Repetitive music

Altough we seem to be having a private discussion with nanaimo :) showing how activity is at an all-time low, here is some stuff related to my latest cultural endeavours to amuse you in case you have some time off the celebrations!

Most of the things I've seen seem to be focused on repetitiveness - I sware it is a concidence. The first is the 1000-year-old Korean Court Rituals - it sounded more modern that I have ever imagined (a bit like Bartók, actually). Besides the funny instruments (like the back of a wooden tiger) and spectacular costumes, the whole thing was a rather nice surprise music-wise as well. Here is a really good description by a korean girl (unfortunately in French, but please check out the pics and video!) Although the sample has singing in it, which, in my opinion, makes it weird in a way, it gives a good idea about the style.

The second is a dance, also partly Asian-related, done with shaolin monks - it is inventive and very enjoyable, take a look youself: (and maybe watch the "rehearsal" videos, they are interesting, too).



And the third one ...is also a dance! With some performance (because of i, it will always mean "naked man pissing in a glass" to me but never mind :-D) . Here , it was a "poem" by Ligeti, on 100 metronomes. You can listen to here (if you are veryvery brave) but the funniest thing was, most people did not even realise that it was part of the play - they though it was a break and others needed to shush them after a while.... There was also dance, of course: for "Phases" the idea is that the two girls are dancing the same thing (just like the two pianos play the same tune) but because of some very minor difference , their dance/music will become de-phased. Hm. Another version here.

Question of the day: do you like repetitive things? I though I would hate them forever but I actually enjoy it more and more. Dementia? Old age?

Advent, winter depression and doing good

Hi,

It's me again...

We are well within the advent and religious or not, I think this time of the year is special for everyone: we are preparing for the big event of Christmas Eve.

This year I hate the commercial side of the holiday more than ever. I just heard that at the opening of the grand christmas sale at Wal-Mart (the not fair trade, not fair employer but cheap store-line) the door-opener person was killed by the pushing crowd. At 5am.

I started to be more conscius about what else to do with Christmas in mind. I am concentrating on home-made gifts, environmental friendly decorations and such, but today I found a very simple idea: do something good every day. Every day. Sounds more like christmas spirit to me.

It might be hard, don't you think? Even if it's not a big thing, and not necessarily done for strangers (ocassionally you can be good to your beloved ones too :)).

On the other hand, I can imagine that it might help to ease winter depression too.

Also, that would be a thing to aim for the next year, all year round. Can it be habit-forming? The coming New Years Eve I may have something to promis myself. Let's see how persistent I can be.

Ps. the question mark above was done by a snail at the beach of Tofino.

Happyhappy

Because one of our bloggers turned 30 today...

The one who started this blog (bless her name),

Who is ever so stylish (usually in a black turtleneck :),

Who is and expert of all movies and dance performances, let alone music,

Who had an article published just before the big 3-0,

Who is a good companion for laughter, talk, hike, shop or visit a theater, an evening of poem-reading or a stroll in the cemetery just as well:

Our beloved Lynx, have a Happy Birthday and enjoy the party at the real Castro bisztro!

Cheesy

Another food-related topic: do you like cheese? The stinky, mushy, but tasty ones?
I bet you do, you Francophones should.
Here is my favorite : Mont d'Or I just learned that it can be warmed and used as a single-cheese fondue in its own wooden box! Whoa, I wish...

What is your taste? The hard yellow ones? Brie? Blue? Or a good feta?
And the good old Palpusztai? (Hey Tarelle, have you had the luck to taste that Hungarian specialty?)

I found a quite good one recently (it's a challenge over here, believe me!), and realised it is made in Germany so you might have the chance to find it somewhere in Europe: it is called Limburger

So here is one more thing I might be able to share with you in spite of the distance.

Surprise

Not too big, but all the more pleasant:


PS1. hint: click on the image and enjoy

PS2. Always look on the bright side!

War movies

The first thing to say is that I don't like them, except of the funny ones like Kelly's heroes, Train de Vie or M.A.S.H. Basically because of the cruelty of the whole insane business. This does not hold me back to have some great cinematographic pleasure (mostly after being forced to watch them) associated to some of them, like The Bridge on the River Kwai, Apocalypse Now or Der Untergang, for that matter (thanks again, nana! :-P) and most recently, the last Kubrick missing from my viewing-list, a truly excellent one (followed by a Russian movie afterwards, that paraphrased it quite a lot but was very far in either estethics and moral statement). This post actually makes me realise I've seen quite a few, from Holocaust-themes (The Pianist, Sunshine) to I and II WW films...and extremely bad ones, too - inspite the fact that I try to avoid them. But there are so many!

