Open Day At The Hate Fest.

It is funny to think how right Marcel Proust was.
Last night Anna and I baked our own pitabread and along with that we created our own falafel and which we we ate it in front of the TV watching the Track & Field World Cup. And I started thinking about Times Square. When I worked at Virgin there was this kosher-cart on 5th Ave that had the best falafels. It was an old jewish man that stood there and he always put pickles in the falafel and it was so damn good. And we are sitting there in front of the TV and I think about this and then I get up and get the pickles. I take a bite and suddenly I am sitting in the sun on the sidewalk right next to the old jewish man. And I can hear the traffic and I am wearing my Virgin shirt, smelling the city, loving the city. And this was in the middle of one of my Hemingway phases. And that is when, in front of the Track & Field on TV with a homemade falafel in my hand, that I decide to give up on On the Road. It is great and all but I just do not care anymore. So I take down one of Hemingway's short-story collections and I start to read. and for some reason everytime I do this I get equally surprised by how good of a writer he is. It is just insane. He seemingly says nothing and still it is all there. One story is called After the Storm and this is the first sentence:

It wasn't about anything, something about making punch, and then we started fighting and I slipped and he had me down kneeling on my chest and choking me with both hands like he was trying to kill me and all the time I was trying to get the knife out of my pocket to cut him loose.

And I remember sitting there in the sun with my book, my falafel and a soda watching the midtown traffic speed by, the men in suits running with the lattes-to-go, the homeless screaming man who always stood in that corner and one time tried to spit me in the face. And maybe the falafel there was not better than any other, maybe it was the view, the smell and maybe it was me and where I was in life then that made it the best. Or maybe that old jewish man just knew soemthing that the rest of us don't. I like to think that.

Listening to: Curve

A Ghost Is Born.

My knee started acting up last night, probably been pushing it too hard at work. Which means that when I got up this morning it locked up when I walked the stairs, so I am staying home today, sadly. I have been home one time before because of my knee, and that time the doctor said that it could help with injections of, wait for it, rooster-comb-oil! Yup, that's it, rooster-comb-oil.
This really makes me wonder, and I when say wonder, I really mean it, there are no googling, twittering or calling friends for answers, just thoughts floating in the air like injured seagulls in a northern coastal town of Scotland.
Is it really the oil from the combs of roosters, or is it just a really bad/excellent name? And if it really is the oil from roosters, how do they get it? And even more importantly, how did they find out that it is good to inject into the knees of injured mailmen? Who was the first that they tried this on? And how come he agreed to try it?

While you mull this over I will leave you with a few words from Mogwai:

What is the greatest secret of Mogwai?

Major to relative minor + delayed guitar = girls crying

Watching the World Cup in track and field and Sweden is so damn good. Oh, sorry, wrong channel.

Touch me I'm sick.

Saw Ginger from The Wildhearts play an acoustic set at a bar in Old Town last night. The room could probably hold about 15 people and Ginger and Conny Blom (Electric Boys, Hanoi Rocks) sat in a corner under one of the speakers while about 40 of us were crowding around trying to see something. The set was really good and they played mostly Wildhearts tunes but threw in Abba's S.O.S together with a Prince cover they improvised as Purple Vein. Anna and I each had a Spitfire Ale and then we tried one called Canterbury Jack Pale Ale that was really good.

Right now I am reading Jack Kerouacs On The Road - The original scroll, and I must say that I am slighty bored. Jack is a great writer and he really has an amazing flow in his writing and the story just speeds by. But the problem is that I read this when I was a teenager and since then I have read to many of the copycats so that now I feel like I have read the story a hundred times. Not Kerouac's fault.
I will see whether I finish it or if I start something else.
The amazing thing is still that he wrote it on an actual scroll and that you can tell when you read it. There are no pauses or anything just this constant urge to move forward with the text, I have honestly never really read anything like that.

Listening to: Sonny Boy Willamson

Ghostrider

Spent saturday out in suburbia watching 11 year old girls play football. That is, I was watching my neice playing a football cup. The funny thing with these things is that you discover little things about people that are pretty interesting.
If we take these kids boys and girls 9-11 years old playing football the first thing that hits you is this: The girls do not really care if they win or lose, the boys do not really care either BUT it is important for the boys that they score. It can, for example, sound like this after a game:
-How did it go?
-We lost, I think, but I made a goal!
And when it come to the games, the girls want to get rid of the ball as soon as they get it, it does not really matter to whom, as long as they do not have it anymore. With boys it is the opposite, they do not want to give the ball to anyone, all they want is the ball for themselves.

