Kip'shiptrip

I sort of live vicariously through my friend Kip. Kip is smarter than I am, takes better vacations and has way better swag. No middle aged paunch, he has a more refined taste in music, favoring late fifties Verve and Blue Note vinyl, rides a killer Ducati and owns a stereo that blows mine away. How come the smart guys get the really good jobs, it just isn't very fair?

When I was young and flush with lucre, I once had a great audiophile system. I would thumb through the latest Absolute Sound with a look of disdain and pinkie aloft in the air, preparing to throw down with any audiophile gunslinger about arcane arguments of soundstage and midrange bloom. But somewhere along the way I realized that it was tough for married guys to build really good systems. The prices have always been obscene. Relationships would quickly end if we tried to pull that stuff. So honestly I haven't had a system upgrade in twenty five years. I had the early morning epiphany that somewhere along the line I had forsaken or stopped chasing the perfectly manicured life, and it honestly shows in the worn holes in my ride, my jargon, my dress, my ever growing antiquity. And my dated audio system.

Kip went to CES in Vegas this week, hunting vinyl, think he said he got a new Clifford Brown record  or maybe it was Lee Morgan? And he wanted to check out these behemoths, Berkeley's  Magico Speakers, a cool 165k for the pair. Baby, if you got to ask, you just can't afford them. He said that they didn't sound very good, either. God's way of telling you you are making too much bread.