Sooner or later it had to happen.  I’ve been flirting with the idea of altered art for quite sometime, toying with moving past the concept and coveting into the actual doing. The recent May/June issue of Fine Books & Collections, featuring Brian Dettmer as “The Cut-Up Artist”, was the final straw on this camel’s back.  I don’t know that I’d ever be able to take an X-ACTO to the body of a book and perform the surgery Dettmer does, but I have to start somewhere…

This past weekend I took the plunge.  But not alone. Like ‘misery’, the insecure like company; so it was easy to take a rainy Saturday and turn it into a family project day.

First things first, we needed to make sure the kids (ages 8 & 12) understood that altered art projects are limited to materials predesignated to such acts.

As book & ephemera collectors, neither Derek nor I wished to have kids yanking works off our shelves or plucking items from boxes as art supplies.  So we decided that the best thing to do was to head to a local thrift store and have us all purchase items specifically for this purpose.  This way each item would be checked and OK’d by us before any harm could befall it.

We proceeded to do as we always do, giving the kids a large (nearly lecture-sized) over-view of the day’s projects.  We began by showing them the Fine Books & Collections issue along with Derek’s Pennsylvania Report Scrapbook and telling them that we were going to create new books from old ones — blah, blah, blah.  (I say that because that’s about all they really heard anyway, busy as they were flipping through the publications we gave them.)

Having sold them on the idea, we headed out for supplies.

With a budget of $5 per person, we each of selected a large hardcover book (mainly modern book club editions in non-pristine conditions, but with a sound-enough overall character to hold our as-yet-to-be-created works), a few magazines (circa late 90’s to early this century), and some children’s books (library discards in moderate condition and other non-valuable titles).

Then it was time to return home and set-up the creation zone. I protected our 100+ year old table by covering it with a vinyl holiday tablecloth, spread the books and magazines out on the top, passed out scissors & glue, and even brought out watercolors, colored pencils, crayons and other craft supplies. Everyone eagerly began to pour through the magazines and books.

And then, one by one, we each stopped to receive or offer reassurance.

“Can I really cut out of this book?” Hunter asked.  (Destiny said nothing, but she was holding her breath, awaiting the answer.)  “Yes, that’s the idea,” I said.  “OK…” he replied with arched eyebrows & a tone that indicated I might have ‘lost it’ & that we all might regret this in a few minutes.  “It’s alright to cut these things up, that’s what we got them for,” Derek said.

Then, a few minutes later, “What are we doing exactly? I mean, can I make it funny?” Hunter asked. “You can make it anything you want — funny, scary, whatever,” I said.  “Best day ever!” was his reply.

But he still hadn’t taken a scissor to anything yet.

It took a few more reassuring rounds of such Q & A before the cutting began.  Good to know the kids really do respect books and paper!

Eventually everyone but me was cutting.

I lifted my scissors… took them near the page… and felt a wave of dizziness hit me.  “Is it hot in here?” I asked, “I think I may pass-out.”  Evey one laughed; but I was serious.  I turned up the air conditioning and then returned to make my first cut.  I didn’t pass-out. I continued, growing in confidence.

Then Derek began to rip the binding in one of the hardcover books he was going to take images from.

I thought I would die from my heart beating in my chest like that.

Again every one laughed at my expense, and for a while there was a bit of competition to see who could make me cringe the most; but eventually we just all settled down into our individual work.

We learned that selecting things to cut-out is easier than arranging them — and that the books will take a long time to fill.  And we reaffirmed that while we all have different styles, interests & approaches, we all enjoy sharing the experience of creating as a group, laughing and calling out, “Hey, look at this!” so that everyone would look at what we made.

Hunter, a typical boy, is mixing cars and sports for his funny book.

Destiny, our pre-teen rocker, is focusing on the photos of rock icons with some “goth” mixed in to make a “dark” book.

Derek selects text passages from Green Grass of Wyoming by Mary O’Hara (People’s Book Club edition), illustrates them with his own art, and is creating his own altered art story book, Dinosaurs of Wyoming.

