There's a substantial article on weblogs in Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende today, which I'm quoted in, so if you can get your hands on it you might want to check it out. There should be an online version available later, which I'll link to then. [Update: It doesn't look like it'll be available on the paper's website, so I've made a version available here.]

The annual Festuge (party week) kicked off Friday, which means until the end of next weekend there is a lot of stuff going on around town. I'll probably be going to see Mew on Thursday, but probably not go see Tindersticks Friday. There are a couple of other things I might check out, but I haven't really made any plans yet. But yesterday was packed with events, so I had to skip the Moi Caprice/Dear show to go to the Bollywood event in the newly opened Filmbyen, which I've talked about before.

The event has planned so you could go see a very long Bollywood movie, have a special Indian meal in the intermission, and after the movie check out the Indian themed party. I was supposed to go to the entire thing, but plans got changed so we ended up going to a Chinese restaurant instead (there's an Asian theme for this year's Festuge, so it seemed appropiate) and then hooked up with some people for the party. The place was decorated with Indian movie posters, had movie clips playing on a big screen, there were all kinds of rugs and cushions you could sit on, the waitresses had on Indian outfits, and there was incense burning everywhere. The DJ looked like one of those guys you see in documentaries about backpackers in Goa who go there and never leave and he played all kinds of Indian music. I didn't recognize a lot of it, but obviously Panjabi MC got a few spins, there was a track that sampled "Staying Alive" and another that sampled Michael Jackson I think. And at some point I'm pretty sure he played Yvan Eht Nioj by The Party Posse.

Like I said it was meant to be a big party, but on occasion the dance floor would clear and dancers dressed in Indian dresses would appear and put on a performance. I wouldn't say there's a huge Indian population here in Aarhus, but there were quite a few Indian people there and it was cool watching all the different dancers perform.
The people we talked to who had seen the featured Bollywood movie, It's All About Loving Your Parents, thought it was absolutely amazing. They thought it was so funny, but as one person remarked the audience seemed to laugh at everything even the sad bits. I guess the movie had some serious scenes, but apparently the movie was so over-the-top that you just couldn't take the pathos seriously.

After awhile we left the party and went through the harbour area, where they have a large boat show. There were a lot of replica fregats and a bunch of other impressive ships. I guess you can board the boats and walk around them, but that's probably only during the day. And after that I had to swing by the last ever Club Drive event.

I've mentioned Drive here several times. It's the local indie club I've been going to for the last five years and now that it's closing it's a bit sad. It's the only place in town where you can listening to rock music, so they will definitely leave a void. Also, there are quite a few people I only ever see there, so now I have to find somewhere new to hook up with them. Granted, lately they haven't been able to draw the same crowd they used to and a lot of the regulars have stopped coming, because the place attracted too many teenagers. But it was still a cool place to hang out and the only place in town where they play Muse, The Strokes, Kings of Leon, The White Stripes and so on.

So, the MTV Music Video Awards were on last night, but because of the time difference it was on crazy late here. So after I'd seen the Madonna performance and Chris Rock's opening monologue I went to bed, taped the rest and saw it this morning with my finger firmly planted on the fast forward button.

But first things first - whoever cut to Justin, while X-Stina was making out with Madonna is sooo fired. What was he thinking!?!
But that wasn't the only weird thing to happen at the VMAs. First someone had to explain a Jenna Jameson joke to Run and then him and DMC were weirdly out of place, while Diddy was making his teary eyed salute to Jam Master Jay (I swear if you run the reaction shots to the Jenna joke in slow you can make out David Spade saying "I wrote that"). And later the BB King dude (apparently his name is Six) suddenly appeared on stage in what almost looked like a planned event.
Also, it was interesting that everybody was too scared to get those Moonmen statues from 50 Cent.

There were several musical performance most of which were pretty bland. My biggest beef is with Beyonce, who chose to lip sync so she could do her dance moves. Even sodding Good Charlotte performed live, but apparently swinging your ass and singing at the same time is too much of a hassle for Beyonsizzle. And the Mary J. Blige performance had already pissed me off before she even made it onto the stage. I know she's just Mary, but she bugs the hell out of me. And why does she always look so terrible? She has so little taste they need to make a special Queer Eye for Mary J. Blige.
The Coldplay performance was cool and the Metallica medley (Are You Gonna Go My Way/Smells Like Teen Spirit/Seven Nation Army/Beat It) was cool as well, but it would have been even better if they'd played more of those songs and skipped Frantic.

