Hole it, what?

"If we keep driving down this street, we'll pass a place that makes the best donuts. It's called Donut Exchange."

"Donut Exchange?"

"Well, that's what it's called."

(10 minutes later.)

"Oh, there it is."

"The place with the sign that says 'Donut Connection'?"

"Oh. Yeah. I guess 'Donut Exchange' really didn't make sense."

"No. I prefer my donuts fresh and first-hand anyway."

"'Bring in your old donuts for new ones.' Heh."

"Heh."

Posted at 10:37 PM ||

 
Judge Dread: Maybe it's Mablean.

Part of the joy of being, ahem, on vacation is the freedom to watch TV all the live long day. Not that I do, of course. But theoretically, I could keep the idiotbox on all day; I could even justify it by saying that I need to study American TV and its frequent trashiness. You buy that, right?

I'm staying with Leafhead, and he and I usually coexist peacefully when we have to pick one program in the evening for the two of us to gawk at. But when he has the day off and hangs out with me in the mornings, it's trouble, because he -- and I shudder even to say this -- likes watching those court shows. You know: Texas Justice, Judge Joe Brown, Judge Hatchettface. I? Detest them.

It's not even the genre that I hate (unlike others), because I will admit that the show most responsible for reviving the whole court craze-- Judge Judy -- is a hoot, and the Honorable Judge Sheindlin is very sensible in her sassy way. But the rest of the time, these TV judges and the people in front of them make me want to throw something -- soft, because I nevertheless don't want to damage the TV set for primetime -- at the box.

Of all the shows, the one that drives me the most insane is Divorce Court, featuring the "judge" who in reality has never been one, Judge Mablean Ephriam. It in fact upsets me that there aren't fifteen websites devoted to the full-on hating of Mablean (even over at TWoP, there isn't quite enough contempt for Mablean for my taste). Swimming against the tide of public indifference is so exhausting.

As far as I can ascertain, Mablean is a few points short of having an IQ. I never understand the point of any of her questions, and she's never too quick on the draw. There was that time a couple was seeking a divorce because the wife suspected the husband, who made Richard Simmons seem subdued, of being gay. The wife pointed out that her hubby carried a "rainbow keychain," but Mablean had apparently never heard of that being a symbol of gay pride. That's just crazy talk! What else you got? Well, there was the time I found my husband with a dick in his mouth. Really? How's that homosexual?

And then there's Mablean's vocabulary. For instance, her penchant for calling a mother who come on her show "babymama." Because Mablean is twelve. Another morning, I was forced -- by Leafhead's speed at getting to the remote before me, and then by my inexplicable inability to get up and leave the room -- to watch a few minutes of the show. But it turned out to be worth it, because at one point Mablean turns to the defendant and said: "So, your family was eel?" She meant to say, I guess, "ill," but the word came out oh-so-misformed. I found it deeply, seriously, profoundly, fucking hysterical. Leafhead and I have been walking around trying to work our new favorite pronunciation into every sentence. "Are you sure you want to eat that expired sour cream? It might make you eel." Say it with me: eel, eel, eel.

Posted at 4:28 PM ||

 
Please sir, can I have Moore?

Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 caused riots and multiple stabbings here in DC over the weekend!!! Okay, not really. The film, however, has been described as "incendiary" in so many reports I've read and heard -- as if the idea that Bush is a stupid idiot is something that would really cause any dissent, let alone outrage -- and I had such an eventful time getting to and from the movie over the weekend, that it might almost be true.

Fahrenheit 9/11 is of course the hot ticket in town, so we dutifully got ours via Fandango on Friday, and set out on Saturday an hour before showtime. Ten minutes into our drive, we realized traffic was just c r a w l i n g , and then the reason: the Carribean carnival. Since we were in Northeast, and had to get to Georgetown, there was no way for us not to cut across one of the streets around Georgia Avenue. Ack. So of course despite the hour lead time, we got to the theater ten minutes late and I had to sit in the very first row. Believe it or not, up close Bush is even dumber.

After the movie we went and had some dinner (and of course lively debate). Walking back to the car, right at the busiest junction of Georgetown, we saw a cop stop traffic in order to allow several police cars to scream to some point further down the street. Driving away, we slowly passed a "Crime Scene Search" truck; the driver was way cute, so Ms. G., who has been even more emboldened by marriage and motherhood, shrieked out our window to ask the cutie what was going on. He said, "Oh, there was some sort of multiple stabbing," and indeed it turned out that we had been just down the street from the rumble outside Urban Outfitters. Funnily enough, the thought had crossed our minds that perhaps people at the theater had gotten into some heated argument over the film. Incendiary, I tell you! (I mean the newspaper reports.)

In any case, the movie was worth the trouble. I do think that Bowling for Columbine is the better film. Its argument -- that it's not solely the easy access to guns that has caused the violence in the US, but the culture of fear created by, among others, the media -- was actually quite novel (and much more tightly argued), against which Fahrenheit 9/11's thesis that the war in Iraqi is fundamentally a war about, wait for it, oil and Bush's personal ties to Saudi families, pales. Still, Fahrenheit 9/11 is incredibly invigorating and moving, and if Moore will never be a great objective journalistic filmmaker, he needs to be blessed for being one who is terrific at using sentiment and satire to make his points. He's like this century's Harriet Beecher Stowe, and I mean that as a compliment.

