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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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).

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.

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 has 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 is. 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!”

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.

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.