I thought the Chris Rock monologue was funny, but Jack Black getting the Super Genius of the Universe Award was the best. Too bad Fred Durst is such a tool. It was also pretty funny seeing Eminem beat the snot out of that puppet from Crank Yankers.
But obviously the biggest joke since Jethro Tull beat Metallica at the Grammys was Justin getting the Best Male Video Award over Johnny Cash. Now, I dig J-Timbo, but come on. The dude has one foot in the grave and made a better video and song than any of those people at the VMAs could ever hope to make. So why give the award to Justin? Makes no sense to me.

It was the twentieth anniversary for the VMAs, so the good people at MTV had announced that there would be a few surprises during the show. I was hoping for a live performance from Duran Duran, so I was surprised (and a bit disgusted) when it was announced that they'd be presenting the Best Dance Video Award with Kelly Osbourne and Avril Lavigne. Anyway, they come on stage, Kelly blabs and blabs, then there's a technical snafu, and suddenly they're presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

It was a bit dissapointing that the presentation of the award was such a mess, but Simon gave a nice speech, and I honestly think they thought it was pretty cool to get the award. They've been getting so much great press lately and were interviewed so much after the show that they need to get their new record out as soon as possible. It's already been postponed to next year (do they even have a label yet?), which is such a mistake. Finish it already and get it out before people start hating you again!

Oh, and Queens of the Stone Age were robbed, man! Robbed, I tell you.

University people are a strange breed. Seems a couple of professors were one day discussing which bugs would be best used for a spitting contest and that evolved into Bug Bowl 2003. The rules are simple:

"Competitors stand in a red circle, place thawed crickets inside their mouths and, within 20 seconds, spit them as far as possible without stepping outside the circle."

This is all very strange, but what really had me wondering was the picture accompanying the article - what's that crap on her face?

German music is weird, too. One of Germany's top acts is called Scooter and unlike Mike Skinner he makes anthems, not bangers. He's got everything you'd expect from a German techno God including bizarre lyrics (his latest track, Maria (I Like It Loud), begins with "Alright everybody/Tie your shoes!"), platinum blonde hair, and obnoxious beats. He has a string of hits behind him as a solo artist (including the oddly titled Move Your Ass, Faster Harder Scooter, and How Much Is The Fish?), but on Maria he gets invaluable help from the unfortunately named rapper Dick Rules, who makes DMX sound like Aaron Carter.
The reason I'm mentioning this is that this is just one of the worst tracks I've ever heard, but you really need to see the video to fully appreciate how bad this shit is. This track is on heavy rotation on German music channel Viva, so I've seen it a few times, but I still get a little freaked out every time.

I took the celebrity match [via Catchdizzle] and the results were weird to say the least. I didn't get a 100% match and among the five results the only names I recognized belonged to a porn star and a page 3 girl. The top ranking match was Yvonne Lim, who I've never heard of and the rest were a Dutch chick and that girl, who played Glory on Buffy. So that doesn't bode well for me. Ryan, however, has it made in the shade.

So, y'all excited about football season starting next week? Like last year I've set up a fantasy NFL tournament for my friends and I'll try to follow The Ravens as best is possible from outside the US. So all I need now is to get my hands on Madden 2004 as soon as possible and I'll be in full NFL mode. Usually, I follow the games at nfl.com, where they have a free real audio feed from the games, because they only show one game a week here. But it looks like the real audio feed has been turned into some kind of subscriber's only service, which will screw up my season. Hopefully, there'll still be some kind of free service or I won't be able to follow the games live at all.

Chris Rock is the host of this year's VMAs and one of two reasons I'll be watching. Chris Rock is one of my favourite comedians. Not because he's the smartest or most original one, but because of his voice. Whenever I heard him talk I just crack up. And when he throws some jokes in there I really crack up. RS has a very funny interview with him, which is worth checking out. I love the text message he sends to David Spade: "Yo, money, don't come to New York without some jokes. Don't think you're walking in and just sitting down." Check the article to see Spade's answer.

