Henry Rollins said, and I quote from memory because I cannot find a reference on the internet:
Always overpromise and underdeliver. Always run behind schedule, never rest.
How is that for a news year's resolution? I would just add this: overpromise and overdeliver to the people you love.
Whatever you wish for in 2011, I hope it will come true for you.
Happy New Year!
Op de valreep: mijn eindejaarslijstje voor daMusic.
From the No Shit, Sherlock department: Dealing with PMS
Women can be touchy about being labeled as a raving lunatic for a few days a month.
30 December 1920 - 14 November 2010
My grandmother would have turned 90 today. This photo must be from the 40s.
Jason Fried: This Atlantic article nails what it's like to be an introvert in an extrovert's world: http://bit.ly/c2waSI
This song by Röyksopp has been in my head today. Have you seen the video already? It is brilliant.
I am not much of a Röyksopp fan but consider myself lucky nevertheless. The song that was in my head yesterday was awful.
We saw the Another Year yesterday and it is great. A typical Mike Leigh movie without spectacular drama but with refined portraits of beautiful characters. Read this review by Roger Ebert or deze op Humo and/or watch the trailer.
Dave Lens: België heeft geen sneeuw-overlast. http://is.gd/jCZ6b
Chinezen stellen eten van hondenvlees zelf in vraag
"Honden en katten zijn trouwe mensenvrienden", aldus Chang. "Een verbod om ze te eten betekent dat China een nieuw niveau van beschaving bereikt."
Check the dictionary of cancer giving or cancer curing objects.
All links go to The Daily Mail. Some examples:
And that is just some of the entries for the letter B. The letter S contains next to the entry for smoking also an entry for sandals. What do you think? Causes cancer or cures it?
(via Metafilter)
The new video of Radical Slave just got released. It is completely shot in HDR and looks as if it is inspired by the latest Lars Von Trier. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a hit on Studio Brussels.
Someone found an enormous amount of beautiful photos made by an unknown woman called Vivian Maier that lived from 1926-2009. He takes on the job of archiving and promoting them.
See the story on Chicago Tonight
(via metafilter)
(via daMusic)
Nick De Mey: Concert ticket prices reached an all time high, now in decline. End of an era? http://j.mp/idEqaX
We all know Björk's It's Oh So Quiet
That however is a cover of the version of Betty Hutton, an American actress and contemporary of Judy Garland.
This in turn is a cover of a song by Hans Lang) sung by Harry Winter
Now that John Cage has not ended on the first position in the British Charts but some X-Factor song did this is my contribution to your Silent Night.
Merry christmas!
(hat tip @filletk)
In this photogallery from Time a picture is taken of various people around the world with their intake of food during a single day.
What is remarkable is how obvious it is that people that move more can eat more without getting fat. I should be getting back to doing sports.
(via @michaelpollan)
The Roots have as far as I am concerned not made one original track yet but they do make great songs danceable. Consider this a good Joanna Newsom remix that goes in the "if I ever have to DJ this will be played" playlist:
(was featured in Soundcheck's year in hip-hop)
From our Stop Pretending You Have Good Taste Department.
On Soundcheck they give an overview of what happened in Hip-Hop this year and of course it's a lot about Kanye West.
If you haven't checked his new album, you should. The Pitchfork maximum score is exaggerated for sure. Also the fact that the album shows up in almost all year-end lists is probably due to the fact that the release time was ideal for that purpose. Nevertheless it is a great record with a wide variety of interesting samples. There's even an Aphex Twin sample of this song.
Into The Abyss talks about the popularity of the colors teal and orange in contemporary Hollywood movies.
If you take two complementary colors and put them next to each other, they will "pop", and sometimes even vibrate. So, since people (flesh-tones) exist in almost every frame of every movie ever made, what could be better than applying complementary color theory to make people seem to "pop" from the background
and after reading this I could not help but noticing the teal and orange scenes in this trailer that was on De Standaard for reasons a lot less artistic: the ass of Natalie Portman.
(thx Nick)
3VOOR12: 3VOOR12TV Best of 2010: Vampire Weekend http://bit.ly/gKqaEJ
Facebook: A map of the world drawn entirely from Facebook friend connections: http://ow.ly/3pj4j
In Brussels a new shop has opened where you can 3D-Print your own lamp for the price of 199€. For those of you not knowing what that means, imagine this:
Download Google Sketchup and create the lamp of your dreams in this free program.
Upload the file you created to the website of i.materialize
Your file will be loaded into their computer system and they will print your lamp on their 3D-printer. This means that with a special process your design is automatically produced using laser sintering
A couple of days later you go and buy it in their shop.
In 10 years time there will be desktop 3D-printers for home users and I can email you my lamp and you can print it for your own use. Or chairs, or guitars, or who knows more complicated things like printers. Print your own printer. Now that is the future.
daMusic: [update] Arcade Fire op tournee met Portishead http://bit.ly/dGg287
Guardian music: Our indie professor reveals her 10 best gigs of 2010. It's all in the name of research, of course ... http://bit.ly/gHZIfh
Just as a matter of securing my snowball business I though I'd grow my own snowflakes. Then I noticed that next to a cola bottle and a sponge I will need dry ice.
Dry ice is very cold (about -60 ℃), so you'll want to wear gloves when handling it. Other than being cold, it's perfectly safe, as is consists of nothing more than solid carbon dioxide. It doesn't melt, but rather sublimes (changes from a solid to a gas when warmed), producing carbon dioxide gas in the process.
Now that is too much effort for me. (via boingboing)
Florian Seroussi: QOTD: "I’ve tried yoga, but I find stress less boring." +1
Tim Siedell: The moon turned red this morning. Exactly as foretold by Yahoo! News.
Chris Van Echelpoel: 13 Lonely Planet gidsen Europa voor de iPhone tijdelijk gratis http://bit.ly/etyoYk (via @MacFreakNL)
Pieter Baert: Een man geeft 300.000€ terug nadat gevonden in gekochte woning. En nu zegt niemand dat het een Turk was...
This text of Ricky Gervais on why he's an atheist is doing the internet rounds.
“Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. But that’s exactly what it is - a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good.
I like his humorous version better though:
It goes on in part2
PIL is coming to the AB in June. These days I'm trying to refrain myself from buying tickets that cost more than 25€ but this is a hard one.
KindaMuzik and daMusic both gave positive reviews of their previous gigs in the region.
This should be good. Of course, I could be wrong, I could be right.
