Tem

I'm a zerox machine. I'm a zerox machine.

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:48:03 GMT

Hello! I haven't forgotten about you, lj. I've just been uh, busy.

The last week and a half have been a bit busy for me, and the next couple of days will be as well. My sister is coming over for new year's eve, and the next day we're going to do the usual family visit. Might stay with my dad again for a day or two.

Anyway, what happened so far:

So 2 weekends ago, from friday the 18th, I was at my dad. The idea was to stay from friday to sunday, and my sister would pass by on friday and leave Hummer with us, while she and Dirk went away for one night. First of all, she didn't show up, because it snowed quite a bit and stuff. That also meant I could go along for a hike in the ardennes with my dad on saturday. It was quite fun, but it was the coldest day of the year (and certainly one of the coldest ones ever for me). This was also with his (girl?)friend, he does a lot of random hikes with her. I like her, she's so...normal heh. And with a good sense of humour. I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this, but he also has another girl-friend, a marrocan woman (only speaks french), and the very few times we spoke she was all super-humble and acted like I was a king or something heh. It annoyed me quite a bit.

Anyway, that night, it started snowing even more than before, so I didn't go home the next day. I sorta wanted to, but my dad was all "so much snow, and the trains and busses will be late or won't show up at all, just stay inside!" Ugh, I know I could've made it home, but I decided to stay, out of laziness mostly.
As it turned out, he had another reason to get me to stay: he was going to Köln with his hike-girlfriend, but she wasn't feeling too good. So I stayed another day to find out if she would be going or not. She didn't. So the next day, me and my dad went to Köln by bus. It was...okay I guess. Köln has an impressive amount of churches and towers and old stuff, plus plenty of shopping stuff...which makes it not much different from any big city in Europe heh. Still, I wouldn't mind going back some day, and focus more on culture and museums. Now basically all we did was run around shopping malls, without actually buying anything. Oh, we did have a nice kebab though! Oh, and there was something special on the bridge: lots and lots and lots of padlocks. Seemed a bit weird, until I looked closer, they were "love padlocks"! With the initials or names of two lovers on them. Never heard of this before, but I admit it's sorta...cute. Or something. Yeah. Anyway, wikipedia has a nice picture of that particular bridge and padlocks: awww.

So, finally got home tuesday night. It was just my mum and me on christmas, but the next day we went to my sister. Ian had been ill the previous week, and he still complained about his tummy from time to time, but otherwise he was very happy and cheerful. Of course, he knows it was present time haha. Hummer was also surprisingly nice, but my sister got him one of those shock collars. Not sure I like it, but it's very effective. That, and castrating him of course bwahaha. No really, otherwise he's just far too energetic and dominant and doesn't listen to anyone, he really is more like a wild beast than a pet. Well, was, because he changed (for the better) in the past two weeks.

Otherwise, I haven't been doing much, apart from gaming a whole lot. I blame the Steam holiday sale. So, so, so many (good!) games for around €5 or less. And I bought a pack with 22 Quake, Doom, and Wolfenstein games for €23. It's insane. Of course I'll never go through all of them, but at least I own a large piece of PC gaming history, and I'll own it until the end of time (or until Steam stops to exist). Also bought more fun games, but I'll guess I'll keep that for my geek journal.

When it comes to music, the only noteworthy things were a minor Pet Shop Boys addiction, being replaced with a Client addiction in the past couple of days. I really should get all their albums. Someday. Oh, one of the songs I got addicted to is Zerox Machine. I found out it's a cover of an Adam & The Ants song, and now I think I'll get all their albums. Well, at least the first punky one. Anyway, Zerox machine is awesome, plus it's kinda funny that Client did a cover of a song that is basically about copying/covering other people heh. The irony! Another song I re-discovered is Pornography. It really does sound all dirty and stuff, but the lyrics really aren't about porno at all. I think. Unless they're singing about the hand they masturbate with. Hmm. Anyway, very addicting. Just like porn, amirite?

And I have OMG important GIG NEWS!! This little band called STEREO TOTAL is coming to Ghent in may! Hurray! Their new album is coming out soon as well. Of course it'll be rubbish, but it's always a joy to see them live. It's kinda sad that this is the first confirmed gig of 2010 for me. All the gigs I was moderately interested in (stuff like the XX, La Roux, etc) all got sold out ridiculously early. So now I might have a six month gap between gigs. If I can't take it anymore, I'll just have to go see a random band. Or go to London again. Wait, I think I complained about this before, nevermind.

Yes, that'll be all for now. I'll try to make some sort of dream entry tomorrow, there's plenty of stuff I don't mind sharing. Had another nice one last night. And with nice one I mean: a nightmare. Because they're the best kind of dream really. Well apart from very detailed/lucid dreams. And happy childhood ones. And maybe sexual ones. Yeah.

Pet Shop Boys gig review

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:28:47 GMT

Well, better get that out of the way first: the audience was actually deliciously diverse. Lots more young people than I expected, and, if my gaydar worked correctly, a more balanced gay-straight ratio than at the average Kylie gig. And especially compared to the last Patrick Wolf gig I went to, where I was probably only one of ten guys with an interest in the opposite sex. I still have nightmares about it really. Okay, not really.
Anyway, this, coupled with the fact that it wasn't sold out but well-filled anyway, made sure that this was one of the best and most relaxed gigs I've been to when it comes to general atmosphere. I genuinely loved being there, a feeling I actually don't have at most gigs. It's hard to explain, but it certainly put me in a good mood before, during and after the gig. I also was lucky enough to be surrounded by people singing and (somewhat) dancing along, so I didn't feel like a total freak doing all that ahaha.

As usual when I go to gigs of bands/artists I'm only a somewhat casual fan of, I was worried about the setlist, and the amount of songs I didn't know. Well, I sorta cheated by looking up setlists of previous gigs, and downloaded one or two songs (biggest surprise: King's Cross. Why wasn't this on the Pop/Art compilation? It's easily one of their best songs). I listened to the new album once or twice (liked certain things, but not enough to buy it). With that, I was surprised that I actually recognised most songs they played, with the only exception being one or two new songs. Also, I was surprised that I could sing along with the chorus of most songs, even the ones I've only heard once or twice before. Proof that it's pure pop music I guess. I'm not complaining, and like I said, I was surrounded by people singing along, so in their own way they encouraged me to do the same, even if I didn't know all the words.

Highlights then. Well, I was surprised how emotional "Go West" made me. But in a way it's not surprising. Back in 1991, when it came out, I was 11, my sister 16, and we watched MTV religiously. PSB had some awesome videos around that time, and Go West was one of them I still remember. So it's one of those songs that I've know for most of my life, and 18(!) years after first hearing it, I finally see them performing it live. Now, I wasn't thinking this while they played the song, I only started thinking about it afterwards, trying to find an explanation of why I reacted to emotionally to this song, right from the start. It was somewhat weird to be struck by a song like that, I can only compare it to seeing Daft Punk for the first time (again, an artist tied to my early youth).
On the other hand, I thought It's a Sin would give me a similar feeling, since it's really one of my favourite songs of theirs. But my emotional load was shot during Go West I guess heh. Still loved singing along to this one (one of my favourite Singstar songs as well!!). It's also a song that has been in my memory for what seems like forever, plus it's also more personal: I was raised a good catholic (really the most sin-obsessed sub-...thingies of christianity), then turned my back on it for obvious reasons, but realised it's hard to shake off 12 years of indoctrination (too strong a word perhaps, but still, I was never given a choice or anything, and they don't exactly encourage you to think for yourself). As far as my personality is concerned, the hardest thing was (and still is, I guess) is to get rid of that sense of guilt and shame they saddle you up with. Annoying. Hmm, all this is a bit of place in a gig review, so let's go on.

Love etc., early in the set, was also a good dance/sing along song. Did the same with Heart, Can you forgive her, What have I done to deserve this, and most of their other hits. Most of the songs were in their original version, with sometimes a longer intro, or the end of the song being mixed with the start of another. Otherwise, vintage stuff!

When it comes to the visuals and the show element, well, most of the pictures speak for themselves, and feel free to look up better pics. I was at the very right side of the stage, on the third row or so (with plenty of space around me). I had a good view of everything, but most of my pics are zoomed in so they don't show the full stage. Well, the tricks with the blocks are quite clever, although I expected more spectacular things to be honest. Might've been because I saw how they did everything, being so close to the stage.
I suppose I liked the dancers more than any of the props or light effects. First couple of songs, there are 2 "blockheads" that tap a keyboard to the beat, and dance very robotic. The blockhead outfit returns later in the gig. The other dancer outfits I didn't like so much, and personally there was a bit of a boring part (when it comes to visuals) in the middle of the gig. They had all 4 dancers on stage, but what they did was just not that interesting. I liked it best when they were dressed up as blocks, or New York buildings, or...christmas trees.

Yes, we got a christmas present from Chris and Neil. They performed their christmas 'hit' "It doesn't often snow at christmas". I can't remember much of the song to be honest (except that it definitely starts out as an anti-christmas song), just because it was so visually attractive. Again, I have plenty of pictures explaining why. Everyone was laughing when the dancers came on as christmas trees and started doing silly dances, always smiling and waving and stuff. And to top it all off: FAKE SNOW!!!! Only on the stage though, but we did have a ticker tape moment at the end of It's a sin (I picked up a silver star!! I'll treasure it forever! It's a unique concert attribute!). Anyway, that was good fun, and a great ending. It surely had everyone leaving with a smile on their face.

Think I said practically everything I wanted to say...except that the venue set-up was different than I expected. The stage was very "deep", which meant only half of the venue was actually used by the audience. The upper seating ring was closed off as well. I didn't mind at all, it made the gig more intimate. I think, in total, there must've been no more than 3500 people there. I like it that way, all the bigger venues have at least 5000 places, with the usual big arena (right next to the one I went to now, and where artists like Muse and Depeche Mode always play) having room for around 15000. Said it many times before but I'm not a fan of mega-gigs like that, so the amount of people here was pretty much perfect for a show like this.

Oh, and one more thing: at the end of the gig, they presented the dancers. Girl first. Applause. Another girl. Applause. Then the only guy out of the four. Applause, hollering and wolf-whistling. This woman in front of me poked her husband and seemed to say "did you hear that? It was them gays!" Hehe. Same thing happened at Kylie, but that was far worse than it was here.

Yes. And that was the last gig of the year for me. Couldn't have ended any better really.
pics: hereabouts

tennis talk

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:58:32 GMT

Probably the last time this year, after this normal (?) updating should resume, including a big dream update! Yay!

First, talk about the WTF (World Tour Finals!), although I'm sure a lot of people went WTF at certain things that happened in the past week.

Yeah, they played it at the start of every match, ugh. Anyway. o2 arena seems like a decent place for sports stuff. I'm not sure if I agree with dimming the lights during play. I can understand that from a player point of view, but I don't think it's much fun for the people there. Although I heard someone say who went to see a match that it looks much darker on tv than it actually is, so, yeah.
Another thing I wondered about was transport to and from the o2. Various commentators um, commented on that, not only that it's not that easy to get there, but also that the evening matches start very late, with some of them only ending around midnight. It can't be easy to take the public transport back to the center of town or your hotel after that time. And you know, London, woo, unsafe after dark and all that.

Yes, then the matches. I was happy that Söderling made it in, definitely deserved to be there. More than Verdasco in my opinion, and the spaniard certainly proved my point by losing all 3 of his matches. Oh, and so did Nadal by the way. At the press conference, he was all "oh, I'm feeling good, both mentally and physically!" Syeah right, the results very much agree with that. I personally thought he looked sorta pale in the pre-tourney press conference and stuff. His habit of NOT complaining is a bit annoying. It reminded me of what Federer said just before Wimbledon. He spoke to Nadal briefly to ask him how he was, with his injury and everything. Federer: "Rafa was all 'oh I'm alright', that's when I knew he WASN'T alright! He's just like that." I certainly hope he can get back to his old level next year. But, to the doubters I say: remember how everyone was writing off Federer last year? Yeah, and who was in all the grand slam finals this year, and won 2? That's right.

Federer also underperformed I think. Every time he just let the first set go right past him, seemingly unwilling to do any effort. He made so many unforced errors, he really wasn't himself. 'Evil Federer' as some fans started calling it when he's like that. But 'good' Federer came out at the right time, until his match against Davydenko. I've said this before, but Federer has just become too defensive and passive. It's still good enough to win against the lower ranked players, but not against the likes of Del Potro and the other young guns and reborn players. It's why I can't see him winning a Grand Slam next year, really. As strange as it may sound, I was happy to see him so upset after the Davydenko match, it showed that he really cared about this tournament. It certainly would've been nice for him to be in all the four grand slam finals and this final as well. But, like I said, he only has himself to blame.

