…is what I imagined Crazy Harry to be saying in today’s panel 1, because “baking” video cassettes is something I’d never heard of. Turns out that magnetic recording tape uses a glue, or “binder”, to hold the oxide particles to the tape. Over time, moisture can affect the binder and cause the tape to “shed” its magnetic coating. So baking the tape at low temperature for an extended period removes the moisture, improving playback quality while lessening possible wear and tear to the playback equipment.
Month: September 2015
Don’t Forget to Wipe Your Arts
Welp. As just about everyone including Les has surmised, Crazy Harold is only too tickled to be entrusted with digitalizing Lisa’s Ghost. Harry does seem to have some “state of the ark” gear for this daunting task…I think I see that USB dongle that a commenter here over at the CC said he’d need. Whether he’s being compensated beyond the honor of being asked remains to be seen.
Conversion Therapy
Guest Page Turner Author
September 7, 2015 at 11:30 pm
Crazy Harry, the downsized mailman from her Dad’s peer groups, is the one to digitize these tapes? The man who works in a comic shop, worships 1950s Bandboxes, and seems to have all disparage for any technology beyond 1975?
So many questions! Here’s mine: has Summer even approached Crazy Harry about “converting these tapes to video” (and you mean “converting to digital”, sweetie; they’re already video)? Or does she plan on just strolling into the Komix Korner with the Sacred Box o’ Tapes and bid Crazy get busy? Readers know that this box–and it’s just one box, not a steamer trunk?–contains hour upon hour of Lisa lectures: is Crazy Harry getting paid for this task? “Psh!” says Les. “Are you kidding?” Who would decline such an honor? He’ll do it and be damn glad about it too!
Digitally Yours
bad wolf
September 6, 2015 at 10:45 pm
Hmm, i wonder where this is leading?
Chance Summer will talk Les into moving on with his life: 1%
Chance Les will talk Summer into maintaining weird obsession: 99%
Yeah, lest you start thinking that Batiuk or his characters were ready at last to move on…Summer’s not tossing those tapes, oh no; she’s preserving them digitally! Wouldn’t want wee Skyler Fairgood to go through life without his ghostly grandmother’s guidance.
Debasement Tapes
You might have expected that a teacher’s car being vandalized on school grounds would be the beginning of A Very Special FW Arc. Instead, we get the ever-more-masculine Summer Moore making her first appearance in six months, Looks like Westviewians are as slapdash at packing boxes as they are at applying Scotch tape.
…asks Les, expositionally (and wouldn’t he refer to “Lisa” as “your Mom” to Summer?). Her response nearly triggers a coronary in Les: Summer dispassionately states she’s throwing them away, implying a blasphemy second only to opening a slabbed comic book.
Son of Stuck Funky 
