I am pleased to announce that the first phase of Operation Avoid Danish Winter is complete. I returned last night from 10 days on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Non-photographic highlights:
Biking 38 miles down a mountain.
Snorkeling with all kinds of beautiful fish, colorful rocks and assorted tourist detritus. Got stung by urchin while attempting to pet it.
Overhearing scraps of conversations between the myriad discontent American families at the hotel. The filet of the bunch, heard from the balcony at 11 pm on Christmas Eve: "I know you're my brother, but why do you have to be such a FAGGOT?!" This was followed by loud blubbering.
Jumping off a waterfall into natural pools in the middle of a rainforest.
Boogie-boarding every morning.
Staying in a hotel with cable. Me and my brother missed most of the Christmas dinner conversation because we were in the middle of a speculate-fest about 'Top Chef'.
The reliably 80-degree temperatures
Here's some pics:
Next up: Panama for the next two weeks. Expect anecdotes about snakebites...
Guy playing solitaire in computer lab, talking on phone: No, honey, I can't come home now. I'm really busy with exams. I haven't done anything except study all day [sips on beer]. What? Just a cola.
[Translated from the Danish]
Speaking of 'honey': Should I read into the fact that the word for 'honey/darling/sweetie' is the same as the word for 'taxes'? I think that says something about the Danish relationship to salary-sacrifice.
Bonus cultural illiteracy: The word is 'skat', which to any English-speaker brings up images that have little to do with terms of endearment or taxes.
Is it me or was there a massive surplus of disappointing entertainment this year? It feels like everything I was looking forward to turned out to be just 'eh'. Did anyone else feel like this? Maybe I'm just starting to go into my Nostalgia Shell, where I become incapable of appreciating anything that was released after I get a real job (our parents, anyone?). I hope not, and offer the following things as incontrovertible evidence that 2006 was The Year of Deflated Expectations:
Superman Returns
Marie Antoinette
X-Men: The Last Stand (OK, it was a bullshit director and my expectations shouldn't have been high. But that trailer was sooooo cool)
King Kong
Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (what was it even ABOUT?)
Bloc Party's new album
The Killers' new album
The Departed
The Devil Wears Prada
Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (My GOD it sucks)
Miami Vice
Sufjan Stevens (Yeah, I said it)
All the 'Lost' clones on network TV ('Look, a bunch of inexplicable shit! That I have to waste 48 Tuesday nights explaining! Wow, it's better than a Tamagochi!')
Preaching -to-the-choir documentaries about how bad Bush is
The White Stripes' latest album
A Scanner Darkly
Talladega Nights
Thom Yorke's solo album
Through this darkness, though, there were some rays of unexpected sunshine. All of the following totally came out of nowhere for me, and have made all those lost movie-theater hours and eardrum vibrations worthwhile:
Thumbsucker
The DFA Remixes, in all their pretentious glory
'Over & Over' by Hot Chip
The Go! Team (it's a band, not a cartoon)
Istanbul (yes, the city)
'We Are Your Friends', by those dudes who pissed off Kanye
Thank You For Smoking
Little Miss Sunshine
LCD Soundsystem
The Wire (OK, so it didn't come out of nowhere. It's just SO GOOD)
Five words: 'Does that make me craaaaazay?'
Capote
Friday Night Lights (The TV show)
The Concretes
30 Rock
Antony & The Johnsons
Wolf Parade
Mission: Impossible III
Danish music like Rhonda Harris, Amstrong, Windermere, Blue Foundation, and Gogol Bordello
The 50 best music videos of 2006.
I have DoCopenhagen to thank for reviving my neglected love for all things musical and video-y. I grew up without cable, so when I finally discovered MTV (and more importantly, M2) at about 18, homework and socializing quickly became also-rans. This list shows further proves that of all the creativity in the world, about 80% of it is taking place on TV.
Oh, and don't forget this. It has nothing to do with music videos, or anything else remotely inspiring. It's just simply the funniest Goddamn thing in the entire world.
UPDATE: Here's the YouTube link, in it's silent, profound glory:
So I finally broke down and did it: I played the tourist card when I got busted for riding the train without a ticket.
Background: My Abu-Ghraibian biking style finally resulted in a snapped chain yesterday, so I took my bike to the Bike Dude and took the bus home. Homosexuality beckoned me into town later on, so I had to take the train. You know when you get to the train platform just as the train pulls up? In Denmark, that means you have to punch your ticket on the platform hella fast before Indiana Jones-ing yourself into the train car. I jammed my ticket into the machine, heard a half-assed 'click', and jumped onto the train just as the beeps started.