Me?  I still am not sure what I’m doing… Slow to start, I guess I’m just making it piece by piece, page by page. Each piece has a title and is a work unto itself.  This is Sailor Iris. (Apparently I had little imagination left over for naming that one.)

I did learn that my book wasn’t large enough for the pieces I was creating.  So I had to head to our boxes and find a larger tome.  I selected a 1943 copy of Outlines Of Internal Medicine by C.J. Watson; of no real collector value & written in, but with a sound enough binding & large enough pages to hold my works.

So far, I have to credit the following works for my altered art: Children’s Guide To Knowledge (Parents’ Magazine Press, 70’s), Indy & Mr. Lincoln (by Natalia M. Belting, illustrated by Leonard Everett Fisher, 1960), Scuttle The Stowaway Mouse (by Jean & Nancy Soule, pictures by Barbara Remington, 1969), Smithsonian Magazine, and — believe it or not! — that issue of Fine Books & Collections magazine.  (There’s double irony in that for sure, because we save all our back issues of that magazine.)

And with my love of old illustrations, I am toying with scanning in pages I like from more valuable books & papers & using my printer to make paper I can cut-up.  Is that fair to do?  I think so.  If you are allowed to add ink-stamps and whatnot, why not new printed copies of the old illustrations? It certainly is more fair to the old items of value anyway.  And that’s the only way I can make peace with altered arts.

And I have.

So much so, that should Barbara Young (owner of The Old Book Shop, who wrote a letter to the editor complaining about Fine Books & Collections feature article) or another similarly upset bibliophile contact me, I am prepared to defend myself.  I know what I’m doing — at least as far as what not to destroy.

And I love, love, love doing this!

I’m certainly not ready to sell my works at handcrafted fairs or even online outlets. Yet.  First I’d have to get over loving them like my babies (something which was eventually done during my charcoal sketch years, so it is possible).  And, second, I’d have to get better at it. Practice should help with both those things. And now that the table is covered with all this stuff, the temptation to fritter away the hours in artistic pursuit seems more than probable…

So if you’re looking for me, I’ll be at my dining room table, cutting & pasting, coloring and arranging, and making altered art like a crazy person.

(You can check up on my progress by keeping an eye on my altered art collection.)

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Back in 1992, when I was 11 years old, I was falling in love with fantasy role playing games. Despite this, I wasn’t at all into Satan. The evilest thing I wanted to meet at the time was a Beholder, and only if I was holding a +6 Sword of Eye Poking. That’s funnier if you know what a Beholder is.

I had inherited a few tattered Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks, but I really wanted to expand upon my gaming repertoire. Because the internet didn’t really exist yet, I had only one other source of information : trading cards (which also held true for my superhero knowledge). For about $1.50, I could buy a pack of ‘Advanced Dungeons and Dragons : 2nd Edition’ trading cards from the local Waldenbooks. I’d go in there once a week and buy a few packs at the counter, take them home, ogle the art and read the mini-biographies of the pictured characters, or the descriptions of neat new weapons and items. What are magical items but externalized superpowers anyhow?

But oh man, were they ugly.

It’s Deanna’s recent exploration of Garbage Pail Kids, and the upcoming Magic : The Gathering National Championships that have brought back some old collecting memories, back from my earliest acquiring days. I dug around under my bed and after some epic battles with spiders and a frightening layer of dust, I reclaimed my D&D cards.

Of course, $1.50 per pack wasn’t a small amount of money when I was 11, so ultimately, I wanted a lot of bang for my buck. Some of the cards managed to inspire a few new character traits and stories that I could incorporate into a game, but most of the cards… well, take a look.

Sure, some of the cards (though not the one pictured at left) had some really wonderful art on them - crisp, expressive stuff that could really evoke a sense of fantasy and inspire art of their own, but none of the artists were credited anywhere on the cards. Unless they chose to sign their image in an area that TSR couldn’t possibly cut it off during production, and signed large enough to be seen in trading card scale, they were anonymous forever. While there are a few Brom and Ken Frank cards scattered within the gigantic 500-card set, sometimes…. sometimes it hurts to look at the others. Please avert your eyes if you have any sense of human proportions, decency, or may be pregnant.

