internet

At least a few times every week, I encounter music that I really, really love embedded into YouTube videos or streaming media from other sources. As a music fanatic who never leaves home without his shiny iPod Classic, I have a serious need to take these gems and carry them around with me,  file them safely away in my carefully organized collection of mp3s on a secondary hard drive, and sing way too loudly along with them in the car.

Unfortunately, YouTube and streaming media aren’t inherently downloadable. They’re ostensibly forced to exist forever within the applets that run them, trapped inside of their web-cages. Of course, there are little software add-ons like SoThink and FlashGet for Firefox and other browsers that will let you snag a lot of streaming media files for yourself and house them indefinitely on your computer if you’re afraid that they’ll somehow vanish. The fact still remains – media that’s been compressed for smooth web use isn’t at the top of its game. At best, any video that you swipe from the online universe is a small, pixelated shadow of what it would be on an official release. These things fall under the ‘good enough’ category, and the legal territory that delineates what you can look at but not touch is still murky.

While I collect a lot of music, I’m typically not obsessive about gathering up live performances of any artist – except for Brooklyn’s Elysian Fields. So, when I found a 90 minute streaming concert video that was filmed on a smoky French stage this past June, I knew I had to find a way to have it. I found their lost Clinical Trial tapes after years of searching, I found 2005’s Black Session, I joined eMusic to get a four song set that they played there, and I needed this.

While web video isn’t great, audio – while still imperfect – suffers a lot less when it’s compressed for slick internet usage. It’s pretty fair game, and since I don’t anticipate any live Elysian Fields releases, it’s ‘good enough’. This is where Audio Hijack comes in.

I talked about Audio Hijack once before. It’s a beautiful little piece of software that will allow you to record audio from any source that your computer can hear – streaming radio shows, your browser, your webcam, and any other sounds your computer makes. You can capture them all. Traditionally, I’ve only used Audio Hijack to capture audio from my record player to preserve the old discs in a more durable digital format, but the opportunity to record a ‘live’ show form the browser also exists.

It’s amazingly simple – just open Audio Hijack, direct the source to the browser of your choice, and hit ‘hijack’ and ‘record’.

Given the fact that web video sometimes has a tendency to buffer and rebuffer itself as it plays (which would make your audio recording useless), there are a few simple steps which I took in order to make everything as simple as possible.

First, close up anything else that will suck up your bandwidth. The only thing that your computer should be talking to the internet about is your streaming video.

Second, if you’re recording from a browser, don’t leave any other browser windows open. You’d hate to have your relatively clean 90-minute concert recording broken up by the little click of Facebook IMs popping up.

Ultimately, the 90 minute show was recorded perfectly and clocked in at under 70 MB. You can adjust your recording clarity to a wide variety of levels for all manner of output later, but ‘Internet (High)’ always works fine for me. I’m not an audiophile, though – any clicks and pops I run into I usually just accept as an integral part of the recorded musical experience. The quest for real-life clarity is best left for concerts that you actually attend. Note that recording is also in real time, much like making a mixtape on a dual cassette recorder. You can’t speed up or skip ahead. It’s a little romantic that way.

None of this is to say that you shouldn’t support your favorite artists by actually purchasing their work. I download plenty of stuff, but my collection of CDs (even if I never use them) matches much of what I’ve downloaded. As a creator myself, I understand the value of having your work both appreciated and compensated for. As with all things, act responsibly.

The fact that I’ve been recording old 1980s toy commercials from ancient VHS tapes for YouTube is another story entirely. Someone’s gotta keep these things safe.

It has been said that anytime you have more than three of something within a theme gathered together, the synergy of these items constitutes a ‘collection’. The internet, o this mighty internet, is making me second guess this definition.

All because of Houston.

You might have seen pictures of what has been dubbed ‘The World’s Worst Apartment’ floating around the internet in some form or another, detached from their origins at the Houston Imports forums. If you haven’t bore witness, I invite you to take a deep breath, ask yourself some serious questions about your life and click here. Before you do, let me warn you that no matter how repulsive you think that this apartment might be, it’s worse, and I take no responsibility for any ill health effects that viewing these images might cause. Seriously.

