On Friday, I collated at my former boss' house together with some former colleagues to have a nice time; it was had, which the following video goes to show:
Went home semi-early, following ingestion of too much 2008 Sancerre Domaine de la Villaudià¨re, which is a white wine I really recommend. I could easily have run with any recommendation for a new wine, but as my mate Peter co-runs a site called Vinpravda, a reviews site that combines any professional reviews of wines it may find, I went with the top white and red wines, respectively, that were released to the population of Sweden this month. ((Yes, we're still forced to buy our alcohol from one outlet, i.e. the place that our government has dubbed Systembolaget.))
This wine was really easy on the palate, carrying a soft touch of wine leaf, walnut and the exquisite feel of easiness that only well-developed wines bring. A simple and matured taste, very easily drunk. It went very well with X's and my feta-cheese and spinach pie. Yummy!
On Saturday X and I went to the big city to try and find some new clothes, not to mention birthday gifts for her cousin's kids. We're visiting them in Gothenburg soon, so we were lucky to enter the realm of BR, a big toy store in the middle of Stockholm city: it felt like getting punched by a hundred colourful demons at once. Sure, I'm used to high doses of information, but I have a lot of trouble taking in little television-sets everywhere, blasting commercials about stuff that children should buy, according to multinational corporations, e.g. the Bratz dolls and Hannah Montana crap, sandwiched between Mattel and Cars.
We actually found stuff quite quickly, to my huge surprise. I mean, I thought it would be hard, but maybe our deeply rooted survival instincts kicked in and guided us towards something and out the door. Fast in, fast out! And as we were visiting the same shopping mall that contained Top Shop (especially now since the mall SOUK has been forced to shut down), of course we had to indulge in the sale that they had! I forced strongly inclined X to purchase a cardigan that would have invoked blatant banalities from Rachel Zoe ((I die. Bananas.)) but made me do rock poses and The P-Funk Sign wail in happiness.
En route through the city we saw the following desperate attempt to make...eh, Stockholm snowy? Bizarre.
Well, instead we headed to American Apparel on Götgatan where X picked up a couple of items and I a t-shirt. You can always count on them for basic wear and some times surprising you with more.
On Sunday X and I chilled, laughed at the abominable monstrosity that is Swedish Idol 2009. Every single artist fucked up, but worst of all I think was Karolina Brånsgård. Her "unique take" on Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" might well have been one of the worst performances this year, which Andreas Carlsson commented well on, saying that he now understood how great an artist Gaga is. And if you've ever heard Gaga live, you should know how well she masters her voice as well as ad-libbing her own material; Karolina had an entire week to figure out how she could make her stuff swing and came up with nothing more than sounding like a Shirley Bassey parody on downers. Speaking of a completely muted and horrid performance, Rabih Jaber also astounded me by sounding as though somebody'd punched his solar plexus just before hitting the stage. Apart from having as much stage presence as a sack of hay, his voice is that of Shane McGowan's, if you imagine Shane being castrated before the age of eight. X just informed me that just before walking on stage, Jaber was told that one of his friends had died. What difference that made to his performance I guess we'll never know, but to me he sounded just as usual. He needs to find just the right material if he's to go on here!
Picture courtesy of Camilla Håkansson, who is unable to rotate images
One of the former runners-up (who are always better than the winners in Swedish Idol) from Idolses past, Darin, opened the entire spectacle by singing a cover of Coldplay's "La Vida Loca", which he did to good effect. Cheers, you squinting #1! ((In my eyes he will always be the guy winning Idol that round. The Mick Hucknall look-a-like that snagged first place must have put something in the water to win, I shit you not.)) The only performance that could match his was Reza Ningtyas Lindh's, and she was flawed at times as well considering how broadly she cast her tones; yet all in all her voice is really good, and her talent is seldom seen! The first time I heard her I thought of Dusty Springfield, but now I find her closer to Eartha Kitt. Dizzamn! Despite her mentioned lack of concentration, talent like hers can undoubtedly never be trained, which means watching somebody like Camilla Håkansson or Mariette Hansson afterwards feels like having your eyes removed by a surgeon as qualified for the task as the Nobel prize committee is at dispensing the Nobel peace prize. Freaking hell, hearing Hansson absolutely murder the Eurythmics track "When Tomorrow Comes" by adding no original thought whatsoever was truly haunting. And Håkansson. Mother of Bog. May she only appear in front of people way up in the Swedish mountains - too bad, she's appearing on TV this Friday. And I'll be watching. And as bad as it may be, I know it will be great to some extent. It must be, right? It can't be like Håkansson's blog, where commas and full stops are never left alone.
Still, it was - as always - great fun to sit and poke fun at the goodies and baddies onstage as X and I watched it all unfold. More exciting than The Hills is right now, anyway. What the hell! Lauren went away, and what, suddenly Lo is friends with Audrina? Yes, I am addicted to this scripted shit, but watching Speidi baby-sit may well be the funniest evil slapstick devised since...the Nordic episodes of "Big Brother". You can't avoid loving that. At the same time, I'm trying to mentally shy away from the bitchiness which seems to be what the script-writers of both The Hills and The City are intent on show-casing this season. Let's hope that Whitney starts ruling soon enough.
On Saturday we watched Gus van Sant's "Elephant". It was quite what I expected, a film based on the lives of youths surrounding the Columbine school massacre, although it was disturbing to see some footage of the two lads who killed people. Somehow, this was cast in the background and as usual I feel that van Sant focuses on people's lives. The violence is in the background; Bog is in the details.
Speaking of which, we yesterday saw the first English TV film-version of the series surrounding Swedish police detective Kurt Wallander, as created by Henning Mankell. Kenneth Branagh plays the lead character. Usually, Swedish police dramas are really, really shitty. They involve the same "elite" cast (e.g. Mikael Persbrandt, Mikael Nyqvist, other Mikaels, possibly) and all act as though they have a wooden stick up their collective arse. Also, dialogue and story - which I think series like "The Wire" and the 1980s Sherlock Holmes Granada-series starring Jeremy Brett proved to be paramount - are second, if not fifth, fiddle to big names that people ought to recognise; it's as though the more recognisable a person is, the better the series/film.
In the film yesterday, "Wallander: Sidetracked", Branagh plays a very solemn, quite sad Wallander. As much as it's funny and interesting to see Sweden through the eyes of people from England - no doubt with good Swedish advice - the acting is good. The cinematography blows the Swedish detective stuff out of the water. The dialogue is standard, yet still heaved above the norm because of all the other parts coming together. It's a cohesive mass that the directors, Philip Martin and Niall MacCormick, have been quite meticulous with. I'll definitely watch the rest. This is a breath of fresh air. Enter, detective's Autumn, through eyes from the west.