Indiana Jones and the Marathon of Kickassery

When it was determined that Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull would be opening during our time here in Amsterdam it did not take long until it was suggested that a marathon of the first three films be held prior to viewing the new one. I probably do not need to tell you that it I was I who suggested it (see: previous marathons of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (twice), the original Star Wars trilogy (also twice), Stanley Kubrick films and Martin Scorsese films). At least, I assume it was me who suggested it. I don’t really remember the specifics of the origin of the idea. Sorry if I’m stealing somebody’s credit.

In the weeks leading up to the new film, I went through a range of emotions about it. To me, the trailers did not inspire a whole lot of confidence. Though I thought the casting of Cate Blanchett was inspired and I was happy to see Karen Allen back as Marion Ravenwood, I couldn’t help but be pessimistic about Shia LaBeouf’s role in the film. Plus, what was up with all the CGI in the trailer?! Indiana Jones isn’t about CGI, it’s about fantastically corny practical effects, like time-lapsed photography of Toht’s gelatin head melting under concentrated heat. I thought some of Indy’s one-liner’s were pretty good (“You’re a… teacher?” “Part time.”) but I was worried the film would be filled with these mawkish lines.

As the release came closer, early reviews began to pop up online. The first couple I read were fan reviews submitted to Ain’t It Cool News, both of which were generally negative. Mostly they just seemed disappointed at the missed opportunity of the film. Then I read something that truly terrified me. Apparently George Lucas has plans for a fifth film, a film that would star Shia LaBeouf and relegate Indy to the Sean Connery role in The Last Crusade. This seemed like a bad idea on so many levels to me that I became uniformly pessimistic about the prospects of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Over the last ten years Lucas has lost almost all the goodwill that the original Star Wars trilogy earned him, and it appeared more and more that he was going to bring the same level of hackery to Indiana Jones.

Then Harry gave the film a glowing review. The thing about Harry is, though, that you can’t trust a damn thing he says. The guy is just too punch-drunk in love with film to offer any sort of objective analysis. I can’t tell you how many times he’s written an exclamatory review of a film which served to raise my expectations to an impossible level, only to have them crushed on opening night disappointment (see: 300). So now I read Harry’s reviews with the eyes of an interested observer, unswayed one way or the other by his thoughts. Moriarty reviewed the film a few hours later. His thoughts were more tempered, more even, but still positive. Mostly I think he was just relieved, relieved that Lucas didn’t kill the franchise the way he did Star Wars.

Then I read Ebert’s review and suddenly I was hopeful again. It helped that his post was titled “I admit it: I loved ‘Indy.’” But even more so, before he even got into his thoughts on the film, he put my mind at ease. He began

At noon Sunday, I attended a press screening of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.” I returned to my laptop, wrote my review and sent it off, convinced I would be in a minority. I loved it, but then I’m also the guy who loved “Beowulf,” and look at the grief that got me … Why did I think I would be in a minority? Because of what David Poland at Movie City News poetically described as “one idiot.” As everybody knows, an exhibitor attended a closed-door screening last week, and filed a review with the Ain’t It Cool News website. This single wrong-headed, anonymous review was the peg on which The New York Times based a breathless story on a negative early reaction to the film. That story inspired widespread coverage: Were Spielberg and Lucas making a mistake … ?

First of all, Ebert confirmed something that I’ve known for a longtime: the majority of people who write to and read AICN are idiots. Their reviews are generally unreliable, but since they’re second to none in getting the inside scoop on films in production, I continue to read it. But it was a line later on in the review that really sold me.

Spielberg at heart will always be that kid who sneaked onto the back lot at Universal and talked himself into a job. He’s the kind of man who remains in many ways a boy. He likes neat stuff. He thinks it would be fun to have Indiana and friends plunge over three waterfalls, not one.

It was this quote more than anything up to this point that put me in the right frame of mind to enjoy the movie. I tried not to get too excited. I’d been burned before. But I slowly returned to the state of cautious optimism that I was able to maintain before the trailers and first reviews hit. I began to think “I might actually enjoy this.”

The marathon began at 1pm on Friday afternoon. The plan was to head out to the theater for an evening screening of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull after finishing the original trilogy. Only the dedicated few decided to turn up for the marathon: Christy, Alex, Bri and myself. Prepared with plenty of junk food, the blinds drawn and the lights dimmed, we soon commenced.

