When I was a kid I used to watch Star Trek and tape it-with a big, bulky tape recorder.  Not a VCR, mind you, but a 50 lb (so it seemed) cassette recorder. I thought that was soooo cool.  I could even edit out the commercials! Then, I could listen to my favorite Star Trek episodes over and over-when I was laying in bed or reading comics, or writing pen-pal letters-just anytime! Unfortunately, mom and dad and little sister didn't share my enthusiasm for Star Trek and they felt obliged to talk or slam doors or make noise whenever they felt like it so many of my tapes had background noise and inevitably me wailing in protest, "HEY, I'M RECORDING MY SHOWWWW, SHHHH!" 



Dad bought me these cheapie cheapie cassettes that came like six in a bag. They would take a few weeks of punishment before warbling and finally coming unthreaded in the recorder. I was constantly fast forwarding and rewinding to listen to my favorite parts of the show or to hurry past a section where mom and dad had to have a conversation or tell me to go do something or another.

Several years later Mom and Dad bought us a VCR.  A VCR!! WOOOOW!  It weighed 500 lbs (seemingly) and even had a remote control on a long cord you could plug into the machine.  Of course, then you had to scoot your chair like 4 feet from the VCR so you could enjoy the luxury of sitting down AND controlling the VCR at the same time. I was nearly delirious with excitement.  Now, not only could I rent movies but I could RECORD MOVIES.  We even had cable at the time.  I was certain I didn't know how the poor shlobs of the world lived their meaningless VCR and CABLE-LESS lives!  I rushed right out to Walmart and bought a blank 6hr video cassette. KODAK brand. 8 bucks! Life was complete! I had everything I needed-to TAPE STAR TREK! Now I could listen to it AND watch it!  Heart pills, please!

Every week day I religiously sat in front of our TV and taped Star Trek, editing out the commercials.  Sometimes I experienced hiccups: storms, power outages, once in a great while I'd mistakenly tape over the previous days episode. By the end of the Summer I had myself the complete run of Star Trek on VHS. I was so happy!   I could usually get 7 episodes on a tape without the commercials and sometimes without the ending credits.



 It was around this time that the studios began releasing tv shows on vhs. Star Trek was one of those shows and I drooled incessantly over it; but the price was hefty for just one or two episodes at a time and I didn't like the whole get a tape every other month thing. I did eventually buy retail copies of my very favorite episodes but that was it.

I made due with my home-taped Star Trek and my handful of store bought episodes for 20 years. Man, I can't believe it's been that long! I put those tapes through some serious abuse and none of them ever gave out.



Of course, the 2000s brought on the DVD format. My sister bought me my first DVD player in 2000 for Christmas along with a slug of movies.  It wasn't long before I set out to replace my home taped stuff with the new DVD format.  At the top of my list was-you guessed it-Star Trek.  Only, by 2000 there wasn't just the original series but the popular Next Generation and Deep Space Nine. Both of those shows I had on tape but they were spotty-lots of gaps. In 2003, I believe, I started buying season sets of The Next Generation. I loved TNG but not as much as the original series which hadn't been released yet in boxed season sets. In 2006 I finally had The original series on DVD. They looked and sounded fantastic with lots of extra geeky features.  I thought, "Well, this is it!" I've finally gotten my hands on the ultimate editions of Star Trek!


Nope, not yet!


Paramount decided to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Star Trek in a big way-by completely remastering the original Star Trek.  Not only would the opening theme music be re-recorded and the film tidied up, but all of the special effects would be completely redone! And it would all be released on Blu-Ray! Wow.

You know, I actually thought I could live happily without them. After all, I had the series on DVD. Sure, the new remastering would be cool-but was it really worth buying again?  Well, I wasn't so sure until I bought a playstation 3 which also acts as a very nice Blu-ray player.  Once I saw a movie in 1080dpi on a hi def screen I knew that buying the Original Star Trek series all over again would be WELL worth it!



Now, my Star Trek Blu-Rays are shipping to my house at warp speed and I'm the happiest birthday boy in the quadrant. (THANKS JULIE AND KEITH!).




I guess I would buy them all over again if something cool enough came along.  I can't imagine what the next step would be though....3D?  Hmmmmm!

Video Game Generation
I grew up in the video game generation. I remember Pong. I remember the video arcades. I remember Atari 2600. I have very fond memories of all of that stuff. But, if I had just one quarter in my pocket and it was between playing the latest video game or playing the beat up old pinball machine at the ignored end of the arcade, I always chose the pinball! To my child's mind then-and my questionably adult mind now-there was just something much more visceral, much more real about Pinball. I loved that the pinball was physical. It had weight, it had dimension. It had wood and steel and tin and glass. It wasn't a cartoon like the other games. Even when I didnt have money to play I still got enjoyment out of looking at the artwork and the layout of the playing field. I liked video games but I've always LOVED pinball machines.

How ironic it is that today I have dozens of pinball machines at home. I play them quite often-tonight, as a matter of fact! The only thing about my pinball games now are that they're made out of ones and zeroes instead of wood and glass and tin. It got me to thinking about how much things change over the years. Even Pinball.

