Are you really straight?

Imagine when you would have to face this on a daily basis. How would you feel, being really “straight” in a non-straight world?

[Thanks for the link, talk of the town! (blog in Dutch)]

Run like Santa, but don’t crash into the shoppers

“Santa runs” have become quite popular the past few years. Basically, they’ve got it all: dressing up like Santa, racing to beat the clock, all with a jolly “ho-ho-ho” smile on your face. This year’s Antwerp organizer Q-music (a national commercial radio network) decided to make it more difficult to win the grand prize: wannabe running Santas will have to face the hard-to-handle obstacle of a downtown shopping crowd, late next Friday afternoon. I’m not sure who’ll be most at risk: the thousands of running Santas or the seasonal shoppers.

No inspiration? Let someone else write your blog posts

Bored? No inspiration? Pressed for time? Depressed? Just plain lazy? The solution is simple: let someone else write your blog posts (I once allowed my elderly mother to give it all a spin, sat back and had to save the furniture) , or use this ‘great’ blog post generator from Australia. I just clicked, producing this superb prose:

Holy crap! I just got slapped with a wet salmon – really – I have not updated this since Paris Hilton was in jail… You would not believe the phat set coming through right now. I prostrate myself in sorrow and beg thy forgiveness.. I am flat out like a lizard drinking with finding Jesus (after someone told me he was lost), homeschooling five children, just generally being a delightful mistress to anyone unfortunate to cross my path, my day is a magical flight from when the nightclubs close to when I am begging my kid to go to sleep, or so help me God that kid will be decorating my wall, ‘Duct tape still life’. I am secretly pregnant. But who cares. I will try to remember I promised you if one more person emails me to ask why I haven’t posted today,  I will start posting pictures of toe fungus, or fecal murals. You wanna test me? Assuming I don’t get distracted by counting my chest hairs..”

Before you run off and cancel your RSS subscription to Antwerp Calling,  I promise all further posts will be hand-written, word by word

US war vehicles, boobs and a dead whale

US WW-II war vehicles, (elderly) boobs and a dead whale: I’m not kidding you: I passed them by on route to the leisurely Antwerp leftbank open-air pool and beach today. My camera was where it should not have been (at home), so all I can offer are these low-resolution cell-phone shots. It was all just too weird though: sunbathing 70 yo topless ladies, chatting with decorated WWII veterans while an art-crew removed a fake dead whale from Antwerp beach, a piece of work intended as a teaser for today’s 2008 art festival [Dutch] weekend. The boob-shots came out kind of blurry, but rest assured: I enjoyed the pool [Images: just click to enlarge]

I’ll have a vibrator, a hot party and some lingerie: sex for sale in front of Antwerp City Hall

What do you get when you mix a warm summer day, a 100,000 visitor influx and one (out of 200) not so common stand with vibrators, sex toys and erotic home parties on-demand at the annual 1600 era Antwerp Rubens market, right in front of city hall?

You can be the judge, but trust me, I had trouble keeping a straight face when a small girl pointed to one of these “novelty items” while persistently exclaiming ‘Mummy, I want one of those!”. Don’t they grow up fast these days?  [More photos of this surprisingly entertaining event coming up. I also got into Antwerp city hall and obviously, kept on shooting.]

Sex, crashing planes and Belgian beer

It’s way too hot inside to type anything meaningful, so let’s just hope this YouTube video link (found on a local blog) is not yet on your “seen it a million times” list. Actually, it’s a French HIV/safe-sex spot aired by M6-TV. The fade-out captions in French are real fun

I’m not sure how you feel about this older piece of CTV comedy though.  Quotes: “Belgium: the only country that makes Luxembourg feel good about themselves”. “Before those Waffle-humpers change the formula”. “We all know how Belgians bottle their beer: that little boy statue pees in it”.  Sure, it’s late night comedy, but we all wonder what all the fuss is about when we taste a “Bud light Lime”. Lime?  Well, given the questionable taste of AB beers (most Europeans wouldn’t touch a Bud), let’s not get too patriotic boys

   [Messy lay-out? WordPress does not allow to align videos.]