Not entirely of course, Davydenko played too well for that. I knew he had a big chance of winning this match. People were all "oh he's like 0-12 against Federer" but the last match was somewhere in 2008, and Davydenko always does great indoors. I was happy to see him beat Del Potro as well and finally win a big title. I seem to be one of the few people who actually has seen him play matches before this, so I know what he's worth. This guy has been in the top 10 pretty much non-stop since 2005 or so. The fact that he's pretty much unknown is just because he hardly does well in grand slams (semi-finals at best), and obviously, because he doesn't look like a model. A bit sad, but hopefully he'll get more fans because of this.

Speaking about fans, I think I can now officially announce that I'm a fan of Söderling. No, not just because of his rivalry with Nadal, not because he's swedish, not because he has pretty eyes. Well, maybe a bit of all that. He definitely has this...je ne sais quoi, you know? Heh. As for his play style, well, he's a power player/baseliner like pretty much everyone nowadays, but he certainly mixes up his shots more than the likes of Del Potro or Davydenko. Mentally, he seems to be much more stable than the likes of Djokovic and Murray. This was very apparent when he actually played Djokovic. Man, Djokovic almost had a mental breakdown. Söderling just did all the right stuff to get under his skin, and he was so annoyed that he couldn't do anything back. I really expected a broken racket at some point. Murray can also learn a few things from Söderling. In the match against Federer, Murray was constantly complaining and even hitting himself, even with his racket. I watched this on BBC, and at some point he was hitting his legs with his racket. Boris Becker was all "noo, stop, don't do that! Don't be stupid! Bad Murray!" Really, Murray and especially Djokovic have a lot of energy, but when things are going bad that energy turns into something negative and almost self-destructive. Not good.

What else...well, most of the matches were really, really good, very fun to watch. In that regard, the final was a bit disappointing, it really wasn't as fun or exciting. Like I said, I really liked the Söderling-Djokovic match, and both Djokovic and Söderling's matches against Nadal. I said this before, but Djokovic is a really clever player with a clear game plan. He only gets into trouble when his opponent doesn't want to play along heh. Still, I expect 2010 to be a great year for him. The Davydenko-Federer match was also pretty good, at least after a set and a half of Federer fumbling. Lots of great rallies, and both players returned some insane points. There was this one smash from Davydenko that Federer still got, he was standing way back but still got it in and scored the point. It was really one of his best points this year, right up there with his between-the-legs shot.

And like every year, there's the criticism of the round robin system. Which is probably louder now than ever, since local hero Murray didn't make the semis because of simple maths. Well, I can't say I'm 100% behind the round robin system, but in Murray's case, he really only has himself to blame. He really could've finished Verdasco off in 2 sets, hell, he probably could've beaten Federer if he hadn't given up so easily. It also doesn't help that the last matches of the two groups had somewhat suspicious endings. It was clear that Federer's main concern was winning at least one set so he could go through. He could've won the match but seemed to give up towards the end of the 3rd set. Same with Söderling and Davydenko, Söderling could've won, I'm sure of it, but he also gave up in the last couple of games (which meant Djokovic was out, despite winning 2 matches as well). To save energy for the next match, no doubt, but it doesn't surprise me that people have been all "omg they fixed their matches!" and "Davydenko bribed everyone to get to the finals!" Right. It's somewhat sad and unfair that players aren't in full control with this round robin system, but ultimately, I think they should keep it for the world tour finals.

Okay, I think that's all for now...

tennis talk!

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:54:57 GMT

Right, a few words about the Paris tournament that took place last week:
1) Roger's early exit. Not that surprising, but somewhat...annoying. Didn't look like he was even trying, and just like other recent matches, he played far too defensively. 'Older' players usually do this, yes, but never this obvious. And just like with the Del Potro match, it seems like he only has one kind of gameplan in his head, and if that one plan doesn't work, he can't come up with any new tactics. It's like he suddenly lost the ability to read his opponent. It's like he became...dumber somehow, while everyone around has become smarter. Disturbing. That's why I believe that, unless he adapts, this is the last time we'll see him in the number 1 position. Nadal, Djokovic and Murray (and actually quite a few others) just seem to be able to outsmart him on a regular basis now.
Of course, I'm always overly negative when it comes to Roger, and he certainly shut me up this year (for a few months at least, heh) by being in ALL the grand slam finals, and winning 2. I can't see him repeating that next year.
2) Safin's retirement. I don't have much to say about this, but I certainly loved seeing/hearing Safin, on and off court. Who's going to be the racket-smasher now? Gonzales? Hah. I only saw bits and pieces of his final match (against Del Potro - and thank you free online streaming thing, but next year I'm buying myself a subscription to tennistv.com), but apparently Tursunov was there as well - as he should be. I wonder who'll retire next. Stepanek? Hewitt? Haas?
3) the Djokovic-Nadal match. I was fortunate enough to see this. And WOW. The way Djokovic played was simply insane. So clever, so aggressive, so clean. He never gave Nadal a chance to get in the match. He hit an incredible amount of winners. This is how Federer SHOULD play instead of being all defense. I'm pretty sure it's the best match I've ever seen Djokovic play, and if this is a taste of things to come, next year sure is going to be interesting. His match against Monfils (the finals) wasn't as brilliant (he started out great, but Monfils gained momentum towards the end of the second set, Djokovic won in 3 sets), but the french crowd was so, so noisy and annoying (unless you're rooting for the french guy of course).

So next week there's the ATP World Tour Finals (yes, the WTF). The interesting thing about them this year is that it will decide who ends the year as number 1. Nadal is quite a few points behind Federer, but he has no points to defend, so if he wins this, he'll be number 1. Federer only has to win 2 matches to keep his position. Federer did awful last year, so even that might be a challenge to him. Nadal never did very well at the WTF, so it's all up in the air really. Djokovic won last year, and the way he's been playing, he might win again. Not sure if he'll be rested enough after winning two tournaments back-to-back, but he's certainly a favourite - more so than Federer or Nadal I think. Murray should also be in great shape, and we all know Delpo quit in Paris to have more time to prepare for this. I just heard that Roddick won't be there, so Soderling will replace him. The draw is going to be announced tomorrow. Exciting!! I'm certainly keeping my eye on it, and try to see some matches. The previous years I almost ignored this entirely, not this time! It's strange that earlier this year, I was very tennis-tired, but since this summer I've been into it more than ever.

I'm excited about next year as well. I checked the points the top 5 collected this year (points they have to defend next year to keep their ranking), and it's quite interesting. Nadal has so, so many points to defend in the first 4 months of the year, he'll never be able to hang on to the first position (if he gets there). Djokovic had a bad start, so it's almost a certainty he'll be at number 2 sooner or later. Murray had an awful Australian open, so he can get a lot of points there. Del Potro will probably also gain more points. Federer only has his Australian Open finalist points to defend, he'll probably be able to get some more in the smaller tournaments. Of course, I doubt he'll win Roland Garros and Wimbledon again, so that's a lot of points he might lose. If Djoko and Nadal win a lot of tournaments in the first half of the year and do well at the slams, Roger might drop to number 3 or 4. Nadal has no points to defend at Wimbledon and very little at the French, so if he gets to the semis, he's almost certain to stay at the number 1 spot for quite some time. This is all highly speculative of course, and anything can happen, but I'm pretty sure of certain things. I can definitely see Nadal on 1, Djokovic on 2 and Federer on 3 at some point next year. But obviously people like Murray or Del Potro might kick ass on a regular basis and enter the top 3. Like I said, exciting! Heh.

You know, last year (or was it really early this year?) I made a prediction that Nadal wouldn't win Roland Garros. I was right!!! No-one would've believed me at the time, but I was right! Well, here's another prediction: neither Nadal nor Federer will win the Australian Open. More? Federer will get to the final of Roland Garros or Wimbledon, not both, and he won't reach the semi-final of one of those (breaking his record). More? Well, the more I say, the more I'm likely to get wrong, but here are my predicted GS winners for next year: Djokovic, Nadal, Del Potro, and a player currently not in the top 5. (I'm deliberately leaving Federer out, because every time I say 'Federer will win!' he loses, and every time I say 'Federer will lose!' he wins. So as far as I'm concerned, he can now win all 4 Grand Slams because I said he won't win any this year).

I think I'm done for the moment. More tennis talk next week!

Morrissey live review

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:45:19 GMT

I went to see Morrissey in Lille with a bunch of friends. Interesting, no?

Support act was Doll & The Kicks. Or Yeah Yeah Yeahs 2. Not only could she be Karen O's sister, her voice isn't all that different - and her stage presence is exactly the same really. Not that it's not entertaining, but you know. She IS hot (shame about that stupid tribal tattoo on her back hahaha), and the music really isn't that bad at all.
After that, there were some old videos and a Lou Reed interview projected on the screen. I recognised some songs, but not the name, so I looked up some stuff. Like, I always thought this song was sung in some made-up language. Come on, you hardly understand a word he sings! Awesome song though, might have to look up some more Sparks stuff.

Anyway, Morrissey. I was quite close to the stage, and I had to admit that I that "oh wow, it's really him!" feeling, a feeling I don't really experience that much these days. But just like all those 80s superstars I've seen (The Cure, mostly) he looked very very old and tired heh. He got more...lively towards the end of the gig.
I actually recognised most of the songs he played, somewhat surprising since I only have 2 albums or so, and don't listen to them all that much. From looking at previous setlists, I already knew he wouldn't play my favourite songs (and I only have 2, so yeah. Heh). But he did play How soon is now?, a song I've recently started liking a great deal.
Morrissey was being his "charming" self, shaking hands with people from the front row from time to time, making odd comments ("you see, the old songs are the worst"), the best one was when he was thanking the town, the audience, the venue, and "most important of all, thank...ME!" People started cheering and applauding, but he made a sort of "no guys, I was only joking, forget I said it" gesture. Which made me like him more, because I'd do the exact same thing if I was a famous person, and just like him, I'd be all "just kidding", but obviously enjoy the attention anyway.

And just like people warned me, Morrissey fans are pretty crazy. I really get the feeling they worship him as some kind of god, and he really does nothing to discourage him. I mean, can you see Thom Yorke or...whoever you kids like nowadays shaking hands with the front row all throughout the gig? It's just something that seems weird to me.
I'm going to have to bring up Luke Haines now (I can't be the only one seeing many similarities between him and Morrissey). I mean, us Luke Haines fans don't worship him as a god, right? I don't think there's a LH fan with a tattoo of Mr. Haines on his or her butt, but when it comes to Morrissey...maybe you shouldn't click this. Crazy. No, us Luke Haines fans might have some modest shrine dedicated to him in our bedrooms, but that's only because we recognise him as the One and Only Misogenic Messiah. That is all.

What else. The venue was pretty nice, and I realised I've done quite a few new venues this year, and no less than 3 of them abroad! This was my first gig in France as well. Although it's just over the border really, and I heard a lot of dutch-speaking people there as well, I suppose for some it's easier to go here than to Brussels or Antwerp. I'd go there more but the last train leaves at 10, that's too early. Maybe by car someday. The location is actually quite clever: it's right next to the train station, and the (huge) building it's in is also a big parking, AND there are appartments on top of it as well. They have a similar venue in Holland, I think the design is quite clever.
Okay, that's all I have to say about it.

gigs

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 01:54:16 GMT

So, time to review 2 gigs I've been to lately.

Health
Support act was Pictureplane, sorta DJ stuff, but pretty fun. Health then. Saw them at Pukkelpop. They were right before Patrick Wolf, so I only ended up seeing about 20 minutes of them. Liked what I saw. So much, in fact, that I bought a ticket for this show and 2 of their albums. While the albums haven't really impressed me much, they're pretty damn awesome live. A lot of energy and clever trickery with instruments and effects units and stuff, it's great to see them make all this work live. There aren't really many stand-out tracks, because the quality is pretty consistent throughout. I also keep forgetting names of the songs (they all have silly names anyway). The only one that really stands out to me is Death+, which is quite repetitive. The good kind of repetitive as far as I'm concerned. I suppose this song, and the band on the whole, can be compared to Liars. Which makes it even more surprising that I like them, because I ended up hating pretty much all those other "if you like Liars, you'll like (this band)" recommendations.

Bat For Lashes
Yes, again! First of all though, something went wrong with the train I was on, which made me miss the support act, Hecuba. I listened to a song or two of their and it seems like something I would enjoy live as well.
So, the gig! Oh, I should say that I saw her earlier this year, and that that gig was (and, I suppose, still is) gig of the year for me. So even though I snapped up my ticket from the moment I heard about the gig, I was still thinking this might be a bit pointless, as she can never really be as good as she was then, can she?

