Alaska-I'm coming

Ha! Found an alternative for a cruise. So I will be flying to Prince Rupert July first, staying there for two days and then on a ferry which will take a day and a night to take me to Juneau.



Chances were I had to sleep on deck, but in the end they had a cabin for me. In Juneau (anyone been there, tips..?) I can do some gletscher walking/seeing and enjoy the snow capped mountains and perhaps some more whales. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Have images of quiet mountains and endless sea touching each other and cold busy creeks running through a small town. That last part I haven't thought of until now.. Will have to do a check on the population of Juneau.. And hope I can get myself into a few tours. Read they have tours flying unto a gletscher and taking a walk there. Have done such a thing in New Zealand. A high point. Hearing the creaks and seeing the different colors of the ice around you. Very very impressive. Is it ecologically sound?? Hmm, I will recycle extra until then. And on july 8 or 9 I hope to fly to Seattle and stay there for a few days before returning to Vancouver and then to.. Amsterdam..
A nice last two weeks I guess, so working steadily on the book until then.

Haring for winter people

Have been starting in two new books today. One about Fassbinder, the German director, and the Journals of Keith Haring. Haring hit the big time during the ‘winter’ timeframe (1982-1988). At the end of the eighties he was as famous as a rock star. Thousands wore his T-shirts or send each other his postcards, millions knew his style. Why? The book states: “Haring tackled the issues of his times, the threat of thermonuclear annihilation, the obscenity of apartheid, and the horror of AIDS. But more than that: he also drew on the need of women and men for emotional response from others, for security of the long-term sort.”
His iconic simpleness was reflected in his baby-drawing: “The reason that the ‘baby’ has become my logo or signature is that it is the purest and most positive experience of human existence.” That will be recognizable for the masses..

There is a clear relation between the ‘Haring-hype’ in the eighties and pop-art, which reigned the art world during the previous winter timeframe (1961-1966). Art historic Jonathan Fineberg sums up his gift: “Haring created icons of mass culture to which everyone could relate.” His style was easily recognizable, simple but always emotional. There was a lot of interaction between figures in his art, they seem to give movement or energy to each other. And that warms peoples’ heart during the winter timeframe.
Haring did not want to work with canvasses. They scared him because of their value and ‘finality’. He prefered paper: “It is loose, natural, real, uninhibited, beyond definition. It is temporary and its permanence is unimportant."
The question is: how temporary will his art be? I don’t see a revival of his work in our current timeframe, again a ‘winter’ period. Shame he died so soon, would have been interesting to see how he would have developed his style.

tarantino sucks..

Hilarious review of film maker Quentin Tarantino in a book by Ian Penman. Copy/past:
“Quentin Tarantino has once said he likes to take genre characters (‘the pimp’, ‘the gangster’) and put them in a real-life situation. Which, when you think about it (which you’re not supposed to) is really only a pseudo-adult kind of Roger Rabbit with guns.
So you see -unreal people in real situations - that’s the reason that despite their spitty hissy tom-cat woozy-Uzi male-violence malevolence these are real ‘feel-good’ movies. A real feel-good deal for People Like Us. People who can spot pop-trash references the way people used to spot wildflowers and lapwings. People too sassy smart to get a feel-good fillip out of Forrest Gump but yet too squishy-brained to make the effort to get haunted by some Kieslowski meditation on the fracturing of late twentieth-century identity. Because these (last) days People Like Us want our fractured identities signed sealed and delivered inside a fast-food pop-cult package - you see, we don’t want to be haunted; we don’t want to wake up later in the night with strange visions shifting around the bare room of our conscience, or tears of trepidation asking to be cried; we don’t want to ask too closely about the failure of love in all our lives and the fever of disappointment that stalks us daily. No, we’re far safer in San Quentin, the adult Theme Park where everything is just a mild wild half-teen half-toon update of old nasty noir references; where pasty-faced men in black suits are our version of giant Mickeys and Goofys who pat us on our nodding heads on the way to the exit as they say: It’s OK little children, go home safe in your fan-fan-fantasies.
Tarantino’s bad guys are just one-dimensional parodies of badness: boy-men facing unreal pulp dilemmas. On some level -like a lot of society- Q.T. is both dazzled by the glare of ‘bad’ men and frightened of the real evil that lurks in all our tense hearts. Thus in Pulp Fiction, we get a six-foot-plus hyper-cool black assassin who talks with the voice of a nerdy white video-rental-store manager. This ice-blooded Isaac Hayes of the hinterlands talks about things like The Brady Bunch and The Partridge Family and A Flock Of Seagulls and stuff that nobody talks about - black or white - unless they’re a Q.T. kinda pop cult bore; unless they’re Q.T. in OD.
His success speaks to us like this: if I can be cool, so can you - just by enjoying my film and repeating the lines afterwards with your friends in the pub where they have the Pulp Fiction CD on an endless loop on the CD-jukebox... “ Says Penman, obviously no fan.