As Raiders of the Lost Ark started, I tried to think back to when I had last watched the films. I knew that I had received the DVD box set for Christmas the year it came out, and had watched the films shortly thereafter, but I couldn’t remember exactly when that was. I decided it was late high school, senior year probably, and that I hadn’t watched the films since that winter. I soon realized that I had forgotten just how silly and absurd the films truly are. I’m not even talking about the Wrath of God melting Belloq and the Nazis in Raiders or Mola Ram ripping a man’s beating heart out of his chest in the Temple of Doom. No, I’m talking about Indy, Willie and Short Round jumping out of a plane in an inflatable raft, sliding down a snowy mountain side in the raft, then soaring off an impossibly high cliff into the white water below. Well, that and Sean Connery destroying a Nazi war plane with a flock of seagulls. I think it was important that I was reminded of the preposterousness of the first films, because while the one thing that I carried from the films when I was younger was their sense of fun, I had forgotten where exactly this fun came from.

One of the things that I think the first three Indiana Jones films do so well is that they immediately grab your attention. In television, this would be called a cold open, the scene before the opening credits that doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the episode, but serves to set the tone and mood. In The Office, it’s Jim dressing as and imitating Dwight. In Raiders, it’s Indy stealing the idol from the Hovitos’ temple. It gets the blood pumping, it gets you excited, it draws you in to the rest of the film. That’s why fifteen minutes into Kingdom of the Crystal Skull I found myself worried and disappointed that I still wasn’t fully engaged with the story. The first and most obvious problem is that we don’t see Indy at all until ten minutes of so into the film. Instead, we get an utterly useless sequence where a bunch of teenagers try and get a military convoy to race them. It doesn’t have anything to do with anything and I could see George Lucas’ fingerprints all over it. Then the convoy pulls up to a military base where they are told they can’t enter because of weapons testing. Even after the commanding officer gets out of his car, the man at the gate refuses to let them through. So the officers in the convoy shoot the guy guarding the gate and break in. By this point, it’s clear that convoy is comprised of Commies, probably KGB agents, but that doesn’t explain why the guy at the gate recognized one of them as his superior. Was the commander a U.S. Officer who switched allegiances? If so, why did he speak in a Russian accent? It didn’t make any sense to me and the fact that I was carrying this debate out in my mind was a testament to how much the opening of the film doesn’t work.

Finally Indy is introduced as he’s thrown out of the trunk from one of the cars in the convoy, which has stopped in front of a large warehouse on the base. He still has the swagger, but something seems off. The Russians, led by Agent Irina Spalko (Blanchett), have apparently kidnapped Indy so he can lead them to a certain crate stored in the warehouse. The first thing that bothered me about this scene as that Indy capitulates way too easily to their demands, leading them to the crate in question with gusto. The Indy of old would never have helped out the Nazis on any task, no matter how trivial, and I found myself wondering at numerous points throughout the film why he continually helped Spalko as much as he did. Younger Indy would have suffered torture before helping the enemy, Old Indy seems to just need a little convincing before agreeing to help out. Ignoring the fact that Spalko’s entire reason for securing the crate doesn’t make any sense beyond acting as a simple plot device, the scene gets even worse after Indy’s improbably escape on a rocket sled, and reaches its nadir when he survives a nuclear blast by hiding in a lead-lined refrigerator. Why I can accept Indy’s skydiving adventure with Willie and Short Round as plausible but not his survival of an atomic blast in a kitchen appliance I don’t know, but the scene simply does not work. Naturally, this scene received the only applause and cheers of the night.

I couldn’t figure out why a scene of Indy being interrogated by an FBI agent bugged me until I realized that the FBI agent was played by the Janitor from Scrubs, at which point I just became annoyed. Needless to say, twenty minutes into the film I was pretty bummed that my reactions so far were more AICN idiot than Roger Ebert. But then something unexpected happened: Shia LaBeouf entered the film and suddenly all the energy and excitement the film had lacked was back in spades. Suddenly, it began to feel like a real Indiana Jones movie. I don’t know what it was about Shia’s 1950s greaser named Mutt that so turned the film around for me. Maybe it was just the fact that I didn’t hate him like a I thought I would. But I think it’s more than that. I think Harrison Ford was better and funnier when he shared scenes with Shia. The dialogue crackled and the jokes worked and film found itself rid of the pacing issues that plagued its opening minutes. It’s basically the father/son relationship in The Last Crusade in reverse, but it really works I think.

