Travel

Peter and I took a trip up to New York yesterday. The early afternoon was occupied by sifting through galleries in Chelsea, the highlights of which were the Tim Gardner and Michael Craig-Martin exhibitions, held (respectively) at 303 Gallery and Gagosian Gallery. The late afternoon was spent being herded around NBC Studios in Rockefeller Center, waiting to see Interpol perform on “Last Call with Carson Daly”. The vast majority of the audience was Interpol fans,… See more →

I’ve been back from Ottawa for nearly a week now and the annoying cold I contracted while I was there is on its last leg, so I am finally getting around to reporting on the festival. This was the third bi-annual Ottawa International Animation Festival I have been to; I counted seeing 162 short films in just about three days and for the first time there was nothing that really blew me away. Which is… See more →

I’ll be in Ontario for the next five days at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. Some brief scattered comments before I leave:

One Hour Photo was a stale and boring waste of 95 minutes. I went to see it based on the strength of some decent reviews and the fact that it looked subtly creepy, and while I’ll concede that the production design (particularly set design and lighting) was exceptional, the story was practically nonexistent.… See more →

You may or may not have noticed that I redesigned the site. Welcome to robweychert.com Version 2, lovingly dubbed “The Motörhead Version” by my friend Merritt. Version 1 has been permanently archived and will no longer be updated. As with that original version, I welcome any and all comments, suggestions, criticism, praise, and disparagement regarding content, functionality, and/or aesthetics.

To coincide with the Version 2 launch, I finally finished the Ireland project I’ve been talking… See more →

I have returned from Ireland in one piece. Details and photos should be up within a few days, but I see that the Resident Evil redux for GameCube arrived in my absence, so don’t hold your breath.

We struck out north from the midlands on what would be our last full day in Ireland. First stop: Clonmacnoise, still more monastic ruins. The addition of a Visitor’s Center to a location of this sort has a tendency to rob it of much of its ambience, and Clonmacnoise was no exception. A little walk-through museum with excessive information about the craftmanship found in the area’s many, many stone crosses was enough to bore me… See more →

Today we trekked south to Kilkenny, primarily to see Kilkenny Castle, but I was also keen to check out the Design Centre and Butler Gallery of Contemporary Art. Unfortunately the gallery was closed while they assembled an installation. the Castle and Design Centre were open, however, and worth a visit.

I’ll say that Kilkenny Castle was my least favorite of the castles we’ve seen over the last week, mostly because its restoration was so thorough… See more →

Much of today consisted of the adventure that was finding our way out of Dublin and onto a solid route southwest to Roscrea. On the way out of the city we stopped at the James Joyce Tower and Museum, which was filled with original printed editions of his books, letters, articles, personal belongings, etc. I found it funny that the museum itself addressed the absurdity in naming the tower after Joyce, since he lived there… See more →

With public transportation finally at our disposal, my sister and I left our parents behind to make the most of our one day in Dublin. One day is not nearly enough for a satisfactorily thorough Dublin experience, but as that was apparent at the outset, we did our best to maximize our time spent there.

We covered much of the city centre south of the Liffey on foot throughout the day, including the Guinness brewery… See more →

Last night I dreamt that I pulled out all of my facial hair. My parents – reasonable, considerate, and loving as they are – have in them the capacity to irritate me beyond belief, and like no other. So my anticipation for the remainder of the trip’s Irish destinations is rivalled by my anticipation for our final destination: home, where ambitions of escape are boundless.

Most of today was spent on the road between Blarney… See more →

I’m in Dublin today and tomorrow and this cyber cafe ain’t cheap, so I’ll just briefly say that the trip is going well, I’ll be back in the States this weekend, and I’ll be putting together a micro-site detailing the trip then.

Tourist trap #2: Blarney. As we already know, I generally find castles to be pretty wicked, and Blarney Castle, though overrun by site-seers of every shape and size, was no exception. It was older and bigger than Bunratty Castle, less “renovated,” and a larger percent of it was open to the public. It was pretty spectacular. If there’s a next time, I’ll have to bring a flashlight to explore the dungeon, which turned pitch black… See more →

We arrived at Shannon International Airport via Aer Lingus shortly before 6:00 AM, Ireland time (1:00 AM Philadelphia time). It was a five hour flight from Boston to Shannon, about 80 minutes from Philadelphia to Boston, take-off delayed by about 90 minutes, so we were lucky to make our flight out of Boston.

We rented a van that resembled a wheeled breadbox, continually reminded my father to stay left, and were off.

First destination, Bunratty… See more →

Tomorrow afternoon I leave for a week in Ireland with the fam, armed with a stack of Irish literature for the many hours destined to be spent on planes and in cars. Luckily, the Transportation Security Administration issued their new list of items banned from carry-on luggage just in time, so I can feel safe knowing that no one carrying a spear gun will be allowed on the plane.

My iBook will be sitting this… See more →

I survived the trip home, and apparently spring arrived while I was gone. The ice cream man is in full effect. Since I missed the first half of the Philadelphia Festival of World Cinema, I’m diving in tomorrow night with a late screening of the U.S. premeire of Versus. Looks delicious.

Detroit is interesting in a ghost town kind of way. About half of the city’s buildings are vacant. And aside from business hours, there is virtually no activity. Weird. None of this stops the place from having some sweet bookstores, though, and looking through those took up much of the day. I also got to check out a nifty arcade in the ’burbs called Marvin’s Mechanical Museum, which had a ton of weird antique coin-op… See more →

I’m in Detroit today. Last night I got a little driving tour and today we’re gonna do some book-shopping and sock monkey picture-taking and punk rock finger-pointing. Results later.

Last night was a fund-raising party at the Heaven Gallery in Wicker Park for the upcoming Version02 Festival (which I’m really sad I’m going to miss). Despite huge potential for overhipness, it was a genuinely great time, and I met a bunch of really nice people. I was also familiarized with the very slick SELECT zine.

Thanks to Kelly and her FluX Core pals for showing me a good time.

My generous hosts and I got back a couple hours ago from seeing a gorgeous digitally remastered 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Music Box Theatre. Wow.

This afternoon I paid my inaugural visit to the inside of The Art Institute of Chicago (I took some fabulous photos of my sock monkey around the exterior last spring). Lots of cool stuff in there, including a number of Lautrec and Renoir paintings I’ve… See more →

Today I drove seven hundred something miles to Chicago. If you didn’t know, Ohio and Indiana offer little in the way of intriguing scenery. But I did see a sign in Ohio for “Gore Orphanage Rd,” so now I’ve got another name to choose from when I start my metal band.