Last weekend we watched C'est arrivé pres de chez vous which in English translates to Man Bites Dog. I never understood that but Wikipedia explains
The phrase man bites dog describes a phenomenon in journalism in which an unusual, infrequent event is more likely to be reported as news than an ordinary, everyday occurrence (such as Dog bites man)
Man Bijt Hond is a Belgian television program that reports about "the other news" as well, so I could have guessed.
The movie is still as strong as it was over fifteen years ago. On imdb I found this interesting trivial fact:
Ben's family didn't know anything about the plot of the film. Ben's mother and grandparents thought they were filming raw footage of Ben, and had no idea that the footage was going to be used in a film in which Ben is a serial killer. Ben's mother was shocked to see her son behind bars, when she comes to visit him in prison.
Not as shocked as she was to see the movie itself I guess.
Ancienne Belgique : Public Image Ltd (PIL) (04/06/2011): http://bit.ly/fuQDUE
daMusic: [update] Captain Beefheart is niet meer http://bit.ly/fbjzwv
AnneJocteurMonrozier: 2010 en images (Big Picture) http://tinyurl.com/26yxc7v - http://tinyurl.com/26fggdn - http://tinyurl.com/35wpdyc
Apache: De Standaard neemt het op voor Singles
‘Single (zijn) maakt niet gelukkig’ vernemen we vandaag in De Standaard. Die primeur heeft de krant uit een onderzoek van … Singles, een commercieel bureau dat activiteiten organiseert voor singles en in die hoedanigheid, geheel toevallig, de perfecte remedie tegen zoveel ongeluk in huis heeft.
In short, the Belgian news paper De Standaard conducts surveys that imply that singles are not happy with their lives. A university made an enquiry and the results seem to point that way. The study was performed by on online dating agency. De Standaard has an online dating site by itself. There is a huge conflict of interests here that remains under the radar if it were not for Apache.
The difference between news and commercials is fading. Online as well as in printed newspapers. Almost every day the middle part of De Standaard is completely filled with advertorials that are almost indistinguishable from the real news. It is us, the readers that are being sold to advertisers. The news is there merely as a disguise and the investment in it is being minimized. It consists mostly of unverified copies of press releases, blatant product placement or short messages about celebrities or sex.
Also universities are going where the money is and do not hesitate to lend their services to private firms to do market research. The result is usually a silly statistic that will make a simple headline like "singles are not happy". The example given on Apache is excruciating, as students are being used as cheap workforce. We should not accept this from important actors of society like universities.
For an example, fill out this survey and try to guess at which result they want to arrive. My guess: it is to influence someone to invest more money in nicer concert halls.
From Yes, Minister. How to conduct surveys:
Het Nieuwsblad: Internationaal Zeemanshuis wordt dan toch gesloopt
Het Zeemanshuis, dat volgens de stad geen architecturale noch monumentale waarde heeft, moet wijken voor woningen en kantoorgebouwen.
De Rechtzetting: Internetenquête bij Limburgers brengt eindelijk opheldering: Jef Vermassen pleegde parachutemoord zelf. http://bit.ly/g81Lpm
Mijn review van de cd van Radical Slave staat online bij daMusic.
Uit die cd: Before We Got Rich
Pocket Revolution: Tempo of a restless soul online http://goo.gl/fb/AtVPj
Recently some website lost its entire database of passwords. Those passwords can now be used on other websites as many people choose the same password for all of the websites they visit.
You and I should try to prevent reusing the same password. Here is an easy method for creating good passwords that you can use:
Technical clothing comes with its own language, the language of performance. The marketing strategy revolves around presenting clothes as engineering. Sometimes, though, I suspect that we are being blinded with pseudo-science.
Then he goes on to marvel at the technical feats of outdoor gear like:
The fleece, the mainstay of every outdoor enthusiast, is made of recycled plastic bottles
and
Gore-Tex is an ingenious material. Because its pores are 20,000 times smaller than a water drop, it keeps water out while allowing water vapour from an overheating body to escape.
So there is your answer I guess. It's the same mentality that makes people choose SUV's in situations where a simple Mini would do.
All I can do is rant on Twitter
The guy that invented call centers should be shot, hung, drowned and sliced to pieces. Twice.
Peeters and Pichal have a popular radio show and can produce a whole campaign against call centers. Of course, I love it.
Radio 1: Bart Eeckhout (De Morgen) wint 1ste Groot Dictee der Federale Taal van Radio1 http://bit.ly/fW0db2 #joos
Wayne Coyne: Reprint of vintage Flaming Lips T-Shirt from legendary 1991 gig in Noble Oklahoma.. included in NYE V.I.P. package http://yfrog.com/gz5ozsj
Everybody knows giving money to charity only leads to bad radio, ugly christmas cards and gooey hit singles. For those people that despite all that still want to donate money down the drain Oxfam produced an album full of Joanna Newsom covers which, based on a quick youtube scan, must really be awful.
Except this one:
Price is ten dollars minimum. (via TMT)
Guardian music: Are the Vaccines and Kings of Leon ripping off the blog band aesthetic? @LauraSnapes thinks so ... http://bit.ly/i2RciK
Fraser Speirs: Of course, in football, the definition of "gay" is "reads a book without pictures from time to time".
De Standaard Online - Trajectcontrole in Brusselse tunnels
De Leopold II- en de Rogiertunnel zijn sinds enkele weken uitgerust met een trajectcontrolesysteem.
Als er één plaats is waar ik te snel rijd is het daar wel.
Conan O'Brien: The latest Rock Band videogame might be too realistic. It’s just four smelly guys sleeping on a bus as they cross Ohio at night.
The misconception that what these teenagers did is 'hacking' needs to be corrected. Journalists need to research what they're talking about, especially if they are doing a cover story for one of the biggest newspapers in the country.
Journalists need to research full stop.
You Can't Spell TIME Without 'I' and 'Me'!
It's now expected that writers of journalism insert themselves in stories.
Which is why I argued at daMusic that I wanted to write this review for the Lambchop concert in the first person. I won.
I wonder when we will see the beginning of Belgo-Nostalgia. Let's say we split up in 2020, based on Ostalgie and Yugo-Nostalgia articles in the press I would say it takes about 15 years. That should be around 2035. I'll be 63 then.
Durant l'existence de la Yougoslavie, nous n'avons eu peur que d'une chose : le nationalisme. La Belgique a du mal avec deux peuples, nous en avions une vingtaine.
houbi: Blogde met hulp van The Guardian eens over het achterste van zijn tong: http://t.co/7NfgCLB
I bet they don't tell you that you have to wade through the corpses in the touristic folder for climbing the Mount Everest.
