That Lost in Translation movie is really rather beautiful isn't it? I knew it was going to be good, but it was even better than expected. It's just great to see Bill Murray in these roles (like in Rushmore and Tenenbaums recently) where he's old, depressed, and miserable. His career has been really hit-and-miss the last... well all his career really. I mean, how do you go from Groundhog Day, Mad Dog and Glory, and Ed Wood to making Larger Than Life? What the hell? But some of his latest work is his best ever and he might even win an Oscar for this one.

Anyway Lost in Translation is just great and has a truly sweet and touching story. The music is great, too. It's not every day you get to hear karaoke versions of Costello, The Pretenders, The Pistols, and Roxy Music (the last one was just fantastic). The story really hit home with me, which was both great and a little depressing. Anyway, if you haven't seen it already you should go see it.

So, are you excited about the big game tomorrow? Yeah, it's going to be great to see Arsenal play against the first non-Middlesbrough team in months. I'm just kidding - I am of course talking about the Super Bowl, which a whole bunch of us will get together to watch tomorrow. The game is on in the middle of the night here because of the time difference, so I think we're going to get together early in the day and hang out, eat, drink, and get ready for what should be four hours of high drama. So I won't actually get to see the Arsenal game, but I'm sure the text messages will be flying in during the day.

Tonight is all about checking out the new indie club downtown and usually I'd go out of my way to bring you photo documentation of an event like that, but my camera has gone to those united states without me, so any review of the event will be sans images. Hopefully, I'll be able to remember enough about the night to write about it later and not be to wrecked when I have to go to the party tomorrow. But then what are the chances of that happening?

I've just about had it with overchoreographed Jazzercise posing as action. I watched the second Matrix movie last night and the whole thing was more like Debbie Allen than John Woo to the point where I could barely be bothered watching it. Obviously, there were a couple of interesting action sequences and the Priscilla dude was pretty cool (how ironic that the most artificial character did the best acting), but overall I thought the whole thing stunk. And all the new age/religious symbolism is pretty much lost on me, since everyone knows Danzig is The One anyway.

I saw Once Upon a Time in Mexico recently and didn't like that too much either. Johnny Depp was fabulous as always, but the story gets way too complicated for its own good, which meant I stopped caring about the story before the movie was halfway through. And the flashbacks do little to explain the actions of the characters (what's with the chains Salma and Banderas are wearing anyway?). There are way too many nonimportant storylines and too many characters, so even Depp and his funky shirts can't save this turkey.

In music news I've been listening to Shout Out Louds a bit lately and I especially like the single Please, Please, Please. They won't be playing here any time soon, but if you're a New York Hipster you might want to check them out in early February, where they're playing four shows in NYC (including one with OK Go).

I don't think there are any shows here before Grant-Lee Phillips plays here in late March, so I'm thinking about going to Copenhagen to see Damien Rice and Josh Ritter in early March. But another possibility is trying to save up enough bread for a trip to the UK either in March to see Fountains of Wayne or in April to see Duran Duran. The latter is probably the most likely as I'll need some time to save up the money. It probably won't happen, but if I can stop spending like a crazy person I should be able to at least save up enough for a few days in London.

Once again we went to the Label Night party and had a great time. Three bands played Saturday night, but we primarily came to see Yellowish, whose debut album will be out in March. I saw them a while ago and weren't too impressed. Honestly, back then I thought they sounded like a second rate My Bloody Valentine, but I figured I'd give them a second chance and I'm glad I did.

They've changed towards a more melodic style, so the show was a pleasant surprise. I'm a sucker for the male/female vocal thing, so add noisy guitars and big keyboard sounds and I'm all over it. So it would seem that a little studio time really have made them focus on the songs, which has lifted them from being just another indie band who drew to heavily on their inspirations to a band that's actually worth keeping an eye on. So we enjoyed that.

On an unrelated note I have to add that I've gone eBay crazy. I mentioned browsing on eBay last year, but now that I have scary amounts of free time I've started shopping and I'm afraid it has gone a little overboard. I started out wanting to get Arsenal jerseys for myself and my brother, but since then I've bought DVDs, PS2 games, videos, and some other stuff. It's more than a little addictive searching for new items and following auctions and the whole "You've won!" thing they have when the auction is finished means that it feels like actually winning something even though you have to pay for it. The only thing that has arrived so far is the "Jack Dee Live at the Apollo" DVD, which is hysterical. I have two of his older shows and they're all very funny.

