i stole a vhs player! by Kayode D. '27
and other old things i’ve acquired over the last 2 and a half weeks
Two weekends ago01 Ok, it's like 3 now, but i'm not going to change the language out of respect to the original post. was CPW, or Campus Preview Weekend. A lot of really neat events happened, but I was in the trenches02 and i absolutely still am with homework and exams. I have a lot of half-written blogs that I want to get out in the near future, but for now, i want to share what I consider to be “the most exciting thing i did over CPW.”
I stole a vhs player.
I have a habit of buying/getting things that I don’t need. Like at all. Last semester, I bought a cassette player, an old landline telephone, and a 30 pack bundle of Halloween Pokemon cards , even though I never play the game and I have yet to even open them all. All were completely unnecessary, but I found their simplicity so cool!!!
My biggest kryptonite has to be record shops, though. Specifically Newbury Comics03 Which has me in a financial chokehold , but I also spend a considerable amount at Cheapo Records, a record store super close to MIT campus. I went there a few weeks ago and ended up buying a VHS tape of the movie Hamlet for 2 dollars. I could practically hear my dad’s disapproving voice in my head as I spent what little money I had on this obsolete thing I would never use.
Hamlet!
Little did he know that I would turn to a life of crime. I was doing laundry04 laundry also has me in a chokehold. I am perpetually in a state of doing laundry in Simmons, and was waiting in a lounge for it to finish. Behind the tv, in a pile of wires and junk, I found a VHS player!! It was awesome and cool and probably from 2002 when Simmons was built. I tried to get a better look at it, but found a steel anchor attached to the back that tied it to the wall. Aw rats. It’s almost like someone intentionally put that there so people don’t steal.
Lucky for me, though, someone broke the anchor!! So now it’s mine05 for the record, I'm not actually going to take it for good. I am merely borrowing it !!
I also “relocated” a TV from the floor 7 lounge, which has 3 unplugged tv’s in an unusable position against a wall. So now one is getting a new life!! I set it all up in my room and me and my roommates set up to watch some Hamlet!
You know on tv when old people make fun of young people for not being able to use a rotary telephone or a VHS player? That’s because it’s hard. I had to look up which way was forward on a VHS06 i feel that this one was warranted. My cassette player positions the cassette to play from right to left, which i realize now is upside down from normal. So yeah, makes sense. . I had to look up how to make the VHS player show up on the tv (it had to be on channel 2 for whatever reason). And then we had to sit there and watch the tape rewind for 45 minutes at a slightly faster speed than the movie ran at. I see why people complained about tapes being returned and not rewound. It all makes sense now.
And the movie sucked! It was so boring! Hamlet is a boring movie!! It’s a beautiful movie, and the sets were stunning, but it’s a very boring movie. It did have Mel Gibson, though (you know, the guy from Chicken Run, 2000?) so that made it a little better.
Record Store Day!!
Last weekend was an event called Record Store Day. Artists from all over support local record stores by releasing exclusive merch/limited editions of records at only these stores. My friend, Noah R. ‘27 convinced me to go, and we embarked to Harvard Square to visit some stores.
The first store we went to was called Planet Records, and my friend, Caleb M. ‘27 would describe it as “a wikipedia rabbit hole incarnate.” Some would call it cozy and homey, others might call it cramped and cluttered. Either way, if you like music and stuff like that, it’s a cool place! I got some cassette singles for like a buck each, and then found some sick cassettes (!!) pictured below. I also found a 1 dollar 3-VHS blind bag, and quickly realized why it was only 3 dollars.
Then we went to a place called Armageddon Records, which stressed me out so I didn’t take any pictures. It’s very metal and punk, and I ended up getting 2 VHS tapes (Apollo 13 and Gladiator). It was just a lot, and I realized that I was trading legal tender for the products I was acquiring. I miss finding things in closets and behind old tvs.
We went to Shake Shack after this. It’s like a regular burger place but they have 15 dollar burgers and no soda (that I could tell at least). Boy do I love Boston!! It was really good food, though. I thought it would be like Steak and Shake, which apparently isn’t a thing everywhere. (My town had a Steak and Shake, and it is sort of like a 50s diner but today. They have good shakes and the rest of the food is pretty mid, but my friend worked there and he said a guy came in onetime claiming to be the “King of Steak” and all the teenage workers treated him like royalty. Long live the King of Steak.)
