As tradition would have it, my last post of the year is a big end-of-year list. (2003, ’04, ’05, ’06 and ’07) This year’s list is a bit long, I’m afraid. Make a nice end to this year, and see you on the other side.
Music
- Album of the year
- a balladeer — Where Are You, Bambi Woods?
- Bløf — Oktober
- Daniël Lohues — Allenig II
- Ayreon — 01011001
- Opeth — Watershed
- Song of the year
- Cover of the year
- Winner: Wende – Laat me (Ma dernière volonté) (original version by Serge Reggiani, Dutch version made famous by Ramses Shaffy) [youtube]
[download] - Honourable mention: Lisa Loeb — Love is a Rose (I didn’t know the original version by Neil Young, but it’s the sweetest little song)
[download]
- Winner: Wende – Laat me (Ma dernière volonté) (original version by Serge Reggiani, Dutch version made famous by Ramses Shaffy) [youtube]
- Inspirational theme song of the year
- Musical (re-)discoveries of the year
- Daniël Lohues / Skik
- Cher (1987–1991)
- Live performances (and other cultural events) I’ve attended this year
- 2008–12–09 — Wende, Stadstheater, Zoetermeer
- 2008–12–01 — Dolf Jansen, Echt / Oudejaarsvoorstelling 2008, De Flint, Amersfoort
- 2008–11–25 — Opeth + Cynic + The Ocean, Melkweg, Amsterdam
- 2008–11–17 — Within Temptation, Vredenburg Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht
- 2008–11–11 — “Tanz der Vampire”, Metronom Theater, Oberhausen, Germany
- 2008–11–06 — Bløf, Tivoli Oudegracht, Utrecht
- 2008–11–01 — Theatergroep Ponies, Kaas en de Evolutietheorie, Theater Kikker, Utrecht
- 2008–10–07 — a balladeer + Long Conversations and the Closet Orchestra, Tivoli De Helling, Utrecht
- 2008–09–15 — Golden Earring, De Flint, Amersfoort
- 2008–08–04 — Meat Loaf, Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam
- 2008–07–06 — Xystus & USConcert, Equilibrio, Vredenburg Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht
- 2008–06–18 — Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Amsterdam Arena, Amsterdam
- 2008–05–23 — Bløf + Stevie Ann, Vechtse Banen, Utrecht
- 2008–05–16 — Wende & Het Metropole Orkest, Muziekcentrum Frits Philips, Eindhoven
- 2008–05–14 — Jon Oliva’s Pain + Manticora + Masterstroke, 013, Tilburg
- 2008–05–07 — Daniël Lohues, Allennig II, Orpheus, Apeldoorn
- 2008–04–27 — Maaike Martens (lunchconcert), Stadsschouwburg, Utrecht
- 2008–03–21 — Nightwish + Pain, Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam
- 2008–03–15 — Annatar + Vanedís, De IJsbreker, Leusden
- 2008–03–01 — Van Muiswinkel & Van Vleuten, Prediker en Hooglied, De Flint, Amersfoort
- 2008–02–24 — Wende, Stadsschouwburg, Utrecht
- 2008–02–08 — Jeroen van Merwijk, Graag, meneer Van Merwijk, De Flint, Amersfoort
- 2008–01–27 — Ayreon, 01011001 release party, Stairway to Heaven, Utrecht
- Concert of the year
- 2008–05–14 — Jon Oliva’s Pain + Manticora + Masterstroke, 013, Tilburg
- 2008–05–07 — Daniël Lohues, Allennig II, Orpheus, Apeldoorn
- 2008–06–18 — Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, Amsterdam Arena, Amsterdam
- 2008–05–16 — Wende & Het Metropole Orkest, Muziekcentrum Frits Philips, Eindhoven
- 2008–11–11 — “Tanz der Vampire”, Metronom Theater, Oberhausen, Germany
- Honourable mention
- 2008–11–17 — Within Temptation, Vredenburg Leidsche Rijn, Utrecht
- And the “The Singer Should Be Fired Award” goes to…
- 2008–08–04 — Meat Loaf, Heineken Music Hall, Amsterdam
- Best Performance by a band I hadn’t heard of
- 2008–03–15 — Annatar, De IJsbreker, Leusden
- Musical OMGWTFBBQ of the year
- Coldplay made an album that didn’t suck, and is actually quite good.
