This last week has been fairly uneventful aside from the occasional night out and a five hour moving session for a friend of mine, who is now officially a house owner. But Sunday was fun as we gathered early at Bridgewater for the Arsenal Quiz followed by the Arsenal - ManU game. Sunday was the day after the daylight savings time switch, which meant my sense of time was completely out of whack all day like I had jetlag or something.

Obviously, staying up until the actual switch from winter to summer time might also have had something to do with that. But I has hanging out watching MTV Base (because I'm down with the hip hop), and then suddenly weird stuff appeared on my television screen.

The first error message was on the screen for a long time and then finally someone pressed "OK" I guess and then decided to change the time to summer time in front of the viewing public. That's what you get for having your cable stations run by a Win95 machine.

But back to the Arsenal game. We filled out the quiz and felt confident that we were embarrasing ourselves in front of the hardcore fans (the event was arranged by the Danish fan club). But by a stroke of magnificent luck we actually managed to get seven correct answers, which meant we won nine pints of beer. So the mood was set perfectly for a game, which had everything except the win we wanted. Arsenal played better than I've seen them play in a while, but unfortunately they only scored once, which wasn't enough to get more than a draw. However, on the plus side I'd put down a few bucks with a bookie guessing that it would end as a draw, so that was a small consolation.

So tonight we're going to see Grant-Lee Phillips and band, which ought to be really good. They got a nice review in Spin recently and when I saw him play a solo gig last year it was fantastic, so even though I haven't heard the new record I'm getting my hopes up.

The new video by The Streets is out now, so you should check it out. It's called Fit But You Know It and both the track and song are pretty funny. Stylistically, it's not exactly like the last record, but if you were into British indie in the 80s I think you'll enjoy it.

The journalistic project I was interviewed for is now online. Their project gives an introduction to weblogs, but mainly focuses on the effect of weblogs on journalism and the possibilities for the future when it comes to weblogs. Sprinkled throughout the project are small sound clips from the interview with me, where I talk about credibility, journalism, moblogs, and why weblogs are cool. I think it's done in Flash and it works really well as they play as soon as you hit the play button.

I noticed today that Dead Kenny had written the same entry as I did last night. His choices are somewhat different from mine although he also gives praise to The Stills (and mentions The Thermals).

I just read an article on an ABC show called Married to the Kellys and was intrigued when I learned that a woman one of the show's characters is based on has a weblog. But what is really interesting is that the weblog is dedicated to comment on the show, which means after each episode airs the real person comments on what the fictional characters did on the show and if anything like that ever happened in real life.
I don't know if I would watch the show if it aired here, but I think if it did air I'd check it out and go back and read the first entries. And if I liked both I think I'd be curious enough to watch and read a little more. So all in all the weblog seems like a pretty good idea. [Update: The weblog is actually maintain by two sisters and not just one woman - my bad]

I wasn't aware that Five Star had gotten back together in 2000. I remember when they were called the new Jackson Five and then they just disappeared to make solo records no one ever heard. I was at Roskilde when The Sex Pistols played their reunion gig and were pelted with bottles. I'm generally not in favour of chucking stuff at people, but I understand why people did it and quite frankly I think it made the concert a lot more memorable than if the Pistols had just played their tired, old songs.

It used to be that I would actually write about music and movies here and not so much about myself. So in realization of the fact that nothing much is going on right now I've decided to write a little about the records I'm currently listening to with the hope that some of you might get inspired and check some of them out (I'm also currently reading Nick Hornby's 31 Songs, so that's kinda where I nicked the idea from).

