Alright... Alright! What's Covid-19 making you binge watch????

Worf said:

As for CD's. I grew up poor. Every record player we ever had was a hand-me-down affair my mom got while working as "the help" for other families (not casting shade... just stating facts). We went from a small '45 player discarded by a teenaged girl (and her 45's to boot) to her pink and cream Hi-Fidelity portable to her parents big hulking RCA unit with a fake add-on stereo speaker (the whole shebang was mono with just an added mono side speaker). We had '78's, '45's and a few LP's. Vinyl was all we had. Dad found a busted cassette player and somehow got it to work, you know one of those portable things with a mono speaker normally found in detective shows recording criminals.

Nobody did real music until I went into the service and discovered the joys of the PX. Still I couldn't afford real music or a real system until well into the 80's when I started buying "real" gear. Before she died my mom had one of those cheesey all in one's with a cassette deck, 8 track and a record player. The two speakers were those garbage deals without jacks on the back just a red and black wire coming from somewhere. My brother, mother and dad all died without hearing or owning a CD. My first civilian "boss" was a hoot though. Dana had an old Heathkit stereo amp he built in the 60's combined with a turntable from the stone age. He was happy and his system was magnificent for it's time BUT in the mid 80's everyone started giving him CD's and he had no player nor knew had to get one. Finally in desperation he asked me to pull him into the current century. After a trip to "Mom's Stereo" (now long gone) we managed to hook a brand new single disk CD player into the Aux inputs of his kit stereo. Man how times change...

Worf

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And nowadays kids like me are back to vinyl and older gear because we're convinced it sounds better. Funny how things go... My new system is being built around a 1978 Pioneer stereo receiver, and I'll be plugging a CD player into the aux on that...

Growing up in the '70s, we only had radio for music until my dad bought some old big band records and a record player with two small speakers, which seemed a big deal at the time, but it was a pretty cheap affair in retrospect - plastic speakers and case. I wasn't allowed to use it until I was older, so it didn't mean much to me other than I liked his records when he played them (later he added more big bands and then some of the '50s singers like Nat King Cole, Sinatra, Martin, etc.)

At some point, I got a hand-me-down "portable" record player from, really don't remember, either an older neighborhood kid or an older kid whose dad was a friend of my dad - a light blue plastic job with a handle and built in "speaker." I had some 45s and that was it for recorded music growing up. In truth, it was the radio where I listened to music growing up - WPLJ from NYC basically "taught" me classic rock and the "oldies" station (don't remember its call sign) taught me big bands and '40s and '50s singers.

Then, the car I bought in the early '80s had a Delco radio-cassette combo and, not being able to buy the fancy units from specialty shops some kids had back then, that was my introduction to tapes. I acquired a lot of tapes throughout the life of that car. Even though I don't have any special ear, I knew that sound - tapes through Delco technology - what's the word, stunk.

Finally, after college and with a real job, I started to buy good stereo equipment (in college, I had cobbled together some mediocre equipment) - a real receiver, speakers and tape deck (from some obscure Japanese brand as that was the cool thing then). Later, I added on a CD player, from memory, around 1990 and it took about three seconds to realize CDs were a hundred times better than tapes. The next fifteen years was pretty much that equipment and a growing CD collection (which got a big boost when my girlfriend moved it) until streaming came along.

Slowly, form the mid '00s on, we gravitated to streaming helped along by a few apartment moves and changing technology. Today, we only have Sonos speakers and a not hooked up CD player with a few hundred never listened to CDs. I'm not proud of this, but I basically use play lists from Pandora (the free version), Amazon Prime or, if I want a specific song, YouTube.

When my girlfriend spent several weeks in Michigan last year helping her parents when her dad got sick, I missed not having a real stereo/radio, etc. Sadly, I listened to the local rock and classical stations on a twenty year old Bose alarm clock radio whose sound fades in and out - oh how the mighty have fallen. I do have a really good-sounding FADA 1940s radio in the room I work (I've worked from home for the past 8 years, but I'm not in there when I really want the radio for company).

Some day, I might improve the situation, but when my girlfriend is here, we don't listen to the radio much, so Sonos does the trick. I get the revival in vinyl, but have neither the space, energy nor passion to go down that route. Right now, my next purchase will be a better clock radio for the next time she has to help her parents, because, when I'm alone in the apartment, I like listening to the old-style radio format with an announcer trying to connect with his or her audience. To that end, I've been eyeing a Tivoli to replace the on-its-last-breath Bose.

My very first record player was a little suitcase kiddie portable, 78rpm, that I got as a hand me down, along with an assortment of hand-me-down records. "Shut off that g-d Victrola!" was one of the first phrases I remember hearing, and it was well into my grade school years before I heard a record player called anything else but "a Victrola."

My mother had one of those boomy console stereos in the cheap veneered plywood cabinet with the AM-FM radio, 8-track, and record changer by the time I was in my teens, but I didn't bother with it -- for $5 at a second-hand store I bought a table-top Crosley radio phono combination -- not the modern Crosley, but the Cincinnati Crosley of the Era, maker of fine low-priced radios. It had a 78rpm turntable in the top, and I used that for years. I still have it, but the cartridge died years ago, and I've never gotten around to replacing it. It also had one of those cheap rim-drive motors that played everything at 85 rpm, so everything I played on it was sharp.

