In a discussion online about moving to Orlando, I had said that Em got a job at Rollins College. This set of replies ensued:
i didn’t know henry rollins had a college. i’d take a seminar on black flag.
one of the most popular courses is “standing on stage not moving in a crouch for two hours and screaming.” it’s an upper division class.
drop/add period last day to GET IN THE VAN.
My stereo had long ago morphed into a home theater system, and for a while I’d been thinking about separating the two. My stereo had been built up piecemeal since I was in high school, it was a real deal-hound special (huge floor standing cerwin vegas I got a garage sale in a ritzy suburb of Albany, the receiver that I bought online and the company sent the ship request to the warehouse, but had their credit card processing ability shut down before they could charge my card, the cd changer that was broken and kenwood replaced it with the top-of-the-line model). It served me well, but I knew that when I got a high def television set, I needed a receiver that could handle passing around the audio and video signals via HDMI. The speakers really didn’t fit in the house, either as part of the home theater setup or as part of a separate listening system.
After setting up a new home theater system (with just a receiver and a set of smaller infinity satellites), I decided to get a little radical with audio. I got rid of my cassette deck (it was time), my cd changer, and my turntable (still a little sad about this). The only pieces that survive from my system in LA is the Roku Soundbridge (a MP3 streamer) and the Mac Mini that sits in my office and serves it.
I wanted it to fit on a shelf in our new built-ins, and I think I put together a near perfect shelf system. It’s a Jolida Hybrid Tube Amp powering a pair of NHT Classic Two speakers. Against my better judgement I even upgraded my speaker cables and rca interconnects from radio shack models to Ixos wire and Acoustic Research interconnects.
The system sounds fantastic, the speakers have tremendous detail and the tubes in the amp add warmth to the sound. The weak link of the system is definitely the DAC in the Roku. It’s a budget unit, at some point I’ll use the optical output of the Roku and bypass the DAC, feeding it into an external DAC like this. At that point the only difference between my system and a high end cd system is the mp3 compression itself. Some day I’ll probably move to a lossless format, but the issue there is the iPod. Apple lossless files are so much larger than even 320k or v0 mp3s that the effective capacity of my ipod would only be a fraction of what it is now. Maybe this’ll change when my next iPod holds 200gb, but the elegant solution would be for apple to either compress files on the fly for adding to a portable device (your itunes library is uncompressed, but when it syncs to your iPod it compresses the files to mp3) or more likely when ripping it gives you an option to store two copies of the file, one for playback (lossless) and one for portable devices (mp3). C’mon Apple, stop screwing around with mobile phones and make it happen.
Even though I got rid of my cd player, I can’t bring myself to get rid of the discs themselves. I’ve probably got six hundred cds sitting in boxes in my attic. They serve as the ultimate backup if something were to happen to the music on the mini, and it keeps things in check karmically.
I thought I’d feel like something was missing, moving from physical media with liner notes and album artwork (however compressed vs. LP artwork), but I think it’s liberating. I make it a lot further into my collection than I did with CDs, where the same five discs would live in my changer for weeks or months, and clearly a playlist is a huge upgrade over a 90 minute mix tape. The biggest drawback is the display. It’s more difficult to get an overview of the collection on a two line vacuum flourescent display than it is standing in front of a wall of cds. Something like cover flow in the new itunes/iphone is probably the way to go.
Last week Emily was offered, and accepted, a tenure track position as an assistant professor of English Literature at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. While we wouldn’t have picked Florida if we were sitting down looking at a map of the United States, Orlando is the size city we were looking for (smaller than LA, but still big enough to offer great restaurants, shows, that sort of thing), and it’s only a three hour, direct flight to upstate New York. The housing market isn’t nearly as insane as LA; we’ll probably be able to buy something right away.
She starts in August and we’ll probably head down earlier, depending on how my long-distance job hunt goes. If anyone has any leads on tech jobs in the Orlando area, please let me know!
Also, anyone want to buy a half-season old set of snow tires? 
Selling my motorcycle didn’t really faze me, neither did removing all our books from our bookshelves and packing them. It was taking our artwork and mirrors off the walls and packing them up is the action that really crystallized that we’re leaving LA, and soon. Our place went from looking like a home to looking like an empty apartment very quickly.
Emily got a Charlotte Newcombe dissertation fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Foundation and we decided that it was time to leave LA. We’re going to spend a month driving around the United States, meandering back toward New York State, then we’ll settle into my parents summer place in Newcomb for 6-7 months while we see what happens with the academic job market. I’m going to try to do a little consulting and see what I can get started. After the job hunting process ends for Em in the spring we’ll hopefully go to Europe for a month and then figure out where we go from there.
We’ve got a lot more information about our route at philandemily.com, and we’ll update photos and a travel log there as well. If you have any suggestions for things we shouldn’t miss on our trip or have a floor we can crash on, please drop one of us a line.
We met up with my parents last weekend in Las Vegas and ate one night at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon in the MGM Grand casino. Robuchon is widely considered one of the greatest living french chefs, having hung up his toque ten years ago after being the youngest chef to consecutively win 3 michelin stars. A couple of years ago he opened a less formal restaurant in Paris, L’Atelier, where the food was still impeccable but the restaurant was sort of like a sushi bar, with an bar seating and an open kitchen.
He opened another restaurant in Tokyo, and then a pair in Las Vegas (A L’Atelier and a much more formal restaurant that recreates the michelin starred dining experience in the US). My dad and I were both feeling committed, so we went with the 10 course tasting menu.
Every dish was fantastic, but the two that really stood out were the poached baby kumamoto oysters and Robuchon’s signature free range quail stuffed with foie gras and served with truffled potato puree.
It was, without question, the greatest meal I’ve ever eaten.
The last few years at Christmas my Dad and I have gone down into the cellar and rooted through some really old wines he has. Their storage has been decent, but suboptimal, and last year we opened a California red from the early 70’s that had half a cup of sediment in it and had totally turned.
This year we opened a Rhone red from 1969, and it was in remarkable shape. It was still a deep ruby color with hints of caramel brown, and had a really complex finish. It was an excellent wine, and I hope we do this well with some of the rest of his cellar. It makes me want to buy some wines that’ll cellar well and stick them away so that I can open them in 20-30 years with my kids.