Red House Painters: Songs for a Blue Guitar (1996)
One of the most beautiful records I've bought in a long time. It starts out with the acoustic Have You Forgotten, which is so melancholic and beautiful that it makes you want to cry within a minute of putting the album on ("Have you forgotten how to love yourself?" he sings quietly over and over again). The second track is the title track which is similar in style. But with Make Like Paper the album starts changing. The songs starts quietly, but after a while builds up and goes into several minutes of guitar noodling before it goes into a more electric version of the song it started out as. The song goes on for more than 12 minutes, but never gets boring, which is quite remarkable. By song five you know in your heart that love will only bring you misery and no matter what happens you'll never find anything as true as the love you've lost. But then I Feel The Rain Fall pops up with 2 minutes of happiness and even though the lyrics are almost suicidal the music is merrier than Christmas with the Cunninghams.
For the rest of the album the songs shift from being quiet and acoustic to being more electric, but the melancholy goes on throughout the record and no matter how long the songs are Mark Kozelek's voice carries them through with lyrics like "And the one thing she found/As she gazed at the sea/Was that she lost her faith/Her faith in me". The album actually includes three cover versions, but the only one which is on par with Kozelek's own tracks is All Mixed Up, which is taken from the first album by The Cars.
I'm a huge fan of Kozelek's "What's Next To The Moon" album and I've listened to "Old Ramon" a lot as well, but this record makes me want to buy everything Kozelek has ever been involved with. So the Sun Kil Moon record will have to be bought next month and I guess I'll just have to buy the older Red House records one by one, because if they're anywhere near as good as the ones I already have I'm not sure I can live without them.

The New Pornographers: Electric Version (2003)
This is a record I've wanted to buy for months, but it wasn't until I found it in London I finally picked it up and boy am I glad I did. I've honestly never heard a Neko Case album, but I found the idea of her doing a Power Pop album interesting and it's probably the album I've listened to the most in the last few weeks (even more than the Franz Ferdinand record!).
The lyrics haven't made a real impact on me, but the songs have cheered me up more times than one and the harmonies are to die for. The album is packed with pop gems, but my favourites include The Laws Have Changed, All For Swinging You Around, and The New Face of Zero and One. I don't really know how to describe their sound, but I think you'll dig this record if you like Guided By Voices and The Shins (or just like good music in general).

Other records I've been listening to a lot lately:

Franz Ferdinand: Franz Ferdinand (2004)
Everybody and their brother is loving this album and I really like it as well. I wouldn't say it has completely blown me away, but maybe it will at some point.

The Stills: Logic Will Break Your Heart (2003)
Logically, I should realize that these guys are just a pop version of Interpol and that they've listened to entirely too many albums by The Smiths. But for some reason I think this is a great record. The bassline in Still in Love Song is killer and lyrics like "And logic will break your heart forever" and "And I'm just so bored of wasting my time/Love and death are always on my mind" appeal to the melancholic poseur in me. They may not be doing anything new, but the stuff they are doing is well worth checking out.

Preston School of Industry: Monsoon (2004)
The main reason I bought this record is that Scott Kannberg used to be in Pavement (the other reason was that some blogger (Chromewaves? Coolfer?) mentioned that Kannberg was actually the talented one out of Pavement). Right now I think it's a pretty decent record, but at first I was a bit disappointed that it wasn't weirder. It's a very simple record with regular songs, which after a while though turn out to be fairly charming. If you need proof just check out the sweet Caught in the Rain, which is a definite highlight.

The last two records are more from the don't-believe-the-hype department. Now, I'm a huge bandwagon-jumper. If you have one I'm sure to jump it as soon as it starts rolling. But once in a while I stop and go "Yeah, maybe not" after I've given a band more than its fair share of chances. That's how I feel about Whirlwind Heat: Do Rabbits Wonder? (2003) and The Thermals: More Parts Per Million (2003) right now.
Whirlwind Heat have gotten written about a lot because of the Jack White/Brendan Benson connection, but after listening to the record a number of times I'm still far from being impressed. Also, I was a bit disappointed to find that their version of You're Pretty Good Looking isn't on the album (although it's nowhere near as good as the original anyway).
With The Thermals it was the Chris Walla/Sub Pop connection along with buzz different places, which made me buy the album. But I'm still not getting why people like it and have described the band's songs as catchy and melodic. But as with Whirlwind Heat I'm going to give The Thermals a couple more chances before I swap them for something else.

Man, my tuchus is sore. We played Flag Football for a couple of hours Saturday and now my thighs and my posterior are killing me. I had been warned that there would be severe pain the next day after playing for so long, but since it wasn't actually that exhausting while we were playing I figured it wouldn't be that bad the next day. So after we had played I even went out drinking and didn't really give it much thought.

At least not until I woke up Sunday with a slight hangover and thighs as stiff as tree trunks. So I spent quite a few hours on the old sofa watching television trying not to move too much. But it was actually a lot of fun playing, so I think we'll try to set up a couple of teams and play on a regular basis. The only problem was that the grass was kinda wet, so people who were just playing in sneakers skidded around like crazy whenever they tried something fancy like juking or a spin move. So I think a pair of football boots will have to bought if I want to play on a regular basis.

