may 1976.: by pics
Đenđi (left) still lived in the basement (... 14 words...). That current place belonged to Đenđi's grandmother (of sorts, perhaps grannyaunt), and this was the reason to meet several times and just sit with the old lady. She would cook sometimes, some interesting recipes. Some roast filled fish, and her special recipe for pašteta are something we still remember. This was probably shot in her kitchen, for it resembles none of the other places from the time.
The brucošijada* on my college wasn't held last year, so we went for it this year. There was booze everywhere, there was a band on the stage, I even remember joining them on just tambourine and general shouting. Dancing in the hallways, and in the A2 room, the awful acoustics of which finally served some purpose, it got properly loud. At some point we noticed a guy in uniform, thinking that maybe some of colleagues just decided to serve and there prepare the Analysis II exam, but no, it was Dragan Antić... pretty much the way anyone from showbiz would find a way to serve in a larger city, not on any mountain or border, and to get an evening out to perform somewhere every now and then. This guy was actually a nobody, a one-hit-wonder, a protegee of a 15 year older lady singer, with whom he got married later, and stayed so for some twenty years. He was tolerated by the gang as long as he kept singing with us, but the moment when he started singing his one hit, within five seconds someone started to sing something else, and everyone joined in that other song.
You got an evening off, buddy, let that be enough.
This is me, solarized. I did many such experiments those years.
The little camping table was in use all the way from spring to fall, as the terrace table. This time Ilona was present (the barely visible third cup on the right was hers), and on another shot she has an umbrella. We simply didn't want to surrender our afternoon coffee to rain. The little ashtray on the near corner was generally mom's. The shot is not good enough to notice one chipped corner. The piece of white porcelain in the middle of the table is the famous lavor [foot basin] (v. 02-IX-2024.), the large ashtray that's been around since forever. Lavor is the vessel in which one washes feet or small laundry. The red box is "Filter Jugoslavija" that mom smoke at the time. I was probably already on škija - yup, the white stub without filter, that's it.
About these coffee cups. This is definitely NOT from the gallery „Sebastian“ (not -ijan, -ian, it was in Dubrovnik), but was obviously influenced by it. Such pieces of nice industrial design were en vogue at the time, and it did feel like sign of a better life, we have nice things and they didn't cost arm and a leg.
(... 16 words...)
I think this was the month when it happened to decide for an afternoon movie, at 18:00, and then go somewhere afterwards. There were three theatres downtown, the big Arena in the building of the department store on the boulevard, with huge built curved screen, amphiteatre seating, and six channel sound system (which we heard just once, some vehicle drove from the balcony, down the right wall, to the screen), all great but... it showed the superspectacles, the fad of catastrophy movies, that kind of salad. The other two were in old houses around the centre, one didn't have a street entrance. There was also a kino garden, roofless, but we didn't go there too many times (I remember we saw „Gimme shelter“ there), because by the time it opens, the academic year is almost done, exam time.
For this ocassion we went to the one on the main square, entrance through the yard of an old house, to watch „Otalia de Bahia“. There seems to have been some snafu with the reels, because we remembered there being a certain Brian de Palma in the credits, and the plot didn't make much sense, perhaps they played the reels in wrong order, or we browsed the posters diagonally and poor Brian's film was due on weekend. I know we played with „Brajane, de je palma?“ (Brian, where's the palm) several times. Eventually decided this was the worst movie show we ever attended, so decided to recoup it by going to the other backstreet theatre, where they showed the latest Hitchcock, „Family plot“. Turned out that it was his last one, he threw the spoon few months later. [four years later, but this really was his last movie]
Two Vietnams united, finally.
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* brucoš is a junior college student. The expression is at least a hundred years old. Bruca is a pubic hair.
Mentions: 02-IX-2024., Đenđi Ujfaluši, Ilona Gnajs, pašteta, škija, in serbian
24-III-2020 - 31-X-2025