From the NRC website:
“Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, Deathproof, has been reviewed badly in Holland. The director of Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill has made a movie with violence in abundance, about “Chicks with cars.” Reviewers Bas Blokker and Jeroen Stout found the humor uninspired and too stupid for words, the total movie lazy and sluggish.”
Has Tarantino passed his time on the forefront of culture? Seems like he keeps making movies in the spirit of the times that made him successful: the ‘summer’ timeframe of the middle nineties. Shame for his fans (but may be they too cling to the past?). Must say I personally agree with Penman.

Back to business

Brought my brother to the airport yesterday. Again, it is harder to see someone going than going yourself. There is a feeling of loss seeing Hans and Chango move past the gate. But we had a very good week.
Here it is back to business again, my last month here, I gather. Like I promised Hans, it has started to rain again, the day after he left. We had a full week of 26+ degrees.. I don't mind that much. Yesterday it was close to 30 degrees and I am more of a spring climate lover. Give me 20-22 degrees and life is good. After swimming practice I opted for the library to get into the swing of reading and writing again. Must say I yawned more than I wrote. But read some interesting material about 70s fashion. It is interesting to see that with social confusion rising and especially (heterosexual) men under fire, the fashion turned into compensation, at the end of the 'summer' timeframe and the beginning of autumn (1977). No more unisex or androgynous (glam rock, disco) clothes, but cowboy boots, lumberjack shirts, army inspired GI-style clothes. Leading, in the end, to the parody of the Village People: all masculinity icons turned into a huge carnival.

And in the mean time I thought: let's search for a week of holiday again before returning to Amsterdam, at the beginning of july. Would like to see some glaciers in Alaska, but cruising there is not easy, on your own. 200% extra on a ticket seems a normal phenomenon. And by air we encounter the monopoly of Alaskan Air. Will see what will show up.

Whistler whales

Vandaag gedaan wat gedaan moest worden: een whale-watching trip. Cynisch gesproken betekent dat een fortuin neertellen om in totaal 5 uur in een bovenmatig bulderende boot door de golven te stampen om uiteindelijk op enige afstand te zien hoe een paar vinnen zich licht uit het water verheffen. In normale taal: “..Orca’s...!!” Ik heb me prima vermaakt (geef mij water, besneeuwde bergtoppen in de verte en mooie eilandjes en ik ben wel gelukkig), Hans ook en Chango een stuk van de reis. En hij kan op school vertellen dat hij Ruffles heeft gezien, de 55-jarige, zeer herkenbare Orca, door de vreemde kronkels in zijn staartvin. En ik ook, hier op dit log. Bijzonder, toch wel.

Gisteren was hilarisch, een dagtripje naar Whistler, dat we bijna misten doordat er geen taxi te vinden was. Een man op straat waarschuwde ons ook nog: “I don’t think it’s allowed to hail a cab on the street in Vancouver..!” Zou me niks verbazen, als daar een ‘regulation’ voor zou zijn. Maar we haalden de Greyhound die Hans ééns in zijn leven wilde nemen en hebben bovenop de berg in de sneeuw gespeeld, in onze t-shirtjes (25 graden). Sneeuwballen gegooid, geklommen en Chango ervan proberen te overtuigen dat hij echt niet in een uurtje skieën kan leren, laat staan snowboarden. Hij wilde wel twee keer op en neer in de kabelbaan. Hans niet, dus gingen Chango en ik nog een keer samen, glijden door de sneeuw, tot op het bot nat, en dan weer beneden in de zon opdrogen. We hebben gekeken naar de ‘coole’ snowboarders met hun sikjes en mutsjes (nog steeds..?! Iedere groep wentelt in zijn eigen clichés, ook bij 25 graden). Helemaal lekker, dat je binnen drie uur van het strand boven op een besneeuwde berg terecht kan komen. Vijf uur sneeuwpret en toch lekker op tijd weer thuis.