From that point on, aside from the saccharine and cloying final scene and numerous issues with Ray Winstone’s character of Mac, I loved the movie. Sure it’s absurd and ridiculous and completely impractical. But that’s what I realized I loved about Indiana Jones as I sat watching the original trilogy earlier in the day. I love that the films aren’t constrained by history or science or physics. I love that they’re unrestrained. And to borrow a phrase from early in the semester, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is just as balls to the wall as any of the past films, if not more so. If you can buy into the conceit of the Ark of the Covenant, of the Shankara Stones, of the Holy Grail, then there should be no reason why you can’t buy into this film. Because while it’s ludicrous and over the top, and it is way way over the top, that’s what makes these films great. They’re b-movies you don’t have to feel guilty about watching.

Hmmm

So I guess it’s been a little while since I wrote anything in here (two weeks, to be exact). I just haven’t had anything particularly compelling to say, I suppose. At least, nothing compelling in comparison to Queen’s Day.

Really, plenty of stuff has happened, and a lot of it might make for a pretty entertaining read, but I’m two weeks behind at this point, and I can’t quite see myself pumping out posts adequately covering the aforementioned “stuff.” That being said, I’m gonna call the highlights.

Wednesday May 7
Began with a fancy dinner at an Indonesian restaurant. Ended up getting stuck between some unfortunate tablemates. Ending up hearing about Boston, Mt. Holyoke and the problem with Amsterdam for the entirety of dinner. Wanted to rip my eardrums out by the end. Relieved I didn’t, however, as I would have been unable to hear the Royal Orchestra perform at the Concertgebouw later in the evening, which would have been a shame because they were splendid. Began the show seated between two septuagenarians near the back of the concert hall. May have dozed off ever so slightly. Moved up to a closer seat with better company during intermission, in time for the stirring finale. Did not fall asleep.

Tuesday May 13
Hung out at Letje’s apartment with Sarah, Christy and Bri. Had my chi realigned. Watched the first thirteen episodes of Trapped in the Closet with director commentary by R. Kelly. Marveled at the fact that Omar slummed between seasons of The Wire by acting in R. Kelly’s ego project.

Wednesday May 14, Thursday May 15, Friday May 16, Monday May 19
Edited my film for Film Theory in Practice. Went better than expected, given the circumstances. Includes ridiculous musical selections, such as “I am the Walrus” and “Broken Face” by The Pixies. Is overly long with a few rough cuts and leaps of logic, but was good experience nonetheless, as it was my most ambitious editing project, at least for a narrative film.

Thursday May 15
Went out to Leidseplein. Enjoyed €1,50 beer at student night at whatever bar we went to. Smoked lots of cigarettes. Decided to go to PopTrash. Found out there was no PopTrash. Decided to go to Pirates. Smoked many more cigarettes. Rocked out. Watched the awesome music videos on the TV screens. Got frites. Biked home. Passed out.

Friday May 16
Rushed madly from editing to the dinner party at Letje’s. Disgustingly sweaty by the time I arrived. Proceeded to eat delicious food and drink lots.

Tuesday May 19
Watched Easy Rider in class Europe-Hollywood-Europe class. Spent the first half of the movie believing Peter Fonda’s character was played by a very young Jack Nicholson. Realized my error when a character who was very obviously played by Jack Nicholson entered the film. Biked to Blijburg Beach. Sat listening to Fresh Air podcasts and watching windsurfers out in the water. At one point there were six different guys going all at the same time right out in the little cove. There must have been a good air pocket right in front of where I was sitting because guys would come by and jump up easily 10-15 feet into the air, doing awesome spins and flips while suspended in mid-flight.

So those are the highlights. I probably missed some. Look for some real posts concerning Indiana Jones and Rotterdam in the coming days. Sorry for the long absence.

