So, Ci3 closed up shop… and with it went A-Maze Mugs. Not sure that any were actually sold anyway? I know I have 2 prototypes and we did work up art for the box. I posted about them a few times. I also did a (very) poorly recorded jingle.
I feel like I just sit on all my maze art, while others are able to monetize their art projects. This is me reaching out for advice from my creative peeps.
I know there are no-money-up-front printing/fulfillment services. Does anyone have good (or really bad) experiences with any of those? I clicked a link on one, and 30 are showing up in my FB ad feeds. Are any more reputable/profitable/flexible than the others?
Even better, does anyone local do printing & fulfillment services, like Commonwealth Press?
Would it be worth it to save & invest some money into it?
I would like to put my mazes on all kinds of stuff. I get likes on my mazes on Instagram. Occasionally someone sends me a solution. Maybe T-shirts would be useless… unless you had one on the back and wanted someone to complete it as a sort of massage? Ha ha.
Tiles may be interesting. The socks that Mike worked up were super cool! Mugs seem to be out but those new stainless steel tumblers are in. Maybe a beer stein? Maybe just a book of mazes? My thing though, is most of my stuff has no theme. They’re just mazes. I have a TON drawn. They just need scanned & maybe cleaned up a bit.
I’m not looking to get rich, but creativity funding more creativity never hurts. Right?
These look like a fun product IMHO, anyway. Finding someone to ship a mug and a dry erase marker AND do the printing may be tough?
I’m open to any and all suggestions and solutions. I feel like I’m just sitting on these, have been for years, and should be doing something with them.
Recently, while camping at a local Jellystone with the family (awesome for young kids, by the way!), it occurred to me just how awesome cargo shorts are. Luckily I have a fashion sense unfettered by current trends, or perhaps a complete lack thereof. Why are they so vilified?
My cargo shorts were the hero of the day for a Saturday camping adventure.
My shorts in the course of the day, at one point for quite some time, contained all of the following…
Car keys
Cabin key
Wallet
Cell phone
Wife’s cell phone
Wife’s lip balm
4 golf balls from Putt Putt that we need to return for a refund across the camp.
The contents of one “fossil” mining sluice bag.
The contents of one “gem” mining sluice bag.
Tummy medicine.
Campground map.
Multi-Tool pocket knife thing:
Plyers
Cutters/Strippers
Knife
Saw
Ruler
Phillips-Head Screwdriver
Flat-Head screw driver
Can-opener
Other Can-opener
File
Epi-Pen.
Tell me that’s not awesome. See the above FB post from my friend Dave, and the photo of backpack shorts found from the bowels of social media? Perhaps that is the only possible evolution to something more useful. Are you brave enough to try?
So, cargo shorts dad, or just cargo shorts man… you continue being you. Cargo shorts mom or cargo shorts woman? You be you too! Fashion will circle back around. Or not. Who cares? We stand the test of time.
I also wear high-top Chuck Taylor All Stars with shorts, which my wife erroneously and hilariously thinks is a faux pas. I mean, what?
I have also noticed that socks with Crocs is a thing. I got into Crocs almost like I imagine someone succumbs to an addiction. I thought they were dumb. I got some for creek shoes at camp. They were really comfortable. I got some fur-lined ones for slippers at home. I wore the regular ones into the yard to garden. I wear them to cut grass, take out the dog, take out the trash. I wore them for a quick run to Rite Aid. Wore them for a longer run to Giant Eagle. Wore them with socks while gardening or mowing the lawn to keep the dirt from getting in between my toes. Will I be wearing Crocs in socks to the kids’ school and sports activities soon?
Tell me in the comments what you store in your cargo shorts. What should I be keeping in mine? I didn’t even get into how different shades of camo PERFECTLY compliment my band T-shirts and Star Wars or Batman T-shirts.
You probably shouldn’t take fashion advice from a guy with lambchop sideburns anyway.