Do you like war-movies? Any favourite? How about books? Is there anything beyond Saughterhouse Number Five and Catch 22?

Get up and dance!

...or jump. Two songs from the great-as-ever artist, one new



and an old



both in a much happier tune than his usual style...

And a bonus: a jumpy one from Noir Désir !
Hope you enjoy it! :-)

Messa di Requiem

I went to a Verdi concert last week (my Mum asked me when I told I was going: hey, not depressed enough already? ha ha-very funny). Actually, she was right, I was weeping quietly half the time - especially when the choir was singing. This is even more unusual when you consider I don't like choirs in general. But this music has such a force! Just listen.

And I was struggling with one, big thought (almost as if it was written with capital letters inside my head): that life is such a big f*ing deception! Everything you do or hope for amounts to something considerably inferior as you would have imagined! Now, this is not what I usually think, but I couldn't help it when I was listening to this concert. Has music ever made you have strange sensations and thoughts like this?

GIFT

My dear friends,

Thank you the wonderful time I had -we had - at home. I hope we can repeat this soon.

Here is a little gift for you, remembering the past and all the paths I chose not to walk along.

I am coming home

Before it's too late...

Calling all angels!

Are you gonna be there?

Enjoy

Beansoup as we like it

Soak the dry bean in water overnight. Discard the water, put the bean into a big dish with cold water.

Add smoked meat (sausage if you like it), salt, onion, garlic, bay leaf paprika and black peppercorn to taste. You may add celery and bell pepper as well. Let it simmer until bean is almost tender. Add cubed carrot, fennel, potato and cook it until all ingredients ara thoroughly tender.

Serve with fresh white bread and (imaginary) sour cream.

Enjoy!

Contest!

This one should be easy: try to find the button that deletes the whole blog from the face of the Earth ( or internet) ! The lucky winner will get a one-year subscription for virtualcastrobisztro! (the second best will get two year's) Just get your stop-watch and record the time in the commentbox. No cheating! :-)

Important note: DON'T push the button when you find it, just record the seconds/minutes/hours you needed (we would have a hard time explaining ourselves a second time...)

Renaissance!

Welcome back, dear bloggers! Thanks God were are ready to start again (it's more likely that it's thanks to Roger, alias "BloggerEmployee4" whom I contacted via a forum, so)

Thanks, Roger! (or any other anonymous BloggerEmployee)!

Riddle!

What is in common in the following places: Vienna, Tel Aviv, Kosice, Nizza, Haifa, Mumbai, San Jose, Spisska Nova Ves, Linz, London, Ulanbaator, Bratislava, Würzburg, Baltimore and Lodz? Ok, I'll tell you (or, as we say in Hungarian: the farmer is free!) So, our little blog had hits from all these places in the last 10 days or so.

Amazing isn't it? Well, to be fair it did not exactly become world-famous, but several people spent a few minutes on our page...You might wonder what for - well, "oy division" attracted quite a few internauts (all the ones from Israel) but we also had hits by the keywords "walking pine tree" and "sex in the sea" :-)

hehehe

Yesterday night on the way "home" we heard this in the radio - also in croatian :D even better.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIA7tfYfPZ8

10

no kidding!

This is the name of a movement (initiated from Vancouver).
Here is also an article about it.
I really would like to hear your opinions about this topic in general.

Sea, Sex and Sun

Yesterday in my garden: Sous le soleil, la chaleur torride de l'été.
I couldn't help sharing this instant of pure tenderness with you.
(Warning: some images may offend non-specialists of biology)

Book-crossing

I needed to do something to get rid of the huge Belgian flag from the opening screen - attracts too easily the eye of my colleagues :-) So I am going to talk about a clever littel idea that I got acquainted with about a year ago, in a restaurant. There were books in a corner with stickers on them, with identification number and some instructions. So, the idea is, you put a sticker on your book, register them online (to get an identification number) and then either let them lay somewhere or take them to "controlled crossing" zones, to have an exchange, for example.