I decided that since I've loved pinball from early childhood and since it's given me so many hours of entertainment over the years I'd stop playing long enough to poke around the interwebs and find out a little more about the life and times of PINBALL.  Here's what I discovered:

Pinball is a descendent of the game bagatelle [bag-uh-tel] and is a French word meaning "trifle". Bagatelle itself was a game invented with the intention of bringing outdoor games such as croquette and shuffleboard inside.

"A competition Bagatelle table is of a similar form to a Billiards table, slate bed, cloth covered with cushions and measuring 6 - 10 feet long and 2 - 3 feet wide.   The first major difference from a billiard table is that one end is rounded instead of square.  The second diversion is that instead of pockets around the edge, the semi-circular end features nine holes (in the manner of Bar Billiards), one in the middle of the semi-circle and the rest surrounding it evenly in a ring.  The hole in the middle is numbered nine, the others are numbered 1 - 8 in a semi-random order.  Rather like a Billiards table, Pool table or Darts board, a variety of games can be played with it but all involve the players standing at the square end of the table and hitting the balls with a cue towards the holes at the other end." -TAKEN FROM http://www.tradgames.org.uk/games/Bagatelle.htm
    
    
The game was highly popular in England and Britan in the second half of the 1700's through the mid 1800s. The size of bagatelle shrank to accomodate parlors and pubs-and children. Here is an example of a table top bagatelle game.


"In 1871, British inventor, Montegue Redgrave was granted US Patent #115,357 for his 'Improvements in Bagatelle'. Bagatelle was an older game that used a table and balls. Redgrave's patented changes to the game of Bagatelle included: adding a coiled spring and a plunger, making the game smaller, replacing the large bagatelle balls with marbles, and adding the inclined playfield. All common features of the later game of pinball." -TAKEN FROM http://inventors.about.com/od/pstartinventions/a/pinball.htm


So, I guess you could say that Montegue was the Great Grand daddy of pinball, eh?

The first "modern", mass produced pinball machine was the BINGO, produced by the Bingo Novelty Company in 1931.  It's interesting to note that the original Pinball machines had no legs! It was a countertop game. Another interesting fact: The name "PINBALL" wasn't even used in association with pinball machines until 1936!





The first coin operated pinball machine was the Bally Hoo in 1931.

That was followed by the first battery powered pinball machine in 1933 and the first electrical pinball machine in 1934.

The pinball bumper was introduced in 1937 in a game appropriately titled, BUMPER.





Something I found very interesting was the fact that the FLIPPER wasn't introduced until 1947! It was first used in the Humpty Dumpty Pinball machine. How odd! I would have thought the flippers would have been there from the onset. Shows ya how much this blogger knows. Anyways, the Humpty Dumpty had six flippers, three on each side and they weren't at the foot of the game where flippers are most commonly found.






Pinball Outlaw

Up until the early 40s Pinball Machines would pay out for landing balls in certain holes which caused a great debate over whether pinball was a harmless amusement or a means to gamble. In fact, in 1942 Pinball was outlawed in New York City as a gambling device. In 1950 the Johnson Act made it illegal for insterstate shipping of certain pinball machines. The ban, although seldom acted on, lasted until 1976.

Pinball makers responded by removing the payouts and replacing that with free games. They also argued that since the advent of the flipper in 1947 that that made playing pinball more of a game of skill than chance.







Biggest Selling Pinball Machine of All Time: ADDAMS FAMILY

Blade Runner is a beautiful, haunting, brutal film that's captured my eyes and heart for almost 30 years (!!) now. It is my all time favorite movie obsession.


Only a few days ago, I got to sit back and watch this brilliant movie again-for the first time in Blu-ray and on a gi-normous HD television and it was a marvelous revelation, a warm affirmation that I will forever love this movie!

Strangely enough, the first time I watched Blade Runner was on another gi-normous tv back in 1984. It was a projection tv. Incredibly anemic and fuzzy by today's standards but breathtakingly awesome to a 14 year old movie fanatic then.

From the first notes of Vangelis ominous score to the opening vista of a futuristic Los Angeles with it's pyramid buildings and lightning racked sky I was completely sucked in. It was a rainy, dreary, apocalyptic world that was completely believable. It is a visual look and feel that I believe has never been matched or surpassed even to this day, quite an accomplishment for a 30 year old film!

Blade Runner tells the story of a former Los Angeles policeman, Rick Deckard, who is called back into service when four renegade, artificially created people-known as replicants (designed for slave labor and 'entertainment' off-world) run a muck in the city. It's Deckard's job to find them and kill them.

Complicating matters is the fact that these replicants are Nexus 6 models. Their minds and bodies are much more advanced than the usual model which makes them a lot harder to detect and terminate ("retire").

The group of renegade replicants is led by Roy Batty, an optimized combat model, who wants to track down Eldon Tyrell, the mastermind behind replicant design, and make him give them more life. A Nexus 6 only has a four year life span and time's just about up for Roy and his girlfriend Pris.

On one level the film is a noir detective style thriller. But only on the surface. In fact, the whole movie is about what's going on below the surface. What is it to be human? What does it mean to be "alive"? Are we who we think we are?


When Blade Runner was released in 1982 it was panned by audiences and critics alike but over the years it gained in popularity and reputation. Today it's considered a science fiction classic on par with 2001: A Space Odyssey.

It was one of the first films to receive the now much overused "Director's Cut" treatments in 1992.

Blade Runner is based on the Phillip K. Dick novel DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP.