Month: April 2009

A $30 shirt for $200

My Achilles tendon is doing a lot better. I’m running short distances without pain, but I couldn’t make up for nearly two months of lost training, so I will be merely a spectator at the Boston Marathon starting line tomorrow morning. Nevertheless, I went into the city with Eric today to pick up my swag bag. Then I visited what I’ll call the quitter’s corral to return my transponder chip and bib. Registration cost me $200, and for my money I’m getting a $30 shirt.

2009 Boston Marathon shirt

This year there are two interesting American entries in the race. The Grand Master, Boston’s own Bill Rodgers, says he’ll be jogging it in four hours, which is literally half the speed of his heyday. The last time he ran it, which was the first time I ran Boston, ten years ago, Rodgers dropped out at Heartbreak Hill. Rodgers had prostate cancer surgery last year.

It was also ten years ago that I first read about Ryan Hall, who was in high school and running the mile in just over four minutes. Now he’s a marathoner, and he has a shot at being the first American to win in Boston since Greg Meyer way back in 1983.

200 lbs., free shipping

Here’s something I thought I’d never see. Amazon.com is selling the Klipschorn loudspeaker with free shipping. These things weigh nearly 200 pounds each! The price? $3999. That’s per speaker, not per pair.

Even 30 years ago, when I was in college, the Klipschorn was considered to be an old man’s loudspeaker. I was visiting an instructor’s house with some other kids. He had a 20-year-old mono hi-fi that consisted of a Fisher tube amplifier, a Fisher tube FM tuner, and a single Klipschorn speaker. Classical music was playing over the radio, and I was completely knocked out by the sound. It was one of the most uncanny and impressive home audio demonstrations I’ve ever heard.

After that I fantasized about someday owning a pair of Klipschorns, but it will never happen. A few years later, when I had graduated and was working, I bought a pair of Allison 3‘s, new, for half price — $350/pair, the equivalent of $1000 today — at a going-out-of business sale. Like the Klipschorns, the Allison 3’s are intended for corner placement. I still have the Allisons, and they’re in excellent shape, both operationally and in appearance.

‘Good Ol’ Charles Schulz’ at MASS MoCA

Something I missed, that I wouldn’t have been able to attend even if I’d known about it, was a screening of the documentary Good Ol’ Charles Schulz, with director David Van Taylor in attendance, at a place I’ve mentioned before, the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art. Here is the part of the film I liked, and I was pleased to later learn that Monte Schulz felt the same.

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