Of course it is much more exciting to find a book, but there is a thrill in giving them away to strangers - it's a certain sense of goodwill and fun, of course. I currently only have one book travelling (there is a chance it will never re-surface again, but still: you can check it out - especially the journal entries at the bottom of the page :-) - the BCID-number is 111-5835661, type it in here) and there are couple of others at home waiting to be released! Maybe you can catch my books at some point? That would be fun :-) There is actually a chance: there are around 300 people registered for Slovenia, 700 for Hungary...and 3000 for Vancouver! Good hunting!

Vive la bière, une fois !

Bonne fête, hein, dis voir.

Ça est un beau drapeau de la Belgique, que le jour de la Fête nationale est arrivée, hein !

We should all celebrate with lynx: today is the Belgian national day! We should all celebrate, I say, because

• Belgium is a great country that has offered innumerable great beers to lynx for some time now
  
• We might not have a chance to celebrate it next year, when Belgium no longer exist, since amazingly idiotic politicians have sunk its political life to a clinical death, just because they want an electoral map that cuts out their own little constituency in such a way that they will be elected and not their competitor, and because they can't think that a nation is something more than ethno-linguistic cleanliness
  
• Someone has to see Belgium as something else than a country with deadly idiotic political problems
  
• She has to cope with it one more year.
  

Vive la Belgique ! Vive la bière !

(and don't forget to check comments on previous posts)

Alien invader

There is a new bug in town. What shall I do? Flee abroad from the invader? Face my destiny and go for a last picnic in Regent Park where I shall meet my doom?

Almost complete ...

Wise!! Wise! OK, so I think we should cut the competition and give the beer to tarelle. Not the whole bottle, but most.
It is redcurrent sirup, and the mystery of the wood will be solved by another picture ...

OK, different view ...

Strawberry is close. Something to lick is close. But lynx's version is still not complete.

I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK

i's last post- title reminds me of a video I wanted to share with you some time ago (I was singing it all the time for days and days...I wanted you to share my suffering...) - but at that time youtube was not working that well. Now it does, so have a nice day! Special dedication to nanaimo (oooh, those mighty rivers of British Columbia :-) )



"And I thought you were so rugged! "

And now something completelly different

Right after dreaming ...
What do you have for breakfast?
Do you have breakfast?
Sweet or salty things?
Rich or light?
Tea or coffee?

Now guys, describe in a few sentences what you see on the picture?

Oy division

We've just came back from Cracow with tarelle, where I was supposed to be attending a conference - we were rather attending the Festival of Jewish Culture instead :-) Quite a great thing to stay in Kazimierz (the jewish district, as you all know) but even more so with the festival just next door, literally.

Our favourites turned out to be a group of Klezmer musicians (Oy division) who came out of the synagogue at the end of their concert to make people dance on the street, luckily, just opposite our hotel-windows, so of course we went down and joined in. Afterwards we've seen them playing jam session in a club and their big-stage performance at the end of the festival...wow. So quick, go and check out their website to listen to their music - and don't forget to dance! :-)


small note to i: thanks for making us try the "gefillte fish"!

"Take your flanky and dangle"

This is a post just to cool down i :-p (OK, I have been phraseing it in my head but now it's on screen)

Sunday evening (when I am usually in a shitty mood due to the shadow of the upcoming week) we have picked a movie to watch with a very special method: based on the lenght! (It was already quite late and I was in a shitty mood, see above). The winner was an old Coen-film, called Miller's crossing, played in the alcohol-prohibition era of the States. I don't want to go into details, so let me just tell you that the plot is superb, the actors great, the dialogues breathtaking and the the whole film is just WOW. How movies should be: make you forget what's around. Important to mention the inventive (and partly invented) slang (see title) which makes (English) subtitles...er...useful.

Here is the opening scene, see if you like it:


if you do, I am sure tarelle will be able to find a solution if it's not in your local rental store :-)

Questions as an extra: do you like movies from the Coen-brothers? Which one is your favourite? Fargo? The Big Lebowski? No country for old men? (The darkest so far, as far as I am concerned). I hesitate between this one and O'Brother now...

hey,

c:/ finger lynx
Plan: summer? Even lynx is silent!!
Nobody has anything to say? Amazing. And hard to believe.
The blog will finish :((

Lavina indeed

I have this post in mind for days so I will publish even if it is too much from the same kind!

Lets collect favorite break-up songs too! And not the "why did you leave me, waaaa" ones but the "get the hell out of here" ones, see below

OK, Lynx started a lavina...

