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On a Dissecting Table

AlexO's response to Leila's Blood, Looms, and Blooms made me chuckle. AlexO wrote:

I listened to the album on MySpace. What a weird musical style and the whole album is so unusual. I see a pattern developing: As with most of your musical recommendations, I walk away confused: not quite sure whether I really love the album or not caring for it at all. It's the most unsettling feeling.

This is a very interesting response. On one hand, I feel that I've succeeded at something (or perhaps it's that Leila has succeeded): If someone were to tell me that an album is weird and…

As Lovely and Troubling As

Which brings me to my latest recommendation: Xiu Xiu's Women As Lovers takes its alluring title from a novel by Austrian author Elfriede Jelinek. The album, Xiu Xiu's sixth full-length, was released much earlier this year, but I only got around to it this weekend, during a trip to Vintage Vinyl in good ol' Fords, NJ, along rich and wild Route 1.

The album is similarly rich and wild, with gorgeous, captivating sound throughout and a wonderful collection of instruments&#151everything from the more traditional guitars, bass, drums, and sax to the more unusual harmonium, metal…

Vinyl Record Day

Today is/was/forever will be remembered as: Vinyl Record Day. August 12th, the day Thomas Edison blessed us with the phonograph.

Vinyl Record Day is not limited to one age category, race, gender, ethnic background, or any other special group. Vinyl Record Day (VRD) is because we love vinyl. It's more than just the music. As Jimi Hendrix said, LPs are like our personal diaries. A primary goal of VRD is to establish a national day when we all enjoy the music most personally important to us. It's for our own individual enjoyment, and collectively, it is for society to have…

A Private Function

After the driving was complete, Bentley got us an after-hours tour of the Isabella Stewart Gardener Museum. Nice place—especially if your taste runs to Venetian Renaissance palazzos filled with fine art. The tour was eye opening and afterwards we retired to the cloisters for adult beverages and a catered affair, complete with chamber music in the courtyard.

Bentley certainly impressed me with the Continental Flying Spur. Yes it's expensive, No, I could never afford one, but I can't afford a lot of the stuff I write about. But a man can dream, can't he?

Besides, with the…

More Weight!

I walked over to Giles Corey's cenotaph—he is of course, the sole "witch" not hung, but rather pressed to death by heaping large rocks upon him until he was crushed. It took three days. As Arthur Miller memorialized in The Crucible, his last words were, "More weight."

Salem Witchcraft Trials Tercentenary Memorial

Salem is full of New Age and Wyccan shoppes and it has an overabundance of "museums" that are more wax museum than serious repositories of history—heck, the place even has a statue of Elizabeth Montgomery in her role as Samantha on Bewitched. But it also has the Salem Witchcraft Trials Tercentenary Memorial.

The memorial reminds me of the Vietnam War memorial in DC, since rather than being a heroic bronze casting, it is about negative space. It is surrounded on three sides by a hand-built wall of New England granite. Inscribed into the threshold of the fourth side are the…

The Bunghole

Of course, any city with a maritime history has pirate history, too. In recent years, Salem has skewed more towards witches than pirates, but some traditions remain, including Beavis and Butthead tavern—or in this case, liquor store—names.

<I>Friendship of Salem</I>

After the Nubble, we switched cars and I got to ride in the rear right seat of a Continental Flying Spur with a "Comfort" package. That means better leather, a rear-seat entertainment package (including DVD player and noise suppressing headphones with a Bentley logo) and a lumbar-massaging seat, which really made being driven an even better experience.

The downside of the rear seat position, however, is that the woofer, which is mounted in the boot and ports its sound into the cabin through the parcel shelf, doesn't quite blend seamlessly with the other 14 cabin-mounted speakers.…

Nubble Lighthouse

The pack o'Bentleys drove out of Boston and east to the Maine coast, following the twisty shore roads up to Port Neddick and the Nubble Lighthouse, purported to have been featured on more post cards than any other lighthouse. I didn't know where that was, so I followed along in the middle of the pack, playing my uncompressed ALC files through the Naim system.

The sound was superb—from the driver's seat, at least. The DSP really did keep the music sounding the same at any speed and the control system was unfussy and straightforward. Best car sound ever? I have heard some systems at…

Acceleration Exhilaration

Naturally, this NY resident, who doesn't own a car, was given a Speed for a starter car. No problem—as it turns out people get out of the way when they see eight Bentleys coming at them. As a result, I managed not to hit any pedestrians or guardrails—only the road.

Another cool aspect to the 2009 Bentleys: Adaptive Cruise Control, which uses a grille-mounted radar sensor to monitor the upcoming roadway, If a slow driver cuts in front of you, refusing to yield right-of-way to a person of your class, the cruise control will automatically keep your car a preset distance from it. Best…