Vinyl creeping into Best Buy

Nope, this is not a Halloween post (screw that festivity, I'm watching "Nixon" after I get back from the gym).

The creeping that's happening here is of the vinyl variety. Or "records," or "albums," to those of you (like myself) who still think there was nothing wrong with the old vernacular. I mean, this isn't siding for your home or a cover for the seat of your car. This is an actual document - yes, a record - that we're talking about. Or several, as in this case.

I just find it amusing that there are still folks out there who insist that records don't really exist anymore, as Frank Nicotero recently did on Chelsea Lately in discussing the recent announcement of the imminent arrival of Guns N' Roses' Chinese Democracy. I believe the exact quote was, "it's been so long since they released anything, their last album was an album!" Um... Live Era was a triple record, in 1999. Yes, 1999.

You kind of have to look at store shelves to know these things, though. And I know it can be hard sometimes, but not at Best Buy these days.

These photos were taken yesterday at the San Francisco Best Buy location on Geary Blvd and Masonic:



Right in the front entrance, here we have a display hawking Elton John's new The Red Piano live album - as a triple vinyl LP. Priced at $39.99. Way to welcome a vinyl hound!




Metallica's Death Magnetic - double LP, $24.99. I'm pretty sure there hasn't been a Metallica album that wasn't released in the vinyl LP format.




Coldplay's Viva La Vida. I'd never buy this one, but still, yay for the format.




This one's a beauty, though you can't really tell from the photos: a 50th anniversary edition of Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, which would be a great coffee table piece for someone with a coffee table the size of a bed. Two CDs, a DVD, a 60 page 12x12 book, and a 180 gram vinyl LP of the original Kind of Blue album on blue vinyl. Sweet! $99.99.




This one here's truly amazing, and a great way to get fans of the original Queen to buy the new album with Paul Rodgers, even if they never listen to it. This $120 box includes the new Queen + Paul Rodgers album The Cosmos Rocks both on CD and double LP, as well as LP repressings of four of the original Queen's '70s albums: Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack, A Night at the Opera, and A Day at the Races. There's a live DVD in there too. It's totally excessive, but looks like it would be a really fun package to tear open on Xma$.

So there you have it - records aren't just for indie retailers anymore. Now go get yourself a turntable and take those annoying, tinnitus-inducing iPod headphones out of your ears!

Prime design / time design

It has taken me until now to finally practice my refreshed web design skills in earnest. I started taking the web designer course at AcademyX in late January, so it's about time!

And the time in this case was the Cesar Chavez holiday, which makes for a welcome early start to the weekend. It also makes up for not having a day off on Columbus Day.

I started this morning on messing with the design for the Rasputin Manifesto site for my own amusement, and had run into some frustration with linking to the style sheet I was trying to create. As Noon approached, I put my work down and went for a swim.

It took until well after dinner for me to finally sit back down and get to it -- there were plenty of distractions to engage me, such as setting up the new external hard drive I bought, transferring and deleting files, laundry, etc. Anything to put off linking this stupid style sheet! Well, once I finally got it linked and got around to adding some IDs, I realized what one of my other problems was earlier in the day -- I was adding the "#" symbol to my div IDs, which explained why none of the formatting was sticking. The "#" symbol (or as our Dreamweaver instructor enjoyed calling it, the "octathorp") belonged on the ID in the style sheet, not the div ID. Got it.

After that I was jammin', until padding in one of my divs started creating more headaches. It was a good run though. It just took the right music to get me going. And the music that made it happen was...

Miles Davis' Get Up With It.

I should have known. Miles' music from the '70s has inspired me in the past. Witness the craziness that my pastels created while listening to Miles' Dark Magus live album during my sophomore year of college:



There's just something in the music, some sort of energy, that puts me in a place to create. It must be Miles himself, for he had the same effect on the musicians who played with him. This is something I know, yet consistently forget.

I cannot forget anymore!