Groove is in Den Haag

For the second time in two weeks I found myself in a foreign city that I'd been aware of since I was a kid but still know next to nothing about. This time it was the turn of Den Haag, The Hague, a city with no discernible centre that seems to exist purely as a very trendy Dutch Lakeside.

Given that The Hague is so very trendy it was a bit of a surprise that it was attached to Scheveningen, an especially tacky sea-side resort.  I thought down-at-hill seaside chintz was a purely British thing, but evidently not.

I ate me some raw herring - that's pretty Dutch, right? It had a tail and everything. Raw herring = good.

Rounded off my Dutch weekend with a visit to the newly opened Stedelijk gallery in Amsterdam. All the other galleries around were closed so it was full to its overflow pipe and, being a scathing cynic as I often am, there just didn't seem to be the art to justify the crowds or for that matter the shiny new building.

Right in the Gulags

Warsaw is one of those cities that I've known of for about as long as I can remember, yet I know almost nothing about it.  Turns out, having spent a weekend bimbling around it, I still know pretty much nothing about it - still, it was a most pleasant place to bimble.  I genuinely would like to say more than that about it - I feel like its stature in my mind deserves more - but there's just not much more to say that's in anyway interesting.

I try not to comment too much on current affairs - mainly because I don't really understand anything, ever - but Pussy Riot have been sent to the gulags and that doesn't sound like a fun day out.  I don't really know what a gulag is but I'm fairly sure that they don't have ferrero rocher there. And that was just for singing a song in a church, I went to a wedding the other week - I sang three songs in a church - in your face Putin.

But really, between that and those Italian geologists who have been convicted of manslaughter for not being able to do the impossible I can't help but think that the world is somewhat unreasonable.

Hiphop Karaoke

In my limited experience of hiphop karaoke one thing I've found is that I don't actually know the words to any raps.  I think I do but what I actually know is the sounds, consequently if you try to read said lyrics it will say something ridiculous, like "Muggs is a funk fest" which just confuses you.  In the end it's a straight choice between making sort-of-right sounds at the sort-of-right time and trying to recreate what's actually been written; I'd suggest that the second option is the first step on the path to karaoke disaster.