Theater

Gone With the Wind

Leave a Comment

gonewiththewindYesterday I started at Webcare. Spent the day watching various people work to get a feel for the systems and the work. Today I actually got to do work. Since I’d done it before it was very well doable. I mostly did the stuff I knew and picked up questions about other departments as I went along. I don’t know as much about them as my “home” department, but that’ll come with time. I’m excited, it’s gonna be fun.

After work today, I met up with Ingrid for a night out. I’d bought tickets to a musical theater piece based on Gone With the Wind a month or two ago on a whim. I asked Ingrid if she wanted to come along, and she did. We ate at Satéhuis (yum!) and then headed for the theater.

The stage was fairly sparsely set. A piano on the left, cotton bales along the back and sides, and a sort pyramid-like thing with a giant metal horse on it on the right side. Since the film is rather long (I never read the book) I was expecting them to whirlwind through parts and that they did. The main narrator of the story was Mammy. She spoke about Scarlett and told her life’s story, where the key parts where then played out. The story is familiar I assume, Scarlett (played by Anna Drijver) is in love with Ashley Wilkes except he gets engaged to Melanie. Scarlett sees Rhett Butler (played by Nasrdin Dchar) at the engagement party and is intrigued by him. After being turned down by both men, she accepts a marriage proposal from Melanie’s younger brother Charles and so the trouble starts. The play then takes us through Scarlett’s life where she is privileged to all hell but never manages to be truly happy and inevitably loses everything including the man of her dreams, Rhett.

I really enjoyed the piece. The mix between the scenes, the songs, the set was really good. Plus Mammy’s narration brought the poignant points of that time’s culture and friction (civil war, slavery, the Klan) to attention and reformed them to something still very valid in the current day and age. The actors played well, but the supporting actors had a tad more life in their performances than the main couple did. Their chemistry was okay, but it felt a bit too stiff at times. Even taking into account the period it takes place in. In the end, though, it was definitely a show worth seeing and I’m glad I went with that whim to get the tickets.

Everything is Awesome!

Leave a Comment

1896772_10151991815823155_1701450211_n1897667_10151991838918155_1913042448_nWe have a new kitchen cabinet! It is awesome and glorious! Nienke’s parents had it in their hallway, where it stood in the way for years. So they offered it to us since we were looking for a better cabinet. We went to pick it up Tuesday. So thanks to Nienke’s Parents for parting with it, and Dad for driving us there to pick it up. We ended up putting it against the side wall (left of where it is in the picture) because that fit better, and also allowed us to rearrange some other cabinetry. Bottom is for large(r) tools and random crap, top for plates. And on top of it…

Wednesday Gert and I went to the movies, double feature time 😀 We started with an early afternoon Vampire Academy, which is a very uneven movie. Disjointed story, jumpy cuts, and it doesn’t know whether it wants to be a high school dramedy or a supernatural vampire movie. I did like the girl playing Rose and the dude playing Dimitri, though. In between we walked around the city and ate at La Place before going back to see The Lego Movie. I had low expectations of it, but it was definitely awesome!

Thursday I got the day off, which gives me a glorious four day weekend! Played lots of Warcraft these last few days. Also stopped at Bruna yesterday and picked up some comics. Today I got fresh bread stuff from the bakery for breakfast, made a giant pan of soup, stopped at the Blokker and got a lantern for the window sill and read my comics 😀

Also ordered tickets to two shows that are coming up at the Stadschouwburg. On April 8 there’s a play/music theater version of Gone With the Wind which seemed interesting so I got two tickets for that, we’ll see who wants to go with 😀 On June 2, Daniel Lohues is performing so I got two tickets for that as well to go there with Mom.

Off to the Theater: C3

1 Comment

A few weeks ago Mom saw a review in the paper of a show by C3, called ‘Wil je in ons groepje?’ (Do you wanna be in our group). She mentioned it to me and indicated she’d like to see it. They were doing one show near here, and that was exactly on her birthday. So I asked her, for confirmation, if she wanted to go, and got us tickets.

