There Is Nothing To Not Be Amazed At

2002-11-28T00:57:00.000+01:00

Don't Call It A Comeback:
Surprisingly enough I actually had a pretty good day today. I managed to stop by school and get some work done and I got to hang out with a lot of people (read: girls) I haven't seen in ages. I plan on doing the same tomorrow and Friday in an attempt to finally get cracking on the thesis, which has been bringing me down for ages.

After dinner and having worked on my Movable Type site, which I'm hoping will be ready this weekend (plus a couple of blog entries I've been working on), I wen't down the pub to see the Arsenal - Roma game. Honestly, I had decided not to get my hopes up, because of last five games Arsenal has played and their reputation for not being strong in away games in Europe. And it was my impression that Oleg "The Ox" Luzhny was out with an injury leaving a spot open in defense for some German kid. So when Roma scored within four minutes that didn't exactly help with my confidence, either. But Thierry Henry showed everyone why he makes the big bucks and scored on literally every shot he had on goal to make it an incredible 3-1 win. I watched the game with my brother, who's a real Arsenal fan, and a bunch of Roma supporters, so the win was extra sweet. It was difficult not to gloat, but seeing as the ref wasn't exactly friendly towards the Italian side we tried to keep namecalling and insults to a minimum.

I was watching CSI last night. I have this thing about watching television series from the beginning and for some reason I can't start watching a series from episode three or five. So when CSI was first show here and I didn't have the channel at first, I just gave up on it. But seeing as it has just started from episode one again on a channel I have now I've started watching it and already after two episodes I'm pretty hooked. It's very different from other shows and I like the cast a lot more than I thought I would. So now that all the other shows I follow will probably take a long Christmas vacation it's nice to know that there'll still be at least one cool show on.
The other show that I follow religiously right now is The West Wing. We' re about a season behind the American schedule, so they've just introduced Mary-Louise Parker here. I'd forgotten how cute she is. I saw her recently in the mushy, but watchable Cupid & Cate where she wears a lot of black eye make-up, and she looks just as fantastic on The West Wing. And everything that I've liked about the show so far is still just as good or better in this third season, so I'm still totally hooked.

2002-11-25T15:09:00.000+01:00

Send Lawyers, Guns And Money. The Shit Has Hit The Fan:
I feel like my head is about to explode. I've just had the worst weekend in ages and it's spilling heavily over into this week. I've been getting letters about my taxes and other depressing money situations and although a week ago I was sure that all this was way behind me everything has just been opened up again and now it's even worse than originally expected. Since Saturday morning I've felt like picking up a Louisville Slugger and beating the shit out of somebody, but I don't have a baseball bat, so I've been forced to sit around and curse, mumble incoherently, and bitch, which I've been doing. A lot. It's really frustrating to be completely powerless and just seeing everything fall apart like a fucking house of cards. So I haven't really been in the mood to blog about my excellent trip to Copenhagen and the fantastic concerts I went to. But as soon as I get my hands on some Prozac I'll be on it like the paparazzi on J-Lo's ass.

The only good news right now is that I've been reading We Blog and this humble weblog is mentioned in it. Kinda. If you look on page 13 and 14 there are screen dumps illustrating how you set up a Blogger account. And if you look on the left side you'll notice that under Blogs of Note it says: There Is Nothing To Not Be Amazed At. So it seems that my 15 minutes have stretched on to a link to my site accidentally being visable in a book. How very exciting!

2002-11-20T13:15:00.000+01:00

Don't Be Real, Be Postmodern:
Nothing much going on here right now. In about an hour I'll be on my way for a three day stay in Copenhagen. I'll go see Ryan Adams and Jesse Malin tonight and Coldplay and Idlewild tomorrow, both of which I'm really looking forward to. I've been listening to Idlewild all day and they're actually really good, so it should be awesome to see them live. Also tomorrow Denmark are playing Poland tonight and the news story is that Morten Olsen, the head coach, would like to see our wings score some goals. Turns out Ebbe Sand (of Schalke 04) and Jon Dahl Tomasson (of AC Milan) has scored something like 75% of the Danish goals, so now that Martin Jørgensen has started scoring in Udinese and Dennis Rommedahl has scored for PSV Eindhoven he like to see them do the same for the national squad. Well, wouldn't we all?

I finished fixing the headers on my Moveable Type template last night. I had to open 176 individual postings and add a new header and delete the old, which is about as tedious as it gets. But now it's done, so hopefully I'll be able to fix the rest of the problems this week and launch the new version next week. Chances are it'll look almost exactly like the current site, but hopefully it'll load a lot faster.

I'm pretty nuts about bands, who make 80s inspired music and wear 80s inspired clothes. The latest to blow me away is Swedish band Melody Club. Their single Palace Station is the best retro single since Emerge by Fischerspooner, so you should definitely check it out.

2002-11-18T16:53:00.000+01:00

I Was Dressed For Success, But Success It Never Comes:
I’ve been a little busy lately, so I haven’t gotten around to talking about the Supergrass show I went to last week. It wasn’t as good as the first time I saw them, but the last half hour of the show was pretty great. If you haven’t seen Supergrass live they basically consist of Dr. Zaius, Paul McCartney's younger brother and that chubby kid you were best friends with in the 3rd grade. And yet somehow they’ve managed to put together some really cool songs for their four albums. Unfortunately, they played way too many songs from their latest album, so it wasn’t until towards the end, when they pulled out all the stompers the show really took off.
During one of the better songs early on in the set some preppy 18-year-old twat in a black turtleneck decided to stagedive. For my money nothing is more rewarding than watching some guy stagedive only to have the crowd part before him like the Red Sea. But unfortunately that didn’t prevent him for jumping out from the stage three more times. Diving is sooo ten years ago, Dude! I mean the 70s had moshing, the 80s had moonwalking and the Safety Dance, and the 90s had diving. Now, how about we try something new like not acting like muppets in public and actually listen to the damn music? How does that sound?
But even so it was an entertaining night out except for the opening act, The 22-20s, who looked like The Strokes, but sounded like an inept Jon Spencer cover band and played excruciatingly loud. They are definitely to be avoided in the future.

I’ve been listening to Ben Folds Live and Slanted & Enchanted this weekend and they’re pretty great. Obviously, they’re very different albums, but both cool in their own way. The Ben Folds album has some really interesting versions of old favourites and there are a couple of songs, where the audience participation really lifts the songs up to another level.
Slanted is one of those albums, where during the first listen you wonder how the hell this record ever got released, but after a few spins you start getting it. I’ve only been listening to the first CD, because those 24 songs are a lot to digest in themselves, so it’ll be a while before I want to listen to the live stuff.

The weirdest thing I’ve seen today is an article claiming that the FBI has been investigating Bobby Fischer, because they thought his Mum was a commie spy. And to make the story even weirder the famous recluse has apparently been giving radio interviews lately praising the 9/11 attacks and made anti-Semitic comments. I guess Ben Kingsley won’t spend any more time Searching for Bobby Fischer.

2002-11-14T16:01:00.000+01:00

We're In It For The Money:
Supergrass is playing here tonight, so naturally we’re going. I saw them the last time they played here as well and it was awesome. I’ve been listening to the new album quite a bit lately and although it’s not as good as their first two records there still are some choice cuts on there. The song Seen the Light was used in a phone commercial here, but the commercial came out a good month before the record came out, so it was a discussion point down the pub for a while if it actually were Supergrass or just someone, who sounded like them playing. The song is good though and so are tracks like Rush Hour Soul and Can’t Get Up. However, I do think Grace is an odd choice for a single. According to this NME review the guys haven’t lost it, so it’ll probably be a crackin’ show tonight.

I saw an interview with British pop act Sugababes the other day and it went something like this:

Interviewer: That was “You Know You’re Right”, the latest video by Nirvana. You guys like Nirvana?
Keisha Sugababe: I only know that one song…
Interviewer: Smells like Teen Spirit?
Keisha Sugababe: How does that one go?
Interviewer: Dah-da-da Da Da Dum Dah-da-da Da Da...
Keisha Sugababe: Yeah, that’s the one!

Nice to see the most important album of my generation still has an impact on the kids. I’m guessing she wasn’t the one, who came up with the idea to blend Are Friends Electric? with Adina Howards’ Freak like Me.

I’ve been playing Tony Hawk 3 lately and although I think it is fun I can sense that I won’t be playing much longer. I suck at it and if I don’t achieve a medal in Level 3 I won’t be able to open up the rest of the levels, which means I’ll be stuck playing the same three levels for the rest of my life. Isn’t that like Dante’s seventh ring of Hell?

I ordered some stuff from Amazon this week and it’s already been shipped, which is so cool. I’ve decided to get back to work on my thesis, so I ordered We Blog: Publishing Online with Weblogs, which hopefully will have some insights that’ll motivate me to start writing again. I ordered Ben Folds Live, because I’ve always been a huge Ben Folds Five fan and on this CD Ben plays both solo and BF5 songs mixed with b-sides, covers, and tracks I haven’t even heard before. And to make it even cooler there’s a DVD with seven live tracks and live antics (whatever that is). I can’t wait to get that one.
I have every Pavement album except Slanted & Enchanted, so when I found out a special Slanted & Enchanted remastered double CD had been released with live tracks, Peel sessions, EP tracks, and more I had to get it right away. And finally I ordered The Photo Album by Death Cab for Cutie, because I only have We Have The Facts… and I’ve been curious about there other albums for a while.

I was working on my new Moveable Type blog yesterday, and it didn't exactly go according to plan. First off I have no idea how to make the text look like I want it and secondly my headers got messed up, when I transferred the files from Blogger. For some reason MT has taken the first 30-40 characters of each posting and copied them into the title box. That means I now have to go through every single posting and edit the title and remove the original title from the main text box. That'll give me somehting to do Friday night.

2002-11-11T17:09:00.000+01:00

That's What I Like About You:
I mentioned Bill Maher's book When You Ride Alone You Ride with Bin Laden yesterday and it got me thinking about a poster we used to have on the door to the DJ booth at the internet radio station I used to work for. The poster read "When you pirate MP3s, you're downloading Communism", which we thought was pretty funny. Maher's book has a lot of "patriotic posters" inspired by posters made during World War II, but updated so they fit the into the post 9/11 scheme of things. If you want to find out more about the book he even has a special Ride Alone website.
The downloading Communism poster is made by the people at Modern Humorist (who are also the geniuses behind this t-shirt). I went over there today to find a link to the poster and came across their Fall 2002 TV Preview. This might only be fun if you watch as much television as I do, but even so I've picked out a couple of fun comments:

Presidio Med (CBS):
This medical drama revolves around a team of dedicated physicians that treats the patient, not the problem. Unlike "ER." Remember that time on "ER" when Dr. Carter left a five-year-old victim of a drunk driving accident on the operating table to catch the last quarter of a Bulls game? That shit will NOT fly at the Presidio.
Still Standing (CBS):
Jami Gertz, better than she ever did. Looking like a true survivor. Feeling like a little kid.
Push, Nevada (ABC):
Shot in the real-time format pioneered by Fox’s "24," this new drama series covers the 22-hour delivery of exotic dancer Nevada Stevenson’s first child.

Seeing as Push, Nevada has already been cancelled maybe the world just isn't ready for a show about an IRS agent even if it's written by Ben Affleck.

Maybe you've noticed that at times this site loads slower than a Clem Snide song and the comments are usually unreliable to say the least (and there's has been plenty of behind-the-scenes problems as well). So for a while I've been contemplating changing to Moveable Type. I've already moved the template over and as soon as I get the last bugs sorted out I'll probably make the switch completely. But until I figure out how to make my old headers like decent in the new MT setting you'll have to be patient with me.

2002-11-10T21:35:00.000+01:00

No Sissies Get Your Love:
A lot has happened this week, so I’ll just mention a couple of highlights. I spent three days in Copenhagen hanging out and going to concerts. I saw Doves at Loppen and it was a very good show. They played about 75 minutes on a stage, which was about foot high, which meant the audience stood very close to the band. I was standing about 6 feet away from singer Jimi Goodwin, which meant I could look him straight in the eyes when he was singing, which was a bit weird. But they played a cool set with tracks from both Lost Souls and The Last Broadcast and ended with a track called Space Bass, which sounded like a Sub Sub track, but I think it might just be a new Doves track. Either way it was a kicking way to end the show.

The next day I saw Hawksley Workman at Rust and that was simply amazing. He played a long show accompanied by a piano player called Mr. Lonely. There weren’t a lot of people at the concert, but it seemed like most of them were diehard fans (Tinka was there, but I didn’t see her). He told weird stories and sang his weird songs and it was just incredible. My favourites were No Sissies and Sad House Daddy of the For Him & The Girls album and it was especially cool to hear the crowd take over vocal duties on the latter. He has the most remarkable vocal range going from theatrical Bertolt Brecht-like singing to Jeff Buckley-like falsetto, so it was actually quite funny hearing the fans trying to sing along with mixed success. Hawksley looks remarkable like Casey Affleck, but the scarf, earrings and sleeveless t-shirt made it easier to tell them apart.

Besides going to concerts and hooking up with friends in Copenhagen I played Fifa 2003, which is unbelievably cool and I saw 61*, which I also quite liked. The movie is about the season where Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris both tried to break Babe Ruth's homerun record. But it's actually a lot more about the two players as people and not so much about baseball. And I got to listen to the new Badly Drawn Boy album, which sounds mighty promising.

I saw a fun episode of Leno recently with Bill Maher and Marilyn Manson (Maher was plugging his book and Manson his DVD). I like Manson and I think he’s pretty funny, but the best bit was Maher going over the reason why George W. Bush wants to invade Iraq:

[Mentions several bizarre reasons to invade Iraq]
Maher: He (Saddam Hussein) tried to kill my Dad. This time it’s personal!
Maher: And he gassed his own people.
Leno: Well, didn’t he?
Maher: Well yeah. In the 80s! Talk about your late reply. I mean are we looking into why Wham! broke up?

Right now I’m listening to the Ravens/Bengals game through NFL.com and it’s pretty exciting. For some reason the Ravens organisation doesn’t broadcast a signal from the games, so every week I’m listening to the opponent’s commentary and except for one guy these commentators are remarkable fair. Obviously, they support their own team, but they always give credit where credit is due and generally describe the games fairly. Except for one guy. Every time the Ravens play against the Pittsburgh Steelers a guy called Myron Cope makes me what to fly to Pittsburgh and open up a can of whup-ass. He has the most annoying screechy old-man’s voice ever and he gets so excited during the game that he stutters uncontrollably. He is completely unfair against the opposing team and last the Ravens played the Steelers he began making up words, so even his co-commentators had no idea what the hell he was talking about. You know how John Turturro has a face for radio in The Quiz Show? Well, this guy has a voice for newspapers. He’s the main reason I hate the Steelers, because every time we played them I have to listen to that old fool talk nonsense for three hours. If you think I’m exaggerating try going through this treasure chest of babble (this is my “favourite”).

And finally I got to meet someone this weekend, who I’ve been emailing with for ages. It’s always a bit strange meeting someone you know through emails face-to-face for the first time, but I thought this encounter was remarkably uncomfortable.

2002-11-04T10:39:00.000+01:00

When It's Time To Party We Will Party Hard:
I'm on my way to Copenhagen, but I just thought I'd post something before I left. I was out Saturday night and for some reason I decided to write about it when I got home. Obviously, I'd had a few drinks, so it's probably for the best I didn't publish it right away. But I thought I'd edit it a bit and post it anyways. So here goes:

So, last night was alright. Well, the drinking, talking, eating bit was fun. The dancing, clubbing, trying to get shagged bit was somewhat of a bust. And the reason is this: There is no good party music! Grease Mega Mix? The house version of Proud Mary? Boney M? All this is the kind of music I imagine is played in the elevators on the way to Hell. And this is what I have to endure on a night out on the town. To be fair they did sneak in a Prince and a Depeche Mode song, but in the course of four hours that is just not enough. I realize they can't play stuff like Dry the Rain or Cut Your Hair, but there has to be some sort of middle road. And to make matters weirder I wouldn't even have gotten in hadn't I gone to school with the doorman (I didn't bring my ID card and the age limit is all of 23). But to be fair it was still a decent enough night. Sure, I did spend most of the night standing in a corner with my arms wrapped around me like I was representing the East Coast, but at least I did get to meet a couple of charming members of the fairer sex and I got to hang out with friends I don't see that often.

I guess I was a bit grumpy that night, but that's the way I get when I have to listen to shitty music. We ate at a cool restaurant where they had a lounge with bean bag chairs and a DJ, who played stuff like Koop's Summer Son. So going from that to Destiny's Child just brings me down, man.

2002-11-02T17:38:00.000+01:00

Copenhagen Center City Boredom:
I finished Corpsing last week and it was quite good. I usually like the beginning of a book more than the ending and that was also the case with this book. The story is about a guy, who goes to dinner with an ex-girlfriend only to get shot and deadly wounded. The ex-girlfriend dies in the shooting and the book is essentially about how he tries to solve the murder. It's packed with plot twists, which means that it gets a bit heavyhanded towards the end, when the mystery gets solved. But it was entertaining and had several really funny passages, so even though the actual plot was sort of far-fetched it was still very entertaining.
I'm currently reading Go by Simon Lewis, which I found on sale a couple of years ago. The main reason I bought it was that Toby Litt had written a blurb for the cover, so I figured I give it a chance. So far it has gone from a Lock, Stock type setting to a Return to Paradise type setting, which so far has been cool and very entertaining.

I'm going to Copenhagen on Monday to see Doves and Hawksley Workman and hang out with friends, but before that I'm going to a party with a lot of people I've gone to University with. I got an email several weeks ago about getting together for dinner and drinks and as it turns out a lot of people from my year and probably also several others will show up at a restaurant tonight. And since a bunch of the guys I used to hang out with will be there it ought to be a very entertaining night out.
And it'll be cool to get over to Copenhagen again. I haven't been over there since March, so it's going to fun seeing the new Metro they've built and possibly even finding a couple of CDs that I haven't been able to find here.

2002-10-30T12:59:00.000+01:00

When I saw her and the Yankees lost to the Braves:
You remember that scene in Dumb and Dumber, where Jim Carrey asks the mobster in the truck if he knows what the most annoying sound in the world is? Well, turns out it isn’t Jim and Jeff screaming in unison after all. Turns out it’s the sound of a guy drilling a hole through my balcony at 8 o’clock in the morning in an attempt to remove a drainpipe. The sound of metal against concrete has been resonating through the building all day and it’s driving me nuts. And they’ve just started! There’ll be construction guys on scaffolding outside my window for several weeks doing God-knows-what disguised as renovation of the balconies for reasons unbeknownst to me. I was trying to watch television while eating breakfast and I couldn’t hear a damn thing, so I’m a bit cranky right now.

We don’t have Lilith Fair here and people like Tori Amos, Fiona Apple, and Juliana Hatfield don’t play shows here, so when someone like Jonatha Brooke stops by I go see her (I went with Jan, who took a bunch of pictures). Supporting her last night was Tina Dickow, who’s like the local version of Ani Difranco, doing an acoustic solo show. It was okay, but not nearly as good as the times I’ve seen her play with her band.
Jonatha Brooke has played here a couple of times and has a connection to music department at the university, so just like the last time I saw her here there were a lot of aspiring musicians in the crowd. She has a huge personality and is both charming and funny and tells a lot of fun stories in between songs. The show wasn’t that different from the show she played here in March, but it was good all the same. One of the highlights was that she played Nothing Sacred on request (which I haven’t heard her perform before) and even though she forgot a couple of chords it was still pretty cool. And she stuck around afterwards and signed CDs which was cool as well.

Monday I worked at the opening of the new Isis Katrinebjerg Center and I had a bit of an accident. I was carrying a stack of plates on by left arm and a stack of glasses in my right hand and as I tried to get around some guy eating hors d'oeuvres I walked into one of those glass walls they have next to doors. I slammed my right hand into the glass, which meant the glasses I was carrying shattered and I was left holding half a glass filled with pieces of broken glass. I had to get the plates and broken glass away, so I rushed out to the kitchen and tried to set everything down without breaking more stuff and started washing the glass of my hand. By some miracle I only got a small cut on my finger, so I started cleaning up and packing the glass in newspaper and threw it all away. And it wasn’t until then I realized what could’ve happened. My hand was hurting, not from the cut, but because I’d hit the glass wall pretty hard. I thought about what would’ve happened if I’d put my hand through the glass wall or if the broken glasses had fallen on my arm. And frankly that freaked the shit out of me. When I was 16 a friend of mine was running around chasing another friend. The one being chased ran out a door and slammed it behind him. The chaser put his arms out, so he wouldn’t get hit by the door in the face, and put both his arms through the door’s window. Both his arms got cut really bad and he was rushed to the hospital. So the rest of the day I was in a weird mood and I couldn’t help being a bit shocked by the whole thing.
Oddly enough my Mum called later and told me they’d seen me on TV. I watched the local news later and while someone was being interviewed at the reception you could see me walking around in the background. Imagine if someone had caught me on camera walking into the glass wall? It might not have made the news, but I’m sure it would have made the blooper reel for their Christmas party.

I went to Peter’s party this Saturday, which was fun. There were a lot of people there I hadn’t seen in a while (most of them people I used to see at school) and the party was still rolling when I left after five, so it was a big success. I’d taped the last game of the World Series, so I watched that Sunday afternoon. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as Game 6, but it was okay and it was cool that David Eckstein got to catch the final ball. He was one the players I was impressed by the most throughout the Series, so it was a cool way to end the game.

I’m supposed to be working on my thesis these days, but I haven’t even looked at it in ages. It’s getting embarrassing, so in order to get moving I went to a seminar yesterday, where I got some tips on structuring ideas and writing. One of the things that’ll hopefully keep me motivated is that I talked to Peter and one or two other guys about getting together once in a while to evaluate what we’ve written so far. So hopefully the upcoming deadlines will be what I need to get my ass in gear.
I’d forgotten how much fun it is to hang out at school. After the seminar we had lunch and sat around and talked. When you don’t have classes you don’t get a chance to sit around and talk to people on a regular basis, so it was cool to do that again. I think I’ll start going down to the school library a couple of times a week just to get out of the house (especially with all the construction going on) and get some reading done. And you wouldn’t believe how many cute girls go to the school I go to. I said hi to a bunch of people yesterday I hadn’t seen in ages, so it was almost like a homecoming or something.