This is real ‘stuff I drew with my non-dominant hand in the margins of my notebook during math class after drinking behind the sports shed during lunch’ quality stuff. As we see with the biology and physics lessons that Istha Rockhead’s card provides (pictured above), the pointer finger is the longest finger on the humanoid hand, and one does not need to close one’s hand around the handle of a mace in order to be able to wield it successfully - gravity will surely do the job for you.

Mortos Ironbeard is an evil guy, if only because of his fashion sense. Everyone knows that belly shirts after Labor Day are completely unacceptable. Also, if you’re a 70 year old man. Also, if you’re wearing two shirts and NEITHER reaches below your bellybutton. Don’t be fooled by those embrace-me arms and come-hither grin - his name is Mortos, and ergo predestined for evil, and his bio states that he murders strangers and takes their place - possibly because he’s angry about being short. I’m not making that up.

The list of offenses doesn’t end with poorly-painted character cards, though. Getting a dreaded Checklist Card in a $1.50 pack was always a severe disappointment. It always invoked a feeling of “here’s a list of cards that you DIDN’T get because you got this crappy checklist card!”

Of course, nothing was worse than the ‘guy holding a pointed stick’ card, or the exciting card depicting ‘chair’ or ‘belt’. Sure, we want to flesh out the D&D universe in every possible way (the game’s creator even made up a probability table for the exact type of ‘woman of ill repute’ that you could encounter), and there’s a LOT of room to do that with 500 trading cards, but is it truly necessary to acknowledge ‘left big toenail’? I musta had at least a dozen ‘Elven Pancreas’ cards.

Still, I always went back for more. It was something about tearing open the shiny silver-and-purple packs and finding the treasures within, even if they were sometimes unbearable, and even if this next pack contained cards I already had quintriplicates of. It was about always having something new that I could find and come home with, and it was about adding onto a social experience with new bits of knowledge.

Ugly, ugly knowledge.

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It’s been about a decade since I’ve played with any RC toys, because frankly, remote control things sucked when I was a kid.

Like any young male, I had a remote controlled racecar or two, but while I was growing up, all RC cars suffered from Severe Battery Uselessness, or ‘SBU’, which is an acronym that I just made up. There was no cure. You could run an RC car for about 3 minutes on 37 D batteries or a clunky rechargeable battery, and out of nowhere, it would be stricken with immobility. The reasons for this were split even between total battery death and being incapacitated by a small stick in the driveway. Battery replacement was expensive, and battery recharging was a multi-hour process. So, I completely lost interest and retreated to the instant gratification of the Nintendo.

In my absence, RC technology has worked very hard to impress me, and it’s delivered the results in the form of Thinkway’s U-Command Wall-E RC robot.

Even though the eponymous Pixar film hasn’t been released, there are about a billion Wall-E toys out there - small action figures, stuffed dolls, dioramas, and a good handful of electronic light ‘n’ sound things. For those of us who can’t invest in the $190 Ultimate Wall-E Programmable Robot (which has robot geeks all a-buzz for all kinds of reasons), there’s the U-Command Wall-E, which retails for about $40-$50.

One of the challenges that’s always thwarted robot designers is the ability to create a ‘personality’ in their robotic creations. It’s now pretty evident that years of personality design could have been bridged by simply bringing an animator on board in the design process, since Wall-E (both the animated character and the RC toy) are replete with personality. It’s a psychologically interesting thing that despite being a box with expressive eyes, that’s all we need from Wall-E to get a good read on his personality, even without seeing the movie.

This is where the RC toy exceeds. It’s not a toy designed for speed, but the slow and steady working treads that the RC uses to move are a solid mode of transport. RCs with treads are a whole new world to me. Wall-E runs on 4 AA batteries, and the remote control runs on 3 more AA batteries. After a good 30 minutes of play, the batteries are still going strong.

