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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.
[Update]: I've added my review of Whip It On to this entry. Just click more to read it.

More...

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!"