So there's a lot of stuff on its way, but most notably is a Baltimore Ravens jersey I got fairly cheap. I've talked about this jersey all year and I'll try to explain why. It's the jersey of Ravens' starting quarterback Kyle Boller, whose name is funny if you know Danish (and you have a juvenile sense of humour). Boller means buns (as in hamburger buns) in Danish, but it's also slang for screwing or testicles. So we've just made fun of that name so often I thought it would be fun to own the jersey. Like I said it's fairly juvenile, but you've got to think young to stay young (or something like that).

I've been following the Primaries quite a bit and as usual I get the majority of information from Letterman, Leno, Jon Stewart, and 60 Minutes. But there was a pretty informative segment about the candidates on television yesterday, so now I actually know what Gephardt looks like (and now he's gone, so who cares). I think the most interesting thing so far are the theories about the Clintons and Hilary's chances of running in 2008. I think I like Wesley Clark the best of the candidates (although he seems to be running a fairly disorganized campaign), but I think John Edwards has a better chance of beating Bush. And that seems to be the number one concern voters have. Not who they think is the better candidate, but who has a chance of beating Bush. This is probably why Dean will lose, because he's just too far to the left to have a real shot at The White House. He seems like a good guy, though, but he's gone a little far with the enraged on the behalf of the people rutine if you ask me.

Anyway, this is so different from Danish politics, which is less focused on the individual politicians and where we have more than two parties, who have an actual shot at making it into the government, so it's pretty fascinating to follow.

Man, the last week has been hectic. I have several projects going on right now, but the one which has taken up most of my time was the Warhol lecture I mentioned the last time I got around to update this thing.

I held the lecture yesterday morning and by all accounts it was a big success. My job was to entertain approximately 130 high schools seniors for 2x45 minutes from 8:30 to 10:10 in the morning. Besides the kids there were several teachers (including my Dad) and the principal in attendance and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. I've never spoken in front of that many people before (outside of concerts and plays), so I hadn't thought about the fact that it might be difficult to keep that many people interested for an extended period of time (especially that early in the day). Turns out it wasn't difficult at all, but all the teachers kept saying afterwards that it was impressive how attentive the kids had been, so I guess that's a sign things went well.

A lot of people feel uncomfortable about talking in front of big crowds, but I've never had that problem. I get nervous about loads of things and when I know I'm unprepared for an oral exam I do get a little sweaty. But usually I don't get really nervous before presentations and speeches. This time around I had prepared a Powerpoint presentation with about 40 slides and eight singlespaced pages with anecdotes and facts, so I had a ton of stuff to talk about, which is a confidence booster. The only problem was that I had no idea how much time it would take to get through my manuscript, so when it was time for the break I had only made it through the first two pages, which meant I had to drop a ton of stuff in the second half.

So in part two I skipped over a lot and when the video projector suddenly gave out I had to skip over even more stuff. But it came back on for the last ten minutes where I got to show off some Pop Art by other artists than Warhol and talk a little about the things the students should consider before choosing images for their own Neo Pop Art projects. I tried to emphasize the importance of choosing something relevant for their paintings instead of just picking out a random celebrity and painting him/her in four different colours. I wanted them to think about which statement they were trying to make and possibly even try to provoke or use humour.
They're having an exhibit in March, so I'll probably go see that to see which subjects are on the minds of teenagers today and how they have chosen to express these thoughts.

Somehow I also found time to go see The Twilight Singers at Voxhall Monday night and review it for Frekvens. The review is in Danish, but you don't need to speak our beautiful language to enjoy the cool pictures Jan took at the show.
It was a pretty good show although a couple of tracks from "Gentlemen" would have been a cool gesture. The "Blackberry Bell" record is really good and especially the amusingly titled Teenage Wristband is a good track.
There aren't a lot cool shows these days, but I'm definitely going to the next Label Night show this weekend, so that ought to be good and I'm looking forward to checking out the new indie club which opens the following weekend.

And in case you're wondering the new Eddie Izzard DVD is excellent and I'm liking the Ryan Adams "Rock and Roll" album a lot more than I thought I would.

Man, am I glad I don't have to work outside on a day like this. I've been researching Abstract Expressionism for the Warhol lecture I'm giving next week and I've been going through my Warhol books to find paintings I'd like to talk about, so I hadn't noticed it was snowing like crazy outside. I went out to get a couple of shots from my balcony and not surprisingly it's crazy cold outside.

It's not easy focusing when there are huge snowflakes all over the place and it's a little hard to make out on the pictures just how much snow is actually falling, but I think you get the general idea.