You’ll see that the apartment in question is strewn with garbage at least a half-foot thick in every direction, and on every surface. And by surface, I mean ‘naturally occurring countertops and tables’ as well as ’surfaces created by compacted garbage’. Garbage upon garbage, ad infinitum, in a modern Tower of Babel – just with more cigarettes. Hilariously, the images also contain an ironing board and a spray bottle of Resolve, like cocktail umbrellas in a hurricane, as if they’d make any difference at all.

What struck me, however, was that this garbage has a very real theme. Was this poor soul a fast food cup fetishist? Did she have a deep, psychological need to retain every cup that she’d ever drank from? And why did she retain a small Pompeii’s worth of cigarettes and ash? And, most importantly, since she has so many Whataburger cups, can these sensibly be classified as a collection?

For my own sanity, I’d like to say ‘NO!’, but I can’t really convince myself. I’m not sure if collections can occur accidentally, or if they can exist without intent, but that’s not for me to decide.

The occupant of this apartment almost certainly suffers from disposophobia, which is a DSM recognized mental illness. The illness has a small collection of definitions, but the one that I find most important to collectors like myself would be that the hoarder’s ‘living spaces are cluttered enough to prevent activities for which those spaces were designed’. The definition of the illness goes on to describe an attachment to possessions that are apparently worthless, but I’m hesitant to place my ideas of value into anyone else’s set of values. My Batman action figure might be someone else’s vintage bathrobe, or another person’s 1932 beer can.

One very common misperception which is perpetuated in most discussions about ‘collecting’ is that a collection has to have significant monetary value in order to be worthwhile. While I haven’t really found a collection to be as emotionally fulfilling as, say, a loving relationship with a dark-haired girl who likes Portishead as much as I do, I can’t really place a value on the inspiration that an occasional dollar store dinosaur might bring me – but I don’t need to sleep on a bed of them because the closet and floor are already full of Stormtroopers. Plus, explaining Dimetrodon impressions on your cheek to your employer isn’t as simple as it sounds.

Still, I have a small armchair that’s currently stacked with Star Trek action figures, so I haven’t used the chair in about a year, so the DSM definition of disposophobia rattles me, just a little bit. All of my other living spaces are relatively inhabitable – I swear. I’m free of food wrappers and ashes and clothes that don’t fit, so I think I’m doing pretty okay. Of course, with the winter coming and the return of Heroes to TV, I have every intention on cleaning off that chair, making myself a cup of cocoa every Monday evening, and curling up in its ugly, itchy, plaid warmth. If I don’t manage to do this, that’s when I’ll call in the experts.

But they’d better not touch my damned Batmen.

As you’ll note from part one of this elegy, my favorite toy line has effectively come to an end. It may be over and finding a new, different life at a new, different company, but not before it taught me some valuable lessons about collecting toys.

You might not know it, but toy collecting is a completely cutthroat hobby. It requires the perfect timing of finding something desirable on a shelf before anyone else does (and in a location where the stockroom doesn’t take first pick), unbelievable persistence, and fighting off enemies at every turn – all while desperately compelled to enable them. There’s a large portion of toy collectors who will not only buy a rare item for themselves, but comb a huge radius seeking out every other rare item with the intent of reselling them on eBay. Not unlike folks who buy large amounts of tickets to popular concerts and resell them for astronomical prices, these scalpers artificially drive up the rarity and prices of certain toys. It takes a great deal of fortitude to ignore the eBay prices and keep searching the toy shelves, especially when that one singular item is all you need to complete a set. Collectors, you know what I’m talkin’ about. The thrill of the hunt! Except sometimes, someone brings a nuke instead of a shotgun and any modicum of fun is taken out of the pursuit.

