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Interrogating the Angles

I know that I can hear differences between... I mean: I know that music sounds different when...

Crap, what am I trying to say?

Music coming out of the Totem Arros sounds different from [than?] music coming out of the DeVore gibbons. I think that's what I'm trying to say. Something like that, at least.

Music sounds different depending upon the speakers I'm using... er, listening to. Whatever.

There are differences. Real differences. That's for certain.

For certain?

But I can't, for the life of me, figure out what those differences are.…

St. Elmo's Fire

Cooking up plasma in the kitchen. But remember kids, don't try this at home.

OK, I'm Glad We Cleared That Up

Cecil Adams says he knows what OK stands for. Now if only somebody would clear up that "whole nine yards" mess.

The Price of Entry

B. S. Prakash muses on what it takes to get into the American labor force. The last line's a kicker.

Edna O'Brien on Beckett

What a great writer she is—this is like prose crack.

Terry Teachout on the Beatles

And popular songs and why only "Yesterday" became a "standard in the old fashioned sense."

A Fe(a)st of Sorts

Tomorrow, music editor Robert Baird is off to Austin, Texas, for the South By Southwest Music, Film, and Interactive Fest. He attends year after year.

I remember, back in college, I pined to go to this. Though I was a DJ and music director at our little independent radio station, we were never able to raise the funds to participate in the event. Austin, TX, seemed a million miles away from the Hackensack River, and even during high-tide, we'd never make it there.

Later, in the dreamy days and drunken nights of Multi-Purpose Solution land, I longed for the band to actually…