This week...

A few things I've been wanting to mention that happened this week, which I've had off from work and have been spending as a nice little vacation at home...

We've seen quite a few movies, mostly at home: a series of animal-related movies - March of the Penguins, Grizzly Man, and King Kong - and then tonight we watched 40-year-old Virgin, which was not as bad as I was expecting. The penguin movie: moving and well filmed, though I'm not sure why it's gotten the huge response it has. Grizzly Man was far more intriguing and weird, and quite a look at obssession and nature vs man. And King Kong was pretty good. It's made me want to see the original, especially since all I really know from it is the famous scene of King Kong standing on top of the Empire State Building holding the girl.

We saw King Kong at De Munt, and I knew it would be busy and such, so I didn't expect the audience to be a well-behaved one. It was ok in the end, but I moaned when this hyperactive kid we'd seen in the lobby ended up sitting right in front of us. He was the type who just could not shut up and I was glad he was at least in front of us, because I could see he was bothering the two people in front of him. But he actually was rather quiet in the movie and I hardly noticed him (I did hear him ask his dad though at one point, after so much of the movie had gone on and Kong hadn't appeared yet, "where is the ape?!"). The same could not be said of the guy sitting next to Onno. He looked to be around 20, but he acted as if he were 12, laughing with a moronic "huh-huh-huh" at really inappropriate times, like, oh, every violent fight scene, and after lines of dialogue that had no humour to them whatsoever. It was hard to enjoy a tense fight scene with Beavis sitting two seats over...

One day we went into town cuz I needed some things and I also wanted to see what the Albert Cuypmarkt was like, since I'd never been in all the time I've lived here. I can't say it was that worth going to. It seemed to me like any other market I've been to here, except maybe bigger. It still was a lot of stalls selling cheap clothes and electronics and household items, mixed with the occasional stall selling food that was more worthwhile. But I could go to the Bos en Lommermarkt 5 mins from my house and have the same selection. The only market I've liked here at all is the Noordermarkt, which, yeah, it has the expensive Farmer's Market part, but even the normal market around the corner seemed nicer than most. I wish I could go more often, but I don't go to that part of town much.

In the neighbourhood of the Albert Cuyp, I found the Tjin's toko, which I've heard about, and I loved looking around there, even though it's quite a small store. They have imported food from so many different places, including some American food. I ended up leaving with some black beans (which our local supermarket no longer carries) and some good ol' Nalley's sweet pickle relish. They are much cheaper than most import food places too, so I might be popping in there every couple of months...

I found out today (thanks, Steven) that Sleater-Kinney have made a new European tour to make up for the cancelled one in November. It's not until May, and it still doesn't come through the Netherlands, but at least it's a tour. There aren't any UK dates though (yet?), except for their curated weekend at All Tomorrow's Parties. And the tour is very similar to The Decemberists'. They play the same places in Cologne and Brussels, so we could even go back to Cologne and see the kind folks again at Gebäude 9 who took O's camera away. But I feel we'll opt for Brussels this time, though I'm not sure about the place they're playing. It sounds a bit theater-ish, but then we were going to see them play in a former church (that is more churchy than Paradiso) in Glasgow.