So…our faithful ol’ Panasonic that we got on sale at the BX is dying. Through 3 PCS moves and various attacks by startled cats, through being used as various pieces parts of a young boy’s playworld, the speakers have begun to sputter and stop speaking. The remote has…simply disappeared. We don’t know how, we don’t know where, we just know it’s gone. The “surround-sound” is simply sound most of the time. Even the bigger bass units are all beat up. I could rewire one more time, I even started to…Beautiful Punk-Rock Wife (her hair is VERY short these days and CHERRY red, it’s so cool) put her hands on mine and said, “Honey, it’s time to let it go.” It’s sad really. It was a good little system. AM/FM and DVD and CD have all passed through it. It doesn’t play MP3 disks though. Yeah, it’s that old.

So we’re in the market for a new home theater this Christmas. That’s the family christmas present. Our friends down the hill have a Bose Lifestyle 35 and we’re looking seriously at that since we LOVE watching movies at their house. The true beauty of it is that Beautiful Punk-Rock Wife was the one who suggested it.

And you may not understand what this means for me. I’ve loved Bose audio equipment since music class in high school. Mr. Music had a pair of 901s in his classroom. This is how I learned of Bach and Beethoven and the great grandaddy of punk rock, Wolfgang A. Mozart. It was the clarity. It was the first time I felt music as a physical force outside of a concert arena. It’s also the memory of how Mr. Music explained to us how to set up audio equipment not based on how it looks, but how it sounds and why it works better over here than over there. “You want to cover the room, not have the sound all bunched up in one spot with dead spots everywhere else.” He explained why it was called “volume.” He took that kind of time. He cared about music and knew we did too and he explained to us how best to play it in our home on the equipment we had. He also played rock and roll sometimes to show how one principal or another still carried on. He’d let the album play out when he did that and he didn’t have to. He knew the best some of us could afford was a pair of Realistics from Radio Shack. Bose is all tied up in that.

So, I’m sure you audiophiles have your own opinions on this. Have at it. Fire away. Tell me why I’m wrong and should get THAT system instead. Provide linkage please. I could be convinced otherwise. Not easily, but it could happen. Remember, I’m kinda cheap.