Weeeell...they're actually quite comparable, this one was really really great as well. First of all, something I thought before the gig was "well, if she plays Trophy, it's already worth it" (because she didn't play it earlier this year). And, of course, she did play Trophy. I love Trophy muchly, and the irony is that it wasn't even one of the highlights of the evening. Really, the gig was that good. I wasn't too happy about the sound, but then I was standing (too!) close to the right speaker. She kept pointing and running off the stage between songs, I don't think she was very happy with the sound either. Some more song talk then: she played Daniel in a more dancy version (and no acoustic version this time), What's a girl to do was also in a much more dancy version (they even added extra handclaps!! It sounded okay but I prefer the "slow" handclaps of the original), she also played Tahiti, Horse and I, The Wizard and Prescilla from the first album. The Wizard gave me goosebumps, it was SO SO GOOD. But the real highlight was the combo of Pearl's Dream and Two Planets. 2 of my favourite songs on the album, and they're even better live. The electronical bits in these songs are so satisfying live. And Two Planets, oh boy. There's just so much in this song already, but live, it's an entire universe on its own. Lots of instruments, random handclaps, Natasha dancing like a loon, extremely satisfying drum pounding,...this was, as some people say, my eargasm of the year. I didn't want it to end, and I wasn't alone. The extremely talkative lesbians behind me were all "wow" and "why isn't anyone dancing?" (the answer was: because there was no room, gig was completely sold out, and they were at the side/front of the stage where there's always a bit more room to move. tsk.)

Oh, and something different from last time: they had a huge banner/curtain thing with a picture of a wolf in front of a moon. They changed the lights behind it from time time, so sometimes it was a "normal" moon, then a red moon, etc. Lights stuff was pretty good in general - although, I, ever the minimalist, wouldn't have gone overboard like they did during some songs. Natasha was also wearing a ferocious looking white wolf mask on her back. She also asked us to howl "because it's halloween". Yes.

So yeah. Very much worth it. Wouldn't mind seeing her again in 6 months heh.

Then something related to Health: as I stepped into the venue, this guy at the entrance stopped me and said "hey, you have a profile on the site right? I saw someone from Ostend and figured it was you". We talked a bit about gigs and stuff, you know. Very brief but interesting: he said something like "I always seem to end up going to gigs of bands I've already seen before". Me too, I said. I've been thinking about that a lot since then. I've already wanted to talk about this earlier this year (and I think I might have? hmm), but there's very little left for me when it comes to seeing bands I like live. I feel that, this year, to make a tennis analogy, I'm Federer and I won my Roland Garros and got my career slam by seeing Black Box Recorder live. They were right at the top of my 'bands I still haven't seen and want to see!' list, and I realised that, now that I crossed them off the list, there's very little else on it.

Now, this isn't necessarily a drama, there's always plenty of new bands to discover, and plenty of other bands I want to see again. But I still consider it an important milestone in my live career (heh, career). It's also my 6th (or 7th, really) year of going to gigs, and just like last year, I skipped a lot of stuff I was somewhat interested in. I mean, I complained about october having tons and tons of interesting gigs, but I only ended up going to Patrick Wolf and the 2 above. At the time it seemed sensible, but now I actually regret not going to The Bug or HTRK (or were they playing at the same time? must've been something like that).
So anyway, conclusion is...hmm, there is none. I guess I still like going to gigs, but most of the time I'm not very enthousiastic about it, and I certainly don't go to as many gigs as I used to. Also, I think I actually might prefer festivals to gigs nowadays - but I'm not going to talk about that now.

Oh, and about random guy who started talking to me: afterwards, I remembered that I saw him (and he saw me, you know, our eyes crossed) at the station in Ostend. He looked at me like he recognised me, really. So, I was thinking, where did he see my face? I have a picture on the AB site, but you can't see my face. I have links to last.fm, youtube and flickr, but there are only a couple of pics of me on there, so he would've at least did some searching around. So how did he know it was me, unless he's been e-stalking me??? Maybe he's even reading this journal RIGHT NOW!! Aaaah! No, I'm just curious really. I apparently have a very memorable/recognisable face, I'm honestly a local celebrity in my neighbourhood. We've been going to a lot of the same gigs this year, maybe he's good at remembering faces or something. And even if he's e-stalking me, I'd be flattered! He's not unattractive, but also not gay as far as I can tell, so romantic possibilities are out, ahaha! Oh wait, he might read this. Um, I'm joking about the gay/romantic thing! I'm not even gay myself. Really. Let's be friends!

Oh, I think I remember why I stopped updating so much: I started feeling somewhat guilty after I do some "me" talk. I know it's what journals are for, but you know.

belgian masters

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:40:33 GMT

How awesome/sad is it that I only have 4 lj entries in october? I pay for this stuff you know. Anyway, I'll have plenty more this month, including the long announced geek/Star Trek update. Just warning you in advance.

Now I'll talk about the belgian masters, a yearly tennis tournament with just the top 6 male players in Belgium. I went the first year when they organised it (Malisse won!), and now again this year (4th edition). This time, I "worked" there ahaha. I just had to show people their seats. What a responsability! Although there's always something people complain about and stuff, whatever. I liked doing it (and I would've enjoyed it even more if I wasn't so damn tired - Antwerp always has this effect on me, so weird), might do it again. Only problem I had was with 4 guys, and one of those guys just couldn't stop talking. I mean, really, he didn't shut up for more than 30 seconds at a time, really. It was so annoying, and I (and even members of the audience) told them to quiet down, but that one guy just kept on going. A compulsive talker. Ugh. I just gave up trying to get him to STFU, because I know it's no use, and because I can't throw him out or anything. Very very annoying. Apart from that, it was pretty cool. Especially when the younger volunteers came to me for advice and stuff. I did what I do best: pretending to know what I'm talking about!! The funniest moment related to that was when they asked me where to send people asking for the toilet, since the nearest one was closed. "oh, I just send them to the entrance. To be honest, I don't even know if there is a toilet there, but no-one I sent there came back to complain, so yeah..." It made them laugh, but obviously, there actually were toilets at the entrance, it's only logical.

Anyway, the actual matches! Oh, but first, this. I don't want to talk about it, because it still makes me very, very, very angry. So unfair, unjust and plain mean. I hope they find a way out because otherwise, it's the end of X-man's career. So I didn't get to see him play, and he was easily the player I was looking forward to see the most. Not a big fan of the other guys. On saturday (my 'work' day), the matches were Dick Norman vs. Christophe Rochus and Steve Darcis vs. Olivier Rochus. Second match was the best one, some really awesome rallies. Bad thing was that both matches lasted around 2 hours, and I only got back at 3AM.

On sunday, there was a doubles game first, Dick Norman and Wesley Moodie vs. Olivier Rochus and Steve Darcis (the latter replacing Malisse). Rather a one-sided match, as expected, but still good fun. The finals were between Dick Norman and Olivier Rochus. Norman won. As I expected. He was so awesome on saturday, I really couldn't see him lose the next day. His serve is his biggest weapon, but since he's mainly a double player, he's a pretty good volley-er as well. There were also a lot of between-the-legs attempts, most of them went over the net, but none of them were winners heh. Sunday was certainly more fun than saturday, much more relaxed. Might have had something to do with the Malisse thing, especially since the players had a t-shirt on with his face on the back on saturday, and Malisse was actually there to sign autographs and stuff. ALSO, you won't believe this, but everyone got a doping control on sunday. THE NERVE, holy crap. Salt in the scar-inducing wounds, that's what it was. Wow.

Still not sure about going next year, especially if it's without Malisse again. I realised the other players (apart from Dick, actually) all have the same playstyle, and since I've seen them play a couple of times before, it's just not that interesting. I wish there were more male tennis tournaments/exhibitions around here, there's one challenger tournament but it's quite far away and didn't have that many interesting players this year.

Anyway, more tennis talk soon.

Ian's third birthday

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 19:32:00 GMT

It's so cute how he does the 3 thing. He looks at his hand, makes a fist, sticks out his thumb first, then his index finger and his middle finger. He looked so happy and proud when he did it at the party.

He's been obsessed with Thomas for quite some time now, and as you'll see in the other pictures, practically all of the gifts were Thomas-themed. This was the Thomas cake:

He's such a clown. And eats with his left hand D: Also, at first he didn't like his little crown at all, but he ended up wearing it for most of the afternoon and only took it off to sleep heh.

That's similar to pictures of me playing with my toys when I was a kid. Why so serious?

This is some sort of weird bike without pedals, they have this in his school as well. He seems to love it.

More here. And since I'm not sure I made an Ian-related post last month, the september pictures are here.

Patrick Wolf gig

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 21:19:19 GMT

I suppose I should write something about the Patrick Wolf gig I went to last weekend (lately, reviewing things has started to feel a lot like a chore - something's wrong with me I think).

If I had to sum it up in one word, it would be...GAY! No really, I've never seen so many obviously gay people at one gig. I was on the right side of the stage, and around me I counted 8 gays. But you know what the worst part of all this was? There was like only one moderately attractive guy amongst them haha. And obviously he was with someone.

Anyway! The gig! It was...good. Not as good as Manchester, not as good as Pukkelpop 2009. Still good. My main problem was the setlist: he played practically every song from The Bachelor - except Vulture, which is one of the few outstanding songs on the album. This obviously left almost no room for the other albums: there was only The Magic Position and The Stars (okay, I love both songs) from the previous album, Tristan and Lands end from Wind in the wires (Lands end was a strange choice, but I love the song anyway), and only Paris from Lycantrophy. Really, of all the gigs I've seen (5 now), this was easily the worst setlist.

He made it up for me (somewhat) by being extremely talkative and cute towards the end of the gig. He talked about some songs (I'm not depressed! Really! Some of my songs might be, but I'm not!), his memories of Brussels, and that he has an unfinished song about Brussels that he intends to finish (oh wow, after Paris and London, Brussels! Ahaha), the fact that this was the last date on the tour (you have no idea how many times I've heard that, and I'm getting quite sick of it. I know they have to pick one city to finish the tour in, but more than half of the time it seems to be Brussels. Hate it.) That last bit is also the reason why the gig was somewhat short, as he had to catch the ferry back home (was it really that expensive to stay in Brussels another night and give us a "full" gig for once?). Also, someone in the audience asked him to play Wind in the wires. "Oh, that's one of my favourite songs! But my ukulele died halfway through the tour, sorry!" UGH.

So yeah, all this left me a bit frustrated and definitely unsatisfied. Of course it would've been hard to follow up his Pukkelpop performance (hell, even someone next to me said "oh I liked it, but Pukkelpop was better. More...FUN"), but it's still below my expectations. I mean, it wasn't BAD, it was just...not as great as it should've been. It very much reminded me of seeing Liars in 2007, also a month or two after their absolutely amazing Pukkelpop gig. It also ended up being a disappointment. Although this really wasn't as bad as the Liars gig though. And it's still Patrick Wolf you know. If you haven't seen him live yet, you really should. His voice is SO awesome, and he's a great showman.

This (and other reasons) sort of put me off going to any more concerts for the rest of year (apart from those I already have tickets of). Like, there's a The Bug gig this weekend, another band I enjoyed a great deal at Pukkelpop, but it's at the same place as the Liars one was, so I was already thinking "okay, it really can't be as good as at PP, so what's the point?", but the P-wo gig made it even worse. Today I sorta changed my mind again heh, and I might go.
And I'll probably talk about it some more, but 2009 hasn't really been a good year for me when it comes to music. Saw some very good things live, yes, but when it comes to albums and discovering new stuff, this year has been rather empty. I know it's just me, since I haven't even bought the new albums of bands I usually enjoy. I guess I'm just getting bored with a lot of stuff. I wonder if next year will be any different.

my sister may not know roman history, but I do

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 22:35:42 GMT

You know what today is? My sister's birthday!
You know what else? Claudius' death-day!
How convenient that, today of all days, I finally, after struggling with them for nearly 2 months, finished both of Robert Graves' Claudius-related books. I really had no idea about the date, I only found out at the end of the second book (and obviously it's on wikipedia's main page too - they always have the deaths of (important - hello Hadrian!) Roman emperors in that "on this day" section).

I should've really reviewed the first book after I finished it, since I finished it more than a month ago. Still, comparing the two books, the first one is far more interesting, and the one I can easily recommend to anyone, even if you have no interest in Rome at all (and you SHOULD be interested in Rome, not just for pure historical reasons, but so you can find out for yourself how little we've advanced in terms of morals, politics, society,... in 2000 years. Quite shocking in a way - or were the Romans simply far ahead of their time?)
I'll try to stop putting things between brackets from now on. Anway, first book deals with everything from Augustus to Claudius acually becoming Emperor. The whole family history can get quite confusing, especially since the Julio-Claudian dynasty has so many members, and a lot of them adopted. That's really about the only bad thing I can say about the first book, those pasages about the family history, or even the ones about Roman society might be considered boring to some. But the style in which it's written is one I really love. Old-fashioned maybe, but rather dramatic and very clever in places. My favourite moments is when Claudius (who is the narrator - hence the I, Claudius title!) stops summing up facts, and goes "I truly am sorry, dear reader, to bore you with all this, but it is necessary that you know these facts, as they have great significance later in my story". Some of them are quite funny, but I can't really remember any of them.

