I finally got around to voting for the 2003 Bloggies yesterday and halfway through checking out people's blogs and writing little notes about why I voted like I did I found a far more comprehensive article about the nominees than I would ever write. So in case you want to know about the blogs I didn't vote for you should check out The Bloggies: An In-Depth Analysis.

Again, I've chosen to use the More function, because I don't want a long list of blogs crowding the entire page. I'm actually not a big fan of the More function, because it means that you can't see the rest of the entries, but when it comes to postings like the ones today and Saturday's I think it's apt.

Oh, I've added a Playlist to the left frame, because I've seen them on other blogs and I think it's a fun little addition. It serves no other purpose than show the last five songs I've listened to, which right now are ZZ Top - Balinese, Low - Long Way Around The Sea, Le Tigre - Deceptacon, Interpol - A Time To Be So Small, and Ron Sexsmith - Don't Ask Why, which will give you an idea of what kind of stuff I listen to on a daily basis.

But on to the bloggies...

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I was going to write about the 2003 Bloggies and why I had voted for the blogs I had voted for. But the site is down, which means I haven't voted yet, and therefore I'll have to write about that later.
Rasmus over at Acutecut suggests making a Danish aquivalent, which I think is a fun idea. I'm sure there are a lot of interesting Danish blogs that I haven't visited yet, so this could be a way of being introduced to blogs you don't normally visit.

So while I'm waiting for people to come over to watch the Arsenal game I've decided to take The Great Procrastination Survey of 2003, which I found over at Bolt of Blue. It got a bit long, so I decided not to put in on the front page, so you have to click More to see it.

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Okay, so I kinda look like a dork now, because I had the old switcheroo pulled on me. Today I phoned the place, where I usually get my hair cut and as it turns out they changed management this month and fired the women, who usually cuts my hair. My hair was a mess, so I just made an appointment anyway, because I figured it wouldn't really matter, who cut it (it's not like I'm David Beckham or someone else with complicated hair, you know). Well, I was wrong. It does matter!

In retrospect I guess I should have figured out something was up, when I was able to get an appointment right away and perhaps also when I was greeted by a fifty-year-old bird in an otherwise empty salon. Turns out she was the one, who was going to cut my hair, which led to a session of ramblings about tabloids and the goddamn weather. So now my hair is in the weird no-man's-land between trendy-spiky-cool and crap-Nazi-scary, which means it'll take at least a week before it's grown back to what passes for normal. The only good thing was that it cost almost 30% less than normal, but seeing as it's also almost 30% more crap than usual I guess it's true that you usually get what you pay for.

And speaking of paying, my cell phone service was shut off today, because I haven't paid my phone bill in a year. In my defense I'd like to say that I haven't received a bill in a year nor have I reiceved any complaints about late payments. So I phoned the company to get things straightened out and first spoke to a guy, who told me one thing and then after having been on hold for ages a girl, who told me something completely different. She was actually a bit pissy, because I hadn't called them and told them that their bills didn't arrive and she wasn't at all amused, when I told her that I really couldn't see how that was my problem. I think she thought I was some kind of loser, who never paid his bills and just tried to hustle his way to free phone service or something. Because when I said that I fully intended to pay right away, so we could get this problem sorted she lost the attitude. But that also meant I had to shell out a lot more money today than I had intended, so the planned night on the town has now been cancelled.

But Sunday is Super Bowl Sunday, so we'll definitely have to do something that night. Sunday is also my brother's birthday, so we have to visit my parents for dinner first. But afterwards I think we might go downtown to the oddly named Gaz Station, where the local football team, Aarhus Tigers, has arranged for the game to be shown on two huge screens. I'll probably be wearing my Shannon Sharpe jersey down there and thinking back to when the Ravens beat the shit out of the Giants two years ago. But if you know me and you've got a better Super Bowl party planned for Sunday feel free to leave me a message, because I'm open to suggestions.

I saw twins on bikes today. I was walking along and suddenly I see these two guys, who looked pretty similar. They were dressed differently, but their hair and glasses were the same and on inspection so were their faces. At first I did the proverbial double check like people do in movies. You stare at the first guy, then at the second guy and then in complete disbelief you stare at the first guy again until you're sure that your eyes aren't deceiving you. And then I thought it was pretty weird to see two guys in their late twenties, who didn't realize that when you look exactly the same already it's pretty dorky to have the same glasses and hair.