I’ve been listening to the new Beck and the new Ryan Adams CDs this week and I’m not really feeling them yet. There are definitely some good songs on Demolition, but it hasn’t blown me away yet. And the Beck CD hasn’t really gotten under my skin either. But I haven’t given up on them yet.

2002-10-24T21:49:00.000+02:00

Why Do Tomorrow What You Could Never Do:
Like most males around the world right now I’ve been following the World Series. I didn’t see Game One, but I’ve seen the other three games and I’m planning on seeing the remaining games as well. The main problem with this endeavour, apart from the fact that I’m still not really on top of the rules, is that they begin at 2 a.m. and go on for almost four hours, which means I’ve been staying up till after 3 o’clock, taped the rest, and watched the last innings the following morning. I’m not a big baseball fan and I’m not a fan of neither the Angels nor the Giants (if I were to support a team I’d probably pick the Yankees although the Orioles are a close second), but there’s just something about the game, which fascinates me and since these are the last games of the season I thought it would be interesting to follow them. Plus this way I get to understand Letterman’s references to the Rally Monkey. It’s actually kind of funny how this has turned into a fight between the mascots. The Angels have their monkey and the Giants have Dusty Baker’s son Darren. I’m not sure, but I think the Giants have won the last seven games were Darren was batboy, which puts a little pressure on the kid before tonight’s game. But you wouldn’t know it to look at him.
So this is what I've been doing with my time lately. I'm so a shoe-in for the Nobel Prize in procrastination and lying around.

But my favourite moment so far has been the Top Ten Memorable Moments tribute they put on before Game Four. They had Ray Liotta, Andy Garcia, and Billy Crystal present the ten most memorable moments and showed clips and had players come out onto the field to get applauded by the fans. The most memorable moment (voted by the fans) was when Cal Ripkin broke Lou Gehrig’s 56-year-old consecutive-game streak and it was cool to see The Iron Man getting praised out there yesterday. Guys aren’t supposed to cry, but I think it was Red Forman who said that when a sports hero gets honoured it’s okay to get a little misty and last night was one of those times.
Except for Johnny Unitas Ripkin is probably the most important athlete to have played in Baltimore, so for him to get honoured like that is a pretty big deal.

The big discussion here right now is about using the Adam & Eve story in biology classes in our schools. Certain Christian groups feel it’s biased only to present the kids for Darwin’s Theory of Evolution (since it is only a theory) and not give them the big picture. The fact that kids are taught about Adam & Eve and everything else biblical in a class called Religion doesn’t seem to phase them. I thought crap statements like this were reserved for people like Jerry Falwell and Rush Limbaugh, but apparently anyone can chip in with nuggets of wisdom like this.

2002-10-21T16:14:00.000+02:00

Everyday It’s A Gettin’ Closer:
I read several online comics everyday and I just thought I’d mention that this is the second reference to blogging in a Doonesbury strip. I guess it really is mainstream now.

I went out Saturday night to hear The Raveonettes and I thought they rocked. There were four of us together at the show and two of us thought it was a cool show and the other two were slightly underwhelmed. They liked the songs, but thought it was unoriginal and that the band was boring onstage. It’s true they just sort of stood there, but I didn’t really find it boring. However, we all agreed it would’ve been nice if they’d been a bit more aggressive onstage. They were too nice and goofy and said weird things between the songs. It would’ve been cool with a bit more arrogance and edge to match the music. But the songs held up nicely live and they were louder than hell. They started off the show with an insane version of Buddy Holly’s Everyday, which sounded like an outtake from Psycho Candy and from there on it was just one ear shattering track after another. Unfortunately, they only played 50 minutes, but since they’ve only released an eight track EP and most of their songs are short of the 3 minute mark it’s forgivable.

We talked about the show afterwards and we couldn’t really reach an agreement about the quality of the show or the band. But it got me thinking about how jaded you get, when you listen to a lot of music and go to a lot of shows. Just like you can never go home again you can never listen to music like your 16 again. Imagine listening to Nirvana, The Sex Pistols, The Doors, or anything like that for the first time again. Everything after that just seems less interesting and always inspired by something you've heard before. And even though you try to keep an open mind it’s tough. There are still bands that impress me, but there seem to be fewer and fewer new bands I get as excited by as when I was younger. I’d like to think that it’s because bands like The Vines and The Calling genuinely suck, but chances are that I’m going the way most people seem to go. The older you get the more you start to think all the new stuff isn’t as good as the stuff you listened to, when you were younger. And no matter how much you try to stay current you don’t have as much passion or time for music as you used to and before you know it everything’s too loud and you only buy records when Dylan or The Cure releases new stuff.

But hopefully I’m not quite there yet. We went to a thing after the show and while I was in the bathroom my brother, who is 22, asked the host if she thought I was the older or the younger brother. When I came back my brother said: “Looks like you’ve lost the age game again”, because she picked him as the older brother. My response was that if she thought I was 21 then I’d definitely won the age game.

Oh, and I'm so getting this.

2002-10-18T13:13:00.000+02:00

I Want Candy:
I’ve seen some fun talk show appearances these last couple of days. My favourite was David Sedaris’ appearance on Letterman where he talked about his weird friends and managed to crack Dave up several times. It seems like Letterman really likes both David and Amy Sedaris a lot, which makes the interviews a lot more interesting as he seems willing to just let them do whatever they want. David Sedaris even got to do a reading from an article called Buddy, Can You Spare a Tie? about how hard it is for men to accessorize. He read the part called Lesson Four: With a pal like this, you don't need an enemy about an interesting product called the Stadium Pal. It was very funny and the fact that the product actually exists just makes it funnier.

Jerry Seinfeld was on Jay Leno last night plugging both his movie Comedian and his latest book Halloween. The book is based on a bit he did on his show I'm Telling You for the Last Time about being a kid and learning about Halloween. “What is this? Who’s giving out candy? Someone’s giving out candy? Who is giving out this candy? Everyone that we know is just giving out candy!?! I gotta be a part of this!” He explains that as a kid you only have one goal in life, which is to get candy. Getcandygetcandygetcandygetcandygetcandygetcandy! That’s all you think about. So the concept of Halloween is just mind boggling and you’ll dress up as whatever to get people to give you candy (ghost, hobo, stuff like that). And this is where the bit gets really funny. Because if you know anything about Seinfeld you’ll know that he’s a huge Superman fan. So obviously one Halloween he dresses up as Superman. He gets a costume from the store with a mask and he’s expecting to look exactly like Superman. But he ends up looking like he’s wearing Superman’s pyjamas and things don’t get better when his Mum makes him wear his winter coat over the costume. So they turned this story into a children’s book and filled it with illustrations of Jerry as a kid trick-or-treating dressed as Superman and it looked pretty cool. I couldn’t find any of the illustrations online, but Leno showed off a couple of them and they looked very funny.
I remember a few years ago a friend and I were talking about Seinfeld and some people mentioned they didn’t know his material that well, so we went into retelling this whole bit for them. I know it’s unbelievably nerd-like, but we just thought the getcandygetcandygetcandy part was hysterical.

And speaking of superheroes and humour I just though I’d like to mention an animated short which combines the Marvel universe with the Clerks universe. It’s called Heroes and is very funny.

2002-10-15T16:46:00.000+02:00

Could’ve Been A Genius If You’d Had An Axe To Grind:
I saw an old episode of The Stand Up Show on BBC Prime the other day and on the show was Irish comedian Ed Byrne. I've seen him on Conan as well, but here he got to do about fifteen minutes worth of material, which was cool. My favourite bit was about how when he was at college he would hang out in the college bar. And every time the DJ played Sit Down by James people would sit down on the floor. That made him wonder what it would be like if people always did what the songs said and how great it would be if someone wrote a song called Shag the Arse of the Irish Fellow. But how it would be a downer if your name was Eileen… “Dear Mr Dexy. Please find enclosed my dry cleaning bill”. I think there has been made two seasons of The Stand Up Show, but they show them at the oddest times, so it’s hard to catch them all. But I'll keep looking, because they're usually quite good and Jon Stewart is in one of them.

As long as we’re talking about British television I thought I’d mention that a part of the ITV show Blind Date has been shot here in Aarhus. For some reason contestants Michael Ewins and Sophia Stylianou had chosen our lovely city as the setting for the date meaning that a camera crew has been following them around the city last week. So if you’ve always wanted a glimpse of what this two-horse-town looks like and you get ITV here’s your chance.

I picked up two CDs my buddy Jan had picked up for me in NYC and I’ve been listening to them all weekend. I had to drive my drive my parents to the station around 6am Saturday morning and the first time I listened to the OK Go CD was on the way home. I cranked it up and just like the Mum driving around bonding with her son in that TV movie I felt like taking the long way home, so I could hear the rest of the song (in the movie it is, unironically, Take the Long Way Home by Supertramp they’re listening to). OK Go has to be the party CD of the year. It’s like The Rentals and That Dog mixed with the fun of The Wannadies and if that ain’t the shit I don’t know what is.
I’ve also been listening to The Shins’ Oh, Inverted World (mainly because Greg seems to think they’re awesome) and I tend to agree. The album starts out with a Sunny Day Real Estate sounding song, but quickly goes into more jangly 60s sounding stuff, which is fine by me. So although I hadn’t really heard anything by the two bands before both CDs turned out to be great investments. I’ve also borrowed the new Supergrass album, but I’ve only listened to it once so far (not a good sign). I’ve been trying to get into Hawksley Workman today as well and some of the stuff is pretty good. The thing is when you just download a bunch of stuff you usually end up with a couple of tracks from each album and probably also some b-sides and weird stuff as well. So until I hear an entire album I don’t really want to form an opinion about him. But I’m still planning on going to see him perform.

Once in a while I read Dave Barry’s articles over there at The Miami Herald and they’re usually pretty funny. And this one is one of the better ones.
Remember I mentioned the new René Dif single (which I’m sure by now is tearing up the radio waves where you live)? And I posted some pictures from around the city? Well, as it turns out the subtle picture of the woman’s tattooed ass is a promotion poster for the Dif single. See how it all comes together after a while?

2002-10-11T14:03:00.000+02:00

Just Sit Around And Mess Around And Tell Your Ma We Went To Rome… Tennessee:
Nothing much is happening here and nothing much will happen this weekend. I have to go visit my parents today, so I can drive them to the station tomorrow. They’re going to Rome, which ought to be nice. I went there once, but didn’t like it. I was 16 and thought it was dirty and everyone I met was rude. This, by the way, is an argument, which won’t win you a lot of friends. Everybody seems to love Rome, so try telling someone you hated it and they’ll look at you like you just said you hated puppies. However, I did like some of the buildings. I thought the St. Peter’s Church was remarkable and there was a small church decorated with skulls and bones, which I thought was gnarly at the time.

Concert season is going nuts right now. Usually, there are a lot of concerts during the last months of the year, but this year it has gone completely mad. I have tickets for four shows and plans to go to at least three more. The latest to be added to the list is a Garage Rock extravaganza in December with Hellacopters, Gaza Strippers, and The Datsuns. I’m not that familiar with any of these bands, but it looks like a fairly hard rocking affair, so I’ll probably go. And how great a name is Gaza Strippers?

I’ve heard two incredible crap songs this week. The first is called Rock My Life and is by German pop sensation Jeanette. Not only is it shite, it’s also a complete rip-off of Roxette’s The Look. It’s incredible that no one noticed this before they released it, but maybe they just figured that since it had worked for Savage Garden it would work for them as well.
The second one is even worse. Remember René “Come on Barbie, let’s go party” Dif of Aqua fame? Well, it seems like he had to repress all his artistic abilities, while he was in Aqua, because now he wants to stand on his own as a solo artist and prove that he wasn’t the Jason Orange of the group. His first single is called Let It All Out (Push It) and yes, it’s a new take on the Salt-n-Pepa hit. And (surprise, surprise) it’s beyond stupid (and when I say stupid I don’t mean stupid fresh). The video features him big pimpin’ and pretending to be a DJ and even the well known and catchy chorus can’t save this turkey. He “raps/sings” the same way on the track as he did on Cartoon Heroes, which means growling like a Saint Bernard with pneumonia, but unfortunately that doesn’t mean it won’t be a hit, so be prepared for it to show up on MTV any day now.

I’m currently reading Toby Litt’s Corpsing and I really like it. I liked Beatniks as well, but this one’s more intense, because it’s a murder mystery. Someone asked me yesterday what I did all day and I felt like Hugh Grant in About a Boy, so I’m feeling very guilty about not really doing anything right now. But at least reading a book ranks higher than watching television in people’s minds, so having spent a day reading isn’t nearly as embarrassing as having spent a day catching up on episodes of Buffy and Angel (which I may or may not have done earlier this week).

2002-10-07T22:07:00.000+02:00

My Able Body Isn't What It Used To Be:
I'm being a cliché tonight. I'm wearing a huge sweater, sipping coffee, listening to Nick Drake, and have spent most of the day sitting on the couch staring into thin air feeling a bit sorry for myself. I went to a bachelor party Saturday and I'm still hurting a bit from the experience. The actual party was amazing, but it seems like every weekend I get wrecked on Saturday, then go see Arsenal beat some crap team Sunday, and then spend Monday wondering why I still feel hungover. I know I could easily change this routine, but I'm not good with change and I'm really not good at getting my shit together. There's a lot of stuff on my mind right now and most of it could be fixed by getting up early and working stuff out instead of watching television all day. So maybe this week I'll grow a spine and deal. If not then it won't be anything out of the usual.

The bachelor party was for an old friend and in attendance were two more friends from the old days. It was a lot of fun seeing them again and we had a blast. I'm really glad I went and it was obvious that they were glad I came, so everything turned out incredible. And since I just remember that the season premiere of The West Wing will be on a few minutes my mood just got a bit of a lift. Pathetic, I know, but it's the small things in life that count and good television is a life saver.

2002-10-05T15:52:00.000+02:00

Do You Really Want To Hurt Me?
I’ve been a huge fan of '80s music since... well the 80s really and this goes especially for the British bands, who topped the charts, when I started listening to music around ’83 – ’84. So when Boy George’s gloriously titled book Take It Like a Man several years ago became available in paperback I rushed to pick it up. I’ve never been a huge Culture Club fan, but I’ve always thought Boy was a remarkable and fascinating person. His entire persona was out of this world in the '80s (and maybe even today) and the sexual ambiguity and outrageousness of his behaviour was just awe-inspiring. And the book was no disappointment. Not only is it as open and honest as it is bitchy and funny. It’s also a fascinating look into the world of '80s pop.
So when Q Magazine last year invited Boy George to take part in their Cash for Questions article I had to write in to clear something up. Boy’s friend Marilyn is mentioned a lot in the book, but there was a passage towards the end, which had intrigued me since I’d read the book. So here’s my question and the answer I got:

So Boy George does not confirm nor deny that Gavin at the age of 16 had a torrid affair with Marilyn. I thought it was fun just to get any kind of an answer, so I didn’t think much of it. Until now that it. For as it turns out Gavin married long-time girlfriend Gwen Stefani last month and to celebrate that the good people over at Popbitch dug out this beauty of a picture:

My guess is it won’t be long till we hear Gwen scream out: “Gaaaavin, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!”

2002-10-02T22:25:00.000+02:00

Money Makes The World Go Around:
You know how sometimes there's something that you want to talk or write about, but you're now really sure how to go about it. Then you think about a clever way of putting it instead of just ranting away, but then the more you think about it the more it just depresses you? Well, at the bloggers get together a month ago we talked about people, who had Paypal links on their sites and I complained that I couldn't understand why people would expect others to pay them to blog. I've actually visited blogs, where the writer has complained, because people didn't donate enough. The mere fact that anyone has even given a dollar surprises me, so I find demands for more money incredible. And later when the savekaryn.com site appeared I just dismissed it and thought it was naive of her to think that anyone would want to help her pay off her debts. So this kind of begging online has been a pet peeve of mine (although I hate that expression) for a while, but now it has turned into full on pissed-off-ness. Turns out this Karyn person has a really well paid job, but has blown all her money on Gucci bags and Louis Vuitton outfits. And instead of just putting away money to pay off her debts she created a site and begged for it. I'm not the type of person who is easily offended, but something about this truly annoys me. Maybe it's because I'm totally broke and don't make nearly as much money as her. I have more debts than her and I don't spend what little money I have on designer bags.

Obviously, everyone is entitled to spend their money which ever way they want to, but why you would what to send money to some idiot, who got herself in debt by buying clothes is beyond me. If you want to give money away there are literaly a million charities that are more worthy than ridding this airhead of her debts. The reason I finally had to vent about this is that according to a Salon article I found today this Karyn person has now been offered both a book deal and a movie contract. I don't even have the words to describe how stupid this is. So now she'll write a book about squandering money and begging online and then turn it into a movie? What's up with that?

I don't have any real points with this other than I find it incrediblely presumptuous that people think that others will give them money just because they have a website and incredibly strange that so many seem to want to donate. Maybe it's sour grapes or something I don't know. Either way I've been annoyed by this for a while and for some reason felt like getting it off my chest.

2002-10-01T23:40:00.000+02:00

Raw Like Sushi:
I had my presentation with the Aibo today and it went pretty smoothly. It’s a good day at work, when you get paid to play with a robot and eat sushi, so anytime they ask me back I’m right there. I also got to talk to some interesting people and eat muffins, so even though I also had to help arrange food and do other stuff it was a fun day. That along with the fact that the Ravens to everyone’s surprised beat the Broncos Monday night has meant that my mood has been up all day.

And when you’re in a good mood you do things you normally wouldn’t have done, so today I decided to get tickets to see Doves in Copenhagen. That means I’m going to Copenhagen twice in November, which I can’t afford at all, but I’m just refusing to think about that right now. While in Copenhagen the first time I’ll check out Doves and also Hawksley Workman.
Now, I don’t know Hawksley Workman from a pile of bricks, but his name has popped up numerous times on the Douglas Coupland mailing list I’m on (maybe because they’re both Canadians), so since he’s playing the day after Doves I feel almost obligated to check him out. I’ll probably check some of his stuff out before the show, but even if I don’t get around to it I’ll most likely go to the show.

I watched the Ryder Cup this weekend and was very excited when the European team won. Obviously, I was rooting for Thomas Bjørn, who played really well in his first and fourth match. But my favourite games were the ones with Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood. It’s just more exciting when you see two players on a team together; because when they do something cool they get excited for each other and can congratulate each other. And Sergio gets excited like no other player I’ve ever seen. He jumps around and screams and shouts whenever they win a hole, which just makes the contest a lot more interesting. I don’t watch a lot of golf usually, but this year I’ve watched the British Open and the Ryder Cup. I think the season is just about finished, but I’ll probably watch a couple of the big tournaments next year as well. I’d love to play myself sometime, but I’ll probably have to wait until I get a really well paid job, so I can afford the clubs and the plaid pants.

The pictures I’ve posted today are just random shots I took around town this Saturday. I had a camera for a couple of days, but since I didn’t get the thing to recharge it I only got to take a handful pictures. I’d love to have a digital camera. I can get over the fact that you can take pictures and make sure that they’re good on the little display on the back. And you don’t have to develop them to see them. I know people have done this for years, but I still think it’s pretty amazing.

Sarah has written some incredible entries lately, but this one is my favourite. Check out this peek into the female psyche:

If a girl ever asks your last name it is so she can match it to her first name. If she repeats it more than once she is practicing her new signature in her mind, not pontificating the beauty of your surname. After all, think about what your last name is. Why would someone repeat that over and over unless she was considering the way it would look on a statement for a joint bank account? A girl who is really interested in you will figure out a way to learn your last name (and the correct spelling) without asking for it. Trust me.

This might be true, but I wouldn’t mind being asked for the spelling of my last name once in a while if you know what I’m saying.

2002-09-29T00:13:00.000+02:00

We Are The Robots:
I went downtown to buy a track jacket today, but instead of the funky, old-school white and black Puma jacket I originally wanted I went with a cool red and black Fred Perry jacket. I haven't bought clothes in ages, so this month I decided it was time to pick something up. After shopping I went to a new bar/restaurant called Watch, which has been advertising with a special Ryder Cup event. They had the tournament on on screens everywhere and some of them had a different camera angles than the signal sent out to the viewers at home, so we would watch that during commercials. It was pretty cool and people actually cheered, when the players were putting, so there was a real atmosphere going on down there.

But besides that I've been working with my robot dog today. I've taught it my name and gotten it to respond to a couple of commands. I can make it walk in different directions and make it make certain noises. There's still some stuff I haven't figured out, but I'll work with it again tomorrow before the players head out for the final round. Besides the dog I've also borrowed a camera, so I've taken some pictures around town today which I might put up eventually.

As previously mentioned Jon Stewart has gone global and he's on my television right now making fun of Bush, so I gots to go.

2002-09-25T15:08:00.000+02:00

One More Robot Learns To Be Something More Than A Machine:
Remember the saga of the robotic dog? Well, it will continue this weekend as I’ve been asked to come pick the thing up on Friday, so I can play around with it for a while. The boys over at Innovation Lab are having some kind of conference on Tuesday and they asked me to stop by with the dog and show off how it works. They haven’t had time to figure the thing out themselves, so since I already “worked” with it once they figured I might be interested in spending some time with it again and then do some kind of presentation on Tuesday. I’m pretty curious to see how well the voice recognition works and how much you can teach it, so I said yes right away. So that means I’ll probably be on the floor trying to teach the damn mutt some tricks this weekend, while following the Ryder Cup team kick some Yankee ass.

