Copenhagen and Beyond

2007-02-18T11:52:00.000-08:00

I am so extremely tired. I can barely keep my eyes open this Sunday evening at 8.50 p.m. Last night, while Jennie was at Frederic's party, I stayed up till too late, alphabetizing our fiction books.
I am reading Henry Miller's 'Quiet Days In Clichy' from 1956 and The Economist.

2007-02-05T14:08:00.000-08:00

[draft]

Stuck in Cairo
Chapter one

Back in his apartment, preparing for his new expat life, Arthur was watching a documentary on Beirut. Not that he was on his way to Beirut, but the show was on TV and “hey, they are all the same down there, right?!” Arthur reasoned.

After his trainee years, time had come for Arthur to show that he had ripened as a shipping man. He was being expatriated for the first time. Something he had looked forward to most of his life.
Like most young men in the company, he had hoped for a position in New York, London or Paris. But when his name was called, it did not have a New York label on it. Nor was he send to places like Amsterdam, Paris or Rome. No, Arthur was going to Cairo, Egypt.

(…)
After he came to terms with his destiny for the next three years, he would say:
“They always send the new guys to shit places like that. Take Morten; him they send to frigging Nigeria. And Peter is in Karachi now. Do you know where that is at?! Pakistan. It’s true! But then you move up. From there you go to Athens, Buenos Aires or Tokyo. And then finally, if you show that you are made of the right stuff, you end up in London or in the New York office.

Lars shook his head:
– But Cairo …?! Are you sure you are up for that? I mean, The Middle East and all …?
– It’s not exactly my cop of tea, you know? But hey, it’s just three years. And if I show, I can stomach that, people know I am good money.

But Arthur was not send to Athens after three years. Nor was he sent to Buenos Aires, or anywhere else for that matter. The company kept Arthur in Cairo. Not being a quitter, and knowing what was in store for him if his passed the test, Arthur stood his ground in the Egyptian capital, waiting for something to happen. And while he waited for that redeeming letter from HQ that would lift his Middle Eastern spell, he would say: what doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger.

But somehow, waiting in Cairo for his cue, did not make Arthur stronger. It just kept him in his place. Just like the company did.

2007-01-28T03:18:00.000-08:00

The map of Manhattan in the kitchen

The laminated map of Berlin, my coffee mug from MoMA, my day planner, Jennie's hair band and Dante's train

A live map of Copenhagen behind the small Buddha, we bought in Hong Kong

2007-01-06T11:42:00.001-08:00

A new year, here we come

Yes. A new year, and a new job. And I hate to be the annoying A student, but I simply just love my new job. Perhaps it’s mainly due to coming from a small publishing house, where the conditions for producing sound journalism were rarely optimal. To now; where I work for an online newspaper http://ekstrabladet.dk/ in one of Daneland’s major media houses, surrounded by skilled journalists.
Not to mention what it does for your morale to work exactly downtown, and not on the ghostly rim of town …
But not to worry, this childish enthusiasm will most likely ware off anytime soon. Plus; who has ever heard of a happy, joyful journalist or writer? As Hemingway once said: the most important quality for a successful writer is an unhappy childhood.

Anyway, Elijah has landed in New York, I have found a columnist for the Dallas Morning News with Norwegian ancestors and the all American name Thor Christensen (I wonder if he winds up as my friend), Peter and Martin are soon on their way to Istanbul to study. Jennie and I are getting ready for Istanbul, too, pleasure, that is. But much, much sooner, we are getting ready for Seinfeld on DVD this Saturday evening, here in Copenhagen.

