I finally got around to watching The Passion of the Christ, which I had been postponing for a long time. I didn't really feel like watching it, but I guess all the fuss had made me curious and I also wanted to see how much I remembered from those bible classes my Mum used to drag me to. Actually, most of the stuff was familiar except for Jesus being filled with sand at the end and the bit where he falls off a bridge and sees Judas hanging out with a werewolf.

I didn't really like the movie to be honest. I thought the whipping and the walk to Golgotha was excessively drawn out and although I can appreciate why I didn't think it worked from a cinematic perspective. Also, I thought the Caligula-like scene with Herod was really out of place. And I guess I can see why a lot of Jews were upset about the movie although picking Barabbas in Pilate's sick Dating Game-like stunt just wasn't cool no matter how you spin it.

The best thing about the DVD, though, was Mel Gibson's original ending where it's revealed that Jesus wasn't actually the son of God, but rather a mischievous magician who liked hanging out with tax collectors and whores. Boy, is Paul's face red in that final scene, but thankfully it ends on an up beat note when Peter blurts out, "Jesus, you got some 'splainin' to do!" and they all laugh and laugh. Apparently, the ending didn't test too well and they decided on going with a more conservative approach (I'm going to Hell for that bit - and you're all coming with me).

On a less sacreligious note I went and saw The Datsuns last week and although I wrote a lengthy review for Frekvens I can sum it up like this: Old stuff rocked - new stuff sucked. I wasn't too impressed by their debut album, but a lot of the songs off that album really kicked ass during the show. Songs like MF From Hell, Lady, Harmonic Generator, and especially Fink For The Man were really cool live. However, for me the highlights were Super Gyration (which came as the third song in the set) and a surprise cover of The Misfits' Where Eagles Dare as the first encore. I'm not a huge Misfits fan (although I did get down to some Danzig in my younger days), but I listened to a bunch of their stuff after Nick had raved about them a few years ago. The only song I really liked was Where Eagles Dare, though, but let it be said that it's a cracking song with the perfect singing-along-drunk-punk chorus and it was fantastic to hear it live. But I couldn't get excited about The Datsuns' new stuff and combined with a very meager turn out the show just had too many lows to get really exciting.

Where's all the gay rappers at? It's like a jungle in this habitat!

Two years ago I watched all the World Series games and last year the series wasn't on tv. This year I considered it, but seeing as the games start at 3AM here I just couldn't muster up enough enthusiasm to watch three games that weren't going to decide a winner. But I was still curious enough to tape game four and watch it this morning and although it was a very low scoring affair it was still pretty cool. I'm a sucker for old baseball stories, so all that stuff about The Curse and Babe Ruth was cool for me. And it also gave me a chance to get more and more annoyed by the fact that they're remaking Fever Pitch in the US and substituting Arsenal with the Red Sox. I don't really have anything against Jimmy Fallon, Drew 'Hot Stuff' Barrymore, or the Farrelly boys. I just think it's pretty lame to remake a movie that isn't even ten years old, is in English, and stars Colin Firth, who had a lot more star power than Jimmy Fallon even back then. Next they'll be remaking Bend it like Beckham calling it Dunk it like Shaq with Lindsay Lohan and Raven-Symone as two spunky chicks, who dream of playing with the boys (actually, that's not a half-bad idea).

I have yet to start a lecture with "Hi kids! Do you like violence?/Wanna see me stick Nine Inch Nails through each one of my eyelids?", but I swear it'll happen one day. But I did actually give a lecture today on weblogs at the Danish School of Journalism, which was cool. I talked for about two hours about what weblogs are, what people are doing with them, and how they've influenced politics and the media in the last few years. I've been doing a lot of research over the last week or so finding info on who went after Trent Lott, Dan Rather, Sinclair Broadcasting Group, and who else have had the entire blogging corps on their backs lately. And while doing that I found this Wiki, which tries to document the impact weblogs have had on American politics.

