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I just watched the film iHostage on Netflix that takes place in Amsterdam. How accurate is this film to the “true story.” In the first scene the police are pissed off at “annoying people” that are complaining about pickpockets in the city.
Moving up to Plzen today, one of the most famous cities for beer in the world.
I’m going to do a tour of the Pilsner brewery there, and of course drink some good local beer! Plus I think there are a few interesting things to see in the city.
Hope everyone is enjoying their Twixtmas…
Yesterday evening, returning via reception at the place I’m staying in,I happened to come across 2 Spanish women who had just arrived, discussing with the owner.
It turns out they had booked a room on booking com, but by mistake they booked it for 2026! The pension is very small and had no room available so the owner was trying to find them another place to stay…of course they had booked non-refundable too, and the last minute prices were very high.
On the bright side,at least they have a room booked and paid for already if they want to come back next December…
Visiting family in Hungary. Driving through Burgenland seeing little bit of snowy landscapes and Schneeberg in the distance is nice. Stopped for a short snowball fight, worth it.
Out of the blue I started thinking about Lili Boulanger’s music yesterday. I hadn’t listened to it in years. Does anybody know her? She lived and worked in the early 20th century and died early in her mid-20s. Bit of a trailblazer for women composing music, it was really rare for them to get such an opportunity back then. Only came more common a lot later. Her work is really wonderful, and there isn’t that much of it since she died so young, so you can listen to it all in a day if you really wanted to.
The one that I started to think about was [Vieille prière bouddhique](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvvlnnm5vxc). It, and also her Pie Jesu, somehow remind me of Claude Vivier whose music I also love, but who lived a lot later than Lili Boulanger.
I also went on a spree of watching Fergie music videos on youtube late at night. In the music video for Glamorous there is a short scene in a private jet, and I never noticed but the captain, who has like 5 seconds of screen time, is played by Freddy Rodriguez. He was one of the main characters in Six Feet Under, which had just finished after five seasons in 2005, a year before Glamorous was released in 2006.
How does that even happen? I get you see actors have small roles in music videos and whatever before their big break, but he was a major character in a huge HBO TV show right before. Maybe he was just a huge Fergie fan and wanted to be there.
What a bop though. Glamorous must be one of the best pop songs from the 00s. The Fergie spree made me think though, I wonder when eyebrow piercings are coming back? I gotta say, I’m not a huge fan. Wasn’t a fan in period, still not a fan. I think a lot of piercings are cute, ears of course, belly button, nipples, septum, they can be really fun and sexy. But an eyebrow piercing always looked the weirdest to me out of the most common ones you see.
I watched someone make pho on tv and looked up a recipe. I think I will actually pass this one. It takes like four days to finish. I do love it though.
I finished another Stephen King as Richard Bachmann book called The Long Walk. It was a bit weird in the beginning since I found myself hard to suspend disbelief over the premise. So, in a dystopian and authoritarian America, one hundred teen boys join a walk where they have to be walking at a certain speed the whole time. The last one standing gets all their wishes granted, but the ones who can’t complete get shot. They boys do volunteer themselves and there’s quite a rigorous selection procedure. The book takes place during the walk and is told from the point of view of one of the teens. They form friendships, opposite factions, see other contestants get murdered and although you kind of know that the POV character will win it’s not really about it and in the end there’s not really a winner. The whole thing is more a parable than anything else (though it made me wonder if anyone would join it if it was real) and when read that way, it was a really cool book. King knows how to write troubled teenagers from a certain social class, and even his earliest books show that.
There are a few of these survival game books/shows around but I have the feeling that the more Western ones are “government against people” while the Eastern ones like Battle Royale is peers against peers. I don’t know if that means something.