A late night Dutch television show once featured soap star Elizabeth Hubbard, aka Lucinda Walsh on As The World Turns (ATWT), talking about her role on the world’s longest running soap, scheduled to stop next month after 54 years.
Elizabeth Hubbard currently lives in the province of Friesland with – you guessed it – a Dutchman.
The last episode of ATWT has Lucinda ending up in Amsterdam, where she might end up buying a house in real life. She has a guest spot on Dutch soap ‘Goede Tijden, Slechte Tijden’ (‘Good Times, Bad Times’ – GSTS) for twee weeks, playing Sair Pointdexter, Irene Huygens’ mother from America.
Hubbard plans to learn Dutch (something everyone wants to hear) and keep busy with writing and the likes. ATWT is about one and half year’s behind, so that’s still a ways to go before it finally stops.
You can catch Hubbard using Dutch words and making jokes (in English with Dutch subtitles):
Filed under: Music,Shows by Orangemaster @ 12:04 pm
And he we go with yet another edition of ‘Zoek de Nederlander’ (’Find the Dutch person’), albeit a very entertaining one, with music and a happy ending. Sixteen-year-old Simeon Mulder who lives in Orlando, Florida made it to the next round of America’s Got Talent, which will be held in Las Vegas sometime this year.
He has the playfulness of a Glenn Gould trying to play like a young Mozart (maybe not the technical skills, it’s telly after all), the wardrobe qualities of actor Tom Hulce who played Mozart in the 1984 film ‘Amadeus’, some serious piano skills and some nice, dry Dutch humour.
Filed under: Music,Shows by Orangemaster @ 12:18 pm
Ah yes, the pseudo-tolerant cliché of the Netherlands rears its ugly head: all of a sudden, hip hop artist Snoop Dogg, head act for The Hague’s Parkpop festival on Sunday 27 June, is not welcome. His show at the Melkweg in Amsterdam the next day is sold out. I’ll bet he’ll say some nice words about the bureaucrats in The Hague at his show.
Parkpop, said to be Europe’s biggest free pop festival, will feature Nena, Nick Lowe and Juliette Lewis. The mayor of The Hague, the attorney general and the cops think that it is a good idea to cancel Snoop Dogg, “in order to preserve the free, open and friendly nature of Parkpop.” Say what?
And not giving an explanation makes us imagine the worst of reasons. Even political parties are wondering why Snoop is being banned. Fear has to be part of the excuse.
Here is a great television appearance by Snoop Dogg on an old episode of ‘Jensen’ (Dutch talk show). It’s mostly in English with Dutch subtitles.
Filed under: Music,Shows by Orangemaster @ 12:36 pm
Eurovision is the fast food of music. I don’t even understand how non-Europeans can get into this exclusive club, unless they pull strings like French Canadian Céline Dion did to sing and win for FranceSwitzerland in 1988 or lobby very hard like Israel did to be able to participate. Maybe that’s why I like this strain of gossip.
Although The Netherlands won the Junior Eurovision 2009 and apparently are able to put on a show non-Dutch people like in Dutch rather than English (or Dunglish), the adult version has been digging its own grave and may have hit China already.
Pierre Kartner (aka Vader Abraham) who is a international song writer and singer wrote this year’s song ‘Ik ben verliefd’ (Sha la lie) (I’m in love Sha la lie) and is being dumped on by the bucketful. The song sounds like it was written eons ago when the Dutch had no knowledge of the outside world, while the subject matter is the safest choice imaginable. The video above is a demo version and will be sung by many different artists.
To make criticizing him easier — and the detail has been corrected — Kartner wrote about the city of ‘Leningrad’, Russia which is now called St Petersburg. Kartner changed the problematic lyric and turned it into Moscow, which I’m sure was not politically motivated and tickles my Russian heritage.
The Netherlands hasn’t made the finals in five years going on six and their last win dates back to 1975, and before that 1969 when only a few countries ran the show. The Dutch often say they should just stop, but I say if Finnish heavy metal can win, the Dutch can surely get back into the saddle somehow.
So let’s go back even further, 1957, and listen to Teddy Scholten sing ‘Een beetje’ (A little bit) about being ‘a little bit’ in love, the Eurovision Song Contest winner of that year and ponder where did it go wrong. Teddy Scholten even sang a French version of the same song.
Gossip ‘journalist’ Henk van der Meyden and sex boss Theo Heuft have teamed up to produce a musical about the latter’s former brothel, Yab Yum.
Yab Yum, named after a Tantric position called ‘woman on top’ in the West, was the iconic brothel of the Netherlands until it was closed down last year by the city of Amsterdam using the dubious Bibob law, which allows local governments to refuse permits on the basis of rumours.
Speaking of which, it was rumoured that Yab Yum was the place where one brought business associates if deals needed to be closed.
Last week a team of 89 ‘builders’ broke the world record for toppling dominoes in one long chain reaction.
In total, 4.491.863 stones of the 4.8 million that were originally set up, fell over at the WTC Expo in Leeuwarden for this year’s Domino Day. Almost three million Dutch viewers watched the show live on television, which was a record for the annual programme.