And then I remembered a guy from school, who didn't like twins. My friend thought twins were silly and stupid. I'm not sure why, but I think he just disapproved of the concept of having two people look exactly the same. Also, there are all the stories about how they have a special connection, where they can feel each others pain and things like that (On an unrelated note I wasn't quite sure, if it was others, other's, or others' in that last sentence. Normally, I'll do a Google search and correct a misspelling based on the number of returns, but in this case that doesn't really help, so apologies in advance if I should have added an apostrophe or something). I think there was an influx of twins at the time and 90210 was huge, so maybe that's what spawned these comments.

So this one time we're hanging out at the cinema and we see twins and he goes into his bit about how they're stupid. And he asks me if I know what's worse than twins? "Triplets?", I quipped. "Obviously", he replied, but he was actually thinking of twins, who dress alike.
And I have to agree with that. Now matter how adorable infants, who are dressed alike look I don't think it's particularly healthy (not to mention cool) to make children, who already look exactly alike look even more exactly alike. It's like depriving them of a personality to just stick them in the same red jacket and have people go Ahhh... at them all the time. How hard is it to buy a blue and a red jacket, so at least people have a shot at telling them apart?

If I ever had twins I think I'd do a lot to make them look different and support them if one wanted to play hockey and the other wanted to play piano. I wouldn't go as far as creating a good and an evil twin like they do on soaps (one blond and the other with black hair perhaps. One has his own room, while the other lives in the basement trying to create his own language and so on), but I would at least try to have them develop individually like normal siblings do. And I would never drag them to this. Or this.

When someone says: "I heard you led a group of people singing We are the World Thursday night" there's a chance you've made an arse of yourself and made sure there were enough witnesses around to allow the story to get out. For the record I'd like to say that I didn't lead anyone and I had been drinking for about eight hours at that point, so my judgement might have been a bit clouded.
But Thursday night was actually one of the most fun nights out I've had in a long time. It started at Bryggeriet with the third ABCBC meeting. There were eight of us including two newbies (Snuf and Jimbo's Corner), who I actually talked to the most. Because I'm all about meeting new people. And talking.

So we hung out for about four hours and talked about Danish weblogs, Copenhagen blogger communities, music, movies, this, that and the other, and then I continued out into the nightlife with a friend. We hung out at Ris Ras, which was packed with familiar faces and then made our way to Den Høje, where drinking eventually paved the way for people standing around arm in arm singing songs like We are the World. Both the ABCBC meeting and the café hopping really was a lot of fun, but it took its toll on me, which I think was quite apparent, when Martin came by the next day to return my book.

Also, this weekend I've tried to get through some more movies I haven't seen, so I rented Novocaine and Gosford Park and saw them Saturday. And I'm going to watch Amelie and The Believer tonight (I thought a movie with Young Hercules as a Nazi could compensate for watching a frou-frou art house chick flick).
Novocaine was decent enough, but it wasn't exactly The Spanish Prisoner. Still, I've been a fan of Steve "I like to punt on first" Martin for a long time, so whenever he decides to do movies that doesn't feature Goldie Hawn or his daughter getting married I'm usually there.

Gosford Park was really good, though. It's packed with great British actors and actresses and even Ryan Phillippe was good in it. Up until this movie I hadn't seen any evidence to suggest that he could act his way out of a paperbag, but I for one thought his Scottish accent in this movie was very believable. The movie got a bit confusing at times, because there are so many people in it, which made it hard to remember, who was related to whom. And I thought Stephen Fry's character was far to silly. But other than that it was really good.

First The Raveonettes got hyped to the max and now it could happen to another Crunchy Frog act, Junior Senior. Their single, Move Your Feet, has been a hit in Scandinavia for ages and now it seems Radio One has picked it up and made it Record of the Week. I haven't heard their record, but this song is damn catchy.

And finally it was cool to see Michael Chiklis, Tony Shalhoub, and Larry David win Golden Globes last night. Maybe now their shows will get picked up over here. Oh, and by the way... Crack kills!

I was in a weird mood yesterday. I tried to get some work done, but couldn't really concentrate. I had to have a serious money discussion with my parents, which is never nice. But at my age it's downright disturbing. It worked out for now, but it is something that will bug me for a while.
I ended up reading, watching a Bill Hicks tape, and for some reason I got obsessed with figuring out the chords to Vision of Love by Mariah Carey. If that isn't the first step towards clinical insanity I don't know what is (however, I did figure them out except for a chord change at the end of the first verse).