I noticed that the ticket hadn't been punched all the way, leaving just a phantom timestamp and no hole-punch. 'Oh well,' I thought. 'They never check tickets anyway.'
Well guess what? When I got to my stop there was a Red Rover lineup of train-Nazis getting on the train and checking everyone who got off. I went into teenage-shoplifter mode and tried to walk off the bus as casually and confidently as possible, possibly hoping the security personnel would conclude 'Wow, that dude's so upright, he's GOTTA have a valid ticket!' Not unlike my teenage shoplifting career, my trip off the train was cut short.
'May I see your ticket?' The behatted dude asked in Danish. After a textbook's worth of calculations before answering, I dedided to be The World's Most Earnest American: 'Oh my God, I don't speak Danish, I'm so sorry. What's that now?'
'Your ticket, please.'
'Oh, that sounds great.' (I decided 'Gee willickers' would be pushing it).
I showed him the ticket and acted very confused when he told me it wasn't valid. 'Oh gosh, I punched it. I heard a click, officer, sorry.'
His eyes narrowed. 'I'll let you go this time. Have fun in Copenhagen.'
'Vi ses naeste gang, svine-røv!' I said.
OK, just kidding. But I can't believe that shit worked.
The Food:
The Rest:
It's Julefrokost season in Denmark! Yes!
What's a Julefrokost? Well, literally, it means 'Christmas lunch', but it's more accurately translated as 'You and your friends get together, ruin someone's kitchen, mob on some Danish food, and get really drunk together. On a weekday.' You always end up going to like five of them. There's The Work One, The Friends One, The Other Friends One and, inevitably, The Random One. This year's T.R.O. is the International Young Businessmen of Denmark Julefrokost. I have no idea how or why I was invited to this, but as long as there's cold schnappes and weapons-grade roast pork, I'm in.
Last night was the first Christmas lunch of the season. Me and 12 other interns from our humble 'saving the world' organization got together at Søren's place to make an ambitious menu of sugar-roasted potatoes, homemade rødkål, and two unfortunate ducks. We started cooking at 4 pm, and we ate at 9.30. The most enthusiastic Schnappesters among us headed home around 2.30. Work is a struggle today.
In the course of living here and in London, there are some topics that I just don't bring up anymore. No matter how similar our Western cultures are, there is just some shit that Americans and Europeans will never agree on. The largest one being, of course, the 'Lord of The Rings' movies.
In the highly significant and representative sample of the Brits, Danes, and Mediterraneans I've met, I don't think I've come across anyone who actually likes these films. Danes have told me that they're boring ('It's just the same thing over and over'), Brits have some sort of class-based objection ('The whole thing is rather common, innit?'), and the Meds don't understand why Frodo and Saruman couldn't just make-a Paella together and move in with someone's parents.
Yet Americans love them. They're the only non-Pixar movies I can watch with my parents without fighting afterwards. We blue-staters love the allusions to the corrupting influence of power, while the red-staters love the whole 'git-r-done' ethos of the series.
I consumed eight hours of 'Lord of the Rings'-ness this weekend (comprising roughly one-quarter of the 'extended edition' of the first film), and was re-amazed at how good it is. How can people not like these movies? We may just have to file this under Shit We Don't Understand About Each Other. Where it can join the company of peanut butter, Will Ferrell, smelly cheese, Cypress Hill and social welfare.
Remember the opening sequence of 'Blow'? I always wished that part was longer. How the hell do you take a leaf and make it into a white powder? Well, this is 2006, so YouTube and you shall receive:
http://cityrag.blogs.com/main/2006/11/how_cocaine_is_.html
Kinda makes distilling homemade rum in a college-town kitchen seem pretty simple, eh?
OK, jeg skulle indrømme at Seattle er ikke så charmerende det helt år. Nu, for eksample, Seattle lige skulle til at slå rekordet for regn i en maned. Rekordet er 15.33 inches i december 1933, og står Seattle på 14.74 lige nu (Ja, ja, hvad betyder 'inch'? Din fod er sandsynligvis 10 inches læng). Også, det sneer åbenbart i dag, so det brækkes snart, tror jeg. Sidst gang tog jeg hjemm for jule, det regnede hver fanden dag. Bogstavelig hele dag, alle dage for den 30 dage blevet jeg i seattle. Argh. Men for to år siden, det kom til 20 grader i januar, sååååå...
Her er hvad, seattle ledede som i går...
Det ligner mere eller mindre københavn i maned...
