For years, Aimee Mann's sweet voice and her dark and brilliant lyrics have obscured the opportunities for strong electric guitar play in her music. On Tuesday night at Avalon, those opportunities fully flowered under the fingers of sideman Julian Coryell.

From a thrilling, reverberating, show-ending solo on "Long Shot" that was not deterred by his breaking a string to the subtle slide atmosphere he created for "Voices Carry," the 'Til Tuesday tune that Mann selected for her second encore, Coryell was the story of the evening.

From previous books, we know that Susan Cheever, a columnist for the
Long Island newspaper Newsday, has suffered heavily under the yoke of
alcohol, both as the child of author (and hard drinker) John Cheever
and as an adventurous souse in her own right.

Perhaps this helps explain why, for her new book, she profiles
history's most influential drunk, William Griffith Wilson, known to
legions as Bill W., the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I'm a lucky guy. Not only is my new wife a sweetheart, she's almost as avid a gadgeteer as I am. But that doesn't mean she wouldn't prefer to have fewer remote controls on the coffee table. We had eight at last count, though that includes the two or three for decommissioned devices.

Such clutter is why manufacturers continue to roll out universal remote controls. A decent one is Universal's Automator ($150). It boasts that it can replace up to 10 remotes, and my experience nearly approached that.

Even among music fans who've never developed an affection for Los Lobos, only the addled would withhold their respect: Together for 30 years, they have long been in the top rank of bands both for consistency and for innovation. Both of those drive "The Ride," their 12th album, even while it also is a loop into charted territory: Four of the 13 songs are new versions of songs from their past.

You probably know a family that has established a network at home to connect all its computers. Each person in the house probably uses the network to share broadband internet access, the printer maybe, or a few files.

What's far less likely is that you have friends who are
using their networks to share entertainment: music, photographs, shows
recorded from television, games, movies, and more.