<I>Business Week</I> has a cool photo essay on the making of a Steinway. The accompanying article is worth reading, too, but the pix are primo.

Who knew there was so much librarian humor out there?

Check one and two, but you won't find any of three in my apartment. Unless, of course, you count <i>Story of O</i>&#151and you <i>might</i>. I like to think of it, however, as erotica. Then there's <i>The Forty-Eight Ways</i>. Is that porn? Nah, it's more of a manual. Takeout menus are few, and include: Wild Fusion (their green curry is delightful); Frank's Pizzeria (a large regular costs five bucks!); and La Conguita (their <i>pernil asado</i> reminds me of my grandma's). I don't keep a very large collection of <i>Stereophile</i> back issues at home, but I do have a few special issues on the bookshelf in my living room.

SWSX 2007. It was the year of the female singer. And of course of Iggy.

Let's do Mr. Osterberg first.

South By Southwest usually saves the best for last, which always seems to mean the final act at Stubb's on Saturday night. For those unfamiliar with Austin, Stubb's is a BBQ joint, once owned by CB Stubblefield or "Stubb," a Navasota, Texas native who opened his first pit out in Lubbock after returning from the KO-rean (as they say it in Texas). While C.B. and his Lubbock restaurant are gone now, his name lives on in a line of nationally marketed sauces and in the Austin location, which has what can only charitably called a "venue" out back. Big, slanty, mudhole is more like it. Instead of an amphitheatre, Stubbs is a hillside sloping down into a gulley which collects rain, trash and chicks showing their tits to whatever heartthrob (Iggy Pop?) is onstage at the time. If it rains, forgetaboutit. Last year I stood in the rain and watched the Pretenders and promised myself nevermore. This year I watched an earlier act on the same bill, the Kings of Leon, who were absolutely wonderful except for the fact that they've now adopted a weird, pretty boy kind of look. They played a set heavy with the material from their new record, <I>Because of the Times</I> which was <I>Stereophile</I>'s Recording of the Month for March, and it rocked.

<I>Consumerist</I> posts a nice rant from a music <I>buyer</I> who went over to the dark side because his <I>legally purchased</I> music was crippled by DRM so that he couldn't listen to it on his iPod.