The Crutchfield Toy Store, and more
Category: Kitchen Sink...
Posted Wednesday, December 04, 2002 at 09:31 AM [GMT-6]

First, let me apologize if you recently tried and failed to access the Gazette. My webhost lost a hard drive, followed by the entire server. I've been told that a new server is now up and running and I trust we'll be more reliable from here on out. But I'm not holding my breath.

The Crutchfield Christmas catalog arrived yesterday. Is there anything better, guys, than a new Crutchfield catalog? OK, so maybe a Harbor Freight catalog comes close. Of course, the cool thing about Harbor Freight is that I can actually make that short drive to Odessa, walk into the Harbor Freight store, and touch the same amazing array of geegaws and gimcracks that overflow the pages of the catalog. I once bought an anvil at Harbor Freight, much to the amusement of most of my friends, although the report of the purchase elicited knowing nods from those few who understand that when you need an anvil, nothing else will do.

Anyway, back to Crutchfield. I think that the "home theater system" has filled the void in guys' lives created when the 60s Muscle Car era was supplanted by the Arab oil embargo and mile-long lines at the gas pumps. Sure, we've got SUVs and Hummer H2s, but that's different... everyone has them, even, well, girls! (Bear with me; this is not an "us vs them" thing.) Back in the GODs, girls drove cute little VW bugs; guys had (or lusted after) Barracudas with hemis and 6-packs (as in carbs...as in engine thingamajigs, not beer). And, as much as I applaud overachieving efforts to make a Toyota Celica into a "street rod," nitrous oxide and a 12K redline will never be an adequate replacement for raw torque from a 455-hp V-8.

Enter the home theater system. Guys, we can reclaim the glory days of raw, visceral power. So what if they're expressed in terms of wattage and lines of resolution, instead of horsepower and foot-pounds of torque and quarter mile times? We're still talking about the ability to shake our environments. But, best of all, we get to use a new language, one that's incomprehensible to the Average Citizen.

Take the Denon DVD-9000 receiver/DVD-CD player described on page 102 of Crutchfield's Fall/Winter catalog. This bad boy has a Silicon Image Sil 504 de-interlacer with PureProgressive circuitry and 3-2 pulldown processing. Ahhh. Add to that the eight (8!) 192kHz/24-bit Burr-Brown audio DACs, and the six (6!) 108MHz/14-bit video D/A converters, and you've got one heckuva...something.

Never mind that neither you nor I have even the remotest idea of what these things do (let alone why they justify the $3,499.99 price tag). We've got the terminology on our side, and if it's incomprehensible to us, just imagine how it sounds to the Average Citizen. In the end, the subwoofer-induced vibration of our Lazy Boys is indeed a fair replacement for the jarring of the Recaro bucket seats bolted on top of the angry driveline of a 1969 Shelby Mustang.

Well, enough of that. Real work beckons.

I love my work. It doesn't pay diddly, but I can't place a value on the fact that I get to work with such a wide variety of clients, something that appeals to my short attention span and general amazement about the world. In the space of a single day I might interact with a homebuilder, a plein air artist, a restauranteur, a community foundation and a professional storyteller. Each has unique business objectives and each requires a special creative touch to capture those objectives in their websites. Place on top of that the challenges presented by the constantly evolving technology and you have a recipe for joyful frustration on a daily basis. I want to write more about this down the road.

For now, however, I leave you with this suggestion: read (or re-read) the 95 theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto, and see how they apply to the work you do, or the businesses you deal with, or just life in general. Then, if you find yourself in a creative mood, hop over to the Minimalist Web Design site and take a break from overblown designs that violate most of those 95 theses.