2016, Personal, Travel

Riley Goes to Colombia Day 10 – February 19, 2016

I woke up feeling much, much better. I would still have some minor digestive issues over the next few days, and it would take rather a while before I felt completely myself again, but I was able to enjoy our holiday once more. I don’t know whether that’s just the thing that happens with stuff …

2016, Movies

Riley goes to Colombia Day 8 – February 17, 2016

This morning we had a flight to Medellin. We were sitting in the airport wondering why everyone was lined up for their flight 2 hours too early. We decided “well, I guess that’s what they do here” and got in line. Only once we were in line did we realize it was for the earlier …

2016, Personal, Travel

Riley Goes to Colombia Day 7 – February 16, 2016

This morning we went to Playa Blanca. There was more than a little confusion: Nobody picked us up despite the pledge yesterday that we would be picked up. We could have walked four times before we finally got in a cab. First, our hotel called them and they said they were on their way. Then …

2016, Travel

Riley Goes to Colombia Day 6 – February 15, 2016

The day before, we were hoping to figure out how to get to a beach, but we had contacted a tour group but had not heard anything. (The beach situation: beaches a few miles away in Bocagrande, on the same peninsula – rendered an “island” by a canal – but in a Miami Beach-type setting. …

2016, Personal, Travel

Riley Goes to Colombia Day 5 – February 14, 2016

Valentine’s Day. One of the cool things about this hotel was the breakfasts. Every morning we had a choice of “American” or local breakfast, and I ate the local every day: empanadas, arepas, a local sausage and limes. Plus, fresh fruit juice! Good stuff. This morning we walked over to Castillo de San Felipe, which …

2016, Travel

Riley Goes to Colombia Day 4 – February 13, 2016

The first two mornings at the hotel, we’d had regular food for breakfast: eggs, waffles. But today we got tamales! They were pretty good. We had a super fast ride to the airport, as it was a Saturday morning and apparently the awful traffic virtually disappears on the weekends. So we got to the Bogota …

2016, Personal, Travel

Riley Goes to Colombia Day 3 – February 12, 2016

This morning we took a cab ride to Monserrate, a mountain that overlooks Bogota. For the first few minutes of the cab ride, we worried he was driving us up the mountain, as we had to go up high to get on a beltway that runs along the hills. The cabbie took us to the …

2016, Personal, Travel

Riley Goes to Colombia Day 2 – February 11, 2016

After breakfast, we took another long cab ride to a mall, where we met Loon, our guide, for a tour of one of Bogota’s big food markets. We tried the following over the course of the morning: 1.Breakfast Sancocho de pescado  Fish soup made with plantain, yuca and potatoes. Arepa de queso – Colombian arepa filled …

1996, Music

Millions Now Living Will Never Die (1996) by Tortoise

Whether or not Post Rock actually began in 1994 with Hex is something we can argue about, but you could say that Post Rock, for Americans, started with Tortoise. Now, I’ve never heard their earliest albums, but it’s hard not to look at this record – with its suite-like 20 minute opener, and its genre …

1981, Music

Face Value (1981) by Phil Collins

Phil Collins has had one of the weirder careers in pop rock, starting out as a prog rock / art rock drummer (who even played jazz fusion, at times) and then becoming a massive pop star. It’s an unusual arc to be sure, and this is the record that began the shift from the one …

1910, Music

Humperdinck: Königskinder (2012) by Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester, Chor der Oper Frankfurt, conducted by Sebastian Weigle et al

My initial impressions of Humperdinck were not great, even though I started with his most famous work. This one though, the opera version of a “melodrama” he wrote in 1897 – because the author of the original story wouldn’t consent to an opera – is really great. All the attempts at “big tunes” with the …

1710s, 1760s, 1790s, 1803, 2008, Music

Trumpet Concertos (2008) by Alison Balsom, Die Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen

This is a collection of Classical and Baroque trumpet concerti, and it’s a good selection of these pieces, giving a good idea of how the music progressed…only the sequencing is, um, kind of backwards.

1816, Books, Fiction

Adolphe (1816) by Benjamin Constant

Adolphe is an odd one: it’s a story of a romance with virtually no context. Sure, we get some idea of what Europe was like for a son of a wealthy family in the early 19th century. And, in one of the later chapters, Constant describes the physical geography of an area of Poland. But, …

1962, Books, Non-Fiction

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1962) edited by Donald Kagan

This particular Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is an old sampler of theories about the decline of the Roman Empire that I think was part of a class my father took in university. It was assembled in 1962, but the first issue with it is that many of the books and articles it …

1968, Music

Vincebus Eruptum (1968) by Blue Cheer

For years and years I have been telling everyone who would listen that Jeff Beck’s Truth is the First Heavy Metal album of All Time. If people mentioned Blue Cheer, I dismissed them outright – despite only ever hearing their cover of “Summertime Blues” once or twice – or assumed that The Jeff Beck Group …

1900, Books, Fiction

Lord Jim (1900) by Joseph Conrad

Conrad is perhaps my favourite (English language) writer from the turn of the last century. I find “The Secret Sharer” to be one of the greatest English language short stories ever written. And Nostromo is a favourite of mine. And yet it took me forever to get into this, considered by some to be among …

1991, Music

Everclear (1991) by American Music Club

These guys are the Kings of Slowcore, so I’ve been told. Not being the biggest devotee of the genre, I have no idea if that’s true. And if I get obsessed about influence and such, I’ll ignore the music here and focus on the fact that slowcore already existed when this came out. (Because, of …