For those who care about such things: I listen with an old DUAL table/2M Bronze Ortofon cartridge, Decware Zen SET Tube amp, and vintage Foxtec horn-speakers, but I mostly listen to (balanced) headphones these days due to where I'm living - Bryston BCD-3 player, Bryston BHA-1 headphone amp, Sennheiser HD600 & Audeze LCD-2 headphones, PS Audio power conditioning and power cord, and Siltech/Cardas/SilverDragon ICs. I have it all on a stack of three 4" thick, 18"X29" MDF shelves, comprised of two pieces sandwiching acoustic tar. Each shelf has 3 legs of solid steel bar milled to a point. I'm working on upgrading vinyl and digital HR playback.

I don't download thousands of albums from the 'net. I prefer a more human scale that allows me to get to know music and absorb it in a healthy way. Downloads are a great way to "test the waters" though; to see what I like & loathe. I also have enough self-awareness and humility to know I have no right to an opinion worth taking seriously when I'm talking about one of a hundred digital ephemera I downloaded that week, possessing no history or wisdom on the subject whatsoever; just a quiver-full of clichés and hip notions of the moment...what a ghostly moment we live in. So I mostly keep quiet.

I re-rate everything I listen to...so act accordingly. You can't walk through the same river twice and all that shit.

Disorder is merely the order you are not looking for - Henri Bergson

O! Pathless Life of Mine Whose Deep Ideal,
Is More My Own Than Ever Was the Real.
For Others Fame and Love's Red Flame,
And Yellow Gold; I Only Claim
The Shadows and The Dreaming.

- from Muskoka by E. Pauline Johnson

Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders?
And even if one of them suddenly pressed me against his heart, I should fade in the strength of his stronger existence.
For Beauty's nothing but beginning of Terror we're still just able to bear, and why we adore it so is because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every single angel is terrible - Rainer Maria Rilke

...and Kam Fong, as Chin Ho - credits for old Hawaii Five-O (always makes me laugh, given the show's audience of mostly clueless caucasians)

:: : :: in ref. to my rating assignment :: there is little to no difference 'tween 4.5 & 5 except maybe emotion or momentary zeitgeist while assigning a rating & 4s are excellent albums & so forth. I also try to be relative; in rating film for example, I rate a Hollywood feel-good film much differently than I do that, of say an early Imamura. The 4 stars I gave School of Rock does not indicate that it's a better film than Jean Epstein's Coeur Fidèle, a film I gave 3.5. Having said that, on the extreme ends of the scale ratings become increasingly absolute. :: : ::

{probably} the Top Ten Albums Heralding Yrs Truly Into the World {no ordr of prefrnce excpt the 1st vive le AEoC ! ¡ !}
:: :: Les stances à Sophie : Fun House : Sunflower : Bitches Brew : Ptah, the El Daoud : After the Gold Rush : Monkey-Pockie-Boo : My Brother the Wind : Loaded : The Great Concert of Charles Mingus :: ::

Tags | vinyl | condition : :> vinyl: g, vinyl: vg, vinyl: vg+, vinyl: f, vinyl: nm, vinyl: new ::: ↵

very good, very good plus, fine, nearmint, , mint and new, respectively. colored or clear vinyl.

Below - intelligence, talent and the ineffable qualities of personality & charisma are given equal weight in my choices. In other words, if I like them I like them:

Actresses (some of these were chosen by "little WarpedOrb" aka my penis): Barbara Harris ☼ Giulietta Masina ☼ Nancy Allen ☼ Maria Schneider ☼ Émilie Dequenne ☼ Maria Schell ☼ Janet Gaynor ☼ Buffalo '66 era Christina Ricci (eat something, girl!) ☼ Barbara Luddy (her portrayal of Merryweather in Disney's Sleeping Beauty is unlike any other voice work I've ever heard) ☼ Laura Dern ☼ Lillian Gish ☼ Kat Dennings ☼ Louise Brooks ☼ Barbara Stanwyck ☼ Laura Linney ☼ Samantha Morton ☼ Cate Blanchett ☼ Faye Wong ☼ Bibi Andersson ☼ Paulette Dubost ☼ Setsuko Hara ☼ Amy Ryan ☼ Kathryn Hahn ☼ Jillian Bell ☼ Amber Nash (voice actor) ☼ Michelle Williams ☼ Claudia Cardinale ☼ Sandra Milo ☼ Harriet Andersson ☼ Jean Harlow ☼ Marilyn Monroe ☼ Patricia Clarkson ☼ Betty Compson ☼ Greta Gerwig ☼ Zooey Deschanel ☼ Kristen Wiig ☼ Imelda Staunton ☼ Fionnula Flanagan ☼ Elle Fanning ☼ Natasha Lyonne ☼ Jenna Fischer ☼ Janeane Garofalo ☼ Sarah Silverman ☼ Sally Hawkins ☼ Audrey Hepburn ☼ Helen Bonham Carter ☼ Wendy Hiller ☼ Jennifer Tilly ☼ Emma Thompson ☼ Anna Karina ☼ Vivian Leigh ☼ Kate Winslet ☼ Maria Pia Casilio ☼ . . . tbc

Actors: Song Kang-ho ♈ Warren Oates ♈ Robert Duvall ♈ Richard Edson ♈ Tom Hardy ♈ Nakadai Tatsuya ♈ Peter Falk ♈ that funny-ass monkey wearing the spacesuit in Robinson Crusoe on Mars ♈ Sterling Hayden ♈ Mifune Toshirō ♈ Cary Grant ♈ Billy Connolly ♈ Ryu Chishu ♈ Mickey Rourke ♈ Michel Simon ♈ John Cazale ♈ Emile Meyer ♈ Eugene Pallette ♈ Bill Murray ♈ Daniel Day Lewis (my fave after Cary Grant of course) ♈ Anthony Hopkins ♈ Robert Mitchum ♈ Gunnar Björnstrand ♈ Hank Worden ♈ John C. Reilly ♈ Brendan Gleeson ♈ Jean Gabin ♈ Nicholas Cage ♈ Julien Carette ♈ Willem Dafoe ♈ Harry Dean Stanton ♈ Takashi Shimura ♈ Charles Laughton ♈ Jack Nicholson ♈ Max von Sydow ♈ Steve Buscemi ♈ Owen Wilson ♈ Orson Welles ♈ Ralph Meeker ♈ Marcel Dalio ♈ Marlon Brando ♈ Jason Robards ♈ Walter Brennan ♈ Balthazar the donkey ♈ Elisha Cook Jr. ♈ Klaus Kinski ♈ Johnny Depp ♈ H. Jon Benjamin (voice) ♈ John Wayne ♈ Vincent Gallo ♈ Ryan Gosling ♈ Erland Josephson ♈ Roger Livesay ♈ Peter O'Toole ♈ Lee Marvin ♈ Harvey Keitel ♈ Bruce Dern ♈ James Cagney ♈ Jean-Paul Belmondo ♈
Alain Delon ♈ Humphrey Bogart ♈ Matthew Modine ♈ Edward G. Robinson. . . tbc