So, remember the SPAMP+? It was a ton of fun. I wrote to ask the SpampMAN if I could get a ¼” stere-to-mono adapter for the headphone jack to make the headphone jack essentially an “out” for a guitar amp so I could use the Spamp+ as an effect or pre-amp.
Dude is solid, and sent me one! He may include it as an option with future builds! The grilled, chilled, & fried all work as you would expect and sound gorgeous coming through my Blues Jr.
Here I used my New York Pro StarGazer (with GFS Lil’ Killer Rails) into the SPAMP, then my Fender Blues Jr. The tones are still awesome! the volume differences are there, but if you pick one & go that rally shouldn’t be a problem. This is totally cool as a pre-amp effect! There’s no on-off, but I do have an A/B/Y switch that I could maybe use to put it in & out of the loop. At any rate, this is still super fun, and that’s what it’s all about!
I dimed the SPICE and HEAT knobs, but left TASTE at 12:00. Why? I always dime all the knobs. I like gain and dirt and punk rock. I ran each guitar through the CHILLED, FRIED, and GRILLED settings.
I like FRIED and GRILLED, but there was a noticeable volume drop with Grilled with all the guitars/pickups. This is a super fun little amp. I may get the normal one to use as a distortion pedal… as I don’t think this headphone out is suitable to run to an amp.
I will eventually get to using a 9V & rocking the headphones. This was plugged into a 9v power supply for the video.
I did test a 9V in it, and it had the same volume drop to GRILLED. Of course I used the oil can guitar in the Spam can amp first.
You can see what kinds of pickups they have and if not just ask me in the comments. You get single coils, humbucker/single split, lipstick, humbuckers, hot rails, and P-90-ish ones. I think the SPAMP+ sounds absolutely killer with the P90’s.
I try not to ruin my guitar/gear videos with talking.
Should I explain things for the 3 of you that watch? Lemme know what you think. Do I need the one that acts as a pedal?
Send me a pedal and I will demo it with all the knobs or almost all the knobs dimed.
On New Year’s Day at approx. 11:25 AM or 11:26 AM EST, there was a sonic boom in Allegheny County or Washington County Pennsylvania.
Immediately, Yinzers took to social media to ask what was going on. Some armchair experts already had all the answers.
The first link shared was from a website called Volcano Discovery. It posts user reported incidents before they’re certified as seismic events before the USGS. At least it’s a url right? It’s on the internet. It must be true.
The next thing that circulated was a phone screenshot of a news story from 2010 about detonating munitions at the airport. The date was left out. No link. Just a screenshot. I saw it all over the place.
Then, the meteor theory started to come out. A blip on an image from a satellite meant to detect lightning showed a flash in an area with no discernable storm systems. A known asteroid being close by for a meteor shower to peak in our area on Jan. 3rd, my be related. I read somewhere but can’t find it now that a chunk of the asteroid most likely entered our atmosphere (now a meteor) at twice the speed of sound, and burned up… resulting in the sonic boom & shockwave.
Yinzers on social media immediately forgot elementary school science class, put on their tinfoil hats, and stated emphatically that there was no flash or no crater, so it could not have been a meteor… therefore had to be anything from top secret military testing of airplanes, to subterranean bomb testing, to nefarious manufacturing at any number of local industrial businesses, to fracking, to gas buildup in mines, to extraterrestrials, fireworks (Yinzers do love their fireworks), and of course… to flatulence related to consumption of the Pennsylvania Dutch classic Pork & Sauerkraut dish as is new year’s tradition. So many fart jokes. Some blamed themselves, some blamed their significant others, one even blamed a cat.
I am fascinated by the videos that people shared form their Ring/Blink/Nest/etc. It sounds like the footsteps of Godzilla. (Mad props to Foley artists everywhere!)
I’m also sort of mad that I didn’t notice it. I was apparently at Sheetz at the time. Good to know I will not see any cataclysmic apocalypse coming. I’ll be taken out before I even know what happened.
