So what did you do last night? If you’re answer is anything less than “bought dinner for John Rhys-David and Marina Sirtis” I got you beat! You’d think I’d be most impressed with meeting Marina Sirtis since I’m a trekker, but I’ve always been impressed by John! He’s just an awesome actor and now I can even say that he’s a great guy. And deep too! We had a Q&A with them and one of the most interesting ideas he proposed was to teach everything in school through history. Math, geography, religion, science, everything. And he was fun to. Unfortunately he was exhausted so after the Q&A and dinner I took them back to their hotel. Great saturday for me!!
Another sad day for journalism. Aftonbladet, the tabloid that likes to think of itself as the biggest newspaper in sweden, had a front page today that was… totally irrelevant. Some guy in “Idol 2005” (our version “Popstar” or whatever) performed some song to his new girlfriend and started crying. Yeah, seriously, that’s the story on the front page today! Maybe if he had sung some love song to his boyfriend or something it might have been miniscule newsworthy, but not even that.
If I’d done the front page I probably would have had a some kinda memorial to Simon Wiesenthal. But that’s just me.
I finished my september 11th by watching “The Flight that Fought Back”. Sounds like a bad horror movie. It was a documentary on Discovery about UA093, the plane that was crashed in the middle of nowhere (sorry all Pennsylvanians) on September 11th 2001. You remember reading about that plane and I have some distinct memory of hearing the passengers crashed it so it wouldn’t hurt anyone else but this is the first time I’ve ever seen what, to the best of anyones knowledge, happened. And it was pretty emotional. All the personal stories and everything, and the clips back to what happened in NY with all the news footage, very emotional stuff. And I don’t know why! I mean what happened that day was a tragedy all around, but this was the little light that made it into a “could have been worse”-scenario, but why would I get emotional about that? I wasn’t directly effected by it? I didn’t know anyone there or effected by it? Or anyone that knew someone even. And it’s a war between the US and muslims, so nothing I’m involved in. But still when I see footage of the second plane hitting I’m praying it’ll miss… I don’t get that emotional when I see footage and read horror stories from New Orleans in the past weeks, and that was on a humane scale far worse!
Yesterday some idiots proved another odd point they made in “Crash” – criminals don’t watch the Discovery channel. If they did they’d probably do their homework alot better. Because yesterday some 3-4 guys decided to rob a Securitas van carrying money to their clients. They got into the van by blowing it up, really smart, huh? But that’s not the funny thing. Their escape plan wasn’t the best so they had to stop, or atleast delay, the police to give them a head start so they sat a few cars on fire on the E4 highway at the bridge at VÃ¥rby. Good plan. Except if they knew anything they’d know the cops come down on the highway at the NEXT exit (Slagsta) so that stunt had no effect at all except jam up traffic for a few hours. Geez, stupid criminals. I happen to know this cause I drive that road alot. But I guess we should be happy they’re stupid.
And when the top music execs in LA got to make their top 10 list, this is what you get. Out of all those, Alicia Keys is the only one I like. Beyonce was ok but getting a bit dull by now. And I’m sorry, I just can’t like someone that changes his name to “Andre 3000”, it’s just not cool… So I guess this leaves me stuck on VH1 looking at “top 100 of the 80’s”-lists. They did a “Top 100 Women” list and for once I was able to nail the top 10. I got the order a bit wrong (never would’ve thought they’d put Aretha Franklin as high as #2!) but Madonna being # 1 was abit too easy. Makes more sense than putting Robbie as # 1 on their “100 men” list! That still feels so wrong.
A sad day for trekkers & sci-fi : Scotty has been beamed up. See you up there lad!
I dunno why but I had no idea about “Live 8” that was coming up on saturday! I must’ve missed all press attention they never got here in sweden. But as I was flipping through the channels I came up on VH1 that had someone reporting from there saying “it’s a party down here, now back to our music”! It turns out I had to tune into our Channel 1 and survive with the INCREDIBLY annoying commentators ruining half the enjoyment!