Posted at 8:46 PM ||

 
Of English import.

It wouldn't be the first time that his reputation preceded and ruined him: I watched the debut of The Graham Norton Effect last night.

I liked Noddy, that old flamer, when he did his shows (So Graham Norton and Very Graham Norton) for Britain's Channel 4, so was curious to see how things would work, transplanted to America. Well, apparently it wasn't. This version of the show is like every other incarnation.

And actually, that was fine. But the choice of guests on last night's show were ill-advised: Sandra Bernhardt, who of course didn't let Graham get a word in and seemed determined to out-risque Graham, and Marlon Wayans, who was just crass (humping a computer screen: always classy!). Don't they know that the only star of a Graham Norton production should be Graham Norton? And while the British studio audience always derived their charm from the way they told such potty-mouthed stories with dainty accents and just the right amount of faint embarrassment, on the American show the audience came across a little desperate.

(I've just seen that the NYTimes review says pretty much the same thing.)

In other news, I see that England lost, in dramatic fashion (is there any other kind?), to host country Portugal in Euro 2004. I'm not in London to witness this aftermath, which makes me simultaneously dismayed and thankful. (My money, by the way, is on The Streets' "Dry your eyes" to become the unoffical song to comfort the ailing English; it'll be this year's answer to Oasis's "Stop crying your heart out," although, you know, they're rapidly running out of such songs, heh.) Anyway, England has! Been! Eliminated! Zoinks. Of course Beckham had to be one villain, missing a penalty by a mile...high. Seriously, did you see it on Sportscenter? It was like David suddenly thought he was playing American football, and was going for the conversion.

Wow. For a minute there I almost sounded like I cared, or even knew about football.

Posted at 3:22 PM ||

 
Baby you can't drive my car.

I'm not the best person with whom to take long car trips, such as the three-hour drives (each way) to and from DC to Rehoboth.

Reason the first would be that I don't drive, so you're on your own, buddy. Instead of sharing the load I simply sit in the passenger seat and, quite quickly after the start of the journey, doze off. It doesn't matter if I've just rolled out of bed and into the car (a very nice new Toyota Matrix, by the way). The gently lulling motion of a CUV on tar just sends me into a blissful snooze. After we get out of the stretch in which the car hits every city pothole, that is.

When I am awake, Leafhead and I do entertain ourselves by spotting chortle-worthy signs. On this trip our favorites were both on the highway leading into Rehoboth (perhaps because that's when I wake up). The first is a sign for "Blind Outlet." We think there's an "s" missing somewhere, unless it's serious, in which case we must beg the question of how a customer would know the difference in the products. The second is a sign for "Crabby Dick's," a grill and eatery. That one is so overdetermined that it's gotta be an intentional joke. Nevertheless, I still wouldn't want to order anything off their menu. There's no telling what you'll get.

Posted at 1:23 PM ||

 
Vacation, all I ever wanted.

If it seems to you that I've been on holiday forever, it's because I have. For the record, I'm not independently wealthy; I'm just lazy. Before this summer, I hadn't had a break in forever (goes the story), so I guess I decided to go for broke this month-and-a-half. To recap, I've been in Ann Arbor, in DC, then in Stockholm and London (and, before that, in hellish limbo), then back in DC. But then for the past few days I was in Rehoboth Beach, because what vacation is real without some lying-in-the-sun? (And now, back in DC, where I'll be for another week or so. When I'll be doing some work, I swear. Especially if my boss is reading this.)

(That's of course why the updates have come in bursts. I've just added one more entry about London, and also one on a canine-related event held in DC last weekend. That gets us up-to-date in the sense that the blog dates aren't screwy anymore.)

The beach was lovely; the weather was perfect. I frolicked in the Atlantic the first day, and got a little sunburnt. Which is absurd in this day and age, of course, but I always think that I want to get a little color, so surely it won't hurt if I went easy on the lotion for just the first hour? Ha ha. "Hurt" is exactly what I now am.

Anyway, I might tell you more about the beach in the next few days, but for more I'll just record my wonder at how a small little beach town could have such a great bakery -- Pasqualini's, which does the most incredibly moist and delicious coffee cake I've ever had the privilege of sinking my teeth into -- and a brewery/restaurant that not only has the second-best name ever (second only to "Fishface," a Sydney eatery which I've sadly never been to, but crave since Aurora Floyd and Leo told me about it), but also makes the best remoulade sauce for its fish-n-chips. It's like the little town that could. (Feed me well, that is.)

Posted at 11:43 PM ||

 
Life's rich pageant.

Every dog has its day, and today was the day for queer pets of the District. It was DC's annual Pride of Pets show, the event that allows all the gay men and lesbians of DC to sit out in Dupont Circle with their dogs. (Well, maybe just the gay men, because we all know that lesbians only own cats.) The dogs get to parade around and compete in categories such as "Least obedient," "Best tail wagging," "Best resemblance between owner and pet," and "Most glamorous." The dog owners do their own preening and prancing, but that's just called "Saturday night."

Of course, Leafhead and I had to bring Heather.

