I've told you about <a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/121807complaint/">my love for CBS' Sunday Morning</a> news program. The show is simply fantastic. Charles Osgood is the host. Charles Osgood wears bowties and talks in perfect rhyme. Mo Rocca knows how to dress. David Edelstein takes me to the movies. Bill Geist is the most charming buffoon. Ben Stein has a strange way of lifting the human spirit. Serena Altschul makes me sigh.
Much of the April issue shipped to prepress yesterday, and the big "Recommended Components" feature is on its way out right now. All that's left to go is "Letters," "Industry Update," and the table of contents. Often, our shipping days coincide with the arrival of our office supply of the previous month's issue. That is, as we send off the April issue, the completed and bound March issues are arriving here.
We spent almost all of today proofreading the April 2008 edition of "Recommended Components." One day of proofreading, however, is not enough.
Omar and I left my apartment and stepped into the chilly night air, on our way to Binny's Liquors.
Hi! Where've you been?
In bed the night before last, images of large and heavy loudspeakers carefully maneuvered into their old shipping cartons and up the narrow flight of stairs from JA's listening room, around a tight bend made tighter by piles of shoes and other things, and up another flight into a hall separating dining room from living room. One heavy step at a time, carefully.
I think it was the only album my parents owned on both cassette and vinyl. So they could listen at home, and in the car. I remember looking at it and thinking I don't know what. This young black man in a gleaming white suit with a look on his face that says what. Looking all confident and comfortable and strange.
It was a quarter to five on the last day of the show, and I was feeling good. I mentioned this to John Atkinson. He was sitting there beside me. The bus was empty but for us. We were waiting to go back to our hotel, waiting to leave the noise and smoke and lights of the crowded, extravagant Venetian. The place is madness. All of Vegas is madness.
In the Loiminchay room, I listened to the standmounted Degas loudspeakers (starting at $15,000/pair). Designer Patrick Chu was a painter before he starting building loudspeakers, and finds inspiration in his favorite artists. He named his smallest loudspeaker after the French Impressionist whose paintings, Chu says, are "romantic and musical." Other Loiminchay speakers include the $35,000 Chagall and top-of-the-line $45,500 Kandinsky.
Totem was showing their special anniversary model, The One ($3595). Along with Naim electronics, the sound created was powerful, fast, and fun. We listened to "How I Love That Woman," a soaring instrumental by Bob Brozeman.