As far as the concert(s) are concerned, they really did rock but it didn’t feel as .. big .. as the original 20 years ago. Maybe it’s my “when I was a kid”-mentality. Madonna rocked as always, “Pet Shop Boys” got thousands of russians singing “go west” and Will Smith getting Philadelphia singing the intro to Fresh Prince, funny stuff. But then I saw an interview with Blair being asked some tough questions by the MTV audience and wow, there are some really big and depressing problems out there to deal with! And having a concert like this isn’t really gonna change THAT much, is it?
So now I’m waiting for the DVD 🙂
I think I may very well be a hypochondriac. And thinking you’re a hypochondriac pretty much proves it, doesn’t it? I think I’ve gone through all kinds of theories behind this ever lasting headache, from simple wisdomtooth to tumor and I don’t know how many times I’ve killed myself with all deceases I’ve given myself! And today I woke up with pain in my abdomen, but that I just blame on my pills of iron I’m taking to make up for the blood donation the other day. But not after thinking my appendix was about to burst. As I said, hyponcriac alert! Is that the price you pay for watching too much ER?
Another thing that works awesome with my home cinema is the Eurovision Song Contest. Usually it was just pretty fun to watch, but now it’s quiet an experience seeing it in 100″ and the thumping sound. And “thumping” is pretty accurate since every damn number had thumping drums all the time. Still think Hungary should’ve won. One of the things I enjoyed was all the BOOOING all the friends-voting got, like Scandinavian countries voting for eachother no matter how sucky the songs are. That’s usually just an accepted behavior, but now they got alot of boooooos 🙂
I invite everyone who thought that buying a new projector and stuff for $2.500 was a stupid idea to come on over to my apartment and see Flatley’s “Feet of Flames”. Wowsy how grand it looked at 100″. And it’s always a bitter reminder of my # 2 regret of my childhood – I shouldn’t have dropped out of dance school.
Well the past 24 hours have been really, really depressing! One of the things I hate about life is when good things end, which as everyone knows has to happen. Like when you get fired from your job and thus losing touch with alot of friends. Or when you’ve gotten used to travelling around the world and all of a sudden that ends. Well on friday night I finally saw the last episodes of “Babylon 5” (still one of the best written TV shows ever!) and the last two episodes are all about this, good things that come to an end. And today I saw the last episode of modern Star Trek. End of an era. For the first time since 1987 there won’t be a new Star Trek episode made for quite a while. And before I was ready to accept that, Sweden got knocked out of the world championship in one of the best games I’ve seen in a long, long time. So yeah, all good things still come to an end. But still, this was a very rewarding saturday.
Egypt week on “Discovery Channel”, highly recommended! Way better, educational and informative than I though it’d be. One of the few upsetting programs was the one about the current fight for Egypt to get all their national treassures back from international museums. Kinda hard to argue why the rosetta-stone should be in London, huh?…
I recently saw a BBC documentary I recommend everyone to see if you get the chance – “The Power of Nightmares”. A documentary about how governments have stopped promosing the utopian society and replaced it with the promise that the future won’t be worse than yesterday. It’s about the philisophies about using nightmares and the “good vs evil” mentality that certain people are very keen to push on us. And it tells both sides of the stories, as well as how the Al Quada organisation didn’t really excist until the american justice system created it themselves and then just went with it. It takes up alot of stuff most of us have no idea about. Just see it. If you can.
The last episode of Friends was on swedish TV last week… talk about the end of an era. 10 years that show’s been going, it’s had it ups and downs but it was quite sad to see it end. Although it’s gonna be in reruns forever and I’ve seen every episode so many times I can pretty much recall any scene in my head. And one of these day’s I’m gonna fill that part of my head with something useful…
Also saw “Ocean’s 12” the other day. Man that was a disappointment. I liked the first one. Liked the sting and ensemble cast, but this one was not even close. So chalk up another one in the “reasons sequels shouldn’t eve be done” right there with Scream 3 and Naked Gun 3…
According to the swedish consumption authority (or whatever) it was decided that this years Christmas present was one of those slim TV:s you hang on the wall. Cool, right? … just how much are people spending on Christmas presents these days? I’ve been told that I sometimes spend more than I should on Christmas gifts, but I would never even think about buying something for $3.000, no matter how much I loved that person! That just doesn’t make sense! Sounds like they were a bit scared over the GNP…
And speaking of terrible Christmas gifts, you’ve heard that Britney released her “Greatest hits” album recently, just in time for Christmas shopping. Did I just get the entire point wrong, or I thought “Greatest hits” was something a has-been artist put together when they needed more money? Not a 23 (or however old she is now) yeard old with a careet that’s still going strong did?