The all-time record for a Marvel Legends price goes to Maskless Wolverine, which was up to about $250 on eBay. It was exactly like the regular Wolverine, but it didn’t have a mask on, so it got a big ol’ ‘whatever’ from me. This past summer also saw some enormous prices when Wal-Mart’s toy division accidentally left some pre-release, prototype Marvel Legends on a shelf in a Kansas Wal-Mart after they used them in a promotional photoshoot. These were discovered by an unwitting collector, and when said collector found out what they actually were, he chose to resell them on eBay and wait for the finished products to come out. Its these kinds of things that fuel the excitement for toy collecting, which I have a very hard time trying to explain to non-toy-collectors. Call them ‘dolls’ and you’ll find yourself choking on one, buddy.

My collecting philosophies came to a head one morning while I was waiting outside the doors of the local Toys ‘R’ Us, not realizing that they open an hour later once the Christmas shopping season is over. I usually prefer to arrive a little after they open, mostly so I don’t appear completely desperate and lonely. Why let people know the truth about me, right? The small crowd outside was mostly young mothers shopping for birthdays and returning undesired holiday presents, but when a large, unwashed man in greasy clothes appeared, I knew that the game was on. See, there’s a network of websites that track where new shipments of toys are arriving and how they’re spreading across the world’s toystores (since toy distribution is always an inconsistent issue), and I’d received a hot tip that the new Marvel Legends had finally hit New York. Greasy Man eyed me, and fearing that he was trying to psychically imbue me with his greasiness, I looked away. From him, I would soon learn what it took to me a Champion Toy Collector.

First, don’t shower before you go out toy hunting. There’s no time, man! You need to get out there and shove your way in through the women and children if you expect to obtain the bounty beyond them. Time is of the essence, and if I must say, your own personal essence is (apparently) far less important.

Second, as if it weren’t implied with the first bullet point, abandon all dignity. No matter how awkward and lumbering you are, run! Make a bee-line to the location of your favorite new toys, tripping over yourself on the way. Sweatpants are ideal for mobility, whether or not they fit you properly.

Third, forget all other expenses. You might have totally destroyed the front end of your car in some other toy-grabbing exploit, but getting these toys is paramount to all other costs and pursuits, and that includes running water and heart conditions.

Fourth and finally, make pseudo-pleasant conversation with the other people in the toy aisle, despite the fact that you’ve just weaseled and stumbled your way to the find of the century, hot in your dirty hands. Make them conceal their disappointment and possibly give themselves aneurysms. That way, you’ll have have to battle them on the vast Toy Fields again.

After observing these four cardinal rules that landed Greasy Man the items that I so coveted, I took a long, hard look at myself. At that moment, I realized that hunting down toys like this wasn’t fun anymore, because the disappointment I felt was far too significant. The game wasn’t fun if we were gonna go all guerilla with it, both in technique and in odor. These were, after all, toys. I didn’t need to become so frustrated over them, and I didn’t need to witness (or eventually become) a Greasy Man, and I was on the fast track to Oilyville. So, he got his Phasing Vision and Giant Man toys. I still had my complete and total unquestionable sexiness. Don’t question it. I got my Phasing Vision later, on eBay. It was more than I should have paid, but it was an open wound that I needed to salve.

From then on, I took to the internet to find what I wanted. There are a few odd items that are still unavailable on retail sites, but paying for shipping costs usually outweighs gas and frustration prices. I still love my trips to the toy store, but it’s more of a casual hunt now. This lax attitude towards the toy hunt, with the knowledge that I’ll be able to hunt down anything I miss out on eventually (when I’m rich and powerful and replace my puny arms with arms that are made of diamonds), has recently allowed me to find some genuine treasures. Marvel Legends 14 variants? Yes, I happened upon a Gold First Appearance Iron Man at Toys ‘R’ Us, and I enjoy him immensely.

The real rules of toy hunting? Have some friends who are willing to look for your treasures, and look for theirs also. Enjoy yourself, hope for the best, expect the worst, and enjoy the journey as well as the destination. Oh, and when no one’s around, sneak peeks into the overhead shelf compartments. That’s where they hide the magic.