There are certain records that stay with you forever – music that seems to grow up alongside you and become more intricate and enthralling with every listen. For me, one of those albums is Weezer’s Pinkerton.

Pinkerton, the band’s second album, was a dark departure from the polished power pop of their 1994 debut. Raw, capricious, and startlingly personal, the record is an intimate examination of frontman Rivers Cuomo’s psyche – his fears, anxieties, and (oft-perverted) desires – played out over a cacophony of crunching, distorted guitars and brazen, booming drums. Over the course of Pinkerton’s brief 34 minutes, Cuomo professes to be bored with one-night stands, fantasizes about a teenaged Japanese fan, and falls in love with a lesbian.

When it was first released in 1996, Pinkerton was widely scorned by critics who were bewildered by its unconventional sound and confessional lyrics. By the time I discovered the album at the age of 12, however, it had become something of a cult classic. Pinkerton was a soundtrack of my high school years, a record that – despite having been written by a 26-year-old rock star – fits perfectly into the histrionic emotional frame that emerges with pubescence. Though my most melodramatic teen years are long behind me, I’m still liable to throw on my well-battered copy and wail along to “Why Bother?” or “Falling For You.”

So when a friend offered me a ticket to see Weezer play Pinkerton live in its entirety – as part of the band’s current “Memories” Tour – I jumped at the chance. In front of a sold-out crowd at Manhattan’s Roseland Ballroom, Cuomo and co. romped their way through a career-spanning set (including beloved B-sides “Jamie” and “Susanne”), before launching into what many now consider their best, and possibly last good, album. Hearing Pinkerton live was invigorating, akin to reuniting with an old friend after years of only speaking by phone. The concert itself, meanwhile, was a night of triumphant vindication for a record that spent years underappreciated and misunderstood.

A handful of photos from the show are after the jump.

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The first thing you notice is the steam. It rises meanderingly into the darkness, stark and formless, illuminated by hundreds of florescent lights.

As you venture closer, the smell grabs hold of your attention. The scent is at once comforting, like your mother cooking in the next room, and foreign, infused with spices and herbs you’ve never seen but can already taste, their aromas marinating the air.

Then, rather abruptly, you are snapped out of this peculiar state of reverie. Dozens of men surround you like fleas to a dog, waving laminated menus in your face, clamoring for you to try their stall. All you want to do is sit and eat somewhere, but you are too overwhelmed to make a decision. You are standing amid the chaotic nighttime food stalls of Marrakech’s Djemaa el Fna market, and you are hungry.

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“Visual Inspiration” is a new series of features on Ponder. The idea is fairly simple: each post will contain a collection of photographs that capture the objects, ideas, people and places that captivate and stimulate my imagination. For the first edition, we venture into the Brooklyn Flea, an eclectic weekend bazaar housed in Fort Greene’s historic One Hanson Place. 

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It’s a brisk November night in Prague, cold enough to make any sane person retreat to the warm comforts of home. But football fans have never been known for their sanity.

Tonight, two Prague-based clubs – Sparta Praha and Bohemians 1905 – face off in the Gambrinus Liga, the highest level of professional football in the Czech Republic. It’s a derby – as football fans term matches between teams from the same city – and the more than 7,000 faithful who cram either end of Stadion Evžena Rošického help to underscore the game’s importance. The rest of the 19,032-capacity stadium is mostly empty, but it makes no difference, as the rabid supporters from both sides chant and sing with the tenacity of a crowd three times their size.

Sparta! Sparta! Sparta! The chant erupts from the sea of blue, red, and yellow at the north end of the stadium.

Zeleny! Bila! (Green! White!) comes the deafening response from the opposite stand.

The Czech football league might not be as glamorous or internationally respected as its English, Italian, or Spanish counterparts, but for the twenty-two men on the pitch, that doesn’t matter. On this night, they feel as beloved and adored as any footballer. And it is certainly of no consequence to those in the stands, waving homemade flags, their faces streaked in club colors. Prague’s true football fans, though small in numbers, are devoted and loyal. It’s not hard to see why, as the Czech capital is home to some of the most fascinating inter-club dynamics in all of professional football.

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At 5:30 AM on a blisteringly cold Friday morning, we arrived in Vienna. We wandered through the Austrian capital’s dark, empty streets before dawn and watched as they slowly came to life. The city is beautiful, to be sure – its buildings are adorned with the architectural grandiosity one might expect – but Vienna also possesses subtle charms, which reveal and endear themselves to you in unexpected ways. 