Guess what VH1 did last night? They had Live/Band Aid specials! What are the odds 🙂 But here’s a thought about that song and the lyrics – “let them know it’s christmas time”. The song was about poor Africa and the starving children down there right? So I’ve been to africa – thrice – but as far as I know this is true for most african countries as well… THEY’RE MUSLIMS! Isn’t that like a slap in the face? I’m pretty sure they didn’t care that much but somehow it just doesn’t fit…
Did you see the MTV European Music Awards yesterday? I almost missed it since we have Battlefield matches on thursdays but my sis called me and screamed “switch to mtv!” and when I did I saw the huge crowd of people on Fori Imperiali that they had closed off (again!) and the stage that looked really, REALLY tiny in front of a very well lit Colosseum! It felt funny cause … well… I was literally right there! 🙂
Reason 8 : Iraq played it’s part in 9/11 by supporting Al Quada and the hi jackers. Well that’s been proven over and over again that that was never the case, but it sure worked on those patrotical americans didn’t it? Actually Saudi Arabia and USA itself had a lot more to do with that than Iraq – Saudi Arabia because alot of the hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, the flew to the US from Saudi Arabia and Usama Bin Laddens money comes from his filthly rich family in Saudi Arabia. And the hijackers got their pilot training in… USA, the same country that taught Bin Ladden how to fight great evil powers in the first place. Excellent job!
Finally got a hold of “Fahrenheit 9/11”. Scary & funny stuff. Funny to see how Bush is trying oh so hard at press conferences and interviews but ending up saying stuff like “fool me once, shame on…[silent pause and a look of confusion only Bush can do]… you…”. Scary to see that the president of “the land of the free” can do stuff like that. It was all abit too much and sometimes very longshots trying to connect the Bush’s to saudi oil interests and all of that, but then it got really personal when interviewing soldiers in Iraq, and it got really heavy when interviewing the mother of a soldier who’ll never come home after fighting, what I’m sure history will call, the worst planned and executed war ever. Anyway, you should all go and see it and then wait in anticipating for the US of A to do the biggest mistake ever by re-electing this idiot. I really can’t see how it can be this close? I mean how many people do you hear being very very pro-Bush, saying that he’s been a great president, he hasn’t screwed up, the war was just and so on? I don’t hear any people saying that but that might be because I’m way over here in Sweden…
Ok, so the olympics are over and done with. And all I have to say is… was that it? I remember a couple of years ago when stockholm was in the running for the summer olympics 2004 and it was this huge deal and tons of money was spent on promoting it. And we didn’t get it. Athens did, obviously. And it cost them millions of millions to arrange it, and even more millions for tv companies to buy the rights to bradcast and millions and millions… for what? 2 weeks of sports? I don’t get whats so important about the olympics? It just seems so overhyped, but that’s just me…
Today I saw ANOTHER docu-movie, this time on the story about MPRC, led by Tipper Gore, to ban “unethical” music lyrics and make the music industry responsible for what they are putting out there. And Frank Zappa, Dee Snider and John Denver came to its defence that they are just overreacting. The music bizz won but had to start putting “Parental Advisory” labels on the most extreme albums. Like all of Eminem’s. And along with that I also saw the “Bleeping Osbourne” weekend when MTV had so nicely replaced the the “fucks” and “bitches” with “beeps” and “mooos”. And they even went to the extreme length of censuring every on-screen cigarette. I’m all for pbulishers and TV stations taking their responsibility, but really, is it the music, lyrics and words we should be censuring? Isn’t it the image? What’s more damaging, Ozzy saying “fuck” or Britney dancing around wearing 3 threads? Twisted Sister’s song weren’t violent or anything extreme, but their image sure was…