Kristof: Maart, oktober, november en december. 4 Dode daklozen. In België. http://j.mp/gZd7eK
The countdown to Leopard, aka Mac OS X.5, has begun! It is very big on the front page of Apple's website. I have been playing with it since I got my beta preview at the developer conference. There are some new features in it that I am looking forward to using day in day out.
Most of them will be clear when you install Leopard and are already well known. Time Machine, Spaces, the new Finder, Cover Flow and the new Dock to name a few have all been thoroughly discussed in the Mac blogging community.
One of my favorite features that may go unnoticed if you don't pay attention: you can now share anyfolder, complete with access control lists and all. Finally!
What I've seen from the new XCode at the WWDC looks very promising. The snapshots, the message bubbles, Objective-C 2.0 and refactoring all look very promising. Let's hope that some bugs got fixed along the way of this significant upgrade. Interface Builder has gone through a major rewrite and the list of annoying things that are gotten rid of is impressive. The new resizer animation is what you would have wanted since day one, for example. Selecting multiple controls and change the common properties of them all at the same time, to name another one. But there were other examples, I'm sure.
According to The Daily Mail Julian Assange might have been the victim of a Honey Trap.
That's what I was thinking all along because a while ago I read this article about the history of honey traps and that Wikileaks-story reminded me of it.
My favorite part of the article was about the East German spies that got caught in the most silly way possible:
The scheme lost its usefulness when the West German counterintelligence authorities devised a simple way of identifying the Stasi officers as soon as they arrived in West Germany: They sported distinctly different haircuts -- the practical "short back and sides" variety instead of the fashionable, elaborate West German style. Alerted by train guards, counterintelligence officers would follow the Romeo spies and arrest them at their first wrong move.
(via Slate)
De Rechtzetting: Gelekt op WikiLeak:s 'Obama loopt soms rond in minirok.' http://bit.ly/eQZVIn
Long time no hear and I never saw the video before. A barely dressed girl running through the woods, you can't go wrong with that of course.
TrolleyCat: "On this episode of 60 Minutes, we'll talk to a woman who had a baby but did not change her Facebook profile picture to a photo of it..."
The concert of Das Racist yesterday was not much of a hit. They seemed to have fun but the sound was awful and they stopped after 45 minutes, which was way to early. Maybe it is because they came straight out of Amsterdam?
This song was played by the DJ's before the concert and made me smile:
Voor de mensen die geen YouTube hebben, vanavond om 23.50u zingt een engeltje je te slapen op de Canvas TV.
(merci Nick)
Belle & Sebastian in Ancienne Belgique
Op 10 april. Voorverkoop start morgenochtend om 11.00u. Echt fan van hun laatste ben ik (nog) niet, maar het zijn wél Belle & Sebastian, natuurlijk.
Do you have information overload? What else is new? All throughout history people have been struggling with information overload:
But around 1500, humanist scholars began to bemoan new problems: Printers in search of profit, they complained, rushed to print manuscripts without attention to the quality of the text, and the sheer mass of new books was distracting readers from the focus on the ancient authors most worthy of attention. Printers “fill the world with pamphlets and books that are foolish, ignorant, malignant, libelous, mad, impious and subversive; and such is the flood that even things that might have done some good lose all their goodness,” wrote Erasmus in the early 16th century, in the kind of tirade that might seem familiar to anyone exhausted by what they find online today.
David Lynch:All pop is magical. #lynchqa
Pitchfork:Low release free Live EP http://bit.ly/hZefBE
Operation Payback:WE ARE GLAD TO TELL YOU THAT http://www.mastercard.com/ is DOWN AND IT'S CONFIRMED! #ddos #wikileaks Operation:Payback(is a bitch!) #PAYBACK
San F. Yezerski: Pascal Smet en Joke Schauvliege gaan iets uitvinden om jongeren weer graag te laten lezen. Ge zoudt ze toch vijf frank geven.
Tonight in Democrazy/Charlatan: Das Racist. You can read this interview or watch this clip and then come along, it's not sold out yet.
Freaky.be over de nieuwe Chris Ware: K-U-N-S-T
We buy bio. We go to the local bio shop and get the best our money can buy. We love the taste of the food and we soothe the sense of guilt we have that way. I guess you could say we are nouveau riche.
That is what is being argued in What Food Says About Class in America. The difference between rich and poor is not more about how much we eat, it's about how we eat. As a consequence:
Corpulence used to signify the prosperity of a few but has now become a marker of poverty. Obesity has risen as the income gap has widened: more than a third of U.S. adults and 17 percent of children are obese, and the problem is acute among the poor.
Let's remind ourselves of the Pollan Doctrine: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. The article (and probably his book too) is a must read for anyone interested in food and its influence on society.
In a program on the Dutch VPRO there was an episode of Tegenlicht called California Dreaming, about the situation in the Golden State (Dutch Version). Recommended watching.
Miranda July Is Creating a New Movie as we speak
Renowned architect Norman Foster to design Apple's new campus in Cupertino. http://cl.ly/3Waj
Playboy Magazine releases every issue on a hard drive
All those magazines that are jumping on the iPad-bandwagon, why don't you do this instead? I would love to have the archives of De Morgen and Humo on a hard drive.
From the same series as that sketch about The German Skull Soldiers, a British Comedy Series by Mitchell and Webb that seems funny enough to be interesting.
So this is the new version of my web log. It is its third incarnation already, so it's version 3.0. First of all: things might be a little bit shaky for now, but all should settle down in the next couple of days.
The most obvious change is probably the new layout. You will see that it is based on a WordPress theme that I adapted to my specific needs. Doesn't it look nicer?
The second one is that comments are now powered by disqus. This should make commenting easier for everybody. Just type your comment and click the "Post As..."-button and you will be given a variety of options to identify yourself. Login as "guest" if you just want to give an email address and a name. Know that if there is ever a need to edit or delete a comment you made you can do so at the disqus website.
For me it should now be easier to blog. I am not using TextMate anymore but MarsEdit, possibly the best blogging software for Mac out there. The engine itself is a fork of blosxom, a perl script that converts a bunch of text files to static HTML and RSS. I will go into details about the technical side of things in another post.
I created a Facebook page for my blog. If you do not want to deal with RSS-feeds but you have a Facebook account you can like it and the posts should show up on Facebook. They will not look so nice as in for instance Google Reader though but they will be there.
