LATEST ADDITIONS

My favorite moment in the Zack Snyder film <I>Watchmen</I>&#151;apart from the Dylan-fueled title sequence, which itself contains some of the most memorable scenes in recent cinema&#151;comes when retired crimefighter Daniel "Nite Owl II" Dreiberg arrives home to find the doctrinaire and mildly crazy Walter "Rorschach" Kovacs in his kitchen, eating beans straight from the can. The startled Dreiberg asks his visitor, "Would you like me to heat those up for you?"

"Think before you speak is criticism's motto; speak before you think is creation's."&#151;E.M. Forster, "The Raison d'&#202;tre of Criticism in the Arts," 1947 (footnote 1)

In October 2005's "<A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/thefifthelement/1005fifth">The Fifth Element</A>." I said of the Harbeth HL-3P-ES2, a descendant of the <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/361">BBC LS3/5A</A>, "Gloriosky, these little speakers are just great to listen to!" Later, in <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/standloudspeakers/1293harbeth/index5.html">A… 2007</A>, John Atkinson endorsed that remark.

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.”

We can’t let Sarah Palin have all the fun.

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.”