It's weird watching Bill Hicks. I think he's really funny, but he gets so outraged by things that on occasion he's more frightening than actually funny. But even weirder is how his material isn't dated. He talks about music made for the pre-teen audience (replace Debbie Gibson and NKOTB with Britney and NSync and you could perform the same material today). He talks about Bush and America selling weapons to small countries that are then considered a threat to world peace. And he talks about how television is stupid and how minority groups yammer on about violence in movies and on and on about topics that are still being discussed today.

On Totally Bill Hicks, which features his last performance, there's a documentary called It's Just a Ride, which tells the story of Hicks' career. Some of his colleagues call him a preacher and says that more than being Hendrix or Jim Morrison he wanted to be Jesus. He didn't just want to entertain people. He wanted to show them the light and save them. That passion sometimes is a little scary, but I think that's what made him take his job so seriously and that's why he was so good. In the documentary someone mentions that a lot of people doing stand-up see it as a stepping stone towards getting a sitcom or something like that. But not Bill. He wanted to perform in front of people and that's what he did. For more about Bill Hicks check out the People Who Hate People HQ.

It was also weird reading Sarah Hatter and seeing that she was considering a hiatus from blogging, because someone had written something hurtful in her comments. Thankfully, only nice people leave comments here, but I've been sent hateful mails, because of my Warhol site and things I've written on Usenet, so I know the feeling. It's just a damn shame that people don't have anything better to do than leave annoying comments and send hateful mails. Hopefully, she'll reconsider especially after so many left supportive comments on her site.

Finally, we're going to the Aarhus Blogger meeting tonight. Hopefully it'll be a bit more structured this time around. Last time we just sat in small groups of people, who already knew each other, so there weren't any real general discussions. But I think we'll try to do introductions and stuff tonight, so that everyone gets to know everyone tonight. And afterwards I think we'll be doing some serious drinking. I think I need that tonight.

In a weird turn of events it has been brought to my attention that the place (Royal Oak) where we were supposed to meet tonight may not exist anymore. So, the new plan is that Jan and myself will stand outside the place where the bar is or used to be and then, when people start showing up, we'll make a decision about where to go. For more info go to ABCBC.

Do you know those ongoing discussions you have with some people? Well, whenever I'm down the pub watching an Arsenal game (as I was yesterday) we always seem to talk about Arsenal look-alikes. Actually, look-alikes are a frequent topic of conversation (yesterday we decided that Birmingham defender Ferdinand Coly looks like Predator). But this debate started (I think) when someone said that they should make a movie about Arsenal winning The Double and have Jerry Seinfeld star as Edu. Since then the cast has expanded to including Shaun Ryder (Oleg Luzhny), Frank Bruno (Sol Campbell), Lee Evans (Martin Keown), Jimmy Nail (Tony Adams), Marlon Wayans (Thierry Henry), Delroy Lindo (Lauren), and the Pringles guy as David Seaman. I might have forgotten someone, but even so this is a pretty cool cast.

If there are any Danish readers I just like to mention that Zulu will show the first episode of Six Feet Under tonight at eight and you really should check it out. I was fortunate to be able to borrow tapes of the first season a year ago and I thought it was absolutely brilliant. Also, DR started showing Ed on Sundays, so you should probably start following that as well.
And if you live in the Aarhus area you should know that we're planning a blogger get-together Thursday night. For more info check out the ABCBC website.

Because I was financially challenged all of last year I didn't go see a lot of movies and I didn't buy as many records as I normally do. So I've been trying to catch up lately by renting movies and "checking out" new music.
I'm really behind on movies, so it'll probably take me a while to get through all the stuff I want to see, but since it's really dark and cold out this is the perfect time to get back in the movie game. So this weekend I'm watching The Man Who Wasn't There and Dinner Rush (although from 2001 and 2000 respectfully they just arrived on DVD here). I might also watch one of the four tapes I picked up for $15 at Blockbuster's big sale (Frailty, The Pledge, The Contender, and Brother).

Musically, I'm not quite as far behind, so I've been trawling through all those "Best of 2002" and "Ones to Watch in 2003" articles and "located" some tracks with bands that sounded interesting. So far I've been impressed by Hot Hot Heat, Brendan Benson, Miss Black America, MC Paul Barman, Spoon, Kings of Leon, Electric Six, Kathleen Edwards, and The Reindeer Section. I have a list of fifteen or twenty other bands that I'm going to try to find some music by in the next couple of days.
A lot of the bands I've listened to the last couple of days really rock out, but have singers with weird voices. And a lot of them sound like Fugazi. I'm trying to get into Liars, The Von Bondies, The Walkmen, and The Mooney Suzuki as well, but they haven't blown me away yet (although In a Young Man's Mind is damn catchy!).

