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A problem was looming in the kitchen--aside from my rudimentary cooking skills and haphazard sanitary habits, that is. I found myself avoiding my kitchen system. The kitchen rig seemed like a good idea at the time. By combining a mass-market mini-system with a sat/sub set, and wall-mounting the satellites, I'd squeeze music into a tight L-shaped place where only radio had gone before. Anyway, I soon tired of the system's rudimentary and haphazard performance and it devolved into a glorified radio. After a decade I threw in the dish towel and replaced the radio function with, well, a radio. Then I set about brainstorming a new music system for the kitchen.

Part IV: Impressing the neighbors.

Well, all the parts are in, and it's time to build the beast. If you missed it, check out last month's GearWorks for all the doodahs and pieces for this all-new HTPC. If you're using this as a guide on how to build your own HTPC, let me give a few tips to start.

The man who made October 31st scary again continues to carve new ground.

Coming off a pair of low-budget, high-concept films (Assault on Precinct 13 and Dark Star), John Carpenter forever changed the world of horror cinema with his landmark Halloween. He's been pushing the genre envelope ever since, with fan favorites such as Escape from New York and the truly original They Live, along with unexpected turns such as Starman and TV's Elvis starring frequent go-to guy Kurt Russell. He's also given fans the occasional sequel, as well as his remakes of horror classics The Thing and Village of the Damned, even as Hollywood has begun remaking his signature works, including The Fog and Rob Zombie's upcoming Halloween. Carpenter knows monsters and how to portray a tense siege, and his experience with both benefit his second installment of Showtime's Masters of Horror anthology series, "Pro-Life." Ron Perlman stars as a gun-toting conservative dad out to retrieve his young, pregnant runaway daughter—at any cost—from the abortion clinic where she seeks refuge, even though the "baby" was conceived in the underworld and really, really needs killin'. "Pro-Life" is out on a fully loaded special-edition DVD from Anchor Bay/Starz Home Entertainment, and it boasts the only audio commentary I've ever heard where the director exits in the middle of recording to catch a quick smoke.