I'd actually expected the future journalists to be a lot more sceptical about weblogs, but they seemed to really think it is a fascinating type of media. Obviously, they have concerns about the trustworthyness of bloggers, but then don't we all? Seriously though, they seemed really into it and I think the whole thing went rather well, so chances are I'll get invited back for similar events, which would be cool.

Besides working on different projects I've actually mainly been busy getting my party on. Thursday night was the Devendra Banhart/CocoRosie gig at Voxhall (reviewed at Frekvens), where the Voxhall people were still raving about the Jesse Malin show the week before. There were a lot of people there and although CocoRosie was a tad pretensious for my liking it was still a fairly interesting show. The two sisters both sing and that sounded swell until one of them started going all operatic on us. But the other one kept going in her old-blues-lady/Billie Holiday style, which wasn't half-bad (oh, and she was a bit of a hottie as well, which works for me).

But obviously the main event was Devendra Banhart, who has a surprisingly large following in this backwater town. I wasn't that familiar with Mr. Banhart's oeuvre before the show, but it seemed clear that people had expected him to play a bunch of acoustic songs and be all mellow. Instead he'd brought along a backing band called The Queens of Sheba (featuring at least one guy from Vetiver), who wanted to rock out. Apparently, that meant the songs weren't that recognizably to the fans (and people didn't dig the fifteen minute reggae jam at the end of the show at all), so I think a few kids were a bit disappointed. But I honestly thought it was a pretty cool introduction to the music. I'm not sure I would have been as impressed had he just sat on a stool doing acoustic songs I'd never heard before. But I'll definitely have to look into his records at some point as people are raving about them like he's the next Nick Drake. I couldn't really make out any of the lyrics at the show, but I really like these lines I found in his bio: "There once was a man who really loved salt/ So he tied his nose to the sea/ And then God came down from his silver throne/ And said, 'Honey, that water ain't free'".

Friday night the hottest band in the country - Nephew - were playing at Voxhall and since the thing had been sold out for months I didn't have a ticket. But that doesn't mean you can stop me from showing up at the after party. So I went down there and hung out and just as I was on my way home the party moved to Sway and I was persuaded to come along by a buddy from Spleen United. So I ended hanging out there for a really long time, which meant my Saturday consisted of getting up, showering, and then heading down to Bridgewater for the Villa game and then pretty much nothing else.

I'm currently reading Eleanor Rigby - the latest from Douglas Coupland - and so far it doesn't suck. I liked Hey Nostradamus! as well, so it seems like he's gotten his game back after a couple of less than brilliant books in the late 90s - early 00s. I'm less than halfway through at this point, so I guess anything can happen. But so far I like the story, the characters, and the tone is unmistakingly Couplandesque, which works for me. Also, I got my Ltd. Edition of the new Duran Duran record today, but until I've given it a lot more spins I'm not going to say anything about it.

We've got some fun stuff planned this week as well. Tonight, it's Arsenal vs Panathinaikos and tomorrow it's The Datsuns at Voxhall. I was really disappointed by their debut album (Datsuns', not Panathinaikos - theirs rule!), because they hadn't included their best materiale (namely Hoochie Mama and Super Gyration) on it. So I haven't listened to it a lot and I haven't heard their new record. So why am I going? Well, they have a reputation for putting on a kick ass show, so I'm going down to see if it is well deserved. Saturday night is an A-List night and Sunday it's the Man United game, so as the philosopher Calvin once said: "The days are just packed".

Here's a bunch of stuff I've come across lately (some which has made its way over to Frekvens):

Download The Shins and The Lips from the SpongeBob soundtrack.

Listen to the new Kings of Leon record.

Listen to the new Jimmy Eat World record.

The story of Live Aid.

The Clark County campaign and the reaction.

The Jon Stewart Crossfire appearance.

I'm still recuperating from a strenuous, but very cool weekend. I DJed the Jesse Malin/Tommy Stinson gig at Voxhall and although not a lot of people had shown up it was still a really great night out. I only had to play before the show began (which actually started really early as Stinson's guitar player got on and played a few songs before Stinson went on) and after the show, so inbetween I had plenty of time to hang out, talk to people, and listen to the concerts.