I mentioned last week I'd been interviewed by students from the school of journalism. I was under the impression their project was going online Friday, but it's still not online so I guess I was wrong. But I'll keep you posted and like I said I'll try to get a hold of some of the shots they took while they were here.

One of the things we talked about during the interview was how some webloggers see themselves as media watchdogs. I actually had an opportunity to play watchdog myself last week. I read an article, which was based on something which wasn't true, which meant a lot of the statements in the article were wrong. I contacted the journalist and told him that he'd gotten the story wrong and after emailing back and forth with him he agreed to change certain paragraphs in the article. He was actually really nice about being corrected and because he changed the article (and the story really wasn't that important to begin with) I'm not going to link to it. But had the story been about something important I think I would have made a bit more off a fuss. But since I don't want to hang the journalist out to dry and all I really wanted was have the story changed I'm glad we could handle it through email.

Is there a job where all you do all day is get interviewed? Because I think I could do that job. And if there isn't maybe someone could create it for me. The job could actually be like a reverse talk show, where celebrity guests come on and ask me questions and I could talk about myself and let them know what I thought of the latest album, movie, book, or whatever. If Tom Cruise came on I could let him know what I thought of MI2 and tell him he should do more movies with PT Anderson and less with John Woo. And then I could tell him about the time a friend of mine saw Nicole Kidman in Paris. I think we'd both enjoy that.

It would be like this weblog actually, but on telly and with people and maybe once in a while I'd go somewhere and do on-location bits and talk about myself there. And when we have bands on I'll sit in with them and we'll play my favourite songs instead of their latest single. So if you run a network or something I think you should give it some thought. It's just crazy enough to work, I think.

The reason I thought about this is I was actually interviewed today by two students from the school of journalism. They're working on a project on weblogs and wanted my opinions on weblogs contra journalism especially in regard to the debate about the credibility of what you read on a weblog. It was a lot of fun and it was cool to get to talk about a lot of the stuff, which Jens and I had discussed last week.
If you don't live here you might not have noticed, but there was a segment on weblogs on national television Thursday night and Jens was one of the people they interviewed. So the next day he came over and we talked about the segment and weblogs in general. So a lot of the things we went over came up today as we talked about Jayson Blair, Salam Pax, moblogs, revealing a part of yourself online, and a lot of other stuff. The best part was I was able to talk about all the things relating to weblogs, which have nothing to do with online diaries and journals.

The only thing which was tough was thinking in sound bytes. Because if there's one thing I'm not it's brief. I never say anything using one sentence if I can use a lot instead. So summarizing why weblogs are cool in five sentences or less is not an easy task for me.
I'll probably have more information about the project later this week and a couple of URLs as well. One of them took a lot of pictures of me, so if one or two of them by some coincidence comes out with me looking like a normal person I'll try to get a hold of them and upload them somewhere. I'm no good at posing for pictures, so I'm sure most of them have me looking like I'm in some kind of pain, but maybe we'll get lucky and one of them comes out alright.

Oh, my weblog had it's second birthday on March 7th and I forgot. Silly me.

I'm getting over my attack of whatever it was I had contracted, which made me feel like crap. So without any further ado and delay here's the rest of my rundown of our trip to London.

Wednesday was the big day for us. We were going to The Astoria to see Fountains of Wayne. But before the show we had a lot more sightseeing and shopping to do. We walked from our hotel through Kensington Garden out to Notting Hill, where the best cd shop in London is located. On our way out there Kristian let us know that we would pass the hotel were Richie from Manic Street Preachers was last seen, but we were a bit disappointed when there wasn't a vigil of fans crying their eyes out in front of it.

They have a chain of used cd shops in London called CD Exchange, which are all pretty great. But the one in Notting Hill is incredible and very much like the store in High Fidelity. Briefly after we entered they put on a horrible Oi! Punk album, which we joked they had bet if they could sell three of in fifteen minutes, which obviously didn't happen. Anyway, they have everything out there at reasonable prices, so I left with a stack of good stuff you can't get over here.

