First I'll just post this link to a QuickTime-trailer of a coming film. "A Scanner Darkly" is a quasi-animated film by Richard Linklater, with Keanu "Neo" Reeves. Why is he in everything? No matter, this can be interesting. Based on a Philip K. Dick film, it's sure to involve sci-fi and...the future. The film's set "7 years from now" where "where America has lost the war on drugs". Well, throw in a bit of totalitarianism and it's classic Dick. I love stories involving a Little Person's fight against a totalitarian government. Anyway, it may be quite different from this, a trailer for "The Nomi Song", a documentary about Klaus Nomi. If you've missed it, you have to read up on the man, here.
Friday was very good to me. After work I went to Solo, where I met Rade, Frederic and Mikaela, who all acted nobly as my Taste Consultants. Frederic had already been to NK and had bought some t-shirts, but was somewhat bored with not having found anything special. My mini-spree ended with buying a Fred Perry t-shirt, a shirt by We, and two pairs of Acne jeans, thrashing my economy for this month, but what the hell. I haven't bought clobber for years. I'm not joking, it's really been years since I bought decent clothes, and if I'd went to Solo by myself, I wouldn't have bought anything, I'm sure of it, so much appreciation to the Fab Three. After Solo, we just huddled along Biblioteksgatan, the "shopping street" of à–stermalm, the expensive side of Stockholm. We got to Sneakersnstuff, a place where the owner has ADD and freaky knowledge of all things sneakery. This was too much of a combination for me, but Frederic actually ended up buying a pair of sneakers with polkadot stripes on the front tip of the shoes. Check out pictures from the shopping tour here.
After this, Rade drove us all, first dropping off Frederic and then took us to Fruängen where he had to sort out a client's computer troubles while I sorted us out by buying a bottle of Absolut vodka. Mikaela was tired, so she stayed at home, while Rade and I went to his place, vodka and PS2 in hand.
The day before, the company Rade works for had thrown a party where he'd sorted their clients out with a complete Libanese meze dining experience. As they didn't eat that much, Rade had brought tons of the lovely food home, and offered me and himself a meze party. That, combined with watching a couple of episodes of The Surreal Life, was great. Go Vern! Anyway, we then switched to drinking Vodka Russian and gaming NBA Live 2005 like crazy, until we switched on Rade's gigantic TV and watched a little Earl Boykins rule the court in NBA IRL. I came home by taxi appx. 04:00.
Yesterday, I did very little in the day. Mikaela has now, by the way, plowed through all six seasons of "Sex and the City", like lightning. Anyway, we just took things very easy. I woke at 13:00, very nice. I listened to Timbuktu's new album. He's a Swedish rapper who writes very down-to-earth lyrics. The music's basic: no reverb, bouncy electronic lines, a fat bass-sound and Timbuktu's wicked dialect. He's from Skåne, down south in Sweden; their accent is very different from my Stockholmian tongue. Historically, the Stockholm dialect has reigned the stately airwaves, i.e. on radio and TV, which has given it a boring stamp, much like the BBC has done with "Royal Pronounciation", the way the royal family of England speaks, which is why a different dialect is much liked. Having chatted with Frederic, Mikaela and I made ready to go to a dinner at Patrik & Staffan's place. So we went, and had a good time, which you can see here [MP4 film, 600KB]. Patrik had made a very nice lamb steak, with which we were served Tattinger champagne and the liver of force-fed duck (foie gras). The dinner was lovely despite my ethics having shattered; I hadn't tasted force-fed duck before, so this was the time. Paté-like, quite OK, but not very special. The lamb was magnificent, though: succulent, well-cooked, very well seasoned. Very good, Patrik! As usual, he and Staffan are perfect hosts in their way. Writing of food, here's a load of pictures of food from the past weeks. Semlae, a dish from Papa Ray Ray and Mikaela's tuna mix (next to my hummus) are among them.
We then went to Lino, but quickly skipped that idea as the queue stretched for miles. Almost. So we went to Cattelin's, where we had to queue anyway, despite my calling Hans who in turn called his friend Hans (...) to make sure we could skip the line. Hell no! The second Hans was busy dressing in drag, as he was going to perform that evening. Perform? I've only seen him hosting bingo parlors and gay places. Anyway, we waited and got in eventually. The DJ of the evening was the best Cattelin's seen (during my few times there) which doesn't actually mean much, but was alright. We danced away, drinking gin 'n tonics, until Hans performed. I should have known. He's almost two metres tall, so him on a stage miming away to old Swedish songs (which is very common in Stockholmian gay varietés) with a quite short partner was a queer (pun intended) sight. It was nice to say hello to him. Mikaela and I swooshed home in a cab after a while, leaving the lads behind.
Today I've scoured the web thanks a lot of syndicated news feeds. That's really the best way to read news on the internet. More on that here, for you newbies and others faintly interested. Now to vacuum the apartment.