July 9, 2011

Dutch ‘Worst Driver’ contestant crashes into TV host

Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 2:19 pm

A contestant of a TV show called ‘De Slechtste Chauffeur van Nederland’ (The Worst Driver of the Netherlands) has proven his inability to drive a car by hitting the programme’s host Ruben Nicolai and an unnamed cameraman with his car.

The show was broadcast last Tuesday. The segment shown in the clip was recorded on 12 April 2011 at Twente Airport. A hospital intern leaked the news of Nicolai’s ‘accident’ via Twitter, and was suspended for a short time, Tubantia reports. Nicolai and his colleague sustained only minor injuries.

The contestant who showed the most progress won a car, but the guy who hit Nicolai got his license cut in half by the host.

The show’s final was partially recorded in Paris, where contestants had to kill or maim as few French people as possible on the public road to win it.

Link: Autoblog. Video: Youtube / BNN.

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July 8, 2011

Retro Friday: Donna Summer on Dutch disco show

Filed under: Music by Orangemaster @ 5:09 pm

A Dutch friend showed me a YT video of some weird Dutch show called Sjef van Oekels Discohoek (Sjef van Oekel’s Disco corner) that had a young Donna Summer sing ‘The Hostage’. Let’s call this like they call it in Dutch, one from the old box.

Her record company didn’t like it at all, she loved it though at the end host Dolf Brouwers says something like “next time when you’re inviting guests… please take the phone off the hook to avoid interruption!”

I like the way she says ‘Guten Tag’ (Good day German) instead of ‘Goedendag’ (Dutch).

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July 7, 2011

Lady Gaga goes Dutch design

Filed under: Design,Fashion,Music by Orangemaster @ 1:24 pm

Bart Hess, 27, from Eindhoven was asked to design a ‘slime dress’ (pic) for Lady Gaga. “I was given free reignrein. It had to have something to do with the album title ‘Born This Way’. The trick was to make sure that the colours were perfect and that it would also stay in place that way.” He went to New York to the photoshoot to slime Gaga into her dress.

Lady Gaga is also rumoured to have been asked to open an exhibition about her at the Groninger Museum, Groningen. Museum director Kees van Twist managed to get singer Bono of U2 to open the exhibition of work by Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn, so I bet he’s confident he can pull that trick off again.

(Link: ed.nl, Photo of Lady Gaga by TJ Sengel, some rights reserved.)

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‘Flemish cookbook is Greek to the Dutch’

Filed under: Food & Drink,Literature by Orangemaster @ 8:00 am

When I occasionally zap to Jeroen Meus’ cooking show on Belgian TV in the evening, I could play a drinking game and get very messed up by drinking every time he uses Flemish diminutives like ‘evenkes’ (a while) and ‘boske’ (small bunch). As a foreigner who learnt Dutch on the street and who has Flemish friends, I can understand him. So why is a food journalist claiming that the Dutch can’t make out what he’s saying? Because they favour their own words and can’t be bothered to do a little research.

The Dutch journalist said it would be best to translate Meus’ cookbook from Flemish into Dutch, which is a touchy subject. But once the journalist claimed that the cookbook was ‘as good as useless’, it got media attention. It’s a ‘hellish job’ to figure out what the Flemish words mean in the recipes. Really? And all those English/Australian/American variants on products and measurements the Dutch all know by heart? Get real and broaden your horizons already.

(Link: standaard.be, Photo: my easy to understand and make banana muffins, available in normal and vegan variants)

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July 6, 2011

Hustling yourself a job with Twitter

Filed under: General,IT by Orangemaster @ 9:45 am

My only memory of someone being creative to get a job is some guy in my hometown of Montréal who carved his CV in ice and made sure the employer he was trying to win over saw it– and it worked.

“This ‘Job Hustle’ film by Bas van der Poel and Daan van Dam speaks for itself. They wanted a job and got one at Boondoggle by using Twitter in an unorthodox way. It’s on target, inventive and effective. They used technology to get a message across, not just to show they are geeks.”

(Link: amsterdamadblog.com)

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July 4, 2011

Zone 5300, awards and subsidies

Filed under: Comics by Branko Collin @ 11:19 am

On May 1, 2009, the major Dutch state fund for the visual arts, BKVB, did something remarkable. They appointed a champion for comics. This champion, Gert Jan Pos, seemed well chosen, because he took a large bag of shiny golden coins, and has been roaming the land with it since, handing out money to whatever comics artists struck his fancy.

