I mentioned Pat Paulsen [home page] for President to Neli just a few weeks ago… and it turned out she had never heard of him. Then, just last night I found this album for a buck at the thrift store [and in good shape, too!]. And, upon reflection, I think the guy at the thrift shop, who, albeit being of the right age to be aware of Pat, ALSO was not aware of who he was [thought I was buying some kind of political memorabilia or something - and he is slightly correct, but…].

So, for all you folks who do not remember the late 60s and early 70s, Pat Paulsen [wikipedia] was a comedian on the Smothers Brother’s Show who tried to bring some humor to a stressful election by deciding to run for president of the U.S.. Several times.

Presidential campaign slogan: “If elected, I will win.”

1988 campaign…

A little dated compared to Colbert and Jon Stewart, but …

We don’t get many trick-or-treaters in the suburban mountains - the distance between homes is too large and people value their privacy too much for it to be an efficient use of those few hours trick-or-treaters get to gather their tons of candies and sweets. I mean, we’ll get one every few years and, since we have purchased no candy for this rare Halloween emergency, we give them 10 bucks or so [hey, the made it up 50 yards of a steep driveway and then up 45 steps, in the dark, on Halloween, they deserve to be rewarded for their intrepidity]

Last night was an average Halloween, and we received no visitors. Just kind of hung out. It was a really warm [for these parts] Halloween and maybe we should have gone out and done something. I don’t know. You never really do. ‘Know’, I mean.

So we were just hanging out, shooting the breeze, marveling at this or that piece of juicy insider gossip that most people would probably find incredibly geeky and BAMM! the stereo starts playing music.

Kind of weird…

You know, when this happens, we check to see if someone is holding the remote, and then, which happens sometimes, we check to see if someone is SITTING on the remote. So a little squirming and a ‘finally getting up and peering at the couch’ later, … no remote. The remote is sitting on the CD player.

Hmm….

Well, we all have probably been there when a little power spike comes through that is hardly noticeable but is severe enough to power cycle something that is set to AutoPlay on power-up.

Well, this CD player was not set for AutoPlay but it does have the capability, so maybe a few bits in its EPROM got munged and well, there is nothing spooky about this. These things happen, right?

This particular CD that was now playing was one of those sampler CDs. It sounded pretty good so we left it playing and went back to our gossiping and frenzied giggling [just kidding ]. So first we heard an old Dire Straits cut, then an old Pretenders, then a cut from the Police [Roxxxxxxxaaaaaaaaaaaaane… ], and we were really feeling the groove, you know?

So I asked Neli, when did you get this CD? and she tells me that she had no IDEA what CD it was, that I must have put it in.

Yeah, right.

Well, maybe. My memory these days, I got CRS [Can’t Remember Shtuff] syndrome. Maybe I DID put it in. Still wondered what CD it could possibly be - I do not usually buy and do not often like compilation CDs. They usually just have a few songs I like and then the rest of the time I just really wanna wanna wanna push Next Track.

Well stranger things have happened, so I somehow must have purchased this CD and at some time in the recent past actually put it in the CD player. OK. [see CRS syndrome above ]. This is my life - I don’t pay close attention to the things I am doing and so have no memory of them actually occurring.

But then… But then, in the middle of Sympathy for the Devil [sounded like the cut on Get Your YaYa’s Out. An awesome cut, but this one sounded remastered or something because it actually sounded Tony-the-Tiger GRRRREAT] it just stopped playing.

Another power spike? Probably.

Well, I was really enjoying that and, when the music did not restart on its own [funny how easy we get to labor-saving power spikes] I grunted and groaned [for good effect]. got up and pressed play, intending on skipping tracks until we got back to the Stones.

But the weirdest thing… the first track was the 1st movement of Nelson’s Mass. I pressed skip, still looking for the Stones, but the entire CD was Haydn masses. This was weird AND really kind of annoying. I popped the CD out and yep, Haydn.

Hmmmmm…..

Well, we did what any normal, warm-blooded human being would do in this situation. We shrugged our shoulders and played the Haydn.

Still. Kind of mysterious….

This was a month or so ago…

As often happens, it was around 2 or 3am and we were asleep.

I then woke up out of a sound sleep because my overlarge but quite efficient nose had detected an unusually strong smell in the air.

The small of way WAY too hot electronics. That is what it smelled like anyway.

As it so happened, I woke Neli in my somewhat panicky attempt to get out of bed and see what was happening. The smoke alarms were not going off so that seemed like a good sign [but who trusts those things anyway? They mostly go off because their battery got a little low - who knows if they actually work].

