Game & Watch

Does anyone else remember these?

I was probably eleven years old when I got my first one (Fire, should you ask), and it seemed like the coolest thing on earth.

After that I got Vermin, and later the mighty Donkey Kong.

I remember that my dad went from thinking it was great (it kept me quiet) to terrible (I never wanted to do anything else).  Not that different from kids with their x-boxes today.

These are obsolete because now no one would carry around a console that only allowed them to play a single game - never mind a single game with such simple graphics and rules!  All you can actually do is move the guys with saving sheet to the left or the right.  

Simple games, single games.  Obsolete.  These will definitely get an entry in the Obselidia.

Before they disappear

Why a blog?  I've been asking myself this question for the last couple of weeks.  The Obselidia  is such a mammoth undertaking, far bigger than I had first imagined - and it consumes much of my time.   I've realized a large part of my job with it is to record things before they disappear.  Why wait until it's gone and write about it in retrospect, when you can catalogue the last of the species, so to speak? 

So, much of my time is spent tracking down things (particularly people) and getting to know what they do, before it's forgotten.

It' s not always easy, what I'm doing.  And I guess that's why I decided to start this blog.  Besides from my neighbor Mitch, I don't see too many people, and maybe I just wanted a place where I could sound off about whatever is going on.

Just reflect on this task that I have undertaken, share the highs and lows.  

Before they disappear.

R.I.P. Eduardo Gonzales

You may have noticed that this is my first blog post in a couple of weeks.  I didn't mean to abandon this, just circumstances arose and writing felt beyond the realm of possibility.

You see, my old man passed away two days before Christmas.  It wasn't entirely a surprise - he'd had two heart attacks earlier in the year, but still...

Perhaps it's no coincidence that I started this project when I did.

My Dad was the last of his kind: a real gentleman, full of manners and style.  He was born in Mexico City to a Polish Jewish mother and a Mexican shoemaker who relocated to Los Angeles when he was still a baby.   Perhaps because of his immigrant heritage, and perhaps because of his nature, he was hard-working and always eager to prove himself, but equally he was drawn to glamour and pizzazz.

He worked, as much as he could, as a piano player.  He had some success in the fifties and sixties, playing with a studio band, and even wrote a couple of numbers that you might recognize.  It was the royalties from these that kept him going when in later years, he just didn't get the gigs.

In his last years, he suffered from ill-health that wore down his spirit.  He would frequently say there was nothing left for him in this world except the grave.  I know the feeling, and I've lived only half the time he did.

He loved jazz, he loved a good taco, he loved beautiful women.  He always dressed well.  

Sometimes I wondered how he wound up with a son like me.  I know he did too...

Dad, I'm going to miss you.

 

My mother's nose

 At a party I went to last night, I noticed that out of some 40 people, I don't think there wasn't a single woman there who hadn't had some kind of cosmetic surgical "work" done:  nose, eyes, lips,  skin, "womanly" areas ... nothing seems sacred.

It seems like EVERYTHING is ground for improvement -whether it actually needs fixing or not.  Until you resemble some fresh out of the plastic surgeon's box idea of what a woman should be,  you don't stop handing him the cash and having more "work" done.   

Seeing these women, and thinking about their "work" - well, it got me to thinking about my mother and her nose.

My mom, God bless her soul, died when I was ten (at which case I had to go live with my Dad, should you ask).  Now my mom came from Oklahoma originally, a family of show people who used to travel round the dust bowl putting on entertainments.  And you know, she was quite a looker.

But, for sure:  she had a nose.  She was Italian by descent, and she had a delightful, beautiful, uncompromising nose.  Roman, they call it politely.

When she first came to L.A., back in the 1950's, her agent told her to "get it fixed".  She told him to go fix himself.  She never became a movie star.  He became one of the most successful talent agents in Hollywood ever.  Fixers like him have grown in strength ever since.  Women like her continue to disappear.  I ask you now: which would you prefer to have in the world? Just a thought, just a wonder...

