3.22.2009

i was in a store called kwantum yesterday. marleen and i were looking at a carpet. while we were in the store a song with the lyrics "i want to make love - in this club" came on the the sound system. first i laughed. i thought it was funny that the music in the home goods store was talking about making love in the club. then i wondered if in the club was referring to something other than my assumption that it meant in a dance club. maybe young r&b dudes refer to their bedrooms or the kitchen as the club these days. then i wondered, "who the hell is this, and why does he have a career?" i wanted to know who the "artist" was and who was listening to him. i whipped out my handy iphone computing device, and i googled "make love in this club" and it turns out that shit tons of people listen to him. the song is by usher (featuring little jeezy), and while i am not intimately familiar with their work i can tell you that i have heard enough. i seem to recall seeing usher on a daytime talk show when i was in high school making him roughly my age, maybe a little younger, and i have come to the conclusion that he sucks meaningfully and deeply. i got a little angry that he gets to make gobs of money singing ridiculous tacky songs with a sidekick named jeezy. i know i sound like the crotchety old man saying "damn kids and their crazy music!!!" it's not like that. i don't think the music is crazy at all. i truly believe that the music he puts out is of low quality. the music is overproduced to mask the fact that its quality is so low, and for some reason the demographic that he is selling to is too uninformed to listen to something better. i find it difficult to imagine that in this age of the ubiquitous internet that anyone in his target demographic is uninformed, but that can be the only explanation for this crazy train of pain i will call the rise of the house of usher. it is truly mystifying to me.
as we were leaving the store i was bitching about usher's crappiness to marleen, and she pointed out that ushers is attractive and that he's a really good dancer. that is more than i can say for almost all of his female counterparts in the world of music directed at the top 40 youth of america. most of them can't sing, dance or make a sandwich, but they look good in underwear. at least he can dance as well as being a fine specimen of man.

that is all for now,
jim

p.s. usher, i may be mistaken, but i believe that if you are doing it in a club it is not called making love. it's fucking.

3.19.2009

hello. i am still here.
i've been busy keeping it real. later today i'm going to get some spark plugs and pick up some film from het beeldgebouw. i may also go to the store to buy some cereal. i've been eating albert hein fruit and flakes lately. fruit and flakes is a copy of kellogg's fruit 'n fibre. after that i'll take some pictures.
i will be going to an art exhibition opening this evening. it is a painting exhibition of a pair of dutchlings who are known as villeroy and boch. they are acquaintances of mine whom i enjoy talking to whenever i see them. if you are in or near rotterdam, you should totally check out their show >>> http://www.cbk.rotterdam.nl/tentrotterdam/mooij-nl.htm

i will post more in the near future.

best wishes,
jim

p.s. if you live in my neighborhood, and you leave your cat outside all the time, please let him in occasionally. he keeps marleen awake when she should be sleeping, and he wants to hang out with you. also, you should want to hang out with him. he doesn't like being on the terrrace. seriously.

3.02.2009


Registered
Originally uploaded by jimturbert
This is a picture of my recently registered in the Netherlands motorcycle. It is a 1978 Triumph Bonneville, and it is beautiful. I find it difficult to refer to the bike as mine. Often I call it "the Triumph" or I find some other way of deferring my possession of the bike, but it is actually mine. The former (and original) owner of this bike was my uncle, whom I called Buddy. Others may have known him as Tom. He passed away just over a year ago, and he would have been 61 on February 19. I always coveted this motorcycle even though I didn't know how to ride it. First of all, it was brown, and I haven't seen too many brown motorcycles. Also, i thought the paint job was really nice. I used to wonder why he chose to ride his other motorcycle more often despite putting so much time and effort into keeping this one. Now that the bike is mine, I fully understand. I got stranded on the side of the road the other day. I had to push the damned thing 10 miles through the Dutch countryside, and it started raining on me. I'm not giving up. I am committed to making this bike an everyday rider. I am just a few small steps away from total reliability which is something that this bike has not experienced since (i'm guessing) the early eighties. I've put in a bunch of money, and I made some sound modifications. Summer is going to be glorious.
I'll keep you posted.

Best,
Jim