I like partying on a Friday night, as the week-end stretches out a bit unlike when partying on a Saturday, where the Sunday just gets blown away by being lazy and hung-over.

After work on Friday, Jesper asked if I was doing anything, and of course I wanted to meet my oldest friend and whigger pimp, so we joined forces and went home to my place, talked, drank a little coffee and played the hell out of "Half-Life 2", a new computer game that stretches the boundaries of gaming further, sporting very nice, sometimes scary, other times exciting and action-y, atmospheres and stunning graphics. We had a blast playing it, driving a little motor-driven raft through tunnels, getting shot at by helicopters and then there's a barrage of other happenings that just make you feel like you're 12 years old again. I fully recommend this fantastic regressive behaviour.

After Mikaela and I had finished making ourselves sweet for the evening, we left Jesper to his partying at Midsommarkransen, and taxied ourselves to Frederic's place. He looked splendid and was in a very good mood. His apartment looks very nice, a great example of somebody having renovated an old, shabby place to a very modern, clean-looking apartment. Anyway, Mikaela made a lovely salad with dressing, Frederic presented a very nice zinfandel wine he'd bought on good recommendations, a few hams (including a delicious pata negra) and I brought three cheeses I'd bought at Södercheesen (which is a horrible name for a great place to buy cheese, in Söderhallarna, near where I work); a very ripened peccorino cheese, a taleggio and a cambozola, all very tasty though I loved the ripe cheese.

Patrik and Staffan came, and added to the flavour of the party. We all drank some wine, started eating and then went to the living-room where we sang karaoke. How, you ask? Well, Frederic had bought "Karaoke Revolution", an American karaoke game which one plugs into an Xbox and then sings into a mic as accurately as possible: "As players sing, they will be rated on pitch and rhythm throughout their performance with a dynamic crowd reacting in real time to each note; hit a wrong note and you'll be booed off stage." It was great fun, although the tracks were very American; the newer ones were mostly #1 hits by one-hit-wonders or crap by nu-metal bands, and the "oldies" were either disco (!) or Motown-styled hits. The latter I liked, as I sang "The Tracks of My Tears" once and then another time I did Sinatra's "I've Got You Under My Skin". Did Frederic sing "Street Life"? Hm. Staffan sang "Stop! In The Name Of Love" and Patrik sang "Hot Stuff", which is actually captured here [MP4 film, 1,6MB, QuickTime], in glory.

We then went to Kharma, a place located in the expensive part of Stockholm. I normally do not venture there, mostly because of the vast number of brats hanging out there, all with slicked-back hair, daddy's credit cards and a glib agenda, and they're legion. We went there as one of the forefront Stockholmian entrepreneurs, Ulrich, has started a club there. So we went! And the place sucked.

80SKR for an entrance fee would be OK if the club was OK, but if it wasn't for the DJ (who was good, actually managing to time the lighting with mixing tracks which is something seldom seen in Stockholm) I would have to say the place sucked immensely. Anyway, why do I dislike it? When we entered, the place was half-empty like expected (the place opens at 22:00, but people don't show up en masse until somewhere around 01:30) , but that isn't the reason to why I think the dining room/bar was totally lacking in atmosphere; the place is just a great example to why a lot of money won't guarantee a success. Comparing Roxy to this place is like comparing getting a warm, affectionate hug from a person you love, with having a heated knife jabbed into your head. Bad joke time: they've made the perfect space place! Why? It completely lacks of atmosphere!

All bartenders except for one (and there were two bars in the place) didn't really care about tending the bars, and the people that got noticed in the bar were bullies who didn't really care about others than themselves. Later in the evening, Mikaela actually danced up to a couple of beeyatches who were ridiculing one in our company and gave both of them the twin towers - two middle fingers erect. Oh, a Marilyn Manson lyric springs to mind: "I wasn't born with enough middle fingers". The main room opened appx. half an hour after we arrived, a darkish place where the good DJ was.

Anyway, there we danced [2,8MB], were covered in strobe lights [1,6MB], discovered there were no actual spaces to talk while at Kharma [1,5MB] and just had to sit down [124KB].

Nah, if I'd arrived solo at Kharma, I would have left after 10 minutes. The company made the visit worthwhile, but then again I'd have fun with these people no matter where we'd be. It was a nice night out, even though I had too many different kinds of drinks (gin and tonic, Highland whisky from 1967 (courtesy of Frederic, among a lot of drinks), red and white wine) and came home utterly intoxicated. I wasn't the swine I've been previously, though! Just tired. I almost collapsed with tiredness while at Kharma, which was the reason to why we left for home.

To conclude the club experience, I liked Cattelin a lot better than Kharma, even though Cattelin is missing some as well. Kharma is designed as a whole, while Cattelin is a little, well, patched-up. You know the feeling: something's damaged and it gets replaced with something that's necessarily not picked to match with the rest. Kharma completely lacks in atmosphere though, which is a big issue with me. The crowd was utterly boring and impersonal, mainly seeming interested in surface, no feeling. Let's see how Tip Top, formerly known as Hus1, turns out when Håkan Waxegård shapes it!