i know you watch the news

this weekend i played skee-ball in a bar. a new jan svankmajer film is out. tommorrow night i might go to a chinese food restuarant that serves unlimited free wine. sometimes i really enjoy life. but i've become so neurotic about the future that getting an internship is just another reason to worry. i'm not looking forward to graduating.

something else i can't help worrying about. lately i feel like i'm being forced out of my own hometown. or at least, forced to either leave or give up my high standards for other people who live around me.

the connecticut primary is tommorrow. that may not interest anyone else, but it's sort of defined my work life for the past month. i don't know what i will do when it's over.

better things to do

i never update this thing, maybe because my job involves blogging and i've sort of come to hate the whole medium. but at work i have to write about small events in local politics, not actual life. which i've had some of. in the past month, i've:

kayaked up to a pier where a woman sang "like a virgin," accompaigned by five or six accordians;

drank on three fire escapes and two roofs, with only one significant bruise;

seen the guy from "what not to wear" and bree's crazy boyfriend from "desperate housewives,"

eaten chinese food with old jewish people, one of whom described a college friend as "a communist and quite a swinger";

seen tv on the radio, and martha wainwright, and belle and sebastian, and some son of a friend of a friend of my father's at a bar i went to a few times last summer;

wacthed two artists compete, iron chef-style, with styrofoam everywhere and critics and reporters in fedoras and an organ, and "could you use the word praxis?";

and some more things that i don't remember. but i think it was all nice. friday is the siren festival, and sunday is the petanque competition.

home again

i figured i should mention here that i left denmark. it was sad. on my last night, i road through the rain on a bike rack from one bar to another, holding a beer. i officially assimilated. unfortunately, that won't do me much good now that i'm gone. at first, i found home a little large, loud, and unfriendly to people under 21. which will sound strange to all the people i constantly bore with complaints about how no place (especially washington, d.c.) will ever compare to new york city. and i still love it here. last night we wandered into a 666 ska show at the bowery poetry club and i remembered that new york constantly surprises me. but i've also seen how things can be done differently, and not worse. i want to go back to copenhagen, maybe in the summer when it's less of a struggle to enjoy. it's relaxed without ever being boring. sort of the way welfare states give people comfort without taking away their desire to work (read the economist if you don't believe me). they've taken the hard edge off of city life but left the grunginess that makes it interesting. when i got to newark with all my bags and they were charging three dollars for a hand cart, i couldn't help thinking, this wouldn't happen in denmark. but now i'm probably boring you all with how much i like copenhagen. so i can just recommend that everyone make it up there if they're ever in europe.

i might keep this blog, since it's classier than livejournal. i'm working at talkingpointsmemo.com, a political website. it's been raining a lot. if you're in new york city, hang out with me.

you're almost gone

i haven't updated this in a while because a. i have finals b. denmark has suddenly become the warmest, sunniest place in the world and i spend a lot of time lying on the grass in parks, wondering where i am. people stop me and ask if i speak english. we resent the tourists; you don't deserve this sun if you haven't lived through the long, cold, dark where the streets were all danish scurrying from one candle to another. the tourists are on vacation, where it is always like this. the danes are bouncing around ecstatic, disbelieving, grateful. everyone in the country is outside.

last weekend i missed pete doherty, who did manage to pull himself together enough to come to copenhagen, but i don't really regret it. i went biking on bornholm. it's probably the prettiest place in denmark, because it should actually be in sweden or germany--a country with rocky cliffs and winding hills, sheep, yaks!, caves. it's known for round chuches and herring. we biked for hours in the wind and the uphill, and then we got to a smokehouse and ian said, "let's eat like champions," and we did. i'm always tired, and i wonder what's wrong with me, and then i fall asleep stoned and tipsy on a ferry at 2, wake up at 6 and at 9 start to bike 70 kilometers, and i can't help being impressed by what my body can do.

i'm leaving saturday. when i come back to fly out, i won't have my cell phone, or my bike, or my bedroom. i'm not really able to understand this.

my british tour diary

london is a big english-speaking city, so i couldn't help comparing it to new york. a handy guide for any visitors from one to the other:

leicester square = times square
oxford circus = broadway in soho
drummond street = curry row
notting hill = the gentrified parts of brooklyn
camden town = st. marks place
tate modern = moma
southhawk = queens when moma was there
the tube = the subway
double decker buses = single decker buses
the london eye = the wonder wheel at coney island
london bridge = the brooklyn bridge
chinatown = chinatown

british people are kind of agressively helpful.

denmark is totally different. there are palaces where there were snow piles, faces where there were scarves. everyone is outside. even more people are biking. tivoli is open and the flaming lips are playing there. i'm starting to understand why happy people might live in copenhagen.

smaack my cheese

i'm going to miss iceland. it's the most beautiful place i've ever been. there are mountains everywhere you look, and geysers, and craters. everything is designed in a cold but striking sort of way. everyone is an artist--in every cafe people are working on their laptops, or writing, or advertising their next show. louisa's cousin's hairdresser is also in a pretty well known band. i think it's called "har." the horses are really small and cute (but icelandic people get mad when you call them ponies). when they have to move a large rock to build something, a woman is called in to get the permission of the elves. on the other hand it's cold, and expensive, and people are kind of materialistic alcoholics. at the trendy bar in the hotel where louisa worked, she said men occassionally peed on their stools. the bar closes at midnight.

we went to kaffibarrin, a bar that might be owned by the lead singer of blur, last night. it closed at 12:30 for good friday (long friday here--the people we talked to found the idea of calling jesus' death "good" kind of ridiculous) even though no one in iceland is actually religious (except for the 10% that believe wholeheartedly in elves). i continued to not see bjork. we went to some guys' apartment where one of them played weird icelandic music while the other one lectured us on american politics. so we're going to london.

hidden people

accomodation review: london stansted airport. safety factor: surprisingly high, because about five hundred people a night are as cheap as i am and decide they would rather sleep on cold tile in a brightly lit building than pay for a hotel. comfort factor: low. there is no carpet in the waiting area. i could choose between a chair and the floor. i decided on floor. sometime in the middle of the night i woke up cold, sore, and smelling something sour. the sour smell turned out to be whiskey, spilled by the nice kids from seattle sleeping next to me. the cleaning people made us move, so i tried the chairs, but even at four in the morning people like to talk on their cellphones really loudly in spanish. so i gave up on sleep and read the quiet american.

from what people said about them, i expected ryanair planes to be made of wood and chartered by drunks. but the seats were made of something resembling leather and the crew even smiles at you when they wake you up and try to force you to buy shit. recommended.

i went to barcelona for two days. it was warm there. i don't want to talk about that anymore.

now i'm in iceland. it's sort of like the moon, but more expensive. luckily louisa is icelandic. icelandic guys wear suits and fedoras when they go out. they also believe in elves. louisa's fifteen year old cousin is cooler than i will ever be. i think she knows it too. tommorrow we might go see some volcanoes and geysers and things. if anyone wants a piece of lava let me know, because it's all over the place here.