Archives for June 2006

Have I mentioned how fit everyone in the Netherlands looks? It’s eerie. Pretty much everyone age 40 and up has the body of a 25-year-old American. You really have to get pretty close to someone to have any idea how old they are. I guess that’s one of the advantages of using bicycles as your primary mode of transportation. Also, their diet is a lot healthier, and their portions are tiny.

One of the funniest (and saddest) things I’ve seen here are the ads for Big Americans pizza. The ads show hearty, brawny men tearing into their pizzas, while the announcer intones, “Tired of ham and cheese all the time? Want something oily and greasy? Are you ready to eat like an American? Then Big Americans pizza is just what you’ve been craving. Mmmmmm, so good.”

Well okay, I just made that last part up. I don’t speak Dutch, so I really have no idea what the announcer is intoning, but I’m pretty sure it’s something along those lines. The really sad thing is that a Big Americans pizza, which is four times the size of any other pizza I’ve seen here in the Netherlands, is what would be called in America a “small” pizza. I’m not kidding.

Okay, I have a confession. I did no research whatsoever for my previous entry in which I asserted that in the Netherlands they call a Quarter Pounder a “Royale with Cheese.” I just assumed that Pulp Fiction was giving it to me straight. But I just went into a McDonald’s, and you know what they called a Quarter Pounder? A “Quarter Pounder.” How disillusioning. Who would’ve ever guessed you could get a skewed view of reality from watching Pulp Fiction?

Update: Whoops, my bad. I double-checked the Pulp Fiction dialogue, and it turns out that they supposedly call a Quarter Pounder a “Royale with Cheese” in France. It’s the rest of the conversation that’s about the Netherlands. I misremembered. So I guess it’s still an open question whether or not they call a Quarter Pounder a “Royale with Cheese” in France. But you can absolutely take it to the bank that they don’t call it a “Royale with Cheese” in the Netherlands. Not a chance. Anyway, I apologize to Pulp Fiction for casting aspersions on its status as a reliable portrayal of reality.

If Quentin Tarantino remade Star Wars.

Like many people with an interest in stories of magic and adventure, I watched The Princess Bride so many times growing up that if I ever close my eyes I can still hear the dialogue echoing around in my brain. Everyone loves this movie. When I was on the fencing team back in college, I would always ask new recruits how they got interested in fencing, and they’d always shrug and say, “I don’t know,” and I’d say, “Come on, it was Princess Bride, right?” and they’d nod and say, “Yeah.” So it’s exciting to hear that there’s a new Special Edition DVD out that features brilliant commentary by my friend . Really looking forward to checking that out.

I just passed a little Dutch kid wearing a T-shirt that said, “The Next Brad Pitt.” I thought that was pretty funny. (Though just between us, I think he’s kidding himself.)

Yeah, in case you were unaware of this, American pop culture has a global reach. For example, a Dutch act called the Beatfreakz has been receiving a lot of airtime here. (Are they showing this in the U.S.? I have no idea.) See if you can spot the subtle creeping influence of American pop culture in their latest video.

Anyway, that T-shirt made me reflect that since coming to the Netherlands I have no idea what’s going on with Brad & Jen & Angelina. Or Nick & Jessica. Or Tom & Katie. Or Paris & whoever her best friend is this week. I can’t even begin to describe how ecstatically happy this makes me. Of course I have no interest whatsoever in the vapid tawdry lives of these people, but in the U.S. I can’t buy a frickin’ gallon of milk without getting an unsolicited update on them. It makes me feel violated. But at the local grocery store here in the Netherlands, the tabloids are mercifully quarantined in the corner. It’s bliss. Sometimes I wonder if they have any different celebrities that they dish on over here. Fortunately, I will never have to find out.

So to any American developers out there: You build a grocery store where it’s possible to shop while avoiding the tabloids and you’ve got yourself a customer. Are you listening?

So the other day I was walking in the woods and something popped into my head, and I thought, “Oh, it’s like a … like a … oh, what’s the word?” And I couldn’t think of the word. It was driving me nuts. I spent about 45 minutes trying to come up with the word, to no avail. Though I did manage to come up with five or six other words that I felt pretty sure were somehow related to the word I was trying to think of. (One of them was “chiaroscuro.”) I finally got home and googled the definition and got the word: palimpsest. Oh course! Palimpsest, how could I ever forget you?