I never bothered much with LPs, since so much of the music I like wasn't available on that format at the time -- you had to go with 78s or wait for Joe Franklin to play it on WOR at 1 am on a Saturday night. But I vividly remember the first LP I ever bought -- a two-record set from the RCA-Bluebird "Complete Fats Waller" series covering 1934-35. Still have it.

As for the 8-track, one cartridge came with it -- "The Best of Don Ho," and that's the only one my mother ever had. She still has it. "Ti-neee bubbles..."

In April I watched Grimm. All 6 seasons. Mostly only because I was a recurring extra in it from the middle of season 3 until it's end. I played a desk detective in the precinct, you see me sometimes in the background for a split second. I have off-set pic's, but didn't have screen shots of me in actual episodes, so I tried to get a few of those in my binge ;-)

My best scene was early in season 6, the episode were Capt. Reynard is talking to Meisner's ghost in the precinct corridor. You can see me walking up the hallway for a few seconds and make a right into the office area.


Besides Grimm, in May I watched all 5 seasons of Person of Interest. Man, that was a GREAT tv show! Timely issues even though it ended in 2016. Amy Acker as Root was so delightfully...... psycho, lol.

I've just finished the most recently released tranch of The Chilling Advetures of Sabrina the Teenage Witch on Netflix. Excellent stuff - great fun, yet intelligent writing too. Plenty of neat little nuggest referenced without over-exposition for the viewer. Looking forward to the next part, which is going to really get into the Lovecraftian Eldritch lore.

Next up, I have a few things I want to watch. If it's still on there, I'm going to check out the Rebels mini-series on the 16 Rising in Dublin. Also, I fancy a revisit to Life on Mars (the UK original), which I've not seen since it was originally broadcast in 2006/7.

Finishing off Longmire, family and I are catching up Fear the Walking Dead before the new season starts next month, and I am getting back to Vikings, about to go beyond season three which is where I left off a couple of years back.

I watched The Witcher, Dark season3, and longplays of videogames on youtube

I got through Life on Mars, and am now into Ashes to Ashes. Whateve the writers may say about not having an exact ending in mind until much closer them doing it, there's an incredible amount of foreshadowning and subtle clues that I'm picking up this time round. Interesting that my original interpretation of the end of LoM still holds up until you get to A2A episode 1, and even then it seems largely true to the longer game had John Sim not decided to finish with series 2... The switch to London and the eighties is smoother than I recall (that said, back then I had to wait three years in between series). I am hopeful for the planned third part they have now confirmed which will take place "partly in the 70s, partly in the eighties, and partly in a version of 'now'. Having seen how he coped (or, indeed, not) with both glam rock and gay lib, I'm gagging to see Gene Hunt face punk rock...

Over the past few weeks, "Marcella," a psychological/police procedural set in England. Also, "The Umbrella Academy," which turned out kinda fun and a new season starts at the end of the month.

On Netflix, "Russian Doll," with Natasha Lyonne. Kind of hit and miss, but it's holding my attention.

I re-watched most of Breaking Bad (finally saw the last few episodes). Three seasons of Walking Dead before deciding it wasn't something I wanted to watch. Millennium (if I had The X-Files, I'd watch them next, but don't, so won't). Babylon 5 and Firefly.

Just ordered the first season of Mad Men; good reviews, but we'll see....

We've been watching "90 Day Fiance" for weeks and I've never seen anything that made me want to throw a brick at the TV more. People are dolts.

We just finished Missions on Amazon Prime. Worth it if your taste in science fiction runs deeper than simplistic 'action films in space'.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6445112/

"Im a morbidly obese 46 year old woman in Ohio with a criminal record, three children by three fathers, zero cash and my electricity has been shut off. I'm engaged to a drop dead handsome 22 year old man in Tunisia who I met online and have known only virtually and for only three months. He's coming on a visa which requires we get married within 90 days or he'll have to leave the country. He will not be able to work for those 90 days and has no skills to speak of anyway. He's a devout Muslim and I am looking to move into a storm-damaged old trailer and expect this to be a 24 hour sex den with my imported man. I've forgotten all about my children and am expecting this man to kowtow because after all, I've brought him here (with magically appearing money, somehow) and all foreigners should kiss American's feet for allowing them into paradise."

What could possibly go wrong?

Just Jim said:

Millennium

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My favourite tv show. I watched it live between '96 and '99 and now I own all three seasons on disk.

Lance Henriksen is a potter, and I bought one of his small platters. I now have his signature and a note, plus he handwrote the mailing address on the box! Sadly he seems not to be selling any more online.

Not really Covid-binging per se, but I run on our treadmill with a 55 inch plasma screen television in front, so to keep my mind off of the suck, I watch a series on Netflix or occasionally something on disk. Recently:

Vikings
High Seas (Alta Mar) (Spanish Netflix, sadly cancelled after season three)
Longmire
Line of Duty
Godless

Now re-watching Marcella (that's Mar-CHELA to you)

Addicting, though. I think we've exhausted all the seasons and spinoffs, thank GOD.

Addicting, though. I think we've exhausted all the seasons and spinoffs, thank GOD.