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One night last week, a bout of channel surfing brought me to the Grammy nomination concert. Not the Grammys mind you, that’s in February, but a televised special to announce the nominations. And only the nominations of the celebrity&#151;driven stuff like Best New Artist which is when LL Cool J, who was hosting, walked across the front of the auditorium and ask the Jonas Brothers how it felt to be nominated. As the bile rose in my throat I changed the channel. I found it to be very strange that this was proceeded by a showing of the venerable 1964 stop motion animation special, <I>Rudolph, The Red&#151;Nosed Reindeer</I> which is narrated by Burl Ives and contains a couple of indelible toon icons in the prospector Yukon Cornelius and a Yeti called a “bumble.”

Naim Audio's Naim Classics label has begun releasing recordings in Dual Pack format that contains both a Red-Book CD and 24-bit/88.2kHz audio DVD for $24.95. The exclusive US distributor of Naim's high resolution titles will be <A HREF="http://www.premieremusic.net">www.premieremusic.net</A&gt;.

If home-gallows prices keep coming down, people won't go to public executions anymore. The home brothel has reduced the amount of cash American men spend each year on banging strangers. And thanks to the home sweatshop, the CEOs of all the major clothing manufacturers have been forced to take pay cuts. (I mean, come on: It was either that or something totally unimaginable, like shipping American jobs overseas, or cutting healthcare benefits for the rank and file.)

It was November 1999, in New Orleans. I had been on the road for almost a month, traveling on my own aboard Amtrak trains. I had a rail pass that allowed me to get on and off wherever I pleased. That freedom was great, but I became terribly lonely. Part of the deal was I had to make at least two stops in Canada. So, I went from New York City to Rochester to Niagara Falls and then up to Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa, and Toronto. All the while reading crazy shit like Pauline Reage's <i>Story of O</i> or Henry Miller's <i>Quiet Days in Clichy</i>, meeting beautiful people, falling in love with perfect strangers a hundred times a day, discovering wonderful new places and then leaving almost as soon as some hint of a connection was made.

She had short brown hair, brown eyes, and wore a brown bomber and a blue and green checked ivy cap. Every ten minutes, we'd have to stop so she could take a picture of something.

Well, I wasn't able to attend Saturday's "Deep Listening" discussion at the Philoctetes Center. A plane to Mexico was missed and I wound up drinking exotic beers and helping newlyweds plan their honeymoon. Long story.

The new high gloss, high performance <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/turntables/708rega/">Rega P3-24 turntable</a> complete with TT-PSU power supply (sold as an option with standard finish P3s) is now available. The updated P3 was a big winner in our <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/features/1208poty/">Products of the Year</a> celebration, taking home awards for both <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/features/1208poty/index3.html">Analog Source of the Year</a> and <a href="http://www.stereophile.com/features/1208poty/index7.html">Budget Component of the Year</a>.