Since I did have to work before hand, and the show didn’t start until 20:15, we decided to go out to eat as well. For ease, we decided upon the restaurant at the theater.

So, last night was the night. Mom picked me up at work, and we drove the short distance to the Oosterpoort theater. After parking we headed inside. We were a bit early for our reservation, but we could get seated early. After getting drinks served, the waiter discussed the menu with us. Because Cristina Branco was also performing at the Oosterpoort yesterday, they were having a Portuguese menu and were there any dietary things we needed. We both let him know that the starter, a fish soup, was not something we would like. Fortunately, the vegetarian option sounded great so we opted for that.

Shortly after, the starter was served, a truly delicious courgette soup with cheese and cream.  The main course was a skewer with chicken, beef and pork served with roasted veggies, skin-baked potato and salad (nom nom nom!). While we were eating, I decided to check our tickets to see which of the halls we had to be. That’s when I realised something. We were in the wrong theater…

Instead of the show being at the Oosterpoort, it was at the Stadschouwburg, the theater they’re connected with. We had a good laugh about it, what else can you do. I’d had the tickets for a few weeks already but never really bothered to read them properly, and we’d only seen mentions of Oosterpoort near the review so we totally missed it.

Fortunately our dessert (melon slices with orange flavoured ice cream and a vanilla pastry with cream) arrived shortly so that, combined with our arriving early to begin with, gave  us enough time to walk to the Stadschouwburg. We arrived there with about twenty minutes to spare. Had we been on time for dinner, we’d have been late for the show 😀

The show itself was quite good. C3  is a a cabaret/comedy group consisting of Mike Boddé, Onno Innemee and, this theater season, Jelka van Houten. They sang songs, some more comedic in nature, some more serious. It started off with Jelka singing a love song about New York. Not because New York is that great, but because the person she loves comes from New York. Onno sang a great comedic ‘cuntry’ song about being a cowboy. Halfway through the song it became clear through the lyrics that instead of being a real cowboy singing, it was a boy singing about playing cowboy and the patrons of the local cafe getting quite sick of his repeated Hyippi-ya-yays.

Mike played the piano throughout the evening (he is absolutely great at that) to accompany the songs. At some point Jelka sang a lovely song about not being able to sleep and begging Mr. Goldberg to help her. This led to Mike explaining to her the story behind it, and how it had led to this beautiful piece of music, the Goldberg Variations. In short: there was this count who had trouble sleeping so he went to Johann Sebastian Bach and asked him to compose him some music that he could have played by his court harpsichord (klavecimbel) player, Mr. Goldberg.

Mike then elaborated that the Goldberg Variations are basically the hardest thing to play for a pianist, and that he could not play it all. However, he knew the basic chord structure, so he could make his own Variations. Which he then did: Goldberg à la blues, Goldberg à la Mozart, Goldberg à la Chopin… It was very awesome.

He also dit a dramatic reading about a nice smelling man in a language built of archaic words, screwed around current words and screwed around translations of english words. The way in which he read this (as if he were preaching) and the speed with which he could speak all those out of the ordinary words is a total turn-on for me (I looooove words and language).

Too bad there’s no videos of this, or his Goldberg Variations online, even to just show a hint. Mike Boddé is brilliant with a piano and words.

There were also sketches. This was for me a much more mixed bag. I did not much care for most of them. I just found them unfunny and I had trouble finding the through line of the show and I do like me a through line. Random assortments of things without a discernible connection throw me off, especially when a show’s description makes me believe there is supposed to be a through line.

After the show, we quickly headed back to the car and went home for today was an early start. We had a great night.

 

July

Leave a Comment

Right, in July I bought a pool 😀 A 276×169 cm blow-up pool (with electric pump ’cause I’m not insane enough to blow it up myself or with a handpump).

