vibes

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving, regardless of where they are.

Tony, let me know how you like them. $700 is the MSRP on these, and I've always thought that was a bit steep. I can tell you that based on the manufacturer's cost, the place you bought them from isn't making very much off of them. Nice find - hope you like them! I tried to get my Sony rep to give me some, but MDRV700DJ's were the best he could do.

Tony, were the MDRCD3000's $700? I just ordered some for bestbuy.com...I don't plan on selling many of them. Pretty steep price for the typical Best Buy customer. We'll see...

Jim, thank you for those comments. I too hope that people won't take WINGY too seriously. His posts crack me up, and I seriously don't understand how anyone can take him seriously. I'll just sit back and laugh a bit more, now that WINGY's around.

That "fook" is the Cantonese word for "blessing." More often than not, it's written "fuk." You see it all over the place in business names. Anyway, I wish I had a picture of my favorite usage of that word in Hong Kong - Chik Fuk Street.

I completely agree, and have found the "dumbing down" of English very frustrating at times. In high school and college, I would frequently have fellow students ask me what I was talking about because they couldn't understand a few slightly more complex words here and there. It's appalling.

This is the case for all languages I've come across. Compare Latin to its descendants, and you'll find that they're all much simpler than the mother language. The same can also be said in other parts of the world, such as China. Mandarin is the youngest of the Chinese dialects, and (generally speaking) has the fewest tones and fewest distinct sounds out of all of them too. Is simplification a form of improvement? Possibly...

"zhege" would be the correct spelling. It means "this" or "this one."

I think some of these things that we find annoying, such as "nu-cu-lar" are actually regional variants in English. I've always found this topic truly fascinating, and took as many classes on dialectology and linguistics (Chinese, not English) as were available in my major in college. Here's an interesting site I found last year regarding American dialects: Dialect Survey I found going through all the questions very interesting. I discovered that I frequently pronounce or use words differently than people around me, simply because I am conscious of the fact that they say/use them incorrectly. Ah, the joys of being uptight...

Pretty much the same for me, except that I've never even tried coffee. To this day, the smell makes me sick. I do enjoy hot cocoa, but only have it a few times a year. Watching my colleagues and people at my company in general (the Caribou Coffee in my office building has to be the busiest one in the country), I'm glad I don't have this need/habit. I see many people I know easily spending $75-100/mo or more on coffee. Me, I'm just on a natural high...

I can't imagine it being Christmas without wanting a Mosaic set. On my list this year: Roy Eldridge Joe Pass John Patton Paul Chambers Bennie Green Randy Weston Curtis Amy My wife claims I won't be getting any music for Christmas this year, but she said the same thing for my birthday and I ended up getting the Johnny Hodges Mosaic and the Bill Evans "Turn Out The Stars" box.

Many thanks, Chuck!

I got this box a couple months ago and just opened it today, and I'm very impressed. This is actually my first time hearing Duke Ellington in a big band setting . I decided to buy something I was totally unfamiliar with for my last Mosaic purchase, and I'm glad this was it. I just finished listening to "Afro Bossa" and am now listening to "Mary Poppins," and all the music has been great so far, and the sound is excellent too. I also found the booklet very interesting too. Since most of the music in this box was recorded more than a decade before I was born, I found the information about the musical landscape in the early-to-mid-60's very interesting. Anyway, if anyone's thinking about getting this box, please do before it's gone, and you'll be glad you did.

I just got this set and am looking for the original track listings for these Reprise releases: Will The Big Bands Ever Come Back? Duke Ellington's Greatest Hits I've checked around the internet and can't find anything. Thanks in advance.

I'd love to hear some Organissimo Christmas music as well. I was listening to Jimmy Smith's Christmas album a couple days ago and thinking to myself how there wasn't enough B3 Christmas stuff out there. Would love to hear Organissimo's take on some holiday tunes.