After a touch more shopping and eating (by now we had given up on the British and ate only in American chain restaurants) it was finally time for Fountains of Wayne. The Astoria is a fairly large place and also a bit run down, but the thing which surprised us the most was how cold the place was. We had checked our coats, so we were standing around in t-shirts and freezing a bit. But the beer was cheap and opening act David Mead was pretty good. He ended his set with "The Book of Love" by The Magnetic Fields, which was cool.

When FoW finally got on stage they opened with Bought for a Song, which is a good song, but it hardly brought the house down. All through the song people stood around with their arms cross and I suddenly got the feeling that people were here to hear Stacy's Mom and didn't give a shit about the rest of the materiale. But I couldn't have been more wrong. Next songs was Barbara H. off the first record and after a few seconds people went nuts. Turns out there were a lot of fans of the first record in the crowd and they went crazy every time they play the old songs. The group behind me were obviously huge fans, who several times made shout-outs for the song Sasquatch, which may or may not actually exist, but is mentioned on a live bootleg (the lyrics are "Sasquatch, Sasquatch/Stop acting crazy/Sasquatch, Sasquatch/Stop eating my friends"). They sang along like crazy, which meant they didn't mind me singing along like crazy as well (you always have to be careful belting out lyrics if the people around you actually came to hear the band instead of your out-of-tune drunken ass).

Needless to say the show was absolutely brilliant. It was like a greatest hits of all the best tracks of their records. Unfortunately, the show was a bit short, but that's what you get for liking a band, who writes three minute pop songs. But they sounded great and the crowd really got into the show after a few songs and turned several songs into singalongs including the acoustic version of Hey Julie. They are definitely the kind of band I wouldn't mind travelling to see again.

Thursday was our last day in London, so we went out to Camden to do our last bit of shopping (I couldn't leave before I'd picked up a Mr. T shirt) and then we went to see Luke Perry and Alyson Hannigan in When Harry Met Sally. I've seen that movie so many times, so when I noticed the show was playing in London (with Luke Perry no less) I decided we had to get tickets. We were fortunate to get offered £40 seats for £12, because not a lot of people had bought tickets for the matinee, so that just made the whole thing cooler.

The show used the lines from the movie, but had changed the settings, so they would fit into theatre form. The script is the best bit anyway, so I thought the show was cool and Perry was very funny. Also, it's been too long since I last went to see a play and it was fun seeing both Perry and Hannigan in real life, so I'm really glad we went.
Unfortunately, going to the show meant we missed our train to the airport, which led to us missing our flight. So we had to get new tickets for a flight leaving the next morning, which meant we had to kill about 12 hours at the airport. Fortunately, there were a group of Danish Brøndby supports on their way home from Barcelona and a group of Americans on their way to see Manchester United play Porto (I think), who were also stuck at the airport, so they could entertain us. Unfortunately, I spent the wait embarrassing myself by drinking too much, which is an idiot thing to do especially at an airport.

So when we finally arrived home Friday afternoon I was a completely mess and slept for most of the weekend. I guess that's why I was susceptible to all the gems from my travelling companions, who had been coughing all week. But I'm feeling better now, so I'm ready for the opening game of the Danish soccer season this Sunday. It's actually snowing right now, so the thought of sitting outside watching a game for two hours isn't really all that compelling. But I'm going with a large group of people, so it should be really fun.

Mirror Project contribution one and two.

I wanted to write about the rest of our trip to London today. I also wanted to write about the Lambchop concert I went to last night. Actually, there are a number of things I'd like to do today, but instead of doing anything I'm going back to bed.

It would seem I have contracted the variety of the Ebola virus my travelling companions all had in London, so now I'm a bit of a mess. I didn't feel so hot last night, but a sore throat and a bit of a cough wasn't going to come between me and my rock 'n' roll. I even went out for coffee afterwards, because that's just the kinda guy I am. But today I woke up with a fever, an aching head, and a nosebleed. The last bit was particularly creepy as I haven't had a nosebleed since I was like 8. I had a feeling I was coming down with something, but it would seem I'm completely falling to pieces now and I think the best thing to do is sleep for a few days and hope for the best.

So, we're back from London and I must say we had a great time. I've had some problems getting my pictures online and I've been pretty knackered since I got back, but now I'm finally ready to let you know how the trip went. I'll probably have to break it up into two posts though as we did a lot of stuff.