2007-01-02T14:32:00.000-08:00

Apropos having your foot in the toilet; here’s a list of a few of my

Still Not Realized Projects and Ideas

1. The Following-in-Mungo Park’s-footsteps-articles-and-book project (idea born: ca. summer 2002, research is still going on. Includes the Go-see-Timbuctoo dream)

2. The Staying-for-at-least-a-year-in-Dakar-and-hopefully-make-a-theses-out-of-it project (idea born: on a warm summer’s night in 2003 in downtown Copenhagen, after a chance meeting with an anthropologist, who sat one stool away, sipping a beer and editing his Ph.D. thesis – on youth soldiers in Guinea-Bissau - outside Sabine’s Cafeteria. He told me, that Dakar is a city he would like to grow old in. That stuck in my mind)

3. The Buying-an-apartment-in-Buenos Aires-while-the-prices-are-still-insanely-low project (idea born: summer 2004, after a brief, three weeks trip to Buenos Aires)

4. The Living-in-New York City-once project (idea born, originally, after my first trip to New York in ‘96 – the idea / dream about living in New York pops up every so often. E.g. after our latest NY trip in May ’06)

5. The Magazine-that-I-will-work-on-and-still-hope-to-publish-one-day-but-perhaps-shouldn’t-eleborate-on-here project (idea born: November 2005, home in bed with my family, reading a feature article from Shanghai in the Danish daily Politiken)

6. The Management-thriller-I-am-working-on-with-Jacob-these-days-and-hopefully-will-finish-this-year-right-Jacob? project (idea born: as I recall, on Dante’s birthday in the park Kongens Have, August 2005, when my son turned 1 year)

7. The everlasting Live-somewhere-else-than-in-Daneland-at-least-November-through-March-and-live-on-the-money-from-my-publisher dream (idea born: ca. 1994)

8. The Go-see-the-Ennedi Mountains-in-Chad dream (idea born: ca. 1998, after seeing a documentary on DR 2 (Danish equivalent to PBS) on the Ennedi Mountains).

9. The Going-to-Tbilisi project (idea born: after one of the first times, Jennie and I ever went to the cinema together and watched the lovely Georgian movie ‘When Othat Left’, fall 2004)

10. The Drinking-a-bottle-of-Champagne-every-day-for-lunch idea (idea born: after reading ‘Brideshead Revisited’, ca: 2001. Gave up the idea after some quick calculations)

2007-01-01T11:11:00.000-08:00

"I love the paranormal, I'm not afraid", says a girl in a Blair Witch Project-ish tv-show. Me too, I love the paranormal, too. Which is why I keep the friends that I do, and live in the world, that I do, and live the life that I do.

So happy New Year's, huh?!

I am only slightly hung over, and not up for anything, I am just happy I don't start work until Wednesday. And a new job that is; a new place, new people, new it-systems, a new place to go to the bathroom. Great!

On Christmas Day, we bought tickets for Istanbul, Jennie and I. Lovely. I can't wait to finally go and to be in a city where East literally meets West.
I'm digressing, incoherently. Again. Time to read Graham Greene.

2006-12-30T14:43:00.000-08:00

Letter to the editor # 3b
draft

[Add to the #3: Returning to the enlargement of the EU for a moment; one of the reasons Turkey’s candidature has caused so much trouble is because of the death penalty in the country. The EU doesn’t allow new members into their club, if they execute their own citizens. ] after the hanging of Saddam Hussein, the European Union condemned the execution, while president Bush send out a statement saying among other that Saddam’s faith was “an important milestone on Iraq's course to becoming a democracy”.
- Execution and democray in the same sentence …

2006-12-28T15:45:00.001-08:00

Letter to the editor # 3

(…) As John Stewart put it when interviewed by Larry King: “It is a matter of credibility”, referring to the Bush administration’s every doing and undoing.

(…)
Another issue that is seldom a popular topic for a dinner party between Europeans and Americans is the death penalty. Again, it seems weird, to put it mildly, that a country that preaches democracy and freedom throughout the world, execute citizens of their own back home. Like my Nebraskan friend and the liberal American weapon law, I realize, that nor will the topic of death penalty be up for debate long enough to argue about it – although there is every good reason to do so. All I am asking is this; how does it make sense to maintain a Medieval legal system when it comes to the matter of life and death, and at the same time cling to words like democracy and civil rights to get the world on one’s side in the fight against the bad guys, the terrorists? As a New Yorker, who lost her brother on September 11th 2001, put it: “I can not stop thinking about the fact that my president and Al-qaeda has the same view on terrorism: They both believe, that God is on their side”.
(…)

Personally, I keep my fingers crossed for the so-called European Project, the European Union – that as of January 1st 2007 includes 27 nation states – and the enlargement of the community towards the East. I hope for a stronger Europe that will one day be sufficiently strong and determinate to grow into a true competitor to the USA – not only economically, but also politically and militarily.
I don’t harbour these wishes, because I hate America, nor because I am an anti-American or because I want the American way destroyed. I hope for a stronger Europe, because I hope it will be able to keep what the American blogger from before calls the only true anti-American entity at bay. So that everything I love and admire about the US, including its people, like a law of nature will take a step forward and take its stand – in America and on the world scene.

