underwater dance off

In between takes on the underwater realm we messed about a bit, as you might have noticed from a previous post. One of the cast, the ridiculously fit Patrick Bauristhene, is a professional dancer, so we did a bit of monkeying in front of our underwater cameramen. Turns out that the crew had done the same damn thing, so now we have a bit of a dance-off, a battle of sorts, on our hands.

THE GREAT UNDERWATER DANCE OFF. from Realm Pictures on Vimeo.

Good thing Pat was there, i look more like boiling spaghetti than like a dancer. Sam does a mean body pump, too

crazy creatures

Turns out that paradise makes its creatures quite bonkers. The wasps are twice as long



because of a champagne bottle in the middle



there are bugs with sticks as eyebrows



and some with carrots on their heads



the dragon flies wanna hump pegs



and the spiders have green asses with dots, white skull heads, and yellow legs with black furry pompoms



plus they're huge



and of course i'm gonna like orange butterflies, but this one took it to the next level: orange fur and even his eyes were orange



what's really crazy cute though, is the lizards. Not only do they hang at strange angles



they play peek-a-boo

black peter

There's a lot of things us Dutch can be proud of -Mondriaan, Vermeer, Cruijff, my dad, Rembrandt, interesting legal herbs, enormous skies- and some we're rightfully ashamed of (apartheid, Indonesia, 2Unlimited), and then there's some questionable stuff. I've had to explain the concept of 'Zwarte Piet' (Black Peter) more often than i care to, but pictures say a lot:



I don't know if it's racist or not. I'm inclined to think not -it's a holiday thing for the kids- but i've had black friends visiting and raising an eyebrow. It's a little close to golliwog. I hope it's more innocent than that



But sometimes it looks just plain wrong



It reminds me of a story my dad was fond of telling me. He had an African colleague at school, and when i first saw the man -i must've been around 4 years old- i went up to him and asked him: "You're Black Peter, aren't you?" He asked: "How can you tell?" I got shy and said: "By your curly hair."

lucifer

my eyebrow has spawned a devil


photo by George Miller

don't say i didn't warn you

being mooned by a 4x4

Thought i saw my second cute spider of the spring, one with 4 giant legs and 4 tiny ones



but then it mooned me

and followed that with a plié



which moved it beyond cute and into the category of the coolest animal this side of the Thames.

why did the chicken wear the pants?

It needed more plockets.

A couple of weeks ago, i thought i saw a chicken wearing baggy pants.

Now it was disgustingly early in the morning, plus i was tired from filling up and hauling boxes like you do when you move to another house, and it was only a passing glance as i was in a bus, so i figured it was more likely my brain had gone to sleep a bit again and i had a semi-waking dream, rather than having actually seen a chicken in pants. I texted a friend about it, saying that if i saw a giraffe with a tie, i'd take a day off.

But last week i had to move my bike to the new place, so i figured i might as well ride it there, and because the image had stuck with me, i decided to take the same route as the bus, on the off chance that i'd be able to check if i had been dreaming or not. What i saw was this:



Now it is very obvious Mother Nature has a healthy and bizarre sense of humor, but i'm kind of hoping this is one of man's creations, like the chihuahua. Or maybe it's the answer to why the chicken crossed the road: to get a pair of pants.