It's the second year in a row that I've been here for this. Last year Heather was highly excited to be out and about, and that there were new butts to sniff was an added bonus. Which is usually how I feel at dinner parties, but I digress. We hadn't planned on entering her in the competition; we didn't want her to go all JonBenet on us. But that little cutie really worked the crowd last year, sidling up to anyone who looked likely to pet her (and at a gay dog show, that would be everybody), doing her ain't I adorable? moonface, and practically kissing babies in her campaign to win one and all over. As usual: thoroughly shameless. It got to the point when we thought that we simply had to enter her in the afternoon's final category, "Most adorable," because it seemed as if the crowd was ready to report us for animal cruelty if we didn't. Sadly, it started raining right before that contest came up -- rain of course scatters gay men and our hairdoes in the blink of an eye -- so Heather's moment of glory was not to be. (I think she could have easily taken last year's star, the winner of the "Best costume" category: a French bulldog whose dad put bat-wings on him. He must have been so humiliated.)

This year Heather was much more laidback. Her attitude was: oh, I'm so over this. I know I'm cute; I no longer need the affirmation. She was still happy to get her adoration in, and seemed especially taken with a scruffy little black dog (alas, love unrequited). But we were all content to just watch. In an odd bit of deja vu all over again, this year it again started raining right before the "Most adorable" category, so we took off before the conclusion of the festivities.

But the afternoon didn't pass without a bit of fresh weirdness. At one point Heather was being petted, a little absent-mindedly, by a man sitting just behind us. Very very quietly, Heather...peed a little bit, right on the guy's foot. It was such a quick burst that Leafhead and I had to look at each other, in silent astonishment, to confirm that neither of us hallucinated this (and to decide that we weren't going to, well, press the point). The object of the golden shower, oddly enough, didn't even notice. Perhaps it was just another day-in-the-park occurrence for him.

Posted at 11:01 PM ||

 
London belongs to me. Because I bought it all.

This is, I think, the fifth visit I've made to London, and this time I have distilled such trips to their purest essence. Without tourism, work, or faux-boyfriends-who-recently-left-the-priesthood to distract me, I've spent this entire jaunt pretty much doing one thing, and one thing only: shop for music.

If you think that a trip organized around one sole purpose is easy, you would be wrong with a side of fries. London has so many excellent record stores, each with their own specialties and idiosyncrasies, that a successful trip must be well planned and executed with swift, brutal precision. I don't want to toot my own horn, but I believe I deserve some sort of Congressional medal in this arena. Or at least a purple heart. Embroidered into a new wallet.

Consider the evidence. I had about five days in the city. I actually did have a couple of friends to see, and a Vivienne Westwood exhibit to peruse. But in the rest of the time I managed to hit all the stores I know and love, and in the right order too, resulting in a haul of CDs that is best left unnumbered. Not only did I only pay full retail prices for maybe two of them, but there were also just four or five that I would buy and later come across at slightly cheaper prices. Bow before he who rocks, mortals.

If you want to learn from the master, know that a day of intensive shopping actually has to begin the night before, with a meal of pasta. Carbo-load, like a marathon runner. Then I get up the next morning, bright and early, head downstairs to partake of the hotel's breakfast even though it's terrible (where the tea must never be drunk black, and the bacon tastes like chicken; rubber chicken, that is), because I will need the energy. If I time it right, I am out of there and get to my first musical destination by 10 am, when the stores are ready to display their wares. There are only so many daylight hours, you know; this ain't Stockholm.

It's important to stay calm, collected, level-headed. I start at the beginning of Berwick Street, at CD City and Mister CD cause they both have great bargain basements, where you can get, say, Tahiti 80's latest for £3 and oh my goodness, even all three CDs of Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs for £5 so it's almost a pity I already have them, but don't forget that their upstairs sections aren't too shabby either, since CD City has a good soul selection, while Mister CD has loads of dance releases for £8-10, but of course linger only long enough to score and then continue on to Select-A-Disc, and whaddayaknow, there's a sale on that could net you things like a 60s Here Comes the Girls compilation for £2.99, but all this is before I hit Reckless, conveniently split up into a regular store and one devoted to dance records that nevertheless share a name that accurately describes my spending, where I can stock up on recent Slip-N-Slide releases before finally going beyond just that first block of Berwick to Sister Ray, which isn't great for deals but often has some nice rarities, and since I can't find Erlend Oye's DJ Kicks truly second-hand, I guess it's fine to fork out the £9.99 they want before going next door to Music and Video Exchange, which I must go into even though I have another day reserved for browsing in the three or four MVE shops up in the Notting Hill area oh and what treasures those shops offer like Frost's first album for £1 and then, since I have time on the last day, even in the Camden branch of the store, which gets me Thieves' single for 30p, and somewhere in those days I actually venture beyond Berwick Street and Notting Hill to Steve's Sounds just off of Charing Cross which is especially worth a visit now that I can also pop around the corner to Fopp for more cheap CDs and DVDs and the major chain stores like HMV and Virgin are more an afterthought but look Virgin is clearing out stocks of Kenny Dope's 3-CD disco compilation for just £2.99 and aaaiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeee.