Maybe it seemed like it was. From my point of view though it was as if my blogging experience got more and more dispersed over other media like Twitter and Facebook. While they have given me an easy way to communicate with the people I (virtually) know, I started hating the fact that they owned all of my data.
That to me is an almost unbearable idea and I much prefer the fact that all of my musings are stored away in neat little text files on my hard disk and, for your enjoyment, somewhere on the cloud. Here, where you can read them and comment on them. So this is the direction I am moving in, without (at this moment) giving up the social networks I'm on.
There are a lot of things that I would still like to do but require some programming work from my side. For the moment I will concentrate on other things, but sooner or later I will do them and you will see those changes here. Stay tuned.
Mijn interview met Luc De Vos staat online.
Bij Van Boeken en Mensen heb ik eindelijk eens een vermoeden wie de pastiche zou kunnen zijn. Toevallig ook geschreven door Luc De Vos.
When the new album by Arcade Fire got released I could not have cared less. Their first album got me somewhat interested and then I saw them live at Pukkelpop and the concert sucked. That is where the story would have ended, but now there is The Suburbs which is on repeat at our office .
So for the year 2010, which is (well) nearing its end, it seems this will be my record of the year. It is not hip, nothing trendy, it is topping the charts and everybody knows it. But what a great album it is. Check it out if you haven't already.
If you are looking for something hipper, there is Tame Impala. I wrote the review for daMusic and I wasn't too enthusiastic about it. There are however some great songs on it and it is worth checking out. And it will make your music bluff more credible if you can mention that you know them.
Me, if all goes well, I might interview them in november. We'll see how that ends. A bunch of kids from Australia that ride the hype. Where else have we seen that go wrong before?
Monkey Sandwich is a duet for a dancer and a movie. It is scary, dark, intense, disturbing and beautiful. It made me think of 2001 A Space Odyssey, Lars Von Trier, Fever Ray, Big Fish and Nieuwzwart .
At one moment it was funny. I don't mean Laurel and Hardy funny like in those other performances one usually sees in contemporary dance but funny funny. The acting, especially by the main character in the movie is spectacular. The dancing is primitive and bestial and impressive. A part of the otherwise unintelligible text the dancer mumbles is a children's poem by Toon Tellegen that I didn't know beforehand.
They should have cut out the extra role by Mauro, it only distracts. And Wim Vandekeybus should stop doing his cameos, it looks pretentious.
They filmed parts on the Dour festival. That was probably my favorite part.
If there is one recommendation I can already give you for the new season, Monkey Sandwich is it. You can read reviews of it in Knack , in De Standaard or on deredactie .
Monkey Sandwich is playing in practically every theatre in Flanders . You can read an interview with Wim Vandekeybus on the site of de Vooruit .
Recensie online bij daMusic .
We've been back for a couple of weeks now but it took that much time to process all belated payments, belated invoices, to visit most of the family and friends and do all of the washing and the cleaning.
Let me tell you what we've done in that month. This is the road we took:
According to Google Maps that amounts to 4.497km. But we did also do Sarajevo and that is not included in the map. And we took day trips and sometimes we took the scenic routes and sometimes we took wrong turns as the GPS did not work. So all in all we must have had more than 5.000km. Take into account that we didn't drive every day, we only once did more than 1000km and we almost never did more than 400km a day. Although it probably sounds like a lot, it is quite reasonable.
The idea was to spend one week on an island and one week in Belgarde. In between we explored ex-Yugoslavia. It must have been a very nice country and now it's a complete set of beautiful countries. There is a lot to see, the see is beautiful, there is a lot of history, it is not expensive and the people are friendly. Check out the pictures on flickr or here:
On the road I learned about 50 Serbian words. My favorite one is Paradajz which is Serbian for tomato. The thing is, over there tomatoes taste like paradise so it is very apt. Other words were harder to memorize. Zeleno for instance (green) was memorized as Zee (sea in Dutch which can be green with a little imagination) + Lennox (we had been singing a song of Annie Lennox just before). All things help.
This was the biggest hit in the car:
I told you your dreams would come true.
De Pukkelpop reviews staan online bij daMusic. Donderdag , vrijdag en zaterdag . U kon ook al onze live tweets volgen als u een beetje met Twitter overweg kunt.
Voor de mensen die graag lijstjes hebben het volgende overzicht.
Waren geweldig:
Waren heel goed:
Al de rest was goed tot gewoontjes. Al bij al geen uitzonderlijk goede jaargang en weinig echte verrassingen.
En wij? Wij zijn er weer mee weg voor een weekendje in Groningen .
De muziek voor onderweg: de nieuwe Arcade Fire op repeat. Tegen alle verwachtingen in ferm goed!
So the Kunstenfestivaldesarts ended with us missing another performance. It was not the first one we missed this year. When you book nearly everything, as you can do if you have a festival pass, you tend to double book with events like mother's day or concerts that have higher priority. That's the way it goes.
My absolute favorite performance was by the Japanese theatre company called chelfitsch. You can read a nice review with some pictures on this blog . It was funny in an absurd way, totally stylish and slightly disturbing at the same time and it was composed on top of the music by John Cage, Coltrane, Stereolab and Tortoise. A great piece and I'm absolutely curious to see more from this theatre company. Apparently their classic is called Five Days In March and there is a small clip from that performance on youtube .
The most talked about piece was certainly Via Intolleranza by Christoph Schlingensief. Noone I believe was able to make heads or tails of the show. It was just a cacophony of images and pieces of text and pieces of music and it vaguely said something about our third world politics or about the imminent death of the performer. In a way I liked it because it was puzzling but in a way I hated it because it seemed too meta to me. People that are more knowledgeable than me have more elaborate opinions about it ( Wouter Hillaert or Liv Laveyne ).
Playful, beautiful, touching and hilarious. That's how to describe the Lone Twin Theatre's trilogy. We spent one sunny sunday inside watching the three performances in a row and didn't regret it a moment. If it wasn't from the beautiful terrace at the beursschouburg we might have listened in on the discussion afterwards with the director but we decided to enjoy the weather instead.
The prize for subtle poetic beauty should go to Lotte Van Den Berg with the performance Het Verdwalen In Kaart. It was so simple in its beauty it reminded me of that famous Sony Bravia commercial . What Sony does with bouncing balls is what Lotte Van Den Berg does with amateur actors of the village of Dordrecht who become in their colorful carnival outfits individual elements of a bigger, beautiful picture. Combine that with a warm welcome through the backstage of the KVS and an equally warm farewell with drinks included and you get that nice fuzzy feeling. Here is a review by Els Van Steenberghe .
