LATEST ADDITIONS

Huckleberry lurks in the shadows.

Now that it's fall, Bagheera barely leaves the toasty top of the Mac music server.

The casual interest soon transformed into an addiction and an obsession. Does <i>obsession</i> come before <i>addiction</i>, or after? I'm not sure. Either way, the salsa didn't seem to mind. It started in early August with two albums: <i>Siembra</i> by Ruben Blades and <i><a href="http://blog.stereophile.com/stephenmejias/la_gran_fuga/">La Gran Fuga</a></i> by Willie Colon. These two led me to several others which led me to more still. I read one pretty crappy Hector Lavoe biography, sent dozens of fiery e-mails to my family in Puerto Rico, devoured tons of liner notes, and watched a gazillion YouTube videos. I've now collected over 20 albums (all on CD), have lured one uncle into sending me rare and classic songs from his library of MP3s, coerced another into donating to my cause his entire LP collection (we'll see about that), and uncovered an entire world of really deep, incredibly hot tracks. The addiction is not fading.

At last, an explanation of why carefully coiled cables grow knots.

I read <I>Slate</I> primarily to catch my colleague Fred Kaplan's "War Stories" column, but whenever I read Fred, I also go to Garry Trudeau's "The Sandbox," a milblog that allows military personnel stationed in Iraq and Afganistan to "vent, rhapsodize, and [inform] the folks on the home front . . . what is going on from their point of view."

The new Miles Davis <I>On The Corner</I> set, which Sony says is the last metal boxed chunk of Miles they're gonna release, ever, is also the most beautiful, ever. Like the LP which reached its finest, most completely perfected form just before CDs came in, the boxed set is reaching its zenith with this one. The funky characters from the original cover are now stamped into the metal casing into which the set, book and CDs combined slip into. It's the same setup that Sony’s been using since the beginning of what has proved to be colossal reissue program.

Philip K. Dick has become a huge success 25 years after his death. He'd have seen the humor in that.