Iron Man

Saw Iron Man on Tuesday night. I thought it was pretty great. It was exactly what I was expecting: a fun action movie with lots of explosions. Robert Downey, Jr. carried the film and was great throughout, though the acting was solid across the board. I couldn’t help laughing, however, whenever Obadiah Stane, as played by Jeff Bridges, spoke, as his speech patterns and cadence were so similar to that of The Dude. It was uncanny. The plot may have been a little predictable, and it was obvious from the very first frame that Obadiah was the Bad Guy In Charge, but that didn’t lessen my enjoyment of the film at all. And hey, the sequel has already been announced for Summer 2010, so hopefully that film will only improve on the flaws of the first. With RDJ back on board, I think it would be hard for the film to go wrong.

We saw the film at the Pathé Tuschinski a gorgeous Art Deco theater near Rebrandtplein. I wish I had taken my camera because everything about the theater was beautiful. The theater we were in was, I believe, on three levels, with two balconies and numerous private boxes around the perimeter. The seats were nice and plush and the light fixture hanging from the ceiling was just too cool for words. I’ll be sure to take pictures when I go to see Indiana Jones in a couple of weeks.

Ai, ai, yai, yai, yai, ai, ai, ai

Brief note of interest: I woke up this morning afternoon to find pools of dried blood leading from the chair at my desk to my bathroom. I knew immediately where the blood came from: walking for a long time while wearing Birkenstocks has a tendency to rub certain spots on my feet raw. These sores heal very slowly, so when I wear socks in the days proceeding Birkenstocks, the scabs tend to mesh into the socks. Then, when I pull the socks off at the end of the day, the scabs come right off with the socks. Last night was the first time that I have ever bled profusely from said injury. I mopped the blood off my feet with toilet paper, but since it was dark, I didn’t realize I had bled all over the floor as well. I’m thinking about leaving the blood on the floor, forever marking Funenpark 22 as my room, with my DNA to prove it.

Back to the topic at hand:

Monday began with an excruciating lesson on editing for my Film Theory in Practice class. Most of the students didn’t show up at first, so our professor went and made phone calls to all the absent students, reminding them that we had class. Forty-five minutes late, the class finally began. What followed was a pretty amateurish introduction to Final Cut Pro. I had hoped I might be able to pick up a trick or two, but everything we learned was basic and pretty much self-explanatory. I spent most of the class coming up with names to use for characters in upcoming stories that I may or may not ever write. Most of them are from the Aaron Sorkin school of alliterative names, but I also threw in the occasional old-school Mennonite name just for kicks. My favorites? Owen Thomas Oakley and Jeremiah Stoltzfus. © 2008 Tim Lehman.

After class I spent the next couple of hours trying to figure out the best way to bike to the Amsterdam ArenA. Devotees of Amsterdamning will remember a previous post where I attempted to do this with disappointing results. However, this time I had incentive to find the ArenA, since I had a ticket to see the Ajax play that evening. After a bit of finagling with Google Maps, I was able to find directions that didn’t involve me biking along the interstate for long stretches. I wasn’t familiar with most of the areas I would be biking through, but the directions were otherwise pretty simple, so I figured I’d be okay. Plus, the ArenA was only rough nine kilometers away according to my directions, which didn’t seem too bad. Nevertheless I left two hours before the game began just to give myself plenty of time.

My caution was clearly not necessary as I found the ArenA without a problem. The ride only took thirty minutes or so, leaving me with plenty of time to kill before the game. My first task was finding the correct gate to enter. I think I walked around the entire circumference of the stadium before finally finding the elusive gate ‘M’. Once I found the gate, I had to figure out how to use the automated ticket-scanning devices. This wasn’t actually very hard, but I was a fit of nerves as I approached it nonetheless. After finally entering the ArenA, I wandered around for a bit, specifically in the souvenir shop. I was hoping they would have the Ajax home jerseys, but I only saw the away jerseys, which is probably a good thing because I definitely couldn’t afford to spend €60 on a jersey. After buying some M&Ms from a vending machine, I found my seat.