Something similar happened in Pororoca by the Brazilian Lia Rodrigues where a dozen of dancers, also in colorful outfits, form a larger body, almost like that of a large insect, that looks like it is crawling on stage until it takes the exit after crawling its way through the public to the front door of the theatre.
The least subtle performance was Hard To Be A God, by the Hungarian Kornél Mundruczó ( review by Guido Lauwaert here ). Dealing with the issue of human trafficking while showing on stage rape and murder is hammering the point home with a heavy brick. It did manage to pick up on a golden oldie though and I've been listening to it ever since:
Through freaky.be I was introduced to Bonom, a Brussels graffiti artist. Turned out he did a performance in the KVS and it fitted perfectly with the two other plays we had scheduled for that friday night. What happened basically was that he used his body and an infrared camera (I think) hanging on the ceiling of the room to paint pictures on a large screen in front of us. I will look out for his works in the streets of the city I'll be living in from tomorrow on.
Busy times are ahead here. I'm moving in with my girlfriend, which means moving from Ghent to Brussels and letting my house .
Now that Les Nuits Botanique are over, let me give you a small overview of what I've written for daMusic (apart from the things you already saw from my last post ):
Of course it's not all music and currently we are trying to see as many performances as possible on The Kunstenfestivaldesarts .
We also did a long weekend Istanbul. Highly recommended. Pictures:
Het is een tijdje geleden dat ik nog eens aan ego-linking heb gedaan, niet? Bij deze.
Les Nuits Botanique zijn volop bezig. Lees mijn interview met MLCD of mijn interview met Holy Fuck .
Moest je zin hebben om nog af te komen, ik heb grote delen van het overzicht geschreven en ik ga naar veel van de concerten die nog komen. Het concert van Gil Scott-Heron was gisteren maar was een beetje een teleurstelling .
Voldoende leesvoer? Er komt er nog hoor, hou de site van daMusic in de gaten!
Om de zoveel jaar, om de zoveel maanden lijkt het haast, komen ze ons mening vragen om te stemmen. Twee stembeurten geleden ben ik niet zelf gaan stemmen maar heb ik mijn broer een volmacht gegeven met het devies "stem op wie je wil, als het maar niet het Vlaams Belang is". De keer nadien ben ik niet gaan stemmen en heb ik ook geen volmacht meer gegeven. Bewust.
Deze keer zal ik naar alle waarschijnlijkheid in't binnenland zitten maar trek ik de lijn verder door: ik ga weer niet stemmen. Al jaren heb ik de indruk dat er geen partij meer is die mijn stem waard is.
Stel dat ik nu zou willen gaan stemmen, voor welke partij zou ik dat moeten doen?
VLDheeft nu de regering laten vallen, vooral uit strategische overwegingen. Ze denken dat ze niets te winnen hebben bij langer in de regering te blijven die door de CD&V geleid wordt.
Ze hebben wel zolang het hen uit kwam aan tafel gezeten en het grote B-H-V-spel meegespeeld. Nooit hebben ze eens duidelijk gezegd: "dat interesseert ons eigenlijk niet, we willen er vanaf zijn". Dat is nochtans wat ik vermoed hun standpunt te zijn. Waarom hebben ze niet eens gezegd: "Die akkoorden die we bereikt hebben in 2005 onder Verhofstadt, we zijn daar nog altijd tevreden mee". Antwoord: omdat dat electoraal niet goed valt.
Ze doen, kortom, niet meer aan politiek vanuit hun eigen ideeën, ze spelen spelletjes. Ze denken na over hoe het publiek het zal percipiëren, hoeveel stemmen het zal opleveren, hoeveel stemmen ze er door zullen verliezen. Dat is in een notendop waar de hele kleurenbalk van politici -zoals Meuris dat zo mooi uitdrukte- mee bezig is. Hoe win ik stemmen zonder stemmen te verliezen.
Neem de SP-A. Ook voor hen is B-H-V de ver van mijn bed show. Sinds ze de puntige oneliners en de frisse ideeën van Stevaert moeten missen gaan ze volop voor de lange benen aanpak van Vandenbossche en Gennez. De ideeën? Raak niet aan het brugpensioen, belast de rijken. Maar hun boodschap vindt in al het Vlaams gewoel moeilijk gehoor.
Niet dat ik er rouwig om ben. Is dat wat het socialisme verworden is? Plat populistische standpunten als core business? Verstandige en door mij gerespecteerde politici die te veel hun gedacht zeggen, genre Van Den Broecke, worden naar de achtergrond verdrongen omdat ze dissidente meningen verkondigen. VDB was nochtans de enige mens in die partij die me van zijn standpunten kon overtuigen, zelfs al was ik er niet mee akkoord. Hij wou de sociale zekerheid regionaliseren bijvoorbeeld. Mijn opinie is diametraal tegenovergesteld, maar als Frank ze verdedigt begin ik te twijfelen. Helaas, Frank wordt monddood gemaakt en moet wijken voor het sexy opkomend talent dat Gennez heet.
In 2005 waren het de socialisten die samen met Geert Lambert de onderhandelingen over B-H-V hebben afgeblazen. Ook zij hadden kunnen zeggen, nu ze die man van zich hebben afgeschud, dat ze die toegiften van toen eigenlijk zo slecht nog niet vonden maar zijn te bang om hun nek uit te steken. Dat zou stemmen kosten.
Moet ik het over de CD&Vhebben? Ik ben opgegroeid in het tijdperk Martens. In die tijd waren verkiezingen een wedstrijdje tussen de PVV en de SP over wie met de CVP - zo heetten die toen - in de regering mocht zitten. Er veranderde weinig, zo leek het, al werden onder mijn naïeve jonge voeten wel de grondvesten gelegd voor dit federaal gedrocht dat België heet.
Toen uiteindelijk eens een frisse wind door de Wetstraat waaide met een paarse regering werd die lam gelegd door Leterme. Met zijn "Vijf Minuten Politieke Moed" verstomde hij Verhofstadt die niet wist waar hij het had bij zo'n plat, schabouwelijk en schandalig populisme. Sindsdien zijn ze terug met hun welbekende mengelmoes van opportunisme en vis- noch vleespolitiek. Het gezin als hoeksteen van onze samenleving terwijl ongeveer elke vorm van nieuw samengestelde gezinnen, die tegenwoordig eerder regel dan uitzondering zijn, indruist tegen de grote fundamentele leer waar ze hun heel gedachtengoed op steunen: de C van Christelijk.
