An Englishman in Copenhagen
My lovely friends over at Spoiled Milk are men of many talents. Not only do they have the finest beards in Christendom, every now and then they produce actual work. Work that clients pay them for. With money!
For instance up-and-coming Dansk rock dudes Marvel Hill asked them to design a record cover. And so they did.
If there is one album that has come to somehow symbolise the last few years of my life it’s Everything All the Time by Band of Horses.
I’d explain more but I have to leave for work and my banana and yoghurt breakfast isn’t going to eat itself.
Suffice it to say that the album perfectly soundtracks the amazing highs – and lows – I have known since moving to Denmark.
All that aside, the band is finally getting round to releasing its second album and Gorilla Vs Bear has the first new track – Is there a ghost? – available as a download.
One of the attendees of mine and Spoiled Milk’s recent blogging seminar has blogged about the event.
Read Andreas Zecher’s post, and see awesome pics of uber blog geeks in action, here!
Here’s something interesting… especially if like me you’re spending less and less time actually talking with real people.
According to their site, ‘NOSO is a real-world platform for temporary disengagement from social networking environments. The NOSO experience offers a unique opportunity to create NO Connections by scheduling NO Events with other NO Friends.
These “NO” events, called NOSOs, take place in designated cafés, parks, libraries, bookstores, and other public spaces. Participants – whose identities remain unknown to one another – agree to arrive at an assigned time and remain alone, quiet and un-connected, while at the same time knowing that another “Friend” is present in the space.
NOSOs are scheduled by users through the NOSO website. They last for a duration of 1 – 30 minutes, after which participants disperse and return to their regular activities.’
I quite like the idea of organising one in Bang and Jensen, everyone turning up at the allotted hour and staring shiftily at one another before leaving en masse.
I wonder if people ever talk to one another at the events? Or maybe there’s a Fight Club-style rule which forbids actual interaction on pain of death.
I think i’d find it too tempting NOT to talk someone. Though knowing my luck the chances are that person wouldn’t be there for the NOSO and would look at me like I was some kind of madman for asking if ‘they were there for the silent meet-up thing that i’d organised on the internet’.
I’ve written to them to ask if I could set one up so I’ll keep you informed.
I just had my 20,000th hit so it seems as good a time as any to say a big thankyou to everyone who takes the time to read the gibberish I come up with.
There’s going to be some big changes soon, so watch this space.
In the meantime, thanks again. I blog you all. 
I got a call from a guy I vaguely know yesterday. He’s more a friend of a friend but he’s a nice chap, and very funny.
He had been out all night and had found his way to Bloomsday’s, my favourite bar in the city, and got my number from the bartender.
Anyway, he asked what I was doing (nothing) and said I should come down. I told him I’d be there in half an hour.
We started talking about things and he told me he’d just broken up with his girlfriend because she had found out he had cheated on her. He met a girl while he was on holiday in Turkey and met her again back in Copenhagen. But it turned out that her friend was a friend of his actual girlfriend’s.
He was swiftly rumbled.
And now he is regretful.
“Next time I’m going to a be a good guy,” he told me.
He asked if I was seeing anyone and the bartender’s laugh was the answer.
I smiled and said that I was ploughing a single furrow and that was fine for now. He said I should be looking, and dating, and sleeping with as many girls as I could.
The barman laughed again!
My new friend said that if you wanted to find gold, you have to go prospecting. “You’re not going to wake up and find a gold nugget under your pillow one morning.”
I said I’d always believed that these things happen when you least expect.
“Most of the gold prospectors who moved to California in the goldrush found barely enough to live on,” I argued.
“But at least they tried,” was his response.
The problem is I found a whole heap of gold once. And let it slip through the sieve.
I wrote a while ago about the time I put a poem under the pillow of a girl I liked.
I ended the story with me bottling the situation when she told me that she’d hoped the poem was from me.
Well, the truth is I denied writing the poem but later that evening we went for a walk and I said that even though I had not written the poem, I wish I had done.
We kissed. Under a blossoming tree, on a hot summer’s day. So long, long ago.
. . .is the latest string to the American Apparel bow.
It’s ‘underwritten’ by the company, whatever the hell that means, and is apparently playing in all their stores.
Whenever I see American Apparel ads on the net (see here for an example) I’m torn by how infuriatingly smug they are but then I realise it’s because their pitch is so ‘effing perfect and I actually want to buy into their brand.
They’ve got the 20-something-disaffected-indiekid-cool thing down pat. Who wouldn’t want to dress in artfully minimalist tees and cardigans and lounge around in boho bars discussing design projects?
Anyway, Copenhagen doesn’t have an American Apparel store as far as I’m aware but with Viva Radio you can recreate the experience of shopping in one in the comfort of your own home.
Simply turn it up (sample tracks selected at random from their playlist: Stevie Wonder – Do like you, Deerhoof – +81, Erase Errata – Marathon) and then walk around your living room trying on clothes, pausing occasionally to ask your partner for the name of the track that’s playing. What larks.
Don’t know if many of you have clicked on my link blog on the right but I’ve been adding some really interesting links recently…
In case you can’t be bothered to move your cursor that far to the right of the screen, here’s some snippets:
Brendel in Copenhagen - My friend Malou points out in Kulturchok København that the world-famous pianist Alfred Brendel is playing in Cph this Friday and links to two marvellous videos.
iFlasher: The ultimate bike lights – From Mikael Colville-Andersen’s Cycliciousness. I can’t wait for these lights to hit the market.
Nostalgia and negation – I found the Meditations on meaning blog recently and it went straight into my Google reader. Witty, insightful and profound writing from an American in the process of setting up his own start-up.
Anyway, that’s it for now. Make sure you check out the link blog for more stimulating reading. (Holy fuck, I sound like such a geek these days.)
I’ve written about both The Tough Alliance and Victoria Bergsman’s solo project Taken by Trees so when I found out the former have done a remix of the latter’s rather lovely track Too Young, it seemed right to share it.
The song is in the Box on the right and you can download it here.