Last night I went down to see The Czars and unsurprisingly the place was more than half empty. And it seemed like a lot of people had shown up to see local act Yellowish and not the main act. But it was a good show all the same. Singer John Grant is a big Shannon Hoon-looking mother with long, braided hair and the full flannel getup. He has a killer voice that’s deep, powerful, soulful and just generally pretty outstanding. They mixed styles a lot and would jump from alt-rock to blues to country, but most of the time they played moody and atmospheric tunes carried by the dreamy vocals and melancholic arrangements. Therefore it was the more annoying that I eventually had to go up to some people I know and tell them to shut the hell up. They’d been standing with their backs turned at the bar and talked through the concert oblivious to the music and the fact that they were getting angry stares all the time. I hate it when people at concerts (or the cinema) talk through the show. It just drives me nuts and I’ve on several occasions told people to can it, because it bugs me so much. If you’re at a packed rock show it’s just annoying to the people standing in the crowd. But when you go see a band play quiet music in front of an almost empty house then it’s annoying to the band as well and it just pisses me off that people have so little respect for the performers and the paying customers.

After the show the band hung out and sold merchandise. I think it’s really cool when the band sells their own stuff instead of having some roadie do it. That way people can have their CDs signed and talk to them if they want. I just picked up their latest, The Ugly People Vs The Beautiful People, and I’m glad I did. I’ve been listening to it today and it’s just a beautiful record. I’d heard some of their songs before, but hearing a full album after you’ve heard a lot of the songs live is usually always a cool experience, because you already feel very familiar with the music. They’re playing Copenhagen tonight and will then be touring all over Europe until the end of October, so if you have a chance you should check them out.

I just found out that Idlewild will be supporting Coldplay in November. I haven’t heard anything by them yet, but have heard a lot of great things about them, so I’ll have to check them out before the show (I actually went to idlewild.com to learn more about them, which is a fun experience if you think you’re about to learn about a rock band).

Tonight Arsenal are playing PSV Eindhoven, which ought to be a good game. Hopefully, Thierry Henry will wear a t-shirt congratulating the newlywed Mr and Mrs Arseblogger and show it off, when he scores his first goal. That would be something.

2002-09-23T21:53:00.000+02:00

You’re Pretty Dreamy For a Boy From Long Island:
I’ve been out partying twice this week, so sleeping and drinking has been pretty much all I’ve done since Wednesday. Saturday I went down to my favourite club, Club Drive, and ended up dancing around to old favourites by That Dog, The Smiths, and Madness. The club wasn’t packed for once, but I knew a lot of people there (including some I hadn’t seen in a while), so it was a pretty awesome night. The only downside was that when we walked home sometime after 5AM it was pouring down so heavily that I was completely soaking wet and I had to stop four times to wipe the hair gel out of my eyes (maybe I need to cool it with the styling products).

Tomorrow night I’m going down to check out The Czars at Voxhall. I’m looking forward to it, but I have a feeling that not a lot of people will show up on a Tuesday night to see a band that hasn’t sold 50 records here. But hopefully I’ll be proven wrong.

I subscribe to Rolling Stone magazine and although the magazine has taken a more celebrity-driven approach to journalism (check out the cover for issue 906) they still produce great articles. In issue 903 there was the story of the Russian kid, who immigrated to USA, started dating a stripper, got involved with people selling growth hormones, and eventually got kidnapped and killed. In issue 904 there was a story about Ernest Hemingway’s son, Gregory, who was a cross-dresser and eventually had a sex-change operation, he was married three times (once after the operation), and he was committed and on all kinds of medication. The article also briefly mentions what is known as The Curse of the Hemingways and lists more than a handful family members, who committed suicide and a couple who died of drug overdoses. But the creepiest article was the one in issue 905, which is about people, who pay to be kidnapped and humiliated. There’s a brief article here about the guy who arranges these kidnappings, but the RS article is written by a guy, who actually went through the kidnapping event, which adds a very disturbing perspective. So I don’t mind that they put Jennifer Love Hewitt, The Vines, or Asia Argento on the cover as long as they keep publishing articles like the ones I’ve just mentioned.

Lastly, I want to say thanks to Alyse, who runs the beautifully designed website Bolt of Blue, for calling me fucking rad and directing so many people over to this site. That was almost too kind.

2002-09-19T15:06:00.000+02:00

It's Just Porn, Mum:
Are weblogs sexist seems to be what is on the minds of people right now. Tom Coates over at Plasticbag and Kenny over at Parallax View have mentioned it this week and as far as I can tell it started here, then went here and here and here, and then got picked up at Blogroots. Like most people I hadn't given this any thought (I link to 25 blogs, 6 written by women), so the only comment I can bring to the table is that maybe there are more men blogging and therefore more people link to them. One of the points made is that the women discussing this want acceptance (ie links) from prominent bloggers, but if they get noticed it's only when they write about sex or something like that. I can see how that would suck, but I think since most bloggers (male or female) don't get linked to by the most popular blogs at all, it will be hard for them to gain much sympathy. I mean I feel left out because I don't live in San Francisco, where all the cool bloggers live, who know each other and go to fray day together. But like Bruce Hornsby once said: "That's just the way it is".

But speaking of female bloggers I will mention that I visited Jennifer's Fireballs & Tsunami today and left trying to figure out, what was so funny about the slogan Ithaca is Gorges. While searching for hints (turns out there are a lot of gorges in Ithaca) I found a website with bumper stickers from the Ithaca area. This one is my favourite:

Is the Trucks song It's Just Porn, Mum a hit in your country yet? It's pretty stupid, but the video made me laugh.

Update: ~~Apparently, there are some template problems over at Blogger today, so until that is fixed you can see my favourite bumpersticker here.~~ Oh, does anyone know what's going on with Roger Avary's blog? I get asked for login and password, when I try to access it.

2002-09-18T23:36:00.000+02:00

I’m a Survivor:
This might only interest Danish readers (and maybe not even them), but here goes anyway.

The fifth season of Survivor (or The Robinson Expedition as it’s called here) is currently airing every Monday night on Danish TV3. However, this year it’s called Robinson: The Final Encounter, because the contestants are all people, who’ve been on the show before. This year they’ve decided to have a boys team fight against a girls team, they’ve taken some of the contestants and put them on a special castaway island, and each team has appointed a chief, who has immunity and can’t be voted off the island. It’s all mighty exciting and whatever happens on the show is sure to make tabloid headlines every week.

The reason I’m mentioning this is that the big story after Monday night’s episode is that TV3 had apparently told one of the contestants that his team mates had lost a contest on purpose, so they could vote him off the island, and if he didn’t challenge the chief to a duel (that’s the only way the chief can be kicked off the island) then he was dead meat. According to the paper he’d refused to do that and therefore the tribal council meeting was changed, so instead of having the contestants vote for the person they wanted to leave the island, they now had to vote for a person they thought should stay. That meant that the person with the least votes would get kicked off the island and because the members of the little conspiracy got confused they forgot to vote for one of their own saving the aforementioned contestant.

The contestant in question is the notorious Biker-Jens, who appeared in the first instalment of the show and has since then hosted several TV-shows including some for TV3. And there’s the rub. TV3 are now being accused of giving him an unfair advantage, because he used to be on their payroll. Obviously, their stand point is that when alliances are formed they have the right to shake things up a bit by changing the rules. However, in the articles I’ve seen they don’t mention whether or not they actually warned Biker-Jens before the tribal council meeting, but if they were going to change the voting process anyway I don’t see why it would be necessary to warn him.

I thought it was fairly entertaining to see the contestants, who thought they’d been really slick by losing on purpose, get screwed over at the tribal council meeting. But the weirdest thing was how the host, Thomas Mygind, behaved. He acted like a school teacher who’d just found out the entire class had cheated on an exam. He was very disappointed and tried to get them to admit that they’d lost on purpose and when they lied him straight in the face he looked really miffed.

From a production perspective I thought changing the rules was pretty brilliant. In order to make the show work you need people who hate each other to compete side by side for as long as possible, because if they’re all good friends all the time and each goodbye is teary and sweet, the show gets boring in no time. Or should I say even more boring, because the concept is growing really thin. I saw the last half of the first season, the entire second season, and parts of the third season, but totally ignored the show last year. You’d think the show would gain momentum now since it’s packed with old favourites, but seeing as they’ve mainly chosen the most annoying and bullheaded people to reappear on the show I’m usually more annoyed than entertained by the show. But if I’m in Monday nights I’ll have it on while doing something else and see the most interesting bits. And I’ll probably keep watching just to see some of the people I can’t stand get voted off, because they take this shit so seriously that it’ll be sweet to at least see some of them lose this thing.

2002-09-16T23:26:00.000+02:00

Everyday I Write The Book:
I’m not really a big book guy. I’m a big music guy and a big television guy. And I used to be a big movie guy mainly because I reviewed movies for a few years, but I just don’t seem to get around to reading more than a handful books a year. The reason I mention this is that I finally finished Tom Wolfe’s excellent A Man in Full, which has been sitting on the table next to my bed for almost a year. In my defense I’d like to add that it’s 787 pages long written in a very complex style (well, maybe not complex, but very repetitive style then) and I’ve read two or three other books besides this one in that time span. So it’s not that I’m dim or anything. I just don’t get around to reading in a book every day and therefore I don’t seem to be able to plough through stacks of book every year. You’d think with my fondness for drinking coffee while lying on my couch that I could get plenty of reading done, but for some reason I always end up watching television instead. But I have a couple of books on the shelf that I want to read, so as soon as I get through the two issues of Rolling Stone I haven’t read yet I’ll start in on Toby Litt’s Corpsing. I thought Beatniks was pretty funny and I’m told Corpsing is even better. Although I don’t read enough I’m great at buying books, so I have several books that I haven’t even opened yet, which is a bit like having homework lying around you haven’t started working on (you know, guilt wise). But it’s great when you have to take a train somewhere and you can just pull something out of the shelf and not have to buy some Grisham crap at the station.

To continue the ongoing saga, that is the decoration of my apartment, I'll just mention that I finally got the plastic poster things that I needed, so now I’ve decorated my kitchen with an I Shot Andy Warhol poster and my bedroom with a Warhol Playboy poster and a poster of Andy and Edie standing on a stepladder in front of the Empire State Building (can you sense a theme here?). I also hung a couple of photos over my desk taken by my friend Joey and a Magritte postcard underneath the Lichtenstein one, which was already hanging on one of the walls. But even with all the pictures and posters I still think the walls are way too bare and white, but I’m not really sure what to do about it.

The weirdest thing I’ve seen today is an article in The Post claiming that Triumph the Insult Comic Dog has recorded an album called Songs in the Key of Poop. I’m sure it’ll be an excellent record… for me to poop on!

2002-09-14T00:04:00.000+02:00

Jimmy Quit and Jody Got Married:
When I was 14-15 years old I played in a band with four guys I went to school with. We played mainly cover songs and played at a lot of youth festivals for a couple of years until our drummer quit to… okay, so I don’t exactly remember, but he definitely left and even though we kept on playing with our guitar player’s younger brother for a while it wasn’t really the same. We put a lot of time into it and even got to the stage where we wanted to write our own stuff and record demos. Thankfully, we only recorded one song and nobody knows where that tape is now, so I very much doubt that anyone will ever hear it again.

The point of the story is that I got a phone call two days ago from a guy I used to hang out with back then and he told me that one of the guys from my old band is getting married. Actually, he’s marrying his high school sweetheart and he proposed to her just a few months shy of their ten year anniversary. Now even though this guy was one of my best friends for many years I haven’t seen him or spoken to him in years. He moved away to go to school at some point, but we had drifted apart long before that for no real reason other than sometimes friends just stop hanging out. So I’m not in any way surprised that I’m not invited to the wedding, but I was very surprised when I got the call informing me about the wedding and also received an invitation to the bachelor party (it’s a surprise party by the way, so don’t tell anyone). I have really mixed feelings about attending mainly because the rest of the people there will be people I knew and/or were friends with ages ago and most of them I haven't seen in almost ten years. But at the same time the groom-to-be is a really old friend of mine, so not going would also be pretty strange. I’m not sure what will happen at the bachelor party, but I know for damn sure this won’t be one of the events like Jason Bonham’s wedding, where we get the old band back together, so at least that’s a comfort.

2002-09-13T01:51:00.000+02:00

The Games People Play:
I have a friend who owns a lot of board games, so tonight he tried to teach me to play El Grande. I got the basic rules, but with strategy games like this you need to play a few times to figure out how to best use the cards you're dealt and to know when to attack and when to chill. In many ways Kenny Rogers was right when he said that you have to know when to hold 'em, but also when to fold 'em. In that song lies in many ways a universal lesson, which can be helpful in a variety of situations. So after the first game I choose to fold 'em and we went down to the closest thing I have to a neighbourhood café to play backgammon instead. But luck had decided to not be a lady tonight, so I went through a series of humiliating defeats and finally just decided to call it quits and go home.

I had actually planned on writing about a surprising phone call I received last night, but it's getting late, so I'll save that one for tomorrow. But until then you can check out this weird story about the arrest of Nick Nolte. In this picture he looks like he could be the next Unabomber. But since he was obviously framed I'm sure the Malibu police will give him 48 Hours to team up with Eddie Murphy to sort out this all out.

2002-09-11T17:33:00.000+02:00

War, What Is It Good For?
Since today is a special day I’ll share three pictures that I took a year ago today in NYC:

I’m finding it increasingly hard to say anything about the attacks and especially the way the media has depicted the consequences (both the personal and political ones) without sounding like an arrogant, thoughtless, and coldhearted shithead. So, not unlike that rabbit from Bambi, in this case I’ll choose to shut up, when I have nothing nice to say. However, I do think that it would be nice if we from tomorrow could get on with our lives and try to think and talk about something else.

Last night I went down the pub and saw Arsenal beat Manchester City 2-1. Two things struck me about the game: Firstly, I’d say that if that last goal by Thierry Henry hadn’t been called for offside (which it wasn’t) it would have been the best goal scored this year and secondly, I think Peter Schmeichel is too fat and slow to play for a Premier League squad. It was almost embarrassing as he waddled up to the Arsenal goal for the last corner kick and hadn’t the ball gone out scoring another goal on him would have been like taking candy from a child.

I’m listening to the new Flaming Lips album today and there are some stunning songs on it. I think Wayne Coyne has an absolutely beautiful voice, which has a bit of fragility to it, which fits their dreamy music perfectly. I’ve only seen them live once, but because it was the day after nine people died at the Pearl Jam show at Roskilde 2000 it was a pretty special show (I did see their car extravaganza at Roskilde the year before, but that doesn’t count). Their show was probably a bit more subdued than normal, but it was an amazingly beautiful experience that I'm glad I saw although a lot of people questioned watching concerts the day after nine people had died at one.

2002-09-09T15:54:00.000+02:00

I Awake To Find No Peace Of Mind:
I feel terrible today. I woke up around 6am and knew that I felt sick, but at the same time I was still in a dream-like state, which was very strange. When I woke up properly after a while my stomach was cramping up and I just felt horrible. So the next couple of hours was either spent talking into the big, white phone or sipping water from a glass, so I wouldn't completely dehydrate. It felt like it was food poisoning, but I've had that once and that was a lot worse, so I guess I just overdid it with the snacks last night. But when I finally felt like I was empty inside I went back to bed and almost passed out and slept for about four hours.

I've been up for two hours now and although I have eaten and had a cup of coffee my throat is killing me and I'm tired and unable to concentrate. I tried writing a couple of emails and reading an article, but I just end up staring with blank eyes at the screen. I'm feeling restless, bored, tired, annoyed, and not well at all. So in order to get a little energy back I might go outside for a bit and wander around. I could definitely eat some ice cream right now, so I might go get a sundae or something.

As planned I watched both football games last night (and during breaks I saw Pete Sampras win the US Open), so for me that was a pretty cool night. I was very surprised by how lackluster the Rams' offense looked, but hopefully they'll get back on track in a hurry (Kurt Warner is the starting QB for my Fantasy team), and although the Ravens lost their first game (and according to Mike Preston they'll lose the next four as well) it was nice to hear that Jamal Lewis had run well and that new QB Chris Redman had played well and even made a touch down. And it was nice to see that all the hype surrounding Falcons' QB Michael Vick had a lot of truth to it. The guy played a hell of a game last night against the Packers.

The last couple of days I've been listening to the new Coldplay record and it's really good. I've seen them live twice and I think their first album is very good, but I wasn't too excited about hearing their new album. I didn't like the single at first and there's just something strangely unexciting about them. I mean they're just a bunch of quiet lads, who make nice songs and do polite interviews. But I think Chris Martin is really growing into the frontman role (he did a nice Bono impersonatian at Midtfyns) and the new record is more versatile than the last one. So after listening to it over and over the last couple of days I've been getting pretty excited about the record and especially about seeing them in November.

2002-09-08T17:12:00.000+02:00

Happiness Is A Warm Gun:
The highlight of an uneventful weekend will be the first Sunday of NFL football on Danish television. And to mark the beginning to the season Zulu will be showing first the Packers/Falcons game and then the Broncos/Rams game, which both look like they could be action packed and high on scoring. It would have been nice to see the first Ravens game to get an idea as to how bad of a state the team is in, but obviously the Ravens/Panthers game isn't of interest to a lot of people over here. But I'm totally psyched about the season starting all the same, so I have got my Fantasy team ready and in about an hour I'll make a snack run to get Pringles, Coke, pizza, and whatever else I can carry out of the local cornershop, so I'm ready for six hours plus of football mayhem.

I haven't really done much this weekend except being hungover and depressed that the Danish soccer team only got 2-2 against Norway. But I did get to watch The Muse, which I hadn't seen before and Happiness, which I had seen before. The Muse was a fun, relaxing comedy about a screen writer, who loses his edge and by way of a friend gets in touch with a real honest-to-God muse (played by Sharon Stone). It had several fun cameos and did a lot of inside jokes on Hollywood, so it was fairly entertaining.

Happiness, however, is still the most disturbing movie in the world. It's a very funny movie, but at times it's almost nauseating, so you sometimes feel like turning it off, but you still keep on watching. It's brilliantly cast and it takes the portrait of American suburbia a lot further than American Beauty. If you haven't seen it and you're not squeemish it's definitely worth checking out.

2002-09-05T15:56:00.000+02:00

I'm A Model, You Know What I Mean:
Watched Zoolander last night and it was very funny. The DVD is packed with outtakes and deleted scenes (is there a difference?) and other stuff, which is almost as funny as the actual movie (Will Ferrell is actually a lot funnier in the outtakes than in the movie). However, the highlight was the two original VH-1 bits that Ben Stiller did in 1996 and 1997, which I hadn't seen before. I think both Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson are great, but found it slightly annoying that Jerry Stiller doesn't seem to be able to act in any other way than he did in Seinfeld and does on King of Queens.

I'm having work problems today as it seems someone deleted my email account and the mails I was supposed to be receiving this week have been bouncing. At first I thought it was a general problem, because I couldn't access our database, either. But after a couple of days I contacted our office and it turns out my account had been erased for some reason. So now I'm way behind with work and I've had to contact a lot of people to find out if they've been emailing me like crazy the last couple of days.

There's a lot going on tonight. I'm meeting up with a lot of different people a lot of different places and hopefully we'll all eventually end up at the Love Shop concert. I'm trying to coordinate everyone's plans, but right now it's a bit of a mess. So we'll just have to see what happens.

I was looking for something fun to read and stumbled on a review of the first episode of ALF over at X-Entertainment. However, halfway through I had to do a little research to verify a story and as it turns out the story checks out. Creepy stuff!

Btw. did you know Alex Doonesbury was a blogger?

2002-09-04T16:09:00.000+02:00

I Might As Well Go On A Talk Show:
What the hell is going on over at Daypop today? I tried to make a screen dump, but I couldn't make the links readable, when I minimized the screen dump, so hopefully it'll still look weird, when you go there.

Today, I'll try to do some reading and listen to some of the CDs I've gotten lately. Later, I'll go see if Zoolander is available at the video store and then watch my friend Morten (the one on the right) talk about having a famous girlfriend on national television. And later I'll probably have to email him and ask why on earth he'd go on a talk show like that?

2002-09-03T23:08:00.000+02:00

I've Come To Wish You An Unhappy Birthday:
My parents and siblings were here most of Sunday and they came bearing food and gifts. It was a nice day, but I was really tired, so I just sat around most of the day trying to make conversation and not let me Mum drive me nuts (for some reason she'd pulled out the drawer underneath my stove and apparently it was disgusting down there. I tried to tell her that I didn't even know that the drawer was filthy, because I never opened the damn thing, but she insisted on commenting on it a hundred times). But other than that it was cool. My sister hung out afterwards and we saw the last bits of different movies that had all started earlier on and then that was it.

Monday I went down to an exhibit of local artist Jesper Seneca's work and I actually quite liked it. Some of Seneca's paintings reminded me of Rauschenberg, who I like. At the exhibit local act Country Stig perform a bunch of his own songs, which was cool. His best song was inspired by Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night delivered in a Johnny Cash-like style, which worked out pretty well.

I also picked up the Swingers DVD yesterday. I've seen the movie at least ten times (it was actually one of the movies I saw half off with my sister the other day), but I found it for next to nothing, so I had to buy it. Ron Livingston is amazing in this movie. Once you stop laughing at the references to Snoop Dogg, NKOTB, House of Pain, Disney, and Wayne Gretzky, and get sick of hearing about how the beautiful babies are sooo money then you'll notice what a great performance Ron delivers.

I saw the second episode of Contest Searchlight today and it was very funny. It's sort of a parody of Project Greenlight, but instead of creating a movie the winner gets to create a sitcom. Since the show is packed with references to Greenlight and showbiz it probably won't ever air here (I don't think anyone here knows who Colin Quinn is), so I'll probably try to get the rest of the episodes through the miracle of filesharing.

2002-09-01T13:56:00.000+02:00

The Kids Went Wild, The Kids Went Nuts:
My friend Søren stopped by with my CDs and the videos he'd promised me and there is some amazing stuff on those tapes. I saw five minutes of a Dinner For Five episode with Sarah Silverman, Kevin Pollak, Ron Livingston, and Rod Steiger and if you're a movie/television/stand-up buff like me this is heaven. I saw Robert Schimmel: Unprotected this morning and most of it was absolutely hysterical. It's very sex oriented, but from a marriage perspective, which is cool. So whatever free time I have over the next weeks will probably be spent watching all these shows. And when I'm not watching the videos I'll be listening to the CDs he brought me. I've been listening to We Have the Facts and We're Voting Yes by Death Cab for Cutie almost none stop, since I got it. It's just that good a record.