A word to Zbigniew Brezinski: We don’t want America to take a step back from the world stage, as you predicted in your book ‘The Great Chess Game’. We want the real America to take a step forward.

Today, Europe posses no real threat to America what so ever. If it did, we would not have people incarcerated in the Guantanamo for 2-3-4 years with no convictions (imagine how fast the American diplomacy would spin, if an American citizen was held behind bars anywhere in the world, and was not put in front of a judge for, say, a week, or a month …). Just like we probably wouldn’t have had a war that even America’s own intelligence agency could find no real ground for.

America is for Europe what China is for the US: Europe needs America’s friendship, and we try not to think too hard about the atrocities that we don’t allow our own leaders to engage in. Just like America can’t afford to loose China as good friend, no matter how much Beijing steps on human rights.

Returning to the enlargement of the EU for a moment; one of the reasons Turkey’s candidature has caused so much trouble is because of the death penalty in the country. The EU doesn’t allow new members into their club, if they execute their own citizens. Nevertheless, EU’s closest ally and partner is America.
Apparently, we can keep Turkey waiting at the door, until she puts democracy and civil rights in stead of torture and death penalty. But America is still way to powerful for Europe to demand abolishment of such institutions as death penalty and the Guantánato prison camp.

2006-12-28T13:45:00.001-08:00

Squid And the Whale

That's what we just saw on DVD; a great movie by Noah Baumbach, that reminded me of 'The Royal Tennembaums', only slightly less absurd. But why do I love the movies about the oh so dysfunctional families?! Why is that?
I asked Jennie to label those movies, that we both seem to like so much. She came up with something like 'New Yorker social realistic movies ...', but it's not quite that, is it? Don't we need the word 'absurd' in there as well? Or what?

Last night, I was at Jacob's place till 2.30 a.m. putting the first building bricks together for the skeleton to our management thriller. And the script took off fairly well. We already have most of the key characters in place plus a good deal of the companies, the sceneries and the dramas. Although this really is a small and somewhat closed curcuit, I probably shouldn't go into further details, yet ... Not before, that is, we have a signed deal with a publishing house in London or New York. Okay, so I revealed our goal ... I'll have to live with that.

Thor gave me 'The Power And The Glory', telling that I ought to read it - soon. So perhaps I should get to it ( I do prefer Orwell to Greene, though, but 'The Power And The Glory' is something of a classic, that would do me good, I reckon).

Only, it is so much easier to keep reading the biography on Allen Ginsberg, that Elijah send me: "Even at his early age he had masochist dreams about exhisbitionism and had experienced a juvenile sexuality based on urine and feces".

... 'See what I'm doing? I am talking about literature, in stead of getting my own hands dirty ...

Also, I need to get on with my 'Letter to the edtitor', which has been simmering for too long on too low heat. I need to get my original thought on print - or on screen. And I need, like everything else in (my) life, to do it now.

It's 11.16 p.m., Jennie went to bed half an hour ago, and I have got to take advantage of the quiet apartment. So, goodnight and ...

2006-12-17T05:01:00.000-08:00

Letter to the editor #2
[draft]

On the other hand …
Being wholeheartedly a pro American seems to me equally as naïve as does the counterpart position. I am the first to defend American culture, when people around me claim, it doesn’t exist. It does, and it thrives. I know it does, because I myself am a great consumer of American culture; both here, in Copenhagen, Denmark, the global village where I spend my life, and on my trips to the US, where I keep coming back to – especially since I have friends on both coasts and a wife who was born in Dallas, Texas. It gives me a chance to visit some of my favourite cultural spots in this world: New York City, San Francisco and Austin. These places can easily match Paris, London and Berlin when it comes to the production of contemporary art in general.
Not least the 20th century has been a true explosion of American literature (from Faulkner, Fitzgerald and the Beat Generation to Paul Auster and Jonthan Safran Foer), arts, movies (Hollywood as well as the independent movie productions), architecture (Chicago and the East Coast in particular), music (from Dylan to grunch) and theatre (from Broadway to the fringe scenes). It is hard to ignore the fact, that American culture is, and has been for while, a key inspiration and influence to the rest of the world, no matter where in the political debate you stand.

