Halfway to Halloween 2026: Group Photo

"Six more months 'til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween. Six more months 'til Halloween. 

Silver Shamrock."

    We're already halfway there! Let's see what's on the Holiday Horror Shelf!

    I'm going with a camping theme since summer is almost here. I've already did a Friday the 13th shelf (with more to come), so here are two other summer camp movies. 

    1983's Sleepaway Camp is a bit of a Friday the 13th knockoff, but the movie is famous for the twist ending. Back in the day, the shocking denouement could have given the ending to Psycho a run for its money. I bought this used Blu-ray online and apparently Travis took this to a horror convention and had it signed by actress Felissa Rose. It reads, "To Travis - Meet me at the waterfront after the social."

    1981's The Burning can brag that it launched the acting careers of Holly Hunter, Jason Alexander, and current documentary director Fisher Sevens. This film is mostly remembered for Tom Savini's gory special effects. Apparently the film had to be heavily edited just to get an R rating. The uncut version wasn't released until 2007.

     1963's Camp Favorites by The Campers is exactly what you think it is except it features an uncredited Phil Ochs. Since the LP is on the horror shelf, I'll choose the track "Cannibal King." That song ends with, "Match in the gas tank. Boom, boom."

Did I Just Buy a Hipster Bike?

     Yep. I think so.

    A couple of weekends ago I received this text from my wife.

    Daphne was volunteering at UHS's annual Show Choir Garage Sale. Apparently quite a few people had made comments about the bike, but no one was buying. Daph knew who to call.

    I took one look at the bike and one look at the price tag. Then I wheeled it to the checkout where Daphne was working. She asked, "Are you buying the bike?"

    "I'm not sure. I just heard that there's a really good looking woman working at the register, so I thought I'd come over and check her out," I replied.

    She smiled and laughed, "That's not true! Now give me your card so you can donate to our sale."

    I did as I was told. 

    She then walked with me through the school, holding doors open, while the bike tick, tick, tick, ticked along the way.

    

    Twenty minutes later, this was in our driveway.

        This was a 1992 Trek 2300 road bike in its first life. 

    This is a screen shot of Trek's 1992 catalog. The frame, crankset, and derailleurs (maybe?) are the only original parts left on the bike I bought. 

    The Brooks B67 saddle is the reason I bought the Trek. This seat and the handgrips will be right at home on the Rollfast, my English 3-speed. The rest of the bike is just gravy.

    Fifty dollars won't get you even halfway to a Brooks B67 on eBay, so this is a good deal. 

    This is what urban bicycle fashion looked like 20 years ago. Here's a 4-minute video from back in the day that shows a process that a lot of people followed -----> Link

    The trend was to take an old road bike and simplify/modify it as much as possible. Typical hipster bike requirements included a leather saddle, flipped handlebars, rims with less spokes, tires with sidewall color, and a bike rack. This bike ticks all those boxes. 

    

    If you really wanted to get into the weeds you'd repaint the frame, fork, and rims a monochrome color. You could also replace the multiple gears with a fixed gear and remove all of the brake components. Then you would have a "Fixie" that was inspired by the bikes used by bicycle delivery people in New York City. I'm glad the previous owner did not go that far.

    I'm not here to mock the hipsters. They were just having fun with their bikes. Can't knock them for that. But I can try to knock some of the 2006 off of here.

  I made some quick changes before I took the bike for a test ride. I flipped the Metropolis handlebars, and added soft grips. Those old-school Weinmann brake levers were also really popular with the hipster crowd.

      Then I made a seat swap, removed the rack and bag, and changed the bottle cage. 

    Hey, that doesn't look too bad.

    The bike wasn't shifting very well, and the chain was noisy. Turns out the chain was just too long. I removed a couple of links and those problems were solved. 

    The front brake was fine, but the rear caliper would only pull from one side. It took me about an hour to figure out it was stripped and missing a spacer. This must have been a problem for awhile because the right brake pad was worn out and the other pad looked brand new.

    

       I bought a pair of period correct brake calipers on eBay. The bike now stops as it should. I also like this look better.