Addendum: if you must know, my loot includes, but is not even limited to, the following. I bought a bunch of artist albums, including some jangly, happy pop albums such as Tahiti 80's Extra Pieces of Sunshine, Ashby's Power Ballads, A Girl Called Eddy's self-titled album and "Somebody Hurt You" single, Terry, Blair and Anouchka's Ultra Modern Nursery Rhymes; and other albums such as I Monster's Neveroddoreven, Paddy McAloon's I Trawl the Megahertz, and A Man Called Adam's All My Favourites. Then there are the compilations. First, a number of 60s pop collections, such as Phil's Spectres: A Wall of Soundalikes, Here Comes the Girls Vols 4 and 6, and Dream Babes 5. I also bought a shitload of house compilations, including Louie Vega's Soul Heaven, Kenny Dope's Disco Heat, Blaze's Found Love, Africanism 2, Afrique C'est Chic, Klubbjazz 5, Jazz in the House 12, and Pure Brazilance. I also got the more eclectic compilations that are Bent's Fabriclive 11, Nitin Sawhney's Fabriclive 15, Richard X's Back to Mine, and Erlend Oye's DJ Kicks, as well as a few soul and blaxploitation CDs, Best of Pulp Fusion, and Norman Jay's Giant 45. Um, also, a few downtempo compilations, namely The Blue Room, Fragile State's Just Got Home, Comfort Zone 5, and Gilles Peterson in Brazil. And I even found some rarities, like Kirsty Hawkshaw's Out; the original "Theme from S'Express" CD single, Frost's Bedsit Theories, a promo CD of Zero 7's "Somersault" that includes Yam Who's remix, and Thieves's only CD single "Unworthy."

Don't judge me. We all have our addictions.

Posted at 9:50 PM ||

 
My foot, your ball.

Fever pitch: London is in the grips of Euro 2004 frenzy. The football tournament is going on now, it lasts till July 4 (ooh, take that, America), I had forgotten about this event, but now there's no way not to remember as I gallivant around London.

I went through -- perhaps am still going through -- a phase when I liked clothes that have numbers on them (what? phases are by nature inexplicable), so my wardrobe is filled with a fair number of football jerseys. I do like the way they look and feel: they usually have firmer, more defined shapes than regular T-shirts, and when you have a nebulous body like mine, you need T-shirts that can stand on their own.

It's a little pathetic, of course. Back in Zingerbore, I've been stopped on the streets by people, excited about a jersey I was wearing, who wondered where they could get one; and once in a bar some man tried to strike up a football conversation only to lose interest when he realized that I was in it for the fashion. Anyway, here in London, I find myself hesitant to wear the jerseys I brought along. I wouldn't want to be mistaken for an Italian supporter and get beaten up, you know (not the face, not the face!).

Yesterday England played their first match, and lost in a dramatic fashion to France. Beckham missed a penalty, Zidane scored twice in injury time, and it was all very tragic, if you can work yourself up enough to care. (Whispers) I really don't, except as a phenomenon. It's been funny to see how mentally hungover everyone is here today. And it was entertaining to watch Baddiel and Skinner on their Fantasy Football program riff on the tragedy. It's one of several things on this trip that reminds me how much more heterogeneous England is -- compared to say, the US -- with everyone more likely to have a shared set of cultural obsessions.

Last night, after the national nightmare occurred, I was contemplating going out to Buzzin' Fly, the club night that Ben Watt DJs at. I ended up not. Officially I'm pretending that this was because I feared running into a gang of roving football hooligans...in, erm, the Notting Hill area. But really, the reason was that I had been walking so much on this European trip that my feet are totally messed up. My blisters have blisters. I'm actually being literal here. I would show you a photo of this physiological marvel, but some things are better left unshared.

Posted at 9:34 PM ||

 
You steal the scene.

Oh Stephin, it's like you and the rest of the Magnetic Fields planned the concert last night just for me.

First of all, can I say? Stroke of genius to do it at the Lyric Hammersmith in London, whose artistic director -- as I realized only when I arrived -- is Neil Bartlett, who I will always love for his Who Was That Man?, and at least the first beautiful paragraph of Mr. Clive and Mr. Page. Also, the venue probably helped attract a some-would-say sedate, not to imply unenthusiastic, crowd, which you embraced by having the evening be more akin to a chamber music performance. But then again, when your group includes a cellist, you are more of a chamber orchestra.

Certainly the tracklisting seemed tailored-made for me: not just most of your brilliant new album i and several tracks from Pieces of April, but also many of my favorite 69 Love Songs -- like "All my little words" and "Busby Berkeley dreams" -- and old favorites like "Smoke and mirrors." Maybe you could have played something from The Charm of the Highway Strip, but I know I can't have everything.

Surely you know that it's a little unusual for people to tear up at a concert, but then again if you do three incredibly moving songs like "Kissing things," "Papa was a rodeo," and "It's only time" -- and do them in smokier and sultrier ways than even on their respective albums -- you can't expect me not to. Besides, I was jetlagged. Also, when Claudia mentioned that "Kissing things" was from "the second 6ths album and originally sung by Sarah Cracknell of Saint Etienne," the squeal you might have heard from the audience came from me, because for a moment I almost thought that you were going to tell us that Sarah was joining you on stage. That would have been too much. Even without her, Stephin did a lovely version and easily showed why, as Claudia mentioned, the song was recently picked by Mojo as one of the best miserable songs ever (whatever that means). I would tell you that you had me eating out of the palm of your hand, but I believe that you don't do affection.