At the same time, it is very hard to ignore that fact, that something is fundamentally wrong with the way this otherwise so free and free spirited country, with so many great and visionary thinkers, conduct themselves politically – internationally as well as domestically.

Most people, I have met, agree with me on this, Americans as well as Danes etc. But a lot, obviously, don’t. Thus what I have finally set out to do; namely to claim the right to a balanced view on America, seems to be an impossible task. One would think, it would be quite easy to get away with such a benign wish, but it isn’t, believe me.
To illustrate my point in just a few lines, let me get back to the – on (constitutional) paper – very free society that is the backbone of The United State of America. In this country, all people have a right to speak their mind, which is called freedom of speech (the first amendment).
Unfortunately, the first amendment seems to the rest of us as a mere statement, as oppose to an actual democratic institution.

In recent times, Mr. George Bush uttered the now so famous words: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”. I don’t know, how that catch phrase has been received and debated in America, but in Denmark (a quaint, almost too preppy democracy with a capital D), such a statement would have sacked any politician by the end of the day. The speaker would have been laughed right off the podium.
The semantics alone says it all; you can not run around fighting dictatorships throughout the world, claiming to put democracy and freedom of speech in stead, and at the same time tell people what to think. This message, Mr. Bush send not only to the American people, but to anyone in the world who cared to turn on their tv-set that day. Thus, if a country decided not to join Washington on their quest for exporting the American way, passiveness alone would side them with the evil lot; ‘the terrorists’.

Similarly, when the French government a few years back [date/year] decided not to support the US in the war in Iraq, France were to many Americans considered a traitor, and French wine were (famously) pored into lakes and rivers. Why? Because French people had the audacity to speak their mind and decided not to be “with us”. The wine poring statement, as far as I am informed, was not instituted by the US government, but it still isn’t the best PR for freedom of speech, in the country that allegedly fight for exporting that constitutional right in particular to anywhere possible.

An American blogger told me, that in her opinion the only true anti American entity in the country is the Bush administration. Unless you count the body of voters, who secured the Bush Administration their seats, as an entity, she may have a point – on paper, that is.

(…)

A friend of mine from Chicago, who grew up in Nebraska, has visited Denmark three times. Quite extraordinary for anyone to visit Denmark that many times. Honestly. But my Nebraskan friend is bright man; he holds two master’s degrees, is well travelled and I have always enjoyed his conversations. They have usually been about everything; good, sound, clever conversations. But the minute I mentioned the American weapon law, he shut up like an oyster. “Mikael, I don’t want to discuss that with a European”, he said. “Why not?”, I asked. “I just don’t”.

And then to Guantanámo …

Dear readers; please comment, I know it is still somewhat incoherrent, but I am working on that.

2006-12-15T02:21:00.000-08:00

Mental Note!

Can Fox News’s ’Fair & Balanced’ be put to ironic use – in my point about the quest for a balanced discussion?
What about Steven Colbert’s speech at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner ‘06?

2006-12-15T02:00:00.000-08:00

Ding!

Okay, I can see again, so nevermind the bullocks ...

I'll be back with 'Letter to the editor #2' entitled 'On the other hand', hopefully sometime Saturday.

2006-12-15T00:55:00.000-08:00

What?

Has the whole world gone blank, or is it just me, who's in the dark, when it comes to updating the world around me? I can't see myself in the blogosphere, all I see is white - and I don't believe it's just because I live in homogenous Daneland ....
So get me back on blog, please, and let me continue my elaboration on the need for a more balanced discussion on everything - not least the view on the US in this world.

