Nobody cares
Nobody cares
Nobody cares
Nobody
cares
Nobody cares
Nobody cares
Nobody cares
Nobodoy cares
Everyone I love has gone
Robots steal my thoughts
There is nothing outside
I give up
Why won’t my body die
Why won’t my body die
Why won’t my body die
Why won’t my body die
Why won’t my body die
Why won’t my body die
TIEFER BLAUER SCHNEE (1981)
Director: Fred Noczynski
Cinematographer: Martin Rötger
I was unwillingly dragged around the world in my youth, which I genuinely believe has had a crippling affect on my mental health. I know it’s something of a lazy cliche to blame your parents for your personal hangups, but I’m pretty sure the two idiots who pulled me into this world and regularly took me out of crucial school years to indulge their OCD-need to go on pointless holidays, do bear some sort of responsibility for my broken mind.
Needless to say, these series of events led to me skiving off school and hiding in the local woods for a week, which was a major cause for concern because a) my school didn’t bother to ring my parents about my absence for a week and b) I was so scared of school and my parents that I was hiding in the local woods for a fucking week.
I’m pretty sure that’s all pretty messed-up.
Also, out of the dozens of places I’ve lived and the hundreds of people I’ve gotten to know and who’ve learned to hate me, the two things that will surely be said about me are: “Oh, Jim?! Yeah, he’s scared of his biological family and enjoys the cold”.
I was once nearly killed when, in 2009, my ex-girlfriend completely misjudged how far we needed to clamber through heavy English snow to get to an isolated holiday cabin. I subsequently teased her about this for quite some time. Sadly, she passed away in 2022 from heart failure, leaving me very-much alone in Sheffield, so this alarming memory has now become something more bittersweet.
I’m not selling myself here, am I?!
Anyway, I’ve only just started watching Tiefer Blauer Schee, a one-minute-away-from-being-a-short-film I found on a compilation of German family shorts, so the only thing I know thus far is that it features a family traipsing through the snow to get to… somewhere.
I have a funny feeling this is the whole film.
But, much to my delight, I am being bombarded with thoughtful shot compositions by the minute, which is odd, really, as you’d think little effort would be put into your cinematography under such extreme weather conditions. Unless you’re Renny Harlin, of course.
I’m not usually into wide landscape shots, considering them pretty easy catches, but this one is particularly clever. Hopefully, you get the idea, despite DDR’s usually-poor disc transfer. I’m pretty sure they’re actually designed to self-destruct, like the instructional tapes in Mission: Impossible.
I hope you are well, as I seem to be experiencing an agonising low-mood attack this week. So, alas, this will probably be the last post you’ll get from me in awhile. Still, as always, should you or any of your IMF Force are caught or killed blah blah blah.
Oh I will be posting so many tributes to Brian De Palma’s wonderful 1996 Mission: Impossible film next year that you will all get fed up so quick. This is a promise, not a threat.
Do stay in touch, darlings.
Toodles!
I feel racked with guilt over being unduly harsh regarding Kinderen voor Kinderen’s 1980s output, whilst discussing the three albums produced by Henk Temming. So, as a form of punishment… ahem… I mean, as a fun little exercise, I thought I’d go through each of those first ten records and select highlights that I hope might very well win over potential new listeners.
It has been harder than expected to whittle down the list, originally wanting to keep it as short and sweet as possible. Between my chosen openers and closers, which are obviously bunched together purposefully for their required effect, things mostly skip along in album order. I was going to have sub-playlists, including one for the gentler songs and one for what I refer to as KvK’s “calypso numbers”, being those with a coquettishly-tropical vibe, but I thought that method might break the spirit of the uninitiated.
“Let’s just keep things simple!”, became my ethos. Therefore, my tweaking of the running order mostly involved putting together a few energetic rock songs, separated by a cute ballad. You know, like how normal, logical, rational human beings would do it. Hey, I’m still learning how to be one, so go easy on me!
I’ve provided the reader and listener with a heavily-abridged text commentary below, rather than indulging in a running commentary of every single track. We all have places we need to be, even if we don’t. So, what follows are my “highlights of the highlights”, so to speak. Again, my plan is to be brief, so, if things get out of hand, then I am truly sorry.