Does anyone know how the nominees for the VMA gets picked? Is it just the record company with the most money, who gets to decide which clips get nominated? Because I very much doubt that Beyonce Knowles' video for Crazy in Love is one of the best videos by a female this year. Personally, I would think A Sorta Fairytale with Tori Amos and Adrien Brody would have been nominated, but maybe it didn't have enough gratuitous ass shots for the MTV jury. Or maybe it just wasn't directed by Hype Williams Dave Meyers.

And for the record - Kelly Clarkson dancing in a living room is not my idea of a great pop video. What the hell are the criterias for this show anyway? And how on earth is The Scientist the breakthrough video for Coldplay? Yellow, anyone? I get the feeling this is just one of those things I need to let slide, so I don't end up having a heart attack when John Mayer beats out Johnny Cash for Best Male Video (however, if it does happen you just know Nick Catchdubs will have his Jersey muscle put a hit out on Mayer).

The other reason to watch the VMAs is that Duran Duran are slated to present, so I need to check that out. They were rumoured to be one of this year's performers, but it looks like they had to step down in order to make room for big name artists like Mary J. Blige and Good Charlotte. Words can not express how sick that makes me feel.

A lot of people have been busy photoshopping album covers and the results can be seen here [via Whatevs]. I especially like The Will Smiths - The Beat is Murder and Dire Straits & NWA - Bruthaz in Armz covers.

And finally there's a large article on Douglas Coupland in The Guardian [via Emme], where he talks about his career and Hey Nostradamus (which I'm ordering this week).

I should never work three days in a row. I don't mean in general, but I should never work three days in a row at the job I have now (if I could get a well-paid job, where I don't have to work three days in a row that would be fine, too). Usually, I just work two days a week, but once in a while I'll cover for someone and have three shifts, which is enough to drive someone like me completely up the wall. The first two days are alright, but the third day I'm already beat once I get there and seeing as most of the work is gopher work I rarely get asked to do something that can cheer me up.

And sometimes between filing this, fixing that, cleaning this, and moving that I get asked to do things that completely baffles the mind. Like today I was asked to clean a whiteboard. Using milk. I know. Sigh.
Someone had used a regular pen on a whiteboard, so now there was a big, red drawing of a building that didn't come off and somehow the job of correcting the mistake landed in my lap. So after a story about how milk was brilliant for cleaning whiteboards I mentioned we didn't have any milk and was told to use non-dairy creamers instead. I know. Sigh.
So there I am - a grown man - at 9AM opening those little, gnarly plastic containers with non-dairy creamers and pouring them on a rag, so I could clean off a drawing of a building that some Poindexter had drawn on the whiteboard the day before. Did it work? Yes, but that's hardly the point.

I haven't really followed the whole flash mob thing (it's not really for me as I prefer not to leave the house), but Anil has some interesting points on how meta the whole thing is.

NME has the new White Stripes video, I Just Don't Know What To Do With Myself, featuring Kate Moss as a pole dancer. The video is directed by Sofia Coppola and the song was a hit for Dusty Springfield. Unfortunately, since everybody in the world is gawking at Katie's boobies watching it right now the link might not work until tomorrow.

And what's the deal with all the virus-infected emails I keep getting? Here's a tip if this is your first week on the internet - Don't open shit when you don't know where shit came from! Ya heard? Seriously, I've never had a virus on any computer anywhere, so how hard can it be to figure out that you shouldn't open files called illfuckyouup.pif? Get MailWasher already and let's be done with this nonsense.

Jinners writes about a CD featuring the songs from Hedwig, but done by acts like Yo La Tengo, Spoon, The Bens, and Frank Black. Although the addition of Type O Negative's version of Angry Inch would've been cool it still sounds like a very interesting project.

Get ready for Salam Pax - The Book [via Nick Denton]. Salam Pax is still writing his bi-weekly column, Baghdad Blogger, for The Guardian (although it's not easy to find), so along with the book deal it seems like starting a weblog has turned out to be a surprisingly profitable idea for him.