I first started noticing this word a few years ago in some books I read. I didn’t know it, and was too lazy to go look it up, so I just started guessing based on context that it had something to do with light shining through or around something or maybe making shadows. I think this is because somehow “palimpsest” reminds me of the phrase “penumbras and emanations” from Supreme Court jurisprudence. This misimpression became so fixed in my mind that I still have to remind myself sometimes that this isn’t what the word means. (And hence the association with “chiaroscuro.”)

What it actually means is: “A manuscript, typically of papyrus or parchment, that has been written on more than once, with the earlier writing incompletely erased and often legible.” I remember the first time I looked it up my first thought was, “What a ridiculously pretentious word. Who would ever use that in a conversation? Give me a break.” (Okay, I guess actually my very first thought was, “Huh? There must be some mistake. I was sure it had something to do with light, etc.”) But I’ve subsequently been surprised at how often that word captures exactly what I’m trying to say. So then I can say, “Hey, it’s like a palimpsest!” and whoever I’m talking to can say, “What the #@%! is a palimpsest?” Which limits the word’s communicative value somewhat.

But it occurred to me that if I blogged about it, that would probably double the number of people I’m ever likely to run into who know what a palimpsest is. So next time I use it you’ll know what I’m talking about. Just don’t go spreading it around. It’ll be our little secret.

Or maybe you all knew it already and I’m just way behind the curve.

This cracked me up. This guy has set out to read the entire MLA list of the 100 best novels and write a capsule review of each one. He’s not a fan of The Ambassadors by Henry James. This was my favorite part of his review: “[I]n 1903 two chapters were reversed. It was a blatant error. The chapter that took place in the evening was followed by the one that took place in the morning. In the former chapter, a character referred to a conversation that hadn’t happened yet. A horrible error you think, right? Henry James fans would be complaining and yelling, right? Well, it remained unnoticed for FIFTY YEARS. You heard me; for half a century people were talking about and analyzing this book, forcing students to read it, and never noticed that two of the chapters were in the wrong order. The error was finally noticed by a Stanford Undergraduate, Robert Young, in 1950. Literary James scholars were anxious to get a quotation from this brilliant young man who had made such a significant discovery. What words of praise for James would their new hero give them for posterity? Let’s quote Robert Young: ‘There must be something radically wrong with a writing style that has managed to obscure an error of this magnitude for so many years from the probing eyes of innumerable readers, publishers, editors, critics, and even the author himself.'”

Recently, while consulting Wikipedia, the source of all human knowledge and wisdom, I randomly came across some interesting trivia.

Did you know that Shel Silverstein, the beloved children’s poet, lived at the Playboy Mansion? Neither did I.

Nor did I know this stuff about Vincent Van Gogh: “Legend has grown up about Van Gogh. One of the myths is that no one recognised his work. In fact it was praised in Le Mercure de France and he was called a genius. He was invited to participate in Les Vingt, an exhibition of avant-garde painters in Belgium and Monet said that his work was the best in the show. Toulouse-Lautrec challenged someone to a duel because they had insulted Van Gogh’s work. Another myth is that he cut off his ear, and although he did cut his ear, it was not the whole ear but part of it, at least the lobe and probably a little more with a diagonal cut. Van Gogh is sometimes thought of as the mad painter, but he could not paint during his disturbed episodes, only the time in between. Sometimes it is said that he did not sell any work, or only one painting in his lifetime (The Red Vineyard at Arles, 1888; Pushkin Museum, Moscow), but this is stretching the point, as he did receive some commissions, which are sales, and he also bartered work for meals etc, which is another form of sale.”

Also, anyone ever play Ultima 7? (Perhaps the greatest computer RPG of all time.) Back in my formative years, the maker of the Ultima series, Origin Systems, was locked in a death struggle with rival Electronic Arts. Origin was known for uncompromising quality and for creating games that were true works of art. Electronic Arts was known for creating games that were unplayable dreck, but the company had deep pockets and spent massive amounts of cash on marketing. The storyline for Ultima 7 concerns a sinister extradimensional entity called the Guardian who is able to influence events through the use of three giant artifacts — a cube, a sphere, and a tetrahedron — which the player must destroy in order to save the world. Until I read the Wikipedia article, I never made the connection between these artifacts and the Electronic Arts logo [dead link]. Ha! Good one! (Sadly, in the end Eletronic Arts bought out Origin, and the long-running Ultima series declined drastically in quality and quickly died.)