Thanks to all the credible sources that reported on this and pieced it together. Thanks to the people who shared video. Thanks to the Illumi-nutty for the wild baseless yet endlessly entertaining fart jokes speculation.
Possible explanation for the Pittsburgh explosion that has not been registered as an earthquake by the USGS – meteor?
GOES-16's lightning mapper saw up a single blip over SW PA around 11:26 am ET, but there has been no storm activity in the area over the past 24 hours.
Bert – a.k.a. ERiC AiXeLsyD – rocking the Dewey Decibel FlipOut Lit Cigarette model.
OK. So, you probably know I like weird guitars. Someday I will have profiles up of all of them on another blog. You may have even read about my Dewey Decibel FlipOut before, or have seen the FlipOut before (or even the knock-off Flipped brand). While the Galveston BB Stone certainly started my weird guitar obsession, the FlipOut solidified it. Sadly, I came to it after AiXeLsyD had been done for a while, and I think even after Gasoline Dion. It some incredibly small and ancient circles I will always be known as ERiC AiXeLsyD. I did, get to gig out with the FlipOut, quite a lot, with Ernie and the Berts.
A while back, I had the opportunity to reach out to Jimmie Bruhn about the Indy Custom Flycaster, and way way back I did some research on the BB Stone. (I have to try to recover all the stuff that used to live on SquareGuitar.com, all those links are now dead.)
I thought it would be fun to try and track down Dewey Decibel(a.k.a. Joe Jerardi – or is it Joe Geradri? Stage names are fun.), and get some insight on the inception and production of one of my favorite axes!
After some emails exchanged, here’s the story from the man himself!
Hi Eric,
I’m awfully sorry there was a delay on getting back to you. I honestly have had my hands full this year, and it slipped my mind. Just for your patience, I can offer the most information I’ve shared about my FlipOut days to this point. And thanks for asking.
I was performing solo in NY back in the 90s, playing CBGBs and many of the NY clubs. My stage name was Dewey Decibel, and I always performed hooked up to an IV pole. Just a thing I did – never mentioned it on stage. Played electric guitar, with synth sequencers for backing, plus voice.
One day I thought of this backward guitar – Its just wood I thought – so it would play the same, just super unsettling, and deeply rock and roll to my mind. I found one shop out of all the NY guitar techs who would follow my instruction. It was Rick from Carmine Street Guitars. I love him because he didn’t even blink, just said “sure, I can do that”. I went on to form a band called… Dewey Decibel, and kept doing shows, and finished up my third album “Unnecessarily Beautiful” with those guys, great players Jon Howard, and Martin Miller. We did good work. I always played the original FlipOut, which started its life as a Fernandes brand Strat. I always had the IV drip by my side.
Back cover for the Dewey Decibel album Unnecessarily Beautiful | Original FlipOut prototype of a modified Fernandes Strat copy pictured!
We did no real promotion for the album, for any of my albums, so they reside in resplendent obscurity, rarely to surface.
Here is what exists online, though there are 3+ albums and an EP somewhere:
Dewey Decibel | Unnecessarily Beautiful | Pictured: Martin Miller (Drums) ● Dewey Decibel (Voice/Guitar/Keys) ● John Howard (Bass)
At shows, my guitar got so much crazy attention I conceived of the nutty plan to use a release of these guitars to bring attention to my band. In 2003 I went to the NAMM show on the recommendation of a friend, to look for a manufacturer. There I approached many confused factory reps from Asia, and ended up having luck with a Korean group who were ready to please. I ordered some prototypes during that year, and tweaked things. Then at 2004 NAMM I introduced them to the unsuspecting earthlings, took orders, and started shipping out of San Francisco once the container ship arrived. That first NAMM show was funny funny stupid funny.
Art from the Dewey Decibel website.
The stupid part was that Fender lawyers sent me a letter on the opening day of my NAMM launch that I was in breach of their trademarks. This is a much longer story but I ended up licensing with Fender later, which was great for name dropping and demonstrating to folks that it was a quality guitar.