I was the first among the IES kids to arrive as the other kids had decided to take the metro to the stadium. I sat in my seat, flipping through the program that had been handed to me as I entered. Unfortunately, the entire thing was in Dutch, so it didn’t do a whole lot of good aside from providing a list of all the Ajax players. I also was sure to take notes of the amazing song that played over the PA system, ostensibly to get the crowd in the mood for some football. The lyrics went, roughly, like this:

Ajax

Ai, ai, yai, yai, yai, ai, ai, ai

Ajax

Ajax

Right as the game arrived, the three remaining IES kids arrived (Shiva, who hooked us up the tickets, had arrived a few minutes earlier) all quite drunk after celebrating Cinco de Mayo before the game by downing a bottle of tequila. Apparently they had taken the metro in the wrong direction for a while, explaining their absence. The game started off slowly, but it was clear from early on that the Ajax were dominating, as the ball spent most of the time down on SC Heerenveen’s side of the field. I don’t remember the exact timing, but I believe that the Ajax scored two goals in pretty quick succession near the end of the first half. Needless to say, the crowd went pretty wild. Nothing too insane, but there was lots of chanting and (obviously) cheering.

During halftime, these really young kids were brought onto the field. Two of the kids were sent to a goal on either end, while the remaining kids tried to score on them. They would dribble the ball down from midfield and try and score once they were practically on top of the goalie. I really only paid attention to the action on my side of the field, but from what I saw, it was a losing battle for the goalie: I don’t think he was able to stop a single shot on goal. Most adorable was this really little kid, he couldn’t have been older than four or five. The Ajax shorts he was wearing were as long as his legs, and I think the stadium held its collective breath each time the kid dribbled the ball toward the goal, just waiting for him to trip over his way-too-baggy shorts and fall flat on his face. To his credit, he never did.

One odd thing I noticed about the crowd was their propensity for throwing paper airplanes. Soon, it became clear that the unspoken goal was to throw an airplane that made it all the way onto the field. This didn’t happen much during the first half, but once the Ajax had a comfortable lead (they scored a third goal, followed by Heerenveen’s first), a steady stream of paper airplanes floated from the stands down to the field. The players didn’t really seem to mind, they just ignored the litter strewn across their field. The game ended, and the Ajax won, and although the crowd was clearly jubilant, there wasn’t any sign of the rioting I had hopped to see, cars set on fire, that sort of thing. Maybe in a match with a bigger rival.

Since they won, the Ajax move on to the next round of the playoffs, which is a week from today. I’m hoping to get tickets along with my friends on the program. Maybe then we’ll see the sort of riots we’ve all been waiting for:

Playing catch-up

Marina arrived to visit Wednesday evening as I was doing my best to recuperate from the Queen’s Day events that has occurred over the past 24 hours or so. She stayed until Sunday evening and the time in between was pretty laid back. She rented a bike Thursday morning and our first order of business was the visit the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam’s modern art museum. It’s been temporarily located while its permanent home undergoes renovations, but the location it’s in now is nice enough, I suppose, though it felt a little warehouse-y at times. There were numerous cool and interesting exhibits throughout (including a very thorough exhibit on Magnum Photos, a group of photographers who have shot many of the images that have become ingrained into my consciousness as important photographs though I never knew before where or who they came from. Interestingly, when a photographer applies to become part of Magnum he or she must spend two years as a nominee. If after those two years the membership of Magnum feels that the photographer shows promise or talent or whatever they look for, he or she becomes an associate. After two years as an associate, Magnum again takes a vote judging the photographer’s work. If the majority again vote in favor, he or she becomes a full-fledged member of Magnum with full voting privileges, a position that is held for life), I think my favorite piece was a computer simulation of animated Elvis models who floated through space and who intermittently began to convulse and shake. These convulsions apparently are procedurally generated the same way that characters in certain video games are coded to react as they are being shot by an onslaught of virtual bullets. The effect was comically eerie.

After the museum, we biked over to Abraxas and Marina bought a space shake. We biked back to Funen, stopping at AH on the way to pick up some groceries for dinner. We spent the rest of the evening watching Arrested Development and The West Wing. The next day was much the same, except this time we visited the coffeeshop (Dolphins this time, where we had a very nice conversation about movies with an electrical engineer from Belgium) before the museum, which was the Van Gogh this time rather than the Stedelijk. There were too many people there at first, which bothered me, but as we moved to the upper floors the crowd thinned and I was fine. In any case, the art, and in particular the colors, were amazing. We again spent the evening watching Arrested followed by The West Wing.