Then, the second book, "Claudius the God". It starts with a couple of chapters on Herod Agrippa, a friend of Claudius'. A somewhat weird way to start, but he plays a big role on the first part of the book. Overall, I found this book to be rather boring at some points. In a way that's somewhat normal, since the first book spans a period of more than 50 years and 3 Emperors, while this one is all about what Claudius did during his reign, about 13 years. It does have some interesting sections though, like his conquest of Britain, the eastern situation (including his view on the new christian religion), and umm...that's about it I guess. But that's about 60 or even 70% of the book, so it's not that bad. The rest is more about all the things Claudius did as an emperor, and some of those were quite boring heh.

I don't really know what else to say, so I'll talk about or quote some of my favourite passages:

1) "I wish you only had one single neck. I'd hack it through!"
Caligula, after being booed by the audience at the races. He was obsessed with necks, and his power to slash them with just one word. The story goes that, when taking girls to the palace, "if the neck was particularly white and lovely", he'd hack it through himself.

2) Caligula, asking Claudius something:
"Do you think I'm mad?"
I laughed nervously. "Mad, Ceasar? You ask whether I think you mad? Why, you set the standard of sanity for the whole habitable world!"

3) Claudius opinion about the germans and the french. While Augustus was sure that one day, there would be germans in the senate, Claudius was of another opinion, and considered the germans to be the "real" barbarians in europe, and the real arch-enemy of Rome. On the other hand, he speaks with respect of the french and spanish territories close to Rome, as "they adjusted easily to the Roman lifestyle". So, it seems that even in Roman times, the french were cowards and surrendered at once hahaha. Oh, and it's probably important to note that Claudius was born in France, Lundugum (current day Lyon) to be more precise.

4) Claudius' British campaign. He used some extremely clever tactics, not especially military, but more aimed at demoralising the enemy. There's also an interesting and very detailed passage about druidism, and how Claudius plans to destroy it. The druidical cult was active in the north of France, and he wanted all of France to follow the Roman religion.
Also, after 10 years or so, they finally capture the british leader and take him to Rome to show him and his followers to Rome, and then to be killed in the arena or whatever. Except that it was a very clever guy, Claudius actually respected him and gave him and his family an estate in Rome and a generous yearly allowance. It's a nice little story on its own.

5) Claudius' view on Christianity. I want to quote what Claudius wrote about the gatherings of this sect:
"The ceremonies include a love-feast that men and women attend in order to eat, symbolically, the flesh of the Anointed One and drink his blood. I am told that this ceremony is often the occasion for disorderly and hysterical scenes, as is only to be expected when most of its initiates are slaves and men and women of the lowest class. Before they are allowed to sit down they must first confess their sins in nauseating detail to the assembled gathering. This provides a deal of entertainment, a sort of competition in self-abasement. The chief priest of the cult (if I may dgnify him with the title) is a Galilean fisherman, that Simon of whom Herod wrote, whoe chief claim to the position seems to rest on the fact that he deserted this Joshua, or Jesus, on theday of his arrest, and repudiated his beliefs, but has since sincerely repented. For according to the ethics of this sorry sect the greater the original crime, the great the forgiveness!"
There's more stuff like that in the book. Yum.

And since this is related to how I started this entry: Nero, the successor of Claudius, became Emperor on 13th october (like I said, my sister's birthday) and died by his own hand on 9th june, my birthday.

chaos reigns.

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:15:45 GMT

Is this the largest gap ever in my lj history? Hmm.

I suppose I just had nothing interesting to share. In the meantime, I restarted my geek journal, again (6 month gap).

Let's see...My sister came over one weekend, with the family. Pics of Ian. Hummer still doesn't listen very much. Ian is still cute and talkative, but definitely not a morning person hahaha. Getting his clothes on is the most difficult part of the day. Otherwise he's generally cheerful. Until they go back home. Clinging to me and shouting "nooo, I want to stay with Tim!" and lots of crying. It broke my heart, just a little bit. I know he does that everywhere though.

Went to Ghent, met up with T&V. Had a fight with Thomas heh. Not going to elaborate. It was his fault! I think I'm still a bit mad (or at least, uncomfortable with the whole thing). He got mad at me for nothing, at first I didn't mind but looking back, he was very rude and hurt my feelings. Only spoken to him once or twice after this, everything is okay though.
I'm also not in a very social mood these days (and, to be honest, this usually goes from late september to early april or something. Awful).

Oh yeah, we saw Antichrist. They hated it. But Valentine still talked about it muchly. I don't think it's a particularly good film, but it definitely left an impression on me, and I don't think I'll forget it any time soon. The things I didn't like were the very arty-farty bits (yes, the very start of the film - and the end) and the torture porn (I've seen a lot of that stuff but this was still painful to watch). What I did like: the underlying themes and the between-the-lines stuff, and analysing the characters and symbols. Since you, dear reader, probably won't go see it (I can't really recommend, it but it's still...interesting), I'll spoil some stuff: I very much liked the part in the middle of the film, the whole "nature is evil" part. It's very much like that story I have in my head about the evilness in the alps. Really the exact same feeling I'm going for. And obviously, I liked the whole "women are evil" part even more! Heh. A lot of stuff in this is up for interpretation, and, if you like analysing stuff like I do, you actually should have some amount of "fun" with it. Just close your eyes when the woman grabs some scissors.
OH, I have tons of respect for Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It must've been really really really hard for them to act in a film like this. I know how hard Björk had it during Dancer in the dark, but really, this is on an entirely different level. Lars von Trier is such a sadist, wow.

So, that was the past, now for the very near future: sister is coming over tomorrow. We're going to empy my granddads house with a whole bunch of the family on saturday. And saturday evening, I'm going to Patrick Wolf. Yay! I feel so un-ready.
I also should visit my dad sometime soon. Haven't seen him since august or so :/ Oh, and there's Ian birthday party next saturday.

More...later this year. Maybe.

mind tricks.

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:56:36 GMT

Right! Dream talk!

So, I was with a group of people, on our bikes, going somewhere. That ended up being...Berlin! (fake, dream Berlin, I doubt it's surrounded by hills, and I also doubt that it's as big as it was in my dream. But still, it had that famous tower thing, so it WAS Berlin, mmkay?). Anyway, the group splits up, and we all try to find something to eat. Everyone went for the chip shops, but I had some the day before (in another dream actually, not in real life). I followed some people who went deeper in the city, but then I lost them and just explored on my own.
Later. Lost the bike, now walking around on foot. I'm in a "normal" street with lots of houses. Then suddenly a fight breaks out between two gangs who came out of nowhere (very The Warriors!). But then one gang starts going after me and another innocent bystander (Italian guy. How do I know? He just was, okay?). We enter one of the houses (big, with at least 3 floors, used as an apartment), and go all the way to the roof. We pass a lot of rooms, but the house really seems deserted. When we finally reach the attic, I hear that one of the gang members is right behind me, and I feel him hit me on the head with something heavy. Blackness follows.
Next, I wake up in a bed, in the same house. I start looking for the people who put me here. I start having a déjà-vu, really the feeling that I've been here before and that all of this happened before. I walk towards a door, thinking "that's the bathroom. When I open it, some old lady will be sitting in the bath". So, I open the door, and who was sitting in the bath? ...two children. I'm even more confused now, but then a woman (their mother probably) finds me and starts talking to me. In german! She invites me to dinner with her family, and talks about how she found me. This was all a bit weird, because I had the feeling I had done this before, but with slightly different variations. The family also gave me a weird feeling, my presence didn't really surprise them at all, it was like they knew this would happen, and that they expected me to stay there for some time.

I thought this was an awesome dream because it combined 2 kinds of dreams I like: city dreams (mainly places I haven't been yet) and time travel/déjà vu/recurring dream stuff.

Had another one with a similar feeling, this time game-related heh. In the dream, I start up some Castlevania game, after not having played it for a while. It's a 2D game, SNES-like, but the difference is that there's a (small, and also 2D) world map where I could walk around on. I think the goal was to go to a big mansion on the left side of the map, where I was supposed to meet up with a lady. But first I go to another arena I've never been to, a land road somewhere between a field and a forest. I immediately get a boss encounter, some guy who seems to control ice. I expect to lose against him, but suddenly I have this awesome weapon (hard to explain, sort of combination of a chain-whip and a flail, with several iron spiked balls attached to it). Beat him with this in no-time. Um, the end. This one was special because of the feeling that I had already played this game before, it really felt like I hadn't played it in months. But, this game doesn't exist! Don't remember dreaming about it at some earlier date either. Very weird. But, with this and the other dream, sorta awesome how my mind plays tricks on me, heh.

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 00:46:18 GMT

First off, some tennis news! Davis cup news! (...it's like, the country vs. country thing in male tennis). I'm not going to explain everything here (it's quite complicated), but the good news is, Belgium is back in the world group! World group, by the way, are the best 16 countries. We fell out of that group 2 years ago (defeat against germany - I was there, sadly. It was played in my town). Last year we played against Switzerland (with the matches in Switzerland), and lost. So we had one more chance to get back in the world group, and we did it! Well, all the credit should go to Steve Darcis. And none, or very little, to Xavier Malisse. Lost the doubles and his singles match. Sad, because on paper he should be so much better than he played this weekend. I think some of the players still don't take the Davis cup seriously. I think they should. Defending your country's honour is important! heh. No, but after the last match was played (the deciding one) and everyone was celebrating, Xavier definitely still looked very annoyed at himself, you could see him thinking "yeah yeah, we won, but no thanks to me". Poor guy. Personally, I think they should get Dick Norman in the team, it's a guaranteed win for the doubles, especially if he plays with Vliegen or Malisse.

So, now that Belgium is back in the world group, it's fun to think about who we're going to face next. A lot of people already seem bent on facing Switzerland again, mainly because the match will now be played here in Belgium, and obviously because Federer (IF he plays) would draw in the crowds. Which didn't happen now, the arena was SO deserted, seriously, maybe a 100, 150 people in total for a place built for 4000 or something. Embarrassing, and even worse than that exhibition thingy that they once did here in Ostend (yes, happened once, never again because only 100 people showed up). Still, there should be more people attending either way, practically every country in the world group has some good/famous players that should be fun to watch. Spain with Nadal, France with Tsonga, Russia with ~~Safin~~TURSUNOV, USA with Roddick...about the only big surprise in the world group is Israel making it to the semi-finals, hmm. Anyway, we'll probably lose again, but I wouldn't mind if it's against one of the countries I mentioned. I'd definitely go see the matches then.

Some people might think it weird that the Belgian players and fans are all "we SO deserve to be in the world group!" while we have no top 50 player. Well, here's the thing, practically all our players are ranked between 50 and 100, they all have about the same level of play. No super-player, but also no ridiculously low-ranked player. This is some difference with, say, the UK, which has one awesome player, but the other players are all ranked below 200. Davis Cup is really about the strength of a team, not an individual player. This explains why, even though Murray played, the UK will now fall back to the euro/african zone 2, which is really low. I mean, even Latvia (thanks to Gulbis!) promoted from group 2 to group 1! (Gototennis has a great article and an awesome Murray picture, Check it out.

Oh, and I was also annoyed that the flemish tv stations didn't think it worth of broadcasting the matches. Pretty sure they did that when we were in the world group. Now I had to switch to a french-speaking channel. The horror!

And now for something completely different:
I can't believe the amount of gaming I've been doing in the past week, and especially in the past 2 days. It's been a very, very long time since I played more than 5 different videogames a day (and a year or two ago, I decided that it would be best to only play a maximum of 2 "core" games a day, keep playing them until I'm finished/bored with them, and then move on). The main culprit in all this is Steam. 4 years ago, they only had Valve games. Now, they pretty much have everything, and every week a special promotion. Bought Braid and Secret of Monkey Island for less than €5, played through Knights of the Old Republic (24 hours of game joy for €8,99, bargain!), and there are so many awesome packs available (like the iD pack, with every Doom, Quake and whatnot ever released). And there are plenty of other great download services with cheap stuff. I'm impressed. I'm already used to downloading games for consoles, but until earlier this year I had no idea it was this widespread for pc games as well. I'm still going to buy "hard copies" I guess (if I can find them cheaper), but I can definitely see myself buying more games through download. Especially on Steam, there's no copy protection thing (I have Half-Life 2 installed on 3 PCs), and once you buy the game, it's yours FOREVER. All your game purchases are stored on your account, so if you buy a new pc or format your harddrive, you just log-in and you get the list of games you bought, and everything is ready for you to download. Awesome, and so easy. And to think, when Steam first came out, everyone said it sucked and would die within the year. Ahahaha.
Also, I might have an extra version of Half-life 2 and Episode 1 (I plan on buying Orange Box for pc as well) so if anyone is interested and doesn't have these yet (which would be very weird and stupid), I should be able to gift them.

Next update: dream time!

hairy spider friends

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 23:35:05 GMT

Hello!

The past 10 days have been nothing but tennis and videogaming for me. Tennis is gone now (been writing a big entry about that, will publish it tomorrow), so I suppose I have time for an entry.