Literature
- Books I’ve read this year (in reversed chronological order)
- Stephen King — Storm of the Century
- Neil Gaiman — Coraline
- Terry Pratchett — Small Gods
- John Ajvide Lindqvist — Let the Right One In (Låt Den Rätte Komma In)
- Christopher Paolini — Brisingr (Inheritance Book Three)
- Neil Gaiman — The Graveyard Book
- Stephen King — Dolores Claiborne
- Michael Scott — The Alchemyst (The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel)
- Stephen King — Secret Windows: Essays and Fiction on the Craft of Writing
- Stephen King — Gerald’s Game
- Cees Nooteboom — Philip en de anderen
- J. Bernlef — Eclips
- Philip Pullman — Once Upon a Time in the North
- George Orwell — Nineteen Eighty-Four
- Stephen King — Four Past Midnight
- Neil Gaiman — Stardust, Being a Romance Within the Realms of Faerie
- George Orwell — Animal Farm
- Terry Pratchett — Soul Music
- Stephen King — Pet Cemetary
- Edgar Wallace — Mr. Justice Maxell
- Terry Pratchett — Hogfather
- Christopher Hitchens — God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything
- Stephen King — Duma Key
- Nick Hornby — High Fidelity
- Rich Wilson — Lifting Shadows, The Authorized Biography of Dream Theater
- Joris Luyendijk — Het zijn net mensen: Beelden uit het Midden-Oosten
- Jeroen van Merwijk — Dit lees je nooit
- H.P. Lovecraft — Tales of H.P. Lovecraft: Major works selected and introduced by Joyce Carol Oates
- Favorite books of the year
- Favorite non-fiction book of the year
- Joris Luyendijk — Het zijn net mensen: Beelden uit het Midden-Oosten
- The books I enjoyed the least (or enjoyed for all the wrong reasons)
This website
- There have been 4,137 visits from 2,639 unique visitors, resulting in 7,003 pageviews. Thanks for stopping by.
- Visitors came by from 76 countries on all six continents. Top 5 countries with the most visitors:
- The Netherlands
- United States
- United Kingdom
- Belgium (hi, John)
- Germany
- Search engines account for 30.99% of my visitors, and like last year Google is the most popular by far. 648 different keywords have been recorded
- Most keywords fall in the following categories
- a (random) book title generator
- evil nickname(s)
- 5, 9 or 18 levels of hell
- meat loaf, jim steinman, “I’d Do Anything for Love” and related stuff
- breastcancer, PGD and the mess the Christenunie made of that
- Then, there were some interesting searches that ended up somewhere on this website
- how to say i look like a idiot in dutch
- nightwish tuomas chipped nail polish
- jesus cyste the musical
- meatloaf in commercial with his actual son?
- mouthsex
- Finally, these keywords make me all feel fuzzy inside and give me a sense of “job well done”
- why things are said that don’t make sense
- i thought of you today
- meatloaf and axl rose herods song (and other demented variations thereof)
- Of the 115 posts I made this year (that’s about one post every three days), these were the most popular:
- Old Crow out of Hell (262 pageviews)
- On the Midnight at the Lost and Found singles (134)
- No promises, no debts (130)
- On the Secret Dreams & Forbidden Fire singles (101)
- Friday night at Lost&Found (85)
- Other popular pages include
- The Book Title Generator 2.0 (956 pageviews — 464 of them on July 29, when it got stumbleupon‘d.)
- the slides for my presentation on what Meat Loaf won’t do for love (116)
- Over 15 people (including me) left 65 comments, while some 3000 comments were automagically rejected as spam.
- In the browser wars, Internet Explorer seems to be losing ground. Good. Even better, the amount of visitors using IE6 this month has dropped to 15% of all IE-using visitors, from 30% in January.