I saw Malin open for Ryan Adams two year's ago, but this time I enjoyed the show a lot more in part because he had brought along a keyboard player, who also sang backup vocals. Once again he told a lot of stories and made quite a few comments about the upcoming election, which was highly entertaining. He also played a couple of covers including the brilliant Everybody's Talking. But the highlight of the show was when he got down on the floor and lay down and asked the audience to join him. Then he made everyone sing along on Neil Young's Helpless, which was a cool thing to do. The showed lasted almost two hours and as promised Malin played like he was playing in front of 10.000 people and not just a 100+ people.

Jesse Malin uses a Sinatra song as his outro music, which I followed up with a Wilco track and seconds later I saw Malin rushing towards me. He'd come out to sign autographs and talk to people, but just wanted to say hi first. Later, he came by again to pick out a few records he'd like to hear and stayed in the bar until they closed. Obviously, I was stuck behind the mixer all night, but I could see that Malin at some point joined my friends at their table, so they got to talk to him quite a bit. However, I did hang out a bit after I had stopped playing, so I got to chat a little with Malin and his crew, who all mentioned several times how much they'd enjoyed the music, which was cool. We took a bunch of pictures at the show, which you can find in The Gallery. And apparently myself, Roy, and Kristian weren't the only bloggers in attendance.

So, obviously I got home rather late after the show, which normally isn't a problem. But as mentioned we had signed up to play in the flag football tournament (Go Aaby Pirates!), so I had to get up at eight Saturday morning. Anyway, I made it out there and was ready to play our first game against Team Søvn & Komfort. Unfortunately, these poor kids had never played flag football before, so they got their asses handed to them in a record breaking way as we ended up creaming them 108 - 0 - the highest score of the day (their team ended with a combined score of 274 - 0). They were very cool about it and we ended up talking to them a lot between games.

I guess we were a little cocky going into the second game and as a result we played rather poorly. It got better in the second half, but we lost anyway, which was pretty disappointing. But we stepped up in the third game and won without trouble in the best game we played that day. To qualify to the second round you had to either win one of the 12 groups or be one of the four best teams in second place. Our first game made sure we were the best second place team by a hefty margin, which meant we had achieved our goal of making it to the knock-out round. But after playing three forty minute games we were pretty worn out. We scored on our first drive and stopped them on their first drive, but then they started blitzing like crazy and that was the end of that. We never scored again and got out-run and out-played on defense, so we sorta gave up in the second half. But it was probably for the best as we couldn't possibly have played another game.

I hung out for a bit to see the guys from Zulu play (they ended up winning the tournament) and later I went to a party to celebrate that one of my buddies had handed in his thesis. I'm not really sure what time I made it home, but I was definitely tired and sore all day Sunday, which is an indication of how much fun we had. So it was a pretty great weekend. I don't have any more DJ gigs lined up right now, but I'm going to see Devendra Banhart Thursday night and The Datsuns next week, so that should be two fun nights out.

If you live around here you can see me on two very different occasions this weekend. Friday night I'm DJing the Tommy Stinson/Jesse Malin gig at Voxhall, where I'll bring the block rockin' beats moody singer/songwriter jams from the days of yore (Parsons, Drake, Dylan, Reed, Cash, Springsteen, and Prine) and more contemporary stuff as well (Yorn, Tweedy, Adams, Kozelek, Farrar, and tons more). And if people get a little rambunctious I'll probably drag out some NYC rock to get us into party mode. Needless to say it's going to rule supreme!

Unfortunately, I have to get up at dawn the next day as we've entered a flag football tournament and have to be signed in at 8:30. I realize this act of insanity craves a smidgen of explanation, so here goes. I obviously love American football (Go Ravens!), but I have no wish to get my ass handed to me by a 300 pound linebacker on a weekly basis, so instead I play the occasional game of flag football with the boys (flag football is a no-contact version of football, where each player wear a belt with a strip on either side, which has to be pulled off when making a 'tackle').

