DJing with a view

DJing with a view, originally uploaded by Amazing Amazone.

Last sunday I was invited to come DJing between debates on the OMWaNa Stadsmanifestatie, at Pakhuis De Zwijger. Not very exciting, but I did my best and I got some good reactions from onhearers. And I loved the view!

Wolkom yn it Heitelân

A few weeks ago I was invited to attend a diner parlant for the project Wolkom yn it Heitelân. This is Frysian for Welcome in the father country. In this project Wouter Osterholt en Elke Uitentuis want to explore the range of cultural identity between localism (Frysian identity) and globalism. How open is Friesland towards new arrivals? What is Frysian identity? How do you conserve cultural heritage? DO you conserve cultural heritage?
Off course I accepted the invitation and traveled north to Leeuwarden. There I told something about Verhalenvanger and listened to and discussed with artist Misja Immink, Bert Looper and Goffe Jensma. Misja made us all an agent for the ministry of in love-affairs, Bert read some poetry and Goffe told us the entertaining story and its implications of the Oera Linda boek. What we spoke about exactly, you can read here, what I liked personally was to get a good introduction of Frysian culture, which seems to become a new part of me. This was the third time in two weeks I was in Frysland; the weekend before we even attended a family gathering of Farquaads Frysian family. Nice and beautiful country too, sitting on the back seat of a motor cycle or on the back of a horse! Thanks again for riding and staying, Florie!

El Salvador

Not only my own brother lives far, far away across an ocean, the brother of my girlfriend Maaike does too. Also in the Americas, but more south, in one of the continents most dangerous countries. And beautiful. He writes about living in El Salvador and throws in some interesting links to give more context about the troubling history of this petite country.

Blanchefosse et Bay

Blanchefosse et Bay, originally uploaded by Amazing Amazone.

The first weekend of september we celebrated the 20th birthday of my cousin's circle of friends. They met at school two decades ago and thougt it was a good time to celebrate that with family and friends. And we all came. With 80 of us, some shacked in the nearby hotels, others like us set up camp on the grounds of the little French estate of the parents of one of the friends. Drinks, food, campfire fireworks, nature and DJ's were all for free to enjoy us through the whole weekend. And boy, did we enjoy it. So thanks, you eadevieguys! And thanks parents of Vincent for the hospitality.
The shack sits along the road into the valley and houses a lot of swallows and the arrows and bows we got to shoot with too.

Gay bashing

Amsterdam used to be a tolerant city towards the gay scene, and even embraced it in all it's glory. But what were incidents are culminating into a gulf of gay molesting.
Yesterday it happened in front of my door. I tried to help, but the two youths (Moroccan and Turkish) were so aggressive, in no time one of them hooked me. When I got back on my feet again, the gay neighbour had been attaced with a bicycle chain lock. Blood all over.
So there we went to the hospital, he to be stitched, me to check if I hadn't broken anything. Luckily I didn't but this is how my face looks now.
Job Cohen, I don't want to drink tea with these people. These homophobic cowards deserve to be castrated because they don't deserve their balls. Stop the terror on me and my friends and neighbours.

Update: One of the guys has been caught, the one that hit me is still out there, but the police knows his name, where he lives and where he worked.
To the left: my face two hours after
Beneath that: my face after two days

At the farm

Last week me and farquaad took care of his parent's house and his younger brother.
Horizons all around, lots of weather: sun, rain and wind, a dog, a cat and two horses made it a real nice holiday setting. Friday afternoon the sun shone brilliantly after lots of rain. While I was drawing a little spec appeared on the fence. Then another one and when a swallow flew by to feed the young in the nests, these dots started to scream and yell.
They were young swallow chicks, already being able to fly but too lazy or unexperienced to go hunting for critters themselves. At the end of the day five little furry balls were seated neatly on the fence.
Takkie the dog (real name: Kojak) was hanging lazy in the sun while I was drawing, but later on we made a long walk of two hours. I had to carry her on the last few meters, poor little Takkie...

Jonas the movie

This week I started off a new film project again.
With Erik Rauws, the cameraman of Johan Verberck's A Detective Story, we will shoot the short movie -with the work title Jonas- this summer in both Amsterdam and Nijmegen.
I like this, doing another small movie. This year, I've already been approached for another movie, but unfortunately I couldn't make the time to put in time nor energy, so I gave only a little production advice for the Dutch horror movie Asian Import Ltd. The director Barend de Voogd also used a blog to track the filmprocess. It's fun but also good for the group dynamics, I found out already with the blog Hidde Simons set up for the filmproject Olifant.
One of the reasons I'm looking forward to be producing this new film project is because it's fiction and short. Horror is not my special interest and being on the road with Couscous and Cola wore me out extremely because I couldn't agree with some of the decisions made for me, but which I had to execute. On this film, we're all in for the fun of it, so here we go!