And here I am again.

Djeez, put Tom Boonen in your blog and suddenly you get comments... :p

Anyways, Kaderweekend is over and it was good. I enjoyed myself, I loved working with the other four (special thanks go to Bertje, who was really wonderful, and -even though he apparantly hates this being said- very adorable ;)). Included a picture of me as Spartacus (yes, I know I look like Tarzan, but it's the best I could do with what was available) and Ingrid, as herself. I'm not sure if it's me, or the flash of the camera, but I need a tan. Goddamn.

For some reason I'm still very busy, and that without having a job, it's amazing. I came home from the weekend to find a lot of rejection notices, but they didn't bother me too much since they were all jobs I wasn't hoping for too hard. I gave two activities the last two weeks, one being very much improvised and still surprisingly fun (at least, I thought it was fun), the other slightly less improvised, with Karolien, which went over rather well. In all the business I did manage to miss a meeting, but I can't say I'm too sorry about that :)

Coming up: 4 more activities and a whole lot more meetings, bring it on.

Me and Tim went to the KMSK yesterday. We got this little book with coupons and you can use those to visit all sort of museums for a much lower price. I'd been to the KMSK before, but the last time was 3 years ago.

I'm not even going to pretend I know a lot about art, I'm very much the shallow guy when it comes to that, my critisicm goes as far as "oeeeh pretty" and "yuk". I don't get modern and contemporary art AT ALL. Tim can see a bunch of spots on a canvas and explain how it is brilliant because of this and this technique and because it was so innovating. I don't know anything about techniques and I just like to look at something and understand what it is. That's probably why I really like the symbolic and allegoric paintings. Sure, they're not very original, sure they're not very innovating. But hey, they tell a story and stories are something I can get.

So, of all the paintings we've seen, these are my favourites:

Scaldis & Antverpia (http://www.wga.hu/art/j/janssens/scaldis.jpg)

This is a symbolic painting, which originally served a political purpose. Scaldis (the old dude on the left) is the personification of the river Schelde. Antverpia (semi-naked chick) is the maiden-personification of the city Antwerp. Scaldis hands her the Horn of Plenty. This basically states that the wealth of Antwerp depends on the Schelde. This painting was ordered by a city official to hang in the room where the negotiotions with the Netherlands would take place. These negotiations were intended to make them relinquish their hold of the Schelde, so Antwerp could make full use of it again.


Judith (http://83.243.20.58/Photos/00/00/05/90/ME0000059069_3.JPG)

I couldn't find an actual picture of the painting, but apparantly the artist made two of the same subject and the other one seems to be slightly more famous (possibly because here she ain't wearing all that much). Judith is a biblical figure who chopped off a guy's head, but feel free to look that up yourself if you're interested.


Madonna en Kind (http://gallery.euroweb.hu/art/f/fouquet/madonna.jpg)

I once actually had to make an assignment about a painting and this is the one I chose after walking through the museum. The picture I'm posting here isn't too good, as the colours of the actual painting are much, much brighter and that's what attracted me to it in the first place: the red and blue jump off the canvas and accentuate the whiteness of the Madonna. She is painted as an image of pure beauty (yes, this was hot, hot, hot back in 1480) and it is rumoured her face was modelled on the mistress of the man who ordered it. It's actually part of a diptiek, but the other part of it is radically different (it shows the man who ordered the painting and someone else, I forget who) and it's not at the KMSK).

Me and Tim also had a little movie night, we watched two great classics which I'd been dying to see. If I'd known they were just sitting in Antwerp's library I'd have gotten them a long time ago.

Citizen Kane, which was awesome all over, and It happened one night, which was funny and sweet and had the oh so very charismatic Mister Gable. I also got It's a wonderful Life and I might watch that tonight. Still no sign of What ever happened to Baby Jane? and I am beginning to despair ever finding that one. Woe is me...

And in closing: a very unfortunate headline, which makes the story seem very depraved, until you read it and just wonder "what idiot wrote that headline, and was he drunk or just wicked?".

http://www.tatteredcoat.com/images/wankdorf.gif