I see a lot of new speaker designs in the course of a month as I peruse through press releases looking for new products to feature in the front section of Home Entertainment.

But it's been a long time since a loudspeaker really caught my eye and demanded my attention the way Sounds by Design's Blackmore and Elise do.

 

Okay, so writing verse obviously isn't part of my job description. But finding and writing about (and coveting) cool stuff is, so if anyone in your house still needs another 'prise or two under the tree, feel free to crib from my own Christmas wishlist:

I know what's about to happen. I'm about to sit here and type a thousand words or so, waxing left and right about The Beatles: Rock Band, how it fits into the current glut of music/rhythm games, whether it does justice to the band and their legacy, blah blah blah...

When really, what it all boils down to is this: if you like The Beatles, go buy this game. Now. If you like the Beatles and don't own a PS3 or Xbox 360 (or Wii, I guess), go buy one of those. Now. And then buy this game. Right after that.

Within half an hour of Tweeting the fact that I finally got my paws on the new stereo Beatles remasters this week, my email inbox was clogged with the same question repeated practically ad infinitum: “So... don’t leave me hanging. How do they sound?” The ellipses were often stretched to the point of abuse, and the question marks ranged from solitary to the obscene, but I read that exactly question so many times I almost started to have Tweet remorse

Honestly, though, who doesn’t want to know how these discs sound? So I’ll cut to the chase and tell you all what I told them:

Forty years ago yesterday, Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Buzz Aldrin sat on the tip of a big metal stick at the end of a massive explosion and pointed themselves toward the moon. Forty years ago this coming Monday, they arrived at their destination, kicked a little dirt, and said a few words we all know by heart, I'm sure. And to commemorate all of that exploding and dirt kicking and aphorism uttering, The Criterion Collection has released a new gussied up restored version of Al Reinert's seminal 1989 film For All Mankind.

It seems that the goal of the entertainment industry these days is to make me feel old. This fact first hit home for me a few years ago when Guns N' Roses' seminal Appetite for Destruction turned 20. It occurred to me, reflecting upon that fact, that as I terrorized the streets of my neighborhood during the summer of '87 in my beat-up old Camaro of Many Colors, pushing my newly acquired Learner's Permit to its limits, screaming "Paradise City" at the top of my lungs, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, itself turning 20 that year, seemed like old fogies' music. Or, at least, I pretended to think of it as old fogies' music. But if "A Day in the Life" was oldies music then, what does that make "Mr. Brownstone" now?

Our Resident Sasquatch Learns to Stop Worrying and Love the iPhone

The good news is that I don’t secretly loathe you anymore.

Yes, you—you unapologetic iPhone users, walking around, flaunting your apps and your slick touchscreen interface. Yeah, I’ll admit it: I secretly loathed you, and not because I’m some anti-iPhone elitist or Luddite curmudgeon, but because I was jealous, plain and simple.

YouTube Maestro Takes Mashup to New Heights

 

This is, without question, the single greatest YouTube video I've ever seen.

Click through to see.

I'm not, dammit!

I’m starting to feel like a nerd pariah.

Seriously, I may well be the only geek in the ‘verse who isn’t even slightly interested in seeing Watchmen this weekend. Even my wife gets a gleam in her eye when we see the trailer, and she’s never read the comic!

A few months ago, the unthinkable happened: my PlayStation 3 went on the fritz.

My first reaction, of course, was denial. PS3s don’t break, do they? Who ever heard of such a thing? And mine gets plenty of open airflow. Maybe it’s just a glitch—some bug in the new firmware.

A few days and a whole lot of spontaneous shutdowns later, it became obvious that I had on my hands the rarest of all birds—a Norwegian Blue PlayStation 3—so I hesitantly sent it in for repairs, all the while pleading with the techs at Sony to fix my precious machine.