There's an interesting article at The Black Table about Instant Messenger Etiquette [via Hard Glitter]. There are a lot of funny stuff in the article, but the sentence that made me keep reading was "What you write is rarely read the way you would have said it in person, especially when you're trying to be funny". Not only is it true, but I think a lot of times it's true of weblogs as well.

The Raveonettes get reviewed in The Guardian and they take a beating ("The Raveonettes might be the indie Roxette - but at least Roxette had tunes").

For some reason I have four Ween records and the only one I listen to on a regular basis is Chocolate and Cheese. They are one of the weirdest bands around, which makes this article an interesting read. For more on Ween check out Catherine's Pita and Felafel, who have written reviews and taken pictures at a recent show.

I've been trying to remember the name of a band I saw on MTV recently, but I haven't had any luck. The video features the band standing in a big, open space like a warehouse or something and the singer is playing acoustic guitar. The first verse is just him alone before the band kicks in and the song has a weird, staccato-like rhythm. I'm not sure what the lyrics are, but I think it has to do with everybody wanting to be a rockstar. It's one of those hip, new bands that you read about on The Modern Age, so if you know who I'm talking about please leave me a comment.
Update: Thanks to Anders it was revealed that the video in question was Westside by Athlete.

I was trying to think today about why my blogging has become so sporadic lately. I've hardly been more busy lately and I still spend a fair amount of time staring mindlessly at my computer screen, so you'd think that I'd be able to rustle up some links and anecdotes for the ol' blog. But it just seems like I've been doing stuff lately that I don't feel like blogging about for various reasons and maybe that's effected my general inclination to blog a bit this month (although seven entries in eighteen days is hardly a hiatus).

But one thing I will mention today, though, that is kinda cool is that I've been interviewed for a big article on weblogs for Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende's lifestyle section. In the spirit of full disclosure I should mention that the journalist writing the article is a friend of mine, but all the same it'll be cool to be mentioned and linked to in a major newspaper. My impression is that the article will try to introduce weblogs as a phenomenon to people, who don't know what a weblog is. But instead of writing a how-to-create-your-own guide it'll be about why people write and at the same time present some interesting weblogs to let people know that it's not some weird, obscure, underground thing. I'm not sure if the article will make the online version, but if it does I'll definitely add a link to it.

And speaking of weblogs I've been asked to talk for 20 minutes on project weblogs during a university course, where one of my friends is a teaching assistant, so that'll be interesting as well. I've written a bit about how weblogs can be used in companies as a way to share knowledge, so combined with the story of how the internal weblog Stuff became the Blogger application I think I'll have enough material for a 20 minute gig.

There are also a couple of other interesting events coming up. This Friday marks the opening of something called Filmby Aarhus (or Film City Aarhus). I'm not entirely sure how it's going to work, but basically it's a huge building where you can edit and show movies and it has been built to further the already thriving film environment here in Aarhus. I know a couple of people, who are involved with this, so I'll go with them and see if I can find out more about the concept.
That's also where I'll (probably) go to a Bollywood party, where they'll be showing the movie It's All About Loving Your Parents, have DJs playing indy-pop and etno-beat (according to the flyer), and serve Indian food. It sounds like a really well-organized and special event, so hopefully I'll be able to go.

I posted one of my earlier entries over at Blogcritics to see if it would spark a debate and it actually did. Most people seemed to agree with me (at least to some extent) and it was nice to see that I'm not the only one who thinks people should spend five minutes rereading their blog entries before they post them.

Can anyone explain to me why the damn Olsen twins are on the cover of Rolling Stone? I like Full House as much as the next guy (okay, I probably like it a lot more than the next guy), but come on! They're out plugging some young adult movie, which is sure to have wacky misunderstandings and probably also a bit of good natured tomfoolery, but how does that qualify them for an RS cover? I thought you at least had to be a real star like Ruben or Clay to get a cover.
However, the same magazine features an article on The Raveonettes you can check out if you haven't lost all respect for that rag.