But speaking of comedy Doc Searls had a fun entry about why Bill Maher should have a weblog. He mentions Dennis Miller in the same breath and normally I'd agree with him, but after I heard Miller's Let's kill everyone rant on Leno a couple of months ago I'm not sure I would want to read his blog. I thought Miller was a pretty smart guy, but he made Chuck Heston sound like the Dalai Lama and I think there are enough bloggers like that already.

I went out last night to see Superheroes (again) and as always the crowd went nuts and sang along with every song. I mention Superheroes here all the time, but most of you have probably never heard of them, so here's your chance. I've found links to the video for Turn Me On and a bunch of their older stuff as well. so you can get an idea of what all the fuss is about. After the concert I went to the after-party for the movie reception that unfortunately I didn't attend. I met a couple of friends I haven't seen in ages and had a few drinks and heard some tunes. It was all good.

Oh, I'm twenty-friggin'-eight today. What's up with that?

2002-08-29T23:51:00.000+02:00

You Are Far and Away My Most Imaginary Friend:
The latest blogger to get linked to a lot is Tony Pierce. He seems to know a lot of so-called A-list bloggers and I guess dating Anna Kournikova will always get you some attention.

If you're anything like me you thoroughly enjoyed reading Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris and therefore you'll be happy to learn that a truckload of his articles are available in the humor section at the Esquire website. And if you haven't read any of Sedaris' books the articles are a pretty good way of getting introduced to Sedaris' take on life in France and the life of The Rooster.

2002-08-29T20:30:00.000+02:00

I'm Doing Alright For Country Trash:
The last couple of days have been spent working and doing nothing, but this weekend is crammed with appointments. Friday night marks the opening of the annual festival week, which means there'll be free concerts, movies, and a lot more for the next ten days. So I'll go check out the opening and a couple of other things tomorrow.
Saturday I'm invited to a movie reception and I'm going out to lunch with my friend, who has returned from the US. There are several parties lined up Saturday night, but it probably won't get too crazy as the units and siblings are arriving Sunday afternoon for my birthday party. Monday afternoon I'll probably go see the legendary Country Stig perform downtown, and then things should get somewhat back to normal.

The only interesting thing I did this week was attend the second meeting in the local blogger's club. There were four repeat offenders and a handful newcomers including my buddy Jan, who I actually spent most of the evening talking to. We didn't actually talk about blogging that much, but we did touch on the subject on comments features. And as it turns out Jan was so inspired that he has started working on creating an improved comments solution. I wish I could help out, but I'm such a 'tard when it comes to programming and the technical side of computers, so the best I can do is come with design suggestions. But I'll definitely do that when it comes time to decide what goes where.

Over at Kottke.org there's a link to a guy who has been sending emails with viruses to himself. I've been doing that lately as well, but I usually don't send a reply.

2002-08-27T18:25:00.000+02:00

What If Something's On TV and It's Never Shown Again?
I've spent today listening to the amazing Songs for the Deaf record by Queens of the Stone Age and messing about with my weblog. I have over the last couple of years made a lot of interviews with famous and not so famous musicians and since some of those were recorded on video I thought I'd get them together and add them to my site. I've only added four so far, but if you want to check them out you can find them to your left and downwards. I need to get a hold of some thumbnails for the rest of the interviews and them add them to the site, but I'll probably do it later this week.

I'm actually on my way to a meeting with a group of local blogger's, but I just thought I'd mentioned that the best news in a while is that a friend of mine is getting back from the US this weekend and he's bringing me some CDs I ordered through Amazon and a stack of video tapes with shows like Dinner For Five, The Daily Show, Last Call with Carson Daly, a lot of stand up, and maybe even some Six Feet Under. It's going to be awesome to check all those shows out. None of them air here, so this is the only way I'll be able to see them. To you getting excited about this might be lame. But it isn't. And that's just the way it is.

2002-08-27T01:01:00.000+02:00

I Lied About Being the Outdoor Type:
Have you ever decided to go exploring in your own city only to find places you’ve never seen before and then get completely lost? Well, Saturday I decided to go to the beach, because I felt restless and didn’t really know what else to do. I’m not in any way shape or form a beach person, so I had never actually been to the part of the beach closest to the city called The Permanent Beach. It’s called that because as opposed to a regular beach (which is basically just sand next to water) this beach has an enclosed area with bathrooms, changing rooms, a boardwalk and a nudie area. So, I walk down to where I know the path to the beach is and just walk straight ahead and while walking it dawned on me that this was a part of my city that I’d never seen. There were buildings I recognized, but it was odd seeing them from a different angle. I saw a part of the harbour I hadn’t seen before and eventually I just walked with a forest on one side and the water on the other until I reached The Permanent Beach.
On one side of the enclosed area was a little sandy area, where a guy had set up a DJ booth and was playing house music and on the other side was another sandy area, where a few people had chosen to hang out. But inside the enclosed area it was packed with people. I met a few people I know, but for most of the time I just sat on the boardwalk reading and glancing at topless hotties. There were so many gorgeous people there it was just ridiculous, but that’s what Danish beaches are like.

So I read for a while and when it was time to go home I realized I wasn't completely sure how to get home from this place. Obviously, I could go back the way I came, but that seemed like a detour, so I decided to cut through the forest. The walk to the beach must have been longer than I remembered, because after following a couple of paths that I was sure would bring me back to the city I ended up in a weird residential area and suddenly I found myself standing next to the local mental hospital, which I know for a fact is located conveniently outside of the city. More specifically in the next town over several miles from my house. And since I have absolutely no sense of direction I had no idea how to get home from there.
But thankfully after a walking around for a bit I found a bus stop, so I could just follow the stops towards the city. I checked the map, when I got home, and as it turns out The Permanent Beach is not at all located, where I thought it was, so if I ever go out there again I think I can find a smarter way to go.

I’ve sent hours this weekend on my other website setting up an online store. I get a lot of emails with questions about where you can buy certain Warhol posters and movies, so I finally got around to setting up a special section. I’d forgotten how much time it takes to set up something like that, so I never got around to set up the stuff for this site that I wanted to add this weekend. Maybe I’ll get around to it tomorrow.

I went shopping today to get those plastic things you use for hanging up posters and to get the new Queens of the Stone Age album. They didn’t have the poster things and unsurprisingly they didn’t have the QOTSA record, either. It’s like the Danish labels don’t give a shit about release dates unless it’s Janet Jackson or someone they’ve spent billions promoting. I’ve left records store empty handed so many times, because the labels don’t inform people about the Danish release dates, so you go to the store on the day of the American or British release date and the clerk just looks at you like you’re an idiot. Fair enough if it’s a band on Matador or Vagrant or something, but this happens just as often with major label bands. So that really rubs me the wrong way. But thankfully a guy I know at the local indie record store promised he’d have the QOTSA record tomorroq, so I’ll have to run down and get it then. While I was there I found a used copy of Phantom Planet’s The Guest, which is surprisingly good. California is a brilliant pop song, but I feared that they might be one-hit-wunderkinds, who’d just gotten a record deal because of Jason Schwartzman, but that’s not the case at all. A friend of mine described the record as unimpressed meaning they weren’t inhibited by the fact that they were recording their first record and could be on the way to becoming stars. It’s a playful record reminiscent of Ben Folds Five and Fountains of Wayne (which is backed by the fact that Adam Schlesinger co-wrote a track) and there are a couple of really great pop songs on it. It’s nice to find a record, which surprises you once in a while and this one is a really pleasant surprise.

2002-08-22T23:03:00.000+02:00

Isn’t It Ironic, Don’t You Think?
In an email today a friend of mine asked how it was possible for someone my age (I’ll be 28 next week) not to be able to cook. I haven’t answered her yet, but I’ll mention that I’m too lazy and disinterested in food to get around to learning how to make sauces, pies, and fancy salads. But that’s not the point of the story.
The point is that ironically a few hours later I’m on the phone with my Mum and she suggests that we have my birthday dinner at my house instead of at their house. Although perfectly logical (it’s my birthday and my brother and sister live within walking distance from here) I’m still not totally sold on the idea. At first I panicked at the thought of having to cook for five people, but was calmed a bit when my Mum said she’d bring the food. And you know she’s going to stick around and help clean up as well. So the only reason I can think off is that it’s weird having your parents as guests. I have people over all the time and I like that. But when my parents stop by it’s almost like they’re here for an inspection. My Mum will ask if she should bring me potted plants or shelf paper for the kitchen shelves and look around to see how I’ve organized stuff. I don’t think they feel at home in these small student apartments that I inhabit and sometimes it’s like they can’t believe that I’ve actually moved away from home. But I guess since it’s the most practical solution I’ll have to invite them over in a couple of weeks for some kind of celebratory event.

I put on my Green Lantern t-shirt today (cuz I’m the Got-No-Green Lantern) and went down to the multiplex to see the Spider-Man movie. It was very entertaining and definitely worth checking out. Kirsten Dunst is a cutie, Willem Dafoe is great as the schizophrenic Norman Osborn, and J.K. Simmons is right on the money as J. Jonah Jameson. The movie is fun, the effects are cool, and while you might be inclined to feel that the movie’s ending, which blatantly opens the door for a sequel, is a bit hollow that didn’t bother me so much. After all this movie is so obviously meant to be a moneymaking blockbuster that anything else would have been strange. However, there were a couple of factual errors especially regarding the Osborns that bothered me more. Where was Harry’s triangular haircut reminiscent of the one worn by Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects? Shouldn’t he have seen The Green Goblin and Spider-Man fight and later learned the secret identity of the both of them? Shouldn’t The Green Goblin have been green instead of wearing a green armoured suit? And since when does Peter Parker wrestle some big guy to get money for a car in an outfit, which looks like Spider-Man’s pyjamas? The last one is actually a fairly smooth retelling of the original story, which can be found here. Anyway, I’m sure Sam Raimi and friends took quite a few liberties with the script, but I honestly haven’t read a Spider-Man comic in more than ten years, so I’m not even sure what was from the original stories and what wasn’t.

There were two Jerry Seinfeld references in the last section and that’s mainly because today I saw the trailer for the forthcoming movie Comedian (thanks Lasse!). Stuff like that rarely slips under my radar, but I hadn’t heard about this movie at all, so now I’m really curious to find out more about it and desperate to see it. I’m a huge Seinfeld fan, so any opportunity to hear some new material is greatly anticipated. The trailer has nothing to do with the movie, but it’s very funny all the same.

The last thing I’ll mention is that this fall a lot of cool acts are coming this way. I’ve got tickets to see Ryan Adams and Coldplay in November (if you want to see Coldplay’s terrific show from Midtfyns it’s available here) and in the next couple of months I’ll try to make it to concerts with The Raveonettes, The Czars, and Jonatha Brooke. Now if only Wilco would just drag their country asses to our neck of the woods then everything would be peachy.

2002-08-18T23:21:00.000+02:00

Just a Perfect Day:
Friday was the most incredible day I’ve experienced in a long time. I got to work and after five minutes I’m told we have a major crisis on our hands. Turns out the building isn’t on fire, no one is dead or maimed nor is anything else happening, which would warrant the use of the term “major crisis”. The crisis in question is that the beer taps someone had set up for this guy’s 50th birthday were dirty and we had less than four hours to get a new set. So I get in a car with a janitor, who looks suspiciously like Uncle Leo, and we drive out to get a new set of taps for the guy’s kegger. We get the taps and go to the place to set the thing up and it turns out the guy throwing the party is a guy called Preben Meyer, who is a major player in the telecommunications game over here. He’s one of those people, who works with technology, which will affect our lives in the future (as a birthday present someone gave him a crystal ball, so he could keep predicting our technological future) and he works for both TDC, the university, and he is a board member in numerous companies. But apparently he prefers his beer on tap just like the rest of us, so we hooked him up and left.

I went back to work, but half an hour later there’s a call asking if I could come back and help them out at the party. When I ask what I’m supposed to do they tell me they need someone to play with their robot dog. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but I’m told by my boss I can go work at the party, so curious as I am I run over to see, what’s going on. When I arrive I'm told that my job for the next four hours is to play with an Aibo.

If you haven’t seen these things I gotta tell you they’re truly something else. You might have seen one in a Janet Jackson video or on a technology special on CNN, but seeing one in real life is a very weird and cool experience. An Aibo is a robot dog created by Sony, which is some kind of artificial intelligence. You can teach it to do tricks, you can give it a name, which it’ll respond to and you can train it to run after a ball and a lot of other stuff. I played around with it for two hours (until it ran out of batteries) and showed people how I could get it to recognize this pink ball and chase after it. And although I couldn’t really bring myself to talk to it I swear on a couple of occasions it felt like the thing was alive. The most incredible moment was when I lay down on the floor and it ran towards me and put its head on my chest and pushed towards me like my parents’ old dog used to do. That was so weird I don’t even have words to describe it.

But this was a party, so when the Aibo was recharging I stuffed my face with salmon sandwiches and beer, which meant by the time I punched out I was already a couple of sheets to the wind.

But the partying had just begun, so I headed down to Oppenheimer’s Afternoon to see my buddies from the band Fillip perform. Oppenheimer’s is a free one day music festival, where a bunch of unsigned bands perform. While I was there a group of my old friends showed up. These are guys I hung out with and went to school with ten years ago and who I rarely see these days. So we hung out, heard another band, and got our drink on and later we went down a party in the street, where I used to work. Up until six months ago I worked for a streaming media company located in a street called Mejlgade, which is located in the most bohemian part of town. They have an annual street party there and we went down for that. I got to meet old colleagues, people I knew from when I worked there, and just a lot of other people I hadn’t seen in ages. I met three girls who’d gone to school with my brother and was introduced to a guy, who composes modern classical music (you know the atonal kind). There were several bars and bands there and it was just incredibly cool. We hung out there for hours, but still made it down to a café for a beer before closing time.

While hanging out outside the café a couple of girls, who had also gone to our school, invited us to a party. One of them I’d met a couple of years earlier at a Motorhomes show in London, so it was fun seeing her again. We decided to go and I was at that party until I was so tired and drunk I could barely function. I don’t think I even drank there. I just sat in a chair and talked to the girl I’d met in London (who’d also been in New York, while I was there last year) and a girl, who’d sat next to my brother in school for three years. I can’t remember the last time I met so many people I know in one day. It was pretty incredible and I wish I was better at keeping in touch with them.

The only downside to this kind of partying is the paralyzing hangover the next day, so I barely moved a muscle all day Saturday. But today I got out and went down the pub to see the boys beat Birmingham 2-0 and was lucky enough to run into an old friend, who’d been down to see Villa lose to Liverpool. After the game it was time for take out and footie news, where we got to see the goals in local team AGF’s 3-2 victory. So all in all it was a pretty smashing weekend. And to top it all off my other job seems to be going quite well and while writing this I got an email from an old friend, so right now it’s all good.

2002-08-15T12:10:00.000+02:00

And I'm Floating Like God in his Heaven:
I did some surfing the other day and somehow ended up at The Brick Testament. The website has a lot of passages from the old and the new testament illustrated with pictures of a cast of, get this, Lego characters. And what makes it truly remarkable is that the scenarios are very elaborate and the pictures are gorgeuos. I've picked out a couple of my favourite pictures, so you can see what I'm talking about.

It's very impressive stuff. And then Jesus said onto the disciples:"Don't call me Shirley!"

Oh, Roger Avary has posted the teaser poster for his version of Bret East Ellis' The Rules of Attraction. How cool is that poster?

2002-08-13T23:50:00.000+02:00

Lookin in My Mirror and Not a Jacker in Sight and Everything is Alright:
It's been a busy, but good day today. I had a talk with someone from the public relations company today, and I'm now officially running the Scandinavian internet campaign for a movie, which will open later this year. I'm not going to talk too much about my work as experience shows that it's best to keep work and blog separated. But I'm very excited about this new gig and I have been working on my assignment for hours and have atleast another hour of work in front of me, before I can go to bed.

Today was also the first day of Blogcritics.com, which featured a live interview with Cary Sherman of the RIAA. You can read it here and my review of Whip It On by The Raveonettes has also been published now. You can already find a lot of interesting reviews and articles there and because so many articles have already been submitted a lot more stuff will be added over the next couple of days.

2002-08-13T01:52:00.000+02:00

She Blinded Me With Science:
I just came home from a night out of drinking beer and discussing evolution and science, so I really should be going to bed. We were discussing the blind faith people have in science and whether there ever will come discoveries as important as discovering that the Earth is round and that it isn't the center of the universe. No conclusions were drawn, but beer and white russians were consumed.
But before I hit the hay I just thought I'd publish this press release first:

Press Release:
Eric Olsen and a consortium of over 100 of the web's best writers are excited to announce the launch of an innovative new music/book review site, Blogcritics.com, tomorrow August 13.
Besides reviews, essays, fantasias and the like on a tremendous number of CD's, artists, and books, we are honored to welcome RECORDING INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA (RIAA) PRESIDENT CARY SHERMAN TO A LIVE CHAT ON BLOGCRITICS.COM tomorrow, August 13, AT 11AM EASTERN TIME.
Mr. Sherman will be answering questions about the future of the industry in these changing times.
For more information on Blogcritics.com and the launch, please see here.

I'm very excited to see the Blogcritics.com site later today and I hope you'll stop by as well.

I've gotten some feedback on the Worst Collaboration post. Ross left his thought in the comments and on his website and Eric continued the discussion at his site.

I'm getting a call tomorrow morning with more details on my new public relations job, so I really should get to bed now.

2002-08-12T14:59:00.000+02:00

I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major-General:
I had a job interview with an English PR company months ago, where it was decided that when they got campaigns in Scandinavia I would somehow be involved. Well, I just received an email today, where they asked if I could work on a campaign for a movie, which will open here in September. I've received some materiale and I should get a phone call later today with more information. This is pretty exciting as I've never really done any PR work before, but I think if I get a few pointers I'll be just fine.

Yesterday I got together with my brother and a friend to watch the Community Shield game. It was a pretty good game and it was nice to see Gilberto O'Sullivan (as my bro calls him) score on a perfect delivery from Bergkamp. The team looks really promising even with Pires and Ljungberg injured.

The AGF - Silkeborg game didn't go quite as well making it five years since the boys from Aarhus last won a game in Silkeborg. And why Josta Dladla didn't start in is beyond me as he is the only one on the team with any technical skills worth writing about. Oh well, better luck next week against OB.

Do you Googlewhack? I had a hit last night with Dadaist Homestretch (combinig my love of football with my love for modern art), which put be on the list of people, who've whacked Google. But apparently it's easier than I thought because in a mere 12 hours more than 60 people had entered new whacks, so my name won't be up there for long.

2002-08-10T18:11:00.000+02:00

Come Together Right Now:
Over at Tres Producers Eric Olsen has been continuing a discussion about cover songs started by Ross at The Bloviator. After having watched an hour of VH-1’s So 80s show I feel compelled to start a discussion about oddest/worst collaborations ever. A few come to mind off the top of my head: Metallica & the San Francisco Symphony, John Denver & Placido Domingo (Perhaps Love), and Julio Iglesias & Willie Nelson (To All The Girls I've Loved Before). But my nominee for worst and oddest collaboration has to be the Sam Moore and Lou Reed’s duet on Soul Man from the movie by the same name. I’m a big Lou Reed fan and he definitely is a lot of things, but a Soul Man ain’t one of them.

So what’s your choice for worst collaboration?

2002-08-10T14:24:00.000+02:00

Please Don't Take Me As I Am:
I went to see About a Boy yesterday and thought it was very funny. It surprised me how annoyed I was by the kid, because I quite liked him in the book. But Hugh Grant has very funny and although the ending is very cringe worthy it wasn't nearly as sickeningly sweet as I had feared. The badly dressed one's music fits the movie perfectly and I think I enjoy the soundtrack even more now that I've seen the movie.

The Baltimore Ravens beat the Detroit Lions 12-6 last night in their first preseason game doing what they've been doing the last couple of years. Sucking on offense and killing on defense. It's nice to see that the rookies have been able to get together to quickly to form a decent defense (however, it was against the Lions, so let's not go overboard with the compliments just yet). Now if only Redman would throw a touch down pass once in awhile we might not get totally humiliated this year.
And did Drew Bledsoe look scary out there for the Bills or what? He completed 9 out of 11 passes for 136 yards and scored two touch downs. My guess is he's going to have one hell of a year.

The launch of blogcritics.com has been postponed till Tuesday (could this be a hidden Aimee Mann reference?), but be sure to visit the site once it launches. I have high hopes for this project and it would appear that a lot of prominent members of the blogging community are supporting this project.

A lot of people still haven't changed their links from the old blogspot address to my new fauxhemian.dk address. So if you have a website and you've been kind enough to link to me in the past I'd very much appreciate it if you would change your link to the new address. Thanks.

2002-08-08T23:13:00.000+02:00

Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus, Riding on the Dashboard of my Car:
I’ve been listening to Transmissions from the Satellite Heart all day and there’s one track that always gets me on that album. It’s the Lips’ version of the song Plastic Jesus, which was written by either Ed Rush or George Cromarty or both (there seems to be some confusion about this). If you don’t know this version you might still recognize the song if you heard it, because it appears in the movie Cool Hand Luke. There’s a scene where Paul Newman is playing guitar and he plays the song very slowly, because he doesn’t seem to be able to remember the chords. If you haven’t seen Cool Hand Luke you really should. I saw it ages ago (even before Guns n’ Roses sampled it for Civil War) and I’ve seen it a couple of times since then. Newman is super cool in the movie and it’s just one of those movies, where you have a big grin on your face, because everything from the egg eating contest to the speech about spending a night in the box is just funny.
But back to the song. I searched Kazaa to find a proper version of the song, but could only find the Lips’, Jello Biafra’s, and Newman’s version. So I went looking for the lyrics and chords instead and was actually pretty surprised to find them right away. And even more surprised after I'd had a chance to read all the verses. It begins with:

Well, I don't care if it rains or freezes,
Long as I have my plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through all trials and tribulations,
We will travel every nation,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far.

Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
Through all trials and tribulations,
We will travel every nation,
With my plastic Jesus I'll go far.

