Shootouts CAN be Dangerous
You know, I was thinking about how dangerous these shootouts are becoming.
We do them in the evening, and sometimes we order out some food [usually Vietnamese] and we draft somebody [Neli. :-)] to go pick up it and bring it back.
We then consume mass quantities and listen to a CD or LP kind of casually and chat about how cool it would be to have X, Y or Z for the next shootout.
Then it is back to the shootout proper: listening, going up to the system and switching cables, powercords, whatever back and forth. More listening.
Ponying up to the system, my tummy being overly full to the point of me whining about it to everybody who will listen [that would be, as it always is, nobody] I then had this terrible waking nightmare:
The button pops off my shorts, goes sailing through the air like a button who really hated being under extreme pressure all these years, and strikes one of the tubes on the most lovely sounding, exquisite, amps we have ever heard.
And the tube *explodes* from the impact. Glass is everywhere. Sparks are flying. The lights in the kitchen are flashing off and on.
I start wondering if Neli is going to kill me with knife or pistol.
Then an extremely unlikely and not very nice event occurs. The exploding tube generates some kind of freak surge and the dying amp takes out not one but both speakers. Drivers are now sailing across the room in cannonball like trajectories.
One lands in the bowl of Red Curry Stew with extra Tofu, and splashes Red Curry Stew with Extra Tofu all over the stack of LPs we had brought upstairs for the demo.
The other hits the floor and starts rolling across the room like the old Bridgestone Tire commercials, continues until it encounters the stairs going down to the other listening room – which it then starts plopping down ‘plop’ ‘plop’.
It then continues to go ‘plop”plop’ down the stairs in the now very, very quiet listening room as I look at everybody else in the room and present them with the stupidest grin I can come up with.
All this to say that I am resolving to be on the safe side and eat less take out at our shootouts from now on.
[Even though that take out *is* really, really yummy… Hmmmm, maybe I’ll just walk up to the system sideways, facing any buttons AWAY from the system.]
You really should try the green chili with Basil and pineapple even though the menu makes no mention of the pineapple, and tofu is fine even though I, the meat eater, prefer the chicken. And I think, vis a vis the red chile, you will have no nightmares. And oh, the Ongaku was such a good companion, along with, of courses Ludwig Van B’s Choral Fantasy. Lucky you two, now that I’ve sent you (thanks to Amazon) the Serkin/Ozawa Telarc Choral Fantasy, you can enjoy all three whereas I, in San Diego, have only the LVB, the Ongaku being on order and a 2-month wait? and NO Vietnamese restaurant that serves the green chili.
And whilst you warn “Shootouts can be Dangerous” let me for the record state Audio Federation demos can be dangerous, at least to the pocket book. Maybe we (and others) should ask Neli what she puts in the chili on the way back from the takeout???
Thanks, Jim!
We’ve been getting together a care package to send out your way with a tasters choice of goodies as well 🙂
I like pineapple, but I think I OD’d on it the first year I had my own place when I was in my late teens: between lots and lots of Del Monte canned pineapple, and many real pineapples, in the space of only a few months, I think I’ve had my allotted share this lifetime :-}
I think we are lucky that Hungry Neli doesn’t just eat all the chili on the way home 🙂
Take care,
-Mike