Filed under: Music,Shows by Orangemaster @ 10:59 am
Ah yes, Dutch singer Dries Roelvink does it again, all while teaching everyone else the importance of backing up your work.
According to Dutch TV show RTL Boulevard, he went out to grab a bite with his assistant and realised he forgot his backing tapes. He went back to the bar where he performed and lo and behold, the tapes were gone (shock). However, he did leave his phone number on the tapes (aaah) and hopes to get them back before his next show (stress).
And since back ups are for mere mortals, Dries never made any. What’s today’s lesson, children? Always back up your work, no matter who you are.
UPDATE: Thanks to TV show RTL Boulevard, someone found the tapes and returned them. Dries, back that stuff up now.
A play set published in 1900 about the plight of Dutch fishermen, which was adapted for a modern context in Senegal, is returning to the Netherlands this month with Senegalese song and dance left intact, and with Marisa van Eyle as a Dutch narrator.
Op Hoop van Zegen (The Good Hope) is a play by Herman Heijermans about the eponymous fishing ship, its owner Bos and the brothers Geert and Barend, who know the ship is not seaworthy, but still sign on as sailors. The brothers then die when the ship sinks during its last voyage. The line “de vis wordt duur betaald” (the fish is dearly paid for), with which Kniertje, the mother of Geert and Barend greets the news of the death of her two sons, has become a saying in Dutch.
The Senegalese version, called Dieuna Diaffe in the Wolof language (Expensive Fish) and with Senegalese star Marie Madeleine Diallo as Kniertje / Yaye Cathy, was performed in 2007 and 2008 in the coastal cities of Senegal. It was adapted by sociologist Maaike Cotterink and directors Anna Rottier and Pape Samba Sow.
According to Cotterink in Trouw (Dutch): “These days, Senegalese fishermen are hired to work three months in a row on Korean and Spanish boats. Far from the coast they are put to work under horrendous conditions for 16 hours a day. Each year fishermen die, but they have little choice, as they have to support their families.”
The play will be performed this weekend in Amsterdam as part of the Fringe Festival, and next week in The Hague.
If you are unfamiliar with Heijermans, Archive.org has an English adaption of one of his other plays, The Ghetto.
Filed under: Music,Shows by Orangemaster @ 10:23 am
On 14 July, world-famous violinist and orchestra leader will be presented with a postage stamp booklet featuring him with his violin, walking the dog (!) and what not on the main square of Maastricht, Het Vrijthof. On this very square, he will be performing an open air concert for the fifth year in a row, although this time it will be the 30-year anniversary of his frilly-dress, pastel-clad Johann Strauss orchestra. And yes, he’s from Maastricht, Limburg and speaks Dutch with that special softness that my main co-blogger does.
Although André Rieu is unquestionably the Waltz King in the eyes of the common man, he grates the nerves of many a native for his obvious kitsch factor, campy music and his perfectionistic ways. He annoys classical musicians, saying that they are jealous of his success, has been seen on Dutch reality television yelling at his employees for not being fully committed, and has been known to keep the tighest of reigns on this business, considering his immediate family runs it. The latter seems to make perfect sense to me.
Either way, the man is a huge Dutch star and probably deserves a stamp or two. If my grandmother were Dutch and still alive, she would have called his music “beautiful music” and been bang on.
Filed under: Food,Shows by Branko Collin @ 9:17 am
Najib Amhali is the country’s funniest ‘stand-up’ comedian, followed by Herman Finkers, according to a poll held by Intomart for Comedy Central. The two comedians switched positions in the Netherlands Humoronderzoek 2009, with Finkers leading last year, writes NOS Headlines (Dutch). Hyperactive comedian Jochem Myjer came in third, and fourth André van Duijn, who is the most famous Dutch comedian with a 98% recognition score.
What I call stand-up here is for lack of a better English word. Although stand-up comedy Anglo-Saxon style is performed in the Netherlands, the most popular theatrical form of comedy and the one performed by Amhali, Finkers and so on is called cabaret or kleinkunst, which typically means one, two or a small group of persons on a large stage telling jokes, complemented with songs and serious moments, all the while sticking to a story line.
The funniest TV show was held to be De Llama’s, which is funny indeed because the show stopped last year.
The Dutch appreciate family friendly jokes the best. Jokes about minorities or jokes that are insulting are held in the least regard. According to the report that Intomart will release in about a week, people also indicated they feel humour to be more important than sex, good food, or economic security. Only health and family are considered to be more important.
The following is Jochem Myjer showing that he’s quite capable of impersonating eight different people in two minutes:
Gossip ‘journalist’ Henk van der Meyden and sex boss Theo Heuft have teamed up to produce a musical about the latter’s former brothel, Yab Yum. 
A play 
Najib Amhali is the country’s funniest ‘stand-up’ comedian, followed by Herman Finkers, according to a poll held by Intomart for Comedy Central. The two comedians switched positions in the Netherlands Humoronderzoek 2009, with Finkers leading last year, 