That’s the bit I remembered, but after a couple of verses about a magnetic Mary, a sweet Madonna, and twelve apostles, there’s a verse and chorus, which go like this:

When pedestrians try to cross I let them know whose boss
I never blow my horn or give them warning
I ride all over town, trying to run them down
And it's seldom that they live to see the morning

Plastic Jesus, Plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car
His halo fits just right and I use it as a sight
And they'll scatter or they'll splatter near and far

Not quite as holy all of a sudden. And it gets even worse towards the end:

When I'm goin' fornicatin'
I got my ceramic Satan
Sinnin' on the dashboard of my Winnebago Motor Home
The women know I'm on the level
Thanks to the wild-eyed stoneware devil
Ridin' on the dashboard of my ...
Sneerin' from the dashboard of my ...
Leering from the dashboard of my van

If I weave around at night
And the police think I'm tight,
They'll never find my bottle, though they ask;
Plastic Jesus shelters me,
For His head comes off, you see
He's hollow, and I use Him for a flask

Plastic Jesus, plastic Jesus
Riding on the dashboard of my car:
Ride with me and have a dram,
Of the blood of the Lamb,
Plastic Jesus is a holy bar

Now personally, I think this is dead funny. But I was just really surprised, when I read the lyrics from start to finish. For some reason I thought it was a Christian country song and it turns out it’s a tribute to debauchery, which actually makes a lot more sense if you’ve seen the movie.
So I feel like I just found out that Vicki Lawrence is the one, who killed Andy if you know what I mean.

2002-08-08T16:10:00.000+02:00

Mo Money, Mo Problems:
Turns out I'm Bizarro Biggie. I mean look at the facts: I'm alive, I'm white, I'm skinny, and my ass is broke. And whereas Biggie felt that: "It's like the more money we come across the more problems we see" I feel like the less money I see the more problems I come across.

Remember I told you that I feared mail? Well, today I got a letter from the Student Wellfare organization telling me that I received more money than I was entitled to last year and unsurprisingly they'd like it back now. So now I have to talk to them about payment plans and whatnot, which stinks. The way this is going I'll have collected enough debts this year to completely screw up my economy for the next three years if I get a decent job, when I eventually graduate, or the rest of my life if I become unemployed.

I sent my review of Whip It On by The Raveonettes for the blogcritics.com project to Eric Olsen today and I think it turned out okay. I actually spent quite a bit of time on it and I'll be use to link to it, when the blogcritics site launches. I've noticed that a lot of people come here looking for information about The Raveonettes, so here's the David Fricke article about their show at CBGB's just for them.

2002-08-08T14:06:00.000+02:00

How Does It Feel To Be Without A Home
Like A Complete Unknown Like A Rolling Stone:
It's moving day today! With the help of my friend Jan I've acquired a new home for my ramblings. From now on I'll be publishing by thoughts and rants at fauxhemian.dk, which is already open for business. So please update your links and stop by any time you like.

2002-08-06T22:36:00.000+02:00

Andy Warhol Looks a Scream:
Andy Warhol would have turned 74 today, which Google celebrated with a cool banner:

And I was excited to see that I wasn’t the only one, who remembered.

When I said that the birthday party I was going to was a low key affair I obviously had no idea what I was talking about. There were a lot of people there including a former member of government, a guy from the Justice Department, several former and present principals from different schools, a television journalist, and a lot of other people. There were a lot of speeches, songs, food and drink, so I was completely knackered, when I got home.

Sunday, I’d barely gotten out of bed, when a friend of mine called to see if I wanted to go see AGF (our local soccer team) play at home against Esbjerg. I agreed and got my brother to come along and it turned out to be a pretty brilliant game. AGF played poorly in the first half especially in defense and managed to turn a 0-1 game into a 0-2 game just minutes before half time. But newly acquired coach Poul Hansen must have talked in capitol letters during half time, because they played a lot better in the second half and managed to get 2-2, which was fantastic all things considered. There’s a real buzz in the city about the team now. They’ve sucked for the last five years and been close to relegation the last three, so now that we’ve got new players, a new coach, and some money coming into the club, people are getting really excited about the thought of supporting a team which maybe won't finished third to last this year.

I check my referral log almost every day, because I'm curious as to how people found my weblog. But lately some of the results have freaked me out a little. It’s not the results, where someone has typed in a string of random, sex related words and accidentally gotten to this site, which creeps me out. It’s when someone types in my exact name and get here, which creeps me out, and that has happened a lot lately. Had my name been John Smith or something I don’t think I would’ve minded as much. But John Fogde is a very unusual name anywhere in the world (there are 200 returns for my name on Google and every single one of them refers to me), so these are people, who somehow know me and use Google to find out more about me. And it’s not like I get emails or messages in the comments from people I went to school with saying, “Oi mate, just found your blog by chance. Funny that!”. I never hear from these people, who are searching for info about me, and that makes me really paranoid. Is that weird?

The last two things are music related. Aimee Mann is giving us a chance to hear her new album Lost in Space at her website and it sounds really good. And the other is that I signed up at Tres Producers to be a music critic for blogcritics.com, so when that launches on Friday I should have a review ready. But more about that later.

2002-08-02T15:52:00.000+02:00

Some Like It Hot:
Kottke is in rare form today as he responds to a quote by Andrew Sullivan.

It's unbearably hot today and I didn't get much sleep last night, because of a huge thunderstorm and a party across the street. Even though the blinds were pulled my room would completely light up whenever a lightning struck and the thunder was louder than I've anything I've ever heard before. Now it's humid and grey out, which is a bit depressing. Hopefully, it'll be nicer tomorrow. I'm going to my uncle's 70th birthday with the rest of my family and if I have to sit in a car for hours in this heat I'll probably go nuts. I have no idea what this family thing will be like, but it's probably fairly low key with some nice food, so I'm sure it'll be fun.

And in football news Ray Lewis of the Baltimore Ravens has signed a seven year deal with Baltimore, which means they now have cap room enough to try to re-sign Sam Adams. Suddenly, it's beginning to look like a team again.

2002-08-01T22:23:00.000+02:00

I Need An Easy Friend:
For the last couple of months I've feared mail. Not in the sense that I think it'll attack me in the night, but because I know nobody writes me proper letters anymore, so besides my bi-weekly copy of Rolling Stone the only mail I get is from people who want my money. So I figure no news is good news and as long as the mailman doesn't drop anything off I'll be alright for another day. So when I heard a rather large plunk in the hallway this morning I got a bit suspicious. It's one thing to get the occasional bill, but when you get one that actually goes plunk it's not a good sign. But thankfully it wasn't another bill, but rather a small package from local music magazine Gaffa. Turns out I'd won two tickets and the soundtrack for About a Boy, which is pretty cool. I've read the book and I just talked with my sister about the movie the other day, so I'm taking her to see it next week. I've listened to the soundtrack all day and there are some good songs on it, but unfortunately it's not nearly as good as Hour of Bewilderbeast.

I saw The Bachelor again today and it turns out that I saw the two first episodes last week and then episode three and four today. I must not have paid that much attention if I've missed that I saw two, and not one, episodes last week, but then with all the commercial breaks it's hard to tell when one thing ends and the next beings. Anyway, the guy went out with fifteen girls divided up into three dates with five girls. And obviously all the smooching doesn't take place until next week (or the week after that or whenever this thing ends), so there wasn't that much rivalry or fighting this time around. The guy has a weird taste in women, but at least he thinks a bit further than just getting a cute girl and is actually trying to figure out, which woman he could marry and stay married to. The sick thing, however, is that all these women are falling head over heels for this guy, because the setting is so perfect and he's no longer a regular guy, but he's turned into Mister Super Dater. So whenever he eventually has to dump them they'll get seriously hurt, which is a downer. And the weird thing is that these aren't dysfunctional women, who have no other choice but to find their future husband through a cheesy television show, either. Most of them are cute and smart and there are a couple of these girls I'd marry in two shakes of a lamb's tail. So it's like watching a car crash in slowmotion if one car was driven by a young Alan Thicke and the other car was a bus full of charming, intelligent, well-educated Playmates. So it's hard not to watch.

Another car crash which is hard not to watch is the life of Michael Jackson. I've always been a bit of a fan and I didn't jump on the Michael-bashing wagon, when he was accused of child molestation. But he's been acting weirder than usual lately and this whole Tommy Mottola is the Devil business seems a bit ridiculous. My personal theory on why Sony isn't promoting Invincible is this: It's a turkey! The album sucks! If there was any money to be made promoting it they'd be out there with posters and flyers all damn day trying to get some of the millions of dollars back that Michael wasted on knucklehead producers like Rodney Jerkins and R. Kelly. I was actually even a bit excited about hearing the album, when it came out but besides You Rock My World I don't think there is one great track on it.

But the thing that gets me about this whole Sony affair is the fact that Michael has teamed up with Johnnie Cochran and Rev. Al Sharpton to turn this into a racial thing. I don't know what Michael's relationship is to Mottola and I don't know if Mottola is a racist, but while I was reading an article in Rolling Stone one thing struck me as pretty fishy. Sharpton is quoted as saying:

"Michael Jackson has had a lot of controversy in his career, but he's never gone to the race card before. So if he's raising it now, there's something to it. I think we must look into it."

I don't like the sound of that. I don't like the sound of that at all. During the OJ case people kept talking about playing the race card and frankly I found it to be a very flippant way of talking about racism. Sharpton makes it sound like people can just pull this card out of a hat whenever they feel like it and just because you haven't cried racism before then your accusations must be true. I may not be an expert on racism, but I think it's something which should be taken a lot more serious that this.

If you want a funnier and probably more well-informed take on Jackson/Cochran/Sharpton debacle it's been covered really well in the comic strip The Boondocks. You can begin here and then just read on.

2002-08-01T01:26:00.000+02:00

Welcome To The House Of Fun:
It has been a while since I found a truly funny website, but as I was reading a couple of entries at Acts of Volition I stumbled on a link to Conan O'Brien's Commencement Speech to the Harvard Class of 2000. It's pretty funny stuff and I particuarly liked this quote:

I was, without exaggeration, the ugliest picture in the Freshman Face book. When Harvard asked me for a picture the previous summer, I thought it was just for their records, so I literally jogged in the August heat to a passport photo office and sat for a morgue photo. To make matters worse, when the Face Book came out they put my picture next to Catherine Oxenberg, a stunning blonde actress who was accepted to the class of '85 but decided to defer admission so she could join the cast of "Dynasty." My photo would have looked bad on any page, but next to Catherine Oxenberg, I looked like a mackerel that had been in a car accident.

The speech is available at the February 7 website, which also links to a lot of other fun websites. I spent a couple of minutes looking through their archives and found a link to some funny Simpsons quotes like this one:

Skinner: We can buy REAL periodic tables instead of these promotional ones from Oscar Meyer.
Krabappel: Who can tell me the atomic weight of bolognium?
Martin: Ooh ... delicious?
Krabappel: Correct. I would also accept snacktacular.

So it's basically a collection of links, which will have you in stitches for many weeks to come. Just thought you'd like that. And if you have time you should also check the Weezer video for Keep Fishin'. It's a really funny video of Weezer performing with The Muppets. And as Denis Leary once said:

We all have this incredible attachment to the Muppets, don't we?
"We love The Muppets! They're so cute!" Did you hear about Jim Henson's funeral? Here in New York City, huh?
Kermit the Frog and Big Bird sang "It's Not Easy Being Green" at Jim Henson's funeral.
If I'm fifty-six years old when I kick the bucket and a fucking sock is singing at my funeral, I'm gonna pop out of the coffin and go, "Hey! What the hell is this about? Sammy Davis Jr. gets Frank Sinatra, and I get a fucking sock!? I'm really pissed off now!"

2002-07-31T22:54:00.000+02:00

Construction For The Modern Idiot:
Turns out I'm a bit daft. I had added this site to the Is My Blog Hot or Not? website and turns out the reason it didn't work was because I hadn't done it right. But it works now, so if you want to give it a go feel free to do so. It's actually a pretty good way of finding new, interesting blogs. So far I've only bookmarked the one called Minimal Thought, but I'm sure there are plenty of others that are bookmark-worthy.

I really should sign up for this, but I'm not sure that American labels would be willing to ship promos to Europe. But I'll probably email them anyway just because it's a cool idea.

I found out today that unsurprisingly is an actual word. I was sure it was a made up word like unfamous or unsane. But apparently not, so unsurprisingly I'll be using it quite a bit in the future.

2002-07-30T15:34:00.000+02:00

Now Watergate Does Not Bother Me:
I was excited about seeing Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs for one day and now I’ve learned that they’ve cancelled their show. That totally blows!

I was at a barbeque with a bunch of friends last night and we wasted an hour discussing why men tend to be more fanatical about stuff (sports, music, stamps, or whatever) than women. I made the mistake of saying that my impression was that men tend to be more interested in politics than women and that was not well received. So we ended up discussing what fascinates women and men for an hour without getting further than agreeing on that men tend to be more fanatical about their interests.
While I was at the barbeque Zulu showed the pilot episode of Roseanne, which I taped. I used to watch Roseanne all the time in the 80s and while doing research for a paper on Seinfeld and sitcoms a couple of years ago I read a lot about the show. So I was curious to see the pilot, which I haven’t seen since it was originally broadcast. If you look at the show historically it’s pretty remarkable. It premiered in 1988 and went up against shows like The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Who’s The Boss, Growing Pains, Full House, and another unconventional sitcom Married… With Children. There’s really not a lot a show like Roseanne has in common with The Cosby Show and yet it was number two in the ratings in its first year and then shared first place with Cosby the following year.

The pilot is pretty funny and manages to showcase the brand of humour and problems, which the show continued to be about. John Goodman is a real standout as he continued to be on the show and while Roseanne has funny lines it’s obvious that he’s the real actor of the two. And it was funny to see George Clooney as Booker.

The latest thing to occupy the mind's of the blogging community is Googlegate. It started out innocently enough with Dead Kenny briefly mentioning that his site hadn’t been spidered for a while and suddenly people started emailing him saying that their sites hadn't been spidered, either (including myself). Now different theories are being hatched and phrases like A-List conspiracies and google conspiracy are being used, while Kenny is now referred to as The blogging world's answer to Woodward and Bernstein. We hope to have explaination on the way sooner rather than later.

Update: Another craze sweeping the world o' blog is the latest in Hot or Not: Is My Blog Hot or Not?. I tried to add the link to the template, but there seems to be a problem at Blogger with blogspot templates, so the link doesn't appear in the archives.

I just realized that if people, who are affected by Googlegate, would add that link to their weblogs, then it will eventually show up on Daypop. If that happened maybe we could get some sort of an explanation.

2002-07-29T18:06:00.000+02:00

I Don't Believe I'd Care To Marry:
Saturday I was awoken by a phone call from a friend, who wanted to know if I'd like to stop by in an hour to help him move out of his apartment. It took me a bit longer to make it there, but I made it there to help him move all his stuff into his new place on the fourth floor (for some reason no buildings in this country has elevators), which took a couple of hours. That was my third moving gig in six weeks, so I'd appriciated it if people would quit moving for a while. Later that day there was a barbeque, Trivial Pursuit, and a lot of booze at a friend's house, so Sunday was as per usual spent on the couch searching for some kind of televised entertainment. Thankfully, the Danish footie season started this weekend, so there was a game on. And later on I watch highlights from local team AGF's 2-0 victory, which is sure to set the tone for a great season.

Another thing I saw was the first part of a reality show called The Bachelor. It was on American television a while ago, so if I wanted to find out who got married to whom I probably could, but I actually want to watch the second part. I've watched a lot of reality television although I usually get bored with it really quickly. But what fascinated me about The Bachelor is that you have 25 girls, who line up to date and then hopefully marry this guy. He gets to pick and chose between all these women and it looks like things will get pretty nasty in the second show. He started off as the perfect gentleman and seemed genuinely sad about having to send 10 of the girls home without getting an opportunity to get to know them well enough to make a well-informed decision (it was interesting to see, which girls he chose and which were dumped. Suffice it to say that the one, who looked like a Playmate made the cut, while the lawyer got booted.). The 15 remaining girls are then shipped off to a house, where they have to live together, while they get to date the guy. That in itself is a setup for disaster, because suddenly you have a house full of women, who are competing for the same guy. But if you are to believe the "next time on The Bachelor" bit the guy then continues to make out with the girls on the dates like he's been handed the keys to his own private harem. So he might get to marry one of these girls, but my guess is that he'll end up divorced faster than you can say Rick Rockwell.

I was supposed to start work on my thesis today and I did read two articles. But it is unbearably hot today, so I ended up reading Rolling Stone on the balcony instead of working. And now I'm on the way out to another barbeque.

There are a lot of bands playing here in August, but the one I'm looking forward to the most is Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs. I've heard a couple of their songs, read a couple of articles on them, and they come highly recommended from David Fricke, so it ought to be a cool gig.

2002-07-27T02:00:00.000+02:00

Talkin' Seattle Grunge Rock Blues:
I watched The Filth & The Fury and it was fairly horrible. I really liked The Sex Pistols, when I was 16 and I’ve always admired their “We don’t give a toss” attitude. But since I saw them on their reunion tour in 1996, where they left the stage after fifteen minutes, because they got pelted with bottles, I’ve lost pretty much all respect for them and especially Johnny Rotten. He’s a self-indulgent and pompous guy, who keeps going on about stuff that happened 25 years ago. Supposedly, this movie shows the real Sex Pistols, which hasn’t been shown in previous documentaries about the band. Honestly, the only difference I could find was that they kept slagging Malcolm McLaren of without giving him a chance to retort. Other than that it was the same stories that we’ve heard a million times before. So that was a downer. The only thing that fascinated me was the relationship between Nancy and the band. Apparently, she was the Courtney Love of the time.

Then I watched the grunge documentary, which unfortunately wasn’t Hype!, but a VH-1 special. It was okay, but nothing special. I still get really depressed, when I see some of the Nirvana live footage, because you just get the feeling that Kurt hadn’t peaked artistically yet and had he not blown his head off he’d still be making incredible records today.

I’m listening to Superunknown right now and it’s just an amazing record. It’s definitely in my all-time top ten and it is remarkable how it doesn’t sound dated at all. Too bad people aren’t making records like that any more.

2002-07-26T22:41:00.000+02:00

Spice Up Your Life:
I was reading an entry on Roger Avary’s blog about his recent lunch with Geri Halliwell and he mentions that had he directed the Spice Girls movie it would have been very different from what it actually turned out to be. Well, in a weird turn of events Spice World, as the movie is called, was actually on telly tonight and I caught the last half hour of it. I think very few will be surprised to learn that it is pretty horrible and not at all funny. I was surprised that Avary had met with the Spice Girls let alone considered making their movie, but I guess he saw an opportunity to make a new version of Help! or something. What surprised me the most were the number of famous people who appear or have actual parts in the movie. How hard is it to see that a movie about five I-don’t-know-whats with no story made only to showcase their music is a terrible idea? Why would you want any part of that? The only remotely funny scene is where the five girls are summoned by a judge played by Stephen Fry and they’re sentenced to have their next record debut at number 175 on the charts and then disappear only to leave the girls doing talk shows in Taiwan for the rest of their lives. And the scene ends with Fry shouting “Now send in Gary Barlow”. So when the highlight of the movie is a reference to a former member of Take That I think you’ll agree that that just isn’t good enough.

I’m going to watch The Filth & The Fury now, which is a documentary about The Sex Pistols and later there’s a documentary about grunge, which may or may not be the movie Hype!. So musically things have taken a turn for the better.

2002-07-26T01:05:00.000+02:00

The Thing That Should Not Be:
Recently, I’ve read two interesting articles and I thought I’d link to them and comment on them here. After all that seems to be what weblogs are for. The first one is a review from The Village Voice of the new Sonic Youth album, which I found on Jennifer’s weblog.
The gist of the review is that a lot of bands tend to overstay their welcome and the most sensible thing to do is break up instead of continuing to make pointless and lame albums that no one wants to hear. In the reviewer’s opinion Sonic Youth now fits this description and since their latest album, Murray Street, is dull she would now prefer it if they would just break up already. Now, I don’t have an opinion on this matter. I don’t own any Sonic Youth records, I’ve only listened to their music on a couple of occasions, and the time I went to see them (Roskilde 1992) there were so many people in the tent I got lifted up of ground and the pressure of the masses pushed me out of the tent before I’d heard ten minutes of music. So I could care less if they broke up tomorrow, but that doesn’t mean I don’t see her point. It’s not so often bands that I like I hope will break up, because I keep hoping they’ll make that one great record that’ll bring them back to their past glory (like The Wedding Album briefly did). It’s more bands, who I can see are just churning out records, so they can continue to justify touring with their Greatest Hits package I wish would just give it up. This goes especially for these new incarnations of 60s and 70s bands, where there are is only one original member of the group left and they don't own the rights to the band name, so now they're called Slade II or The Beach Boys Family.

However, I guess Metallica is a good example of a band I wish would just pack it in. All the crap surrounding their self-titled album pointed in the direction of them starting to suck and since then it’s been a long and depressing journey up Shit Creek (and I’ll never forgive them for that symphony record. Never!). And now it seems really hard to imagine them coming back after five years with new material that anyone would even care remotely about. So if James would just stay in rehab that would probably be the best solution for everyone.
But as much as I’m able to see the reviewer’s point I still think the review is a bit on the harsh side. And revealing that she’s only been a fan since 1995, when the band has been around since the early 80s, was a major tactical mistake, which a number of angry letters to the editor made sure to point out.

The second article came to me through the Douglas Coupland blog. It’s from the SF Gate website and is a general article about the weblog phenomenon. Most of it is the same as you’ve already seen in a hundred articles with interviews with the people you’d expect, but the opening paragraph is what caught my attention and kept me reading. Apparently, Paul Grabowicz, a professor at the UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, and Wired Magazine co-founder John Battelle are going to teach a class on blogging this fall, which is what brought this article on. The article isn’t at all specific about what will be taught in this class, but Grabowicz is quoted as saying that:

“… he hopes the class will merely give fledgling journalists another tool to report news in the most accurate, compassionate and conscientious way possible.
"Our hope is that the two communities, bloggers and mainstream reporters, can feed off each other," says Grabowicz. "Bloggers can learn the mechanics of newsgathering. Journalists can take in more discussion, criticism and analysis of news."
"Our intention isn't to co-opt anyone," he continues. "What we'd like instead is to change the one-way-street nature of journalism a little bit. Before, it was, 'We dictate, you listen.' Now we're listening as the public dictates."”