I try to recall what I did, I really changed my mind about publishing ... OK, so , here we go:

This is world famous man, with a song, which I don't have to translate.

And I proposed that everybody does at least one CD of his/her best of songs and also that everybody should find a love song which is not older than 1(3?) years and we will vote and the winner will get (first ) copy of each ones CD. And so, everybody will stay young, because we only lisetd old songs in the previous link. Which is a disgrase at our age :P
Something like this ... So?

Top 5 love songs of all times

I have just heard about (the apparently wonderful) Nick Cave concert in Pecsa and it brought me back memories of all kinds (e.g. my "Let Love In" CD residing with nanaimo for years and listening to songs at i's place on the bigbig stereo of her father...hmmm.)

Anyway, this song was played at the Budapest concert and for me it is one of the nicest love song ever - it is so simple and yet beautiful. Other songs on the list would include (of course!) "One" from U2 and at least one PJ Harvey (I cannot decide which one). How about you? Do you think "November Rain" could make it? What about all the Beatles songs?



The text is here.

our next real castro session will look like this

btw does anyone keep track of who won what?

Photo Detail Contest, 2nd edition - final part

Let me sum up:
It is a bird
It is bending down for something (eating, what do you think ?)
It has a white belly with black legs and back, but you couldn't see the wings yet
It yielded a bottle of pink champagne to i who guessed all that.

Now that you want to see the whole picture, let me just show you that :
And now is the time for another contest and for a second bottle of champagne : where was that picture taken and what kind of bird is it?

Photo Detail Contest, 2nd edition - part 1

Let me sum up:
It is something wild
It is not some bird's wing, but that is very close
It is not the corner of a mouth.

Additional hint : it is animal, but not human. A wider view now:


Think of your dry (pink?) champagne!

Lets celebrate together

Here is the idea:
We all prepare the cake below and eat it while imagening the rest of the people (especially i this time) to be around.

So, melt 200 gram butter and 200 gram bitter chocolate, stir in 200 gram sugar and 200 gram flour. Add 5 whole eggs, mix well. Pour it into a cake form and bake it for 45 minutes on 170 C. (or until the knife comes out clear).

This recipe might be familiar for some of you...

hb for i

Dear i!

It is your birthday, the happiest day of the year, you know...
Here is my virtual gift, enjoy...(the picture is mine, it was taken last December...)

Photo Detail Contest, 2nd edition

Dear VCBers,

No posts for a while, and I have my share of responsibility in it, so I won't blame anyone. But it is time to catch up, one way or another! So the way I thought would be best is not that of the samurai, but rather that of a new photo contest. And what's more, it will call for for discussions about our last destination with Lynx : Ireland!

Now, who will win the bottle of champagne at stake today?

Wazzehellizzat?
(hint: it is something wild)

Heraldic

What would be on your coat of arms? I am thinking about things like a library ticket and a piece of jigsaw flying above a golden barley-field or a cookie-cutter and a digital camera on the tips of the southern Alps...

Mine most certainly would display a cat, an angel with sword, a phoenix of course and somewhere in the background the Pluto...

How would our blog's coat of arms look like?

Bob Fosse

The last dance-post for a while, I promise. I just cannot resist to include my all-time favourite (I cannot imagine I did not start with him...)

So, this is very different from what I have showed you: this is musical theater! Nanaimo and Tarelle already had the chance to see my favourite "All that jazz" but I am sure that you have seen other coreographies from him, but did not know it was his (Chicago? Cabaret? Sweet Charity?) The bit that I am showing you is from this latter, where you can see all his genius: at first instant it does not even look like dancing... But it definitely is, and also what I find the sexiest dance ever. Just some subtle movements, or sometimes even the same pose, held for a minute: it takes a great dancer to do it right! The result is highly erotic, without any trace of being vulgar (see any chosen rap-video for the contrast).



This is said to be the direct precedent to this famous number in "Cabaret": I hope you like it!

Musical update and "Chanson de Satie"

A few weeks ago my favourite game has been taken away: that is our "music provider", also featuring the musical links to the right..."working on new tools that will implement the environment for artists and their producers" does not sound good to me. I am guessing that we can say goodbye to that lovely webpage (containing loads of Hungarian songs as it was a French-Hungarian invention.)

