A short while ago I finished a book by Nick Hornby called “The Polysyllabic Spree”. It’s a collection of essays that Hornby wrote for the believer magazine. In these monthly essays he explains which books he wanted to read that month, which ones he bought and which ones he actually read. It was a nice read, especially for a non-Englishman, because it gave me some ideas about stuff to read. One of the books Hornby discusses, near the end of the book, is “A Life in Letters” by Anton Chekhov. I had heard of Chekhov of course and I had been to one of his plays, performed by “de Theathercompagnie” in Amsterdam. I remember it well as it was the first (and last) time I got to see Dutch actress “Halina Reijn” in the flesh. Anyways, I wasn’t very familiar with Chekhov’s work at all. Hornby quoted a letter that Chekhov wrote to his brother Nikolay and a couple of passages from this letter, like the one quoted below, intrigued me. continue reading »

Een tijdje geleden stond ik op een huisfeestje van een bekende te luisteren naar een bandje. Het bleek een cd-release party te zijn voor hun eerste cd die ze zelf in elkaar hadden geflanst. Het bandje heet Go Back To The Zoo, een tot voorheen enigszins obscuur Amsterdam’s bandje dat het de komende periode druk zal krijgen. Maandagavond stonden ze zomaar opeens in “De Wereld Draait Door”, waar ze hun nummer “Beam me Up” ten gehore mochten brengen. Het energieke nummer is door Nike verkozen voor hun nieuwe commercial, waarin onder andere ook Rafael Nadal te zien zal zijn. Als er ooit een kans zou komen voor een echte doorbraak, dan is het nu zou je denken. En dat omdat het Amsterdamse reclamebureau dat de Nike commercial produceert hen heeft gevonden op Myspace. Wederom een digitaal succesverhaal.
Mocht je de band dus nog willen horen of boeken voor ze definitief doorbreken, dan is nu het moment.

Klick hier voor de videoclip bij het nummer “Beam Me Up”.

I’m missing your laugh,
how did it break?
And when did your eyes
begin to look fake?
I hope you’re as happy
as you’re pretending.

I just love that last phrase: “I hope you’re as happy as you’re pretending… ”

The question of course is, is this a contradictio in terminis? I mean how could she actually be “as happy as she is pretending”?  Does’nt the whole “pretending” assume that she well ehm.. is ehm.. pretending? Ergo, that it is not so? That the pretended happiness is non-existing? Or is it perhaps possible that even though she is pretending at this particular moment she actually is -that- happy most of the time? All of the time? Some of the time? Not right now obviously, what with the whole pretending… Or maybe she is just overdoing the whole happiness thing ’cause she desperately needs it to show. But then again, if that were the case, she probably wouldn’t be -that- happy or she’d just not be thinking about needing to have it show, right? Wrong?

Its a song by a group called “Dashboard Confessional”. (I got used to that name, but man did I hate it at first) Anyways, if you haven’t heard of ‘m make sure you check out their MTV Unplugged album. They just released a new album also, called “Dusk & Summer”. I don’t like it much, but make sure you listen to “So Long, So Long.”

“Don’t let anybody make you think that God chose America as his divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world. God has a way of standing before the nations with justice judgment and it seems that I can hear God saying to America “you are too arrogant, and if you don’t change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power, and I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn’t even know my name. Be still and know that I’m God.”

- Martin Luther King

(listen to it here)

I’m a sucker for quotes. Any and all words for that matter, and I ran into this Martin Luther King quote a while back. I figured it was quite amazing how King’s words still ring so true, and still apply to today’s situation more then 40 years after he first uttered them. You could of course argue that this has nothing to do with King’s words as such, but more with America’s foolishness in its foreign politics that hasn’t changed. I guess it’s a bit of both.

The question arose however, when did Martin Luther King actually speak these powerful words? I assume the audio-file proves he did, but when and where? And this is where the “fuckin’ bloggers” come in… continue reading »