Saturday we met up with Jalene and her friend from home, Cynthia. We ate a bit of lunch at a cafe in Vondelpark and then made a quick stop by the Red Light District, which is much less scuzzy and sleazy in daylight than it is at night. After sitting by a canal for a while, Jalene and Cynthia caught a train back to Maastricht and Marina and I went back to Funen. Later in the evening we met with Nick and Bri and went out to the Green Elephant. What followed was a night of very pleasant conversation. Later, some other IES kids showed up and we joined tables and hung out non-awkwardly. I was, to be perfectly honest, a little surprised. Sunday began with Marina returning her bike, followed by a visit to the Rijksmuseum. Most of the museum is undergoing renovation as well, but they had one wing open to visitors. That one wing was dedicated to the Dutch Golden Age, so we saw lots of Rembrandts and a few Vermeers and a whole lot of Delft Earthenware. I’m glad we went because I might not ever have made it their without a visitor who wanted to go. After the museum, we stopped by the Carousel Pancake House, and I’m happy to report that the business plan Josh, Elliot, Meg, Marissa and I came up with appears as viable as ever. Afterward, we made a quick trip back to Funen and Marina packed her things and took the bus to Centraal to catch her train.

I spent the rest of the evening accidentally singeing my bangs while trying to light a poorly rolled cigarette with a temperamental lighter. Aside from the stench of burning plastic and a few scorched stubs of hair near my scalp, there was no harm done. I had to look closely in the mirror before I could even tell that any damage had been done. Mostly I just think it’s fun to say I caught my hair on fire, overstatement that it certainly is.

Queen’s Day

Queen’s Day. The day I have been anticipating since before my arrival in the Netherlands. The day that I have been anticipating since Ahna Minge discussed how amazing the day was during Macalester pre-study abroad orientation. The day when the Dutch let their hair down, go crazy, dress all in orange. The day of city-wide street parties, of concerts in every major city square, of day long drunken revelry. Queen’s Day. Queen’s Day was Wednesday.

Our celebration began Tuesday evening. With the ceremonial lighting of the Party Candle, our festivities began. An impressive collection of cheap, knockoff brand soda and bizarre and brightly colored liquored materialized on my desk in a matter of minutes. A case of Grolsch sat waiting in the fridge. The fun, summer-y music of Cut Copy floated from my laptop. We sat in a circle and we drank. We made plans. We reveled. Nick was asked about his ten day trip through Germany, Italy and Switzerland more times than I could count. We debated the nature of orange and whether Bri’s liquor was of orange hue or red (it was red). We decided to head out. Beer was packed into backpacks, mixed-drinks poured into soda bottles, tobacco and rolling papers stuffed into pockets. The party candle: extinguished.

Bikes were unlocked and many attempts were made as Sarah tried to ride sidesaddle on the back of mine. Eventually we succeeded and rode to the ISHSS, our predetermined point to store our bikes and walk into the city center. We rolled as we walked, drank as we walked, celebrated. I joked about smashing my bottle on the ground ala Ryan in season four, episode eleven of The Office, but he was high on cocaine and we’re not into that shit.

As we passed Waterlooplein, the bass beats began to pound, drawing us in. We had planned to go to Spui, but that could wait. The music drew us closer. Behind Het Muziektheater a stage was set up. Lights flashed. Crowds gathered. We pressed on, it was Rembrandtplein we were now searching for. We were split. Bathrooms had to be found. More beer was removed from backpacks. We waited, we were reconnected. The “naah-nah-nah, naah-na-na-naaaahs” of a Hey Jude cover wafted through the square. Those around us danced and pressed forward to the stage. We retreated, we retraced our steps. We advanced toward the music at the Muziektheater. The crowd pulsed, we pushed, moving forward, closer, closer to the stage. Again we were split, stranded among thousands, dwarfed by the population of the tallest country on the planet. Again we retreated, and in our retreat, we were reunited. More pushing, more drinks spilled upon us by those who attempted to carry uncovered drinks into the mass, more dirty looks and muttered curses in languages we didn’t understand.

Outside a tent, we reconvened. Talked, laughed. Smoked. Talked and laughed about addiction, and how it was over, done, I, maybe all of us, were addicts. We lost Sarah. Through SMS texting, she was found. We skipped, jogged, jumped, descended upon her outside the Metro. She had to go to Centraal. I donned a tiara. Minus Sarah, we began to our original destination, to Spui.

