Stephen Mejias

The Stereophile forumhttp://forum.stereophile.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?Cat=0&C=1">forum; has been hot. I don't even know what's happening&#151I'm only the Administrator&#151but two members are really going at it. It's been going on for days. One dude sees things one way, and the other dude sees things in a very different way, and neither wants to meet anywhere near the middle.

Was it really only yesterday? It feels like it was a hundred years ago.

Jason Victor Serinus reported">http://stereophile.com/news/031308amex/">reported on it a couple of weeks ago, but in case you still haven't seen that American Express ad featuring hi-fi retailer MusicDirecthttp://www.musicdirect.com/">MusicDirect;, here it is.

I still sometimes forget that the year is 2008. It'll take me a few more months to get used to it. No doubt about it, though: 2007 is old news. I can tell by the copyright dates on my new CDs. It's 2008. The birdies are making all sorts of happy racket outside my kitchen window; the high temperatures are creeping up, up, slowly up; Opening Day is less than a week away.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I">http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/092005knowing/">I knew nothing about high end hi-fi. Hard to believe, I know. But true. I didn't even know that the high end existed. My Magnavox boombox worked just fine. As a person grew older and gained the responsibilities and markings of an adult, I knew that his or her speakers and amplifiers grew larger and flashier and more expensive&#151like their houses and cars and debt&#151but I didn't equate those changes with better sound. I didn't even think about better sound.

The Solo Mini Mini Cooper. Vroom vroom.

The sun is almost all gone now and the streetlamps along Newark Avenue are just beginning to take on a sort of greenish glow. The sky has become a shadowy mess. We're trying to postpone something. Who would want the day to end like this?