who just came in here and knew MY name from high school but I had no idea who she was--but I'll be damned if I don't remember when my father came home with that bad boy featured above.  Yep--a toddler watched fascinated as he hooked it up to the Marantz receiver and music poured out of the AR speakers.  Thus began my love for the vinyl that will never, never end! 

Okay, it hasn't ended, but it's been stopped for a while.  My mother decided that waiting for us to fix the turntable was akin to hell freezing over, so she brought it upstairs, plopped it on the kitchen table, and began to start a'unscrewing.  The verdict?  The thing was just plain worn out--and rightly so.  I mean, it was VERY heavily used--at least every day, and on the weekends?  There wasn't a Saturday night that went by without me staying up until 5 or 6 in the morning listening to records. 

But dammit, I still bitched that we hadn't gotten our $80 worth yet!  Too bad there's no way that I can get a similar turntable for under $200.  The good folks at Technics have been smoking the crack, and I'll be fucked if all their TTs are for DJs, and cost 'round $600!  The hell?!   But I've got to get a good brand, 'cause I'm jonesing for some Argent, Rachmaninoff and Dutilleux right now.

And even if I did find a Technics turntable, what are the odds that it'd have that cool, kickass stroboscope?!