Like many other A/V stores, California Soundworks (californiasoundworks.com, 661-945-0971) started out as a home stereo store selling gear to audiophiles. That was back in 1979.
Are they earbuds for your MP3 - or earrings for your QT? A little bit of both, maybe! For head-pleasing sound and head-turning style, there's the new Active Crystals collection from Philips and crystal artisans Swarovski (active-crystals.com).
Former jazz musician and big-band arranger/composer Dave Schulz isn't too far from his passion these days. His stage now is the store he opened 7 years ago, Audio Video Synergy (908-213-0001).
Arrive at a high-tech hotel, and you're in for a refreshing experience. Imagine being greeted curbside by a bellman bearing a PDA who registers you in just moments, eliminating what can be a frustrating trip to the front desk. In more and more hotels, new technology is making agonizingly long check-in lines and the risk of getting stuck with a lousy room nuisances of the past.
"This, like any story worth telling, is all about a girl," Peter Parker tells us at the beginning of Spider-Man-not what you'd expect to hear from a superhero. But, as delighted audiences soon discovered, Spider-Man doesn't play by the rules.
Sonnefeld photos by Michelle Hood Barry Sonnenfeld is the master of droll. You can see it in his work, from John Travolta's suave, minivan-driving gangster in GetShorty to Tommy Lee Jones's slow-burning G-man in Men in Black to Patrick Warburton's oblivious superhero in The Tick.
It all began with a film projector on the hood of a car showing images on a bed sheet hung between two trees. Richard Hollingshead went on to perfect this apparatus, and the world's first drive-in cinema under the stars opened to the public in Camden, New Jersey, on June 6, 1933. By the late 1950s, there were more than 4,000 drive-ins - and why not?
At the low end of the gift-giving scale rests the traditional tie, money clip, or soap-on-a-rope, and at the high end - well, the sky's the limit. There's always someone on your list worth indulging, and sometimes there's even the money to do it. And while you might not be in the same league as Donald Trump or Tiger Woods, it's always fun to look.
Jamie Sorcher talks to the natural-born killer turned Nature Boy about his health-conscious documentary Go Further on DVD, his favorite flicks and tunes, and, of course, Cheers.