All what's left to us is this , a meager substitution but all that is available. You do not need a login, just the newest Flash version and a click on the text "all uploaded files" in the upper-right corner to get access to the (rather slow) alphabetical list. And then you can post stuff like this:

boomp3.com


The other thing I wanted to share with you is a song and a singer I have discovered recently (we have seen a small animation with this music at a short-film festival with tarelle) and I find it haunting. You can listen to it on a fellow blogspot page, on the top. Arthur H has a calming-deep voice and sings jazzy stuff. Also comes handy if you want to cut your veins. Enjoy!

En 89, les Parisiens ont pris la Bastille, en 68, ils ont pris la parole

As Nana asked me to, I will try to explain what happened in Paris in the spring of 1968. That is hard. "Mai 68" is a very strange event in France, especially in Paris, echoing the civil rights movement in the United States, but it was very different in spirit and origin for the Paris case. Pupils and students of Paris universities went on "strike" and revolted against the burden of social convention and against the mental paralysis of the French establishment. History says it sparked off when spring came, and on March 22nd pupils were fed up with seeing their female classmates sleeping in another building and being forbidden to visit them. Lots of other versions exist and that is where Robert Merle comes in the picture : he wrote a whole book about that day to depict the whole set of circumstances around those premices. The national archives of French TV and radio (INA) only last year made public the documents about that event, giving a whole new material to open perspectives on these origins and check hypotheses. But no one cares any more. The truth is people wanted some oxygen in their lives and souls, suffering from widespread authoritarism and wanting to dream about brighter future... and present. But the demands of protesters were unclear, and went in all direction, because there was no real structured thought or ideology to help formulate the claims in a intelligible vocabulary. It was not really a communist or a maoist revolution, it was clearly not about raising wages. It was just that when you were not conforming to the working, grey, silent and docile horizon society fixed to your life, you were considered like a shit, that when you thought something, you couldn't really discuss it, that fathers were always right, bosses always winning. If you are on Earth, it is for working hard and dying quietly (each time I see a movie, a documentary or whatever about how people behaved during that period, I a frightened, really. Sometimes, today Japanese society make me think about that a lot). That was more or less what the youth of that time was fed up with and claim to abolish.

A childish, essential, imprecise and very clear case.

The whole heart of Paris was under siege by students holding meetings in their universities theatre to debate about how to fight against a predominant state of mind, pianos were installed and played in the square of Sorbonne, cars piled up in the adjacent streets, flowers were painted on the walls and Molotov cocktails thrown to squads of military police charging indistinctly students and other inhabitants of the neighbourhood. Posters were printed by idealistic printers with mottos about the beauty of life and the cruelty of rules, while tyranny and intellectual terrorism were experienced among the dreamers' meetings by the organized revolutionary groups, who saw an opportunity in that insurrection and wanted to channel the revolt into their long-studied plans of revolution.

Then, workers went on strike, trade unions first followed the movement and then kind of took control of it. They formulated demands in terms of the good old-fashion class struggle (for the revolutionaries) or of wage and work-condition improvement (for the reformists), in terms of death to the system for the anarchists, death to bourgeois culture for the maoists, and death to the super-ego for the psychoanalysts, etc. The whole thing went on several weeks, with a real state of insurrection in Paris, and movements a bit everywhere in France. Bourgeois feared for their properties and for "order and security". Nations of the world feared for a Red revolution in Paris, settling soviets on the wrong side of the iron curtain. Le Général de Gaulle, then in charge, secretly took refuge in some place still unknown with certainty by historians, and disappeared completely a few days. He came back, repressed the whole thing, lovers of the orders marched on the Champs Elysées to show they wanted tradition and order back and the old system unchanged : no one knew where it cam from or where it could go, so reaction came high in the public opinion. The Général dissolved the Assembly and organized general elections within 30 days to allow a formal expression of that reaction, that resulted in an almost unprecedented victory of Gaullists (as you can expect). But just a year later, he organized a referendum about a minor constitutional subject, only to tell France that voting for that was voting for him. He lost and he quit. The whole society had changed because colours and discussions had flourished everywhere, and not any more exclusively about the question of whether the Marxist revolution was the next step of humanity, or whether hormones were the only ground for a will to change the society.

You can tell I am very biased when telling you all those things, and my knowledge of it is very small, filtered by the things I wanted to read and hear about it. It is a real unidentified object in social history, and everyone understands it differently. Sarkozy declared during the presidential campaign that he wanted to get rid of the 68 heritage, because the praise of laziness and the contestation of authority were the deep reasons for the long-term levels of unemployment and the problems of deficit in the State's budget. (sic!)