Lots of music stuff going on right now. I've been listening to the new Fountains of Wayne record almost nonstop the last couple of days and it's just brilliant. The first six or seven songs are really great and then they go and try out a couple of new musical styles and then come back and rap up the record with a couple of classic FoW tracks. Highlights include Hackensack, No Better Place, and Bright Future in Sales and I also really like Valley Winter Song, which sounds like a track of the criminally underestimated James Iha solo record (oddly enough he doesn't appears on that track, but on All Kinds Of Time, which is the following song). So if you like well-crafted (or hook-laden as Letterman called it) pop music you really shouldn't deprive yourself of this record.
I've also been listening to the No Fun EP by Local H, which is really a fans-only kinda release. I like it (especially President Forever and Birth, School, Work, Death are cool tracks), but it's not as great as I had hoped for. But it's Local, so what are you going to do? And hopefully a new full-length record isn't far off.

I've mentioned local band Tiger Tunes here a couple of times and now they've finally released their brilliantly titled debut album Absolutely Worthless Compared To Important Books. If you want to listen to it the entire album there is a streamed version available. If you don't know them you should probably check out Train Stations and Harbours and Airports and (Angry Kids of the World) Unite first.

I recently found this tribute to Linda McCartney done by fellow vegetarian Morrissey, which I thought was nice.

The latest on the Duran Duran reunion is that Ben Affleck wants to appear in their first new video. I know it'll give the band a lot of press, but since he's neither a hot model nor 17 I think it's a bad idea.

Have you seen the video for Golden Retriever by Super Furry Animals? Well, they're finally living up to their name as they spend the most of the video looking like Rhys Ifans in Human Nature. And isn't it nice that the sunscreen trend has made it all the way to Wales now. Isn't that the international sign for a trend being over?

And finally check out this clip to see what rap would be like if Ludacris was a ten-year-old white German boy [via LYD].

During the blogathon I mentioned that I would like to know if Bret Easton Ellis was working on a new book and I received a comment, which directed me to the Watching Bret Easton Ellis weblog. According to an article mentioned in one of the entries his next book will be very autobiographical and without gay content. Which means my hopes for a story about a group of models, who join the Al-Qaeda and successfully manage to replace the American President with Donovan Leitch probably will lead to naught.

I'm still trying to read classic books as mentioned earlier, but after The Sound and The Fury I read The Autograph Man, because it was both given and recommended to me. It was good and definitely made me want to check out White Teeth. So now I'm reading To Kill a Mockingbird and I expect I'll tear into yet another classic as soon as I've finished reading this one. And seeing as I have a couple of classics on the shelf already that I haven't read yet I hope I can continue this quest to expand my horizon a while longer.

I'm entering the final phase of the writing process in regards to my weblog paper. I'm five pages shy of reaching the 60 page minimum and I haven't written a conclusion yet, so meeting the requirement shouldn't be a problem. However, there is still some stuff I want to add and I'm sure I still need to do a lot of rewrites, but suddenly handing it in on October 1st doesn't look impossible anymore.

While working on my paper I've done a lot of research, read a lot of weblogs and a lot of articles, and I feel like I've learned a lot about why other people read and write weblogs. But there's one thing that I've thought about for a while. I claim in my paper that weblog publishing by nature is a dynamic media. By that I mean you can update them quickly from anywhere in the world and if they aren't updated on a regular basis they cease to be relevant. A lot of people seem to enjoy that they're able to quickly published brief entries with observations and links and the prize you pay for this as a reader is that weblogs often are filled with dead links and spelling errors.

During a conference recently author David Weinberger said:

"As rhetoric, I think it's important that many Weblogs are written badly. When reading a Weblog, you assume that you're reading a first draft. You know that it wasn't carefully edited, not much spell checked. You have the sense, wrongly, that it's closer to the person who wrote. Second of all, by reading what you assume to be a first draft, Weblog readers tend to be forgiving. You have to forgive the broken link. You have to forgive the bad spelling. You have to forgive the fact that the second paragraph should really be the lead. Social forgiveness is not a bad characteristic."

People who know me won't be surprised to learn that I'm rarely that forgiving.

Now, I think it's brilliant that you can publish your entries really fast and get your thoughts out there as quickly as possible. But would it kill you to go back and reread what you've just broadcasted to the entire world? How busy are you that you can't check if the link to your favourite gerbil page is working?

