Sufjan and Autoheroics

Thursday night was Sufjan-in-Amsterdam night. It might have been Sufjan-and-Animal-Collective-In-Amsterdam night, but it wasn’t, because the Paradiso in Amsterdam seems to have more than one room! In which there exist multiple concerts! And we only had tickets for Sufjan Stevens! (Incidentally, I want to start a Brian Wilson-style tribute to Sufjan called SURFjan Stevens!)

It was cool, though: I was delayed in arriving and we may or may not have gotten lost trying to find the place (Amsterdam-related difficulties), so we only saw the second half of Sufjan’s set. And there were full families packing the three-story standing-room-only venue, so I couldn’t see very well. And we were confused and still didn’t know if Animal Collective was playing in the same place or not. It was really fun.

Sufjan and the Illinoisemakers were good, though: they were dressed in normal indie clothes at first, but then they came out dressed as U. of I. cheerleaders for the first encore. They did an unimpressive human pyramid! It was so cool!

UPDATE: Oh yeah! Sufjan performed that song from Nip/Tuck last week! Yeah!

And then we missed Animal Collective, so I spent two hours of transfixion in front of a BBC documentary on Israel and Palestine back at the hostel. And then we spent the next day in Amsterdam, until we went back to Leuven.

Then I decided it was time for a shitty action movie. As I floated by the movie theater on the way home from the train station, I noticed that The Legend of Zorro — Antonio Banderas’s latest typecasting mistake — was playing an hour later.

So I paid my 7 euros, and then I bought beer and snacks in the snack shop, and then it sucked. It wasn’t even as good as the other Zorro films, because it seemed to be going for the Pirates of the Caribbean thing. Or perhaps it was just meant to be a kids movie, complete with semi-heroic overactive youngster and horse-related comic relief. Antonio Banderas couldn’t deliver the funny lines right, either; but I don’t blame him, because they weren’t natural.

Oh well. It was kind of like seeing Animal Collective.

Stay tuned for a Euromullet update sometime.