April 2007 Archives

Just to keep you posted, I'm still on schedule. I was one day behind, but there's no author this week, so I am going to make up for that. I did the middle ones in the weekend. And deo volente I will keep up with the day-songs. Because I like it. And because I learn things. The Gloomy Sunday urban legend for example. The Hungarian suicide song, legend has it that 180 people committed suicide after hearing that song. It is a pretty depressing song, in both 1 - 2 versions. Oh and I know you will read about my Monday songs on Tuesday, who cares. But please help out, yesterday I forgot to add Sonic Youth for crying out loud. Long live my daughter.

Promise me you will at least watch Dalida:

The Mamas & The Papas - New Order - T-bone Walker - Pulp - The Carpenters - Duran Duran - Dalida - the Boomtown Rats - Vanessa Paradis

Maroon 5 - U2 - Billie Holiday - Sia - Johnny Cash - Oasis - Morrisey - Earth Wind & Fire - Lionel Richie

More?

My friend Stella slept with him. She and five thousand other girls. Those days are over. So we decided not to go out tonight. There was the Big Queen Beatrix Birthday Party, but that would have meant putting on orange T-shirts. And Michiel had already fallen asleep on the couch at half past eight. Enough excitement for today. Orbit caught his second pigeon in two consecutive days. On leash mind you. He jumps up in the air, flies alongside or towards the pigeon -sorry, too fast to really see- and gets the pigeon. Today he merely got hold of the tail, the pigeon escaped leaving half its tail in Orbits jaws. Orbit the feathered dog.

Merchants in truth, HJA Hofland wrote about them, consultants for hire to tell the truth. Imaginably catastrophic. I hope I show truth about Hofland. I think I drew him much older than we all know him, but the photo's over his newspaper columns are pretty outdated. The man is eighty, I hope he is not insulted by my truth.

They didn't ask about plays, they asked about sculptures. Is there a sculpture or statue in your neighborhood? And yes, there is good old Dr. Sun Yat-Sen where I walk Orbit every day. But Dr. Sun Yat-Sen must have sounded boring to my radio show host. He asked me whether I liked the statue, and why. Why indeed. Well, I think a park should have a statue. Just because. I remember when I was little, in our park in Eindhoven. I have never forgotten the radio monument there, a lady hanging over a pond, calling out to Indonesia, a Dutch colony at the time. Of course to my radio show host the idea of a radio monument had more appeal than Dr. Sun Yat-Sen could ever. And then I also did the good deed of explaining the commotion about the Canadian forces in Afghanistan handing over prisoners to the Afghans to torture. I hope I came across halfway coherent. And I sure hope O'Connor will resign. And I amused Holland with the Toronto FC and the Kansas City Wizards...

I quite liked the question actually. Let's repeat it. Is there a sculpture where you live?

Tomorrow night - or tonight, because you are probably reading this tomorrow - I'll be on the radio again. See, I warn you in time, I guess I'm more confident than last time. The studio guest is a playwright, so I think they may well ask me whether I was ever in a play. They always ask questions that fit their theme. I already thought of an answer, and I am giving it here, so in case they don't ask, I haven't gone through the effort of thinking of it for nothing. Thoughts should never go to waste. I was in a play. It was in grade five. Nobody in my class wanted to be in a play with me, so I wrote a monologue. Or maybe not exactly a monologue, because I made other children participate. Come to think of it, I did a real monologue for the same reason at another time, but this one makes a better story. I wrote a quiz, the complete eight rounds of a very popular TV quiz at the time, een van de acht, and I was the host Mies Bouwman. In the final round the winner had to sit at a conveyor belt, watch dozens of prizes glide by, and would take home what ever prizes he or she could remember afterwards. I imitated this high tech affair in a very ingenious way. I had two kids sit on either side of a table and pull a roll of toilet paper over the table. The one kid put the prizes on the toilet paper and they miraculously glided across before the eyes of my winner, and the other kid had to catch the prizes before they fell off. It was a thundering success, the only down side being that in those days I peed in my pants on a daily basis. Playing Mies Bouwman didn't change that.

Yesterday's sketches were so abominable that I had to start over this morning. It's hard to do one's best every single day. Maybe impossible. Anyway. Why did I put the wrong author in the title of this weblog entry? Because I won a book! My favourite radio program runs a weekly item in which Ivan Sitniakowsky gives away a book. A book he found for almost no money on a flea market or in a second hand bookstore, which he then talks about on the radio, and then sends to a listener who emailed. Great concept. So thank you very much Ivan, I am now off to bed to read funny stories from the fifteenth century, goodnight!