Dan zwijg ik nog over het debacle van de holle slogans die "Goed Bestuur" en "5 Minuten Politiek Moed" ons hebben opgeleverd.
Over de N-VAmoeten we het wel hebben. Dankzij een Vlaams Nationalistisch spelletje (denkt u echt dat de slimste mens ter wereld zich in Vlaanderen bevindt?) is meneer Dewever incontournable geworden. Hij staat voor de onafhankelijke staat Vlaanderen. Weinigen lijken dat ten volle te beseffen dus herhaal ik het nog eens: hij staat voor de splitsing van België. Hij is er in geslaagd heel het debat over te nemen.
Wat raar is aan Dewever, en wat ik u nu zeg zal u misschien verbazen, is dat ik hem eigenlijk wel mag. Hij is de enige politicus die nog echt aan parler vraidoet. Die zijn discours is geheel het mijne niet maar hij kan het verdedigen als de beste. Alle andere partijen moeten het hebben van marketing gespin en blijven steken in wollige uitspraken die hun gebrek aan ideeën moeten verbergen, maar Dewever heeft een duidelijke visie over hoe de maatschappij moet functioneren en kan het gewoon zeggen zoals het is. Bij hem is het duidelijk waar hij voor staat. Alleen, laat dat duidelijk zijn, staat hij heel ver van mijn eigen ideeën.
Over het Vlaams Belang zwijg ik. Wat betreft die partij is dat mijns inziens het beste, zeker nu ze goed op weg is te imploderen.
Blijft over: Groen. Het kneusje. Degene die constant flirten met de kiesdrempel. We kunnen discussiëren of een stem voor zo'n partij sowieso nuttig is. Ze hebben in hun partij de federale kieskring als programmapuntje staan, naar mijn oordeel een oplossing voor een groot deel van de problemen waar we tegenwoordig in zitten, en dat pleit voor hen.
Bovendien hebben ze Lucas Vander Taelen in hun rangen. De enige politieker die de laatste jaren echt indruk op mij heeft gemaakt met zijn niet voor de hand liggend discours over ghetto's in Brussel. Iets waar hij in zijn eigen partij eerder voor verguisd werd dan geprezen.
Ondertussen is Geert Lambert in de partij gaan zitten en zijn ze op die manier dezelfde fout aan het maken als de SP-A en de CD&V een paar jaar geleden: een Vlaams Nationaal beest binnen halen puur voor zijn electoraal gewicht. De taal uit hun mond moet ook al niet meer onderdoen voor de taal van anderen .
Op Franstalige partijen kan ik niet stemmen, daarvoor zal mijn verhuis naar Brussel niet snel genoeg geregeld zijn. Ik weet niet of ik het zou doen, maar het feit dat het niet mogelijk is maakt er over nadenken een zinloze oefening.
De selectie van 2010 bestaat dus uit politici die zich allemaal sterk Vlaams profileren. Vlaams of Vlaams, u mag weer gaan stemmen. Wenst u goed bestuur of goed bestuur, u mag weer gaan stemmen.
Wat zeg ik? U moet stemmen. In een rechtsstaat waar we zouden mogen stemmen zou het gemakkelijk zijn: ik zou gaan stemmen en mijn stem blanco afgeven. Dan tel je mee in de statistieken als "ik ga niet akkoord met heel de boel".
Ik ben daar eigenlijk wel voorstander van, van de stemplicht. Want dat stelt mij in staat om te doen wat ik gezien de omstandigheden de enige juiste optie acht: niet gaan stemmen. Er zijn dan mensen die zeggen dat ik antipolitiek ben, dat ik dom ben, dat ik de democratie onrecht aandoe etc. Ik speel hun spelletje niet mee en ze vinden dat blijkbaar rampzalig. Ze zijn mis. De beste manier om mijn politieke opinie te verkondigen is dat ik geen stem uitbreng. Ik heb dat de vorige keer niet gedaan en ik ben wat trots dat ik nu kan zeggen dat ik voor niet één van die politici heb gestemd.
Er zijn er dan die zeggen dat ik maar een eigen partij moet oprichten. Niet echt, dank u. Ten eerste heb ik daar geen tijd en energie voor, ten tweede heb ik daar geen zin in. Er zijn efficiënter manieren om de wereld te veranderen dan aan politiek te doen, en ik draag bij waar ik kan. Bovendien probeer ik in zoveel mogelijk aspecten van mijn leven een goed mens te zijn en zoveel mogelijk mensen te overtuigen om op dezelfde manier te leven. Dat is de manier waarop ik denk de wereld te veranderen. In de politiek gaan gaat voor mij te ver, zoals voor anderen mijn vegetarisme te ver gaat. Elk zijn keuze.
Bovendien heb ik moeite met compromissen en kan ik beter schrijven dan mondeling argumenteren. Ik ben verlegen dus ik zou op TV geen twee zinnen na elkaar kunnen zeggen en een rood jurkje staat me als lippenstift op een varken. Echt, u wilt me niet in de politiek en ik wil niet in de politiek.
Blanco stemmen vind ik laf. Zoals gezegd: ik kom best wel op voor mijn mening. Zie ook deze tekst. Vandaar mijn ostentatief niet gaan stemmen. Niet stiekem in dat hokje maar luid en duidelijk. Mijn niet-stem komt op dezelfde stapel als die blanco-stem, maar mijn gebaar is, vind ik, eerlijker en duidelijker.
Het is mijn keuze. Het is mijn beslissing. Van alle statistieken die daar die zondag zullen getrokken worden wil ik in de kolom "mensen die niet gaan stemmen" belanden. Ik wil gerust mee helpen de verkiezing te organiseren en als ik moet gaan zitten: met plezier. Maar vraag me niet te stemmen op één van die partijen waar ik op kan stemmen want geen van die partijen staat voor iets waar ik mij kan in vinden zonder me slecht te voelen.
Het is dat of emigreren.
Een oplossing voor B-H-V is verder af dan ooit. Maar dat is niet eens het ergste. Het ergste is dat de politiek kampt met een totale legitimiteitscrisis en zichzelf zo goed als irrelevant dreigt te maken. Yves Desmet in De Morgen .
In Belgium we live amongst the prime choreographers of the international contemporary dance scene. That is what people tell me. To me it is all still very new and I have the feeling I am still very much trying to find my way in this art discipline.
One of the important names that I had not even heard mentioning before she died was Pina Bausch. You might think you don't know her either, but maybe you do. Do you recognize this?