We discussed our guest who was sleeping, presumably soundly, downstairs and I was nominated to pound on their door and rouse them if that became necessary - as I was male and so were they [still are to the best of my knowledge].

And here is the thing - we had turned on all the audio gear in two systems - and some of which was not hooked up but on stand-by. So we cannot but think that something is seriously overheating and in danger of a melt down. Right? So we go sniffing this and sniffing that. The Ongaku amp? Nice clean warm comfy-on-a-cold-morning air coming off of that. The Meitner ? Nice new yummy electronics small was coming off of that.

I mean, we are sticking our noses in the most unusual places, behind racks, under benches. Making all these sniff sniff sniffing noises. And we were kind of in a hurry. This was a VERY strong smell.

But nothing smelled bad. We went downstairs. The equipment there was also fine.

Was it the furnace? Sniff the air coming out of the ducts. Nope.

So then we went room to room, just to see if we could smell where it was the strongest. Kind of strong in my office - but *sniff* *sniff* *sniff* my monitor and computer were fine.

Then I thought to start turning on the lights to see what we could see. I went to look in the bathroom, to turn on the light there, and it wouldn’t come on. Then I remembered I had turned it on as a sort of ‘night light’ for our guest should he want to come up stairs to the kitchen for a snack.

But the light was not on and wouldn’t go on.

Then I turned on the secondary lights, the shower lights, to see what the heck was happening here, not thinking it was related.

But lo and behold, the light had blown out, and apparently had caught fire, causing a big stink but luckily not burning the house down. The was a Sunbeam florescent bulb from 2002.

Well that was that. We turned off the power to the thing, made sure it was dormant, and then went back to bed.

Shame on us for thinking at first that it was the audio equipment! Bad us! Could of just as well been an old TV or computer or whatever.

Certainly would never think it was a light bulb. Kind of scarey to think about. It was an older bulb, and I am sure the technology has advanced quite a bit since those early days of screw-in florescent replacements for incandescent bulbs.

I’ll post a photo later. If I do that now, then people will know what the culprit was just by scanning the blog without having to first follow along as Mike Cheech and Neli Chong went sniffing at the most unlikely things that night.

[Thanks Mike M!]

Dear Santa,

The following is the list of things you seem to have forgotten to bring me this year [I understand the economy is rough; but seriously, could you make sure you don’t have a few items in your sleigh that you forgot to deliver last night???]:

1. 100,000 mint condition LPs, across multiple genres and in order thank you, all previously Loricrafted with the 4-step Walker Prelude cleaning process. [if not this year, perhaps next Christmas?]

2. Enough Nordost ODIN, Jorma PRIME and Audio Note PALLAS to cable out all 3 of our rooms [and maybe the 4th we are thinking of adding] in either 100% pure ODIN (or PRIME or PALLAS) and in any kind of mixed-cable madness we might want to hear someday. [perhaps this is just stuck in the chimney? I’ll go look.] [Nope. Doesn’t seem to be there. Hmmmmm… Not sure what the problem is here.]

3. A blank check and the name of reputable and competent contractors to add several rooms to our house for the following speakers, one pair for each room. which we would also appreciate very much if you could deliver ASAP: Marten Momentos, Kharma Grand Exquisites (and/or Midi Grande Exquisites), Wilson Alexandria II, Acapella Sphaeron, Audio Note Sogon (at least ONE of these new rooms has to have corners for the AN speakers, unlike our current house), [Oh, and FedEx or UPS is OK, too, if, you know, Rudolph and the other reindeer are a little pooped from last night’s hectic delivery schedule].

4. 1000s of free plane tickets - which come with free room and board at the Boulderado, so that we can fly in everyone who wants to hear their favorite music on any or all of the above setups. [or. hey, you can just fix the real-estate mess, make everyone giddy in the process, and get us a place in the big city. You know, a city that people are already traveling to in the normal course of living their lives?]

Well, Santa. Four things on my list. Not so bad. You’re doing a great job so far, and we know World Peace is not something you can help with, but it seems to me that the items on this list are exactly the kind of things you are so awesome at.

But please HURRY; because right now Neli thinks *I* am Santa, and boy oh boy, this list is going to take me some amount of time to work through…

Happy Holidays, Santa [and to all of you out there, too! Happy New Year!]

[Crossfitness is all the rage in fitness land. It consists of highly varied workouts done at warp speed (as quickly as possible) and focus on exercises that are actually useful in the real world. WOD stands for Workout Of the Day].