When I started blogging I used Blogger, whose tagline is "Push-button publishing for the people". I consider whatever is written on a weblog something which is published (meaning it should be able to withstand the same scrutiny as any book or newspaper) and therefore I like to think of my entries as (small) articles. This means even though my entries on occasion are filled with irony, slang, rubbish, and lies I try to take each entry as seriously as I would an article I was paid to write.
This doesn't always happen, but generally I check the spelling, edit, and reread everything which goes up here. Therefore I find it hard to accept that weblogs should generally just be considered first drafts and obviously this also means I get annoyed when people publish entries full of mistakes and broken links in the same way I get annoyed when I find mistakes in a newspaper or in subtitles.

Obviously mistakes happen and I’m sure you’d be able to find several errors in my entries as well. But my point is I think that if you want to be taken seriously by your readers you need to spend a bit more time writing coherently and do a bit of editing. But if you think I’m wrong let me know. Are broken links and spelling errors an integrated part of weblogs that we shouldn’t try to do anything about? Or would it be helpful to us both as readers, but also as a community if everyone spent an extra two minutes on each entry to weed out the worst mistakes?

What the hell is going on in California? I checked cnn.com today to see if Arnie had decided to run for governor, and indeed he had. I know he has talked about this for a while, but I seriously thought it was a joke. Now, I don't want to invoke the wrath of the Terminator here, but he just doesn't strike me as the most politically aware person around. I mean, have you ever seen him speak about anything resembling a political case? But if you thought the Austrian Oak was a weird choice for governor take a look at the rest of the ballot. How would you like Gary Coleman as your governor? As he points out to cnn.com: "I thought, hey, why not, [...] I'm probably the least qualified for the job, but I'll have some great people around me." Whatchu talkin' 'bout, Gary?

Or how would you like the watermelon smashing Gallagher as your governor? He's running as well. Alongside the legendary Angelyne and comedian DL Hughley. But my favourite has to Larry Flynt. That's right! The Hustler guy, who I'm sure will have a lot of success running under the slogan "Vote for a Smut-Peddler Who Cares". And Americans wonder why Europeans don't take their politics seriously.

And speaking of US politics it seems Jerry Springer won't be running for Senate after all. But that doesn't mean this article about the Run Jerry Run campaign isn't still funny.

Grandaddy has been added to the schedule at Voxhall, so I'll hopefully be able to go see them, when they play here on the 18th of November.

I visit a lot of blogs from all over the world and people are doing weird things on a lot of them. But what's going on right now at Distant Sun is fairly unique. It's like her weblog is virtually falling apart.

As you might be aware Andy Warhol would've turned 75 today had he not died in 1987. To celebrate this I've scoured the net for Warhol-related articles.

Whitney Matheson lists 75 ways to celebrate Warhol's 75th, which includes "Tell the DJ to play Duran Duran" and "Take a young lover". Words to live by.

The Miami Herald has a general article about Warhol, which mentions that admission to The Warhol Museum today is 75 cents, which includes free birthday cake.

The Baltimore Sun has an article about the young Andy, which features a lot of little-known facts.

And finally there's the article, On 75th anniversary of his birth, late pop artist is still an icon, in the San Antonio Express-News, which I've contributed to. I was contacted by the writer to give my opinion on Warhol's continuing impact on American culture, which I gladly did. And the article turned out really well, so I'm glad I did. Obviously, I had to mentioned the internet and weblogs, and there's some stuff in there about television and fame as well.

The NY Times has an interesting article about Jon Stewart in which he mentions that he'd like to turn his show into a 24 hour news channel, so Fox News aren't the only ones presenting fake news.

And there's an article in the New York Press about NY Bloggers, who are having an impact on the NY Music Scene. It's actually a very cool article and it makes me think that I should try to do something similar over here. Not start a club, but create a Danish music weblog where I write about up-coming bands and shows in an attempt to plug some of the better local bands. However, this might have to wait until I move to Copenhagen as there really isn't much of a cool underground scene here right now.

There were a couple of good articles in The New York Times this weekend. First an article on Fountains of Wayne, where their music is called "Dilbert rock, loser-core or Mersey Jersey" (Mersey Jersey? Is that a reference to NJ and Mersey Beat? Help please!) and they talk about not being with it.
And then there's the article on Photo Booths, which is not about the new Robin Williams/Colin Farrell Amelie-remake joint where Colin can't leave a photo booth for 24 hours, because Robin has developed a crush on him because of the photos he's developing of him. Instead it's about the history of the photo booth and an exhibit with pictures taken in photo booths in the 20s and 30s now on exhibit at the Griffin Museum of Photography. Très fascinant.