Posted at 10:14 AM ||

 
Taking stock.

Hello. Although this says "June 11," it's really, like the 17th and I'm back from Stockholm and London. I'm playing fast and loose. With the dates, that is. Indeed, I've posted a bunch of entries about my time in Stockholm, starting here. Hurry there and read up, and you'll have all your gaps filled in. I've posted the entries on the dates when stuff happened, and, well, they were sort of written then. You'll indulge me. Or perhaps not care. Or are really confused right about now. Anyway.

More in the next few days, when I'll pick up the story from London. And there won't be any more bad "stock" and "swede" puns. We will have moved on.

Posted at 11:27 PM ||

 
Stock message.

If I know my audience, and I think I do, you all spend your days wondering if I'm dead yet. Well, I'm happy to report that I'm not, and indeed here I am, checking in from Stockholm.

I'm been writing, but not uploading entries yet. Partly because there are photos to go with some entries, and partly because I don't trust that, in rushing to beat the internet-cafe clock, I won't accidentally post something that I will later find embarrassing, or even worse, splice a comma. Besides, this Swedish keyboardäs just freakinä the hellå out of me.

So anyway, I'll post a bunch of messages soon, from which you might learn all about herring, my near-brush with Eurodisco fame, my visit to the shrine of ABBA, how I found myself on the right side of a party that people were trying to gatecrash, and other assorted matters. (Update: erm, done.) Can you stand it?

Posted at 12:40 PM ||

 
Smörgåsbord.

When I travel I tend to eat very lightly. This, of course, is great: I've already lost some weight, and am practically a bag of bones. A huge burlap sack of dinosaur bones, but still.

On some level maybe it's due to stress, but mostly it's because I tend to travel alone. Dining by yourself is already a treacherous proposition in a city you know; in a place that you have yet to get your social bearings in, it's downright impossible to be sure that you won't end up eating at a place where the waiter announces you to the room with an audible shriek of "TABLE FOR ONE!!!", and an inaudible one of "Loser."

So when I haven't been out with friends, it's been lots of sandwiches in cafes. (At Chokladkoppen, a well-known gay cafe that nevertheless is not, it would appear, a child-free zone, I have a good sandwich that's however quite ruined by the two straight women with their screaming kids who sat down next to me. Incongruously -- or maybe congruously? -- the PA system played a song whose sole lyric appeared to be, "We've got to have sex a lot.")

Yes, I did try the herring. I'm not at all a big fan of fish, although I love certain types of sushi, and salmon. But at dinner on Sunday, Mother of the Groom brought some preserved herring. Although she told us that it's an acquired taste and we didn't have to feel as if we need to be polite, I gamely took a small piece. Then I just drowned the thing in sour cream and chives, and...it wasn't bad. Sour cream does make everything okay! Not so not bad that I was tempted to have a second piece, though.

Having said that, the Swedes make the best potato salads ever. And if you ever make your way here and are looking to sample some sort of bottled drink that's unique to this region, I recommend the Festis Dandelion Apple drink.

Posted at 10:07 AM ||

 
A tragedy of epic proportions.

With the music shopping a bit of a letdown, I am forced to be, good lord, cultural.

Although Stockholm isn't perhaps especially well-known for its museums, I've seen quite a few good ones. (Not counting the sad, sad Musikmuseet, previously mentioned.) I enjoyed both the Moderna Museet and the adjoining Arkitekturmuseet. The former has lots of installation pieces that aren't complete rubbish; the latter does a nice job of surveying the architectural history of Sweden, in a space that's simply one large architectural studio. Very modernist.

While at the Arkitetc, I get a weird thrill of recognition when I see that one wall included a lighted cube showing some "colors of Stockholm facades." Yes, that's sort of an odd thing to depict, but the point is that this consisted of a band of color strips that looked to me quite similar to the cover of Saint Etienne's Smash the System. Given that the band has recorded in Stockholm, I wouldn't put it past them to have been inspired by a trip to the Arkitetc. Hitherto the album art has been compared to the colors of Wall's ice cream (?), but I believe that my paradigm-shifting theory will, erm, shift the paradigm by which we understand this cover art.

I also visited the Vasa Museet, which is something. The museum is built around a Swedish ship which Gustavus Adolphus ordered constructed in 1628; on a glorious day, the ship set sail, and then promptly sank on this maiden voyage. The ship then laid at the bottom of the sea, forgotten for 300 years before it was discovered and raised, almost intact, in the 1960s.

The salvage operation is impressive, and seeing the ghostly ship in a dimly-lit museum was fascinating. But what I found sort of funny was the scale of the tragedy. I'm not saying it's gloriously small, but...it's gloriously small. The ship had something like 150 sailors, and was on its way to pick up 300 soldiers. Of these, a grand total of 30 people died. Presumably these were the sailors who...couldn't swim. When the ship sank...15 minutes into its voyage...in Stockholm harbor itself...down, down, down...for 30 whole meters.

I'm sure it was indeed quite tragic, and my heart goes out -- but also, on -- to the 30 sailors and their families. And I'm sure the fear that gripped the village was indeed hysterical. Out of control. At right, we in fact see villagers panic at the sight of the sinking ship. Villagers may be played by method-acting plasticine figures in this exhibit.