I am not too happy with these sketches, but I've had bad sketches lead to a good final before, so not to worry. I just also had a thousand other things to do today. Picking up another pair of Grunberg prints (they're good sellers). Emailing clients on my waiting list. Helping a neighbour load his van with garbage. Watching the thunderstorm from the porch. Returning a DVD. Tomorrow I won't have anything distract me.

My wonderful editor Ellen de Bruin wrote a book: Dutch women don't get depressed. Now apart from the title, of which she herself says it isn't true, I can't relate to the things that allegedly determine a Dutch woman. I don't get depressed, it's just not in my nature. And okay, my physical appearance is not exactly elegance of the fragile kind. But I never ever never ever never ever complain or nag about housekeeping. Never. It is one of the things I forbade myself to do decades ago. I would rather live in a pigsty. If you would have lived under my stepmother's regime, you would have sworn the same vow to yourself, I promise you. Maybe she was just a typical Dutch woman, I have never thought about her in that way before, thanks Ellen. She was always going on about having to do all of the housework, and "going on" is putting it very nicely. And rules! Ellen says Dutch women have house rules about which glasses to drink from and how and where to put them, etcetera. What a nightmare. I have two house rules, I'll be honest here. No plopping sounds made with fingers and insides of cheeks. And no snapping with finger joints. I can't stand those sounds, neurotic, I admit. Otger used to believe I could hear those things streets away. But one thing puzzles me about Ellen's theories. Dutch women rank 73d when it comes to female professional succes, a place they share with Pakistani women. Yet they don't derive their status from their husbands positions. So where do they derive their status from? From folding towels? And still not getting depressed? I feel less and less Dutch, I must say.

I am half way. And getting better at it, if I can say so myself. I am really getting to know the different animals. There's a few pages that I would like to redo, but the schedule doesn't leave time for that. Some day I am going to do a book all by myself, and redo every page until perfect, but not now.

Piffin's second ever art show! (Her first one was years ago, back in Belgium, I can't believe I never blogged that, I thought I had. With this kind of work, but then a life size baby elephant) The show today is one with the best student work from different Toronto high schools. We traveled all the way across town to Etobicoke for it, train, train, train, bus, bus, bus. To a mall in the middle of nowhere, with parking lots for millions of cars. A small miracle that they have public transport going there at all. We enjoyed a lovely Canadian dinner. And this one is for IJsbrand.

We were never good with plants. We only had cactus's and succulents. A succulent in Dutch is a vetplant, a fat plant. Michiel told me that if I was a plant, I would be a succulent (we were talking Briggs-Myers Typology). I turn three in this photograph. If you can guess the year, you know my age today... Click on the picture to enlarge it.

If I had known there would be no author for me to draw this week, I would have taken the weekend off and done the Dutch Woman piece after the weekend. But as usual, things turn out for the best. I am sort of having an unexpected weekend now, it is suddenly raining tickets. Okay, it already started raining while I was still doing the piece on Sunday, and Eva took us to see a Dutch film. And then Wilmar had Marlies tickets for my boys. And then last night Piffin and I went for some great jazz. And tonight the Elektra dress rehearsal. What have I done to deserve this?

I'll probably do some finishing touches tomorrow. But it's too late at night now, my eyes want to close down.

Usually I do these things to Michiel, and he always makes me solemnly swear to never ever show them to anyone.

I am very happy with the way Louis Paul Boon looks on the page. Maybe Lex was right in Tuesday's comments, maybe some sketches bare more likeness with Boon than the final illustration. But I think the facial expression fits the character Jan de Lichte, who was a seventeenth century rogue, deranging and revealing the hypocrisy of his day. A skirt-chaser too. And I think I managed to put that in his face. And before you say anything, I know I depicted Jan de Lichte too old, the historic Jan was broken on the wheel at twenty five. And Boon wrote the novel in the 1950's when he wasn't this old yet either. So I had my editor decide on the age, and he said to give Boon the age we remember him by.

I'm on schedule. I still feel very wobbly about having to ignore any urge of perfectionism, this is what they are, and all of the happy little accidents are there to stay. And while doing this I had my usual fun with the radio. Roel Bentz van den Berg played three covers and the original of the the greatest Canadian song of all time, Ian and Sylvia's "four strong winds". So I proudly emailed him that our fietsenmaker is their son. And that Otger and myself both ride one of his bicycles. And Roel emailed me back thanking me for this very interesting feedback. And that he knew my work, that goes without saying, duh.

