18 February

Rusty Quarters Retro Arcade & Museum

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Rusty Quarters Retro Arcade & Museum
I want to go to there. Rusty Quarters is in the Lyn-Lake area of Minneapolis, next to Bryant Lake Bowl.

I’ve been meaning to find time to head over to that part of town and check this place out for a while, but I just discovered a number of photos of the inside posted on Instagram. It turns out they have their whole game list posted on their website, but just from looking at the pictures I was able to identify the following games:

Rampage, Centipede, Joust, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong, Q-Bert, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Space Invaders, Asteroids, Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Jr., Track and Field, BurgerTime, Defender and Crystal Castles.

Yes… that’s pretty much perfect.

Prioritizing tasks for the freelancer

Anyone who’s had a serious go at freelancing can tell you that one of the biggest challenges is staying focused. Without Bill Lumbergh standing at the entrance of your cubicle, mug in hand, prodding you all day long, it’s easy to let yourself spend the whole day gutting a fish on your desk instead of doing any real work.

No wait, that’s what happens when you work in an actual office.

The challenge for a freelancer is more about keeping those creative energies focused on paying clients’ projects, and not veering off into spending half the day tinkering with your own projects… like… making a sign reminding yourself to stay focused on client work.

Fortunately for you, fellow freelancer, I’ve already done that, so you can move on to more important things.

(Click the image above — or, if you must, here — to download a print-ready PDF version.)

How did record company consolidation come to this?

For reasons I don’t care to get into, I was singing Leslie Gore’s modest ’60s hit, “Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows” (best known to Simpsons fans as the “chase music” Chief Wiggum and Homer play in the squad car as they chase Marge and Ruth Powers in the classic episode, “Marge on the Lam”), and as usual when I get a random song in my head, I wanted to crank up the audio clip of it from the iTunes Store for the amusement (or annoyance) of everyone within earshot.

As I was listening to the clip, I noticed something odd. The CD it’s currently available on is from the 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection series, easily identified by its distinctive black-white-and-gray cover designs. I believe these originally featured artists from the A&M label, but eventually expanded to include other artists currently distributed by various labels under the (very large) blanket of Universal Music Group.

And that, I guess, is how ’60s bubblegum pop like Leslie Gore (originally released on Mercury, I believe) ends up being distributed by the same label as Ghostface Killah.

Leslie Gore, now distributed by a rap label