There are some great tracks in the Charlie Christian box that should probably be in there. I'd put a version of Hamp doing "Flying Home" in there as well. Lots of other great recommendations have already been given.

My system: It's connected to a Sharp MD-X7 minidisc shelf system. I'd much rather spend what little money I have on music than expensive components. The closest thing in my system to "audiophile" is my Sony MDRV700DJ headphones, and I got those for free from my Sony rep.

Strange how close together all of our results are...mine were the same as everyone else's, with Secular Humanism being at the top, and Unitarian Universalism being second. Interestingly enough, the religion I was raised in and no longer am a part of (Mormonism) was 7th on my list.

We stay at home for Thanksgiving every year. Since I work in retail, it's best if I go to the office the day after Thanksgiving to monitor sales and such, and that means no traveling... This year, my brother and his wife and baby are coming to our home for Thanksgiving. They moved to Iowa a few months ago and are the only family we have that live even remotely close to us. We'll probably eat in the early afternoon. The meal is pretty traditional, nothing too exciting. I hate televised sports, so if I have anything to say about it, there will be no football on the TV. Unfortunately, my brother is a huge sports fan so I probably won't be able to make it through the day without suffering through at least a little football.

Hey, nice to see so many other people are dieting. I'm doing the Atkins thing too. Today's meals: Breakfast - hot dog (plain, no bun or anything) Lunch - Cheese bratwurst w/grilled onions Dinner - Eggs and bacon I've lost 60 lbs since January. It was actually 75 at one point, but then I went off the diet for a while and...

You bastard. Why did I vote in this god-forsaken poll, anyway?

I'm a big fan of Christmas music, and am looking to expand my collection of Christmas jazz. I would appreciate recommendations, especially for items currently in print. Here are a few things I either have or am looking to buy soon: Ella Fitzgerald - Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas Kenny Burrell - Have Yourself a Soulful Little Christmas Vince Guaraldi - Charlie Brown Christmas Jimmy Smith - Christmas Cookin' Ramsey Lewis - The Sound of Christmas What else is out there?

This is not accurate at all. Our clerks are supposed to know much more than their discount retailer counterparts, and are supposed to be able to give much more personalized service too. The company is currently doing tests in some markets with having employees that receive much more training and leeway to do their jobs, and the results have been fantastic thus far. I know there are some boardmembers that live in some of these markets, so they may have seen these special-format stores (I'm not at liberty to say where they are). It's best to keep in mind that at this time of the year, chances are very likely that you're going to run into seasonal employees - those hired just for the holidays - when you go into a Best Buy. We have plans to hire more than 20,000 this year, chainwide. Anyway, seasonal employees aren't going to know much, especially about something more esoteric like SACD. I should also note that SACD is not a focus for Best Buy, so I'm not at all surprised that the clerk wasn't able to give STAX accurate information. Most people have still never even heard of SACD. I'm glad to see that the company is giving the format a chance, but offerings are slim - we used to carry two Sony DVD players and one Sony home theater-in-a-box that had SACD capability, and I think we're down to one Sony HTiB and one Pioneer DVD/DVD-A/SACD player. I've been told the Pioneer model sells pretty well, which is good. The two Sony models we used to sell didn't do so great. On the brighter side, SACD offerings in the Best Buy stores in my area are about 3-4x bigger than they were when I bought my player earlier this year. Most of the SACD's that have been released that have piqued my interest (mainly jazz titles from Universal, Blue Note, Fantasy) have been available at my local store, which is nice, because the standard CD format jazz section is pathetic at the local Best Buys.

Teddy Charles - Coolin' Eric Dolphy with the Latin Jazz Quintet - Caribe Tal Farlow - The Return of Tal Farlow Nat Adderley - Work Song Stan Getz/Cal Tjader Sextet Barney Kessel - Feeling Free

Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane Anything by Wes Montgomery The Book Series by Booker Ervin Anything by Bill Evans Anything by Walt Dickerson