Harold & Maude is my all-time favorite movie. Every ten years or so, I get nostalgic for the film and I watch it again and obsess over it. (I have it on Blu-Ray, of course.) I knew the movie was based on a screenplay written by Colin Higgins, a UCLA film student. Higgins sold the screenplay, and then wrote a…
A well-written and detailed account of the intertwined lives of four prominent, larger-than-life fixtures of the folk music scene of the early 60s. The book very effectively transports you back to those heady, exciting days of the Greenwich Village music clubs and cafes. I really knew nothing about Joan Baez’s sister Mimi, nor anything about her enigmatic, fascinating husband, Richard…
After reading a dense, information-packed science book about the immune system, I hit the other end of the spectrum and read this mindless, trashy gay novel. Into? is a satirical (I hope) look at a subset of shallow, superficial gay men who never find love. The main character, Konrad, obsesses over straight “bros” at the gym, goes from party to…
We landed in Kenya and were taken to Acacia Tree Lodge. This was a lovely hotel. We settled in and then tried to figure out what to do on Christmas day in Nairobi, January 2020. In Ethiopia, Christmas and New Years are ordinary days, because they use a different calendar. Their New Year is in September and their Christmas is…
Back in the late ‘70s, when punk music was all the rage, I became fanatically obsessed with it. I especially loved British punk and was very into The Sex Pistols, Clash, Stranglers, Buzzcocks, Jam, and countless other punk bands. One major favorite, though, was the band X-Ray Spex, led by the brilliant, talented singer Poly Styrene (born Marion Elliott). Poly’s…
Our final two days in Ethiopia were spent back in the capital, Addis Ababa. We flew in from Lalibela on a short flight, and arrived at our new, beautiful hotel, The Capital Hotel and Spa, around 3:00. We didn’t have much time to spare, because I had scheduled the Go Addis food tour for that evening. We tossed our bags…
Today we woke up earlier than usual. Sunday is a very important day of worship for the residents of Lalibela, and the procession of people heading to the church for services is an awe-inspiring sight. Our hotel knows that tourists like to watch the processional, so they had breakfast prepared early for us. Hailu came to pick us up at…
My friend Mike is very into comics, anime, and graphic novels. He raved about this re-imagining of the life of the cartoon character Snagglepuss. Treated as serious subject matter, the collection takes us through the McCarthy era and blacklisting, Stonewall (yes, Snagglepuss is gay!), the Rosenberg executions, Marilyn Monroe’s relationship with Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller, and many aspects of…
This is a big book with a long title, but I ended up plowing through it pretty fast. Although I have a Master’s degree in immunology, the science has changed rapidly, and this book refreshed my memory on the basics and also got me caught up on some of the newer developments in the field. Using real people as examples,…
This novel recounts the life of Little Dog, the son of Vietnamese immigrants, and his experiences growing up in the US. The author is an award-winning poet, and he certainly deserves the accolades. Nearly every sentence is dripping with perfect, beautiful wordplay. Sometimes I found myself stopping and re-reading some of the sentences simply because the words were amazing. For…
Although I’m not a parent and have no desire to be, I saw this book in the library and found it intriguing. One morning, the author was driving with her four-year old son in the car. She stopped to run into the store to get something, leaving the kid in the car for five minutes. Someone called the police to…
Today we fly to Lalibela, to see the famous rock churches tomorrow. Along the drive from the airport to our hotel, at large crowd of people were marching in our direction. It was a funeral procession. When someone from these villages passes away, the entire community mourns. I discreetly managed to get a video of the procession from inside the…
This was a really good, practical book. I go through phases where I meditate regularly, and when I do, my life is much better. But I sometimes let my travel schedule distract me from the practice, and I forget to do it on the weekends, and before I realize it, I’ve let the practice of meditation fall by the wayside. …
Mark’s main interest in life is food. He is a big-time foodie, spending nearly every evening watching cooking videos, thumbing through cookbooks, and perusing cooking blogs. When we go into a bookstore, he visits one section and one section only: the cookbooks. There is a travel video blogger named Mark Wiens who makes videos which are a perfect mix of…
The flight from Mombasa to Addis Ababa was only 2 hours, 15 minutes, and passport control was pretty fast. This hotel offers a free shuttle service, so they were waiting when we arrived. A nice big van, just for me and Mark. This hotel, the Golden Tulip, was pretty nice. Accommodations in Addis run the gamut, from major luxury to…