2006-12-12T13:53:00.001-08:00

Letter to the editor #1

Subject: We’re all Americans for better or for worse

Introduction: This letter to the editor - of The New York Times or any American newspaper for that matter - has been cooking in my mind for the past nine-ten months or more. To be honest, I believe it started in February 2005, when we visited Jennie’s brother John in Longmont, Colorado, and we all got to talk about the US and the rest of the world …
I reckon that this blog potentially has no more than 3-6 American readers, and potentially around 10 readers in all, counting the Danes, too. Thus, it has to be a perfect place to work on the template for the final letter. So please, all 10 of you, feel free to comment, all you like - here, or send your comments to mir@horisontgruppen.dk. I beg you, as a matter of fact.

In my mind it started out with this statement of mine:
"I am not pro American, nor I am anti American – I claim the right to the nuanced*/balanced point of view"

* “Nuanceret” (same meaning) works very well in the Danish context. But I can clearly hear that it doesn’t in English, so help me out guys; what is the word I am looking for?

Just like the discussion I can’t keep having, but seem to end up in midst of time and time again:
I was, and I still am, against the war in Iraq* - but I applaud the removal of Saddam Hussein.

No country or people, should live under a brutal dictator – but then say, that that is why you go into war, and don’t use it as a retrospective excuse, when your reason number 1, 2 and 3 turned out to be as little substantiated, as your own intelligence agency reported long before the war even started …

Just like: You don’t automatically become an anti Zionist if you criticize the Israeli government or its military actions in Gaza – regardless of what the Israeli might say. You just allow yourself to disagree with the Israeli, like any other people (which is called freedom of speech).

[Back to the letter, part one …]
By Mikael Rømer, a Danish journalist
We are all Americans, weather we want it or not: Every day a great majority of the world’s population are consuming still more American products and American culture. And every week or month people in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa are all adding yet another American-English word to their vernaculars and streams of consciences – be that trough reading, listening to music, watching movies, documentaries, the news, sitcoms or commercials (most English/American movie titles and commercials are no longer translated in Danish television or movie theatres).
IT phrases are consistently not translated in my country, Denmark, and neither are management expressions and concepts, just to mention two limited semantic areas.

So, even for people who allegedly claim to hate the US and march up and down in front of the American Embassy with banners , when ever they get the chance, even they can’t rid themselves of the American influence. They get America in through all their senses, all day long: Listening to Jonny Cash or The Eagles, loving the Cohen brothers’ or Woody Allen’s movies, freaking out to Pink or Red Hot Chilly Peppers, getting inspired by reading Jack Kerouac or Charles Bukowski, or checking out Yahoo news, whilst drinking Diet Coke, eating a Big Mac or a Whopper, and later shave their face with a razor blade from Proctor and Gamble to the tones of Gwen Stefani, dressed in Levi’s jeans … As you probably reckon by now, this list could easily fill up the whole paper. Honestly.
And no less, do the anti Americans shake the American ghost when they give the embassy the bird accompanied by the words “Fuck you” (yelled in English, mind you).

All I am saying is, that in order to be a true anti American, it takes a lot of skills shopping and consuming entertainment, not to mention tuning in your radio or turning on your tv-set. With the computer it is easier to avoid, only you have to come up with a valid alternative to Google, which may end up slowing down your anti American research ...

[end of letter to the editor, part one]

It is now 10.53, Danish time, and 'Godfather Part One' is on Danish televsion 2 in two minutes. So I am seriously thinking of leaving y'all for now, to see how much of the movie I can stay awake to, getting up for work tomorrow and all that jazz ...

And remember; please, please correct me if I am wrong; grammatically or factually – my opinion, though, I would like to keep.

2006-12-12T01:29:00.000-08:00

Husbond morning sickness

I don’t usually run around telling people, that ”we” are pregnant – I don’t own a womb, you know. Thus, we are having a baby, Jennie is pregnant and I am the sympathetic one – but not in a semantically obscure fashion.
Nevertheless, Sunday I seemed to catch Jennie’s morning sickness, only it was at night. I haven’t vomited for awhile, so perhaps it was just the universe’s way of saying; get back on the horse, and do some heavy drinking! No?! Hm. That was what I got from it.