Not that I have anything to say really. Um...met up with Thomas and Val on sunday! They came to Ostend. Friends, yay! I love Val. I think it's slightly disturbing that I prefer talking to her than to Thomas haha. I suppose it's just easier to have a proper conversation with her (while Thomas is even more flippant than I am!), I enjoy talking to her about random facts of life. And I enjoy bickering with Thomas, sorta trying to impress her, and flirting with her haha. Aah. Anyway, might see them again this weekend or the next.

I now officially have a beard, since it's been over 2 weeks that I used a razor on it. Actually, from june on, I've just been trimming it, never fully shaving it. It looks a bit weird since I have very little hair on my lower cheeks but lots under my chin, and very thick and sturdy hair as well. Fun! I suppose I'll take a picture of it to prove my vanity, and shave it tomorrow. Need a haircut as well.

It's september. In my house, that means...spider month! Didn't take pictures this time (mainly because they're the same kind of spiders as the previous years), but they really were out in force this year!
First one: saw it sitting right in front of my bed. And you know how much of a spider friend I am, so I tried to capture it. FAIL. It ran under my bed. Checked under my bed right away. Couldn't see it anywhere :( So it must've ran superfast and hid somewhere else, grr. And yes, I actually did manage to sleep that night. I also vowed that I would kill spiders from now on, instead of being stupid and trying to save them.
Second one: right in front of the bathroom. When it saw me, it tried to run (into my room!!) but I put my best foot forward and crushed it.
Third one: right next to the tv in the living room. I again was feeling merciful, and try to make it fall into a cup, so I can throw it outside. You know what that little fucker did? IT JUMPED AT ME. I am absolutely not kidding you. It didn't quite reach me, but when it was on the floor, it started running towards me as well. Again, I saw no other choice than to crush it under my flip-flops of DOOM.
Fourth one: actually this happened even before the first one, but the other three were all "big" spiders, this one was a bit smaller. This one was hiding...UNDER MY SHEETS. Believe it. Mr. Spider must've been unaware that only 4 creatures are allowed in my bed: me, Ian, plush Cthulhu and my (imaginary) sexual partner, and that, if you're not either of those 4, the punishment for intruding my bedstead is DEATH. So I delt it swiftly to that vile beast.

Aah yes, I forgot how much I enjoy writing about my adventures with my 8-legged friends. I certainly hope I haven't killed them all, hmm. Maybe I should leave the windows open all day again...

US Open! Closed!

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:50:31 GMT

Yeah, I suppose I still have to do an update about that. I suppose I kept delaying it because I pretty much already said everything on twitter. And other, videogame-related reasons, yeah.

I don't even know where to begin. Oh, maybe that draw thing. As you can see, I did quite poorly. Well, it's the guys who did poorly really! Main offenders: Wawrinka, Roddick and Murray. I had Murray in the final but that loser already lost in the 4th round. Loser. Then again, he lost against Del Potro, which means Del Potro actually defeated the top 3 players in one grand slam. Incredible. But more about that later, I want to call Murray a loser again. There.

You know, Djokovic did fairly well again, and people saying he had a bad year just don't understand tennis. 2 quarter finals and one semifinal when it comes to grand slams this year, how is that bad exactly? He did quite well in the "smaller" tournaments as well. I think he's one of those players where people just have really really high expectations of him (he did win a grand slam after all), but I really can't see him become number 1 or something. First step is winning another grand slam. Will he? Dunno. BUT I enjoyed him in that Federer match. Tactically, he can really only be outsmarted by Federer. Really, Djokovic seems to be one of those few players who actually think 3 moves ahead, instead of just wanting to make the winner straight away. When he plays like this, he's really much fun to watch, although I imagine tennis newbies/Nadal fans (same thing actually!) might find him boring. Oh, and nice stunt with McEnroe (full story here).

Nadal. Read this. I mean, I love Nadal's personality (at least, off-court), but clearly he and his team don't know what's best for him. He really, really should've pulled out of the US Open sooner. Now he might be out again for another month or so. Like someone said, he's almost literally tearing himself apart like this. The way I see it, there are only 2 options: either he keeps playing as intensely as before, but then he'll be out a month or two a year with injuries, and he won't keep this up another 5 years, or he starts playing less tournaments and changes his play style to be less intensive. First one is the dark side obviously, and I'm afraid he and his team will take the 'easy' way out. We'll see. But yeah, this year definitely must've been the worst in his career.
And since everyone deserves a vid: try this. Aww. Kinda weird he even got to Nadal with all that security. And then they criticize Roland Garros after what happened during the final there, hah.

Federer. So he lost, but he had a great year. He was in the finals of every grand slam, and won 2 of them. People don't seem to realise what a great achievement that is. He had an 'off' year last year (but still, 3 gs finals, won 1, how is that bad exactly?), but this year has been one of his best (especially off-court!). But, now that he lost the US Open, I really can't see him winning (m)any more grand slams. Nadal and Del Potro have now beaten him in GS finals, there's Murray who beats him on smaller tournaments, and plenty of 'wild cards' like Tsonga who can beat him. He has to be at his best, and to be honest, he's really only been playing at around 80% of his usual level in the US Open, and his unforced errors in other grand slams this year were a lot higher than usual as well. I don't know. I've been proven wrong many times when it comes to Federer, this year alone I've been wrong about almost everything heh (didn't have him winning Roland Garros nor Wimbledon, but had him as winner for the US Open). Again, we'll see. I love him muchly, but I'm not very hopeful about next year. I want him to end the year as n°1 though, so I hope he wins some more tournies this year. And the Masters, but that seems quite unlikely I guess.

Oh, and I really like that tennis blog thing, they made this update: Federer lost the US Open, not get over it. (yeah they're sorta Fed fanboys actually). But! Check it out, because it has some good videos, especially the one of THAT shot. You know what I'm talking about. Seeing it without context lessens the experience I guess, but I saw this happening live. I was going all "oh! oh! oh!" and laughing madly heh. I mean, Fed had one 2 sets, he was 6-5 up. Djokovic was serving. It was 0-30. And then Federer made THAT shot. Match point. Djoko was so bedazzled by that point that he didn't even bother to fight back heh. But it was quite a tense match though, enjoyed it. Just like the final, first couple of games were really really boring though.
And also check out the Federer getting mad video. "don't tell me to be quiet, okay? I don't give a shit." He talks like I would, really.

Del Potro. You recognise that name, don't you? Yes you do! I had him as winner of Roland Garros! Heh. And, like I said in my previous update: "I'm 100% sure Del Potro will win a Grand Slam in the next 3 years". How conservative of me. So I'm happy I made a right prediction for a change hahaha. So yeah, I'm a big fan of his (he's more humble than Nadal! After defeating Nadal in the semis, he said "yeah I know everyone was expecting Nadal in the finals, so...sorry." heh). I have to be really honest and say that I'm still a bigger Federer fan, so seeing Fed lose broke my heart (...not really, but kinda), and seeing JM win made me somewhat happy. If that was a semi-final, I wouldn't be that upset about it really. I just always get really involved and worked up and hyper-emotional in finals, so after a match is over I'm either super-happy or super-sad/angry. So in a way, I'm happy the next grand slam is 4 months away heh. But I'm sad I won't see any tennis on tv until then. Apart from the davis cup I guess.

And one more thing about the US Open in general: the award ceremony was AWFUL. Delpo wanting to say something in spanish "no time for you! Have to mention the sponsors and all that!" Blah. Lots of players and tennis fans complain about how super-commercial the US Open is (it's all about sponsers and tv schedules - it's why the award ceremony was so short), I have to agree with them. For that, I'd say the US Open is my least favourite Grand Slam. That, and the stupid noisy audience. Then again, Wimbledon is ruined by the british press hyping everything and everyone (for no reason - so when do they think Murray is going to win a slam now?), and Roland Garros is ruined by blatant racism (I don't think they ever, ever want a spanish person to win again), and the Australian open is ruined by...well, it's the one I can see the least matches of because of the time difference!!!!
As usual I'm only half-serious about this, I guess every tournament has its dis/advantages, but I think the US Open annoys me the most.

On the women's side, not much to say except CLIJSTERS CLIJSTERS CLIJSTERS. Although, I'm still not sure if her winning means she's awesome, or that the rest of the girls are pretty crap. Probably about 50/50. And, since she's a mum and won, it was another reason I wanted Federer to win (his first GS as a dad, you know!).
Oh yeah, and that Serena thing. I can't believe there are people who say that, even if it was a foot fault, it shouldn't have been called at that point in the match. That's something I don't get. People basically don't want the linespeople and umpires to do their job now? What do do the circumstances have to do with it? I know there must be umpires who don't make a call in fear of beeing jeered at by the audience, but they are BAD umpires. Real umpires do their job, not matter what. So yeah, that's my opinion on that. As far as Serena is concerned, I'm surprised she offered her apologies (even if it was after 2 days, and obviously just because of PR reasons). Everyone knows she's a real bitch. And everyone should know that the only nice girls on tour are Clijsters and Ivanovic.
And it's quite likely Henin is coming back. Good thing? I think so. Clijsters is actually better now than she was before retirement (everyone seemed to have forgotten that she only ever won one grand slam - Justine has 7!), so I wonder if Justine has something she can improve. She was tactically perfect, but because of her size her serve was always really weak, I can't suddenly see her grow or something to improve that heh.

Had enough now?

US Open!

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 15:33:15 GMT

Now that the first 2 rounds are over, time for an update, no?

First of all, yay belgians!! They've done very good so far, I think it's one of the most successful grand slams ever. Which is kind of sad, seeing as only 3 are left in the third round heh, but yeah. 3 out of 6 isn't bad. We're still number 6 in the country ranking! Kim Clijsters is the star so far, her third round was against a fellow belgian, Flipkens. Match was disappointing actually, Flipkens is a very good player (not strong but very clever), but she was far too nervous now. Probably the biggest crowd she's ever seen, and then playing against her idol/best tennis-friend (they went to the same tennis school together, and Clijsters was apparently a sort of big sister to her heh - typically belgian, we probably only have 1 tennis school in the country). Oh well, Clijsters - Venus Williams next. The other girl still in is Wickmayer, who defeated the 16th seed in the first round. On the men's side, Olivier Rochus lost against James Blake in the second round. He actually did much, much better than I thought in that match heh. Blake isn't that Blake from 3 years ago, but he obviously had the support of the audience, and went through in 4 sets.
And lastly, in doubles, we have 2 teams with belgians in it: Olivier Rochus and Guillermo Garcia-Lopez (interested how this came to be, kind of a weird match up) and the by now famous duo of Dick Norman and Wesley Moodie. They're 7th seeded now, and they're almost guaranteed to play at the doubles masters at the end of the year.

I've seen quite a few matches so far. The only one that made me go HELL YES was Tsonga - Nieminem, second round. Tsonga was just...gah. So, so, so awesome. If he can keep this up he going to totally destroy Nadal. Really. He could win the tournament like this. He's in great shape, and I'm pretty sure he's the only non-top 5 player that has won at least one match against everyone in the top 5! On my draw I have him reaching the quarter finals (defeating Nadal, but losing against Murray). I'd love to be wrong though. I seem to forget this from time to time, but I really am a Tsonga fanboy.
Other matches...are hardly worth mentioning. Oh yeah, that Gulbis-Murray match! Hahaha. I stayed up so late for that. It was worth seeing 'Ernie' play heh. Even though it was quite frustrating, he made so many unforced errors, almost painful to watch. Apart from those, he made some awesome shots and all that, and was pretty good at countering Murray, but yeah. That amount of unforced errors, compared to his general play style, just means there's something wrong in his head. He needs some sort of mental coach. Anyway, this was a horrible year so far (also thanks to horrible luck at the draws), but it honestly can't get any worse next year. Unless he doesn't even get past the first round then. Doubtful. But something has to change.

Apparently this is the first time that the top 16 seeds are through to the third round in a grand slam. I read something similar about a previous tournament. Men's tennis is awesome, and awesomely consistent.
...and yes, here it comes: what a difference with women's tennis, where there have already been tons of upsets. Well, at least 3 big ones, heh. Ivanovic, Jankovic, Dementieva... And Safina is playing like crap, I don't know how she got this far. Oh wait, because everyone else is crap as well. Olivier Rochus complained about stuff related to that as well. Sure, in a way, it's normal that women are paid as much as men. But when you look at their performance, this is clearly not right. Not only do men have to play longer, but the difference in the level of play is incredible. The reason, other than our modern views on sexism, why women get more money for doing less? Money! Men not in the top 30 have a really hard time getting sponsors, while any russian bimbo with a pretty face has sponsors fighting over her. Who cares if she's not good at tennis? She's pretty, people will want to watch her! So in the end it has nothing to do with tennis itself, only with money, image, and other shallow things. I think it's horrible, but it's certainly not the only sport suffering from this.

Saying that though, I have seen some pretty good women's matches. Bondarenko-Ivanovic was actually quite fun to watch, and there were some others as well. Usually featuring girls I've never heard of against a top 20 player.