    Hipster bikes were all about high seat posts and low handlebars. Riding in this position gave the biker an illusion of speed, but was pretty uncomfortable. I brought the stem adapter up a bit and added some headset spacers.

    Parts bin saddle. I don't remember where I found this seat, but I'm 100% sure it was in a thrift store. I like the logo's design.

    I had an authentic Trek water bottle cage in the parts bin, so that went on as well.

        The last step was to replace the tires on those Vuelta (hand built) wheels. I wasn't a fan of the red sidewall stripe, and the rubber on the tires was beginning to crack. The tires are sized 700 x 23c. I decided to bump that up a bit to 700x28c. Theres plenty of room. I went with all-black tires from Amazon.

    When she saw them Daphne said, "Yeah, that looks better than the red." That's all I needed to hear.

    Before and after pics.

    It's gone from a hipster to a commuter in ten days. What a fun project. The plan is to test drive it some more and take it to Marketplace. 

   All of my other bikes are made of steel, so this composite frame seems just so dang light. I'm tempted to keep the Trek, but that just means something else has to go. 

    Thanks to Daphne, my fine line between collecting and hoarding has been crossed.

Blink and You'll Miss It - part 16

    Easter 2011 (nine months old)

Easter 2012

Easter 2013

Easter 2014 (Just a little grumpy about going to church.)

Easter 2015 (Pretty happy about going to church.)

Easter 2016

Easter 2017 (It's irresponsible to take a child with a fever to church, but she can still hunt Easter eggs at home.)

Easter 2018 (Hmmmm. That dress looks familiar.)

Easter 2019

Easter 2020 (You don't have to dress up for online church.)

Easter 2021 (Officially too old for the children's sermon.) 

Easter 2022 (New glasses and experimenting with hair color.)

Easter 2023 (Wearing the dress she picked out on our trip to Portland.)

Easter 2024 (Out shopping after church.)

Easter 2025

Easter 2026 (hanging out after church... without braces)

Insert the "time flies" cliché here.

Actually, it isn't a cliché; it's a law.

April Fools' Day 2026: Group Photo

    Happy April Fools' Day! Let's see what's on the Holiday Horror Shelf!

    I just realized that April Fool's Day, released in late March of 1986, is celebrating its 40th anniversary. The film is a horror-comedy, but it was marketed as a straight up slasher, and horror fans didn't like the surprise ending. I think the film's title should have tipped the audience off. That, and the fact that all of the "kills" happen offscreen. 

    The Jeff Rovin's novelization of the film was based on the original screenplay that ends on a darker note. Some copies of this book have movie stills on the back cover that aren't in the movie, but they match what is in the book's plot. 

    So, what's up with The Sound of Music Blu-ray and The Pacifier DVD? Those aren't horror movies. 

    I thought you'd never ask.

    Our family tradition at the theater is to give each movie trailer either a thumbs up or a thumbs down when it's over. That helps us plan what family movie we could all see next. We also did this with the trailers on the DVDs I'd bring home from the library. We watched a trailer for The Pacifier when Charlotte was in 4th grade. Char really laughed at Gary the duck and the dirty diaper jokes. Daphne did not. At the end, Char and I gave the movie trailer a thumbs up, and Daphne was decidedly at thumbs down, "That movie looks terrible," she said. I secretly gave Charlotte a wink, and she nodded at me. 

    Later, when I went into Char's bedroom to say goodnight, we hatched our plan for April Fools' Day.

    The next day I found a copy of The Pacifier at Urbandale's public library and hid it at home in my backpack. At dinner that night Charlotte casually asked her mom if she could watch any movie at home, what would she pick? Daphne responded, "Oh, I haven't seen The Sound of Music for a long time. That would be a fun one." 

    Char replied, "Okay, let's watch that tomorrow night." Char secretly winked at me while her mom was clearing the dishes. I was impressed. She had a pretty good game face for a ten-year-old. 

    That was March 31.

