Dan Deacon

I wish I went to Harvard. I wish I could fly. I wish I was in the Olympics. I wish I could be two places at once. I wish I could be 27 again. I wish I could float in outer space, specifically the Milky Way. I wish I didn't have to sleep. I wish I was on a train in 18th Century India. I wish I could vanquish my foes. I wish I was Dan Deacon for ten seconds.

When the Gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers.

Mozart

Man do I hate Rock and Roll. Even the name pisses me the fuck off. Is there anything more lame than a guitar? Think we might be overusing the instrument a little? Just the thought of some American douchebag playing guitar on a beach for his sorority or whatever makes my skin breakout in fits of acne and bedsores.

I get that there are classic songs and I tap my toes to them sometimes, and grant there are some genius melodies in the genre. But, pound for pound, there's no greater pile-up of hack horsehit than the finger snapping ass farting rock genre. What really boils my cabbage is the way people at rock concerts all face in the same direction and worship the band. Music should be a soundtrack, not a sermon. It should blend. The only performance worth watching in some kind of awe is a classical recital or symphony - but would it hurt for those higher forms of art to loosen up a little too?

Can't Touch This

This isn't exactly a fashion page, but somebody has to say something about the direction of women's clothing. This Aladdin and the forty thieves look isn't working. Every woman I see is wearing these silk pants and gypsy shoes they know look like shit, but wear just because it's the new thing to do and the magazines say it's hot. I see the guilty look on your faces ladies - it's okay to go against the grain. You look like MC Hammer and even if the whole point is some kind of "anti-sexy" look, the thing is still a complete fail.

Wendel Clark

The more I think about sports, the more I hate every moment I've wasted watching them. Sports is the original reality TV, nothing more. Obviously. But, God it was good getting into a Leaf's game and holy fuck did the playoffs feel something awesome. I miss that shit.

Deep down, I've always known this, but am even more aware of it watching these Euro puffs play games. Did you know that after every game the home team applauds the audience for their cheering efforts? Often shirts are removed while the hands are clapped and it's basically one big, stadium wide, cock sucking session. The look of semi-retarded athletes applauding fully-retarded sports fans is too much.

Chicken Or Egg, hmmmm?

Just read the average Japanese human watches 300 minutes of TV per day. Ka-nee-che-wa! That's a lot. The most in the world.

Considering the messed up shit they have on the tube, it's no wonder they're such tweaked out little fuckers. My question to you is, what came first... the tweaked out little fuckers or the messed up TV?

Your Leader

An unfortunately potent case of food poisoning has kept me from lecturing you idiots for the past few days. Before I continue with the syllabus, let's all enjoy a sage and personal analogy about my experience.

Remember the opening sequence to Bonanza? My guts felt like that map of the Ponderosa for about three days and there was something in my intestine which vaguely resembled Dan Blocker (with hat).

Gary

There's a guy that works in a friends office who's been drinking too much and missing work and generally being a drunk asswipe. The guy is two seconds from losing his job and when he does show up to work, is totally exhausted. To make matters worse, apparently the guys name is Gary. In honor of this guy that I'll never meet, I'd like to use his name, from this point forward, as an "ism".

Gary (Gar-y).
Definition: To be feeling terrible in the morning and unfit to work.
Used in a sentence: I'm feeling a little Gary this morning, maybe I will call in sick.

Schmenge Brothers

While there's nothing better than hanging out with buddies you've known forever and been through all types of serious shit with, there's still something small to be said for boozing it up with foreign dudes you barely know. They say completely offside shit and go from sober to smashed in five seconds, typically after a few hours at the bottle. It's like a switch that flips and is worth the price of a hundred vodka soda's to watch. The Euro drunks almost always break their glass when it's empty and walking around a bar in open shoes is basically suicide.

Edna & Tex

Went out Friday night with the locals and spent the rest of the weekend staring at the ceiling in my apartment. Was out till past five in the morning and was one of the first to leave. It's standard behavior here to cruise on beer until the sun comes up then scarf down a pizza. Finally got my ass in gear Sunday night to go to the local grocery store for popcorn. Of course, there's only one store open on Sunday with only one person on staff - by law everything has to be closed here on the sabbath. Was in line for about a half hour.