I need to find out a lot more about this. Obviously, by bloggers he isn’t referring to the droves of teenagers, who use their weblogs to ramble on about hot guys and how much math sucks. He must be referring to the ones, who use weblogs less as a journal and more as a soapbox and by doing that he has indicated that there are different kinds of blogs. It would be interesting to see, which blogs it is he feels the journalistic community could learn something from, because there certainly are blogs of different qualities. I mean just because it is now possible for every boob in the world with an internet connection to publish their thoughts on everything from porridge to politics doesn’t mean, and let’s be perfectly honest here, that those opinions are well-informed, interesting, or in any other way suited for publication. Hell, most of the stuff I write here is uninformed rubbish, which I should probably keep to myself, but where’s the fun in that? So I’ll look into this a bit more and get back to you.

2002-07-25T00:31:00.000+02:00

It’s Been One Week Since You Looked At Me:
I wish I could say that the reason I haven’t updated my blog in a week is because I’ve been busy curing cancer, saving the rain forest, or even something like reading or working. But honestly I’ve done none of those things. I’ve hung out with friends, watched all four days of The Open, and rented Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2002 and played it non stop for two days straight. The only things sensible and/or productive I done this week is work Friday and Wednesday and going to IKEA to buy a lamp and some shelves, which I haven’t gotten around to unpack yet. So there’s your explanation right there.

And for the record: That Tiger Woods game is incredible! And it’s a real time stealer, too. I played it for hours and now that I’ve returned it I desperately want to continue playing it. I have to figure out if I’ll be able to afford to buy it this week or wait and ask for it for my birthday in September. The graphics are very cool and there are so many features and courts I haven’t played yet that I feel like I’ve only scratched the surface so far. I got totally hooked and it is definitely one of the best games for PS2 I’ve played yet.

Watching The Open was a cool experience. The Danish players played really well, but Thomas Bjørn had problems early on on the last day and Søren Hansen never got the birdie he needed for first place towards the end. But even with that they both finished in 8th place, which is really impressive and it was well-deserved that Ernie The Big Easy Els won. It was also great to see Thomas Levet in such a good mood during the four-hole play-off and the sudden-death round, which he lost. And to top every thing off I learned that Tiger isn’t Tiger’s real name. Apparently, you can name you kids Ytossie and Rain, so as names go Tiger actually sounds like a pretty sane choice. But as it turns out the guy is actually called Eldrick Woods and thankfully Tiger is just a nickname.

Work was weird today. I was asked to shred a lot of documents, so I got hold of a shredding machine, but before I could set it up the technical supervisor suggested that I set everything up in a room with a TV. Or as he put it, “If you have to do shitty work, and this is shitty work, you might as well make the best of it”. Truer words have not been spoken, so I set the machine up, turned on MTV, brewed some coffee, and shredded what turned into eleven bags of shreds (which is, I’m told, approximately half of what an Arthur Andersen employee shreds during an average workday). MTV still sucks, but I got to see the new System of a Down video for Aerials, which I think is their best song, and there were a couple of other good tunes as well. And looking at a Diana King video while working sure beats not looking at one any day of the week (even if the music is terrible), so I can’t complain.

2002-07-18T00:48:00.000+02:00

Good Times Never Seemed So Good:
I helped a friend move into his new place today. A place that I actually had also helped him find. Peter had put an ad on his weblog and I passed it on to my friend, who was looking for a place to live. He interviewed for a room in the house and got it almost right away and he is very excited about living there. I have now met two of his future housemates and I think he'll fit in famously.

So today we moved his stuff and it was the quickest move in history. There were four of us in a car with a trailer and we moved all his stuff in less than two hours. Granted, he doesn't have a lot of stuff and practically no furniture, but two hours is still pretty quick. After moving we had pizza from the place across the street from my friend's new place and we spent quite a bit of time making fun of its name. They have a sign on the building advertising that they serve deep pan pizzas and real Italian pizzas. And also on the sign is the name of the place, which is Señor Pizza. Señor Pizza!?! Wouldn't it be Signore Pizza if these pizzas are so damn Italian? And aren't both names pretty horrendous anyway? There were other weird things about their decor and they screwed up our order, so we didn't get what you would call a great first impression of the place.

Then we got in the car and cruised around and then went to the beach. Normally, four guys driving to the beach and checking out girls would be a pretty cool scenario, but when your bumping to Elvis you kinda lose cool points. The only music in the car was some live album from the late 70s and although I enjoyed hearing Elvis singing Sweet Caroline and Suspicious Minds (which is my favourite Elvis song) I could have done without the rest of it. There is something about listening to Hound Dog and Love Me Tender, which makes me feel older than I am.

I actually went out and bought the Gangway record I talked about earlier and it's pretty great. On the off-chance that you've never heard a Gangway song I'd say they're similar to Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, and The Divine Comedy, which I think is a pretty smashing combo. So that and the new Doves album are getting a lot of rotations on the stereo.

2002-07-17T00:22:00.000+02:00

Everything Seems To Go My Way:
I've been at work both yesterday and today and it has been surprisingly less boring than usual. I've been cataloguing papers handed in by students and while that is about as much fun as a German sitcom my workday was made a lot more interesting by the music choices made by of one of the secretaries. It started out pretty bad with Craig David followed by All Saints (who I actually secretly like), but then she started playing Danish bands Carpark North and Gangway. I haven’t heard Gangway in ages, so I had totally forgotten how amazing they are. Or should I say were, because they broke up a couple of years ago. Personally, I think they’re the closest we’ll ever come to a Danish version of Pet Shop Boys, but with funnier lyrics, and if I had any money I’d pick up their greatest hits album tomorrow.

That just goes to show how a boring job becomes a lot less boring, when you can hum along to lines like:

And if you should ever leave me
I know I would feel
as sad and lonely as Mr Carter
when he arranged that mission in Iran
and everything went wrong
everything that could go wrong went wrong

My buddy, Søren, took a lot of pictures at Midtfyns and I found a couple that I thought I should link to. Remember that picture that was supposed to be of me looking cool? Well, Søren actually took an even better picture of me being photographed trying to look cool. The other two pictures are from the Coldplay concert and I just thought they looked cool:
Coldplay1 and Coldplay2

2002-07-14T23:13:00.000+02:00

Let's Play Twister, Let's Play Risk:
I have a good friend, who's a good cook. And not only is he a good cook, but he seems to also really enjoy cooking, so he tends to make dinner whenever I visit him. Saturday night we got together four guys and had dinner and it was great. Tuna steaks and some weird potato dish with a sugary-vinegar dressing with onions was served with white wine and it was really nice. All night we heard great music (Tom Petty, REM, Jeff Buckley, Beastie Boys, and more) and after dinner we played two games of Risk. I haven't played Risk in years, but surprisingly I wasn't wiped out or anything like that. I wasn't home until after 4, because I hung around after the other two guys left and talked for a bit. It was a fun night and nice to just sit around and talk for a change instead of running from café to café getting blasted.

Today I watched Singles again. And that was it. But then what more could you possibly want from a day really?

2002-07-13T13:07:00.000+02:00

Sometimes These Fantasies Come True:
Football season starts in September, but the first pre-season games will be played in about four weeks. So it's time to get down with the Fantasy Leagues and the only free one I could find is the NFL Fantasy 2002 game. I've set up a league, but according to the rules there needs to be 12 players in a league, so if you want to join send me an e-mail. I've sent out a couple of invites already, but there is definitely room for more people, so come join the fun. If you need some tips for organizing your team check out Fantasy Insights, who've specialized in predicting which players will be the most valuable on fantasy teams.

I've just set the thing up, so I haven't even checked out the rules and so on yet. But my plan for today is to pop on some Tool, make some coffee and figure out, how the whole thing works. If you've played the NFL Fantasy before feel free to write me with tips. Or if you know a better game I'd like to hear from you as well.

2002-07-12T18:59:00.000+02:00

Sign Your Name:
I was checking out Daypop and today's most popular place to link to is blogChalking (mixing small letters with capital letters is so 1997!), so I checked it out. Seems it's a way of keeping track of the location of bloggers inspired by Warchalking. So in an attempt to stay in the loop I signed up, which means I have to post the following to my site:

Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: Danish, Denmark, Aarhus, Aarhus North, John, Male, 26-30!

What this will do for my site or for the rest of the world is yet to be determined, but I guess we'll find out later.

2002-07-11T18:21:00.000+02:00

Really, Really Bad Idea:
I found this article about Jon Stewart and the Daily Show. Apparently, CNN will start broadcasting a Global Edition every Saturday and Sunday with highlights from the show beginning this September. I think this is great, but I was surprised by a remark made by CNN International spokesman Nigel Pritchard:

"The Daily Show has no topicality internationally and no relevance for an audience outside the U.S."

What the hell is that supposed to mean? And the genius continues:

"We like the format of the show and Jon is a very good host . . . but we're using the style of the show. It's not because of Jon but because of the program."

So the CNN show will consist of interviews with semi-famous tv stars, but Jon's commentaries about tax laws, elections, the NRA, and so on won't appear, because they have no relevance for an audience outside the U.S.. And I guess that also means that we won't be seeing Lewis Black ranting and screaming, either. If I wanted to see poorly conducted interviews with a bunch of brainless nobodies I'd watch Leno, so this seems about as smart as John Rocker's comments about the New York subway system.

2002-07-11T16:24:00.000+02:00

Here Lies a Picture of a Girl:
I went through hundreds of photos taken at the Midtfyns Festival and found a couple you may or may not find interesting:

Me writing J-Fo on a cup (Notice the snazzy Aqua t-shirt)
Jens Unmack of Love Shop
Jez from Doves
Jimi from Doves
Jonatha Brooke all by her lonesome
Jonatha again
Søren from Saybia
Søren again
Long legs and big smiles
Matt is such a rock star
Muse's Matt Bellamy again
Garbo: Now with umbrellas
Garbo up close
Chris Martin of Coldplay
That hottie from Briskeby. (Ps. Hummel Rules!)

Turns out Wil saw the same ballgame as I did.

2002-07-11T00:55:00.000+02:00

Ride the Lightning:
The weather here is nuts! It's pouring down again and today's thunderstorm is on its fourth hour. I'm getting a little nervous as I have my TV and computer on and I'm not sure, how my insurance covers if they blow up. But I figure since I've already experienced lightning hitting my apartment building once, it probably won't happen to me again.

I managed to break my phone line tonight and didn't notice for about an hour. The phone line is connected to an extension chord with a plastic gadget and somehow I managed to place a box on it and wreck it. I don't know the first thing about fixing wires, but I've managed to connect the two cables again, so both my phone and internet connection are up again (my first attempt made the phone work, but there was and occasional beep, which made my computer refuse to connect to the internet). I've done a pretty shabby job of fixing it, so tomorrow I'll need to get one of those plastic things with the screws you use, when you need to connect two wires. How obvious is it that I don't know what the hell I'm talking about?

Both my sister and my brother stopped by to watch Blow and although we all thought Johnny was cool and Paul Reubens was fun, we didn't find the movie too captivating. And we noticed that the movie and Spy Game, which we watched last night, were edited in a style reminiscent of how Soderbergh edits his movies. Obviously, the funky cuts and zoom cuts are inspired by movies from the 60s and 70s, but Soderbergh is the one (atleast to my knowledge) who re-introduced them. Anyway, the movie was okay and had some fun stuff, but like Boogie Night and Rock Star the movie was interesting, while things were going well and less interesting, when the shit starts hitting the fan.

I'm watching an All Star baseball game right now and it's the second game I've watched this week. Turns out that one of the sports channels I have shows baseball games, so now I'll try to check that channel once in a while to see if they'll show a Yankees or Orioles game on occasion. I don't know a lot about baseball, but I like baseball movies and I'm fascinated by all the stories about the Brooklyn Dodgers, DiMaggio, Babe Ruth, Jackie Robinson, and Mickey Mantle, so I've always wanted to get into baseball. But since it's been impossible to watch games it's been impossible to seriously follow the sport. It was the same with American Football, but thankfully Danish channel Zulu started broadcasting a game week two years ago, so now I follow that religiously.

2002-07-10T18:43:00.000+02:00

Two Can Play That Game:
Seconds after I had posted the last entry I went by Tinka's blog. Turns out I'm not the only one in Denmark, who is struggling with the heat (and saw Billy Idol: Behind the Music yesterday?) and decided to write about it. Apparently, the reports of the death of her blog were, in the words of Mark Twain, greatly exaggerated.

2002-07-10T18:09:00.000+02:00

Hot in the City:
I'm in such a slump right now. I came back home from the festival about 2 AM Monday and since then I've done nothing but sleep and watch TV. I haven't even shaved or washed my funky, mud ridden clothes yet. I don't know why I'm so exceptionally lazy right now, but the fact that it is unbearably hot and humid outside probably has something to do with it. My apartment is extremely funky and even though the door to the balcony has been open all day I'm still sweating bullets.
There was a huge thunderstorm last night and since I live on the third floor I had a pretty good view of it. Lightnings were hitting stuff all over the place and every couple of minutes the sky would light completely up and there'd be a huge bang. So instead of doing anything productive my brother and I rented Blow, Spy Game, and Soul Survivors. I'm watching Blow by myself tonight, but we saw the other two last night.

Spy Game is a decent enough thriller starring Brad Pitt and Robert Redford about a spy, who gets caught and thrown in a Chinese prison. After hating Pitt for doing movies like A River Runs Through It and Legends of the Fall he's turned into one of my favourite actors. Don't get me wrong, I haven't seen Meet Joe Black or The Mexican (and I'm in no rush to), but he's still made enough good movies to make up for a couple of stinkers. And both him and Redford were good enough to add some life and charm to this at times too complex story.

However, Soul Survivors is another story. I can't remember the last time I saw a movie this incomprehensible and stupid. To be totally honest the main reason we rented this waste of celluloid was that it features Eliza “Evil Slayer” Dushku and because we were curious to see Wes Bentley in something other than American Beauty (and because my brother and I try to catch anything, which features either Owen or Luke Wilson), but neither could do anything to make this piece of crap worth watching. I won’t even waste time trying to re-tell the nonexistent storyline, but let’s just say it makes Boxing Helena look like Citizen Kane. Hopefully, Blow will turn out to be a little better.

My friend, Jan, has pulled together all the photos which were taken at the festival and made them available online. I'll go through them soon and pull out some of the best for you. But for now I'll just link to a portrait of me, which was taken on our way to see Love Shop. The photographer wanted me to look cool, so in order to do that I had to turn my head to the point where I was about to pull a muscle in my neck (and hold that pose, please!). It turned out okay, I guess, and the dark skies in the background certainly adds to the gloominess of it all.

2002-07-07T16:28:00.000+02:00

Being There:
There isn't really any music on today, so I've been working on the reviews I had to write for last nights show. And they're all online now rated on a scale from one to six with the other ones I've written this week:

Rival Schools (****)
Gomez (****)
A (*)
Muse (*****)
Doves (**)
Isaac Hayes (***)
The Calling (**)
Dear (****)

Add to that the interviews I did with Doves and Rival Schools and I think I've had a pretty productive week.

I saw a lot of Danish bands last night and did a little partying, so it was a nice enough evening. Today, we finish the last articles and then in a couple of hours we start packing. We have a ton of computer stuff we need to pack and cram into a truck before we can leave. But hopefully I'll be home sometime after midnight, and since I don't have to work then I don't really mind if we get back later than that. It's been a fun week with some cool concerts thrown into the mix. For me personally the highlights were the interviews and seeing Muse, Rival Schools and Coldplay live, so in conclusion I'll say that it's been fun being here even though the weather has been unstable to say the least.

2002-07-06T15:27:00.000+02:00

Where Were You?
Just came back from the Jonatha Brooke show and it was a very nice experience. Her band had gotten stuck in LA, because the airport had been closed because some disgruntled ex-employee had come back and shot some people. So she performed solo and I think it was probably better that way. There weren't that many people in the tent, but the people there seemed to know her stuff. And when one guy called out a song title she just went Okay! and played it. We sat on the grass for most of the show and hung out, so that was cool.

Before that I was at a stand-up show with three Danish comedians. The last one was Lasse Rimmer, who is the Danish Alex Trebek. Okay, so not exactly, but he is the host of the Danish version of Jeopardy. But he also writes on a sitcom, he does stand-up, and he writes a weblog in Danish. All three comedians were funny, but Rimmer was the most highly anticipated. He did a good job and dealt well with the hecklers. Even when he asked the crowd a question and some guy who formed his answer in the form of a question. He did a bit about deer caught in the headlights of a car, which reminded me of an old Eddie Izzard joke about evil pilotfish, who swim two by two to scare the other fish into thinking there's a car coming at them. It was funny stuff and a nice break from all the music.

I found two nice pictures I wanted to share with you: Walter Schriefels (Rival Schools) and Chris Martin (Coldplay)

2002-07-06T12:02:00.000+02:00

He's a Complicated Man:
I saw Isaac Hayes last night and he's a cool cat. I'm not a big soul fan, but he has a cool-ass voice and every thing he says oozes sex. And he played Theme from Shaft and Chocolate Salty Balls, so that was alright.

I've been blogging a lot, but because Blogger was down yesterday I haven't been able to publish until now. It was pretty frustrating, but maybe that'll teach me that it's worth it to shell out a couple of bucks for the Pro version.

I have a very loose schedule today, so I'll go see Lasse Rimmer do some stand-up in half an hour and later today I'll go see Jonatha Brooke, Junior Senior, The Calling, Dear, and Superheroes. I have to review The Calling, who I don't really know, but chances are their pretty terrible. But we'll see I guess.

And finally here's a snippet of our breakfast conversation the other day:

[We were talking about my deflated mattress]
Søren: You don't need a pump. Just grab it and ftttp, ftttp, ftttp, blow it up
Jan: Just get on your knees and get the job done
Me: Yeah, that wouldn't be the first time I've done that

2002-07-05T21:32:00.000+02:00

Here Comes My Day in the Sun:
I just came back from seeing the best Danish live act ever. They're called Love Shop and I've seen them a hundred times and they're always in super form with a couple of new, fun stories they enjoy sharing. They have a truckload of great songs and they're one of those bands that always have people singing along to their stuff. And this time was no different, so it was awesome as ever.

My interview with Doves is available now (Modem - ADSL). I thought it went pretty well and we got to talk about both their records and some other stuff. But when I was at their concert a guy from the record label had stopped by and told my editor that the guys thought the interview had been great. Apparently, they hate giving interviews, but they had told the label guy that this had been the best interview they'd given in ages and that it was obvious that I was well prepared. To me that's a big deal.

Actually, it's a huge deal. I've done a lot of interviews and I tend to only interview bands that I like. So when I get the impression (or am specifically told) that the artist thought being interviewed was fun and not a boring chore, then that's a big deal to me. I always try to do as much research as possible and hopefully find a couple of questions they haven't been asked a million times before. And if they enjoy being interviewed, then usually the interview becomes more interesting and then everyone is happy. So knowing that they enjoyed it enough to tell their record label people about it means a lot to me.

2002-07-05T16:39:00.000+02:00

Here it Comes:
I saw No Doubt put on a decent show last night. I liked Tragic Kingdom, when it came out, but I don't know their newer stuff. I hate the two new singles, so I was mainly there to see them and hear Just a Girl and Spiderwebs. I guess if you're a fan then it was a good show, but I was slightly underwhelmed. Like Seinfeld's girlfriend once said about his act: "It all just seemed like a bunch of fluff".

I've seen nothing today, but I've interviewed Jez and Andy from Doves and that'll be available later today. Watch out for a couple of choice remarks about Tim Henman and info about upcoming dates. You can also read my review of A (who were shit) and Muse (who were great). Both are in Danish, but if you check out the Muse review you can watch some live clips from the Hulabaloo DVD.

I'm off to see Doves now, then some Danish bands, and tonight I'll go see Isaac Hayes. And he better play Theme from Shaft.

2002-07-04T21:28:00.000+02:00

A Maniac, Maniac on the Floor:
I saw Muse play today and have established that Matt Bellamy is absolutely nuts. As always he gave it his all and jumped effortless from playing beautiful piano lines to screeching guitar solos to singing in the wildest falsetto ever. Origin of Symmetry is a cracker of an album and the songs work even better live. Muse absolutely rule and if you haven't heard them yet you should give them a chance (they don't even play the dreadful Unintended anymore). Hopefully I'll be able to and some pictures from the concert later.

More stuff to check out:
Coldplay performing three tracks from their forthcoming album. It's a world premiere and I'm passing it along to you.
The entire Jon Spencer Blues Explosion concert (lasts about an hour).
My review of Gomez (in Danish).

2002-07-04T16:22:00.000+02:00

Pictures of You:
We've taken a bunch of pictures already, so I've collected a bunch of links to the best ones:

How we got our gear from the truck to the press camp
This is what the roads are like
Me pretending to work
The main (and muddy) stage
Our headquarters
Wednesday morning
Our studio
Paving the streets with wood
Ben from Gomez
Tom from Gomez
Turin Brakes
Rival Schools
The last punk in Denmark
Jon Spencer
Jon Spencer rockin'

2002-07-04T14:25:00.000+02:00

I Know You Don't Listen To Me:
I got to see both Gomez and Coldplay last night and both were pretty good. I've seen Gomez a couple of times before and as always they were in an extremely good mood. They're a fun bunch and they have some great songs. Unfortunately, the weather was pretty bad, but still they managed to get people excited during the first couple of songs. They played too much new stuff in the middle part of the show, so it died down a bit, but the ending was smashing as they played Here Comes the Breeze, Get Myself Arrested, Ruff Stuff, Revolutionary Kind, and Whipping Piccadilly was the last song. So considering the circumstances the show was actually very enjoyable.

