September 20, 2009

Made from pig

Filed under: Animals,Design by Branko Collin @ 11:34 am

Christien Meindertsma documented 185 products contributed to by a single pig in an exhibition at the Kunsthal in Rotterdam last year, and in a book (also available in a pigskin bound version, of course). Pig 05049 won her one of the five 2009 Index design awards in August.

The list of good things coming from a pig includes bacon of course, yoghurt, pudding, paints, enamels (bone china!), cigarettes, brakes, bullets, and washing powder. The distinct smell of crayons is pig.

The Index Award prize money, 100,000 euro, will go in part to making the book available on the web, but if you want print copies you can buy them via Amazon and so on. The print version shows all the products life-sized.

(Via Jason Kottke. Source photo: Indexaward.dk.)

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September 19, 2009

Vote for your favourite Prinsjesdag hat

Filed under: Weird by Branko Collin @ 4:07 pm

Newspaper Spits is running a poll that lets you select your favourite Prinsjesdag hat.

Prinsjesdag (Day of the Princes) is the day that the government presents its budget for the next year, that the Queen addresses a joint session of both chambers of parliament, and that is always held on the second Tuesday of the year. It is tradition for female parliamentarians to wear outrageous hats during the joint session.

And rather than holding Prinsjesdag on a Monday, Tuesday was chosen because in times before the introduction of railroads, it could take a representative more than a day to get to The Hague, and travelling on Sundays was frowned upon.

(More hats at NOS Journaal. Source screenshot: Spitsnieuws.nl.)

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Lock picking increasingly popular hobby

Filed under: Sports,Technology by Branko Collin @ 10:49 am

The New York Times has an article (behind a pay-wall) about lock picking as a hobby almost exclusive to Germany and the Netherlands, and about Toool, The Open Organization of Lockpickers, which …

[…] is dedicated to picking locks for fun. The movement has been growing over the last five years, with a chapter now in Eindhoven, in the east of the country, and foreign branches in several places, including Germany and the United States.

[…] Its members see lock picking as a sport and organize annual competitions, a sort of Olympics of lock picking, at which entrants compete in various categories — padlocks, mechanical locks and freestyle, in which contestants confront a variety of locks with any tools they choose, as long as they do not damage the lock. The next tournament will be held in May in Istanbul.

At the hacker camps I attended the past 12 years, there always was a lock picking tent (where for some reason you had to take your shoes off, as if visiting a temple or Canadians), but I never imagined that what they were doing there was such a local hobby. According to the NYT, lock picking as a sport was invented by Steffen Wernéry of Germany, who in 1997 started the Sportsfreunde der Sperrtechnik club. The difference between the Dutch and German lock pickers is apparently that the former, in good security tradition, share their secrets with the lock makers.

(Photo of Kevin Mitnick‘s business card by Nathan Yergler, some rights reserved.)

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September 18, 2009

Cocktail hour with Dutch band videos

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 5:59 pm

It doesn’t happen very often, but we of the 24oranges are really busy. Here are some videos of Dutch bands in French and English to keep you entertained. Cheers!

First up, the video of Frenchman Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Qui est in, qui est out’ sung by local favourites The Spinshots, but with the original Gainsbourg video. They will be performing this tonight at pop temple Paradiso in Amsterdam.

Next up, a Dutch-British collaboration Laura Vane & The Vipertones that is playing Amsterdam this weekend and have been getting rave reviews of their first album, which came out a few weeks ago. Here they are with ‘Steam’.

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September 17, 2009

Preserved junk food collection on display

Filed under: Food & Drink,Weird by Orangemaster @ 10:48 am
Snack

Fons Biemans, a deceased snack bar owner from Tilburg, left behind an entire collection of Dutch junk food favourites preserved in jars, which promptly reminded me of the Chamber of Curitosities Tsar Peter the Great had in Saint Petersburg, Russia, but with food instead.

Biemans used the preserved food as a menu, never having to display fresh product which could just stay in the freezer. A teacher discovered the collection in a cellar, during a move.

And there’s a website called Snack-O-Theek where you can look at the collection online. You can play ‘guess that snack’, too.

(Link: vleesmagazine.nl, Photo: Snack-O-Theek)

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September 16, 2009

Jip en Janneke children’s books now in Persian

Filed under: Literature,Religion by Orangemaster @ 11:27 am
Jipenjanneke

Islamic theology student Simin Rafati has translated all of the famous Dutch children’s books Jip en Janneke by Annie M.G. Schmidt into Persian. Jip en Janneke (in English, we say Jip and Janneke – J is pronounced like a Y), a boy and a girl who have adventures, have already been translated into several languages, including Chinese, Estonian and Latin.

The concept of Christmas was not an issue for the Iranian government who either allow or disallow the publishing of the book in Iran, “as Christmas is also celebrated by Christians in Iran,” Rafati explains. Sinterklaas, a traditional Dutch holiday, was no problem either. However, Jip en Janneke have a dog, Takkie and that was a big no-no. “Dogs have always been considered ‘unclean’ in Persian Islam. I argued that even though Takkie is a dog, he’s a dog from a very different culture.” And so Takkie could stay.