So you see : the fight is not over...

Not to leave the last word to this idiotic guy, let me tell you this best condensed description of what happened in may 68: In 1789, our fathers took Bastille, today we recover our speech: En mai, on a pris la parole comme on a pris la Bastille en 1789

Where? Who? Why not? Who cares?

As you see I found the cabel to download the photos and make the post I promised long time ago. The prize is a bottle of Dreher bak in Budapest or a complete Pizza dinner in Ljubljana if he/she comes :)

It's the rabbit

Happy easter for you all!

Puzzling addiction

This morning in the shower (you know, that daily magic moment you have when all becomes clear in your mind), I felt like an urge. To go and get a good puzzle, and dedicate my room's floor to these little pieces of cardboard for the days to come. And I realised perfectly well where it came from. These last few days in Lynx place, we finally began the puzzle we had bought in Amsterdam. It looks like this (I know it's all grey and every part looks alike, but it's only 1000 pieces):

If you like that picture, just go to this wonderful website. It took me ages to find on the web an image of a real sketch by Rembrandt (usually you only find reproductions of sketches made by Rembrandt admirers after his work). Let alone the amazing quality of that picture! (hint: this makes a fabulous wallpaper to my widescreen laptop, it has perfect proportions for that. Just select "Fit to screen" rather than "Fill screen" if you are on a Mac, and just grab a tissue and start crying of you are on a PC, and good luck with the "Tile" or "Stretch" options)

Anyway, I realized I was simply an ex-addict falling back again for his forgotten sin. When I was a boy, I could spend days and weeks (especially in holiday, but not only) doing and re-doing the same ten puzzles again and again. Little by little, I lost the habit. And now that I have tried it again, I just can't help feeling the urge of diving back in my old obsession.

Lynx, I promise I won't propose you to take a cigarette again, at the end of a party, now I think I know what an ex-addict feels. Or maybe you are stronger with tobacco than me with puzzles?

Offence of 'complicity in toking'

Seen in the toilets of a mythic train, the Flying Scotsman.

If you see someone smoking and fail to denounce them to the "Train Guard", you might be prosecuted.

Now my heart-broken thoughts got to the poor CCTV which must feel they are no much use any more, in a society of denunciation.

Stranger than fiction

This movie is not new. Not old either.
I love Emma Thompson, Dustin Hoffman as well and I kind of like Maggie Gyllenhaal. That's not the reason I suggest you to watch this movie.
Here is a trailer for it:

Please, if you feel like to see something refreshingly grotesk, try this one.

Insomnia - Take 1

Dear VCBisztroters,

Here is a big first-time for me : I just went out of bed at 4:30 in the morning with no urge to go back to my bedsheets and grab a little more sleep from this cruel world. I just feel like taking a good tea, and do a bit of my research which I didn't do much yesterday. Not that anyone is interested in my little adventures, but do you call that insomnia? It is very strange to me, though, as I usually rather can't go to bed, you know, unable to feel any need to go to bed, even 5 or 6 hours after having had dinner and having said goodbye and sleep well to the ones I love, on the phone or on the chat. Today is just the opposite, I woke up a bit at 4.30, like so many times before, but couldn't possibly close my eyes any more. Not that it was painful, really, but I just couldn't. So, what! let's get up!

I can see two possibilities to that o so very strange matter of fact. First, it is only one more weird twist of my researcher's sense of guilt. You know, that dreadful thing that is chasing us, even when we have worked all day: "How come your thesis is not finished yet?"

Another possibility is just... the opposite. I feel so good about my work, life, love, stomach (all four cardinal points of my life, in no particular order), that I don't have to flee under the blanket to forget about it in the arms of slumber.

Who knows which of the two it is? Whichever, it will be a good surprise to Lynx to find me awaken, maybe still working, when she gets up. Maybe I should put some silent alarm on, just before hers ring, so that I go back to bed alongside her, so that she won't be afraid to wake up without feeling me close at hand...

In any case, this strange new state of affairs has two unexpected sides (unexpected: to me). The good side is, I feel new splendid thrills: I drew the curtains open on the nightly lights of street lamps and I will see, little by little, the sun dawn's light growing. Something that I usually only observe when I am a/ completely drunk after a long, long night of partying b/ very, very tired and guilty to have spent the whole night doing nonsense online or watching too many episodes of, say, Dexter.