Posted at 9:55 PM ||

 
Stock footage.

This is a detail from the facade of the Grand Royal Palace. I'm pretty sure that's Janet Jackson on the left.

Posted at 10:43 AM ||

 
Swede swede music.

Maybe it's because I didn't do much research about where to go, but the music shopping -- always a cornerstone of every trip I take -- in Stockholm has been disappointing.

Surprisingly, the huge chain stores (HMV, Tower, Virgin) have not invaded the city. This would be a good thing if small, indie record stores thrived as a result, but these seemed scarce too. A couple of places on Drottninggatan -- Skivhusset and Megastore -- were fine, but hardly comprehensive, and expensive to boot. There I picked up CDs by The Radio Dept., Airliner, and Douglas Heart, because when in Sweden you have to buy music that's on Labrador, which is an ace label even though, really, all its bands sound the same.

But I don't think it was just my lack of research (although right before I left I finally read about a second hand CD store steps from where I was staying; typical). Many record stores I did stumble on were startlingly specialized: one devoted to death metal, and another mostly to reggae. On vinyl no less. And they were also impossible to locate. It was into the latter shop that I barged, on the day when I was wandering around Södermalm, to ask if there were other used stores around. The nice man drew me a map to Mosebacke Records, and I needed the directions, because the store (note to future self: it's at Hökens Gata 11) had no signage whatsoever outside. It was also about the size of my left shoe, into which was crammed quite a good used selection. (Like Thomas Dolby's soundtrack for Gothic on CD, surely a rarity? Pity I had no actual interest in collecting it.) The few of us who were in there that day had to follow tactical military blueprints whenever we wanted to move around the store simultaneously.

I did go to the Musikmuseet, in the vague hopes that it would, I don't know, extoll the virtues of the Cardigans. Sadly, the museum was a little bit Music for Idiots, with plaques that said things like, "Sound is produced when air vibrates." Um, thanks. But you do get to play various instruments -- how did I go so long in my life without fingering an electric guitar? -- and there was even a fantasy room where you could do karoake while wearing rock star accessories such as a feather boa and shades. Quite. There was also an exhibit devoted to "Swedish Ensembles Through the Ages." So, one display had, like three propped-up accordians on a stage, and this mystifyingly vivid write-up: "This is a nice summer night, in 1941, in a standard Swedish labour movement people's amusement park, with birches and lottery wheels, the sounds of the merry-go-round, and the mosquitoes are buzzing, everybody is dressed up. The poster announced Julabro's Quartet, but tonight only a trio arrived." Where is the missing accordian player? I have no idea. The exhibit ends in the 1970s, with a stage devoted to...yes, ABBA.

In light of all this, the musical highlight of the trip thus far has been a fleeting, even peripheral moment. Sunday night a bunch of us, who had just gotten to Stockholm from Sandhamn, met up for dinner with -- to the surprise of some of us -- the groom's mother, a delightful and generous woman who, how you say, seemed especially inclined to take care of the merry boyz. She regaled us with excellent stories, and at one point started telling us about a famous friend of the family. So blah blah blah, blah blah, and he was on a soap opera, and had a pop group, and then suddenly I heard the phrase "Army of Lovers."

I squealed a little too loudly, and then had to be forcibly restrained from breaking into a chorus (and two verses) of "Crucified." It turned out that the groom's brother-in-law's brother is Alexander Bard, leader of the cheesy (and I mean that as a compliment) Eurodisco group that gave us works of genius such as the aforementioned stomper, and, even more sublimely, "My army of lovers." Mother of the Groom was pretty impressed that I had heard of them, and eyeballed me with a little intrigue. "I need to get you to meet him," she cooed, and while I did have a moment of slight panic -- because, really, all I would be able to say to him is "I love 'Crucified'!", which I'm sure he's never heard before -- I was also like, totally! Alas, that meeting never came to pass, but I like to think that I will soon be contributing guest vocals to Paul's new project "Bodies Without Organs."

("'Bodies Without Organs'? That's from Artaud," Puch, a friend at the dinner pipes up. And indeed it is. Clearly the cultural literacy spectrum stretched wide at this dinner. With me at the low end, of course.)

Oh well. For the record, the songs I'll be associating with Stockholm, Summer 2004 are -- for a little local flavor -- the really, really annoying "Hej Monika" by Nic and the Family, and Outkast's "Roses," which is of course really good.

Posted at 2:08 PM ||

 
A room with a view askew.

In Stockholm I'm staying at a basic but perfectly nice hotel. I had tried to book myself into the same place at which a bunch of my friends are staying, but was a little too late on the draw. As it turned out, these friends have mixed feelings about where they've ended up, because the rooms are very small. You can't accuse their hotel of false advertising, though, since the place is actually called Tre Sma Rum. I don't think I immediately understood the moniker, but when I did, I thought it hilarious. (Also, it also made me want to go "RED SMA RUM! RED SMA RUM! RED SMA RUM!") The hotel entrance was, as I commented to Walker, "very John Malkovich."