And lastly, my draw!! How exciting and frustrating it is, especially compared to the other people who also entered their draw on the ATP site. I'm currently ranked 12954 out of 19590! Which isn't that bad I suppose, considering lots of people probably look up most of the players to look at how well they performed in previous tournaments, if they're in shape, etc. While I definitely kept the result of the previous tournament in mind, my picks for the non-top 20 were more random and based on stuff I remember from last year or so, and not based on recent results. I've done fairly well I suppose. My only big mistake so far is Wawrinka, I had him going until the 4th round, but he lost in the first one!! He was 19th seed here, and lost against someone ranked 182! Everyone had him in until at least round 3, so yeah. I'm quite disappointed in Wawrinka, he's a great player and really shouldn't have lost this early. I had others through to the 3rd round (Karlovic, Andreev, Mathieu) who lost in the first round. Oh yeah, Tursunov also lost in the first round, and unfortunately Safin as well. His last Grand Slam :( Which reminds me, the last Safina match I saw was fun just to see her get mad all the time. Didn't smash her racket though, disappointing.

Right, next tennis update in a couple of days.

a different head space

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 23:59:39 GMT

Time to complain! I have not been well recently. My mind is a mess. I only properly seem to function after 8PM as well. It's all my own fault, I've been staying up far too late in the past two weeks. I need a job, simply so I can live in a normal day pattern. And have something to concentrate on, I have no focus at all now.

My dreams have been so messed up recently as well. I can't remember them clearly, but a lot of them just felt bad. Not because of the actual content, but just...the feeling. Nothing happens in them except talking, I seem to be some politician or whatever who needs to listen to and consult people, and then make decisions. It's awful!! But in my dreams I seem to be so good at this, and in many different situations as well. I'm pretty sure I was a roman emperor one night, and a Starfleet commander another night. Oh, and I just remembered one in which I was some sort of astronomer, and I discovered tons of new stuff, and I had to convince my fellow scientists that it was all real. It's so confusing and annoying, in those dreams I'm super smart but when I wake up I feel like the complete idiot I am.
I had a good dream two nights ago. It involved...Los Angeles! No, that's not weird, when it comes to the US, I have more LA dreams than NY dreams, really. Anyway, content wasn't that interesting maybe, but it was a dream in two parts. First part, I was in LA. Second part, it was the day before I left to LA. Second part was more interesting (or at least, the part I remember best), lots of bad and very, very weird things happened. There's a possibility that my dream/spiritual guide is no longer Xena, but a rather arrogant cop who looked vaguely familiar and knows all about me, and who in this dream, was undercover as a (female!) prostitute. Hmm. I think I prefer Xena.

The past few days, I've been mainly listening to HTRK, Little Boots and The xx. I love HTRK muchly, individually their songs don't seem that strong, but that dirty, passive, nostalgic atmosphere on the album is so, so good. It's a perfect late night/early morning album.
Adam told me to listen to the Little Boots album, and I did! Multiple times! And while I still think I won't buy it, but it certainly isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Every song has something I dislike (mainly related to being too poppy for me), and at least half of the songs could be Kylie songs, but at least they're good pop songs.
Apparently The xx are quite the hype on the island, but they don't get any attention over here (yet). Listened to the album a couple of times, and I'm still undecided. In one way, the songs are beautiful and brilliant, so minimalistic and melancholic yet very poppy. But on the other hand, something prevents me from getting really into this. Don't know what. I'm sorta considering seeing them live, but this music is usually not very exciting to see live.
Incoming albums: The Bug, first Health album, and I'll probably give the La Roux album a few listens as well.

Short tennis update next I suppose.

that tennis update

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 00:36:14 GMT

Yes, the US Open is about to begin! Exciting!!! Except that I probably won't see that many matches due to the time difference. But still!

Just for fun, I signed up for this ATP draw challenge thing. You just predict who's going to win matches, from the first rounds to the final. It's like gambling, only there's no money involved (you can win prizes, but you know). It's interesting because they also show stats and the percentage of people who think this person or another wil win the match. I'll post some interesting stats at the end of this update heh.

My draw is pretty boring and predictable, I have Federer as winner, Murray as finalist. Roddick and Tsonga as semifinalists. Tsonga might be a somewhat controversial choice, but the opponents he gets are doable for him. He'd come out against Nadal in the quarterfinals, but I'm actually convinced Tsonga will have the mental advantage in that case. In the round before that, Nadal should come out against Monfils, also not a very easy opponent.
Federer has a rather "easy" draw, the only player he has to fear (somewhat) is Roddick (or Djokovic), and then he'll already be in the semis. It's also likely he'll come out against Söderling, but Federer will probably get his 12th win against him (12-0 for Federer).
The lower side of the draw looks more interesting. How about Murray - Del Potro as a quarterfinal? Should be awesome, I hope it happens. Like I said, I have Murray in the final, but I consider myself more of a Del Potro fanboy, so I wouldn't mind him reaching the final instead. I'm 100% he'll win a grand slam within the next 3 years though.
This is all interesting (for me at least) speculation, but I've always been wrong this year haha. I expected Del Potro to win Roland Garros and Murray to win Wimbledon heh. But I was right about Söderling reaching the RG final though! I'll be wrong about so many things this time, I can feel it. But I suppose that would only make things more interesting. Like, in one way I'm half expecting Federer to make an early exit, but when I look at the draw it seems only Roddick is a danger, and that's already the quarterfinal. Yeah, Hewitt fans, your guy has been playing exceptionally good lately, but he hasn't won against Fed in -7- years! So, no. Federer will have to be injured for something like that would happen. And my disbelief in Federer this year has always been wrong (apart from the Australian Open, but let's not talk about that now heh).

One of the first matches on monday is...Gulbis vs. Murray!!! Awesome! The epitome of Gulbis' crappiest year since...ever probably. I'm not even sure if he ever made it past the second round this year in anything. He's currently ranked 101. Can you believe it? Last year at Roland Garros everyone was convinced of his awesomeness (even Nadal!). But this year...I guess it's a mixture of truly bad luck, and of something bothering him mentally (maybe the bad luck?). Now an anecdote I'm going to bring up every so often when I mention Gulbis: earlier this year, he was playing a match, and his coach was encouraging him and yelled "let's go Gulbis!" His reply: "go where?" Ahahaha. ...it's probably funnier when you imagine his face when he's saying that. Or, if you're a Nadal fanboy/girl: someone shouts "vamos Rafa!" and he replies with "que? donde?" Aah, I don't know why I find this so damn funny, but I do.
Yes, well, anyway, he can win against Murray! But he mostly likely won't, of course. Certainly would be one of the biggest upsets ever. One can dream.

Okay, then, the stats:
- 65% think Federer is going to win the US Open. 12% pick Murray, 10% Nadal, 6% Roddick, 4% Del Potro. This means about 3% think a non-top 5 player will win. Hmm.
- 99,4% think Hewitt will lose against Federer. The other 0,6% are australian. Obviously. And of those, 0,1% believes Hewitt will win this tournament. Blimey mate!
- 66,6% think, if a Djokovic - Roddick match will take place, that Roddick will win.
- almost 70% think Nadal would win against Tsonga. But if there would be a Nadal - Del Potro match, slightly more people think Nadal will lose than the other way around.
- 0,5% is sure that Gulbis will kick some Murray behind in the first round. Go go Gulbis fanclub!!! Heh.
- even better/worse, my guy Tursunov comes out against Roddick in round 2. Only 0,3% is behind Tursunov :(

...okay these probably weren't interesting, but they amused me for a moment or two.

you know I have to post this every late summer

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 22:14:13 GMT

Blanche - Another lost summer

I vowed this wouldn't be
another lost summer
I've looked around but I can't see
that old time summer

it's still hot
but I look at what I've got
all I feel is number

I guess it's too late to plant those seeds
it's not worth it to pull the weeds
they'll just die; like I'm doing inside

my brother and I were the best of friends
more than just brothers, but now I pretend
is it a crutch? that I expect so much?

I promised myself I'd be strong this year
but here I am again filled with summer tears

and the fish ain't biting
and I'm through fighting
the same situation
the same frustrations

'cause summer's almost gone
the love I planned to sing about never came along
and I can't figure out where I belong
but ever year I sing the same old song

where's that old time summer?
it's another lost summer
another lost summer

it was the best of nights, it was the worst...

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 00:24:33 GMT

First something I forgot to mention yesterday: there was an awesome thunderstorm going on in the evening, of an intensity I've rarely seen over here. Lightening bolts came down in different places, and followed up quite rapidly. Later, it became more cloudy, and the lightening stayed behind the clouds. Still pretty how it lit up everything though.

That, and yesterday's stupid post, made my mind do overtime when I went to bed, and I "worked" on this little story I've had in my head since last year. It's extremely Lovecraftian, both in style and content, and it's about how the alps can be such a scary and unholy place heh. It has a lot personal things in it, the main character is basically "me", just...older. And more like a character in a Lovecraft story haha.
And I say "worked" between quotation marks, because really, I hardly had to think at all, this all just entered my head of out nowhere. Is this inspiration? I haven't had that in a long while, and definitely not in this amount.
Of course, the chance that I ever actually write down is slim, the chance that I ever show this to someone else if I do in practically non-existant. I want to have more than one story in my head before I start writing.

I think I also mentioned something about filming myself singing You only tell me you love me when you're drunk on Singstar. Yeah...I've been thinking about that, too much probably. I have all these ideas to make it more 'special', but idunno. There's already one thing I'm definitely going to do though! That is, if I do yotmylmwyd (or should I just call it 'drunk'?). I'm not so sure anymore, I think the singing is rather monotonous, and I already have a monotonous voice, so...maybe not such a good idea. But, while my other Pet Shop Boys songs (Rent and It's a sin) are more interesting to sing, they're also much harder. Hmm. Maybe I should just start with drunk and see how it works out? Yeah, you know what, here's the deal: I'll have this online by the end of next week, no matter how crappy it is.

I saw this thing on MTV: True life: I'm bisexual. I'm not really sure what the point of this show was, since all it did was reinforce the usual clichés about bi people: they're oversexed, confused (if not complete nutcases), cheats, etc. Although I got some good quotes out of it: "I like guys. I like girls. I like dick. I like vagina!" and (the guy) "if your stuff gets hard with both sexes, then you're bisexual!" Haha. Also, not surprisingly, the bi guy got the most negative reactions from his environment. He was easily the most sane one though heh.

I went to this today: http://www.thebigaskagain.be You'll probably hear about it in november or so. I was only there to laugh at all those hippies and take pictures though. And to confirm that the organisers are LIARS. They say more than 10.000 people participated. 10.000 people before and around the beach during the whole afternoon? Sure! 10.000 actually dancing? LIES. I know a thing or two about crowds, and when they did the final dance (the one they'll show in the commercial) there's no way there were 10.000 people participating. So there. Apart from that, it's a...nice gesture. Mainly of everyone working there, and the tv companies etc. since they did everything for free. U2 even allowed them to use a song of theirs completely free of charge!!! Wowow. Not to be overly cynical, but 10.000 people (or less!) just isn't that much, is it? I wonder how many environ-mentalists (oh sorry I couldn't resist) will be in Copenhagen during the climate conference, that number should be much more impressive than this. Maybe he should've made the video there, find some empty space somewhere and get at least 60.000 people together? Now that would be truly impressive, and make more of a statement than this. I'm all for environmental awareness, but all these protests and whatnot seem a bit pointless to me. The only good thing I've seen concerning this was An inconvenient truth. Everything else just seems very clumsy and naive.

Talking about clumsy and naive things (oh tem, that was such a good transition from one paragraph to another!), I'm off to read some more I, Claudius. I want to finish it this weekend, and possibly finish the second book by the end of next week.

from the desk of...

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 23:10:41 GMT

Today was one of those days where I've been stupidly lazy, and actually felt guilty about it.

I was in a sort of blogging mood yesterday, but not today, and most of it were things that I've already talked about I think, general boring philosophical and ethical talk. Obviously all very contradicting as well.

Also, while I keep finding new people to follow on Twitter every day (found Patrick Wolf - the day before he announced he'd never update again), I've started feeling bad about talking so much about myself. I had (or still have) this with lj as well, there have been several points in time where I was very close to completely deleting this journal. The historian in me ("save everything, no matter how unimportant it seems!") always wins out though, and I'm happy he does.
Anyway, when it comes to twitter, I think it's much more useful to keep posting stuff like the tennis updates, movie/music/tv series review and recommendations, etc. The occasional emo update is inevitable though.