Coldplay was the last band to play here last night and they put on a pretty good show. They'd been out to look at the stage early in the morning and had been sure that this would be the worst show they'd ever play. But not surprisingly people had chosen to ignore the mud and had shown up in droves. So the band were really happy that so many had shown up and it showed. Obviously, the feedback on the new stuff weren't that strong, but Shiver, Trouble, and Yellow were well received and so was the new single. I don't know if it was the weather or the fact that Coldplay don't have enough great songs that stopped the concert from being fantastic, but as concerts go it was still pretty good.

The Rival Schools interview I did is online now and so is my review of the concert (unfortunately, it's in Danish).

2002-07-03T20:39:00.000+02:00

Bring It On:
We just got permission to stream the Gomez concert, so in 15 minutes you'll be able to go to musik.dk and watch them play live.

2002-07-03T19:12:00.000+02:00

I Won't Complain Unless You Want Me To:
It's absolutely pouring out and ~~in fifteen minutes~~ right now the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion will enter the large stage here at Midtfyns. My guess is that Jon will be pretty lonely out there as he is virtually unknown here and with weather like this I doubt anyone will be interested in checking out new stuff. But if you have a bitchin' internet connection you can watch the show online at musik.dk (links are in the corner to the right).

I've had a great day so far. I did an interview Walter Schriefels from Rival Schools, which went really well. I'll link to the interview, when we get it online, but until then you can watch a clip of us talking before the interview.

I also saw them play this afternoon and they rocked. The gave shout-outs to Danish model Helena Christensen, the little mermaid, and Danish money because it hasn't been turned into European money yet. The played Good Things and Used For Glue and most of the other songs of the record and although they had a shitty time slot and no one knew them they made the best of it.

My friend, Søren, interviewed Jon from Coldplay and that interview is available here in two qualities: ADSL - Modem.

He shot some clips from the Turin Brakes and Rival Schools shows:
[Turin Brakes - Windows Media: ADSL - Modem]
[Turin Brakes - Windows Media: ADSL - Modem]

[Rival Schools i Windows Media: ADSL - Modem]
[Rival Schools i Windows Media: ADSL - Modem]

Check out the clips and check back for more as the John Fogde Blues Explosion continues.

2002-07-02T22:15:00.000+02:00

Message in a Bottle:
My blog is in the shitter right now, so there is no author tag and the comments don't work either. If you have questions about the festival or you have an interesting story or questions for some of the bands feel free to write me at john@warhol.dk or leave me a message in the tagboard in the left column.

2002-07-02T20:32:00.000+02:00

Everything in its Right Place:
We’ve been down here at the Midtfyns Festival since 1 o’clock and we seem to have everything under control. I’m blogging this from a laptop with a wireless internet connection in the middle of a muddy field with a cup of coffee in front of me and a mouth full of chocolate biscuits. It’s slightly surreal, but a lot of fun. Everyone is in a really good mood although the weather is supremely shitty. There’s mud everywhere, but as long as we can sit here out of the rain it doesn’t really matter.

We’ve already gotten a bunch of interviews lined up and apparently we’ve secured a world premiere of some of the tracks from the new Coldplay record, which will be released in August. We’ll make them available online on Thursday, so I’ll add a link as soon as we’ve got them ready. We should also get some stuff from the forthcoming Muse DVD, but more on that later.

We have so far been promised interviews with Muse, Coldplay, Doves, and Rival Schools, and I’ve been asked to interview the last two bands, which I’m pretty excited about. We’ll shoot the interviews with a digital video camera and then make them available online as soon as possible. And since I’ll be interviewing in English everybody should be able to understand what’s going on. I have to start preparing some questions for the interviews now, but if you have any questions to the bands or any interesting titbits of information you’d like to share feel free to leave a message in the comments.

There seems to be some problems with the author tag on the Blogspot sites, but hopefully it’ll get fixed soon. But it’s still me, John Fogde, who’s writing, and I’ll be adding a lot more about the goings-on here at the festival later.

2002-07-01T23:35:00.000+02:00

Good Things Are Coming Our Way:
I was at a wedding this weekend and it was a strange, but nice experience. I went to the island of Samsø Friday by myself and ended up at the place we were supposed to stay around 6 PM. It was a place, which is normally used to house schoolchildren visiting the island, so it's like a camp or something. So there were dormitories with bunk beds, which was a little odd, but not that odd, when you're used to travelling and staying in youth hostels. An hour later we went to pick up my friend, who was also invited to the wedding, which made me a lot more comfortable. To explain the situation I'll just mention that the groom started at university with my friend and I and we were the only university friends, who were invited. This also means that I don't know any of his other friends that well. I met a lot of them at the bachelor party, but I don't feel like I really know them. So after my friend got settled we ditched the others and went to get dinner and beer. When we got back we sat in the sofas in the dining room, while the others sat in the kitchen. Some drifted back and forth and talked to us, but mainly we were just the two of us. I don't think we intentionally wanted to be asocial, but we felt comfortable just being the two of us and not sitting in the kitchen, where people were smoking and playing cards. So we sat around drinking beer and listened to The Pixies, Manu Chao (a big hit with this crowd), and New Order until around 2 AM, when it was time to hit the sack.

Saturday morning was spent getting ready and watching a bit of Wimbledon before leaving for the wedding. My friend and I wore similar shirts by Danish designer Mads Nørgaard that are reversed in colour. So mine is white with light-blue ruffles and his is the opposite. We didn't wear jackets, so people thought we were a bit strange. Everyone else wore suits you could as easily have worn at a funeral (except the best man who wore a beige jacket and clown pants. Honest!), so we thought we'd do something different. A girl, who by the way wore a completely see-trough dress, mentioned that we looked like those two guys from Dumb & Dumber and realizing she'd just called us dumb pointed out that she meant because of the shirts. Ha ha! Very funny. At least my underwear wasn't showing.

We walked to the church, which was located on the top of a hill with a very picturesque view of the island. It was quite windy, but other than that it was a nice day and the setting for the wedding couldn’t have been better. Inside were about 60 people and after a few minutes the bride arrived dressed in peach coloured dress. The actual wedding lasted 35 minutes, which I thought was extremely swift. We sang three hymns and there was an exchange of vows and rings, but what took up most of the time was the sermon. The priest had known the bride’s family for a long time, so he was able to add a personal touch, which was nice. But the gist of the speech reminded me of a cross between John Donne’s No Man is an Island and Hedwig’s The Origin of Love just to give you an idea of my frame of reference.

After the ceremony and having waited for the newlyweds to drive away we wandered down to the restaurant. My friend and I have travelled together quite a bit, so at this point we should know that we are disorganized idiots. Everybody else drove, but we wandered into the town only to realize we had no idea what the restaurant was called or where it was located. We walked by two restaurants we were sure weren't the right ones, then wandered back a bit only to change our minds and wander back the other way again. We finally noticed the priest drive by us and followed him until we found the restaurant. This led us to champagne, hors d’oeuvres, and watching the happy couple unpack a barrage of presents. The rest of the evening consisted of fantastic food and wine, a lot of songs and even more speeches, and drinking until 6 in the morning.

I won’t go into details about what happened at the party, but I have to mention this old guy, who made the remark of the evening. I’d noticed him early on, because he had a cigar hanging on his lower lip like a dopey Clint Eastwood. But it was the hearing aids, which really made me notice him. They were huge and grey with big plastic things going into his ears. Now I don’t want to make fun of the disabled, but I thought it was funny that he had those bad boys turned up so loud that the feedback they created distracted the chef twice, while he was presenting the menu. I didn’t sit near him, but I was later told that he had rambled incoherently throughout most of the night not even stopping while people were giving their speeches. But he really through in a zinger as the sister of the groom was rapping up her speech and people were getting on their feet to toast the happy couple. She said that she’d end her speech with asking people to join her in a toast and in a second of complete silence the old guy says “Thankfully! Now we don’t have to listen to more of her babble!”. The women next to him grabbed his arm and undoubtfully told him to can it, while the rest of us made the toast. And immediately after dinner he was escorted out and driven home. It was pretty embarrasing, but also really funny.

Sunday we had brunch in the bride’s parents’ summer house, where we also watched the World Cup final. I didn’t feel too hung over, but in the car down to the ferry and especially standing in line I got a bit queasy and the foul stench of seaweed didn’t make things any better. But I made it home alright and spent the rest of the night in front of the television.

To wrap this wedding thing up I’d like to add that I thought we had an excellent time this weekend. The party was arranged to perfection and I got to talk to a lot of nice people. I was fun telling the groom’s parents about some of the things we’d done together and it was nice to see the bride and groom so happy. It was a unique experience and something I won’t forget for a long time.

Today has been spent sleeping, watching Henman fumble his way through his fourth game, and packing. I’m leaving for the festival tomorrow at 8 in the morning, so I need to get all my gear ready. I’ve been listening to Rival Schools all night and I’m really looking forward to seeing them on Wednesday. I have no idea what we’re going to be doing at the festival yet, but I guess we’ll have a meeting tomorrow to sort things out. I’ll do my best to update about my musical adventures and maybe I’ll even be able to link to some photos and interviews. I’m sure it’ll be an awesome week. Good things are indeed coming our way.

2002-06-28T00:59:00.000+02:00

Darlin' Don't You Go and Cut Your Hair:
I got a haircut today and as always it was a weird experience. I’d rather go to the dentist than a hairdresser, because at the dentist you get your own room and you just lie back and let them go to work. But at the hairdresser there are all these people around you and you have to participate with instructions about how you want your hair, the length, style, colour, which kind of hair wax, and so on and so forth. There are the obligatory questions about this haircut compared to the last one you got (should it be longer or shorter than last time?), but if you’re anything like me you have no clue what your hair looked like two months ago, so you just say that whatever she thinks would be nice is fine with you and then hope she doesn’t get too fresh with the electrical shaver. And at the end she shows you the back of your head in a mirror and asks if you like it. What are you supposed to say to that? It’s not like you can ask for a do-over. So you just nod in acceptance and wonder if she really is able to remember how much she cut off the last time or if she just saying that it's shorter this time to mess with you.

The conversation during the actual cutting process is also a strange affair. Usually, I try not to say anything, because I feel weird making small-talk with someone I don’t really know, who’s basically getting paid to be there. But it depends on who is cutting my hair how uncomfortable I am and the girl who cuts it now is pretty nice, so I usually make a little small-talk with her. I’ve been going to this place for less than a year and the reason I changed salons (I wish there was a more masculine word, but I can’t think of one) was that they kept changing their staff at the last place I went to. I went through three different people there and the second one was a real piece of work (I really liked the first one, but finally gave up on the place, because I couldn't understand a word the third one was saying). She was nice enough, but she wasn’t exactly shy, so she’d just burst out with really personal information that you honestly don’t want to hear in a situation where you can’t get up and leave. It got really embarrassing the time she told me about this birth control device she’d gotten inserted into her arm (I’m not making this up), and since at this point she’d only cut the hair on one side of my head I had to stick around to hear her bang on about it for another twenty minutes. Maybe I’m repressed or something, but I can live without hearing about strange women’s choice of birth control.

Maybe the reason I think going to the hairdresser is a strange experience is because for a long time I didn’t cut my hair. From 1990 to 1998 scissors did not touch my hair, which meant that for a long time my hair went down to my waist and not surprisingly it didn’t look so great. But the theory was that if you wanted long hair you shouldn’t cut it (or as Alice in Chains said at the Metallica unplugged show: “Friends don’t let friends cut their hair”), so I didn’t cut it. But eventually the grunge look got boring (I got rid of the Doc Martens, the ripped jeans, and the flannel long before the hair), so I cut it and the funny thing was that the hairdresser was more hesitant about cutting it than I was ("Are you sure you want me to do this?" she kept saying). So it’s only in the last couple of years I’ve gone to a hairdresser on a regular basis, so maybe in a year or two I’ll enjoy it as much as going to the dentist.

2002-06-27T01:32:00.000+02:00

Cause You're White, But You Got a Nose Like Bill Cosby:
I was a big fan of The Cosby Show growing up. I watched it all the time and my favourite episode was the one where the kids put on a show for their grandparents’ anniversary. The big finale is Olivia lip syncing her heart out to some gospel song sung by a woman, who sounds like she has just risen from the grave. And her performance is so great that they play it again during the credits (oh, another choice moment is the episode, where Bud duets with BB King on How Blue Can You Get. Bud (or Kenny as he was actually called) was one of my favourite guest characters). I also really liked A Different World, but that wasn’t so much because it was a spin-off as it was because I thought Dwayne Wayne was a riot and Cree Summer was kinda hot. I also read Bill Cosby’s book Fatherhood and I have Inside the Mind of Bill Cosby on vinyl, which I bought in a second hand shop years ago.

I also really like Eddie Murphy, so when I saw the movie Raw years ago I thought he did a funny impression of Cosby and I liked the way he made it sound like Bill’s real home was like it was on the show (I don’t handle the money. My wife, Camille, handles the money). If you haven’t seen Raw the bit centres on Cosby’s son Ennis, who wants to go see Eddie do stand-up and when he gets back Cosby asks his son what the show was like. After a while the kid finally tells his father, what Eddie said at the show, which leads to Cosby calling Eddie to complain about the filth-floin-filth that Eddie says on stage (to this day I don’t know what floin means or if it’s even the right word, but that’s what it sounds like). So Cosby chastises Eddie for cursing on stage, which leads to a very funny Richard Pryor impersonation with a lot of cursing and the show just continues with more and more funny stuff.

The point is that I didn’t actually think that Cosby ever called Eddie to complain about the show, but after reading a recent article where Cosby criticises the show The Osbournes I’m beginning to think that maybe he did. And that maybe he’s a bit of an annoying know-nothing know-it-all. I think that’s a real shame, because I always thought he seemed like a really nice guy.

2002-06-26T16:01:00.000+02:00

Say My Name, Say My Name:
It seems like everyone is playing the name search game on Google, and since my last entry didn’t provide a very interesting return I’ve decided to add a better sentence at the end of this entry just to see if it gets picked up by Google instead.

I was watching Time of Your Life (which is best known as a vehicle for Jennifer Love Hewitt’s heaving bosom) and Jessica Garner's character mentioned that Go Away Little Girl by Donny Osmond was her favourite song. But a little research showed that it's not the same song as the one I heard Steven Wishnoff sing last year at Don't Tell Mama's since the punch line of Osmond version isn't "I'm gay little girl, so go away little girl". But I couldn’t figure out, how wrote that version.

If you’ve never gone to work with a hangover I suggest that you keep it that way. I’ve done it a couple of times and it’s brutal. I went to the Skt. Hans party Sunday night (it translates into a Midsummer Night party) and I tried to moderate my intake of alcohol. But it turns out that even if you drink moderately, then drinking moderately for eight hours means you’ve still been drinking quite a bit. And then going to work after four or five hours of drunken sleep isn’t really that great an idea. So all day I looked like I’d been on a Downey Junior-style bender and the type of assignments I got didn’t exactly help (let’s just say you haven’t tried mindless work until you’ve applied white-out to 60 Xeroxed pages to cover black marks left by the holes that were punched in the original). So as soon as I got home I went straight to bed and pretty much sleeped the rest of the day.

Yesterday, I went shopping with my sister to get my Dad a birthday present. Later, we went out to my parents’ house for lunch and hung out there the rest of the day. I saw the Germany – South Korea game, which predictably ended 1-0 to the Germans. It was a pretty good game, but I think it’ll prove to be a big handicap for the German side to have to play the final without Michael Ballack. He’s been their best offensive player all through the tournament, so the fact that he’s banned from the final is a major blow to the team. We also saw the two final episodes of 24 and I have to say that I was a bit disappointed. I thought the final revelation was ridiculous and Bauer going crazy Rambo-style was a bit weird. However, I liked how they dealt with the wives of the two main characters and the Bauer/Drazen show-off at the end was understandable. I doubt the second series will be very interesting, but I’ll probably give it a chance.

I’ll be pretty busy the next two weeks. I’m going to a three day wedding this Friday, so before I leave I have to buy a present, get a haircut, find some clothes, and generally get organized. Monday I'll probably have to work and then get ready for the Midtfyns Festival, which I’ll be leaving for Tuesday morning. I won’t be back from that until the following Monday, but because I’ll be covering the festival for opasia.dk I’ll be online throughout the festival, which means I’ll be able to update the blog and link to some of the interviews I’ll be doing. I’m really looking forward to seeing bands like Rival Schools and Muse and I’d love to interview both bands. But so far I don't know what I'll be doing down there, but I'll let you know about it when I get more info.

I’m experimenting with a program called MailWasher today. It’s a program, which checks your mail server to see, which kind of mail you have waiting for you. So not only does it allow you to sort through spam and mails with attachments, without downloading them, it also allows you to bounce mails, so you hopefully won’t get any more spam from that account. I’m not sure how well it works, but it sounds like a good idea, so I’m giving it a shot.

And in reference to what I was saying earlier: John is a Fauxhemian

2002-06-23T15:47:00.000+02:00

I’m a Ramblin’ Guy:
I haven’t really done anything the last couple of days. I’m still trying to organize my apartment and I’ve been watching a lot of TV, so today’s ramblings are just a bunch of different things I’ve thought about the last couple of days.

Like I said earlier my predictions for who will win the World Cup suck. Now Spain is out meaning that South Korea can meet Turkey in the final. Which they probably will if this tournament goes like it’s been going so far.

Wil Wheaton had a funny entry the other day about the Germany – USA game, where the Americans got to feel the Wrath of Kahn. I hadn’t even thought of that reference even though there’s an entire Seinfeld episode, where they discuss which is the better Trek movie.

I have a friend from Brooklyn, who’s a photographer. His name is Joey and he has a website called Joey’s World, which he has just updated. I met him in London in 1998 and managed to keep in touch until I could afford a trip to NYC in August/September last year. We hung out quite a bit and it was nice to know someone in the city especially which all the commotion surrounding 9/11. Anyway, besides being a good friend, he is a brilliant photographer, so check out his website.

I don’t really follow British music as closely as I did, when I could get Radio One on my radio. But it seems that the cool kids are into The Streets now. I heard them at a party recently and now they’re getting a lot of play on MTV2. The critics love them and if you're into hip hop performed by a white guy, who sounds like Tricky, then this is something you'll dig.

Speaking of music it seems that R. Kelly has decided to write a song about the child pornography case against him called Heaven, I Need a Hug. Oh My God! He should probably stop writing songs about this topic, since it was probably the inspiration for songs like Feelin' On Yo Booty, Like A Real Freak, and The Greatest Sex that got him in trouble in the first place.

I was watching Searching for Bobby Fischer last night, which is an awesome movie. The cast is pretty incredible, and I really like the story as well. Generally, I tend to really like movies about chess (although Knight Moves did sort of fall through the cracks), because it’s such a fascinating game. I know the rules, but I can’t play it properly, so watching movies or hearing about people, who have the ability to foresee how the game will unfold, is really fascinating. Another really good chess movie is Fresh, where Sam Jackson plays a part very similar to the one played by Laurence Fishburne in Searching.

A lot of blogs have those tests to determine which Breakfast Club character you are or which kind of shampoo you are, but I tend not to put stuff like that on my blog. I don’t usually write about which Google searches send people to my site (some of you people should be ashamed of yourselves!), but here’s one I couldn’t resist. I was reading an entry in Kieran’s blog, where he suggested typing your name into Google like this “John is” to see which kind of a person you are. He listed a lot of hits, but here’s the ten first using my name:

John is a British artist
JOHN IS DEAD.
John is one of New York's winningest handicappers?!
John is an Exacta Box Specialist?!
John is a small village nestled along the Northumberland Strait.
John is also available separately for use in your software or on your servers.
John is hitting the road!
John is Gone, Or To Be An Evil Genius, You Have To Actually Be A Genius".
John is the Webmaster of WebWord.com
John is married to actress Marnie Mosiman, who played 1/3 of Riva's chorus in Star Trek's "Loud as a Whisper" and has two sons, ages 13 and 14.

I don’t know why this is funny, but it is.

I’m going to a party tonight to celebrate that today is the longest day of the year. It’s an old pagan tradition, which includes having a bonfire and burning a witch (we usually use a fake witch these days, though), and it’s usually a pretty great night out. I’m going down to the college campus, where my sister lives, to have a barbeque with some friends and then there’s a party, which is always fun. It’s one of those things that everyone shows up for, so you usually get to meet people you haven’t seen in ages. Unfortunately, I have to work tomorrow, so I won’t be able to party on full speed tonight, but even so it should be a fun night.

2002-06-21T17:31:00.000+02:00

Her Name is Rio:
Unfortunately, both Brazil and Germany won their games today. I think I’ve made it very clear earlier that I don’t like Brazil, but in the match between Germany and USA I didn’t really have a favourite before the game. But once again the Germans played the most boring football ever and because of the incredible skill of Landon Donovan and the will to win displayed by the US team I started rooting for the Yanks (which as usual led to a defeat for my team). So it was a bummer, when the Germans scored and an even bigger bummer, when the ref didn’t notice that a German player standing on the goal line got his hand on the ball preventing it from going in. Oliver Kahn is a really good goalie and was the main reason the Germans won the game as their strikers barely created a chance in the entire game. My guess is that Germany will beat Spain in the semi finals and go on to play Brazil in the finals. But so far I haven’t predicted a result correctly in the entire World Cup, so I won’t be surprised if it’s South Korea and Senegal, who reach the final.

The English supporters must be very disappointed with the loss to Brazil today. This means that they won’t get to play Turkey in the semi finals, but more importantly it means they won’t get to hear a re-recording of the classic Duran Duran song Rio dedicated to the footballer Rio Ferdinand. Apparently, the fans have been creating their own tributes to the defender, who scored the first goal against Denmark, based on the Duran song. And this led Simon Le Bon to promise to re-record the song with new lyrics if the English squad beat Brazil. But now, unfortunately, this probably won’t happen.