I think you can guess what we've been up to today. And about the Wizard of Id, in Holland he is called de Tovenaar van Fop. Many years ago I shared a house with some students. One of them was christian, but otherwise very nice. We decided to share a newspaper subscription, and Pernelle insisted on a christian newspaper. After she moved to a different address, I canceled the christian newspaper. They wanted to know why I cancelled, and I replied that I preferred the Wizard of Id, which ran in the Volkskrant.

And what is there to tell? Otger had an ugly splinter in his hand, getting it out required some cutting. I gave him a piece of wood to bite on and some whisky to drink. No, I didn't. And I went to the corner store for dish washing liquid. Before I reached the corner I had already told three different neighbours I was on my way to buy dish washing liquid. That's our street for you, a person cannot walk out of it without being asked where she is going. They are seriously saving my life though, these people. Pulling me out of my lonely existence.

Once again I dread this one will not be guessed, amaze me. Today really is a holiday, kids are home, Michiel is home. But mommy is working, boohoo. Michiel worked hard too, though. He hung a whole lighting system in Piffin's room. She is painting murals on all of her walls, so she needs good light everywhere. And now there are rails with spotlights, an attic loft gallery. It wasn't easy, Piffin's wiring lies on top of her ceiling, which is in the very top attic in the house, to be reached with a ladder through a tiny trap door. Where the squirrels live. Michiel found a dead one...

Happy birthday Michiel! I am still in an old photo's mood I guess. This one had hidden itself inside that gigantic box of slides. Michiel's cheek was ripped, but I photoshopped that away. When we look at our 2007 selves in another twenty two years, will we look just as young and pretty then? Very significant detail, in this picture, Michiel is exactly half the age he is today...

Nine down, twenty to go. I have to do this faster. Forgot take the laundry out of the machine again. Michiel wanted to go to bed, no sheets on the bed. I did manage to buy him a birthday present for tomorrow. And a very nice cake. It looks like a present, with ribbons out of coloured white Belgian chocolate. I don't know why it was important for the baker to point out the fact that the chocolate was Belgian. Chocolate is most probably African, but that doesn't sound so good. Otger found himself a new book at the book store where we got the present, and we bought Piffin a Juxtapoz. So I said to the cashier, something for the father, the son and the daughter, nothing for me. She checked out the articles, for the father, the son, and the holy ghost. I mean, the Juxtapoz. They said they had been making religious jokes all day, and that they should stop, but that they couldn't.

Piffin and I did the Flickr thing, go look! It's only a fraction of what's in the box. If you want you can subscribe to my stream, so you'll know when I uploaded more. Oh, just imagine if they had known back then! That all those photo's would be out in cyberspace for the world to see. They would have been outraged, no doubt. I remember my parents being very annoyed with me always telling stuff to neighbours, the whole street doesn't have to know! There you go, I haven't changed, now have I? (Oh and never mind the spelling mistakes in the titles, Piffin doesn't write in Dutch much)

My wonderful new scanner is very good at scanning slides. And Piffin loves scanning, so there's a task for her. Throw the whole god damn box of ancient family slides in a Flickr stream! No, not yet tonight, but one of these days. The one above is me and my brother. Strange, these old memories. I can have a family of my own, love them to death, but this old fading family in the sixties somehow stays the real thing. Long gone, never coming back, but never going away.

It's not his bowel, not his anal glands (yuck), not his joints. So he probably strained a muscle. She injected a pain killer, and if it's not better tomorrow, we'll go for x-rays and blood work. Poor dog, he passed out in the kitchen after we came back. Then we went to the science fair at Otger's school, and he was still in the same spot when we returned.

Poor Orbit is sick. He is trembling all over, and he is puffing and blowing. Squeaks when he is touched where he hurts. I have him drink from the palm of my hand every half hour or so. He wants to do his dying scenes again, lay himself down under a table in the back yard. But we don't let him, he has to stay on his blanket. This afternoon he wanted to stay so close to me that I had to take care not to ride my office chair. His nose against my big toe. I'm sure he'll be fine again tomorrow, it's already eased down a bit. He should quit eating garbage, stupid dog.

We found a very elegant solution for Piffin's problem. Michiel makes her really small furniture, and now she looks a lot taller.