In Spui, we ran into other IES kids. Sam wore a hood attached to no jacket. He pointed us to the music. We walked. We the found the band. Some guitars, two saxophones and a trombone. Probably a singer somewhere in there. We pushed on. We were in Dam Square, we found a carnival and neon lights. We contemplated riding, but were in no state. In the morning! Yes, yes, in the morning we would ride. Hallie bought cotton candy, we began walking back to our bikes. Nick and I talked music. We talked Battlestar Galactica and the final five. We surged on and returned to Funen on our bikes. Briefly we returned to my room, lit the party candle, convened. It is after midnight, I don my orange t-shirt, for it is now Queen’s Day proper. Then up to Sarah’s room, where she was entertaining Eleni and Anne, two other Mac kids. We conversed, a brief respite from the night.

In a state, I realized the party candle might still be burning, unattended in my room. An image of a Funenpark in flames filled my head. I returned to my room, but the candle was out. Who extinguished it I know not, but I am grateful. With a bowl we go to the roof and retire to the smoking corner out the wind. We pass the bowl. It hits hard. Later we rejoin the circle. The ground seems to wobble beneath my feet. I take a step backward, then a couple forward, trying to maintain my balance. I try to lean back against the wall, but it is farther than I imagined. I fall.

Suddenly, sitting up on the ground, my mind is clear. I am back with reality. Christy suggests soda. I think that is a wonderful idea. In my room, I sip on a mug filled with €0,33 EuroShopper Cola as the conversation continues around me. As time passes, out numbers dwindle. Bed, they say, wake us up at 6am for shopping. Soon it is Nick, Christy and I staving off sleep in my room, the last three of our crew left to fight away the call of our soft pillows. Six a.m.! Pah! we say, that is but mere hours away. We can stay up. We shall persevere. We run through our options in staving off sleep. Card games! Yes! Perfect, but we have no cards. We shall make cards! Of course, yes, we have index cards, we have writing utensils, yes, we shall make playing cards! No, what an idea. Making cards? Whose idea was that? Far too much work. We shall take a walk, watch the sunrise, stay awake.

Away from Funenpark we walk, toward the windmill, toward the Albert Heijn, which, to our dismay, does not open until 8am, a full four hours away. We walk to Oosterpark, through Oosterpark, around the block. We decide to find the perfect vantage point to watch the sunrise, over the water, on a bridge. I lead us through the Dappermarkt, expecting to arrive back by the windmill. But we do not. We pass under unknown train tracks, we walk down unknown streets. We are lost. The sun quickly approaches the horizon. It is a race against time. Soon, a FEBO in the distance. I know this place!

To the river, to the bridge, we walk. Conversation becomes irrelevant. We are zombies, zombies waiting for the sun, hoping for the perfect view. It is light out. We reach the bridge. Has the sun ascended above the horizon? We cannot tell. A chilly breeze floats over the water. We stare off in silence, observing. It is 6am. We have friends to wake. Back to Funen we walk.

A knock on Bri’s door. She answers, Dana pops up behind her. She will be out shortly. Alex’s door: Liana answers, confused. Alex will be out shortly. We decide to prepare some breakfast, but there is miscommunication. Time is lost. The day is fading away, the Free Market has begun, goods are being bought. Around 7am, as a reconvened group, we again depart Funen.

The streets are quieter than we expect. No vendors, no booths line the sides of Prins Hendrikade. Nothing near Centraal. We arrive at the Jordaan, our legs exhausted, our endurance waning. But we have arrived at the booths and the vendors and the shopping. We felt reinvigorated. We bought coffee for €1, and chocolate-orange cupcakes for another Euro. We are replenished. We search out deals, we search out oddities. A framed photo of a very young Arnold Schwarzenegger dressed as what appears top be a geeky scientist? Check. Amsterdam Ajax football scarf? Check. Sherlock Holmes, sci-fi and humor books? Check. And various t-shirts, jackets and bags? All accounted for.

We stroll. We peruse and browse. The streets fill as time passes. Our cravings for sustenance increase, as do our assertions that there is no way we are walking back to Funen. We find ourselves near Spui, we find ourselves on Leidsestraat. Christy breaks away, back to Centraal Station, back to Funen. Us others press on to Museumplein. Nick and I break away, to find a tram, to find Funen, to find sleep. The 10 tram from Leideseplein isn’t running. We walk further, ask a woman directing traffic about the 10. It isn’t running, she says, but try the 14, just over that way. Over that way we walk, but find no tram, only a lonely, abandoned bus stop. We push on. Ahead, a tram! It’s number is no matter, anything to rest our feet. No charge, the attendant tells us when we offer her our €1,60 in payment, too much craziness today to take money. As the tram pulls to a stop, I see the 10 approaching behind us. Off our unknown tram we hop, and onto the 10 we climb. The attendant this time is less benevolent. We pay our €1,60. We arrived back at Funen.