Are roman noses obsolete?

I never see them now.  Jeez, don't think I'm a sicko, fixed on my mom, but you know: she was a fine strong looking woman.  And now all I see are women with little button noses, ski jumps so narrow, you'd need to be a flea snowboarder to leap off them...

I hope I'm wrong about this.  That LA is just an extreme that doesn't represent the general reality, and if so let's me know.

But here, at the edge of the Pacific, it seems the genetic strain that typified women who cared more about their integrity than their perceived success, women who knew how they lived was more important than how they looked, women who would have the courage to hang out with a geek like me...

I hate to say it, but....

Those women are ob-suh-leet. 

Walkman This Way...

Ah, the Sony Walkman.

The height of modernity in 1980.  Positively futuristic!

Right there in your pocket, a portable stereo.  Wow.  

Do you remember choosing tapes to take with you on vacation?  You could fit ten in your carry case and you would oscillate wildly - shall I take Beethoven's fifth or a Flock of Seagulls?  Well, if a girl should look inside, I don't want to appear too uncool...

And I don't know about you, but I used to spend hours making MIX TAPES, the great precursors to playlists.  But I guess that's a whole other entry.

Walkman discman ipod - what next??

The Way of the Dodo

The dodo bird is the icon of extinction, the holy mother of obsolete species.

The dodo: three feet tall, unable to fly.  Man finds it on the island of Mauritius.  This fool bird that has no fear of humans.  Easier prey cannot be imagined.

Apparently the meat didn't even taste that good.   But who cares?  It was easy to catch, and if humans weren't chasing it down, it was the dogs and the pigs and the cats and the rats that the humans brought with them.

It's extinction through mindlessness.

The last confirmed sighting was in 1662.  Less than a century later, the dodo had gained a mythical status, people uncertain whether it had ever truly existed, or was just a hoax like the jackalope or the Scottish haggis.

Imagine: less than a century for something that was real to be commonly viewed as folklore.

Will that be the fate of things dying out now?  One hundred years hence will people sit around and talk of typewriters and telegrams as though they were a fictional invention, a whimsy of some new wave (circa 2107) author?  I wonder.

But perhaps, that is the function of The Obselidia. 

To say a holy yes to all that used to be.  To say to all: this did exist, this was real.  And this is how it was... 

Buster's Shoe Repair Store

My neighbor Mitch came knocking on my door today, a little upset.

He'd just been to Buster's Shoe Repair Store on Wilshire and found out they were closing down.

Buster's has been open for over 70 years in that location, with John, the present tenant there for twenty years.  Recently the landlord decided he wanted to develop the property (another shopping complex coming our way), so gave John the heave-ho.  

Twenty years paying the rent, and the guy gets two months notice.  Thanks and goodnight.

Now obviously, shoe repair stores are not about to become obsolete.   People will probably always need a new sole (boy was I tempted to write soul...).  But you know, I think small, mom-and-pop stores are on their way out.

Who needs them when you can go to Wal-Mart or Costco or whatever and get it all under one roof ?

But is that the world we want to live in?   Mitch goes into Buster's for a chat more than anything else.  He's confined to a wheelchair (and his shoes never touch the ground - so it's not like he needs the service they offer).  But he was heartbroken.  It's another step in that relentless march towards an homogenized world.

I suspect kids in the future (who am I kidding?  I bet it's true of kids right now...) will read the Obselidia and marvel at these little stores.  "What?  All they did was repair shoes and leather and focus on the thing they were experts at?!  No way!"

Yes, way.

Thanks John.  Thanks Buster's.

Good luck finding a new place where you can afford the rent and the landlord doesn't kick you out on a greedy whim.

   

And if you want to sign the petition, and help save Buster's,  swing by his store on Wilshire while it's still there.  You won't find a friendlier place.  And you'll be looking at a little piece of history - before it disappears...