Not sure how I feel about this imposed day of rest, but the more I get accustomed to not being able to get things outside business hours, the more I like it. For example, if you want to look for apartments to rent (or buy) you need to look from Monday - Thursday, 9 - 2pm, because real estate agents here don't work weekends. Think about that for a minute and try not to laugh.

Industry Function

Got an industry function tonight. I'm going in cold here, not knowing too many people to hang with. I think I'll give 'em a number two - you know, the chug too much booze and act like a gangster routine. I figure the best way to make a name for yourself is at these parties, running at the mouth, pulling stunts. Maybe I'll blow a fireball.

Men At Work

I'm proud to report I can now safely tell the difference between a Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish or Danish accent. They all sound like drunk baboons with nickels in their mouths, but there is an actual difference, albeit a subtle one. In fact, Swedish starts to sound like French if you concentrate and Norwegian is almost singing. Danish is the toughest of the bunch and is the equivalent of the "French Canadian" farmer accent. They get a lot of slack for it up here, but don't seem to mind being the runts of the language litter. In fact, world wide, I challenge you to find an uglier, less comprehensible tongue.

Conversely, most people I meet here think I'm from Australia. They can tell I'm not British and there's something not American about me, so they go with Australian. Gotta admire their incredibly flawed logic. In the past I used to correct them, but I've learned, why bother?

Africa

Copenschmagen is too white. It's unhealthy.

Now

Had a meeting this morning scheduled for 9am, 45 minutes north of Copenschmagen. Worried I'd get lost, arrived an hour early and finished the meeting before it was scheduled to start. I made it back to the office about the time I should have been mid-meeting. The guys at the office were in a meeting when I got back and when they saw me walk in, assumed something was fucked up. It's hard to explain, but this is a pretty good metaphor about how things around here never work smoothly, even when they're ahead of schedule.

Doctor

Heading to the dentist tomorrow. Will be my first look at the local medical scene. It's just a routine cleaning but I'm expecting leeches and whiskey to play a major role. Hope they have head bandages in my hat size.

Peter Pumkin Head

Isn't Jeff Daniels great in those Michigan ads?

Speaking of Jeff Daniels, where the eff is Peter Pumkin Head?

John Hughes

Holy crap have a lot of celebrities died this year. The 2009 Oscars obituary montage is going to take forever.

Drabinsky

So they're sending Garth Drabinsky to jail for 7 years, of which he'll serve one. They say he would have been sentenced more heavily if he wasn't physically handicapped. Met the guy once and he's a pretty intimidating dude - he was on trial at the time and there was a serious dark cloud over his head.

Here in CPH they come down hard on white collar crime, even harder than in the US. Many are outraged with the laws here - apparently you go to jail longer for fraud than you do for rape. If that was the case in Canada, Garth D would be looking at a Madoff style sentence of 150 years and he sure as fuck wouldn't be out in 12 months.

A Good Schwarma

There's a place around the corner from my office that served me the single worst meal of my life. It was a schwarma platter - chicken on rice. I asked for the kabobs but got the little shards of chicken and didn't realize it till I was at the office and had my red and white napkin tied around my neck and fork and knife sharpened and ready to cut those sweet kabobs. The meal had hunks of gross chicken fat and was generally disgusting and terrible. It wouldn't have bothered me so much, but the dish was about $16, which is expensive even for here. Talk about a rip off.

Now when I walk by the place I give the chef in the window the evil eye. I walk by often and distribute the bug eye, mean eye, cruk eye and recently the squint eye. The strange thing is, it's starting to work. The chef is actually getting upset - I think he's gonna jump me soon. They must really put curses on each other wherever the fuck this guy's from, because he's about to lose it.

Rick Moranis

When was the last time you saw Rick Moranis in a movie? Apparently the little guy was a big ass jerk and nobody wants to work with him anymore. Considering most comedians are more evil than rabid gorilla's, it's more likely that he's not working anymore because he's too busy counting his dough or he just isn't funny anymore. Which happens (see: Chevy Chase).

Spalding Gray

For the unfamiliar, Spalding Gray was a master of the rare art of soliloquy. His famous movies SWIMMING TO CAMBODIA and GRAY'S ANATOMY (trailer below) are marathons of storytelling and pretty much the artsiest things I've really truly loved in my life. A few years after getting into this guys work, 9/11 happened and the sensitive creature that he is, couldn't take the sadness and killed himself. Gray had always been obsessed with death, owning a home that bordered on a graveyard and writing about it often. A true artists soul, gone and missed.