Getting the Warhol thing ready is going to take a little work. The main theme is to introduce Pop Art to these people using Andy Warhol as a starting point. The point is to present them with a variety of images, which will inspire them when they have to create their own pieces of Neo-Pop Art later this month. So I have to choose some of the famous images (Campbell's Soup Can, Dollar Bills, Marilyn), some more unusual images (Electric Chair, Red Race Riot), and some of my favourite images (Ethel Scull 36 Times, Mao) and find out how to structure the whole thing using interesting anecdotes. The most difficult thing is to figure out how much stuff I'll need to prepare to go on for 70 minutes. I speak very fast, so I have to remember to slow down and try to break the thing up into two logical parts to make room for a break. Man, I need to seriously start working on this thing.

A friend of mine is taking her final exam today, which will turn her from a hardworking student into a real honest-to-god doctor. So she's having a shindig tonight, where most likely some of the other graduates will appear as well, so that should be fun. So I won't get a lot of work done the rest of the day and I have to have an draft of my presentation ready for Thursday, where I'm going out to the school to scan the pictures I'll be using. So today will be all about work.

Oh, Curb Your Enthusiasm started here yesterday. I'd already seen the pilot at the Museum of Television & Broadcasting in New York, so I'm excited about seeing the regular episodes which starts airing tomorrow on Swedish television.

I finally got around to uploading the pictures I took around New Year's, which means I can get around to writing about what we did for New Year's.

Obviously, I spent Christmas with my parents, but after spending a couple of days at home I went to Sweden to spend a few days with some friends in a house they'd rented. The place was huge and is usually used for school trips, but friends of mine go there on occasion to relax and they'd rented it for New Year's and invited us to come join them.

I spent five days there doing nothing but eat, sleep, read, watch movies and shows, play games, talk, go for walks, play poker, and listen to music (we listened to The Postal Service a lot and decided that Dizzee Rascal kinda sucks). My phone didn't work, we couldn't get online, and because all the stuff we watched was stored on harddiscs I didn't watch television for five days. So I had no idea what was going on in the world, which was nice for a change. Obviously, we had to go into town to get food and snacks, so we would've probably noticed if something huge had happened, but we didn't buy papers and like I said my phone didn't work, so I wasn't in contact with anyone during those days. It's funny, because we think we so desperately need to check mail and get text messages all the time, but it's actually very relaxing to just chill and tell the world you're not around.

A main theme during our trip was No Limit Texas Hold'em Poker. Recently, I mentioned poker in another entry and since then some of my friends have caught the poker bug. So we watched several episodes of the Celebrity Poker show and a couple of other shows about poker tournaments and obviously we also played a few games. At the same time I started reading Stefan Fatsis' excellent book Word Freak about competitive Scrabble players, so that week I learned more about people obsessed with games than ever before.

New Year's Eve itself was very low key and nice, because nobody really felt like drinking a lot, so we made dinner, listened to music and just talked, which was cool. New Year's has a tendency to get built up so it has to be the party of the year and then it always disappoints. So just hanging out and relaxing was a nice change of pace.

It's not like a lot of other stuff is going on right now. According to the news unemployment is at the highest it's been in five years here, so there aren't a lot of jobs to apply for right now. However, I did get around to finishing my submission for the Coupland Award Contests, so that was a little exciting. In case you have submitted a story or never got around to it you have until February 3rd to submit or resubmit an entry. Turns out the discs with all the submissions were stolen and everyone has to resumbit their entries. Just thought I'd pass that info along.

I hadn't written a fictitious story since high school, so it was a little weird trying to make up a story, but as soon as the framework came into place it went okay. I like to tell myself the reason I haven't written a book or a screenplay is because I haven't thought of the right story yet. I'm convinced I could write interesting and funny dialogue if I just had a plot to tie it to, but because I don't want to write about a bank robbery or a murder I just haven't done it yet.
So when I actually got an idea around Christmas it wasn't too difficult to write a 1000 words, because I knew how to start and how to end and working on the stuff inbetween was the fun part. I very much doubt I'll win, but it was fun to write in a different way than usual, so I'm just glad I did it and sent it in.

The next project I have to work on is preparing a lecture on Andy Warhol, which I'll be giving later this month. I've been asked to hold a lecture to about 130 high school kids, so I have to figure out what my focus will be and which paintings I'll use as examples. I haven't really studied Warhol lately, so I'll actually have to seriously hit the books, so I get quotes, facts, dates, places, and people right, so I don't feed them incorrect information. It's going to be an interesting experience though and I really hope there'll be time for a Q&A as I find that more interesting than just rambling off facts for hours. But the lecture isn't for another two weeks, so I should have plenty of time to prepare and I'll be sure to let you know later how it went.