You can find the full playlist here: Ik Heb Zo Waanzinnig Gedroomd
I usually like to get a playlist going with a “BANG!”, but, this time, I decided to go with something more atmospheric. “Het Land Van Vroeger”, from 1989’s 10, is very dream-like and mysterious, reminding me of Moby’s “God Moving Over the Face of the Water”, from the Heat (1995) soundtrack. Then we get the pace going with “Op Een Onbewoond Eiland”, which is one of KvK’s signature tunes. If you stood on a street anywhere in The Netherlands and sang this song, everyone about you would hum along. Guaranteed. “Brugsmurfblues” is about goodness-knows-what, but it always makes me jump for joy when it begins. The stage performance implies it’s about having to drag loads of crap to school with you everyday, but the title appears to signpost the lament of a troll living under a bridge. Hmm, go figure. “Trim, Trim, Trim” recants the hardship of keeping fit, with its music video being just about the campiest thing you can possibly imagine. Safe for work, and yet somehow still NSFW. The little blond boy on the rowing machine turns up in the “Mode” video too, doing some amazing “dad-dancing”. “Treuzeltechniek” we can all relate to, which is dawdling after being told to go to bed. I don’t have a problem with that now, what with being a grown-up who loves not being vertical, but, as a kid with a boring strict bedtime, I definitely kept things going for as long as possible. The ginger boy, a favourite of the KvK producers, who sings the song, nearly knocks over one of his backing singers during the live performance, which is worth looking out for.
With the bombastic intro section out of the way, 1’s opener “Ik En M’n Beessie” gets a more formal pace going. The Dutch don’t seem to use contractions much, but I think “m’n” is short for “mijn”, which means “mine”. Interesting, huh? Yeah, okay. “O, Dat Huiswerk” is wonderfully petulant. A kid complains about having to do homework, which is something else we can all relate to. I didn’t do much of the homework I was set, or classwork, or exam revision, or listening to teachers in general. I left school with three passing grades, which still doesn’t bother me to this day. I’ve learned more and gained more useful qualifications as a willing adult. I guess I always knew I wouldn’t be academically successful, so I chose to just sit staring out the window thinking about boobs.
“De Wrat” is the first agonisingly-cute number, of which I have created a separate playlist here. It has an interesting ascending melody, with a pleasant plinky-plonk rhythm to it, providing a perfect example of early-KvK’s strong points. Skipping down to “En Ik”, which features misshapen kids criticising their own bodies. While the song has a rather abrasive riff, the singer complaining about being too small and cute is just so charming that I simply had to include it. “Teddybeer” is perhaps the cutest song of them all, even though the live show’s production designers made a grave blunder in building a giant teddybear that is truly the stuff of nightmares. I don’t recommend searching for this clip if you value a good night’s sleep! “De Drummer”, surely about a boy explaining why he loves playing the drums above all else, doesn’t necessarily have the most pleasant melody in the world, but the character’s passion about his musical instrument of choice is infectious enough to warrant being on here.
“Beesteboel” is a rollicking centrepiece, which kicks the meandering-arse of proceedings somewhat. Definitely one you will catch me dancing to! “Mode”, about fashion, is certainly unique-sounding. Still, even with the charmless choral work, the lead vocals cut out a toe-tapping tune. The 80s rivalled the 70s for having the worst fashion sense in human history, so that makes for an amusing bit of schadenfreude. Are we doing the 90s now? Sigh. At this rate, we’ll run out of decades to copy! “Meidengroep” has a driving rhythm that belies its folksy instrumentation, which is echoed in the upcoming “Vakantie In Italie”. “Meidengroep” then blossoms into a pitch-perfect ABBA tribute, which is glorious. You could include it on an ABBA record and nobody would notice it was really KvK. “Diet” has an offbeat groove to it, which many of these early songs lack. I approve! The music video for “Fisse Knul” competes with that of “Trim, Trim, Trim” with its unashamed camp. Erm, let’s just say they made a wise choice in picking older teens to perform in it because, well, you’ll find out.
Moving speedily along…
“Vaders Allergie” is one of my favourite of KvK’s calypso numbers, which you would do well to play at a family barbecue. It features such a bold musical tone and adorable vocal performance that it makes me smile the millisecond it begins. If you can find just one song in existence that does that for you, then surely your life has been improved considerably. KvK has those songs in spades! It’s songs like “Vaders Allergie” that keep me coming back time and time again. The same goes for “Spinnen”, about a kid being scared of a spider. The singer’s melodramatic gasps and repeated declaration of: “Stop!” is a highlight in its truest sense.
The girl singing “Make-Up” has such a deep voice that I initially assumed it was a progressive trans anthem, which I am happy to have be true in my head. I remember loving going through mother’s makeup collection when I was a camp little boy, which I’m sure must’ve irritated her to no end. “Why can’t boys have all this fun stuff?!”, I would wonder. I’m far too lazy to be a “lipstick lesbian” nowadays, so, for those times when I am so-inclined, I’m comfortable with being a casual tomboy in a scruffy pair of shorts and t-shirt.
It took me forever to appreciate “Vakantie Met De Tent” fully, what with its jarring-inclusion of a prominent adult singer, but the small kid having the final say at the end of each chorus is fast making the song one of my all-time favourites. I’m finding new gems every day! “Astronaut” features the chorus of backing singers tripping over each other with chaotic joy. This is one of the charms of the earlier songs, before modern production techniques smoothed out the “errors” in the young performers’ vocals. This apparent-improvement may increase the odds of the producer getting more work, sure, but it diminishes the cuteness factor considerably. I’m sure one single button on a modern mixing desk could iron out “Astronaut”’s delightful-unsteadiness, but I wouldn’t press it myself.
And so I shall skip ahead to the closing series of songs, beginning with the “Als De Kat Van Huis Is”. It’s such a strange jazz romp that even the singer sounds like they’re smirking at its strangeness. It’s slow, purposeful intro just makes it feel like the beginning of the end, which is why I placed it here. “Schipperskind” and “De Lek” both share fairly-apocalyptic melodies, which descend into sadness in bold style. “De Lek”, in particular, can easily be described as “haunting” in its gloomy melodic outlook. And then we come to it, the title track of this playlist, which there is a reason for. “Ik Heb Zo Waanzinnig Gedroom”, which translates to: “I Had Such a Crazy Dream”, sounds like a drunk 8-year-old slurring their way through a Bavarian drinking song. The music video practically storyboards itself! Sadly, the only one that exists is of a blank-eyed girl swaying soberly from side-to-side, rather than a rebellious little boy with a mischievous twinkle in his eye getting hammered with his fellow Victorian street urchins. It’s the tune that got me hooked on KvK in the first place and should always feature at the beginning or end of any playlist. It’s smack-bang in the middle of 1’s tracklist, which I find a miscalculation, but hey-ho. They were new to all this back then!
I chose “Foto-Album” as something of an epilogue. It’s so simple and fragile and melancholic that, hopefully, it’ll leave you with profound emotions. I don’t need to have the lyrics translated to know what it’s about. The title and tone of the song says it all. I hope you are as moved by it as I am.
So, there you have it. My attempt at brevity has clearly failed, but I think I have done pretty well in summing up 64 songs at 2 hours 56 minutes of great, but still dated-even-for-its-time, music. KvK’s sound has evolved fascinatingly over the four-and-a-half decades its been going, ditching these old music hall skits for indie rock anthems and polished power-pop gems. They’ve become indispensable in helping me battle my lifelong struggle with depression of late, blocking out all the negativity and regret that comes with being an adult. There are sombre moments in the lyrical and musical themes, of course, but they’re never mean-spirited or at the expense of someone else’s happiness, which is a common tragedy you encounter in your mature years.
All kids want is food and a kind word. And maybe the latest generation of gaming console. But that’s it.
46 is released next Friday, 10 October 2025, so do check that out. I’m sure a review from me will follow its release fairly sharpish.
I hope you enjoyed my playlist, having done all the hard work for you. What I left out isn’t terrible, but they’re just not what I would, in good conscience, call “highlights”. For instance, there’s one song that begins with the sound of kids cheering for joy at a pop concert, but it sounds more like they’re screaming in distress. Yikes. Nobody should have to hear that. It would have made it onto the list, were it not for that fundamental blunder by the producers.
Let me know if I missed off any of your own personal favourites.
Do stay in touch, darlings.
Toodles!
Ingredients (in order of appearance):
Olive and Sesame Oil
Whole Crackling Spices: Cardamom Pods, Star Anise, Black Peppercorns, Cumin Seeds, Poppy Seeds
Diced Venison
Fish Sauce
Celery
Asparagus
Green Pepper
Rocket Chillies
Mushrooms
Radish
Courgette
Broccoli
Garlic Puree
Powdered Spices: Chilli, Curry, Paprika, Garam Masala, Clove, Turmeric
Herbs: Coriander, Bay Leaf
Ground Coffee
Greek Yoghurt
Result: Positive
Another experiment, this time attempting to substitute the usual tin of chopped tomatoes with pureed courgette. This technique I saw Keith Floyd, my secular spiritual leader and alcoholic inspiration, do with aubergine. I don’t have anything against tomatoes, I just thought I’d try something different. And because I ordered hand-picked courgettes to be delivered this week, instead of the prepackaged ones. What arrived made me exclaim: Woah!”. They’re as long as cucumbers and twice as thick, I honestly didn’t know how I’d stuff them in my crisper drawer.
Don’t worry, I won’t say it.
Not being a fan of courgettes, they’re easy enough to disguise when using a small amount. But these fuckers?! Apart from keeping one aside in the bedroom for when I’m feeling lonely, I thought I’d try pureeing one to use in a curry. Hence this post. Baking one for an hour, then simply squeezing the pulp out of its skin, was my first choice; but peeling one, then dropping it diced into a blender, was my second.
I’ll do the latter next time.
You see, my body has a tendency to overheat, even at the coolest of times. I think this is genetic, as my father suffers the same problem. So, when a person like me has to stand over a steaming stove after the oven’s been on for an hour, well, they just don’t end up very happy at all. And, boy, was I miserable making this curry! I actually found myself concerned that I may pass out at some point.
The bottom line is, much to my disappointment, that the dish honestly didn’t taste any different with courgette puree instead of chopped tomatoes. It was a sideways move that required a lot of work. And electricity. It was nice having the courgette peel to nibble on as a snack whilst the curry was simmering though.
The venison was also an experiment. I mean, I’ve had a crappy £10 venison burger at a farmer’s market, as many of us bohemian saps have, but I’ve never tried venison steak before. As it turns out, it’s basically just fancy lamb, so I’ll maybe just stick to lamb in future. Then again, lamb is pretty fatty, I believe, so perhaps paying a little extra for deer meat is the right way to go.
I shall have a think!
I wasn’t going to add Greek yoghurt to this one, but, after an hour of stewing, the curry seemed to lack any personality. The yoghurt saved the dish, basically, which I’m grateful for. Especially since there’s another portion in the freezer. Oh and the sprinkle of ground coffee was just to add some much-needed oomf, which it certainly did.
It’d go great with a mountain of rice, if I was allowing myself such. I’m still not sure what to do with the giant box of the stuff I have in the cupboard. Maybe I’ll just pour a cup out into the bin once a week. It’ll probably take a year to get rid of, but such is life.
I’m on something of a downer today, for no good reason. Just a random low-mood attack, I guess. I fancy getting drunk and ordering the greasiest, sweatiest, carb-heavy takeaway one can get their hands on in this town. Which should be easy to track down.
Everything just sucks, you know? I could really do with something good happening.
Hmm, perhaps I should dig out that spare courgette.
Do stay in touch, darlings.
Toodles!
P.S. That’s what she said.
Ingredients (in order of appearance):
Olive Oil
Pecans
Rocket Chillies
Cauliflower
Sea Salt
Herbs: Dill
Garlic Puree
Sandwich Chicken
Lime Juice
Baby Spinach
Result: Mixed
A mad culinary science experiment turned hearty lunch!
I had a simple query: can you successfully pan-fry cauliflower florets, without having to part-boil them first. I was just going to have whatever-the-results were as a snack, but then things kinda got out of control!
Let’s face it, a bed of raw spinach leaf is as rock and roll as you can get.
The answer to my question is a resounding: “No, not really”, although I was absolutely fine with how crunchy the cauliflower turned out to be. That is, after a tension-filled half-an-hour of frying. However, for your average diner, I’d recommend boiling it for 10-minutes-or-so first.
Lotta hyphens going on in this post.
I also overdid the sea salt somewhat, which was more of an eyesight issue, and the pecans turned out to be chewy, not crunchy.
The cooked wafer chicken, designed for sandwiches, and lime juice were last minute additions. The chicken actually soaked-up the lime juice, in an astonishingly delicious way, so I’ll be doing that again! The oil that came out of the pecans made the wok go crazy, so I ended up having to turn the heat down considerably. This bode well for my planned long cooking time.
Oh and I chucked the lime halves in just to extract as much flavour out of them as possible, but I didn’t actually eat the remaining husks. Their presence in the above picture is purely as a garnish.
The dill, as usual, was picked by me going through my dried herb collection and seeing what I liked the smell of today. You know, just like how the pros do it.
So, yes, positive for me, but most-likely mixed for others. I shall definitely be doing it again, only with the necessary tweaks implied above.
And it was half a cauliflower I used, just in case you’re curious.
Do stay in touch, darlings.
Toodles!