Also, per July I got a regular contract at work (versus via a temp agency), so that’s a nice change.

I bought a new collage photo frame, ordered prints of a bunch of 2010 photos and used them to fill said frame, as well as the photo curtainy-thing I have on my loo door.

Picked the Sims 3 back up after almost two years. Brought on by Nienke and I building an imaginary mansion where we would live I decided to try and build it in the Sims. It’s 2/3 finished and looking pretty good. I’ve identified some problem areas so will probably rebuild in a while.

I Went out for pizza with Eva at Napoli. As per usual, the pizza was great, the seating rather cramped. We sat next to each other for most of the meal since there was no space to sit on the other side of the table. On itself not a problem, but it’s nice to be able to look at the person you’re talking to. After we had mostly finished our pizza the people on the table next to ours left, so I could switch places and we hung around for a while longer chatting eye-to-eye.

When we left, Eva suggested we go for ice cream, so went across the street to get a McFlurry at the McDonalds there. They still had their outside seating there, so we lounged on that while enjoying the icey-chocolatey-caramely goodness of McFlurry-with-mixed-in-candybar.

Talked some more about life, the universe and everything from small talk to future plans. When eventually the McD’s personnel started putting the tables and such back inside we stuck around until we were the only table left 😀

We then slowly made our way back to the train station, walking along the water and the pretty trees that look the best in evening light. Once back at the train station we were thirsty and hit the Burger King for a coke to finish in that last half hour before my train would leave. Some fifteen minutes later, mid-sentence, Eva spotted Mellien, so we called her over to wait for the train with us. After some more chatting, we parted ways: Eva returning home, and Mellien and I headed for the train to our respective homes.

On the 19th I went to the hair dresser. I walked in with the remnants of my Spike-blond hair, and came out with a purple mohawk.

The 24th saw me and Nienke go to a Derek Ogilvie show. Both of us have been wanting to for while now. We’re intrigued but sceptical, so going to a show gave us a chance to see beyond what he shows on camera. Fortunately, he’s quite like on TV during his shows. He’s quite hyper while he’s communicating, making jokes with the audience and such to bridge the moments where the spirits are talking to him and he has no message to give yet. There’s a very energetic and relaxed vibe coming from him. It’s obvious from watching him that he believes fully. I remain sceptic. I’d love to believe this is real, but there were just a tad too many things that can be attributed to cold reading techniques*. In the end, though, the five or so people that got a reading, I think it did help them. And I’d go again if he comes back to Groningen.

*I know it’s the primary cause of death, but it’s funny to notice how many spirits die of heart disease. And how many women have had miscarriages, even one the woman in question didn’t know about… And when he starts to call out the confirmation things it’s a lot of pains here, pains there. Most of these are pretty generic, back pain, pain in leg, stomach/bowelpain. The things he mentions, though, after he found the person the spirit wants to talk to… there’s really specific stuff in there.

Starbucks on Groningen Central Station is opening August 5th and they we’re doing a trial run last week to train the staff. You could go in and order whatever you wanted for free. I had a lovely White Mocha. I’ll be ordering from them more in the future (although not too often, that shit’s expensive).

I also got my first batch of GetGlue stickers. GetGlue is a website where you can check in to various things that you’re doing/watching/listening to/reading etc.. While mostly focused on Media, it also has topics so you can conceivably check in on anything.

By checking in, and liking things, you earn virtual stickers. Once you have enough stickers (minimum of 20), you can have them sent to you, via mail, for free. My first batch took about 5 or 6 weeks to arrive I think. So far I’m enjoying it a lot. I check in to what I actually watch (I check in to TV or movies mostly) and have that posted on Twitter and Facebook. And besides that I actively hunt stickers, checking into and liking things for the sake of getting a sticker, even if I’m not actually watching that at the moment. I think I’ve collected close to 300 stickers now. Too bad they only send 20 at a time, and you can only request a new batch once a month…