Spent last night drinking mojitos and watching Fishing With John. TV rarely gets better than that.

Today me and Anna have been cleaning and baking (that is Anna has been baking and I have been helpful).

Listening to: Atmosphere.

I am all about BRING THE WAR HOME right now!

http://www.myspace.com/bringthewarhome

Throwing Bricks At Trains

Wow, that was a long break. Seems like I just stopped writing all together. Well, it was summer and I stayed mostly outdoors where there are no computers, cellphones with internet, internet cafés and other assorted electrical outlets.
But now that I have joined the long line of running lemmings towards that steep cliff that is also called the iPhone, I think that I can start updating a wee bit more frequently. That is, if my iPhone ever comes. It seems like everyone in Sweden wanted one at the same time, so they all bought one. Then I waited a couple of weeks before I decided I wanted one. By which time, they were all out. ALL OUT. Not one left in the whole country. So here I am typing away on my trusted electrical typewriter hooked up to the Commodore 64.
Anyway, if everything turns out all right, maybe I can even figure out how to post some photos that I have not found on the net and post here. We will see.

So for now.

Up the irons.
See you on tour.

A Boy Named Sue

Welcome to the country that has all seasons, all the time.
It seems like we have come to the part of the year that is supposed to be spring but instead is something completely different. We have had now in Stockholm all four seasons everyday. The sad thing is that I am not even exaggerating. On friday we had sun, it was pretty warm and the sky was blue, towards the afternoon it started raining and by late afternoon we had a snowstorm. Yup, a full, straight to the point snowstorm. It was snowing heavily, from the side, and the visibility was zero. After about 2 hours of this whole of Stockholm was covered in snow. Now it is sunday morning, all the snow is gone, it is pretty warm, but the sky is grey and I think it will start to rain.
From this we can also draw one more conclusion. You can tell that I am a Swede who has lived in Minnesota, I spend way too much time talking about the weather.
Oh, and I am a mailman.

The new Isis is really good.

F L O O R S H O W

What you are seeing in this photo is The Sisters Of Mercy from last night. This is a good clear, nice picture of the show. You could claim that my phone sucks, etc, etc, etc, but the truth is that this is what you saw. After about half the show I moved to the back and then I saw a great light show, tons and tons of smoke and heard great music. But once I moved to the back I never saw the band again.
But the show was good, but maybe this is the last time I will see them for awhile. Still the same show, same lights and almost the same show. They need to come up with something new now. Maybe an album??

Last weekend I went and saw Thåström and I can easily say that that was the best show of 2009. I have a hard time seeing how anything can be better then that. With a great new album and an amazing band that turns more and more into The Bad Seeds he is pretty hard to beat. On one guitar Ossler who released last years best album, on drums and the other guitar two guys from Bob Hund and Rockis from Osslers band on bass. Great lights and a really good setlist helped too. So damn good. Hard to believe that he is 52. Especially when he plays Aldrig Nånsin Komma Ner lying rolling around on his back while the band is impersonating a tank.

In other news I am really sucked in to The World Cup Baseball Classics or the World Classics Baseball Cup, it could also be called the Cup Of Classic World Baseball, ha ha, I have no clue. But it is really fun to watch and I am amzed by how good Japan and Korea is. One of them will win the whole Cup of World Baseball Classics.

Ok one more photo.

For The Roses

Hmm, no I do not really have an excuse. I have been lazy, and I have not really been in the mood. But I am back. And I am writing again. Always something, eh.

I have been reading a lot, and I have been listening to a lot of good music, and seen some excellent hockeygames.
The other night Minnesota won over the Sharks in a pretty damn intense game, where I really did not think that Minnesota would have a chance. But they refused to give up and ended up winning.

I also sat up way to late following the trade deadline, which was a bit of an anticlimax. No fun trades, nothing fun at all actually. Maybe the economic crisis have reached the NHL too.

The new Thåström album (which is absolutely amazing) is being released on friday and I am going to go and see him on sunday. As always I am expecting a great show. Especially with the band that he is touring with nowadays. And anyway, I have to see him, I have not missed a tour since Synd in 1986 which was the first time I saw Thåström. It was in a tiny town (or village) outside of Oskarshamn called Blomstermåla and Fleshquartet was opening. Great show.