Merry Christmas

Christmas is drawing to a close down here. between a Christmas morning service, presents, and a cook out, it was definitely a first for celebrating it in this manner. but wonderful nevertheless. best wishes to all.

3 Mini Album Revies

when i initially got my hands on all three of these albums, i had grand intentions to make full posts about my thoughts regarding each. as time has passed and i've filled my time doing other things like learning spanish and traveling, i thought i'd give a quick recap in chronological order:

"graduation" by kanye west

i was really excited for this cd due to my love for his first two which were largely solid from top to bottom in regards to lyrics, subject matter, and musical content. there is, however, a drop off on this outing in all three criteria. in his first two albums he showed so much promise before falling into the plight of many successful rappers before him: no longer able to rap about the struggle, they now rap about how they've "made it" and the perils of fame. kanye may summarize it best in a line from the track "can't tell me nothing" when he says "i dreamed i could buy my way to heaven and then i went and spent it on a necklace." he spent his money on a necklace with this album. there still are some winners on this album, notably "everything i am," "champion," and "i wonder," but a couple recycled lines and uninspired beats leaves this a notch lower than his past albums. sad day for kanye and i anticipate his return to form with his next album.

"in rainbows" by radiohead

radiohead has, debatably, the best album recorded in the 90s to their name. how did they follow it up? with all sorts of good albums afterwards, that's how. granted, i wasn't as huge a fan of "hail to the thief" or "amnesiac" but that would not prevent me from downloading the new album for any price i saw fit. and i declare it a remarkable album. while several of the tracks like "nude," "videotape," and "bodysnatchers" are wonderful on their own, this really is an album to listen to in its entirety. then it becomes wonderful, claustrophobic, and layered. at its core is my favorite "all i need" which is just a force given what comes before and after. definitely check it out, although i think they stopped the download. very good stuff though and kind of shames a lot of other bands for being more singles driven in their albums.

"alive 2007" by daft punk

so i'll admit i have a soft spot for daft punk. maybe it's because they pretend to be robots. maybe it's because they have an ear for turning techo-ish stuff into something that is really appealing to my ears. IRregardless, i'll swear by their first two albums "homework" and "discovery" and even their third "human after all" gets better every time i give it a repeat listen. i know i routinely listen to their live album "alive 1997" because it is just stellar to see them play around with songs from their first album in a different context. now comes "alive 2007." i had begun to read about concerts on their most recent tour where they performed from the middle of a giant pyramid and the music was so infectious that even security guards would be dancing. needless to say, i was intrigued. then, lo and behold, comes a live recording from one of the concerts on an album just for me. this is amazing. the only reason i hesitate to speak more strongly about it is because i feel like one really needs to be steeped in their discography from all three studio albums to really see what amazing-ness is going on here. but it's worth it. from top to bottom, this album is an experience. and after attending creamfields down here, listening to it with my eyes closed almost allows me to think for a moment that i was actually at the daft punk concert, which i now know for a fact i would be willing to give most any body part to have attended. listening to this cd gave me the chills while walking down the middle of a busy street. i'm not even going to talk about the contents of this album. just go ahead and buy the entire daft punk discography, learn it by heart, and then listen to this and be content in life because you'll have no other choice anyway.

something that i've actually done since being down here

so i figured it was actually high time that i wrote about something that i've done. two weeks ago i took a five day trip. we bused from buenos aires to mendoza (roughly 12 hours) which turned out to be a fairly enjoyable experience owing to the luxurious seats that reclined into almost a full bed. we even stopped at a restaurant for the dinner meal (paid for with our ticket) and included the amazing film high school musical 2. strangely enough, i think it was an illegal copy that had the spoken dialog dubbed but the songs subtitled. i was listening to my ipod at the time, but managed to enjoy myself by filling in my own imagined dialog.

mendoza felt like a rather sleepy little town but apparently has 111, 000 inhabitants. but i guess most things feel sleepy compared against bs. as. our initial plan in coming was to rent bikes and cycle from bodega to bodega taking the winery tours. however, fate intervened against us. since it's not quite high season yet (which we were actively trying to avoid), several of the bodegas weren't giving tours on saturdays. subsequently, it did not make sense for us to rent the bikes, but we still did two tours that day. the first was at "La Rural."

they make a couple different wines varying in quality. at the low end is san felipe. the middle brow stuff is trumpeter and the best quality stuff is rutini. it apparently is one of the oldest bodegas in argentina and the tour included a small museum of various winery arcana. the second place we visited that day wasn't particularly interesting compared to our first tour so i'll excise that from the recap.

the next day the girls went to explore a gigantic park that is on one side of the city and Marc (a friend from my Spanish class at the UBA) and i opted to hit another bodega tour. he had heard good things about famalia zuccardi and so we went that direction. although it is considered young by many wineries in the area, it put on one heck of a tour. our group consisted solely of Marc, our guide, and me. apart from explaining the process that goes into making the wine, we were able to taste a bit at every stage of the way to see how it actually affects the taste. this means we got to drip a little into our glasses from big vats like there:

at the end we then got to taste several different varieties from their finished stocks. excellent tour complete, we hightailed it back to town and out to the park in hopes of seeing the monument in the following picture. which we did successfully, and thus the picture. it was built for general san martin by the chilean government, i think, for an important victory over....someone.

it was set up with a great deal of attention paid towards its presentation. it's set at the top of a hill and as you look out in the different directions, you see either the whole of the gigantic park, the city of Mendoza proper, or the Andes. very beautiful stuff.

which led to the next day when we took a bus across the Andes to Santiago, Chile. i rolled shotgun in what was more or less a 15 passenger van and had the time of my life. i felt a great sense of anticipation as we approached due to all the snow capped peaks just sitting in front of you. after an hour or two, you finally find yourself going through the foothills, gently rising, and before you know it you are at the chilean checkpoint and there are snow capped mountains on all sides of you:

the trip in the van was a lot like riding a roller coaster at times: fast speeds, heights, hairpin turns. i had the added bonus of looking at our speedometer to see us cruising 80 km/h when it was clearly marked 40 km/h in a curvy, non-passing road. but it really was just fun to me since i got all the fear of dangerous drivers out of me in high school from the times i was a passenger in a car with Derrick or Kryton Fischer behind the wheel. but the roads could be fairly perilous looking, especially this stretch here that had no guard rails and many 18 wheelers to be passed on its narrow lanes:

and on the way back we were doing this in a double decker coach bus. good times all around. we obviously made it to santiago safely and enjoyed walking around the city center after checking into our hostel. we didn't really have a good sense of what there was to do there and we just wandered around towards things that seemed neat and drew our attention. one of the things that we found was a municipal park where the city had initially been founded many, many moons ago. santiago is quite hilly due to its proximity to the Andes and the park was just full of several gardens, staircases, plateaus, and other hidden gems. it would be perfect for a huge game of hide and go seek or paintball. at the top there was a castle-esque structure that granted 360 degrees of visibility and, because the park is on a hill, you are at eye level or higher than a lot of the skyscrapers.

we also managed to make it out to the pacific coast to a little town called vina del mar. we ate some really fresh fish at a restaurant near the beach, waded into the waters, and relaxed on the sands. apparently, i was pretty happy to be at the beach.

that about rounds out the trip. we had a 22 hour bus trip back to buenos aires where we got to watch "wild hogs" and "i spy" which meant i got to test the battery limits of my ipod. the good news is that i was able to listen to over 200 songs before the battery died. apologies for all the typos and incoherent sentences but i feel like this is too long for me to proofread. as consolation, i leave you with a final picture of the sun setting on the bus ride home.