Setting up an environment on OSX

I am an old lisper, but I have been having a hard time jumping back in because I can not set up an environment.

For instance, allegro's alisp just timed out and I dont know how to get it back (I installed their IDE, but getting a project going is stumping me)-- I know emacs and can make that work.

Clozure CL64 seems like a workable system, should I use that?

Then I tried to get some software loaded, and I am having a tough time. For instance CL-JSON is available via git, so I cloned that into ~/lisp/cl-json but it has a file cl-json.asd that I think I am supposed to load, but I dont know how.

So my question:
Is there a set of init files I someone recommends? Is there an IRC or forum for folks like me? How should I get this going? Anyone in the bay area that wants to work together on something like this? Thank you!

thank you!

-brewster
[email protected]

ASDF is the current package manager of choice for CL. Those asd files are for ASDF. Install from the ASDF website or using Quicklisp (below).
Quicklisp (http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/) is the current package installer of choice for CL (uses ASDF).
Aquamacs is one of the better Emacs environments on OSX. Install Slime (http://common-lisp.net/project/slime/), possibly using (ql:quickload "quicklisp-slime-helper")
Clozure has excellent CL support on OSX.

As for other places to seek help, there's #lisp on irc.freenode.net or comp.lang.lisp (low activity).
There are a number of mailing lists for specialized questions.
Both http://planet.lisp.org/ and http://www.reddit.com/r/lisp are good for following general news.

breakthrough, I am now making real progress.
thank you.

Here's my usual procedure (assuming the Xcode tools are installed):

# Install Homebrew
$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go)"

# Install SBCL and Emacs
$ brew install sbcl
$ brew install emacs --cocoa --srgb
$ brew linkapps

# Install Quicklisp and SLIME
$ curl -O - http://beta.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp
$ sbcl
* (load "quicklisp.lisp")
* (ql:add-to-init-file)
* (ql:quickload "quicklisp-slime-helper")
* (exit)

# Configure Emacs
$ cat >>~/.emacs <<EOF
  (load (expand-file-name "~/quicklisp/slime-helper.el"))
  (setq inferior-lisp-program "/usr/local/bin/sbcl")
EOF

# Done.