I still have a tad of that not so fresh feeling, so I will ... be getting back to work (?).

2006-12-10T01:11:00.000-08:00

Sunday morning

I am reading my Sahara book, Dante is punching holes in a straw, and Jennie is in bed, reading the paper, trying not to feel sick. While preparing some sort of breakfast for Dante and myself (salmon / raspberry jam – but not together), I heard a show on the radio about an old submarine. The sun is actually shining, how about that ....

2006-12-08T02:06:00.000-08:00

Shiny Friday at the National Television

I am on my way to meet up with my old friend, Ole, a reporter at Danish National Television. We are having lunch at the network’s shiny new domicile, two metro stations from where I’m at. I plan on spilling my gravy down into Jeppe Nybroe’s lap – a shiny new anchor at the Nine O’clock News. Even his narration is shiny, and he has the ability to make eventything around him shine, even stories that have no point to them. Yummi. Before lunch, Ole has promised to treat me the 12 O’clok News – back stage. I am such a lucky girl ...

Yesterday at Sabine’s Cafeteria, I sat with my non-fiction reading material ‘Sahara’, when Kristine came in. “I still plan on going some day”, I told her. Looking at the cover she replied: “Something about small boys, huh?!”. “No”, I said. “Something about my old dream about crossing the Sahara”. “And something about small boys, right?”, she said grinning. People are odd.

2006-12-07T01:10:00.000-08:00

Salmon and Piano Man for breakfast

As I wrote in an e-mail to Thor around 9.20 am; this morning’s salmon went down to the sounds of Billy Joel’s ‘Piano Man’, David Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ and ‘Young American’.

Thor turned 35 yesterday, and after three hours of beer and wine (and you’ll feel fine) at Peter’s – debating our usual topics: world peace/domination and travels Kaplan/Byron-wise – I left for Temple Bar to meet up with Thor’s three person crowd. Stayed till closing, and the rest is history; salmon, David Bowie, dancing with a screaming Dante ... I am nowhere near hung over, although I would prefer to be anywhere but here. But then again; what else is new?!

Peter has already absorbed my idea about coming to Istanbul in March 07 for a visit, when he and Martin will be studying at Bilga University (sociology and political science, respectively). Turning on Google Earth, Peter gave me the tour of his beloved Constantinople with a narrator’s sound, ehh, narration of what we need to see, Dante and I.
I think our trip means more to Peter, than it does to me - with his usual enthusiasm, combined with the view of being our tour guide around town ... showing us the new 1890’s ‘latin quarter’ of Beyoglu, the big bazar downtown (primarily for tile shopping), neighbouring the dear old lady Hagga Sofia, claro, across the Galata Bridge that takes you all the way ... to Asia, my son! Oh you've been there, son, that's right ... Still: Oh joy!

And Elijah, I told Peter, that I would lobby for your visit, too. So, get back to Turkey (in March), you Turkish Speaking American (another, but not quite as famous, Bowie hit).

Words of the day, as a homage to Elijah: Habit & Connection ...

2006-12-06T00:58:00.000-08:00

New York, New York, deep sigh …

Yesterday I got this craving: I wanted to go New York again – perhaps I shouldn’t have put that Manhattan map up on the kitchen wall afterall. But it fits so well in, above the small table, just around the corner from the large map of the Caucasus ... crap.

It’s only been six months since we left our Chelsea apartment for the week, and headed for Jennie’s mum’s sanctuary in North Texas. And since the US has been on my travel schedule no less than four times for the past two years, I’ve told myself that it’s time to seek new paths in the world.
Istanbul is just around the corner, por ejemplo, and Dante has never seen the inside of a real bazar. What kind of father am I?! And then there is Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia (no, it’s not Atlanta) – which brings me back to one of the first movies Jennie and I went to see together, ‘When Othar left’, it really makes you wander, what we need Hollywood for ... and how do I get from Georgian movies back to New York City? I forget. Well, Elijah will soon be nesting big city-wise in Gramercy, and she has promised me to prefer a guest room over location, so, that’s one way to go ... I am out of order, please fix me – and afterwards; get me outahere ... to the nearest big city with a vibrant kitchen scene and extremely low rent, otherwise I’d had to work, and that really would interfere with my art of living ... etc.