- The download page alone wasted 8.6 Gigabytes of bandwidth. The most popular of the public downloads were:
- Karla DeVito – Wake ‘Em Up in Tokyo (full album) (2GB)
- Meat Loaf – Bat Out Of Hell (live version) (416MB)
- Bonnie Tyler – Holding Out for a Hero (extended remix version) (194MB)
- Bonnie Tyler – Holding Out for a Hero (instrumental) (193MB)
- Bonnie Tyler – It’s Not Enough (183MB)
- Meat Loaf – Lost Love (182MB)
- Bonnie Tyler – I Do It for Yo (169MB)
- Bonnie Tyler – Under Suspicion (161MB)
- Desmond Child and Todd Rundgren discussing the idiocy that is “If God Could Talk” (156MB, which is strange, as I removed the link on January 2, 2008)
- Bonnie Tyler – Loving You’s A Dirty Job (weird version) (154MB, and no one who could identify that version)
- The (almost) Complete Meat Loaf & Jim Steinman lyric archive burned away 812MB of bandwidth, which mostly consists of HTML, CSS and the occasional image. There were 24k visits to 53k pages.
Everything Else
- Favorite website of the year
- Boston.com’s The Big Picture
- Favorite word of the year
- Toeterturk (someone who celebrates an event by driving a car around while blasting the horn loudly, perferably in the middle of the night)
- Least favorite word of the year
- Swaffelen (to swing and intentionally tap the male genitalia against an object)
- Places I’ve spent the night this year
- Reasons why, this year too, tall people rule harder than the short ones
- Just because.
- Things that bothered me to no end this year
- People writing ‘copy write’ when they mean copyright, ‘web sight’ when they mean ‘website’, and variations on that theme.
- “Ik heb hier een brief voor me moeder.”, “Dat is me fiets.” and similar insults to the Dutch language.
- The expletive ‘crapdammit’ still not breaking through into the mainstream.
- Stupid people with stupid opinions.
- Catering to Internet Explorer 6’s vast array of inaquadicies.
- Things that, as fas as I’m concerned, may go extinct in 2009
- Complaints about the ban on smoking: it’s there, it doesn’t seem like it’s going away, it’s your dirty habit, so suck it up and don’t bother me with it.
- Politicians trying to force their religious worldviews on the rest.
- Everything 2.0. In fact, make that everything digit point decimal that isn’t actually software.
- Internet Explorer 6. Outdated piece of crap.
- People adding disclaimers like “but that’s how I feel” to almost everything they say. It’s your opinion, so stand by it. Own your words.
- Favorite photo’s I shot this year
- My year in tweets
- observation: as soon as it starts to rain, people in cars turn into total fuckwits 5:45 PM Jan 21st
- Briefgeheimen: “Als ik tussen ander mensen loop voel ik me net een reus.. ik ben 1m95.” Cry me a river. http://tinyurl.com/2pqj96 6:07 PM Mar 11th
- zelf zoiets verzinnen lukt je niet: “homobelangenorganisatie wijst homoseksuele relaties af” http://tinyurl.com/39v7rz 9:22 AM Apr 3rd
- “Bel de bergingsdienst, ik voel me een wrak,” kent u die uitdrukking? 8:34 AM Apr 17th
- Juggling is not for me: I almost had a big-ass kitchen knife sticking through my hand. 6:44 PM Apr 30th
- me: 1 – people peddling religion and the bible: a big fat zero 10:37 AM May 22nd
- Why is it, to cite Ian Hunter, that all of the good ones are taken? 2:00 AM May 31st
- The downside of staying somewhere with less privacy than home: crazy behaviour will be noticed. No singing along with Maiden for me. 3:25 PM Aug 8th
- apathy sucked my interest in almost anything out of me 11:56 PM Aug 20th
- Once again, a member of the female species told me she didn’t want to see me anymore. She was my physical therapist, but still 9:17 AM Nov 20th
- Things I’m planing to do in 2009
- Write more and better stuff.
- Perfect my crème brûlée making skills. The first try was perfect apart from the caramelized top, the second a complete and utter failure except for the top.
- I’m going to try to keep up the ‘see at least one concert or other cultural event each month’ schedule.
- See at least one version of Tanz der Vampire. (How about combining Belgium and Vienna?)
- Finish my list of 100 things I want to do before I die.
- Furthermore: don’t mess with perfection.