The dark side is... well, I can't remember. There won't be too much of a dark side, then. Well, I hope. Any light of a professional morning insomniac would be much appreciated here.

Morning-night-catly yours,
Tarelle

Alas, too late for the beer brew

Lynx and I missed the public beer brew organized each year by our favorite, family-owned traditional natural-(meaning-atmospheric)-yeast-only brewery, Cantillon. No regrets, it was a while ago, on March 1st. Next session on November 8th . Be there or be square!

But if you are really sad you missed the previous session, don't rush on your fridge and drink all you find there. Rather visit that forum (or do both, drink and visit)! Lynx, I am sure you will love it. Especially the section where beer lovers discuss their degustation experience. And the one with news and announcements (Revue de Presse).

Practical, huh?

Jiri Kylian

I know that my culture-related posts are not the most popular ones but I absolutely want to show this to you - to i because it is her nameday and she likes ballet as much as I do (we both have our "little ballerina" picture from the eighties, ha?) and to nanaimo because she commented a few days ago about having understand something of modern dance for the first time and I want to prove that good "new" dance is not mystical...and to tarelle because he have met the above-listed ladies at a modern dance performance in Trafo, or was I just dreaming that?

Anyway, this piece is a contemporary one but still, there is no need to understand it, it is just simply nice to look at. The dancers are just great (the company we have seen with beansoup: the Nederlands Dans Theater.) I hope you have ten minutes for it - don't be scared, it has nice music but that starts only after two minutes (a wonderful Mozart). It is good picture quality, even on fullscreen. (And if you like it you can have the second part -entirely consisting of duetts- type "Kylian petite mort in the youtube browser.)

i-day

As a gift for the world's best cookie-maker's nameday, here is a unique recepie for making donut! Enjoy.

Traveler IQ

Some mind-numbing stuff for you - I don't want to be the only one wasting precious time! (It is actually good fun, but beware: it is addictive.)

There will be blood

I swear I wanted to watch this movie even before Daniel Day-Lewis got the Oscar... and despite of the weird title (the Hungarian version is even worse, e.g. "Bleeding oil"). Therefore I refused to read any information related to it (I did not even know what era it is set) because the presence of my actor-idol was enough. Briefly put: it is worth watching, mainly because of his acting as the movie itself is sometimes a bit too slow. This should be enough so go and watch it (or for stay-home mums: you can rent it as well, you won't loose anything by not watching it on big screen.)

The main interest of the movie (for me) comes from the fact that you are never sure if you should like or hate Daniel - both feelings are justified. I cannot help but sympathise with him but I am sure tarelle will hate him to the bones. That's one of the big issues between us, by the way: my ability of finding excuses for almost everybody.  So, contest: how good are you for finding excuses for stupid/mean/boring/etc. people? I am too good a catholic, it seems, I can (almost) always at least feel sorry for that sort of people - sometimes even forgive them. Can you?  

Anniversary

Lynx is right, we didn't even celebrate that our blog is one year old already.
Here comes a music (sorry for the cartoon) what I heard in the real Castro, every and each time I went there. As if they were greeting me with it.

How should Király Sándor's quote be embroidered?

You feel more like nana using:
	cross stitch
	backstitch
	chain stitch
	stem stitch
	a good glass of wine
	a Swiss knife's corkscrew
pollcode.com free polls

If you don't understand, have a look at these:


If you still don't understand, go back there

contest

So, since Tarelle asked me to, I uploaded a picture into my profile.

Where was it taken, guess?
Clue: the city has something common with me.

Culture vulture

I am a bit sorry to push nanaimo's previous post (read it! quick! it's so nice!) a bit further down on the page...but I have some bits that I would like to share with you since a long time - especially because 50% of our active bloggers have no real option in the near future to immerge in the beauties of theater and I would like to show these to compensate them :-)

The first one dates back quite a long time - we've seen it on stage about a year ago with tarelle. When I have accidentally seen a advertisment that one of my favourite actress*will be on stage in London, I kept nagging tarrelle so efficiently that he managed to get two great seats for us on the side balcony, just next to the stage. (Thanks so much for that!) The play was Tennessee William's (whom I like very much) Glass menagerie and she is seen talking about it in this video (from min 35:00 approximately). Awesome.