Wall-E has 10 function buttons and 2 program buttons on an easy to hold infrared remote. The ‘forward and backward’ stick will indeed move Wall-E Forward, but pressing the stick back will execute a left turn, as Wall-E cannot reverse direction (and can’t turn right). These are basic things - but the neatness comes with the buttons on the right side of the controller.

The ‘music’ button will provoke Wall-E to play 4 or 5 different songs and dance differently to each one. The ‘eyes’ button will create all of the neat little movements and quirks that bring the robot to life, and the fish-shaped ‘special turn’ button will start a special chain of more personality-rich movements. The ‘box’ button creates sound effects.

The ‘sun’ button is an odd addition. Every so often, Wall-E will stop responding to commands, and for some bizarre design / personality reason, you need to press the ‘sun’ button to reactivate him. It doesn’t really interfere with play, but if you haven’t read the instruction manual and leapt right into play, this feature might be a little confusing. We finally have RC toys that can communicate consistently with their remotes and we add a feature to emulate noncommunication. Curious indeed.

The ‘program’ buttons allow you to hit any of these 10 buttons in any sequence and have Wall-E perform the strong of actions that you’ve determined, sending him into true automatic, robot mode.

If there’s a weakness in this giant mix of personality and charm, it’s that Wall-E falls backwards a lot. While the instructions suggest to run Wall-E only on flat, un-carpeted ground and to extend his arms fully forward in order to maintain balance, his movements have a kick to them (which is far better than being sluggish) that will toss him backwards. This requires uprighting Wall-E by hand, and I can’t help but wish for an extending panel or rod that would pop him back upright when this happens. Most balance issues can be resolved by keeping Wall-E’s movements steady and consistent instead of starting and stopping him a bunch.

Even as an action figure, Wall-E is a great display piece - a perfect addition to my robot and Pixar collections. While this version does not have an opening chest panel, it WILL however freak the heck out of your dog. Check out the video after the jump to see Wall-E in action. I like it a bunch, and it may have just reawoken my interest in the ever-improving world of RC.

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I agree, I am guilty. I am definitely one of those folks that read the newspaper or watch TV and make comments like “When I was younger, kids never acted that way. You did not hear about all these shootings.” And “Corporate America was filled with ethical, honest managers.” And “All these kids on drugs, it’s horrible – not like in the good old days.”

Well, this week I came across this book at a yard sale and it piqued my curiosity. It is by Otto L. Bettmann and entitled “The Good Old Days – They Were Terrible!” Hmmm, what did Otto know that I did not?

Since crime is one of the things that bother me most, I went to the chapter on that subject. Yikes! I did not like what I read there. Seems that in the period from the 1860s through the 1890s, the crime rate rose 445 percent against a population rise of 170 percent. Reference was made, of course, to the West where there were a lot of gun-happy folk. But I also learned that New York was known as the world’s center of crime with an extravagant toll of murders, assaults and robberies. One of the statements from George Templeton Strong, who lived in the Gramercy Park area of NYC, noted that most of his friends were investing in revolvers and carrying them at night due to the huge increase in street crime.

I thought I’d turn to another thing that infuriates me: the rich getting richer in today’s corporate world. In the chapter called “Work”, I see a picture with a huge octopus, his tentacles wrapped around bundles. At the top it reads “Corporate Greed - All for Ourselves Nothing for the Public.” Each tentacle has the name of a particular railroad and the workers are standing forlornly nearby.

The caption is “Railroad Monopoly takes control of New York wharves, depriving freight handlers of work that brought them 17 cents an hour - $10 for a 7 day week.” The chapters also cover working conditions and accidents. Long before OSHA put in safety features on machines and required companies to watch out for their employees’ well-being, there were numerous accidents, leaving workers maimed or killed by the horrific conditions.