The Raveonettes were on CNN's The Music Room this weekend and parts of the interview is transcribed here. But for some reason they left out the best bit. The transcription says:

TMR: How do you work as a duo?
WAGNER: I write all the songs -- all the lyrics to all the songs.
FOO: For us it works really well to be a two-piece. When you are a duo, it makes things really simple. ... We kinda like it that way. No drama. It's easy and smooth.

But in the interview on television Sharin Foo added right after Sune's remark "And I do the laundry" with a sly smile. Beautiful.
Their album, Chain Gang of Love, is released on August 25th in the UK (hopefully here as well) and on September 2nd in the US. Can't wait.

I know some of you cats come here looking for Coupland news, so here are the latest articles on Hey Nostradamus. There's the Doug interview, the article written by a friend, and the review. Oh, and you can get the Hockey Night in Canada coffee table from the picture in the first article here.

Can I just say that I totally dig the new Duran shots? Granted, Andy looks more messed up than Mike Mars, but other than that the shots are cool. And before you start making jokes about them being old and fat check out the shots from Vegas. Lean, mean, rock 'n' roll machine, baby!

And finally there's an article (in Danish) about a woman, who's opening a book store here next week called Books 'n' Coffee. Now, I know a lot of you are thinking, "What's the big deal about someone opening a book store where you can get coffee and hang out and read books?". Well, we don't have those over here. I know! But we don't. For years I've had conversations with a friend of mine about how weird it is that we don't have coffee shops like Starbucks (we got those recently) and book stores like Borders, because that's where we always hang out when we're out travelling. But now this woman is setting up this shop with English-language literature only and a café area, so if her prices are reasonable I expect I'll try to hang out there once in a while.

And breaking news: Jason Schwartzman has left Phantom Planet. For more on Schwartzman read Roger Avary's fun entry about Jason's birthday bash a few months ago.

Once again I was watching Parkinson on BBC Prime (I know he's an old fart, but the interviews are always great) and this time he interviewed David Bowie. I never realized how flaky Bowie can be. Usually, in interviews he's pleasant, but cool. But he must have felt right at home with Parky, because he was grinning and jumping from topic to topic like crazy. And when he started humming weird melody lines from Tubby the Tuba and songs by Ernest Luft even Parky just sat there mesmerized by this odd man.

Once again he told the story of how Life on Mars is his version of My Way (Bowie was hired to translate the French song "Comme d'habitude" into English, but did a terrible job. So they passed the job on to Tony Anka, who turned it into My Way for Frank Sinatra. So as a revenge Bowie decided to write an equally grandiose song for himself, which became Life on Mars) and several anecdotes about The Stones and Little Richard. But the one thing he said that got me out off my seat was his answer to Parky's question about how he used to get on with his parents. Bowie leaned in and said, "They fuck you up, your parents do!". People were laughing hard, so it was hard to pick up the rest he said, but it had to with his parents passing on their faults to him and then adding some extra ones.

It took me a while to realize that he was paraphrasing from a poem by Philip Larkin, but afterwards I looked it up and here's the whole thing:

This Be The Verse
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

Obviously, it's up for debate how well this applies to everyone, but even if it doesn't ring true to you, I think you'll agree it's pretty funny.

I found the poem at Art of Europe, which is a very interesting site. There's a lot of information about great European artists written in very unique way. So if you need the basics on W.B. Yeats you can go there and be informed that late in his career he "fell into Mysticism and Whining about his Hard-Ons before winning a Nobel and Generally Degenaerately [sic] associating with Aery Trolls and suchlike proporters of Nuclear Power and Par Lagerkvist inside his ElderStatesman head. If he was alive today, would probably be into the United Nations, the Moonies, Viagra and
Jennifer Love Hewitt.". The site is also packed with paintings and poems, so even if you consider the quote above total blasphemy I'm sure you'd still be able to find something there you'll like.