Where I ended up, instead, had slightly bigger rooms and nice high ceilings. Although I'm happy with the place, there is a painting on the wall in my room that unnerves me. On the left is a photo, tinted for extra-creepy effect. All through my stay, in the middle of each night, I had an urge to sit up bolt upright in my bed and scream, "I AM CARLOTTA!!", and then go jump in the San Francisco bay.

Creepy possessing paintings aside, Stockholm has been intriguing so far. At this time of the year, it gets dark very, very late. And even then, it's never completely pitch black. More time for drinking, then.

I'm sure the first thing you want to know -- aside from whether, erm, the city is clean (answer: yes) and if they have McHerring (no) -- is whether Swedish men are as impossibly good-looking as they're supposed to be. (I'm sorry, did I say "you"? I meant "I.") The answer is: sort of, although it takes them a while to grow into it. I think no one can really make bright red acne on pale white skin work. But when the men hit their 30s and 40s, they do have a certain je ne sais quois. Of course, sadly I am mostly invisible to them. (Mostly. To the man digging the ditch on the corner of Hornsgatan, call me!)

Posted at 10:12 AM ||

 
For better.

The day of the wedding ended for me at about 2:30 am, after a late night snack of fried potatoes and anchovies (file under: better than it sounds).

We'd been dancing, to a DJ who began by jettisoning the very idea of mixing records -- opting, instead, to try the radical new technique whereby you simply stopped one record and slapped on another abruptly -- but got better (points for the mash-up of "Milkshake" over "Billie Jean"). Then again, I later heard that, in the final thirty minutes after I went to bed, he played stuff like Guns 'n' Roses and Bryan Adams, which encouraged way too many drunken revelers to play air guitar. It was a wedding, alright. And a hip and happening one as well: at one point people from the town were trying to climb over the walls of the deck because the wedding celebrants seemed to be having so much fun. For once in my life, I was on the right side of the velvet rope. Too cool, for school.

At some point in the evening I got a slight cramp in my calf. I don't recall when this happened. In case you've just joined us: it was all a blur. Although it didn't bother me then, it would flare up a few days later and practically cripple me. When I moaned about this time-delay cramp to my friend Walker, she said, "Oh, during the dancing?" "Well, I don't know when it actually happened, " I said. "But I'm glad you immediately think of my dancing as cramp-inducing."

Before the dancing there was the wedding dinner, which was wonderful. Matters were greatly helped by the waiters, who were unable to pass by a glass that they didn't want to fill up to the rim. Regardless of the level it started at. Couple this with the fact that the dinner went on five or six hours -- "A Swedish tradition!" -- and you can see why we were all the worse for wear. And pulling muscles left, right, and center.

At dinner the bride and groom were thoroughly roasted, led by a toastmaster that Toll would later describe, with precision and not a little bit of awe, as "clearly a sadist." "You can see it in the way he clinked his glass," she claimed, and given that she writes beautiful essays on cruelty, she would presumably know.

At another point during dinner a commotion arises, and a line of men were suddenly racing up to the head table to kiss the bride. Caught up in the excitement -- by which I mean, "drunk" -- I dutifully follow suit. Apparently it's a Swedish custom for every man in the room to lay a smacker on the bride the minute the groom leaves the room. That, no doubt, is the real reason for all that wine. Later it's the bride who takes her bathroom break, and so the women, and not a few men, ran to kiss the groom. Without implying that I had a specific preference for one member of the wedding party over the other, I would have, abstractly speaking, chosen this latter option, if I had known it was one. But having already kissed the bride, I worried that I would end up misrepresenting the number of teams I played for. God forbid I should be known as that lowest of the low, bi. (Kidding! Don't email me!)

But the day began with a beautiful ceremony, which I did make it to with twenty minutes to spare. Somehow it seemed appropriate that, as we -- with me particularly breathless --waited in a group in the forest clearing for the bride to come up the path, the first thing we heard was her sparkling laugh.

In the clearing we listen to some beautiful readings, and the exchange of vows. Everyone's a mess: the women are crying, while the men do their best not to look stricken. But they don't fool me, nor I myself. When the time comes to sing a traditional Swedish song, I hum along illiterately. A Swedish man standing somewhere behind me sings it in this crystalline, pure voice, and it's quite literally breath-taking. I have no real urge to turn around and see who it is, perhaps because it, and the whole scene, seems magical, and I feared that to know its source would be to break the spell.

Posted at 2:43 PM ||

 
From the Old French word for travail.

I didn't quite end up having to run down the aisle in the middle of the wedding, but only because I would never have found the forest clearing where the ceremony was conducted.

Do I need to recap my hellish air travel? I was thinking of doing a flowchart, but, really, it can be summed up by my pointing out that on a flight that had two straightforward legs (DC to London, London to Stockholm), a grand total of two were cancelled. I -- or rather a company whose name rhymes with Kittish Hairways -- was batting a cool 1.000. The first flight never made it out of DC; then, when I finally got to London (where I had to stay a night since all connections to Stockholm had departed that evening), I was originally scheduled on an early morning flight. And this was after lots of begging on my part because I absolutely needed to get to a wedding that, with each account to yet another ticketing agent, was close to morphing into my wedding if that meant I could get a better flight.