Naked men and weird music: Don’t try this at home

It’s been done before, but I actually enjoyed this YouTube movie. By the way, can the Swedish reader who repeatedly mailed me the poorly written message below please stop trying to get in touch again? I read your message over and over, and somehow I hate to break the news to you, but you do need appropriate medical care. And PLEASE, stop mailing me countless naked pictures of yourself, I’ve got all I need

“If you are not able to communicate, the way of your existence will suffer serious damage. you will be limited by your self in strange way to obtain part in your community. to learn essential way of including people, to pretend to accept and not to demand,is opening social way of mutual understanding. people who pretend to limit space for other people,by demanding or claim anything. to be your self is not excluding to show mutual respect to others,and accept the diversity.
The truth is naked. to keep someone in power you need to persuade him to wear your cloths,uniform of your believes. and who say that the pure heart forced with dimension of love, tenderness and honesty should have double jacket and burka?and who claims that genuity has no sex, no erection and no joy?
If you on the base of your culture,religion, social structure of your person,expirience and life have trouble with my nudity,wich is just a simple form to expresse my freedom, and if you have problem with erotic and may say pornographic elements i appologize. to be nude is natural way of being one with the nature.to desire is the important part of human need,and sign that you are open to the future, cause you expect much to happen”

How to gate-crash a wedding, and get away with it

“Do every day one thing that scares you” (quote from “The Sunscreen Song” by Baz Luhrmann). Last night I literally followed this well-meant advice by ‘kind of’ gate-crashing a wedding in an affluent eastern Antwerp suburb. I’d only seen the bride and groom once in my life (for 2 minutes), my SO is only a distant relative of this amazing couple. But I enjoyed some sparkling conversation in the lush gardens, shook hands with people I’ll never see again, congratulated the bride with her stunning appearance and listened to exotic conversations in several languages I’m not fluent in. The hospitality and sincere warmth of this couple was genuinely impressive.

I had a superb dinner (lacking in conversation as the night passed on, as I ran out of “that sounds great!” platitudes) but danced till 4 am with an ecstatic crowd. A less than classy drag queen act, a stunning nipple gate incident and drunken real-old ladies making advances while flashing their jewelry (and underwear, ‘par accident’) were just the icing on the (wedding) cake. Here are some shots I took with my cellphone. These folks truly had a perfect, fairytale-like wedding. Enjoy! [Regarding the 'gate-crashing' part: well, with my partner being a distant, but surprisingly welcome relative, I simply suggested I'd join him. Two gay men passionately dancing on their straight wedding party: the degree of tolerance of these lovely newly weds sure took my breath away ]

When cars get too smart

Sometime reality beats fiction. On my way to the Antwerp leftbank city beach tonight (28°C/85°F) I had to avoid these 30 ton trucks, making a narrow escape as the Antwerp Kennedy river tunnel is a notorious death-trap. Anyway, I arrived safely and tried to check the onboard computer. When I clicked “disengage anti-carjacking door lock” I got a complete system reset and 10 seconds of utter disbelief, before one of the displays came up with this message: “I don’t want to”. Great, just what I needed

A friend of mine claimed up to 30% of roadside assistance interventions are caused by freaky car electronics behavior. Do you still feel safe, in cars stuffed with more electronics than an average PC?

The Antwerp 2008 Marathon and 10 Miles: an overdose of fun

The best part of the yearly ING Antwerp Marathon and 10 miles must be the massive endorphin rush, creating feelings of visual exhilaration, and sometimes just a little bit more.

Quote:
‘Besides behaving as a pain reducer, endorphins are connected to euphoric feelings and the release of sex hormones’ – nicely explaining why all these people bother to run in the first place.

Last year I asked ‘can this lady please give me a call? I want that feeling too, but I’m unable to produce it while running’, but she never called. Maybe I’ll get lucky this year.

[Antwerp marathon 2008 edition: April 20. My first shots - Full photo coverage by www.sport.be]

[my photo: 2007 edition]