I was going through some old lj entries just now actually (long story...but wait, I have time! I was curious when I bought Patrick Wolf - Wind in the wires, to be more precise before or after I saw him at Pukkelpop 2005. Turned out to be a week or so after that, even though I remember not particularly enjoying him that time. Hmm! It's amusing that Wind in the wires is still my favourite album of his, and that he's become one of my favourite artists and live acts ever. Also amusing - non p-wo related - that I was already worshipping Shiva back then, my whole "steal gods from other religions to form your own" thing is older than I thought. Shiva is still one of my main 3 gods, together with Bacchus and Cthulhu - but maybe I should write about that another time). I found an entry with a survey thing, and suddenly reading this made me laugh, a lot:
q: are you kinky? a: of course not
I don't know if I was being serious or trying to be funny, but it does seem funny to me now, after I recently opened up to some people about the extent of my kinkyness. For the record, I've been kinky since I was 13 or something, I just hid it well, until I met other kinky people. I could write a long entry about my personal history of kink (I've already prepared that in my mind actually, and it actually gave me new insights and made certain pieces of the puzzle fall into place - felt good, even made me feel better about all this). All I'll admit here are 2 things: 1) having had a 'wet dream' involving something kinky at an age my body wasn't even ready to get wet dreams, and 2) having seen a large part of l'Histoire d'O at a very, very young age (but well after fact one...I think). Not really sure why I'm sharing this, but there you have it, feel free to use it against me later.

Also amusing that I started this entry with saying I feel bad about writing about myself, and then do just that. I actually wanted to do a tennis update, but I'll keep that for a separate entry I guess. I'll just continue with the "I" talk:
I'm still reading I, Claudius (I'm a slow reader, in the sense that I sometimes only read about 20 pages a day), and I'm enjoying it very muchly. Books (and authors) like that always inspire me to write more myself. My style of writing here, after reading a book, always seems much more...book-like, don't you think? Heh. But I very much enjoy this style of writing, I always feel more creative. And it makes me do more of an effort to try to not start every sentence with "I". I (oh crap) just wish I was creative enough to actually write a (long) story, but I can never find a good subject. Maybe I'm doomed to be a non-fiction writer, but that's just so...school-like. I, Claudius actually seems like a good compromise: almost everything that happens in the book really happened, and every character in it was real. The author just fills in some gaps (mainly personality-related), and tells everything from a first person perspective. That first person perspective is obviously very interesting since the use of the word "I" is inevitable!

Right, I'm done now. (and yes, at this point, I'm thinking of deleting everything I wrote. But clicking the 'post to partyweirdo' button doesn't take as much effort, so there you go)

this one dedicated to all badman in SW9

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 00:30:18 GMT

Okay, so in the past few days I looked up some more stuff from band I liked at Pukkelpop. And ordered albums. Quite predictably: Dizzee Rascal - Boy in da corner (already wanted to buy this before PP really), The Bug - London Zoo and Health - Health.
Starting with the latter: their new album is coming out soon, but I read some reviews of the first one, one of which simply said "I really, really, really, really like the drums on this". I mean, holy crap you guys, if you ever want me to instantly buy an album, use that line! I've become such a sucker for drums and percussion (the weirder, the better), a line like that is all the recommendation I need.
Oh yeah, also got my ticket for their gig in october heh.

When it comes to The Bug, I definitely had to get used to the fact that the album is different than the live stuff. Darker, slower, but also more varied, with different MCs (even a girl, wow!). But to be honest, just the music without the MCs would be a bit boring. And the MCs seem to be jamaican (or at least fake the accent), which is all the more fun. Same as on PP, I don't understand 99% of what they're saying heh. Looked up some lyrics, and it seems to be about drugs, carrying guns and stabbing people. Just your average night out in London I guess. In a way, I feel sorta bad about listening to this, because kids might worship this kind of stuff and live it out, leading to more violence and stuff. On the other hand, I feel that this really isn't the intention of the artist (unlike, say, some american rappers who are all "hey kids, look at us, we're rich and have all the bitches we want, and all we had to do was steal, do and deal drugs, and carry a gun around all day!"), and I feel that any artist should be able to put out his work without having to think about things like morality and how society will react to it.

I also saw that they're doing another gig over here in october (october is a hellish gig month, gah). Not sure if I'll go, but I'll definitely keep it in mind. I'm also interested in what the audience will be like heh. This whole dubstep/grime thing (or as I would like to call it: electro-hiphop) is fairly new over here, although it's certainly not that far removed from stuff like M.I.A. or some Santigold tracks. Pukkelpop certainly showed that a fair amount of people enjoy the genre, but then the festival crowd is generally quite different from the gig crowd.

I'm not even sure why I enjoy this so much. The lyrical content does nothing for me (like I care about what happens in the shadier parts of London, pffft), and the beats and electronic tricks are actually quite simple . I suppose it's the combination of those beats and the way the lyrics are brought, they really spit it out, it's at least twice as fast as the average rapper.

Well I certainly talked a whole lot about that, wow.

Just saw The Wrestler. It's awesome. At first, I was a little confused how this movie got to be so popular, since the filming style (and themes, I guess) are very much dogme 95 (if you're not familiar with that term, think Dancer in the dark, it reminded me a lot of that one). But of course, it has WRESTLING, and the story is simple enough, it's sorta very Rocky. Only with wrestling. And filmed like a european movie. Yes. But really, it deserves all the praise it gets.

obligatory big pukkelpop review 2009

Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:11:27 GMT

The day started with having to queue up for two and a half hours to get in. Already complained about this enough I think, so let's move on.

That uhh, small delay resulted in me missing 3 bands I wanted to see, and the first band I eventually saw was Bon Iver around 4PM. Was still a bit pissed off at everything, so I can't say I was very much into this. Sounded pretty though.

Walked around a bit, getting food/drink tickets and junk (I won a Pukkelpop hat!! ...from a sponsor, so it looks stupid), and tried to find a good place for Dizzee Rascal. He played quite a few new songs, most of them sounded very good (but not like his "old" style at all). He played Flex and Fix Up Look Sharp, but no I luv you (from what I heard of the old albums, this is by far my favourite). And yes, he ended with Bonkers. Which made everyone go Bonkers. Yes. But it was soooooo awesome, really. Of course it helps that it's my number 1 summer hit, and hearing it live would've already been great regardless, but it was much, much better than I thought it would be.

Went to the chateau to hear some Soap&Skin. This girl has an awesome voice. Reminded me of Joanna Newsom a bit, except that this was with a piano. Good stuff.

Next: La Roux in the club. Good gig. I was interested to hear how her voice would sound live, and it's really very much like on record, nothing fake about her. And while I like the sound in general of the songs, the gig still didn't convince me to buy the album. She was all "this is great!" and "you've been the best crowd since a very, very long time, thank you so much". Pffft, cheap tricks heh. Plus, set was only half an hour long, while she got 45 minutes.

Went to the chateau to relax, and to wait for Andrew Bird. I somewhat enjoyed it, but just as I wanted to leave, I see that it's actually raining in the tent. Yes. So I stayed a bit longer. Went outside when most of it stopped. Saw some impressive lightening, but it was moving away from us, rain stopped as well.

That slightly messed up my schedule, and I waited for the "surprise act" to show up. It was either going to be Them Crooked Vultures or some thing with members of Wilco and Radiohead. And it was...Them Crooked Vultures. I intended to stay outside the tent a bit, in front of the videoscreen, but both the videoscreen and sound frequently fell out. This was rather annoying and I just said "fuck this shit" (yes, out loud, I love saying this out loud) and moved to the Club.

Grizzly Bear was playing. Again, something that sounded nice, but I suppose I wasn't really in the mood for that sort of thing at that time. (now that I hear some of their songs again, I actually quite like them heh)

Stayed around the club stage to listen to The Offspring. I actually recognised a lot more songs that I thought I would (at least...3!!!) Still, I wouldn't have watched this (and actually I didn't, I just listened) if something more interesting was on. It's one of those moments where I sit down somewhere at the back and only half listen to what's on the main stage.

Went to the marquee to see Beirut, another band some of my last.fm friends seem to like a lot. I liked it (certainly enough to see the gig from beginning to end), didn't love it. I did love the drummer though! I can't decide whether he looks like a retard or a creepy pedophile guy. He has that kind of face, and he's smiling a whole lot when he's drumming, and he's really into the music. It's both creepy and adorable. I was outside the tent, and lots of people pointed at the screen and laughed every time he came on. Aww, he can't help it, leave him alone!! heh. But um yeah, music was nice, yeah. Oh, also surprised to read that they're from the US, the music they make is SO european, seriously. I thought they were irish, or from central/eastern europe.

Anyway, that was enough for me on day one. Wasn't in the mood anymore, and I doubt Fath No More and My Bloody Valentine was worth staying for someone like me who's never heard of them (and tends not to enjoy the headliners anyway).

Had my usual rough night, felt ill, like I had a cold or whatever. BUT for the first time ever, I had no ringing in my ears or anything. Guess having a short day and staying far away from the front of the stage helped with that!

Day 2!!

Unlike yesterday, I could just walk right in. Had plenty of time before Ebony Bones started, so I went to the petit bazar. It's a seperate section of the festival, with weird things going on, and also a couple of tents with mini-theater and movie showings. One of my favourites was this "Jesus" fellow who talked through some really old (and horrible) dutch songs. He was a righteous old bastard, he promised a beer to the girl with the biggest pair of tits, said tons of politically incorrect stuff, and loved insulting us. It was much fun, next time I think I'm going to spend some more time there.
BUT the reason I went there in the first place was the wrestling tent!!! Yes, there was a group of professional wrestlers putting up a show there. It was short, but tons of fun haha. They also picked out a girl from the audience to be ring girl, in the end they got her to wear a tiny bra and string (despite that, she actually did a remarkable job - she must've done something like this before, THE WHORE!!!!). Anyway, we got one big fight between 2 guys (which I actually have on video, here), and then a royal rumble with all the guys (not that interesting). As far as I'm concerned, this can come back next year, although they'll probably find something else.

Saw Ebony Bones in the club. Pretty much the same gig as I saw last year in London, but still a lot of fun. She and her band are just great performers. And the songs aren't half bad either heh. The thing that surprised me most is that she managed to do that "to the left/right/back/front" thing, making the audience move in that direction when she said so. Not at first obviously, but the second time, everyone was doing it properly, and it was amazing to see. Respect! Especially since really no-one knows her here, this was also her first time in Belgium. She definitely made an impression, she's mentioned quite lot in the reviews and newspaper articles.

Next I saw a bit of The Chapman Family. Not really my thing, sorta harder, very guitar-driven indierock.

Went to the dance hall for the first time this festival (!) to see some Buraka Som Sisterma, that portugese dance project. I wasn't horrible, but I've seen stuff like this before (DJ playing stuff, a couple of guys and a girl screaming random stuff - yeah I should find another word for "stuff") so I moved on.

On the other side of the festival, The Virgins were playing. Very unoriginal sounding indiepop, but I stayed until the end of the set anyway. Also, I got a very gay vibe from the singer (and possibly other band members too). Then I found out they're from New York, where half the population is gay and the other half just acts gay, so yeah.

Then there was a bit of a gap until the next interesting band, so I went to the chateau to see Bill Callahan. Nice singer-songwriter stuff.

When I came out of the tent, Glasvegas was playing in the marquee. Sat down and listened a bit, and while it certainly wasn't horrible, I thought it was horribly The Killers-like.

Went back in the chateau to see a bit of Kap Bambino. Quite liked this, electro-punky stuff with a girl shouting the lyrics. Wouldn't listen to this for a full hour though.

Went to see Patrick Wolf in the club. As he said himself, third time at Pukkelpop!! (first time in 2005 for Wind in the Wires, though I didn't really like his performance then, and in 2007 for Magic Position - very good gig). His um, appearance was quite different this time. In a golden dress of sorts, with long blonde hair. So weird! Anyway, the gig was SO GOOD. Even better than last time. He also seemed a lot happier, talked quite a bit, even something about "I'm only human, just like you, I make mistakes" (no idea what that was about until I looked it up - hmm!), thanking us for supporting him, saying something like "see you next time, on the main stage maybe?", and explaining stuff about his song and latest album (he's doing that a lot in recent years, I like). Like he explained that the Bachelor is about being lonely and looking for love but not getting it. "But I want to end with a positive note. This is a song about being in love" and The Magic position started, and I almost cried for some reason or another. Yeah, it's very hard describing how I felt during and after this gig, emotional I guess, in an overwhelmingly good way. I felt very small in a way, but had so much respect and love for Patrick Wolf, like he was a teacher or spiritual guide or something, and I was still a very young and ignorant student. Yes I know how weird this all sounds (but you should be used to that by now...), that's just how I felt then.
Anyway, if you want a setlist or something, he definitely played The Bachelor (favourite song on the album but it sounded weird live), Vulture, Damaris, Shadowsea, Tristan, Hard Times, Accident & Emergency, The Magic Position, and a Madonna medley heh (in 2007, he covered Rhianna's Umbrella). And yeah, I don't think he played any song off his first album!!!

Oh! Also, just before the gig, someone walked by me wearing that red P-wo tshirt I have too (I should get a better picture of it than this). Wow! Must be a foreigner hahaha. (Must be! I want to be the only belgian with that t-shirt! grr!!) No, P-wo isn't that popular over here (thanks to the support our many "alternative" mags and radio stations - oh wait, they're all shit), and I definitely noticed, just like 2 years ago, a lot of english-speaking people in the tent.