I was living in a warehouse with boxes of these guitars and my drum set. It was a time of odd existence, taking orders, shipping, doing R&D, and lining up reviews with the big guitar magazines. The FlipOut got strong thumbs up reviews in Guitar Player as well as Guitar One. I did care about the feel of the neck and the pickups. It’s self evident I think when you handle one.
I was moving forward on the BottomOut bass, having received a few prototypes which worked nicely. Even took orders. The problem was that the whole business had me working in too many directions, and exhausted. I’d gone to Europe, and did a bunch of sales, there and in Australia too. I was overworking, and getting wiped out. This was all on my own, and I’d been living with some fantasy that these cool guitars would elevate the music, and demonstrate my sovereign rock and roll whimsy. But alas, the FlipOut project ended at around 500 guitars because I was exhausted, the R&D was too slow, and I couldn’t parlay the thing into working for another manufacturer. I was too much of a lone wolf for them. So I went back to graphic design and animation. I’m an animator today living in incredible San Antonio. I also continue writing and recording a new album, to be released secretly into thrift store bins.
The guitar colors were just my favorites at the time, the names were inspired by memories. Barry Leventhal was I think a kid I played in little league with. Austin really had cabs colored like the guitar.
I’ve seen the FlipOut rip-offs coming from Europe/China, and they look ridiculous, all backward and stuff. Just joking – I guess it was inevitable someone would cash in.
Hey thanks for your interest. Hoping it fills in some detail.
Until now, this is pretty much all that was out there on the FlipOut!
FlipOut models & colors
How cool is that? The entire story from the man himself! I urge you to go check out the music of Dewey Decibel.
The only mods I had done to mine is the inimitable Aaron Hutzel drop in some GFS Lil Killer rails. This was not a kock at all to the original sound, but the humbuckers are more my thing.
Neighborhood Facebook groups and Nextdoor. They have a lot in common. Typically, the posts fall in one of these categories:
Fireworks or gun shots? It’s loud. No one cleared either with me.
What are all the sirens for? Where are they?
There is a suspicions person or group of teenagers walking around the neighborhood.
I found a hair in my pizza and thought I would try to destroy the livelihood of all involved.
Solicitation of professional goods and services, only by “a college student” or “retiree” willing to severely undercut prices for those professional services.
On a side note, I highly recommend @bestofnextdoor on Twitter.
But then there’s the worst kind. It starts innocently enough. Someone wants to know what is going in to an old building that’s vacant or being torn down/renovated. Then someone jokes, a bank, a mattress store, or Spirit Halloween.
Then. Then, its the worst. People answer the question with what they want to go there, but with authority (or lack of basic writing skills) and make it seem like that is what is going there.
They wish. They guess.
They equate real concrete answers to be as equally fanciful to their own.
People are wishing hard for Target, and Chick-fil-A . Then people say they don’t want Target or Chick-fil-A. Also, no one can spell Chick-fil-A, even as they are replying to something that mentions it and spells it correctly. It’s always Chic Filet or Chik Fila or something equally absurd. It’s a small, but maddening detail.
Actual photo of 50% of the local population.
I bring you, the saga of Burlington and most likely Ross moving into the old Bridgeville Kmart location, as presented by local Facebook groups and Nextdoor, and as ignored by members of local Facebook groups and Nextdoor. It’s all over local social media if you look, but no one an handle the search button. It generally looks like this, people: 🔍
I mean, if only all these could somehow link back to each other, and the actual factual information could be sorted out.
I hope they got the smell out of the building. That Kmart used to totally smell like poop over by the K Café.
All sings point to Burlington replacing Kmart and Chick-fil-A razing & rebuilding where the current empty Taco Bell lies. Ross and a Pet Smart may be squeezed into the Kmart space also. A little birdie told me because they saw my repeated request for factual information in these threads. A true journalist can’t reveal their source, right?
