Here's some random stuff I've noticed lately:

Cool photos over at Roger Avary's.

Funniest review in a long time.

Weirdest referral in a long time.

Everything you always wanted to know about Huckapoo (but were afraid to ask):
Entry one, two, three, and four.

If you live in Denmark you might want to check out the Björk listening parties this weekend. I'll most likely be at the one in Aarhus.

The annual Festuge (party week) kicks off Friday, which means there'll be a lot of free shows downtown. I'll most likely check out Nephew, Tiger Tunes, and The Raveonettes at Univers and probably a few other shows as well.

And I'll definitely be at the Aarhus Rock Massacre, which my friends from Sway are putting on at Ridehuset Monday night. The lineup consists of The Defectors, Awedge, The Burning Primitive, Blunt, and Magnified Eye, so it should be a rockin' good time.

I don't know the first thing about hifi equipment, but I'm seriously considering getting these speakers.

I've been watching K Street lately and although it's very odd it's also quite entertaining. Besides I'd watch Mary McCormack in anything.

Summer ended here early last week with a bang, not with a whimper, and it's been pouring down ever since. So I took the opportunity to take a stroll down to our new art museum and spend a few hours indoors with the masters. I mainly went because they have a Pop Art exhibit on right now, but it was also an opportunity to see the rest of the collection. The museum opened a few months ago, but I hadn't gotten around to visiting it, but it was definitely worth a visit.

Although the museum looks a bit like a large red LEGO brick from the outside it's more reminiscent of New York's Guggenheim Museum on the inside. The regular collection is pretty interesting and especially some of the large photographs in the modern art section were pretty remarkable. They also have a lot of Danish art from the 17th century and some of it is really good. But it is a little odd looking at these old painting in such modern surroundings. Also, the lightning is a bit strong several places, which gives excessive light reflection on the canvases. But generally I think it is an interesting collection, which covers both the modern and old, the Danish and the international rather well.

The actual Pop Art exhibit was a little on the small side and I had seen a lot of the works before. But it was interesting seeing Tom Wesselmann's Great American Nude No. 98, because in reproductions it usually looks like a painting and not an installation. There was a large and beautiful Rauschenberg and one of Johns' flag paintings, which is stunning in real life. But I think the piece I liked the best was a piece by Roy Lichtenstein called Cloud and Sea. It wasn't a regular painting, but instead it was painted on a metal surface, which the surface extremely shiny. It looked truly remarkable. There was some other fun stuff as well, but I think it would have been nice with a few more works (David Hockney was missing for some reason).

Besides being artsy I've also spent some time playing 80s games and WEBoggle. I definitely better at the latter, but not nearly good enough.

I went to the strangest show last week. Now, I've seen some weird acts in my day, but they've usually played fairly conventional venues. But Friday night I went to see Deerhof at what can best be described as an abandoned factory, which is now used for exhibits by a local art school. That makes it sound edgy and cool, but in fact it's a run down crappy old building filled with weird crap that's supposed to be art.

For some reason I came down there way too early and completely soaked (the last part had to do with it suddenly beginning to rain), so I had to stand around for ages before the opening act went on. This indie rock thing is a young man's game, which would explain why I was the only one thoroughly annoyed by the fact that no one sold tickets for the first twenty minutes I was there, they were still setting up instruments when I arrived, and no one knew what the hell was going on. And when we finally got into the room where the concert was held there was no stage, no bar (just a stack of beer crates with warm beer), and no one knew when the bands were supposed to start playing.

After more than an hour of standing around in what looked like a demolition ready garage what constituted a support act went on and played poorly for a while. The mix of out-of-tune student rock combined with sweltering heat and the thick smoke from huge joints was a little more than my patience could stand for, so I went outside after a couple of songs and literally stood around staring into thin air pretty much until Deerhof went on. At this point I should probably mention that I hadn't heard a Deerhof song before and honestly didn't know anything about them. But they've been on my mental list of bands I needed to check out for a while, because I must have seen them mentioned in a positive way a couple of places. So inquisitive and openminded as I am (when it comes to music) I couldn't let them perform here without checking them out.

But unfortunately I didn't enjoy the concert at all. I actually left well before the show was over which I never do. I didn't even leave the theater during The Postman, which I think shows you how willing I am to give people a chance to prove themselves. Deerhof seemed like really nice people, but I just don't get that naive/noisy thing. I didn't like The Moldy Peaches, not too crazy about Mates of State, and I just can't seem to get into The Fiery Furnaces, either. Deerhof have this female, Asian singer, who sings in a little girl voice, which just bugged me to no end. They combined that with noisy indie and dominating drums and although some songs had cool parts ultimately it was just a frustrating experience. So if that was Twee I think I'll stick with Tweedy.

Earlier the same day I had actually seen local band Utah play at another venue and I thought they put on a pretty good show. They are probably inspired by bands like Turin Brakes and Muse, but have several really good songs (my favourite is called Newboy), so the similarities don't really take anything away from the band. Hopefully, they'll get signed soon as they're one of the most interesting bands around right now.

After a long period where I've pretty much just been hanging out and relaxing Monday suddenly offered up a bunch of gigs. I've been DJ-ing at Sway quite a bit lately and Monday I got two gigs at Voxhall. That means I'll be DJ-ing before and after the Phoenix and Jesse Malin concerts in September and October. I'm totally excited about this and hopefully it goes well enough that they'll ask me to come back and play some more.

Also, I've been booked to do two lectures on weblogs at the University and one at the school of journalism. It should be a lot of fun to see which things the kids in the different classes find most interesting and what they'd like to discuss once I stop yapping. I found two interesting weblog-related articles yesterday, which I might try to mention during my talks. The first one, Warner's Tryst With Bloggers Hits Sour Note, is about Warner Music's attempt to plug The Secret Machines through music weblogs and the other, Blog Interrupted, is about someone who lost her job, because she wrote about her sexlife on her weblog. Both are pretty interesting, so I think I can mentioned them somehow.

But there are a few weeks before I have to be ready for these gigs, so the next couple of weeks will probably be as chilled as the last ones have been. Oh, I saw "Hollywood Homicide" earlier today and it obviously sucked. But is that like the weirdest cast ever? Master P and Dwight Yoakam in the same movie? Was that a cameo by Lou Diamond Phillips or is his career really that much in trouble? It was like a bad Beverly Hills Cop movie and it was like there was a couple of scenes missing in the middle where they actually find evidence against the bad guy before they go on the obligatory chase through town destroying everything they come across. I just went over Josh Hartnett's resumé and you gotta wonder how he ever became a leading man. Sure, Virgin Suicides is a good movie and Black Hawk Down is okay. But everything else he's been in is beyond horrible, but I guess he can pull them in at the box office. A friend told me that a Danish movie publication is looking for writers, so I'll definitely be contacting them tomorrow. And with the wit and movie knowledge I've just displayed I think we can all agree I should be a shoe-in for a job there.