The second is a very recent one, a Peter Handke play that we've seen last Friday. Very repetitive and catharsis-less stuff: loads of actors crossing the stage in various costumes and creating various situations: like if you would be sitting in a café of a busy town-square, looking out. Hm. For that much money we could have even had a decent dinner in that café :-) It was quite interesting, though.

The third one never happened, at least not for me: if I had looked at the available programmes more attentively, I could have seen my idol on stage, who was performing just next door to us: Pina Bausch, choreographer and founder of Tanztheater Wuppertal, (one of the best contemporary dance companies) actress of Fellini and dancer of Almodovar. Just to give you a taste here is "Le sacre du printemps" from Stravinski and a small extract of the big classic, Café Müller. These were the two that they've danced in London last week. Other parts of the latter piece can be found here. I hope you like it. (It's not evident...)

*nana, do you remember her in "All that jazz"? She also plays in Titus :-)

Present

I'm glad to see that Tarelle is back, and still in the Christmas spirit :).

Dear Tarelle, here is your very-very belated birthday present. This is one of the wisdoms I like the most and I had a hard time to learn myself. Sorry for the clumsy translation. For compensation, I added one more water-picture.

I hope you like it.

Sandor Marai: Herbarium

63., Of waiting for the things

To wait, with the patience of an angel and a saint, for the things – people, ideas, conditions – which belong to you, find you. Not to rush toward them, not to make a step, not to urge them with a word, with a move to come. Because certain people, ideas, conditions which belong to your life, personality, your physical and spiritual fate, are always on their way to you. Books. Men. Women. Friendships. Revelations, truths. All these are on their way toward you, flowing slowly, and one day you will have to meet. But you shall not flurry, or hurry their advancing. If you rush toward them, you might miss what is important and belongs to you. Wait, with all your might, carefully, with all your fate and life.

Some gifts for the kids!

Since we are (even more than usual) in the spirit of kid stuff, smiles and gifts, here is a small animated that you might like.

Et vive le Virtual Castro Bisztro!
Bises and with love,
Tarelle

And she is right.

Mea culpa, really nobody reads it. Even lynx not :)

Lynx thinks nobody even reads the blog.

How I haven't found this before?! Note CAREFULLY the places ...
And this for foreigners?

Birthday alert!

yes, yes: we have another baby to celebrate - he is slightly heavier than Péter and Konstantin put together, but he is merely 106times older! Tarelle is getting older on paper but he is still far from starting to suspect: because as Wilde says "The old believe everything; the middle aged suspect everything: the young know everything". So he knows for example that chocolate is GOOD for you, n'est-ce pas? :-) (here is some virtual chocolate for the big day...maybe there will be some real one along the way?)

So, all things nice and wonderful and happy to my Chéri!

(and another quote just as a post scirptum:"The secret to staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly and lie about your age" but this is only for women, age looks good on men, sooo not fair!)

BIG news!

So here he is: Péter has arrived on the 1st of February! (What a shame to put post it here with such a delay - nana, what have you been doing since? :-D)

Happinness and health and all good things to everybody involved!!!*

*and let me express my anxiousness over the fact that the percentage of male bloggers has risen abruptly in the past few months! Come on everybody! Spread the XX spirit! :-)

Barummbarumm

Are you familiar with this little cartoon-hero? I loved it as a child!

Click here and here...more on the website if you liked it.

Update!

Our favourite place has finally managed to get together a webpage: hip hip hourray! So I have exchanged this link for the old one under the "what's where" section, so any time you feel like browsing the menu, you can do so without searching for this post!

Happy find

Good news: I have just found the dvd that tarelle (so wisely, bless him) burned for me from our photos from autumn 2006 till this year's autumn. Many of these were believed lost (either by an unfortunate move of tarelle on his computer few months ago or by the sudden disappearance of late Bruno.) So rejoice! And here are some so that you can see what the world (and us) would have been deprived of...

The first one is my balcony, from last spring. It is better not to show you how it looks like now...quite desert, to be honest.


The second one is from our visit in Paris with i and Konstantin (he cannot be seen clearly as i is in front of him, taking a pic of a "floral wall" which is actually an advertisment.

The third is touristic: I let you guess what's on it :-)

Now what?

What will you do differently this year?
	Working more, having less fun
	Having more fun, working less
	Everything
	Nothing
	Leave me alone
pollcode.com free polls

2008

Here is my contribution to your happy new year. Some of you might remember last New Years Eve, celebrated happily together, having no clue what is gonna follow for many of us..Oh those innocent times...