Whoops. euro-virgin and blogger virgin that I am, I mistakenly called yesterday "Saturday". It was Friday. Big deal, but, you know, for the sake of accuracy and all . . .

Today the Indiewire bloggers write haikus to honor this great city of Amsterdam. Here's mine, scrawled on the back of my hand at around 2am this morning . . .

Bikes! How fuckin' cool!
Everybody looks ten
times hotter on a bike.

Day started rough, with me sleeping in (for a grand total of 6 hours) and missing Bruce and Me. I've got one more chance to catch it on Wednesday, so that'll be ok.

Don't know if I can do the full on film-by-film review right now, but I saw Max By Chance (short and smart), Don't Fuck with the Lewises (disturbing and problematic), House of the Tiger King (sort of sublimely fantastic) and 24 hours on Craig's List, which belongs in a group of docs that are interesting, well-crafted, fairly engaging, but never expand past the existing framework of their construction and thus all blend together.

Learned about Amsterdam today too . . . Dinner at a good Indian restaurant called the Bombay Inn. Someone on Flyertalk said it had "the best Aloo Ghobi" in the world. Untrue. But it was very good, and Brian, Eugene and I got to hear crazy stories of obsessive drug use (not his) and aquatic exploits courtesy of David Flamholc, director of House of the Tiger King.

Later, I joined Sarah Price, Dan Ollman, Chris Smith and the Yes Men (Mike and Andy) along with some of their friends at a coffee shop. I drank Pear Looza like it was going out of style and learned about the early days of experimental video and inflatables. Good times.

Finally, the official IDFA party was once again in full swing at De Bailie. Lots of dancing, and some illicit "party pic" action fueled by the SilverDocs crew (they're mob deep here). Still, got to bed relatively early, as Sunday is my seven movie marathon day.

Oh yeah, and the bikes. Damn. It's so hott! Office workers, bankers, moms, students, old folks . . . everybody's on bikes! If I could take one thing from here back home, that would be it, hands down.

david

Um, I've been here for six days. Six days of mostly sitting in a dark room watching flickering lights. And you want socio-political insight? Sorry. Can't do it.

I've been learning what I can and talking to locals about everything from architecture to arts funding to Van Gogh's death, but I don't have too much to say on that just yet. And if I did, I hope you wouldn't trust my perspective any more than I'd trust that of a European who attempted to make sweeping statements about the US after spending six days in New York.

As for some of the specifics, I don't at any point say how "cool" it is to smoke dope. I don't smoke in the states, I'm not smoking here, and other than a seemingly functional application of the decriminalization of marijuana (which I support in the US) it doesn't seem like that big a deal here.

As for the bikes, well, I'll stand behind that. It's amazing to see the extent of the bike culture here. If similar numbers rode bikes across the US we'd be making incredible strides towards solving the energy crisis.

So, I'm going to keep reporting on films and food and parties and this whole crazy experience which is totally new to me. You're welcome to tune me out.

thank you very much for your help. You guys 40680 rock, thanks again.