It’s Burlington. And maybe Ross, and PetSmart… and maybe even something else. It’s definitely not a Target.
🎯
My personal prediction: 6 months after Burlington opens in Bridgeville/Collier Township, people will still be asking (via Facebook community groups and Nextdoor) what is going in at the old Kmart location… and other people will still be answering that they drove by and saw red so it must be a Target. 🤦♂️
Actual factual information:
Collier Township Zoning Hearing Board on Burlington: ZHB-2021-0005
Collier Township Zoning Hearing Board on Chick-fil-A: ZHB-2021-0003
Thank you for coming to my TURD(Totally Unfounded Rumor Department) Talk.
OK. I really need to go do something more productive with my time now.
Please, feel free to share your actual factual information in the comments, or wildly speculative conjecture. Apparently feelings are facts everywhere these days, not just in politics.
I tried to pick the most odd & attention grabbing of my herd. Do you think I missed the boat by not including some of my other notable oddballs? He didn’t even mention the amps or pedals. Ha ha.
Shout-out to my peeps at Actual Ugly Guitars! It’s a Facebook group focused on looking for guitars ranging from the weirdest of the weird to just pure abominations with strings and sometimes even frets. If you’re gonna join, answer the questions or you won’t get in.
Here’s a rundown of what’s pictured if you’re interested:
Click the links on the guitar names to go to my Instagram posts where I posted all my axes at the beginning of the Covid shutdowns. You can check out most of them (& more) at Posting #AllMyAxes. 🎸 (Part 1) & Posting #AllMyAxes. 🎸 (Part 2) too. I posted all of them individually and some fun group shots & extras under the #AllMyAxes hashtag on Instagram.
If not rocking the Spark for practice or jamming along to YouTube or the built-in drummers, I like to rock a guitar through the tuner then into the A/B/Y into both the Blues Jr. and the Micro Terror through the Laney. Sometimes I put the wah up front, or sometimes on just one amp. I had a Dunlop CryBaby for years, then once I heard the “tone-suck” even when it was off, I couldn’t un-hear it. Same with the Dirt & Ernie… sometimes I just use it as a boost. It will come in handy if I ever get back to live stuff. My “sound” is pretty much gain on 10 master volume on 2 through both amps because I love the sound of the overdriven amps, so I don’t really need to add much dirt. If I set up the Trio, I run the “band” out to the PA so drums & bass come out of that nice & clean instead of one of (or both of) my amps. I am terrible with the POCK LOOP looper. The Lil’ Smokey is also a ton of fun, and I have used to to drive a 4×12. I think I need simpler one or more patience. Maybe both.
So, that’s my setup. Yes, I do play these guitars. Yes, they’re all playable. (I have a go-to guitar guy that is like a guitar-whisperer.) Yes, I have gigged & even recorded with some of them and would gig with all of them.
Which ones do you dig or hate the most? Got any oddballs you want to share? Hit me up with some comments!
This is how I have been responding to spam lately.
The original:
From: Onain onainreddy@aol.com Date: 2/5/21 7:27 AM (GMT-05:00) To: world.and.lunar.domination@gmail.com Subject: Why Not Host your Web Site With Us!
Hi world,
“You can get a premium look on your website with a minimum effort.”
If you are looking for the new website design, then please share your requirements or a reference website if possible so that we could discuss your requirements further.
Looking forward to hearing your valuable response.
PS – My phone tried to autocorrect you to Onion and Orion. Onain the Orion Onion would make a great children’s book. Perhaps being an author would be more profitable that writing spam emails?
I’m not Arby’s. You must have found my blog posts about jalapeño poppers and Bronco Berry Sauce.
I don’t have the meats, -AiXeLsyD13
Simple.
Arby’s :: Bronco Berry Sauce®
It’s interesting to me that people find my stupid blog contact from when looking doe something else entirely. How inept at the internet must one be to contact me instead of a large corporation?
She had to have read, or more likely ignored, one of these posts:
World (and Lunar) Domination 