Of course, we ended the day at Newbury Comics (because you know I can’t resist). My funds were running low and I was absolutely torn on what to purchase. I was split between getting the American Football 1999 debut album DELUXE EDITION07 with a second vinyl filled with unnamed demos and alternate recordings, as well as a book with the story of the album and getting Modern Baseball’s “Modern Baseball Presents: The Perfect Cast EP” along with “Motorcycle.LPG” by Slaughter Beach, Dog. Both of these are amazing works of music!!08 that I found from a friend while on this trip that the same guy is in both bands and wrote songs for both!!! It’s so awesome and made me want to get them even more!!! Also, they were specially colored pressing, which only made it even cooler.
I was at the store until it closed and ended up getting the American Football Album. I don’t regret my decision (too much) and I’ll appreciate this deluxe edition for years and year to come. Now I just need a record player…
Swapfest!!
Swapfest is like a big monthly garage sale at MIT, but for technology stuff. Vendors come once a month and sell stuff in a big parking garage near campus. There’s computers, phones, electronics stuff, music, cameras– if it is “technology” they probably have it. I was really excited for it, since this was the first one of the year since last November. Only one problem:
I had no money. I spent it all on things I didn’t need (shocker) and now just had to look at things I wanted. My biggest regret of the day was not buying a video camera that looked like a gun. I mean it didn’t look like a gun, more like a barcode scanner, but still.
A positive though: I saw not one, not two, BUT THREE copies of Side Pocket, my favorite game on the SNES.
Side Pocket
Last semester, me and some friends who I will colloquially call “the boys” decided we were going to have a video game night one Friday. We set up the the aforementioned 7th floor lounge with 3 TVs and played Fortnite and Jedi Old Republic. We chatted about the state of New Hampshire and the longstanding impact that Fortnite has had on our generation. It truly was a grand old time. Other members of the friend group, who we can call “the girls” showed up about an hour in, and sat with us.
Me and my roommate eventually booted up the classic games selection on my Nintendo Switch and began to play through some old titles. A little ways in, we came to Side Pocket, a billiards simulator for the SNES released in 1993. It was great because it was a game we both quickly understood, but the limited console capabilities made the playing field super even and a ton more fun. The soundtrack was absolutely insane, and it was the perfect quaint little game. We played for a little while and just chatted and had fun.
The girls, on the other hand, hated this experience and loathe the game of Side Pocket. One person described it as “Kayode and Bryce sitting in front of the TV and saying ‘oh darn’ or ‘i didn’t expect that to happen’ for an hour and a half.” They say it was really boring to watch.
But I loved it! I miss it, and want to do it in the future. A part of me wonders if we lost what made games great when we upgraded with modern games. The community that was built over Tecmo Bowl has been replaced by faceless online play. I think that online play is still good, but I long for the drive and urgency to gather and play games together in a friend’s dorm room or on someone’s couch.
And has science gone too far? Has the improved graphics taken away the creativity and imagination that came with playing games? One of my favorite games of all time has to be Zork, a text based adventure game made by MIT students in 1977. It has no graphics, and you have to take notes as you play. One of my favorite high school memories was at the end of senior year, where me and some friends made a big map and would play the game during any free time, just trying to solve the puzzles and escape the massive Underground. We refer to this time as Zorkathon, and I miss it.
But that’s a blog for another time, I guess. I’m really tired. This semester is almost over, and I have a lot of blogs to post in the next few weeks. Until next time, partners.
- Ok, it's like 3 now, but i'm not going to change the language out of respect to the original post. back to text ↑
- and i absolutely still am back to text ↑
- Which has me in a financial chokehold back to text ↑
- laundry also has me in a chokehold. I am perpetually in a state of doing laundry back to text ↑
- for the record, I'm not actually going to take it for good. I am merely borrowing it back to text ↑
- i feel that this one was warranted. My cassette player positions the cassette to play from right to left, which i realize now is upside down from normal. So yeah, makes sense. back to text ↑
- with a second vinyl filled with unnamed demos and alternate recordings, as well as a book with the story of the album back to text ↑
- that I found from a friend while on this trip that the same guy is in both bands and wrote songs for both!!! It’s so awesome and made me want to get them even more!!! back to text ↑