Below, you’ll find a smattering of photographs from throughout the day.

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A group of young soldiers in Liberia (2003)

Words by Yang-Yi Goh | Photographs by Jan Sibik

The boy pulls the pin from the grenade. Silence fills the air. He studies the frozen, terrified expressions of the four European reporters who stand no more than 20 feet before him.

Please, please, don’t do it, don’t do it, they plead to the boy. At 13, he is easily less than half the age of the four men before him, but he literally holds their lives in the palm of his hand.  He is a soldier in the Liberian army, and he must be strong.

Smirking, he flicks his wrist towards his Caucasian counterparts, toying with them. He laughs as they tremble with fear. At the last possible second, he hurls the grenade in the opposite direction.

The reporters are still within range of shrapnel from the explosion, but luckily they remain unscathed. At this point, they’re just thankful to be alive. One of the grateful individuals is Czech photojournalist Jan Sibik.

“I almost started to pee,” he tells me.

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This piece was originally written in September 2009 for a Travel Writing class.

Mark and Rachel Price are visiting Prague from Birmingham, England. They are standing in front of the famous Nationale-Nederlanden building – known colloquially as the Dancing House – gazing up at its parabolic glass exterior.

“I quite like it, yeah,” Rachel says. “It gives the city a bit of an edge, doesn’t it?”

Mark looks at his wife quizzically.

“I don’t know really,” he says. “I’m not sure that it fits. I feel like that bloke who ate lunch on the Eiffel Tower because it was the only place in Paris he couldn’t see it.”

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You will do foolish things, but do them with enthusiasm. – Colette


People say a lot of things about mistakes – everybody makes them; you learn from them; they’re human. Nothing they can tell you, however, will take away the initial sting of regret that siphons through your body when you realize you’ve erred in some way.

My mistake, in this case, was launching this website two days before leaving for a full semester in Prague. At the time, it seemed perfectly reasonable to assume I’d be able to balance writing material for Ponder on top of schoolwork, an internship, weekend trips, and, of course, adjusting to the sudden shock of finding myself living in Central Europe. I was wrong.

Over the last three months, I have seen and done a number of extraordinary things, most of which I could not have anticipated while eagerly uploading the site in late August. I’ve guzzled beers at Oktoberfest, ridden camels in the Moroccan desert, and listened to the Dalai Lama speak about the development of democracy in Asia. What I haven’t done is properly maintain the magazine I’d dreamed of starting for years. And it bothers me – a lot. 

The reason this magazine is called Ponder is partly because that’s how it began life – as a daydream, a doodle in the corner of my notebook. Unfortunately, constantly dreaming does not equate in any way with doing, which is something it has taken me much longer than it should have to learn.

What I hope for now is twofold: first, that I have learned from my mistakes, and that I’ll be able to manage my time more successfully; and second, that I’ll be able to take some of the strange and wonderful experiences I’ve had and share them here. I never wrote out a full mission statement or description of Ponder, because it was hard to put into words. I only had a very abstract vision of what it could or should be, and figured that over time, as I wrote about whatever I please, it would sort of solidify itself. We’ll soon see if I was right.

Starting this week, there will finally be a steady stream of updates on this website – I’ll be aiming for about one or two a week. I realize that very few, if any, people are reading or care about Ponder right now, but if you are, then please stick around for the ride. And if you happen to like what you read, don’t hesitate to pass the word along.

For now, though, feel free to take a look at a few pictures from my various travels after the jump.

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There are plenty of things you might expect to find in a deserted back-alley: discarded junk, old tires, perhaps a rodent or two. Chances are, though, that “menswear boutique” wouldn’t be high on that list. After three and a half years on Toronto’s main shopping strip, owner Matt Robinson made the unconventional decision to move his shop, Klaxon Howl, into the far corner of a dusty alleyway.

To some, the relocation seemed ludicrous – but it couldn’t have turned out to be more perfect. The reconverted 19^th century coach house – chockfull of rustic, quirky charm – provides the ideal setting for Klaxon Howl’s eclectic mix of vintage workwear and military apparel, alongside its exceptional private label.

Perhaps even more remarkable than the store itself is the enthusiasm of its owner. A conversation with Robinson reveals not only his extensive historical knowledge of the goods he hawks, but also his undeniable passion for his craft.

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