1. Big Amp Pump: Lift 90lb. Audio Note Ongaku. Take 2 steps forward. Put it back down… carefully.
a. Advanced: carry it up and/or down 10 stairs
b. Advanced: put it down to your right and/or left (comes in handy because of all those amp-stand and cable footing issues)

2. Rack Shuffle: Lift 50 lb component off of a rack and put it gently onto the floor. Lift 50 lb component up off the floor and insert it into a rack. (aka the “cables still don’t reach blues”)
a. Advanced: Do not slide it (feet often stick to and or rub the finish off of quality equipment rack shelves) but instead stick out your rear to counter-balance the weight as you extend your arms and component into the rack.

3. Cable Contortion: connect (correctly!) the 20 ends of 10 cables and power cords to components on a rack that is too close to the wall. (aka “Squished Skull” and “Why oh Why Can’t My Arm Bend That Way Just For a Second” blues)
a. Advanced: use only the big ELROD power cords (when cold and stiff) and suitably stiff interconnects [stiffest ones we have here are Odin and they aren’t too bad] .

4. Component Packman: take 10 components off the racks, amps and speakers and pack them in their shipping cartons. Then unpack them and set them up (aka lets exhibit at a show or someone else’s listening room - essentially 1,2 and 3) .

5. Dusting Time: move all your LPs and CDs and dust the shelves they are on.
a. Advanced: re-order them [this is hard for us since we have 2+ major locations for CDs and 3+ for LPs scattered throughout the house].

——

Now, according to way all the crossfit sites do it, we are supposed to time ourselves and say we can do, say, 4, in, like 26 minutes or something.

We do 1, 2 and 3 all the time.

We have NEVER done 5

You know, I was thinking about how dangerous these shootouts are becoming.

We do them in the evening, and sometimes we order out some food [usually Vietnamese] and we draft somebody [Neli. ] to go pick up it and bring it back.

We then consume mass quantities and listen to a CD or LP kind of casually and chat about how cool it would be to have X, Y or Z for the next shootout.

Then it is back to the shootout proper: listening, going up to the system and switching cables, powercords, whatever back and forth. More listening.

Ponying up to the system, my tummy being overly full to the point of me whining about it to everybody who will listen [that would be, as it always is, nobody] I then had this terrible waking nightmare:

The button pops off my shorts, goes sailing through the air like a button who really hated being under extreme pressure all these years, and strikes one of the tubes on the most lovely sounding, exquisite, amps we have ever heard.

And the tube *explodes* from the impact. Glass is everywhere. Sparks are flying. The lights in the kitchen are flashing off and on.

I start wondering if Neli is going to kill me with knife or pistol.

Then an extremely unlikely and not very nice event occurs. The exploding tube generates some kind of freak surge and the dying amp takes out not one but both speakers. Drivers are now sailing across the room in cannonball like trajectories.

One lands in the bowl of Red Curry Stew with extra Tofu, and splashes Red Curry Stew with Extra Tofu all over the stack of LPs we had brought upstairs for the demo.

The other hits the floor and starts rolling across the room like the old Bridgestone Tire commercials, continues until it encounters the stairs going down to the other listening room - which it then starts plopping down ‘plop’ ‘plop’.

It then continues to go ‘plop'’plop’ down the stairs in the now very, very quiet listening room as I look at everybody else in the room and present them with the stupidest grin I can come up with.

All this to say that I am resolving to be on the safe side and eat less take out at our shootouts from now on.

[Even though that take out *is* really, really yummy… Hmmmm, maybe I’ll just walk up to the system sideways, facing any buttons AWAY from the system.]

click click click click.

…

click click.. click click?

…

click CLICK CLICK!

…

CLICK??

=> Overheard: The sound of an audiophile working with selector switches - trying to figure out why no sound is coming out of them big ass awesome speakers.

[what was wrong? There were two preamps in the loop and one had its volume set to zero. Yep, that’ll do it]

[Hmmm… that last post had a crazy title for awhile - sorry about that]

Next month’s issue will feature a ‘Best of’ section.

Now, this is not the roll the dice, smoke-filled back room, KMA, what-were-they-thinking kind of best of the year kind of section. You can see those elsewhere. In fact there’s an epidemic of those.

The people most harmed by those types of lists are the people who buy gear every 5 to 10 years and look at these lists to decide what to buy [been there, done that].

And it is not even going to be a REAL Best Sounding Gear of The Year feature - which we could do but, seriously, the people who really care about good sound already know what sounds good. The may not be able to afford it [right now] but they pretty much know what to listen for and to.

No, our list will answer questions like:

Who has the coolest remote control?
Who has the fattest cables?

… and many more

You are invited to vote on these important questions, and many more - and add questions of your own - just post your votes or questions in a comment to this post.

Enjoy!