    I found our Blu-ray of The Sound of Music the next day after school. I loaded The Pacifier DVD into our player, clicked past the previews and the menu, and set it so the movie would begin right after the Walt Disney Productions logo. Since the Blu-ray player has place memory, I ejected The Pacifier DVD and put it in the case for The Sound of Music. I was fairly confident the movie would start right where I hit "Stop". I put The Sound of Music case on the kitchen counter, and waited for Daphne to come home. 

    Our trap was set.

    We gathered in the living room after dinner. I made a production of pulling the disc from the case, and placing it in the player while the girls were watching me. I hit "Play" on the remote, and the movie started where I had hoped it would.  Daphne knew she had been had about 30 seconds in. She yelled, "Oh nooooo! Not this movie!" when Vin Diesel appeared on the screen.

    Char and I yelled, "April Fools!" and Char laughed and laughed and laughed. I did, too. Daphne took it in stride (her yell was mostly fake) and agreed to watch the movie with us. 

    I probably wouldn't even be writing this story if that was all. But our movie-switch wasn't the only surprise. In The Pacifier, one of the teenage characters that Vin Diesel is supposed to be protecting has secretly joined an amateur production of The Sound of Music, and when the director quits, Vin takes over. At the end of the movie, we get to see the cast perform a scene from the musical. None of us saw that one coming. Turns out Char and I weren't really lying. 

    Secondly, Daphne was surprised that she enjoyed the movie as much as she did. She asked me when it was over, "Is Vin Diesel in any other movies like that? If he is, then I would watch them with you guys for sure." Unfortunately, this is his only family-friendly comedy.

    This afternoon I asked Char if she remembered pranking Mom with this movie six years ago. She nodded her head, "That's the movie where mom got to see The Sound of Music anyway."

    So, yeah, The Pacifier might not be an April Fools' Day movie at your house, but it sure is at ours.

St. Patrick's Day 2026: Group Photo

    Happy St. Patrick's Day! Let's see what's on the Holiday Horror Shelf!

    From left to right: This is the seven movie set of the Leprechaun films. 

    If you haven't seen any of these horror comedies, skip number one and jump to Leprechaun 3 or Leprechaun 4: In Space. 

   2024's indie horror film Oddity starts with a serious you-don't-know-who-is-in-the-house-with-you scare and then morphs into a fun twist on the Golem monster.

    Here's how the imdb.com describes 2012's Grabbers:

    This Irish horror comedy can be fairly compared to Tremors (Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward were great in that). I liked the redemptive storyline for one of the leading Garda characters. 

    Musically, I'm going with The Pogues' LP If I Should Fall from Grace with God because it includes "Turkish Song of the Damned." Bandleader Shane MacGowan explained its lyrics as being a mixture of pirate and ghost story '...about a guy on a Turkish island who deserted a sinking ship with all the money and all his mates went down… then his best mate comes back, and all the crew, to drag him back down to hell or wherever they are.’" - Wikipedia

        It felt pretty timely when I found this Leprechaun Returns Blu-ray at Goodwill last week. I didn't even know there was an eighth film in the series. Apparently this one ranks pretty high with the fans. Some websites put this 2018 movie at the top of their lists. I haven't watched it, yet, but it was cool to find it in time for this post.

    Great Irish Tales of Horror: A Treasury of Fear was first published in 1995 and is divided into three sections: Lurking Shadows, Wake Not the Dead, and To Make the Flesh Creep. AI says 1861's "The Child Who Loved a Grave" by Fitz-James O' Brien is the most famous story in the book, and he's known as the Celtic Poe.  I'll rate that story as "meh" since a child dies at the end.

    Don't forget to wear your green. You don't want to get pinched!

Friday the 13th 2026: Group Photo

    Happy Friday the 13th! Last month had a Friday the 13th, but I was too focused on Valentine's Day to notice. Luckily, March has one, too.