Ohboyohboyohboy. WORLD CUP ACTION STARTS TODAY!!! YEEAAGGHHH!!! RRAAAWWWRRRR!!! RRRRRR!!!!

Sure, you may be saying, “Dave, why all the excitement? Doesn’t this so-called football merely consist of ninety minutes of a bunch of grown men running around in the grass trying to kick a rubber ball into a net … and failing. Isn’t it true that any time it looks like someone might actually do something interesting he gets fouled or called offsides?” But that just shows what a stupid American you are. If you were here in Europe like me, you’d understand what it is that makes this game worth rioting over.

At the grocery store, every magazine has something World Cup-related on the cover (even, no joke, National Geographic). Here in the Netherlands, people display the color orange to show their national spirit. The streets are clogged with orange pennons, and, I shit you not, adult-size orange lion costumes are on sale everywhere. Sure, buy it for the World Cup, but wear it year round.

If you’re in the U.S. and want to get in on World Cup fever, I’d say that your best bet is probably to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and tune into ESPN 8 (“The Ocho”).

So about the Netherlands.

Before you get too excited, I’m not in Amsterdam. I’m staying on the campus of a scientifically-oriented college on the outskirts of the country. Cow pastures make up a substantial proportion of the grounds. There was also a week-long torrential downpour when I first arrived, which limited my adventuring significantly.

Anyway, about the Netherlands.

They eat chocolate sprinkles on their bread at breakfast. Brilliant.

They also eat ham and cheese. Lots of ham and cheese. Seriously, if you ever secretly fantasized about eating ham and cheese three meals a day, then man have I got a country for you.

They have really nice bike paths. The bike paths crisscross the whole country, and have their own traffic lights. More people ride bikes than drive cars. Everywhere you look you see 80-year-olds bicycling around.

They have intermission for movies. They literally stop playing the movie right in the middle and make you sit around for fifteen minutes. This is supposed to force you to buy more popcorn and soda. This can get pretty tedious, especially at a movie like X-Men 3 where you were already pretty bored.

Marijuana is sold legally here in Head Shops. Despite this, the students I talked to had trouble thinking of anyone who smokes it (which would not be the case among college students in the U.S.). It’s the same thing with alcohol. I think the drinking age here is like 16 for beer, and even that is barely enforced. The result is that alcohol just isn’t that exciting. Students here are aghast at stories I tell about going to college in America. They’re like, “You mean people drink and vomit, and then keep drinking and vomit again, and then pass out and have to be taken to the hospital to have their stomachs pumped?” That’s basically unheard of here. And I say, “Well, only on weekends. Mostly.”

The students wanted to know what Americans think of the Netherlands, and I had to break it to them that the answer is “They don’t,” and that 90% of Americans would no doubt accept this statement at face value: “I’m Dutch. That means I’m from Denmark. It’s a small country in Eastern Europe nestled between other small nations such as Holland, the Netherlands, and Scandanavia.” Despite stuff like this, the students told me, “People will think it’s cool that you’re American. They’ll think you’re rich.” To which I responded, “Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.” Well, actually I didn’t. But I thought about it.

Oh yeah, and they also call a Quarter Pounder a “Royale with cheese.” But you probably knew that.

I’ll be making my second appearance on Jim Freund’s Hour of the Wolf radio show on July 15th. (On WBAI 99.5 FM, a local New York station.) I’ll be chatting about my recent adventures and reading my new short story “Blood of Virgins.” I’ll try to post clips from the interview to my website. You can also listen to clips from my previous interview on my Media page.

I just got a subpoena to go testify against my mugger. The subpoena was sent to my old address, even though I paid the post office there to forward my mail. (I want my dollar back.) Fortunately, my roommate is still living at the same address, so he received it, otherwise I probably never would have seen it. I haven’t heard anything from the Court for four months, now they need me to appear on Tuesday to testify. I’m in the Netherlands. Needless to say, I probably won’t make it.