They were removing the last of the Christmas lights downtown yesterday. I guess that means Christmas is officially over now. For me Christmas ended on Boxing Day, when I got back home to my apartment. Sure, I went out to my folks again the next day for dinner and more Christmas cheer, but after I unloaded all my gear I sat down to watch In the Company of Men on one of the Swedish channels and that pretty much put an end to the season to be jolly, so to speak. Swedish television is a lot like Danish television, but they have better music programs and once in a while they'll put on a great movie or comedy special, which'll have you wonder why Danish television always has to be so damn boring?

But even I have to admit that showing a Neil LaBute movie on Boxing Day is pretty sick. But I hadn't seen it before, so I figured I might as well get it over with. If you haven't seen the movie it's basically about two guys, who have to work on a project out of town for eight weeks and decided to ruin a young woman's life. They find a blind woman and decided to make her pay for all the misery women have put them through by leading her on and then eventually brutally dumping her. Things don't quite go according to scheme, so the end result is actually even more devastating than originally planned.

The film reminded me of Business Strangers, which came out several years later, because of the subject matter, but also because of the use of airports, conference rooms, and hotels as scenery. I actually liked Business a lot better and must say I was a bit disappointed in Company. I thought it was going to be a lot more brutal and unpleasant. I thought the relationship between the men and the woman would have gone further, gotten deeper, which would have made the ending a lot more powerful. Business had more interesting characters, better acting, was shot in a nicer way, and rapt up its story more effectively, which all in all made it a much better movie.
I liked Nurse Betty, but didn’t think it was brilliant. However, I was blown away, when I went to see Bash at the Almeida Theatre in London a couple of years ago. I was in town for a reading by Douglas Coupland and went with some friends to see the play without knowing what it was about.

The play consisted of three short stories. The first was about a woman (Mary McCormack), who's giving a statement to the police about how she killed her child. She is sitting at a table talking to a tape recorder and is the only one on stage. Her statement is actually more her life story than an actual statement and as she explains how she ended in this tragic situation it very much felt like she was talking directly to the audience.
In the second story Zeljko Ivanek is a travelling salesman in a motel room, who sits reclined in a big chair with a drink telling the story of how he let his daughter die, so he would have a tragedy in the family, which would then prevent him from getting fired.
And in the final story a couple (Matthew Lillard and Mary McCormack) tells of the time they went to New York with a group of friends to celebrate. While the girls were getting ready the boys walked through Central Park and decided to assault a homosexual in a public bathroom. Once again someone dies and others are scared for life.

The play originally starred Calista Flockhart, Ron Eldard, and Paul Rudd, when it was put on in New York, which seems like really odd casting choices compared to the three actors I saw.
I thought the play was extremely riveting and shocking, so I guess that's why my hopes were a bit high, when I sat down to see In the Company of Men.

After the show we stood around talking outside and saw Ralph Fiennes arrive to pick up a friend. Then Matthew Lillard came out and my friend Anne insisted that I have my picture taken with him. I had mentioned that my brother is a fan, so she thought it would be fun if I could bring home a picture of the both of us, so she asked Lillard if she could take our picture. He was hanging out, signing stuff anyway, so he agreed. The picture's been lying in a drawer for ages, but I dug it out and stuck in on my fridge after I saw Company. So now I have Matthew Lillard looking weird at me every morning, when I'm making breakfast.

I've been incommunicado lately mainly because I'm having problems getting back into everyday life after the whole Christmas/New Year's thing, but also because I've just been ill again (and not in a cool Beastie type way, either). So I've been sleeping a lot, watching way too much television, and been eating almost nothing, so my energy level has been extremely low. But I think this is my final day of fever and headaches, so hopefully I'll get back into rotation again soon.

Turns out I'm the only person in the world, who doesn't like The 22-20s. I mentioned them in a review of a Supergrass concert and since then everyone and his brother has let me know that I'm nuts and The 22-20s are the hottest thing since lava. So given this massive show of support I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and pretend like they didn't suck when I saw them and try to keep an open mind once they release an album.

This actually reminds be a bit of the book I'm reading right now. It's written by Kevin Sampson and is called Powder. It's about the rise and fall of a Liverpool band called The Grams and it's a very interesting insight into the British music business. Sampson used to manage the band The Farm, so I'm assuming a lot of what he's writing about is based on his experience as a manager. It seems pretty authentic anyway. It's all about hype and press and how sometimes the music gets left in the background, when you're trying to make it big. I found an excerpt from the beginning of the book at Denver Post if you want to see what I'm talking about.