2002-06-18T23:12:00.000+02:00

Red Means Go:
I don’t like driving. I have no problem with being driven, but driving is not something I enjoy. When I was a kid the guys in my class would say stuff like: “When I’m eighteen my license will be right there waiting for me”, because they found it unthinkable that you could legally be allowed to drive and not want to take maximum advantage of this right. I didn’t get around to getting my license until I was 20 or 21 and then only because of some technicalities I’ll spare you for. I had a harsh woman driving instructor and I didn’t do well at the driving tests, but I got my license and pretty much just stuck it in my wallet and forgot about it. My parents suggested that I take the car out once in awhile, so I wouldn’t forget how to drive, so I did that on occasion, but I never felt any real joy in driving. I always found it to be a burden that you have to drive safely, be alert, find a parking spot, drive while everyone else is talking, and stay sober (none of which you have to do if you ride on the bus). Also, I’d get really paranoid, because I was driving my Dad’s car, and I’d hate to have to explain to him that I’d banged up the car or let it get stolen. And because I moved away from home before I got my license I had to go out to my parents’ house to get the car, which was just too much of a hassle.

The fact that I’ve crashed two cars doesn’t exactly make me enjoy driving, either. I’d like to point out that because I’m an inexperienced driver I’m also a cautious driver, so the two crashes aren’t because of recklessness on my behalf. The first crash was in my Dad’s car on my way back from the movies. While we’d seen the movie it had rained and started freezing, so it had gotten quite slippery. I was aware of this and drove slowly, but after changing gears the car for some reason spun out of control and we went sideways into a traffic light. The whole right side of the car was banged up and there were pieces of glass all over the car. My brother was sitting in the passenger seat and after making sure he was okay I carefully drove the car back home, inspected it, and went to bed. My parents were in Tunisia, so the next day I talked to a neighbour and decided to drive the car to the shop, call the insurance company, and tell my parents when they got back unless they called. Which they did, but they were really nice about it.

The second crash was because I’d never driven a van before and had no idea how to estimate the length of the thing. I was about to move my stuff into an apartment and had to pull the van through a narrow passageway to get to the parking spaces behind the apartments. I made a right turn and got half the car through, when the right side hit a metal plate, which is used for when you close the iron gate in front of the passageway. The metal plate went into the van door and scraped all the way across the side and eventually came out of the wall. Because it was a rental I wasn’t too embarrassed by the event, because I have a feeling stuff like this happens all the time, but it cost me a fortune to get the damn van fixed. And because I’d busted to door we had to pull all my gear out the back of the van.

Why am I mentioning all this? Because my new job requires me to drive on occasion. The company car is a Volvo station car, which means it’s not the handiest car for trips into the city, but because most trips are to the printers we need a spacious car. I’ve driven it twice without accidents, but I always get that feeling of doubt every time I enter out into traffic. Like I have no idea what I’m doing and that I’m breaking laws left and right. I’m sure if I got more experience driving the same car I’d get better and more confident, but for now I’d prefer not driving at all.

2002-06-17T22:58:00.000+02:00

Caught by the Fuzz:
In all the commotion over the Danish defeat I forgot to write about the party we went to Friday night. I didn’t really know what to expect, but it was billed as a garden party with live music and several hundred guests, so it sounded alright by me. I had dinner with a friend first and then walked to the house, where this thing was held. As we were walking down the street towards the house we noticed a line outside the house and immediately got excited about the party. We got in line and noticed how well organized everything was. Everyone got a blue ribbon tied around their wrist and to the left of the entrance was a billboard divided into squares with numbers on them, where you were supposed to hang your ticket. The tickets would then form a huge version of the cover to the Sgt. Pepper album and it would be easy to see how many of the invited had actually shown up. In the garden was a stage set up beautifully between the trees with branches and leaves hanging down in front of the stage. Over the area in front of the stage were hung huge, white strips of cloth reminiscent of sails, which would prevent people from getting wet if it had started raining. And to the right of the stage were two large tents with tables and chairs and in the back was a large bar. All in all it was one of the most well organized parties I’ve ever been to.

We got in and hooked up with my brother and sister and a bunch of friends and started drinking and listening to the bands. But after about an hour we started hearing rumours that the cops had come to stop the party. Not only would that have been a bummer, but since the party was slated to continue the next night it would have been a double bummer. We’d been told that the people, who had arranged the party, had visited all the neighbours in advance and told them about the party and had gotten the go-ahead from the neighbourhood. So we didn’t quite understand, why the police had come, if no one had complained about the noise.

Finally, the guy who’d gotten my brother the invites explained the situation to us. Apparently, the arrangers had applied for a permit at the police station to have the party last year and had been told that they didn’t need a permit. They only needed permission from the neighbours, since it was a private party. So this year they hadn’t applied for a permit, but gotten permission from the neighbours. And since they didn't have a permission from the police, when the cops drove by, they saw the line in front of the house and got suspicious. They then came by claiming that this was a public party and because alcohol was served they’d have to shut the party down. The arrangers went on stage (no one actually saw the police in the garden) and said that there’d be no more music and that everyone would have to move indoors by 11. And that the second leg of the party wouldn't be held in the garden, but in a building by the harbour the next day.

Everyone got really pissed off, but what could you do but make jokes about having finally been to a party that had been brought down by The Man. So around 11 some people start moving indoors, but a lot stayed outdoors. And I actually stayed outdoors drinking until around 2, when we left the party, so the only thing the cops managed to do was stop the live acts and piss everyone off. It was just the most pointless act of power I’ve ever seen especially since they never came back to check that we'd stopped the party. Now I’m not one to quote Body Count, but it annoys me that they didn’t have something better to do on a Friday night than wreck a perfectly nice and peaceful party.

I try to work as much as I can these days, so when I was asked to fill in on Friday I gladly accepted. It wasn’t until I got home I realized that the quarter-finals are on Friday, so I started panicking a bit. I wanted the shift, but I didn’t want to miss the games, so I called one of the others who work there and traded shifts with him. So now I have to work tomorrow and he’ll cover my shift Friday. That means I still get the extra money and get to see the games at the expense of the two games tomorrow. I can definitely live with that although I'd love to see the Japan game.

While re-reading this segment I'm watching Parkie talking to James Nesbitt and it's hilarious. My mother is from Derry in Northern Ireland, so I always love hearing that weird accent. Nesbitt referred to a trip to Vegas as "a good crack" and says "coi-bois" instead of cowboys. I can sort of imitate it and will slide into it, when visiting family, but I haven't stayed long enough in the North to master it. But I still love hearing others talk that way.

2002-06-15T23:43:00.000+02:00

Feeling Minnesota:
I don't particularly want to comment on today's game, but not commenting at all would be the chicken way out, so here goes: I can't remember ever watching a game this terrible! Now I don't want to take anything away from the English side, who were very well organized especially in midfield and who appeared to be able to score at will, but the Danes played like shit. Goalie Thomas Sorensen, who'd played brilliantly the first three games, fumbled the ball into his own net after four minutes and from then on the Danes never got back into the game. He probably should have saved Heskey's shot which gave the third goal, but at that point it hardly mattered anyway. Jon Dahl missed a header, which must have created huge cheers in Newcastle, where they'd remember him missing chances like that on a regular basis and Ebbe Sand barely had a shot at goal. And to make matters worse it seem like the English were satisfied with 3-0, so they took it nice and slow in the second half, which made the defeat and our lack of ability to score even more embarrassing. It's not so much losing I mind as much as it is the way they lost. They played a horrible game and were beaten severely and that's a very sad way to leave an otherwise impressive World Cup tournament.

So the result of the game put quite a damper on the party I was at, but we still managed to have an enjoyable day and evening, which including a couple of games of croquet and the consummation of a lot of alcohol and a big bowl of chilli con carne. I’m still very depressed about the whole thing and decided to leave the party as the rest of the guests began playing a very complicated drinking game. I have so far refused to watch any of the post-game interviews and haven’t heard anyone comment on the game or seen “highlights” and hopefully I can get through tomorrow without hearing about the game as well. Now all there’s left to do is cheer for Sweden and hope that the English will beat Brazil.

2002-06-14T16:35:00.000+02:00

Korea, Korea, Career, Career:
Thankfully, sometimes what comes around goes around, which means Portugal follows fellow favourites France and Argentina out of the tournament. Korea's Park scored one of the Cup's best goals and made sure that they went undefeated to the second round. All the best to them in what will surely be an interesting game against Italy.

Now it's time to wash the original, vintage Danish 1986 World Cup jersey that my brother nicked from my Dad and I then nicked from my brother, so it'll be nice and clean for good luck tomorrow.

2002-06-14T14:51:00.000+02:00

I Think You Suck:
Right now I'm watching the Portugal - South Korea game and I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that throughout the tournament the Portuguese team has sucked. Big time! I have no special affinity for the American team, but I think it’ll be very unfair if Figo and friends go on to the second round with a 0-0 game, because the Yanks fumble the ball in the end zone against Poland. But then fair and football rarely go together, do they? It’s just so depressing to watch these world class players stink so badly. And I’ll agree with commentator Per Pedersen that the Joao Pinto’s sliding tackle should not only have gotten him a red card, but also a prison sentence.

I’m going to a thing called the Potten Festival tonight. I might go tomorrow as well (if it’s any good), but I won’t watch the game there, because of the graduation party I’m going to. I’m not really sure what will happen at the festival, but as far as I know this is an annual event held by a group of people, who share a house not far from here. Apparently, they set up a stage with bands, three bars, a food tent, and a DJ booth and then have a two day party in their backyard. I got invited through my brother and both he and my sister (and their friends) will be there, so it ought to be good. I’ll hook up with a friend later and have dinner and then we’ll go check it out.

Thanks to all the people, who’ve commented on the Denmark – England game. Not surprisingly I’m rooting for Denmark, but I’d just like to say that I hope everyone will enjoy the game and hopefully the better team will win. And hopefully whoever wins will go on to beat the living daylights out of those smug Brazilians.

2002-06-13T22:23:00.000+02:00

So I’m Walking Around Your Closet:
When I moved into my apartment two weeks ago I was told there would be cable TV already installed for me. So I wasn’t really surprised, when I plugged the TV into the cable outlet and all I got was static, but in this time of World Cup fever the thought of having no TV signal was almost chilling. So I got my old antenna back from my brother (you know the kind you stick on top of your set and then spend hours adjusting to get the best picture), so I at least had the three national channels, which allowed me to watch most of the games. I called the cable company and ordered the full cable package, which I was told would be ready for me in no more than sixteen days, which I found very annoying (especially since the same company was supposed to have my phone ready that day, but had screwed up, so I had to call both them and their cable department from my sister’s). Every day I would check to see if my channels were back on, but all I saw was static until two days ago when it hit me that I might want to try pulling out the antenna cable and actually plugging the TV into the cable outlet again. And obviously now my channels are back and who knows how long they’d been waiting for me to pull them out of the wall and give them life on my 28” screen. Like the NYC cops I ain’t to smart.

So now the television is on 24/7 and I’ve been watching a lot of MTV2 the last couple of days. Generally, the music is better than the crud they play on MTV, but let me tell you loud guitars and anger does not necessarily a good rock song make. I could go on for days about bands I hate, but I’ve decided only to make fun of Papa Roach today. Their latest single is called She Loves Me Not and this time the unfortunately named Coby Dick has gone from running and crying (Last Resort) to crying day and night (Broken Home) to reflecting over crying for five years (no less) and realizing that life's not fair and that he’s the jerk. I liked the aggression of Last Resort, but already after seeing the video for the first time I realized how horrific this band is. And with every single they’ve gotten more and more annoying and the main point of frustration seems to be the banalities leaving the quivering lips of front man Dick. Even self proclaimed loser and microphone abuser Fred Durst doesn’t whine and rhyme this poorly. Why people like these guys is beyond me, when there’s a barrage of bands, who sound almost the same, but doesn’t whine nearly as much. But I’ll keep watching MTV2 as long as they keep playing bands like Muse and Rival Schools.

I don’t listen to Danish radio much, because they play horrible music, the DJs aren’t funny or smart, and I hate those call-in radio contests. But I had the radio on Monday, because I thought my cable was out. I was listening to their World Cup coverage and heard a couple of new songs I hadn’t heard before. One that’ll probably be a hit this summer is the new Sophie Ellis-Bextor single Get Over You, which I thought sounded suspiciously like Wham Rap! (which might not necessarily be a bad thing). Another is the Vanessa Carlton single A Thousand Miles, which I really like. I know my street and/or indie cred will plummet faster than Enron shares with this admission, but I think it’s a cool song. Very catchy chorus and to me it sounds like the single Sony wished Ben Folds had written. And for once it’s nice to see (and hear) a cute, teenage performer, who seems to be able to do more than show of her midriff. I doubt I’ll by the album, but as singles go I think it’s rather good.

I just saw Doogie Howser rapping alongside Snoop on a song from Undercover Brother. Doogie is the whitest guy ever! What a weird concept for a video. And what was Buckethead doing next to Bootsy? It’s all very strange.

Yesterday was spent trying to set up the apartment and putting my closet back together. It’s insanely heavy and large, so I had to disassemble it to move it out of the old apartment and then yesterday I had to reassemble it, which wasn’t easy. It’s so big you could live in it (if you were so inclined), so I had to assemble it standing up, because I knew if I assembled it on the floor I wouldn’t be able to lift it up by myself. The first bit was fairly easy, but after you’ve attached the sides and the middle bit to the bottom bit you have to attach the top bit to the sides and middle bit (these are technical terms you may not be familiar with, but try to keep up) and there’s the rub. I managed to screw one of the screws into the middle bit, so the top bit would stay on, but while I reached for more screws something went wrong and the top collapsed and the screw tore through the middle bit. So now there’s a huge crack in the back of my closet, which hopefully will be unnoticeable once I get around to putting all my jumpers in there (I’ll be getting some funny Google referrals because of this segment). After assembling it I realized that it didn’t at all fit, where I wanted it to fit, so I had to move everything else around, which wasn’t easy. Not only are the bed and closet very heavy, but there isn’t a lot of manouvering room, because of all the boxes. But I got it done and the next project is to buy those nails with the plastic hooks on them, so I can get all those phone lines and computer cables away from the floor.

The last thing I’ll mention is the four phone calls I made to my ISP today to complain about a bill for more than $300 they’d sent me for some computer equipment. The deal is that when you move sometimes they have to send you a new modem and if you don’t send the old one back in a fortnight then you have to pay for it. But as it turns out they bill you right away and then if you return the modem they cancel the bill, which is what I assume they’ll do now that I’ve sent them their stuff. But I found it very offensive that they assume you won’t return their shit, then bill you without an explanation and then on the off chance you do return it they graciously cancel the bill. And on top of that they had the nerve to charge me $12 for changing my subscription? Service is obviously a thing of the past.

A friend of mine just graduated as an architect today (I always wanted to pretend I was an architect) and he invited me to a celebratory brunch before we all watch the Denmark/England game together. I actually had other plans, but gladly changed them to be a part of the graduation party.

2002-06-12T10:43:00.000+02:00

Happy Nation:
England failed to score against Nigeria and Sweden played a pretty good game against Argentina for a draw, which means the Argentinians will have to pack their bags (or purses if you will) and leave the tournament as the second of the teams named among the favourites to win the World Cup. This means we'll meet England in the second round, which seems like a pretty good deal. So far they've only scored two goals and one of those was on a penalty, so unless Michael Owen suddenly finds his form we should be able to beat them. And the motivation should be there as well. Because if we win we'll probably meet Brazil in the quarters and get a chance to revenge the 2-3 loss from 1998, which would be sweet beyond belief.

It was fun watching the Swedes give it their all today and I wish them all the best against Senegal, which is a team they should be able to beat even if Ljungberg stays on the injured list.

2002-06-12T00:13:00.000+02:00

It Really, Really, Really Could Happen:
Not surprisingly most of my day after work has been spent watching highlights from today's amazing game. A very cool slow motion montage of the Danish squad fighting an uphill battle against the immense pressure from the French strikers while Blur's The Universal played in the background has been my favourite so far. The French fans are beyond disappointed and are saying what the Dutch fans said, when their team didn't qualify for the World Cup. They refer to their squad as a VIP-team, where the players are too concerned with being superstars and making commercials. It seems a viable explanation for the dismal effort from both teams, which consist of some of the best and most famous players in Europe.

We'll play this Saturday in the second stage either against England, Sweden, or Argentina, which will be decided tomorrow morning. Before the group games I would have chosen Sweden as our preferred opponent, but Celtic’s Henke Larsson is showing incredible form and has so far been the most intimating striker in the group. And the thought of losing to Sweden is just too much to bear, so I think I’d prefer going up against England. But that won’t be an easy match either even if people seem to think Seaman is as likely to fumble the ball into his own net as Butterfingers Barthez. But I personally think he has played well all season and he’s only let in one goal so far, so I don’t think we’ll be that lucky. And with his buddies Cole and Campbell playing in defense our scrawny strikers will have to watch out. And the Brits also have Beckham and Michael Owen, who will probably chose the game against us to peak and play like it was the final. So I’m very anxious about the game tomorrow, which will tell us a lot about their form.

It’ll also be very interesting to see the Sweden – Argentina game tomorrow. Argentina seems to have the ability to pull out something amazing when it’s needed. But I won’t mind seeing the Swedes beat them and it would be great to see Ljungberg in top form and maybe even see the Red Marauder score a goal or two. But my guess would be that tomorrow afternoon England will have 7 points and Argentina will have 6, which means we’ll have to stop Batigol and friends if we want to get a rematch against Brazil in the quarterfinal. It is almost too exciting.

2002-06-11T10:25:00.000+02:00

Unbelievable!!!
2-0 against the French and two of my three bets (Rommedahl as first scorer and 2-0 as the result) will pay of nicely. Now it's off to work with a big smile on my face.

2002-06-10T23:20:00.000+02:00

Cartoon Heroes:
I've been checking out some of the blogs that I haven't had a chance to follow, while I was off-line. As usual Catchdubs delivers the dope-ass links and this time he led me to The South Park Creator. So here's the closest I could come a self portrait in the style of South Park:

2002-06-10T22:03:00.000+02:00

I Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll All Night:
After a long and busy week I’m now back in the blogging game. A lot of stuff has happened, but not so much in the “I’m going to Jamaica to marry Christy Turlington” vain as the “working and getting organized” vain.
I’m actually quite enjoying my new job. The people are incredible nice and no one ever checks up on me to see if I’m doing my job. It’s very stress free even when there’s a lot to do. I’ve told them that I want as many shifts as possible, so I’ve been working two or three days a week, which suits me fine. I try to watch as many of the World Cup games as possible, which means I don’t get to sleep as much as I’d like. But hopefully getting up at 7 a.m. can become a habit I can keep, when I have to get started on my thesis.

But besides working and moving into my new apartment (and organizing all the annoying things, which goes together with moving) I’ve attended the bachelor party to end all bachelor parties. A good friend of mine is getting married in a couple of weeks, and a bunch of guys arranged a surprise party for him, which lasted almost 24 hours (I’d like to see Jack Bauer party for 24 hours instead of just fighting crime). Bachelor parties have a pretty bad reputation here, because for a while it became a tradition to put the groom-to-be through a series of humiliating events, which usually including tarting him up and parading him through town wearing a sign, which indicated that he was willing to perform sexual favours for change. But thankfully this was a lot more sophisticated, so after throwing my friend a surprise breakfast we’d hired a masseur for him and later we took him to a beauty parlour for men for a facial and both events were highly appreciated. We did a fair share of drinking, while the centre of attention was getting worked on, so spirits were high, when we took him out for a late lunch.

After lunch a couple of guys made lame excuses so they could leave and then went out to a park to set up a place for dinner and our party. Our job was to hang out and make sure our friend got a few drinks and didn’t get too suspicious about the further events. After a while we took a cab out of the city and were guided to the spot they’d chosen for the party. We set up a barbeque, a couple of tents, tables and chair, and hung out for a bit. Then we started cooking and as the appetizers were almost ready the bride-to-be and her friends showed up. They’d had a similar day and then joined us for dinner. And from then on the drinking and partying just went nuts and I finally got home at 6:30 the next day.
The last bit of the evening is haze, but before I started drinking G&T’s I remember discussing Haute Couture with the guys and defending it as art and being gobsmacked that I was the only one, who thought Christy Turlington was hot (and we couldn’t even reach an agreement on Helena Christensen, and no one seemed to know who Nadja Auermann was, so I was very much alone on my side of the argument). I also discussed Paul Auster’s The New York Trilogy with a female Lit-Major, who thought the short stories were brilliant, but besides saying they were interesting from a literary criticism stand point failed to explain, why she liked them. I dislike them, which wasn’t hard for me to explain, and the argument ended with her explaining that it had been a while since she’d read them. But thankfully she cheered up, when she found out that I’d read Less Than Zero and enjoyed James Spader in the movie version.

Not surprisingly I was incredible hung over Sunday, so I didn't do much except watch World Cup highlights and the first half of Angel Heart.

After work today I had an informal chat with a guy from a local company, which has specialized in jingles for radio and internet. They want to branch out into streaming and I got in touch with them through a mutual friend. We ended up talking for an hour about how they could approach this business area, but because they were still in competition for an order they didn’t have a job for me yet. I suggested they contact my old company, who can help them with the technical stuff, and if they could work out a partnership, then I’d be more that happy to do some freelance work for them. So later this year I might get some much needed freelance work, which I’d very much appreciate, but I'm not going to hold my breath.

But the most important thing right now is the game tomorrow against France. The French team has been terrible so far, but if Zidane plays it’ll boost morale and chances are they’ll find their form again. Thankfully, we don’t need a win to qualify for the second round, so as long as they don’t beat us by more than one goal we’ll be alright. But they’ll be a tough opponent and the Danish side didn’t play very convincingly in the 1-1 game against Senegal, so anything can happen. But if we win it’ll be one of the most amazing moments in Danish football history, so it just doesn’t get anymore exciting than this.

2002-06-07T07:58:00.000+02:00

Back in Black:
I left the old apartment on Sunday and have since spent a lot of time trying to organize my new place, while working and trying to catch as many World Cup games as possible. I finally got back online yesterday, so now I should be able to update the site on a regular basis again. Today I have to work again and tomorrow I'll be going to a bachelor party all day, which means that I won't get to see any of the games and I won't be around much. But I'll trying to get back into the swing of things as soon as possible.