ByGD
I confess that I grew up with a few stereotypes about the French. And as an adult, my few interactions with French people have not done very much to dispel them. So I’m as surprised as anyone to discover just how many French bands I love – especially because most of them play metal, and all of them are heavy. Here is some French music I like.
ByGD
I personally dislike sportsball of all kinds. But I like my kids and I like Iceland. Back in 2016, both of my kids were on soccer teams. And Iceland almost made it to the World Cup. So that year, I paid a little bit of attention.
Since I’m blurry on the details of European soccer (or, let’s face it, youth rec leagues despite years as a reluctant soccer mom) I’ll quote Wikipedia:
Iceland reached its first major tournament, UEFA Euro 2016, after a qualification campaign which included home and away wins over the Netherlands. After advancing to the knockout stages of Euro 2016, Iceland defeated England in the Round of 16, advancing to the quarter-finals, where they lost to host nation France 5–2.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland_national_football_team
That doesn’t sound like much, but until about a decade earlier, it was impossible to play soccer year-round in Iceland because there were no indoor pitches. Playing against some of the best professional teams in the world, Iceland’s top soccer players all had day jobs.
It was just a coincidence that my husband and I were in Reykjavik on the day they team returned. We had no foreknowledge of the event and just happened to be walking around the neighborhood when it became apparent that something was going on. And that’s how I came to join in as all of Iceland came out to hail the conquering heroes.
Áfram Ísland!
ByGD
Seattle Dance Collective continues its second season with the fourth of five pieces, Musings by Amanda Morgan. As usual, the piece premiered online on a Thursday. But by now, the individual pieces are beginning to feel like a program that is organized along a gradient of tradition. Beginning with the beautifully filmed ballet Home, the pieces become progressively more experimental. A Headlamp or Two felt like a film whose content happened to be dance. Musings feels like a multimedia artwork in which the media are film, dance, and spoken word.
ByGD
My musical taste is eclectic, but punk is not my genre. I love the idea of punk and most of the politics and aesthetics of the culture. But the music rarely does it for me. The list of punk bands I like is very short, and usually includes an interesting cultural backstory. So here it is.
ByGD
Dwarf hamsters might be even worse pets than rabbits. Where rabbits cower, dwarf hamsters burrow and hide. And they are pretty well camouflaged in their bedding. They actually make brightly colored bedding for hamsters, probably to make it easier to find your pet in its cages. But I was worried about the potential health effects on such a short-lived animal of eating dyed paper. So the closest we ever got to playing with our pet hamster was a Waldo-like “Where’s Hammie?” game.