    From left to right: I picked up this two DVD set from Half Priced Books not realizing that it contained FT13th Part 2, not Part V. That's okay. Part 2 is better than Part V anyway. The real star of the show is FT13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Director Tom McLoughlin shot Part VI like an old Universal horror movie (by1986, Jason, Freddy, and Michael had basically become the new Dracula, Frankenstein, and Mummy), and he has stated that, "... if you turn the color off, this movie would look great in black-in-white." I've watched the opening in black-in-white, and I agree.

    FT13th was released for the NES system in 1988. I wouldn't call this a good game, but I think it looks good on the Horror Holiday Shelf. I just came up with that name. I like it.

    FT13th Part 3 in 3D! came out in 1982. They cranked out eight of these films in the 80s. That's almost one a year. There's gonna be diminishing results at that pace, and Part 3 shows some of that. Still, I like the scenes that are set up exclusively for a 3D effect; like when a guy holds up a red hot fire poker to the camera for no apparent reason. My friend Tim gave me this Blu-ray.

    FT13th: The Final Chapter does really end with the death of Jason (at the hands of Corey Feldman), but like this VHS tape, Jason experiences a comeback. Just call this movie Part 4. 

   Up next is Ghoulish: The Art of Gary Pullin.  From Amazon: "[Pullin is] a go-to artist for official film artwork, concert merchandise, LP packaging, and endless other pieces of pop culture ephemera, Pullin has put pencil to paper for film posters such as Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, The Big Lebowski, Vertigo, and The Babadook, soundtracks including Creepshow, Scream, Christine, and Tales from the Crypt, and concert merch for the likes of Jack White, Alice Cooper, and the Misfits."

    I got Ghoulish in a bundle deal on eBay. This isn't the book that I initially wanted, but currently it's the only book from that bundle that I have read. Funny how that works sometimes.

    I'll admit that I bought this can of hard cider from Angry Orchard just for the shelf. I don't even like hard cider. I'll probably punch a couple holes in the bottom and make it a Halloween decoration. 

    

    Stay safe out there!

Yeah, That's a Rob Zombie DVD

     Rob Zombie films look rough, but this Goodwill DVD of 31 is a beautiful  mess. 

    I can only guess at what happened here. The case is twisted, was sat on, and was probably thrown across the room. It has dog bite marks, spent time in shallow water, and might have been air-dried in the trunk of a get away car.

    I don't think the damage done to this DVD could be replicated in an art studio. It's too pure.

    So, even if I haven't watched this movie, this DVD is going on the display shelf. Sure, anyone can buy a new copy of 31. Who else owns this?

    It's fun when you can judge a book by its cover.

An Automatic Turntable Rescue

    I found this Direct Drive Fully Automatic Onkyo turntable (CP-1027F) at Good Will last week. This was manufactured from 1981 to 1983. I know I sound like a broken record (player), dad joke, but vintage electronics really don't get put out on the GW's store shelves anymore. They typically go straight to GW's online auction site which I dare not speak its name.

    I thought it was weird that the hinges for the scuffed and cracked dust cover were missing. The turntable mat and the 45 RPM adapter were also AWOL, but none of these were deal breakers. 

    I plugged the player in the store's test outlet, and the light next to the Power button lit up. That was a good sign.

    

    When I pressed the Play/Reject button, the player hummed for about five second and then shut down. Pressing the Cueing button did nothing. These are not good signs.

    The platter began to spin when I manually moved the tonearm toward the spindle. The speed also changed when I pressed the 45/33 button. Also, the cartridge and stylus were intact, so I could do test runs without spending risky cash on those. Okay, now we were onto something. 

        I could have a maybe-working manual turntable for $17 ... Why not? Sold!

    The turntable's base needed cleaning, but it wasn't that bad.  

    I removed the bottom cover after giving the base a wipe down. This is the mechanism that controls the tonearm's movement (or lack thereof).

        My guess was that old grease was keeping the auto-functions from working. A thread on Vinyl Engine supported this idea. 

    The red gear in the middle is my problem. That, and the sliver e-clip that holds it in check. Both were frozen in place, and that explains why the Play button was making nothing happen. The motor would try to turn its worm gear, and Red was having none of it. 

