I grew up in Bunghole Ville, Southern Holland. Where the
favorit pas-time is still watching paint dry.


The early to middle part consisted of

* endless days of swimming at the local lake district
* moussed hair
* horrible brightly coloured over-priced O’Neill sweaters
* "La Gear"’s with shark-like gills on the side
* bragging about having sex with multiple partners at age 15
* secretly ogling a copy of Playboy by the bike shed [argh]
* secretly being a big fat virgin
* the earthquake and the multiple floods
* world soccer card madness
* a bizarrely filthy mouth
* mind numbing holidays in Normandy, France.
* friday-afternoon friends group hanging out near school


Which was basically what everyone was into at that time.
It never occurred to me that you could look beyond that and
Discover other things, things you REALLY liked. So,



The latter part solely consisted out of



* vegetarianism, existentialist nihilism
* actual sex, which we all talked about but which very few of us enjoyed
* the prodigy, death in Vegas, chemical brothers, future sound of london
* tripping on acid and dancing like a spastic at Phoenix on a friday nite.
* herbal tea and sunflower seeds, quorn and cigarettes
* secretly wishing we could still be virgins
* Eric von Däniken, Tarot, Kabala and mystecism
* open air concerts, dynamo, pinkpop, lowlands
* trying to drink your own morning urine
* having a dirty old man pay you for your morning urine
* reefer sleepovers
* undescernable growth of hair on the chin, supposed goatee
* Jamiroquay, adidas shoes and velvet pants
* Massive ‘underground’ dance parties in abandoned factory halls
* Spiked hair, twirled hair, hair as hard as concrete
* Tequila w/o salt or lemon, deep fried chicken w crispy crust

And with the return of the chicken came an end to it all. I cut my hair,
shaved my chin and grew up. Well, a little bit anyway


damneditsallthetime
[This message was edited Wed Jan 22 7:37:41 PST 2003 by IstenSzek]

ConsciousContact said:

Thank you, ConsciousContact...could you elaborated on the part I quoted? Sounds interesting.

LaVisHh said:

thanks... i hate how imperialistic the US is... it seems to me that if hawaii wanted to secede from the US, they should be able to do just that... forget all of the bullshit... how is the US government going to rationlize that one anyway...


"hawaii wants to be independent again..."
"no"
"why the hell not?"
""

LaVisHh said:

Okay.

Looking at wildlife with my father at five in the morning.

Playbacking to ABBA songs with my sister.

Setting up a play on the stage at my father's place, even though that mostly changed into dressing up in the prop attic. Pretending to be a roman.

Playing with Playmobil and Lego on my room.

My mother playing Neil Diamond.

My brother playing Black Sabbath.

Locking myself into my room and wondering why I was so lonely and blaming it on everyone and everything besides myself.

Obsessing over TOUCH, by The Eurythmics and then Purple Rain by Prince & The Revolution.

Sitting on the bench outside the graveyard where my father is buried together with my best friend and realising the world is a big place, but I like it better in small places.

gooeythehamster said:

Damn yes, I forgot to include that in mine. It was the
same with me. First Eurythmics obsession and then, all
of a sudden a major PRINCE obsession.

IstenSzek :O Wow!

IstenSzek said:

I just (L) you, you know that?

Still live in Bunghole Ville?

I'll be in Amsterdam (Bong Ville) from the 5th to the 10th, having a beer with some friends on the 8th.
IF you're around, wanna join us? There'll be other orgers there... I bet you fit right into my crowd.

IstenSzek said:

Twins, seperated at birth, I am sure..

EllisDee said:

Hawaii is cursed by way of their location. It's been the perfect midway point for travel by boat or plane...sadly, you are correct.

They want to be seperate, and what is cool, is they recognise the local people whose families arrived long ago, who helped build Hawaii. They do things non-violently, and are educating themselves to win their silent war...

Thank you, Ongbotty...and I have to agree - I prefer small places too.

gooeythehamster said:

I'll see what I can arrange and let you know something
quickly as possible. Promise.

I'm from a place 10 km below amsterdam, named Kudelstaart. I lived in a big house (according to Dutch standards, small country + many people = small houses) next to a lake.
Most important was the basement, where I was always playing music with my brother and my neighbours.

Holland is one of the world's most crowded places. It's extremely flat and where I lived, it was several metres below sea level.
It was nearby Schiphol, Europes fifth airport. Every morning I could hear by the sound of the distant planes what the whether would be like.

Because the lake is higher than the land, surrounded by dykes, it never felt crowded. You could always look across the lake and feel like you're in the middle of nature, with a huge skie above you.

Skating was even better. It was 10 km to the other side. The lake was only 4 m. deep, so the surface freezes pretty easily (though it hasn't the last 6 years). Many times I've skated across this huge mirror under the blue sky.

All over the Netherlands, there are lakes like these.

The flat land causes the clouds to be really beautiful and the big sky and the fresh sea air make you feel like the Netherlands are less crowded than they are.

Now I live in Amsterdam. I studied communication science (hated it), and then worked for the government for 1,5 years. I hated that too, quit, and managed to become a viable pop/rock musician and composer, doing some other free lance work beside it (copywriting and taking part in facilitating teams for large scale group processes).

