WEBVTT

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(Louisiana channel - David Hocney: Photoshop is boring)

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[David Hockney] The invention of photography

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was an invention of chemicals

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and in a way, chemical photography is now ended.

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It lasted - what? - 160 years.

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Now, nobody thought chemical photography would end.

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Nobody predicts that, do they?

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It ended - it certainly has ended now.

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Kodak stopped making fixative about eight years ago, I think.

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And the fixative was the invention.

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Daguerre did it his way

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and in England Fox Talbot, who was playing with cameras,

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and meaning, seeing these images -

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and remember, they saw them in color: you always see them in color;

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they were surprised that the photograph was black and white

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when they first came out -

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but, he said to Sir John Herschel:

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"How can I -- how can we fix this image?"

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They could get it on paper, using silver

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but it didn't last long.

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And in fact, sir John Herschel said:

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"Oh well, if you want to fix it, you need this, this and this"

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and wrote out the formula for fixative

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that was still being manufactured till eight years ago.

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So now, we've now moved out of that period.

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I will point out, I - in 1989, I was invited by Adobe, in Silicon Valley,

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to the launch of Photoshop.

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And they invited a few people for various reasons.

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I tink I was invited because they'd seen the photo collage I'd done

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of - of Pearblossom Highway.

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And so they invited me and I went up with my assistant, Richard.

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And I took my dogs as well.

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They said - I saw it -

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there are two things they don't like in Silicon Valley:

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smokers and dogs.

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I said "Well, you got to lump it,

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I'm here and you'll have to do it."

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But they were showing as well - we tried things [check]

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And when we were driving back to LA, I said

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"Wow, that was all about drawing

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and it's the end of chemical photography."

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Because you can't do this with chemical photography.

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It has to be digital for the Photoshop.

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And I was a bit early, but nevertheless,

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I could see that's what was coming.

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The one-hour Photomat place was going to disappear

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- that's what I had been using, things like that.

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And it has implications that I began to see.

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They've got bigger,

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they're still there now, they're getting bigger.

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In a way, I mean to say, useful thing, Photoshop

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but I think it has made a lot of magazines look very similar,

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rather boring.

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It polishes photography, they put the highlights in,

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take them blemishes away, I mean that sort of thing,

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love it in Hollywood,

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they all touch up things.

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But I mean, it's also causing a kind of stale look

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- to me, anyway, to me.

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But that's why, if you need, you know,

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even fashion magazines, thirty years ago,

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would have quite a lot of drawings in them

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so you got a different thing as you looked through pages.

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But not many people draw now, so it's all photography

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and I think, getting more and more boring because of it, I think.

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I mean, I was - we were just in the Picasso show here, you know.

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I was looking at that owl, that marvelous owl

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and today, I pointed out, well,

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some people just stuff a real owl and put it in a case.

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It's not that interesting.

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And I was explaining to my young friend

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why Picasso's is so marvelous is

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It isn't an owl, it's a human being looking at an owl.

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It's an account of a human being looking at an owl.

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So that's what thrills us.

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There is more owlness there than in the stuffed owl.

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If you find a way to solve something -

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I was talking about the Spring, you know,

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I'm working on that now in England -

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and how would you depict the arrival of Spring?

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The arrival of Spring is too slow for a movie to catch it.

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It moves too - it moves, but it moves too slowly

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for the movie camera.

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And it's also not that easy to photograph

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because the very first signs of it is so subtle

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the camera doesn't see them that well.

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But if the human eye sees it, you can exaggerate a little

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the first little green shoots coming up,

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you emphasize the green.

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The cameras can't - they're not that good on color, really,

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I mean, they don't see the subtle colors at all, actually.

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It's OK, you know, on a beach, color photography

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but with greens, it's not that good, really,

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even today it's not.

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Even, I mean, when we use nine cameras,

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and therefore we could use different exposures on each one,

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we didn't get a bigger range of greens.

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I know that, I mean I know about,

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I know about technical things, about film and things.

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But it's a -

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peop-- you know,

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not much is written often about these technical problems

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they're technical problems.

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You can overcome them but

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if you're not taught about them much,

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some people forget that they are problems

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and how they have to be sorted out.

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I've been dealing with the Winter in East Yorkshire.

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It's a climate, just like this really, just over the water.

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It's a very similar climate,

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very similar horticulture and agriculture

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I mean, the Spring is just beginning here, isn't it?

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It's just beginning there.

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And - but of course, you don't get Spring in Southern California,

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not big anyway -

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and I found there was more color in the Winter,

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that the road, this little road, is darkest of all

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at the height of Summer

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because all the leaves of - come over it, it's like a tunnel

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and it's darker in it.

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But I mean, you get in light coming in.

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But that's its darkest.

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It's at its lightest in the Winter if it snows,

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because you get reflection from the ground.

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And we filmed it with nine cameras,

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I'm drawing it all the time as well.

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My local doctor we're friendly with, you know,

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because she is a pai-- an amateur painter,

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and she comes to the studio

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and I'm showing her the pictures.

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And then we showed her the films.

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And she said:

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"God, I've never looked at this little street!"

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And she said, next time she came, she said:

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"You inspired us, David.

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We drove down and took a long walk,

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a darned long walk [check]

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after watching your films and those things."

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And I said:

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"Well, it's a lovely, it's a

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- I'll tell you what's very nice about there:

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it's a very, rather isolated bit of England.

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It's very isolated partly because there's a wide river,

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the Humber, to the South

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and there are not many people there,

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not many people live there,

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it's agricultural, great one agricultural land [check]

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so they don't build on it much.

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Not many people.

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And we can - we painted in it, filmed in it,

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nobody's - nobody there to stop you.

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In L.A.! Oh, if you got out a camera in a car,

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you'd have had to get permits,

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you'd have to get police riding to protect you,

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install lines [check]

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Hollywood cops and things.

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But in East Yorkshire, we come, we do it, nobody bothers us,

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We're hanging on jeeps, you know.

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I mean, actually, once JP and I,

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we were going out painting with our canvasses

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and you never see anybody out there,

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and suddenly, aboard a Toyota truck [check]

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four policemen jump out and we got a ticket:

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we hadn't put our seat belts on.

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And OK, we were just not going far [check],

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we were going to get out the canvas. [check]

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And so we got the tickets.

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One of the policemen is looking out of the window to me

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and saying "You got to have the seatbelt,

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death is lurking everywhere."

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Well, I'm looking out of the window and I mean,

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I mean at leaves coming on the trees,

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the spring is coming out, and I say:

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"Well, you know, life is lurking everywhere as well!" [laughs]

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Anyway, we got the tickets,

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we might put them in the exhibition, actually.

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But we were going to paint, you know,

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set up six canvasses.

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Well, if they saw us with these cameras,

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we'd have been taken out to jail, probably, I mean

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because we were hanging on.

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But we're not going very f--

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I mean, we were going, you know, 10 miles an hour.

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They'd leave it alone, probably,

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but it was amusing that we got the ticket for the seatbelts.

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I did tell them that I was not particularly into bondage, me:

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I'm not, actually.

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I don't like the seatbelts. [laughs]

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A lot of people are into bondage -- I don't like --

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and it's OK: good fun, sometimes.

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(Louisiana channel)

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(Supported by Nordea Funden)

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(louisiana.dk/channel)

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