Well, Zulu, the tv-station which shows NFL every Sunday night, has a tournament called Zulu Flag Bowl 2004 and someone entered us to play in the tournament (our team is called Aaby Pirates for some reason). So this week we've been practicing and Saturday at 9 AM we have our first game of the one day tournament. I'm not quite sure how it works, but I think first we have to play three games against the teams in our group and then we might qualify for quarterfinals and then the teams play until there's a winner. I believe the winner goes on to play the winner of the tournament held last weekend in Copenhagen, so you get a 'Super Bowl' with a team from each side of the country. We've been training trick plays, reverses, fake hand-offs, and what have you, so I think we'll be fairly disappointed not to make it out of our group. But after that we'll just have to see. It should be a lot of fun no matter what happens. So if you want to see me run slants and outs (or see the guys from Zulu play) we'll be at Tigers' training ground in Viby all day Saturday.

I've been fairly busy the last couple of weeks, but I did get around to see 21 Grams, which I had been wanting to see for a while. Unfortunately, it wasn't quite as good as I had hoped. The acting was good and the idea of the intertwined lives was interesting. But I felt the fancy editing got in the way of the intensity, because I spent more time trying to figure out when stuff was happening in the narrative timeline than getting engulfed in the character's lives. The acting was definitely strong, the cinematography was gritty and interesting, and the editing had you guessing and interested in finding out how all this was going to tie together. But ultimately I found the ending slightly disappointed and as I said I wasn't exactly swept away by the story while watching the movie.

Like most people I've been listening to the Interpol and the William Shatner records this week and I've been digging them both. At first I wasn't too hooked on the Interpol album and couldn't understand why they'd put the two best tracks at the end of the record. But after listening to it on repeat all day I'm now liking it a lot. It sounds a lot like the first one, but at the same time it's definitely different. I don't think it's quite as intense and desperate as the first one, but it has the same dark tone and Paul Paul Interpol's weird voice. So if you liked the first one you should definitely check out "Antics".

I probably won't be buying the Shatner record, but it's worth checking out all the same. I've been listening to the streamed version on the VH1 site and his version of Common People is absolutely friggin' brilliant! I like his voice, Ben Folds singing the first bit, and it's nice to hear Aimee Mann chime in as well. But the kicker is to hear Joe Jackson sing towards the end. Man, does that guy sound bitter! Apparently, Joe grew up liked common people in 1950s England and it would seem he quite effortlessly is able to relate to the lyrics.
While that version is both rockin' and amusing there's a lot more emotion to the song That's Me Trying about a deadbeat dad. The song was written by Folds and Shatner in collaboration with Nick Hornby, which is quite interesting.
Another interesting collaboration comes towards the end of the record where Shatner and Henry Rollins get pissed off by pretty much everything and everybody in the song I Can't Get Behind That. So it's definitely an interesting album, which I might eventually pick up, but right now I have to focus on buying stuff like food and if I have a few extra squid they'll be going directly towards getting the new Duran Duran record, which is out next week.

I noticed a few things this week, which I'm just going to throw out there:

I just realized today that The Mario Brothers are called Mario Mario and Luigi Mario. I always assumed they were called Mario Bros. because Luigi just came along later on and since Mario was already famous it was just the easiest to called them Mario Bros. instead of having to invent a new name for them.

I was watching the new Danish tv-station Charlie (whose demographic is 60 - dead btw), because they were showing Jeeves & Wooster one night. During that first episode Jeeves referes to himself as a valet, but pronounces it 'va-let' as opposed to 'va-lay' as Americans tend to. I wonder why that is? You'd think if anyone would pronounce a word with a la-di-da accent it would be Brits and not Yanks.

I've been doing weblog lectures lately and have another coming up shortly, so I've actually been reading weblog related articles and entries for the first time in a long time. One of the things I stumbled on was that 'Blogs' had actually been a Jeopardy! category recently. And the other was that Evan Williams quit Blogger. The former is a lot more shocking than latter, but the latter is still quite a surprise.

And the final thing is that apparently the cool kids are now wearing Danish Design.