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Hey, have you ever wondered what it’s like to be a <i>Stereophile</i> staffer? (I have.)

There was fast food like Catalonian baguette pizza with chorizo. Tapas like flash fried baby squid or crispy potatoes with olive oil mayo and tomato sauce. And then of course there was that robber baron Rupert Murdoch and his damnable tabloid <I>The Sun</I> which every morning has a half&#150;naked twentysomething smiling at you from page two! Danni, 23, from Coventry was my personal favorite. Yes, Europe does have its advantages!

And then there was the music, right, right, the music. A mini-theme of the 41st installment of the Barcelona Jazz Festival was the 50th anniversary of <I>Kind of Blue</I>. The idea, and it was an admirable one, was to turn three groups of musicians loose on Miles masterwork and then sit back and enjoy the contrasting approaches. Now that I’m back in the States and have had a few days to contemplate what I saw, it all sort of comes under the heading of: “The Mysterious Ways in Which a Musician’s Mind Works(?).” Or “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Drummers.”

Nellie McKay’s <I>Normal As Blueberry Pie: A Tribute to Doris Day</I> (Verve, CD and LP) is the unlikeliest delight of the year. Who’d have thought that the snarkmistress of <I>Get Away from Me</I> (her 2004 debut double-album, with its “Explicit Lyrics” label, downtown cool, and sharp-wit irony, to say nothing of the title’s savage slash at the then-raging darling, Norah Jones) could produce such gentle covers of hits once sung by the queen of wholesomeness?

The December 2009 issue of <i>Stereophile</i> is now on newsstands. Our final issue of 2009 includes our annual “<a href="http://www.stereophile.com/features/1208poty/index9.html">Products of the Year</a>” feature. People love this feature. We’re already receiving fun complaints from manufacturers whose products are not <i>pictured</i> in the article, complaints from readers because we only vote on products we’ve actually <i>listened to</i>, complaints from angry moms because we didn’t pick their children to play one of the lead roles in “A Christmas Carol.”

Well, here’s <i>another</i> great video from Grizzly Bear. The band is like a bottomless cup of creativity. How do they do it? Don’t they have record reviews to write? Don’t they have issues to ship to press?

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery...or maybe not!

If just seeing a room can make you mouth water...well, this was it.