Since she died I saw at least two choreographers pay homage to her. It was twice by referring to this scene of hers:
I'm not sure what the relationship is between the first part and the second part of this movie on youtube, but the second part is surely the way it was performed on scene: with a black tuxedo, showing almost only the hands and the face of the performer. So obviously she saw beauty in sign language of deaf people and did something very touching with it. The actor in this piece is called Lutz Förster and was recently in Brussels in a performance by Jérome Bel . The performance was very simple: Lutz tells the story of his life on an almost empty stage.
As he explains in this interview this performance was also made before Pina Bausch died. To me the piece was also about not being able to quit doing the one thing you love. Even though I wouldn't consider it brilliant I enjoyed the performance a lot.
Yesterday we went to see Alain Platel's Out Of Context . It is also dedicated to Pina Bausch and has a reference to the same scene. At a certain moment five people step out of the audience on stage and do the words to the music in sign language while the dancers are crawling on the stage floor.
Maybe because Out Of Context gets raving reviews everywhere I had expected more of it. Some scenes are very beautiful but others make me nervous. For instance, one thing that really puts me off is when choreographers use stupid humor to ease the audience. Making funny faces or shaking your ass may be funny in a Laurel and Hardy movie and it may comfort the audience but I consider it bad taste and almost an insult. If a choreographer tries to win me over with a stupid joke, that's usually the point where he looses me.
Another thing that bothers me about Out Of Context is the use of music. In the first couple of scenes a minimalistic soundtrack of animal noises sounded interesting and promising. In the end a selection of easy listening pop songs and one piece of classical opera music is used in key scenes of the performance. It feels like a crowd pleasing decision, not like the result of an artistic decision and the effect is that it diminishes the experience instead of adding to it.
No, for the moment I'll stick with sign language for the deaf and beautiful references to Pina Bausch' work. This one for instance is by the French cineast Philippe Decouflé, a song by Bourvil:
Philippe Decouflé cites Pina Bausch and Merce Cunningham as important influences (see for instance this text in the New York Times ). We should talk about Merce Cunningham next, but of him I know even less than of Pina Bausch. I'll keep you posted while I explore!
Mijn recensie voor de plaat van The Bear That Wasn't was een moeilijke bevalling. Ik vind de muziek namelijk niet zo denderend, en dat komt voor een groot deel door mijn verveling met Duyster-muziek als genre.
Ik heb dat ook zo geschreven . Alleen zit ik er een beetje mee in mijn maag dat ik Nils een sympathieke gast vind en hem eigenlijk wel alle succes toewens. Bovendien vertelde hij me dat hij slecht met negatieve kritiek om kan.
Dus, moest je dit lezen, Nils: trek het je niet aan. Je hebt overal positieve recensies gekregen en die ene negatieve, die zal het verschil niet maken. Het beste!
One of the most influential websites in the world of music is Pitchfork. This website is very powerful and having your album featured in its "Best New Albums"-category can make for an incredible uptake in an indie bands existence. Recently featured were Vampire Weekend, Hot Chip, Four Tet, Gorillaz and Charlotte Gainsbourg (the last of which had a very bad review in one of the most influential Belgian magazines which goes to show it's all relative).
Those are the names of the groups you do know. There are also those you don't know. Take latest additions The Morning Benders or Fang Island. Take my favorite Titus Andronicus (in the Charlatan soon ) or take Gil Scott-Heron, Gonjasufi, Local Natives, Liars or Pantha Du Prince.
That said, one could have seen the last one coming. Pantha Du Prince is friends with Animal Collective (and he opened their show in the AB last year ) and AC are the darlings of Pitchfork. They get a Best New Album mention if they fart so why wouldn't their friends? But it's also brilliant music:
I've not been listening to a lot of electronic dance music. It doesn't excite me anymore. I'm not sure if it's the genre or if it's me that is to blame. For a while I thought that it was the genre since nothing interesting seemed to come out of it. Like Hot Chip, sure, nice poppy tunes. I'm sure this song with the brilliant video is ironic and it's fun and all, but: so what? It's a crappy popsong and provokes the same feeling Weird Al Yankovitz used to do: nice and fun but I wouldn't exactly listen to it again given half a choice.
Don't get me started on Justice or New Rave or the recent female electropop singers like La Roux. Soulwax in their Night Versions, OK. But that was the starting point for the rock scene to take over. Nowadays if you go to a rock concert like the one from Vampire Weekend you see a lot of people dancing and that's great. On a sidenote: you should go and see Vampire Weekend now, before they turn big as coldplay. I have a feeling they will become that big.
LCD Soundsystem was the last great band I guess. Me jumping around in my little apartment to their Yeah Yeah Yeah, that was exciting. And their debut album, that was exciting, when it finally came out I could not be at the record store fast enough. Alas, James Murphy is thinking of quitting . Can't blame him. They'll be at the Ancienne Belgique but apparently that's sold out.
What do you think? Am I missing out on dance music (electronic music) or has the scene really become less interesting? Who do you see as great contemporary bands in the genre? Let me know. I kind of miss it. Until then: Pantha Du Prince.
Dit weekend had ik Nils Verresen op bezoek. Dit is een filmpje van toen hij nog studeerde:
Ondertussen is hij afgestudeerd en een muzikant die onder andere Ayco Duyster tot zijn fans mag rekenen.
Ik deed een interview met hem. Lees het hier .
Het is bijna zover. Eerst nog de lente, maar daarna in al zijn glorie: summertime! De recensie van het plaatje staat online bij daMusic , de bijbehorende track krijgt u hier:
De zomer zelf houdt u tegoed.
Saw these guys yesterday in Archiduc in Brussels and I was quite impressed by their African rythms. The name suggests a band but it seems like it's mostly the girl that makes the music. Tonight also in Select on Studio Brussels and they will be playing live on the 16th of February in the Botanique . Check it out!
Recensie van het nieuwe Tindersticks album staat online bij daMusic . Muziek terwijl u leest:
De review van het optreden van Panda Bear vorige zondag in De Kreun staat online .
Muziek terwijl u leest:
For New Year we did a trip around Europe. A triangle starting in London on New Year's Eve. London is in Great Brittain and they still use the Pound Sterling there, a currency which has nothing to do with our fine Euro. To get on the London Eye you need about 17 of those Pound Sterlings.