So of course I get up at 4 am, trudged back to Heathrow, only to have that flight cancelled too. I can't tell you how close I was to sitting down on the floor, bursting into tears, and giving up on the whole fanciful notion that was "getting somewhere." I think I was only saved by the lack of anywhere to sit at Heathrow.

The one good thing about (eventually) being on the later flight to Stockholm was that I encountered two fellow travelers who were likewise going to the same wedding. With them I shared the adventure of getting from Stockholm to Sandhamn, the island where the wedding was held. Of course it was an adventure -- haven't you been paying attention to my hell?

This one I pin on our cab driver, who was supposed to take us from the central train station to a bus station where we could catch the bus to the ferry to the island. Lost? So was he. Okay, he wasn't really lost, but also had no real concept of the bus terminal; instead, he lucked onto a busstop that was on the bus route. And so it came to be that the three of us -- instead of boarding a bus at its point of origin and settling down to a nice long ride -- were instead literally on the side of a highway, nervously peering at each bus zooming by at 80 miles per hour to discern if that was the one we needed to flag down. Of course boarding the bus at that point meant that we had to stand in the aisle, with our bags obstructing all paths in all sorts of ways. On the other hand, the looks that the other passengers gave us -- you know, the ones that said damn tourists -- were uttewrly unhindered.

Not a good trip then, travel-wise. Later on I would also run into a Stockholm cab driver who turned onto the street where my hotel was, seemed incredibly flummoxed that the numbers were decreasing, and had to be educated by me on the possibility that, if we just went in the other direction, the numbers would go back up. And then there was also the cabbie who had just started in his glorious profession. I was actually his second ever passenger. I would have felt special, but then again I was too busy feeling persecuted.

Posted at 11:51 PM ||

 
Welcome to the cheap seats.

You remember that hilarious bit on Seinfeld where Jerry riffs on the way airlines always insist on leading all the economy passengers through first and business classes, as if to show off the promised land before rubbing our faces in the grotty reality that will be our cheap seats?

Notwithstanding my recent frequent flyer-derived business class experience, my reality is firmly grotty. I usually battle the death march through luxury by affecting indifference, even blase boredom. As if to say: oh, I've seen it all, these luxurious plushy seats that recline so far back and allows you to do the can-can without decapitating the person in front of you; you can't impress me.

On the BA flight from the US to Europe, however, it was hard not to be a little awed by their sleeper seats, which lean all the way back so that you are completely horizontal. You can practically perform dental surgery in them. To accomplish this, the side-by-side seats interestingly face each other, so that one passenger always has his or her back to the front of the plane. When the safety video came on, therefore, it was funny to see how these passengers had to behave in case of the infamous "emergency landing." Apparently, instead of leaning forward in a half-crouch and your hands over your head, such backward-flying passengers are supposed to lean back, cross their palms, and place them on their chests. You know, as if they are already at eternal peace and lying in a coffin? Yeah. So I guess the person who built these swanky seats hate the passengers who fly in them as much as I do.

Posted at 8:10 PM ||

 
Things can only get better.

And we're off to a roaring start. I've had fairly good travel karma in recent years (passing tornadoes notwithstanding), so it was a matter of time before it came around to bite me in the ass.

Ouch: on Thursday there was apparently some electrical or computer failure at Heathrow, which meant that my flight from Washington DC to Stockholm by way of London got cancelled. Upshot: I had to stay a night in DC, and now a night here in London. (At, respectively, the Hyatt [all American bluster: huge king size bed] and the Hilton [all European chic: tiny single business traveler bed].) Since I'm going to a wedding in Stockholm, it's all very upsetting. Right now it looks as if I'll miss some events but perhaps arrive for others. I keep having a vision of myself as Benjamin in The Graduate, running down the aisle during the vows. Or perhaps popping out of the wedding cake at the dinner itself. I always was one for the dramatic entrance.

Posted at 11:04 PM ||

 
Dog's eye view.

Hi. It's Heather again. As you can see, I'm still cute and dreamy, and that would be true even if I'm not being photographed with the Barbra Streisand lens.

But enough about me. I've been very happy because Uncle Brittle is visiting. First, I'm glad to report that he's as handsome as ever. In fact I spend quite a bit of time just staring at him, which amuses him to no end. He thinks that in this I'm a little like that Jack Russell terrier (spit) on Frasier, who unnerves Dr. Crane with his unwavering stare, but I don't enjoy the comparison. My gaze, for one, is loving. Not creepy.

One reason why I've been so ecstatic is because Brittle gives the best tummy rubs. I try to be cool and collected when I see him, but it doesn't take long before I abandon all shreds of my dignity and just beg for the rub. This time around, he was in the door a whole two minutes before I rolled over like a cheap whore. Which I thought was quite restrained.

Anyway, Brittle has been here about a week, and he's done squat. He went to some BBQ on Memorial Day and failed to bring me back a doggie bag, and since then has been doing some shopping. He's fretting about some outfit for his trip to Stockholm; you would think that it's his wedding he's going to (eyeroll). (As far as outfits go, you know where I stand.) But he's indeed off to Stockholm, and then London for a couple of weeks. He says he's going to rig up an electric scratcher for me before he goes, but I doubt that he's that much of a MacGyver. I'm just going to have to get my fix before he leaves tonight. It won't be pretty.

Posted at 11:53 AM ||