The summer edition of Zone 5300 introduces you to a couple of the recipients, either because they felt like it or because by now Pos has saturated the Dutch comics landscape.

Robert van der Raffe (illustration) received a ‘working budget’ from the fund for a 120 pager he is working on, though he has yet to find a publisher. Zone 5300 publishes a light autobiographical comic about the traumatic experience of being graded in art school, in which Raffe is the good guy and all the others are either losers or bad guys.

Jeroen Funke (illustration) won the Jan Hanlo Media Essay Award 2011, and his award winning story is in this issue. The award was given to the winner of a competition for essays in comics form about sensory perception. Funke has his regular heroes Victor and Vishnu discuss how growing up adds filters to our senses that prevent us from seeing (and feeling, smelling, tasting) what’s really there.

Peter Pontiac (illustration), an underground comics giant from the 1970s who went mainstream-ish with his autobiographical Kraut (about a father who worked for the wrong side during the war), received the Marten Toonder Award 2011 for his entire body of work. In this issue he fills the two pages of The Sketchbook Of, a recurring feature.

Awards? Awards?! Eindhoven Design Academy graduate Tim Enthoven (illustration) apparently needs no stinkin’ awards (yet; although he won one for his debut album Binnenskamers – Indoors – before it had been even published). Zone 5300 calls him the jeune premier of Dutch comics, and says of his work that it is “shifting boundaries”. For Zone he wrote and drew a story about his uncle Jos who has lost the ability to read after a traumatic experience. Since the uncle did not want the nephew to write that story, the nephew has hidden the text in the scenery.

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July 3, 2011

Amsterdam parking rates slashed

Filed under: Automobiles by Branko Collin @ 12:29 pm

Amsterdam is the most expensive city in the world to park in. The city’s policy of driving car owners away from the centre by making their stay too expensive seems to be so successful that now an operator of private car parks has started slashing its rates.

In a bid to lure customers away from the competition P1 Parking has lowered its daily rate from 55 euro to 20 euro. The only snag is that you have to make reservations at least two in days in advance.

Competitor Q-Park and others are studying their options. Bloodthirsty financial news site Z24 is already announcing a price war.

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July 2, 2011

Dutch parodies of famous album covers

Filed under: Music by Branko Collin @ 7:36 pm

As you may have read, after the Rutte government attacked “entarte Kunst” it is now promoting “Blut und Boden” music. Dutchnews reported yesterday that “MPs on Thursday evening voted in favour of a quota for Dutch language music on Radio 2, the public broadcaster which focuses on popular music. The motion, drawn up by Martin Bosma from the anti-Islam PVV, requires programmers to make sure 35% of the music played on Radio 2 between 07.00 and 19.00 hours was produced in the Netherlands.”

The folks at the Amazing Retecool blog have used their regular Photo Fuck Friday to try and imagine what famous record covers would look like if all music had to be in Dutch. Shown here are Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the Netherlands by Ohjajoh and Foreigner’s Double Passport by Gelul.

Meanwhile, Radio 2 have announced that they have no intention of adhering to any quotas, NRC reports. Two weeks ago minister Marja van Bijsterveldt announced that public broadcasters will have to take cuts of up to 127 million euro.

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July 1, 2011

British criminals big fans of Amsterdam

Filed under: General by Orangemaster @ 11:03 pm


First, British students who apparently were interested in studying in the Netherlands and now the media tells us of wanted British criminals enjoying the good life in our wee country, mainly Amsterdam because it kinda looks like back home.

“In the past three years, 83 British fugitives – 10 of them wanted for murder – have been arrested in the Netherlands. But the Dutch police are getting good at catching these people and sending them back to the UK. They don’t want them here.”

Well duh! Of course we don’t want criminals here per se, silly journalist. Amsterdam sports some Irish pubs, well known food and clothing chains, and an overwhelming amount of English (Dunglish), let alone good weed and whores. ‘Costa del Crime’ they call it. What’s next?

(Links: badnewsfromthenetherlands and uk.news.yahoo.com)

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