The London Eye is basically a big Ferris Wheel. I can recommend it if the queue isn't too long. You can get nice pictures like these when you're on top:
Afterwards we went to see other friends in Bristol. Bristol is a place in Great Brittain where they also use Pound Sterlings but have far better graffiti. This artist does not seem to be liked by his colleagues as they try to overpaint his work with blue spots:
Then we went to Belgrade which is in still another country but it does not use the Euro currency either. The fun part of Belgrade is that everything is about 14 days later than in Belgium. So if you want to celebrate your birthday twice, especially if your name is Jesus Christ, you can. We celebrated Jesus Christ's birthday twice and we never knew the fellow!
This temple was ordered by the God fearing guy called Slobodan Milošević:
So it was a great trip with fine people and good food and great drinks. If you want to see more pictures feel free to wonder around in this flickr set or right here:
It looks like more and more people start being aware of how important food is in our modern day society. Not only is eating a social phenomenon, it is also a way to show who you are, politically, culturally and economically.
As a vegetarian I tend to think I have all the answers ready. I have thought things through for myself. Most people usually did not. Defending vegeteranism therefore has for me become a game that I have gone through so many times that I hardly enjoy it anymore. I usually go through the obligatory arguments I have long ago formed in my head and usually people start to understand. It is part of my vegetarian mission statement to make people understand so I never avoid the argument.
In the Vooruit Mo is organizing political debates. Live debates with interesting guests. Yesterday it was about eating animals in a time of food and climate crisis. If it weren't for the fact that the bill featured the impressive name of Jonathan Safran Foer I probably would have yawned away the occasion, favoring my book over a night of watching the same arguments over and over again.
As a matter of fact, the title in itself should have been reason enough not to go. It is my strong belief that we should not link vegetaranism to climate change. There is a link, surely, but trying to convince people to leave their steak on the account of climate change seems risky. What happens if climate sceptics turn out to be right in a couple of years? It hasbeen a cold winter, hasn't it?
It was not Jonathan Safran Foer that provided the thought provoking ideas. However, his companion Louise Fresco, a Dutch writer and scientist that was once at the top of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) did. She explained clearly why we eat meat. For a crowd which had among its members prominent and activist vegans like Michel Vandenbosch this is quite a couragious thing to do. No uproar followed when she summed up the four reasons she sees to eat meat:
These are reasons why we eat animals. It would be wrong to conclude from that that it is morally just to eat animals but it is important to understand why we came to where we are now.
All in all Louise Fresco did not seem to take much offense in people eating meat or fish. Neither did Jonathan Safran Foer, who stated he had become vegetarian at least 25 times in his life. Their case being: we should as a whole, as the human race, consume less meat.
The debate about whether it is at all ethicalto kill an animal for our nutritious enjoyment was never touched upon. Which to me as an ethical vegetarian is my main gripe to the evening.
No matter how efficient, animal friendly and environmentally friendly you can produce meat, I will not eat it as long as it involves the killing of a being with feelings. Most people however seem not to be worried about the killing. We can make the killing happen humanely. Didn't we gather experience in that matter while executing criminals after their stay in death row? An analogy I would not dare to bring up.
Animal rights activists are jumping on the climate change bandwagon because it is good for marketing the vegetarian idea. In the long run, as the industry starts producing meat in more efficient and animal-friendly ways, this approach could hit us back really hard. In the long run it is not a good tactic.
The report of the evening is online on the website of MO . Much rather than that it would be interesting to look at this TED-talk from Louise Fresco about biological farming, and how it might not be such a simple solution as you might originally think:
The MO-paper is pretty elaborate and interesting, partly in Dutch and partly in English. Download it from their web site , it's a PDF.
Popping up in the blogosphere recently was an essay by film critic Roger Ebert who has lost the capacity of eating. He can no longer eat. What he misses the most? The social aspect of dining. Beatifully written piece: Nil By Mouth .
One of the most interesting and influential voices in America is Michael Pollan. His book, The Omnivore's Dilemma , is one I should probably read. However, I have a slew of other books piled up. Luckily Kottke has built up a nice list of references to Michael Pollan for in between reads. This piece Unhappy Meals is a case against nutritionism and is hugely inspiring.
Some interesting fact to take away: the production of rice produces methane which is one of the evil gases for climate change.
Another one: according to how you make the calculations (and I'm quoting Louse Fresco here) cheese could be worse for the environment than meat. Some explanation here on the interwebs.
A farmer in the room said his pig production farm emitted less CO2 than the production of soy beans does, so don't get too excited about your tofu burger either.
And meanwhile developing countries increase their consumption of meat. According to this report meat has become totally trendy in india .
Our friends from Ontroerend Goed got a raving review in The New York Times for the premiere of "Once And For All...". That is the English title of "Pubers Bestaan Niet", see my earlier post about it here (in Dutch).
There is no denying: almost everyone adores this show. Unfortunately these are its last days as the adolescents are slowly turning into adults and getting more and more unfit for the characters they are playing.
Any private company in a similar situation would try to cash in and get the highest possible profit out of this production. Not them. Rather than replacing the older actors with younger ones the people from Ontroerend Goed call it quits.
This touches an aspect of theatre that I am still personally struggling with. If in pop music you have something that even remotely resembles a hit, almost always a complete commercial machinery gets unleashed to maximize the profit. More profit makes that you have more means to produce and promote your next album.
In theatre on the contrary it seems to be all about the moment: "This show, here and now is brilliant, but it will be over tomorrow". Shows in Belgium play typically three nights before they move to another city. There is no way word of mouth will ever get to you so you will miss it if you are not willing to take the risk and just go blindly. Time and time again.
That makes it hard to convince people to come to the theatre. It is impossible for me to say to my friends: go see this and that show, it's brilliant, because the shows that I would recommend to them are simply not playing anymore. It seems that every time I succeed in convincing someone to go to the theatre it is a statistical inevitability that they will end up seeing something which is between mediocre and interesting and they will regret the time they spend there. As a result they will stay home and watch television the next time. Can you blame them?
It is extremely laudable to end a show on its peak like Ontroerend Goed does. It is a great display of artistic integrity and it shows great guts to not make any kind of compromise. It is just that it is such a shame not more people will be able to see it.
This interview on the Belgian Radio was taken the morning after the New York premiere.
My review for Lou Barlow's latest album is online on daMusic . Bottom line: I like it but it's not fabulous.
In this clip Lou Barlow does the José Gonzales-trick on 'Bullet Proof' by La Roux:
By the way, I'm continuing my new year's trip in rainy Belgrade. If you see someone waving on this web cam , there's a good chance it's me.