Let’s sleep for a while, Nick and I say. It is 11:30am, we have been up for over a day, do we not deserve this rest? we ask. We will meet again at four, we say, we will go out again at four. We go our separate ways. I sleep.

At 3:30pm I wake up again. Soon, I receive an SMS from Sarah. They are in Spui. I cannot bring myself to walk there. There has been so much walking already this day. So so much. I say I will meet up with them later. I do not. For the rest of the day, I watch Six Feet Under in my room, recuperating on Queen’s Day, my timing all off.

I will return in years to come, this I vow, of this I am certain. I will come back to Queen’s Day, and in the years to come, I will adjust my timing. In the future, no more will I sleep away Queen’s Day afternoon, missing the music in Museumplein and Spui and across all the city. But for now, at the moment, I am content. Wrapped in my Ajax scarf, I look back upon Queen’s Day, the night before, I look back upon Free Market and getting lost in the city in the middle of the night, upon beer in backpacks and rolling while we walk, upon falling to the ground and clearing my head. I look back and think Man ‘o man ‘o man. I survived Queen’s Day 2008. That was a good day.

Sunday, briefly – Updated*

Sunday I had hoped to bike to the Amsterdam ArenA, the home of the Ajax, the city’s soccer (football) team. I had passed by the stadium on the train before, and I knew it was a ways outside of the city, but I had some time to kill, and I figured why not?

I took a look at my map of the city, and found an arena-type building labeled Olympic Stadium. It was roughly where I envisioned the ArenA to be, so I decided to give it a try. It was actually pretty easy to get to, judging by the map, just a quick ride through Vondelpark and a short jog down another street. I arrived at Olympic Stadium without any trouble, but it became immediately apparent that it was not what I had in mind. As far as stadium go, it was pretty small and was made of dark brown brick, clearly not the enormous white steel structure that serves as home to the Ajax. I later learned that Olympic Stadium served as, believe it or not, the main venue when Amsterdam hosted the Olympics in 1928.

My hopes of finding the ArenA thwarted, I decided to bike around randomly for a while, and before too much time had passed, I found myself in the Amsterdamse Bos, some sort of national forest, I think. At first I biked along this long, perfectly straight and rectangular man-made body of water. My assumption is that it was built back in the ’20s for use in Olympic crew events, as that’s how the artificial lake was being used today. One after another, groups would row down past me as I biked along a path right next to the water. What I found most interesting, and most typically Dutch, was that, although, as far as I could tell, each boat had a coxswain giving orders to the rowers (sorry, I’m writing in a café without internet and can’t check Wikipedia for the proper crew terminology), alongside the water on the same path I was riding on, biked a steady stream of people whom I can only assume were crew coaches, who shouted instructions at the rowers through megaphones as they biked lazily along (that was a truly spectacular sentence (fun fact: that sentence had even more commas before I realized how ridiculous it sounded and removed a few)).

After getting tired of dodging biking coaches shouting into their megaphones, I decided to try biking along other paths through the Bos. It seemed mostly just like a much larger, much less populated version of the various parks that scatter the city. There were many wide open grass spaces and benches in the shade, along with small ponds to look out over, but without the near-suffocating crowds that Vondelpark can attract on a warm, weekend afternoon. After my legs tired of pedaling around the park, I biked on back, never having found the ArenA.

Incidentally, the very next day Chantal, the IES director, sent out an email announcing she had four Ajax tickets available on a first come, first serve basis. Needless to say I raced right over to her office and snatched one up. I’ll get to see them play a team from the northern Netherlands (the SFC Heerenveen this coming Monday. While I would still like to bike to the stadium, I found the actual ArenA later on Google Maps, and it’s quite a ways from Funen. I’m sure biking is possible, but I wouldn’t even know where to begin short of biking down the highway to get there. I’ll keep you posted.

UPDATE: Now with links. Alas, I didn’t feel like learning anything about rowing.