We left Aarhus early Monday morning and checked into our hotel in London before noon without problems. The Hyde Hotel is located just around the corner from Paddington station, so it was easy for us to get everywhere. The hotel was cheap, but nice and because our room had a tv we quickly got involved in the life of daytime tv star Trisha, who along with Jenny Agutter and Tina Dickow became favourite topics of conversation.

But we were eager to get out to see the city right away, so as soon as we'd dumped our stuff off at the hotel we went out to Camden Market. I've never seen so many white people with dreadlocks in one place as I saw out there, but I guess that just adds to the weird atmosphere of the place. They have all kinds of strange shops, which sell clothes, CDs, bags, and junk and although we didn't initially buy anything it was still interesting enough that we went back on the last day and bought a few things.

We had planned on going to a club called Trash that night, but people were really beat after a long day, so instead we just went to a pub near the hotel and had a few drinks. That also meant we got to see highlights from the Oscar show, which we had all missed, because we had to get up so early to catch our plane.

One thing I have to mention at this point is the English food. I've been to England several times before and have never been too impressed by British cuisine, but the two meals we had on our first day were totally ridiculous. We had lunch at a pub before we went to our hotel and what we got was microwaved servings, which tasted of absolutely nothing. Granted, the meals were very cheap, but still I like it when the chicken at least tastes like chicken and not like eating pieces of air. And what's with those damn peas?

So after that we decided we weren't going to buy more food from British people, so that night we went to an Italian restaurant. At first I really enjoyed my fettucine with cream sauce and mushrooms, but after a while I realized it tasted only of cream, which isn't that interesting. And since Kristian's Pizza Diablo apparently didn't exactly invoke mental images of hellfire or the Devil we decided that from then on we weren't going to eat any more meals prepared by white people.

Tuesday, we decided to go on a pilgrimage to Highbury, where Arsenal play their home games. One of the interesting things about Highbury is that it's located right in the middle of a residential area, which is unusual. We obviously visited the gift shop and also tried to find the house Colin Firth lives in in the movie Fever Pitch. After that we went out to Tower Bridge, which is my favourite tourist attraction in London. Here I managed to take two shots for The Mirror Project, which I'll submit as soon as possible. After walking around there for a bit we tried to find an area called Bermondsey, which according to Time Out was supposed to be way trendy. Unfortunately, it's not at all near Bermondsey station and when we finally found it it wasn't really all that trendy. And the shop we wanted to see, Cockfighter, was closed, so that sucked.

Afterwards, we split up, so I could go visit a company I've done some work for in the past and later I went to see an exhibit of some of Billy Name's photos at the A&D Gallery. I talked to the woman in the gallery a bit about Warhol and Billy and my website and when I started walking around she went downstair to tell the owner that I had stopped by. The exhibit was very nice. There were several shots I hadn't seen before and they'd decorated the backroom in silver with Maria Callas blaring like at The Factory. So, after a while the owner who had set up the exhibit came up and we talked for a long time about the photos, Billy, Warhol, and art in general. It was really interesting and especially cool to get the perspective from someone who not only is a part of the art world, but has also met a lot of the people I've only read about in books.

When I met up with the others we decided to go for Indian food, which again was a bizarre event. Our waiter barely spoke English, so ordering was a hassle and when the meals finally started arriving another waiter had to come over and shift the plates around so we got the meals we had ordered. Then we waited for ages until I finally told the waiter that we couldn't understand where our desserts and coffee were. We were told that a lot of people left before getting their desserts, so they were waiting for us to let them know if we wanted it or not. We then found out why people left early as dessert was a weird, cold, dumpling-like thing, which looked like a giant pea covering in goo. But since I'd made such a fuzz I had to eat it, but thankfully like most the food we'd eaten it didn't reallt have any taste, so at least that wasn't too bad.

The food was actually pretty good, but the eating experience was somewhat wrecked by four people behind us who simultaneously with having some sort of intervention for one of them who was contemplating divorce spent most of the time talking loudly into their cellphones (anyone who answers the phone "How ya doin', killer?" should be shot!). They were truly obnoxious, but we really didn't feel like getting into it with the locals, so we let it slide.

Okay, so that's it for the first half. If you need a more succinct summary of our trip my brother's written a bit about it on his weblog and you can skim through the pictures I've uploaded.