More picture here...

This afternoon, Black Francis (better known as Pixies leadsinger Frank Black) gave a 'precore' performance at the Zorgvlied graveyard in Amsterdam, a couple of hours before his show in Melkweg. At the tomb of Herman Brood, he played four songs, some of them from his new album "Bluefinger", that is a hommage to Brood. He also played the Pixies classic "Where Is My Mind". I heard about the performance an hour in advance via Twitter and rushed to Zorgvlied with Kari-Anne. I shot some pictures and filmed two songs. One of them is on YouTube now. On the picture below, you see Black and his friends looking for Herman's grave. They were late for their own show.

My lunch smiles at me. So does life! :)

Yes! Kari-Anne and I go to R.E.M.'s Westerpark concert.
Kari-Anne just bought the tickets via Ticketmaster.nl.
Here's their new single: Supernatural Superserious.

This is the view from my study.
I twisted the camera while taking the pictures (except the last one).
It gives an nice effect, doesn't it?

This Monday, Dutch comic artist Hanco Kolk assisted Spinvis at his Christmas Eve concert in Paradiso. Kolk, who once designed my avatar, did some live drawing on stage during the song 'Flamingo'. I attended the show and made some pictures...

On Christmas Eve, Harald and I visited a concert of Spinvis in Paradiso.
Special guests: Simon Vinkenoog and Hanco Kolk. See my photos...

Going to bed early today...

Tonight I went to see Patrick Watson in Melkweg. Highlight of his concert was he and his band playing "Man Under The Sea" without microphones in the middle of the audience. It was breathtakingly silent until he sked everybody to sing along. Brilliant!

However, I didn't feel well (too tired and a bad stomach), so I only saw half of the concert of the second band: Cold War Kids. They sounded very intense, but I was not in the mood to stay. I'm going to bed now, hoping to feel better tomorrow...

Great Nine Inch Nails cover by the man in black.
Johnny Cash died a half year after this recording.


Here's NIN own version (plus one with David Bowie).

"If I only ever make one movie, Control would have to be it", Anton Corbijn said earlier this year. Today I could see for myself what he meant, and I'm convinced: Control is a real Corbijnesque movie, completely in line with his photo shoots and music videos for bands like U2, Nirvana and Depeche Mode. I really got depressed by just looking at Sam Riley playing the tormented lead singer Ian Curtis.

The black and white scenes of the poor British city Macclesfield are very impressive, just like the isolated shots of Curtis walking along in his long coat. You cannot feel no pity for Curtis, who is obviously struggling with his life. He committed suicide at the age of 23, being a father and a husband. This movie is not a pleaser, just like Joy Division's music itself. Great music, great movie.

My brother Sander opened his architecture office in the NDSM Wharf and celebrated the opening today, as part of the Kunststad project. It was a nice opening, with very nice weather. A great change for me to take a closer look at the NDSM terrain. It is really great and booming - MTV and IDTV opened their offices here recently.



More photos on my Flickr page...

One year ago, the Wilhelminaplein (my office view) looked like above...
... but they  started building an apartment building that will block my view.

I received the manga comic Death Note (Desu Nōto) to review for Stripschrift. And now I read this:



Article via Stripforum. Also watch this news show on Belgian television (VTM).

I have no problem with beautiful women giving me free beer.
Yesterday they did at Heineken's Refreshing Motown Event
at the Westergasfabriek in Amsterdam, as part of PICNIC '07.
They danced on a table, wearing tiny dresses and motor helmets.
Heineken promoted its new way of music sponsoring.
But is this the way?

I'm sort of frenetically urging towards the end of the book I bought in Utah this holiday: Bob Woodward's Wired, about the dramatic career of John Belushi. The explosive actor (famous for being one of the Blues Brothers) was found dead of a drug overdose March 5, 1982, in a bungalow off Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. I'm at February 26, page 387, having one more hundred pages to go. It is a fascinating book, making you feel sorry for his hysterical way of living - but most of all for his wife Judy who can't get him off drugs. This book must be scarily familiar for anyone who ever lived with a drug addict.

I spend this Sunday at home, reading all kind of stuff.
My cats Mike and Mango enjoyed the nice warm sun.
Laura came along at 4:00 P.M. to get her bike.
After she left I watched a Moebius documentary.
Right now, I enjoy some postponed writing...

After sleeping off my jetlag, I finally succeeded in selecting some of my 965 pictures, uploading them to Flickr and compose this illustrated report. Let one thing be clear: glorycookie and I had a great holiday. Driving through the southwest of the USA is fascinating and thrilling. We experienced California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah and the cities of San Francisco, Las Vegas and Berkeley. Our main goal were the beautiful National Parks in the southwest, but the roads towards it and the towns where we spend the night were just as great. The holiday was a true adventure.



San Francisco was a very cosy megatown. We liked the changing heights.



Our road trip brought us to many national parks, like The Grand Canyon:

Holiday time is over. glorycookie and I arrived at Schiphol this morning.
Deadly tired due to the jetlag, so here's just a short photo blog. More soon!



Beware of the excessive food dishes! Above you see my thursday's dinner...



Update: Kari-Anne also published some nice pictures.