Morgen alweer het afscheid. Jammer hoor. Moet ik gewoon weer aan de slag. Doorschrijven! De laatste restjes van het internationale materiaal dat bruikbaar is voor mijn boek. Daarna terug naar Nederland, om daar de bronnen op te zoeken die de details van mijn hoofdstukken moeten gaan invullen.

canadian bowling by my brother Hans

Canadian Bowling, by Hans Kniesmeijer

Some things are the same the world over yet they are slightly different, things like food, coffee, music, public transport and so on. Bowling in Canada is a whole different cup of tea. The three of us wanted to go bowling so we went for it.
The balls you use for Canadian Bowling are very small, just slightly larger than a tennisball. Furthermore there are only five pins and you get to throw three times and the lane is shorter than a 10 pin lane.

Now there is something you need to know, something that always happens whenever Tom and me do something competitive. Grown men turn into small children. Ludo games turn into battlefields and card games turn into pop charts. Pop charts?
Yes pop charts. The highest score gets to be the number one and we don’t shut up over it. This happened with Canadian Bowling too. Tom won the first round, setting the family record at a dazzling 128. I scored 107, Chango 123.

I was bowling like a madman in the next set. Tom’s sour face pushed me to greater hights and I set an incredible family score at 152. Chango took second place with 128, Tom 126. This meant even added up my two scores were better......
The final round, i hate to say, went to Tom, with a measly 133. so it was two to one, his total score being higher than mine. But hey, my family record will be in the books for a long time, maybe even forever. I can’t see anyone go Canadian Bowling. Unless my weasley brother is going to give up swimming here and take on bowling, just to get that family record.

Hans.

Nobody's playing at Playland today

It’s warm here.. 26 degrees yesterday, even warmer today. To please my nephew and brother, we went to Playland, a large activity parc just East of center. We were looking forward to a huge roller-coaster ride and more thrills. We asked tourist information yesterday, we asked the bus driver this morning, and they all made sure we safely arrived at what should have been the gates, but there was no-one there.. When we passed the open gates in wonder four workman came to us. In typical ‘regulation’ language we have gotten to know so well in Canada, they immediately told us ‘you can’t be here’. But we were! Of course, they meant regulations have it that no customers are allowed inside the premises when the parc is not open. Not open?? The leaflet said ‘opens april 21!’ Turns out they only open during weekends the first two months. You have to check everything three times, it seems. They repeated twice more that we couldn’t be here, so we quietly stepped outside the gates and went for a drink in Tom and Jerry’s place.

A very funny waitress helped us there: “oh no love, you wouldn’t want to order a cappuchino here..” Turned out she’s turning fifty next month and has been working there since her nineteenth. That would make you turn honest about what you can and cannot do well.. She did her best though in drowning the cheesecake in chocolate sauce and canned strawberry’s, serving with the smooth ease and self-deprecating style that hints at an alcohol problem. But funny she was.
Because Chango demanded action, we decided to go bowling. Canadian bowling, that is, but perhaps Hans will write something about that. It is different from European bowling (small balls, 5 pins). And what else to do on a sweaty day with a sunburn from yesterday’s visit to the swimming pool (‘is that your son Sir? It’s not allowed to leave him in the water alone.’ ‘But I’m sitting here at the pool side at two meters distance, the water is 60 cm deep here and anyway, he has his diploma..’ ‘Still, regulations are, he can’t be in the water alone, Sir.’) than go bowling..?

After some Greek dishes, we tried to get a little nap just now (Hans still jet-lagged, me suffering from jet-lag-by-proxy), but of course that does not work with a 6 year old boy around.