Well, I’ve been proven wrong on these issues, but surely the problem of drugs in today’s society is much worse than back when… I turned to the chapter called “Drug Addiction” to learn more. It begins by saying that the American drug addiction problem has a longer history than most suspect. Opium use had become a national habit as early as 1840, and there was an estimated 100,000 addicts in 1868 with importation increasing from 24,000 to 146,000 pounds over the previous 28 years. Jane Adams describes a group of vagrant Chicago youngsters huddled in an abandoned building to seek relief from their wretched life in the euphoria of drugs. She went on to say that they stole from their parents, pawned their clothes and shoes, did any desperate thing to get the dope. At that time opium was sold by drugstores. Even infants were exposed to the dangers of drugs. No mother of the 1880s would be caught without Winslow’s Baby Syrup or Kopp’s Baby Friend. Both of these were liberally spiked with morphine!

Cocaine wine was freely sold as a sedative and the Bayer pharmaceutical firm gave the world aspirin and also developed heroin, marketed as a cough medicine.

I am getting quite an education. But surely, the schools were better. Children wanted to learn and teachers were dedicated back then, right? The chapter on Education nearly did me in! Turns out that the Little Red Schoolhouse was not so charming after all. The great educator, Alvin Johnson, recalled his own school days in the 1880s and said “We expected to learn nothing in school and we were not disappointed.” Teachers were poorly paid and given minimal respect and the turnover was very high. Also, because of children being used in farm labor, the school year barely lasted twelve weeks. City schools were not any better and many teachers confessed that the best they could do was “maintain order.” Many boys were compelled to work all day to help support the family and then came to night school, exhausted and hungry. The New York Commissioner of Education frankly admitted in 1871 that thousands of children leave school without being able to read and write.

Of course, I did not grow up in the 1890s, but perhaps my time in the 1950s and 60s was not so hot after all. My daughters accuse me of growing up in ‘a bubble’, protected and isolated from the real world. After reading this book, I am beginning to think they are right.

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Once upon a time it was unheard of to hold a rummage sale if you didn’t have a record turntable for sale; I believe some families had to go down to a thrift shop and obtain one just to sell it, just to get the tag-sale credibility. For that reason, for many years I would only buy a turntable in absolute prime condition — and it was usually dirt cheap. As time went on, much like the ubiquitous Apple ][e, those sellers who had one to part with had already sold it. Supplies of old turntables dwindled to the point where in the past two years we started to buy any turntable we saw, just out of fear that eventually they’d be no more. This tactic, however, means we bought a bunch of junk over the years…which ended up being used for spare parts (which I may write more about in the near future), but we’ve gotten pretty good at only buying valid record players these days.

First, let’s look at a couple ‘eras’ of turntables:

1. Pre-1960s: This was the time of 10″ 78rpm records, and a lot of custom turntable construction. These are often very stylish by modern standards, designed to be a piece of decorative furniture rather than an audio accessory. Collectors of old electronics are happy to put the time and effort into restoring these vacuum-tube-driven machines, but a vinyl collector should stay away. Even if an old turntable has a 33-1/3 rotation speed, a 78rpm needle is going to tear up your albums; these are for the collector who knows what they’re looking for.
2. 1960s-1970s: The advent of microgroove vinyl and new cheaper mechanics brought out machines with more interchangeable parts and broader speed capabilities. The “drop-in” turntable is the most common to be found — an audio manufacturer would produce the electronics (amplifier, radio, etc.) but the actual turntable would be manufactured separately by a company like BSR and ‘dropped in’ to their stereo system. These tended to be cheaper quality than the high-end audio, but were often built with durability in mind. Don’t be surprised to see turntables with speeds from 16rpm up to 78 rpm; many had a ‘flip needle’ that accommodated both the smaller microgroove needle and the larger 78rpm needle.
3. 1980s and up: Before CDs took complete hold, cheap stereos included a record player for completeness sake…but most were of such poor quality and relied on so much plastic that they were of little use to an audiophile. On the other end, high quality turntables with variable speed control and strobe rpm indicators were available even in mid-range equipment. This period, however, dropped all speeds but 45 and 33-1/3 rpm. Modern vinyl collectors without need for 78s are going to be much more satisfied with a 1980s Pioneer turntable than a BSR drop-in from the 1970s.