Anyway, moving on: to the chateau then, to see a bit of HEALTH. HEALTH HEALT HEALTH. Yes, just like Liars, it's something I like repeating. And just like Liars, they're awesome. And just like Liars, they're music is...just like Liars heh. But I absolutely loved them, lots of variation and weirdness and randomness and awesomeness in the set. Only saw about half an hour I think, maybe even less, but this was surely the surprise of the festival for me. Will see them again in october.

I thought I still had time for food and stuff, but as I walked by the marquee, eating my overpriced chips, I heard Fever Ray was already starting!!! Rushed in, found a good spot, and enjoyed. It was the exact same set as a couple of months ago, with the same faults (too much damn bass on If I had a heart, you couldn't even hear the vocorder parts at first). But still awesome stuff to watch and hear, really cool atmosphere (though I wished this was on a smaller stage - marquee is far too big for this).

Went to the chateau to see a bit of Crystal Antlers. But, after that trio of weirdo bands, these guys sounded so...conventional, you know? Not that they were bad, they were just too damned normal heh.

Anyway, had plenty of time to find a good spot for Kraftwerk. I can be very short about the gig: it was 80% the same as their 2004 show, with 2 "new" songs (as in, old songs, but heavily remixed), a different playing order, and sometimes, a slightly different mix of some of the other songs, just to show that they do mix things live and not everything is pre-recorded heh.
Also, I stood fairly close to the stage, but of all the people around me, I was the only one really dancing and clapping and (yes) singing along. How damn boring!!! It's even worse than at Radiohead! Heh. No, I just hate it when people at gigs show no emotion or no reaction to what's happening in front of them (apart from clapping between songs, yes). Oh well.
BUT I really enjoyed it. I just want them to hurry up with a new show and/or album, 6 years of pretty much the same stuff is a bit long, no?

So, this was actually a really really good day, certainly one of the best I had at this festival, or any festival for that matter.

day 3:

Micachu & The Shapes
Fun band, very random at times, but I thought the sound sucked. I could hardly hear the vocals. Really liked the songs at the end of the set though.

Went to the chateau (where I'll end up spending half of this day) to see Hudson Mohawke. Liked this, sounded a lot like early Jamie Lidell (his Muddlin Gear period - very random electronic stuff, no vocals). But not as exciting.

Saw some Deerhunter in the marquee. But, this music is just no good at 4PM on a very sunny day - and the marquee was half empty, could've gone all the way to the front row if I wanted to. I'm sure it's nice music, but just like with Crystal Antlers, it felt too "normal" and didn't excite me at all.

So, I went to the club to catch a bit of Gang Gang Dance. This DID excite me. Only because they had like 3 different set of drums on stage: a 'conventional' drum kit, electronic kit, and a mixed kit which included steel drums. The girl who did the vocals also operated the front kit. It's kinda hard to describe the music. So I won't! Hah. I enjoyed this but it's probably not nearly as good on disc (or, mp3, yes).

Okay, I'm going to do the lazy thing now and group some of the chateau acts together, being Rusko, The Bug and Magnetic Man feat. Skream and Benga. All three of those were these dubstep/electro/ragga collectives, a type of music I wasn't that familiar with (though at first not radically different from hiphop, it definitely feels different). Unfortunately, somehow many people wanted to see these guys, and I only got in during The Bug. And I'm happy I did. At first I was just sitting down because I hadn't rested since I got there, but I just couldn't stand still. I don't know what came over me, but I just had to dance. On stage: a white guy behind a laptop, throwing out beats and random electronic noises. And a black guy, throwing out streams of incomprehensible words. But that combination was somehow completely AWESOME. It was like the white guy was all "come on guys, dance to my beats!" and the black guy was all "yeah, come on, you can do it! harder! faster! stronger! yeah! come on! come on!" and before you knew it you were dancing and just couldn't stop. Well that was what happened to me anyway. At first I was even scared of myself because I was so into this, I actually wanted to leave heh. But I just gave in, I'm glad I did, I really haven't danced like that in ages. I even tried new moves!! I must've looked very very silly. And that also made me think: in one way I would have loved to have someone with me to tell me how awesome/silly/stupid I looked, but on the other hand, I might've just held back because there was someone with me!
Also, The Bug was responsible for the second best moment of the festival. He asked "does anyone here smoke weed?" Practically everyone in the chateau raised their hand hahaha. (losers!)

The first dilemma of the day was Hanne Hukkelberg vs. Yo Majesty. I chose Hanne. Because I have an album of her. It's nice. And she's norwegian you know. The gig was quite nice as well, but not that exciting. I stayed the entire gig either way. Reading the reviews, I should've gone to Yo Majesty after all, much more fun it seemed, and the singer walked around with her tits exposed the entire gig. Did I tell you she's black (yay!), lesbian (boo!) and rather fat (y...boo!!!)? This is why I said in my previous update that, when I'm at a festival, I should do the more fun bands instead of the more "nice" bands, you know? Festivals aren't really the best place to enjoy pretty music like Hanne Hukkelberg and Deerhunter and stuff.

I saw a bit of Fennesz, which was one of those "laptop artists", with the only difference is that he had a guitar plugged in. Interesting! I guess. Wasn't bad, but also not as exciting as those dubstep thingies.

Then time for the second dilemma: The Whitest Boy Alive vs. Peaches vs. Florence and the machine. I knew Florence and the machine was the most sensible choice, but I went with Peaches because I completely rediscovered her this year. Aaand I probably shouldn't have. The show wasn't bad, but certainly didn't have the same energy as the ones from several years back. She has a (quite good) live band now, with a girl who can play a mean guitar. No bondage act though :( heh. Setlist was okay (not enough Fatherfucker songs though - and no I feel cream), though some songs sounded less exciting live as I thought they would. So yeah, not a bad show at all, but I certainly prefered the earlier shows, and I obviously also felt uncomfortable knowing that two other bands I like were playing at the same time.

After another chateau visit, it was time for the THIRD dilemma of the day: Klaxons vs. Little Boots. Less problems with this one, Little Boots all the way, although I would've loved seeing Klaxons as well. Little Boots was quite good though. I would say she actually put up a better show than La Roux (yeah yeah, I can't write reviews without comparing, sorry), but the songs in general just don't sound that interesting (as in, suppose I bought the album, I know I'd get bored with after a day or two because the songs are so transparently poppy). There were a few exceptions, there's one song I hadn't heard before that I liked a lot (I think it was Click?) Still, I enjoyed this.

Then another chateau visit where I couldn't get in. Decided to camp near the chateau so I could see dEUS on the screen above the marquee. They...weren't bad!! I haven't been following them recently, their latest albums don't interest me at all, but they also played some classics. Like Nothing really ends, and Instant street. Both are awesome, but Instant street has that progressive change near the end of the song, it goes from a rather slow song to a real rock show. Obviously great live.

After that, back to the chateau for the last time for Moderat. Apparently a fusion of 2 electronic acts (Apparat and Modeselector), and I actually expected something very pounding techno music. But no! This was much more intimate, more minimal/ambient electronic music. It really wasn't bad at all, but not what I expected. Also, they looked very much like Kraftwerk minus one heh, 3 guys on stage behind a laptop, with a big video screen in the background.

Left earlier to get my bag out of my locker and everything, then went to the main stage area, and saw a bit of Arctic Monkeys. Just the last 2 songs or something, and it was not quite what I expected. Since when are these guys like, you know, a real band instead of stupid indie kids? Judging from what I heard, they're going to lose 90% of their fanbase (yes, the stupid part) with the release of their new album. Because we all know: the better your album is, the more fans you lose (hey, look at Radiohead and all those stupid people who only like The Bends).

Anyway, then it was time for fireworks (for the first time ever, it wasn't better than the previous year!!!) and to leave. "See you at Pukkelpop 2010" the screens said. Then the main stage guy said goodbye, and "you were awesome, you were BONKERS!" (yes, he said that, not a word that is usually used in dutch).

So, this Pukkelpop was DEFILED by many organisatory flaws, but just like last year, the line-up was very solid and I haven't seen any bad band. The only thing I can complain about is that there were too many things overlapping for me, and that I only saw half the bands I wanted to see on saturday. I'm the victim of my music taste, sigh.

Oh, and one final thing: it's been tradition that on sunday, my mum's friend gets us some kebabs. Guess what? This year, all the kebab places were closed!!!!! No kebab this year! The tradition has been broken!!! It's just, telling for this edition. So much bad luck and negative things this year, it must've been a curse or something. Gipsy curse!!!

More randomness:
- this year, I only went to the dance hall twice. Main stage only once really. Really spent about 80% of my time at the smaller stages, club and chateau. I loved the saturday at the chateau, I wouldn't mind the return of themed days.
- record edition this year, around 60.000 visitors each day. It's really reaching the limit now. Like, thursday is usually a calm, slow day, but now even the back of the main stage was PACKED with people. Usually you can go there for a quiet nap or something, but not this year. Too many people.
- thursday was also the hottest day of the year (and one of the hottest days EVER). Some rain and a nice thunderstorm on friday, but otherwise excellent weather. Which means: lots of nudity!! heh. And more opportunity to do some tattoo-spotting. Again, very jealous of some people. I wish I was sorta less...prude about getting one heh. I got some more ideas now though, so who knows, next year people will get jealous of my tattoo(s)!!
- band t-shirt spotting was also done. Like I said, saw someone with that hyper-exclusive P-wo t-shirt, someone with that Liars - Drums not dead one, tons of Radiohead ones (didn't wear my 'you used to be okay' one though), quite a few Kraftwerk - Autobahn ones (they were selling some K-werk t-shirts at the merchandising stand, including that one - I was wearing my Man-machine one that day and haven't seen anyone else with it!!). Some people seemed to recognise my Kaizers Orchestra one AND even my Stereo Total one (although that seemed so unlikely, she must've been pointing to something else. Maybe I had a horrible bug on me or something haha). Oh, and again, didn't buy any merchandise. I was tempted to buy this Kraftwerk t-shirt I've never seen before, it was quite nice, but didn't get it after all.
- second year in a row I didn't have a cold on sunday!! Heh. But then I had one after Madonna AND after Dour. The weather was crap then though, and this time, I took vitamins!! (which obviously doesn't help against an infection, but whatever, I've been feeling quite fresh and energetic this year).
- again, saw less bands than the year before, "only" about 35 this year (44 last year, 51 the year before that). Had a very short thursday this year, and never went in really early like I did the previous years, so I'm not surprised.

Anyway, Pukkelpop 2010. It's going to be the 25th Pukkelpop. Anniversary edition!! From what I heard, they definitely plan on making that petit bazar bigger (but then it won't be 'petit' anymore!!). As for the rest, who knows? I guess, since it's tradition, I'll throw around some names that will mostly likely be at Pukkelpop or another summer festival. I checked last year, and I got P-wo, Placebo and Kraftwerk right! Hurray! Heh. I already put my list up on the PP forum, so: The Knife, M.I.A., Santigold, Goldfrapp, Liars, Joanna Newsom (where's that new album, c'mon!!), Rufus Wainwright, Patrick Wolf (yes), and some others that are probably to unrealistic. But if Daft Punk have their new show ready, they should definitely be at Pukkelpop or Werchter.
But will I be at Pukkelpop 2010? Depends on the work situation. It's a bit annoying that Pukkelpop starts on a thursday, that means only saturday is I day I'm sure I can go. Werchter is easier in that regard, I could go 2 full days to that. Anyway, we'll see, but there's always something interesting to see at PP.

Oh yes, pictures here, and my new camera actually allowed me to make some good short vids, see here.

obligatory post-pukkelpop update

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 00:34:12 GMT

Yeah, I survived. My ears hurt, and there's this weird pressure on my head that's probably related to that. And I probably lost another 2 or so percent of my hearing permanently. Yes, more things on my long list of complaints this year.

But I'll save all that for my "big" update, which won't be so big anyway (not even sure I should do it, a short review on last.fm should be enough really). I usually write down lots of notes on the bands after each festival day, but not this year. Didn't write down anything on the first day, some random Patrick Wolf stuff on day 2, and just a few words on day 3. Yeah. But the amount of complaining will make up for that, I promise.

Anyway, the bands. Hightlights: Patrick Wolf. To a lesser extent: Kraftwerk, Fever Ray, Ebony Bones. Discoveries: Health. Gang Gang Dance. The Bug (and this mixed genre of dubstep/house/ragga/whatever, I don't know what they call it but I rather like it). Disappointments: none. Regrets: should've seen Florence (or even Whitest Boy Alive) and not Peaches, damnit. Advice to self for next year (if I'm going, that is): go see the bands that seem like the most FUN rather than those that have 'pretty' music (this makes sense in my head, honestly).

I took many pictures and videos, some good, most of them bad. And I can't seem to upload them to flickr at the moment. Just to be different, I'll show you some "atmosphere" pics instead of band pics:

I paid 135 euro for thrills like this

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 20:52:07 GMT

here is about 1/1OOth of the awesomeness that is BONKERS live: