The southern catholic cities in Dutchland celebrate carnival- very similar to South America, except that it is much colder. So really, there wasn't much chance of partial nudity.
Nevertheless, I decided to go along this year, to catch up on some of my missing Dutch cultural upbringing. If I were to describe it in one sentence, it would be this one: "It was a cross between St Patrick's day and a giant Halloween party where the theme was "bad music", held outdoors on a dry winter's day. Classy indeed.
Our group went to a city called Breda. It is a large-ish city with very nice, quaint stone buildings and streets, apart from this weekend, of course. There were brass bands competing with each other and street-side clubs for air-vibrations, there were floats and confetti and costumes...
There were many different costumes to be seen. Pirates, sailors, sexy pirates, sexy sailors, "furries" (people in animal costumes), sea monsters, astronauts, monks, blackface preachers, a homeless man, a sexy homeless man, a ghost buster, Mexicans, Japanese tourists, prisoners, cowboys, anerexic whores, fruit, animals, and a whole lot of people who just wore the most garish wigs, glasses and rags they could find. There was something for everyone.
Yes, there were people in Black-face, without them, you-know, getting killed on the spot. The Obama costume is ridiculous. Just with an afro (which Obama doesn't even have), blackface and a homeless-man style sign, he is doing a terrible impersonation of Obama. (Although it is a great "racist douche-bag costume")To blend in, we were also encouraged to dress up in some way. This was my opportunity to fulfil a lifelong dream. To dress up as Michael Jackson.
I know it is ridiculous. I wouldn't call myself a fan by any stretch, but I happen to think he was awesome, and I wish he had died in about 1992-93. Seriously, let's ignore the little boys for a minute and you will see that no-one will ever be able to touch him... as a performer. If he had died, noone would even dare put Elvis, or Hendrix, or Jim Morrison, or Sinatra anywhere near his level. Old age is a curse for an artistic genius.
Let my comedic idol, George Carlin sum it up for me (contains some bad words)
The point is, I didn't grow up with Halloween in New Zealand, and I missed out each year in Japan. I haven't played "dress ups" since I was Kilroy the Mouse from the book "The Eleventh hour" at a school "favourite book character" day. That was a long time ago.
Seeing as my generation is the youngest possible age to remember Michael Jackson as the King of Pop, and remember wanting to go to Neverland, I feel it was almost my duty to impersonate him at such a culturally important event. I managed to scrape together a costume on the morning before leaving- a rubber hat and a white sparkly exfoliating glove, for 5.80 Euro. It was probably the highest-cheap/authentic ratio at the festival (except for possibly the homeless guy). The rest of my costume I was able to piece together from my already limited wardrobe to more or less imitate this immortal image from Bille Jean:
And below is me. Sure, I didn't have the time to be-jewel my jacket, and I took some liberty in rolling up the sleeves and wearing a surgical mask (made from tissue a white insulation tape). But everybody knew it who I was supposed to be- even an elderly couple who sat down next to me on the train.
And here is a classic street-light scene, although by this stage of the night, the white stripe on my pants had long fallen off amongst the masses of drunkards.
While taking in some sights outside of the main city, we came across this alley-way that just seemed perfect for an MJ music video. I couldn't help myself as I busted out all my dance moves. (The video is 14 seconds long).In all, it was a fun day. An odd day. In fact, one of the strangest conversations I have ever been in happened. One of the many times I went to get a beer, an old guy looked me up and down.
"What are you supposed to be?", he asked. "A gynacologist?"
"No, I am Michael Jackson"
"Oh, so your costume failed then. Where are you from?"
"Leiden. I'm with a group of foreign students."
"Oh, I can hear your accent, where are you from?"
"New Zealand." I replied, the conversation was now normal and harmless, but annoying as he immediately switched to English despite this conversation having been all in Dutch up till now.
"Sho, fwatch da gaishin like in New Zheeland?" He said, in a thick Dutch accent, which I couldn't pick up straight away.
"What?" I asked.
"De gay schene"
"Huh? I ask.
"You know", he says, "Have you ever heard of the gays?" He gestures a gay gesture. (use your imagination.)
"Oh", I say, not particularly enthused.
"What's the gay scene like?" he asks again.
...
Ah, welcome to Dutchland!
As the night closed in, the crowd became visibly younger and drunker. Each bar had lines of hundreds waiting to get in, despite the god-awful music. Seriously, you could sing the same words to each song, and these words would be: "La La La"... As far as I could tell, there wasn't much difference between these songs and the Smurf's theme tune.
So in all, it was fun, but I was happy to leave this behind. After all, I'm from Rotterdam- a non catholic, non carnival city. For me, it was like admiring cultures where they put spears though their face. It's kind of cool to see, but happily, it wasn't my culture after all.
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