Amsterdam is the best. After 12 years, I still think so.
- first time on the bike through Amsterdam, 12 years ago. That was better than driving a car for the first time. I felt freee!
- sneaking into the local zoo with the ladies at night,
- relaxing on the terrace in the Vondelpark, where you'll always meet some friends, perhaps skating or jogging by,
- queensday, hot weather, performing with the band on a boat filled with people dressed like partying homosexuals, and I was being pulled across the canals wearing a bathrobe,
- drinking my coffee and reading the morning paper in one of my three favorite diners,
- eating chinese in a very good chinese restaurant with original chinese food, not the western thing. It looks like a bathroom, in the middle of the Red Light district (the heart of Amsterdam)
- i love everyone being so casual and direct, but it's almost offensive if you're not used to it.
[This message was edited Wed Jan 22 8:14:54 PST 2003 by LillianLaughs]

Nice, thank you, LillianLaughs...I could almost see what you were describing.

des moines, iowa:

the duane & floppy show (any other iowans on this site might remember this show..."where's floppy?")

twin bing candy

maid-rite (loose-meat) sandwiches

the ruan grand prix (till they stopped doin it in the summer of '91 or so )

candy kitchen (candy sto' on the northside of des moines...that wuz the place 2 go 4 yummies)

the court avenue farmers' market every summer

king ying low (chinese restaurant downtown--they had the best shrimp fried rice in town)

the intersection of 16th & forest

drake park



...i could go on all day...

Oh don't stop, Handclapsfingasnapz!

Describe the town, or area if like.

LaVisHh said:

o-tay!

like p, i wuz born & raised on the northside of town...it wuz a fairly decent side of town till like the late '80s, when crack cocaine infiltrated des moines and gang activity got really bad. the city of des moines renovatin the hell outta the northside nowadays...i call my dad and he keeps tellin me what they're buildin and that i probably wouldn't recognize half the place.

des moines ain't really nothin more than another minneapolis, except dm's smaller & has a lot less 2 do--no clubs, really (everytime one opens there's a shootin or some fool acts up )...it's a pretty quiet place, 'cept 4 the northside. me and my dad moved over 2 the southeast side of town about 13 years ago, cuz he wuz sick of the northside and he wanted sumfin betta...i hated the southside (i still do ), cuz it wuz so frickin slow over there...



here's the des moines skyline at night.....



....and here's the edit message!
[This message was edited Wed Jan 22 9:06:04 PST 2003 by Handclapsfingasnapz]

Sheesh, it seems from most posts that things are changing for the worst.

i grew up on a farm in frederick,md.

i was surrounded by fields of corn and grazing cows.

i had almost every animal from foxes to pigs to horses to rabbits.

i remember the first time i saw a chicken get slaughter, that was NOT fun but i still like chicken

my childhood was very peaceful but isolated since i was an only child and lived so far away from everything.

sadly, the place were i grew up in is now a housing development. the house i grew up in was torn down to make room for the development's entrance sign

Aw Denver! Growing up in Denver, not quite the Cosmpolitan city, but on it's way, at that time.

When we were kids we would go to the "Pickel Factory".
They made dill pickles there. On thursdays they would sort out the cucumbers. We would take whatever they didn't want and share with our neighbors. I can still remember the taste of those cucumbers, fresh, crisp...

Shopping at the downtown was always the highlight for me..Mom would take me to the five and dime, and you could find so many neat things..I was in heaven. Then we would go over to Woolworth's and have a slice of pizza.

Looking west from downtown Denver you can see the snow capped mountains. So majestic, so beautiful.

Playing down at the creek with my two brothers (now deceased), tying a rope around the tree and swinging back and forth..

sparxxxtresss, thank you.

Do you have any pictures of the farm you grew up on?

There was not much in my childhood to link me to my hometown, Gary, Indiana.

As a child, I remember walking to the candy store, which, of course, was in a lady's living room, playing baseball and basketball outside for hours, playing ditch at night, and talking to girls through an open window.

Sorry LaV, not much happened in Gary.

Ah, nice. sag10.

Woolworths and Kress. They don't make them like that anymore... I loved the homemade breakfasts at both those places. At Kress, they had the entire kitchen out in the open, and you would order up your food at a breakfast counter...all the ladies wore nets on their hair, and white dresses...

I forgot the all-time classic game "leg." This is basically pitching quarters to a line in the sidewalk. The closest to the line won. If it landed perfectly in the crack, you won two quarter, "dough boy." Also, if your toss went in the grass, you lost two quarters.

LaVisHh said:

i do but i don't have a scanner and i'm too lazy to take them to staples to get them transfered to a cd.

jbchavez said:

Hey, nothing wrong with that! You just described many of my days of playing at the park, going to the general store for candy/ice cream, and playing with anything and everything around us.

sparxxxtresss said:

I just meant as a memory, and you answered my question. Thanks.

I thought of two more things...

The penny candy store was called Helen's they had the best assortment of penny candy. I use to take my dollar and buy these little nugget gums in a pouch, red licorice wrapped around a little black dot, it was suppose to be a record. Dots attached to a paper, and red waxed lips, and waxed nails..

At dawn a bunch of us kids would get together and form two teams to play "Red Rover", it was something like... red rover, red rover, send sag10 right over. You would have to run across the grass and try to break the arm link of the other team. If you did then you got to be on that team.

sag10 said:

Me too! But the store was called, Paauhau Store, LOL...creative eh?

I remember Red Rover...we had all sorts of games - cuz we were all poor.

A game of "Ghoul", where we had teams and the goal was to steal a "slipper/flip-flops" from the other team, and bring it back without being tagged. If you were tagged, you were "out".

The usual tag and hide n seek were big time favorites too. The local workers supplied a club house with baseball, tennis, and basketball supplies that we could use too.

Yes, we were poor too!

We created so many different activities, that didn't involve money..

How did we do it?

sag10 said:

Simple. Mom chased everyone ouside, we ended up at the park, and used our imagination to have fun!

Trees, dirt, leaves, cut grass, etc...all free!