    I don't have a tool for removing tiny e-clips, so I bent this cheap fork to help me out. I thought I'd use it to pull the clip off its post, but I ended up pushing it off instead. 

    Whew. The clip went flying, but I found it.

    The red gear was really stuck on the post. I couldn't pull it off with my fingers, and I was afraid that pliers would damage the gear's teeth. I dropped oil down the gear's center hole and let that sit for 30 minutes. Then I used the fork "tool" to pry the gear up and off. I was lucky. The gear wasn't stripped and was easily cleaned with isopropyl alcohol. 

    I lightly greased the post and the other gears' teeth once the red gear was safely out of the way. Then the red gear and the clip went back in place. I'm not gonna lie. Getting the e-clip back in place without breaking or losing it wasn't fun. These clips go on hard.

    I wonder how long it's been since that tonearm moved on its own? It felt pretty good to see this thing in action. Yay!

    What didn't feel good was the audio test. Now I could only get sound out of one channel. Boo.

    I took things apart and looked around. I somehow had torn the red tonearm wire off of its solder point. It's been a minute since I've soldered anything, so I watched a few YouTube videos for a refresher course, and then reattached the wire (flux is your friend) to the spot marked "R+".  And we were back in business. Hello, stereo.

    

     This is where the automatic turntable should place the tonearm when I press the "Play"button.  

    When the music is over and the stylus has reached the run-out groove, this is where the tonearm should rise and return to the cradle. 

    My problem was that the tonearm might do that right, but often it was dropping the needle halfway into the first song, and then later it would endlessly ride the run-out groove until I hit "Reject". The service manual explains ways to adjust the lead-in and the auto-return positions, but they require cutting wires or soldering in jumper wires. I found a YouTube video with a simpler solution of bending metal and turning screws, but I decided to think about it more before doing either of those things. 

    If the tonearm movement was always misaligned, then I could see making adjustments. But it was right some of the time. I watched some YouTube videos of owners showing off their same models of this turntable, and I noticed something. My tonearm slightly wiggled horizontally when it was set in motion. Their tone arms were rock solid when they moved. 

    I began to suspect there was something wrong with the pivot assembly that guides the tonearm, but I didn't know how it was put together. I found a seller on eBay that was parting out a turntable like mine, and they had taken apart the piece I wanted to see inside of. So helpful! 

    Turns out there's not much going on in there, and the only reason I could see why the tonearm wiggles is that the screws that hold the tonearm in place were loose.

    There's a small lock screw in the middle of the larger screw.

    I have had this screwdriver set for decades. It's amazing how many times it gets used every year. I loosened the lock screws and then turned the larger screws in to tightened them. That got rid of the wiggle. I haven't had a problem with the auto-functions since, so I think that fixed that problem.

    I kept the price tag on in case I wanted to return the Onkyo. Now GW only extends refunds for store credit, but that's better than their old "no returns" policy.

    Ummm, yeah. I guess I'm keeping it.

        Cosmetically, the biggest offender was the dust cover. Cracks can't be hidden, but deep scratches can be lessened, and light scratches can sometimes be removed. The cover still isn't great, but it does look presentable. 

    Here's my plastic cleaning crew in order of use.

    The dust cover hinges on the Pioneer PL-4 that I keep at school fit the Onkyo perfectly. I ordered a pair from eBay, and that should solve my last problem.

    

    Parting shots and thoughts:

    The turntable mat and the 45 adapter are leftovers from a previous turntable project. I'm currently using a clear acrylic mat on the Technics I recused last year. This is still a $17 turntable as it sits today. The new hinges will push the cost to $56.76. That's still pretty good for working piece of audio history.

    If I do keep it, then I'll spring for a new stylus. There's a replacement on LP Gear for $56.25 (not counting tax and shipping). I might leave that purchase for the next owner.  Cartridges and styli are a matter of personal choice. 

    For now, I'll put it in my lineup and make sure it really is working well.  

    I'd like to thank the Onkyo for helping me get out of my February funk. Honestly, that short month is not my favorite.

    

    I think I'll use this slipmat. It works with that thick, silver platter.