As you can see, collectors of 78rpm records should stick to eras #1 and #2, while modern vinyl should stick to #2 and #3…but switch hitters are stuck with #2 to get a useful turntable. Collectors of 78s wishing to actually play back their lacquer disks should probably look for a turntable from the 1960s, though; the older turntables were often quite hard on the records played back on them due to primitive needle materials, but about the time that vinyl records began to dominate the market turntable manufacturers had improved on the earlier machines significantly. The flip needle is a must for collectors of both 78s and 33rpm albums: it was possible at the time (and quite often with modern ‘78rpm’ turntables) that the needle had to be physically replaced depending on the groove width. The flip needle ingeniously had two needles mounted opposite each other, and the cartridge was designed to allow the needle to switch sides via a little lever. Even if your turntable doesn’t have a flip-needle, the entire cartridge can be replaced for relatively low cost.

Replacing the cartridge may be a good idea no matter which turntable is purchased, even newer ones. A rummage-sale turntable needle may have been use well beyond its intended age, and could potentially damage your albums. A visual inspection can help identify severely damaged needles, but such an inspection cannot always be trusted. When picking out a rummage sale turntable, examine the tonearm head to see if the cartridge looks replacable: if the needle and cartridge is molded into the tone arm, or if there are soldered-on wires, skip the turntable; it may be harder to find a needle that fits than to get a new cartridge. Because the cartridge does all of the work of changing the vinyl’s groove into sound, being able to replace or improve it can be the difference between a junky record player and a high-quality turntable. I’ve also found that even similar-looking needles are not interchangeable — but if you buy the cartridge with a needle, not only are you certain you’ve got the right needle, but you’re certain what cartridge you’re using for ordering replacement needles in the future. While the cartridges are more resilient than the needle, at the age of most used turntables I’ve found more damaged cartridges than I ever expected to encounter. If you’re going to replace the cartridge, you can expect to spend from $10 to $30 for the low-end, but as with most audiophile equipment if you’ve got deep pockets you can always find something better.

After checking out the needle, the next important part is the turntable motor. Best bet is to ask the garage sale proprietor if you can plug it in. You don’t need a record album, you don’t need speakers — you just want to turn it on, see if it spins up smoothly and quickly, and if it switches speed when selected. Unless you know your turntables well, it may be difficult to tell if a turntable is direct-driven or belt-driven. A belt-driven turntable may just need a new belt if it doesn’t turn, but a direct-drive platter that doesn’t turn can be a more serious repair. I have bought slow-turning turntables that just needed a cleaning and greasing to bring back to speed, which might not be too bad if you’re comfortable disassembling a turntable, so it is always best to spend your money on one that requires the least amount of work. Aside from replacing a belt, the turntable mechanism is the most important aspect of buying a second-hand turntable, because replacing it basically means buying a new turntable. A good turntable platter and motor can be improved with a new cartridge and needle with little effort or cost, but no cartridge can improve a bad motor or damaged platter. If there’s any hint that the turntable motor, speed control, or other mechanical mechanisms aren’t working, the turntable should probably be left where it is.

One more consideration is the player’s accouterments. A turntable can come in two main forms: as part of a self-contained stereo system, or as a component. A component system is the simplest machine — in fact, they rarely contain any electronics at all. With these, however, you will need an appropriate amplifier that can handle a turntable’s signal. Modern amplifiers quite often lack a turntable input, so a separate preamplifier may be required. Record players that are part of a stereo system can be handy if you want simplicity, but the additional electronics can make it more trouble than it is worth if something like the volume knob has a noisy connection or there’s a short in the radio switch. The all-in-one stereo systems are more likely to end up in my parts pile than the component turntables do. If you are going to buy a console system, avoid ones without a recording output — a “tape out” connector on the back of a console stereo can still be connected to another stereo system, or to your computer for recording.

Because the basic structure of a turntable hasn’t changed much in the past fifty years, a nice, working turntable from the 1960s can rival the quality of a modern one, as long as care is taken to make sure to buy a sturdy, working, repairable turntable.

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