You’d expect Iranians to be less permissive than the British when it comes to the illustrations by Fiep Westendorp of Jip en Janneke. These instantly recognisable silhouettes were ingeniously chosen to make them as easy to print as possible for simpler printing presses. However, the British publisher found them ‘unsuitable’ for the British market as they looked like ‘little black children’ in the poor African sense of the word, and so the British use different illustrations.

(Link: wereldjournalisten.nl, Jip en Janneke (Dutch))

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September 15, 2009

C’est fini: no more cross-border drug buying

Filed under: Film,General by Orangemaster @ 11:04 am
poster1

Next Monday is the premiere of the film ‘C’est Fini’ (It’s over’) in Antwerp, Belgium, a comedy film made by the Dutch cities of Roosendaal and Bergen op Zoom near the Belgian border to inform drug tourists about not being able to buy drugs anymore in both cities.

As of tomorrow, coffeeshops in both cities will no longer be allowed to sell soft drugs (hashish and marijuana). Coffeeshops that do sells drugs will be shut down for five years after a first warning. About 90% of all the drugs sold in these cities are to Flemish youth, which adds up to some 25,000 drug tourists.

The film’s plot has three Flemish guys trying to score a joint in the Netherlands. You can catch the trailer here (warning, nasty splash page).

The Dutch could just stop selling soft drugs altogether, some do say, others think that it’s still better to be relaxed about soft drugs in order to dissuade people from taking hard drugs. The current trend is that most people would probably not have the Netherlands known as some sort of coffeeshop and prostituion heaven, but hey, it’s part of the country’s identity at this point and it does attract the right tourists in some places. The jury is defintely still out on this, so to speak.

And don’t ask me why the poster has three languages on it (English = cool, French = cool to the Flemish, Dutch/Flemish = to be understood).

(Link: parool.nl, cestfini.be)

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September 14, 2009

Unique Jacques Brel photo exhibition in Amsterdam

Filed under: Music,Photography by Orangemaster @ 2:16 pm
Brel1

I once read that the cities of Amsterdam, Brussels and Paris made up an interesting cultural triptych, and an upcoming exhibition of Jacques Brel photos entitled ‘Le Pont d’Amsterdam’ by his official photographer Jean-Pierre Leloir in Amsterdam seems to support this imaginative theory.

Brug 9, a newly opened Amsterdam venue under a canal bridge will be featuring an exclusive, three-day photo exhibition of famous photos of Belgium’s iconic singer Jacques Brel, taken by world famous French press photographer Jean-Pierre Leloir opening on October 9. The exhibition will coincidentally feature 31 photos — coincidentally because it’s been 31 years since Brel’s death on 9 October 1978. Thirty of the pictures are black-and-white, with one colour photo of his last concert.

Rockarchive Amsterdam’s Michelle Lemesle, a Parisienne and huge fan of Brel, is supplying the photos for this exhibition. “Jean-Pierre Leloir is the most unknown famous photographer there is and has a huge archive of photos,” explains Michelle to anyone who asks when people come to her gallery.

The event is organised by MSTRDM, Alter Fritz and Rockarchive, with yours truly DJing at the opening.

(Photo: Jean-Pierre Leloir, courtesy of Rockarchive, Amsterdam)

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September 13, 2009

Dutch nab world record for group air guitar

Filed under: Dutch first,Music by Orangemaster @ 2:19 pm

(Michael ‘Destroyer’ Heffels in action at the Air Guitar World Championships 2005)

Yesterday at Appelpop, a free two-day festival in Tiel, Gelderland, the world record Air Guitar was broken by the 2005 World Champion, Dutchman Michael ‘Destroyer’ Heffels and an audience of 51,000 people.

By holding an air guitar session and breaking the world record, youth organisation Music Mayday, which help young people in countries like South Africa, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia develop their talent, drew attention to the fact that talented African youth can’t even afford a guitar.

Disclaimer: I occasionally do work for Music Mayday and my co-blogger is related to one its fine employees.

(Link: depers.nl)

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September 12, 2009

First national footgolf championship held in Nijmegen

Filed under: Dutch first,Sports by Branko Collin @ 8:30 am

Argyle socks and knee-length shorts, those are apparently part of the dresscode for footgolf, a sport invented by advertising agency Nothing.

Last weekend professional football player Theo Janssen won the first national footgolf championship at the Rijk van Nijmegen golf course, beating his fellow FC Twente attacking midfielder Kenneth Perez. Other participants included PSV striker Danny Koevermans, local boy Roy “the phantom” Makaay and Pierre “Pi-Air” van Hooijdonk.

A wary press, realising the joke might be on them (the jury is still out) covered the event, including public broadcaster NOS:

The sport is just like golf, with the exception that you play a football instead of a golf ball, and you use your feet to play it.

Apropos ‘Nothing,’ the company’s website explains that the name describes the space where ideas come from, but I cannot help but notice that it also neatly covers the emperor’s wardrobe.

(Photo: Roy Makaay teeing off, source NFGB.)

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