Whatever the case, the Orangewood rocks, and it's reasonably priced enough that I ended up buying another one for my daughter. Every time I picked up that Orangewood and strummed a few bars of Johnny Thunder's "I'm Alive," which somehow felt like the perfect song for March 2020, I felt that dissolution of self that I think we all crave in stressful times.
I am not a very visual person, so losing myself in television and movies doesn't work for me, but music? That's what got me through my misspent youth. Instead, it helped me get through staying at home.
It sounds great too, even if I never ended up taking it on the road. The Orangewood is the perfect travel guitar-small, portable, and not too expensive at under $400. After all, no road trip is complete without some terrible cover songs around the campfire. Among the things I tested was an Orangewood guitar, specifically the Oliver Jr. Michael CaloreĪbout a month before 2020 went from just another year to, well, 2020, I decided to write a guide to prepping for the perfect road trip. The old machine-with its simple two-function Cook/Keep Warm switch and its white shell faded to a yellowish cream color-is heading to the house of a friend, where with a little luck, it will bubble and hiss its way through the next six or seven presidential administrations, probably outliving all of us. It's pricey ($140 if you can find it on Amazon), but it's half the size of the ancient 'Rushi it replaced, and it's filled with an infinite number of features. It has discrete settings for different kinds of rice, multiple warming modes, and (this is huge) a timer, so I can just tell it what time I want to eat and it makes sure the rice is ready for me on the minute. I went with the popular choice: the Zojirushi NS-LGC05XB. Nothing wrong with the old one, I just peeked at what else was out there and realized how much rice cookers have evolved. After the shelter-in-place order caused my rice consumption to jump from two meals a week to five or six, I started itching for an upgrade. I make rice at least twice a week, so it's gotten a lot of use over those years and gathered some tremendous karma along the way. We've had the same rice cooker in my house for about a decade, a hand-me-down gifted by a fellow WIRED employee long ago.