2006-12-05T01:00:00.000-08:00

I may not be that late afterall, Honey

I just called my wife to let her know, that I may be in a bit later than usual today. Not that I like it, and not that I usually stay at the office till particularly late. But since I left early yesterday, and since I have to leave early tommorrow, I figured, what the hell ... I’ll stay till ... 4.30 or even 5 p.m. ...! I never saw the point in sitting with my mates, bragging about how many hours I put into my work on a weekly basis. I know people love that sport. I just don’t get it. I really don’t. 37,5 hours a week suffice, if you want my opinion.

So now my wife is probably thinking: “Then get the damn work done, and come home instead of sitting there, writing about how late you may or may not be!”. And you know what, she just may have a point. She usually does.

In the moning paper – yes, born as late as 1974 and I still subscribe to a morning paper – I read an interview with Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s father. Somehow I wish my articles could be like Wikipedia’s; and go through averagely 14 sets of hands, before finding their final forms. The article on George W. Bush, in particular, has been edited no less than 30,000 times. Well, I guess that would slow down the publication process a little. But then again, I’m not the one in a rush.

Okay Jennie, I’ll be home around 5.30, bringing the stuff for the walls ...

2006-12-04T00:02:00.001-08:00

Have fun at Hooters, Martin

So, it’s Monday morning, again, and I am expected to produce an editorial before noon – i.e. in good three hours’ time. About what?

My colleague Martin just told me, that he is staying at Hooters, in Las Vegas for the annual CES - Consumer Electronics Show - in January 07. Perhaps he is joking. I don’t care. I am just relieved, that someone else volunteered for the job, so I didn’t have to go again. CES isn’t really fun, and Las Vegas isn’t really New York, or San Fransicso, or Austin, or Hong Kong ... for that matter. So, thank you Martin, have fun at Hooters.

Meanwhile I have three editorials left to write, before leaving my job for the past three years.
Has anything happened lately, worth airing an oppionon about? Let’s see; Iraq is in the middle of a civil war, according to John Stewart, but according to G.W.B., that is not the case. Tyrkey still blocks Cypriot ships and aircrafts in its harbours and airports – which is not, I repeat not, the quickest way to the EU. What else ...? Oh yeah, a genocide is reportedly on its way in Tchad – FYI.

2006-12-01T02:25:00.001-08:00

"Start wearing purple, wearing purple/ Start wearing purple for me now ..."

Gogol Bordello, Copenhagen. Yes, the Ukrainian New Yorker Gipsy Punk band, Gogol Bordello, was in town last night. And what a fine job they did, if I may put it like that.
The lead and lead insanitist, Eugune Hütz, wore his musical and energized gipsy-weirdness with usual style, all through the concert that rocked the house, myself, my wife and my unborn second child. Say what?! Yes, you heard me.

And speaking of little people, one of the backing singers is Elijah Wood’s girlfriend – my allways well informed wife could inform me (FYI) – and she too rocked the place in her gipsy outfit, female style, throwing her huge drum out into the crowd – and herself after it.
So there she sat, on top of the drum, banging the tight skin, turning and twisting her little body, while the hands of the crowd carried her around the room. Meanwhile Eugene Hütz’s yellow and black striped gipsy pants slid down and gave the Copenhageners a still better view of his sweaty ass crack. A view that sort of tied the room together ...

2006-11-24T13:50:00.000-08:00

Home alone Friday night, starving

I am watching the late news, while Dante is fast asleep, and Jennie is out to a Nordic music event - bringing the only functionable phone in the family, preventing me from ordering in (restaurants in Copenhagen don't know how to work en e-mail address). The fridge in our new and almost shiny kitchen is empty, completely. The last meal I had was breakfast this morning. My stommack is so noisy, that it threatens to wake up Dante, whom I cannot leave to get food.

So, If anyone in the vicinity of Jennie reads this, please make sure that she gets home imediately, if not sooner, so I can go out - and eat. Either that, or pop by yourself, and please bring food.
Jennie, if you see this on your way home, please bring home some food! I beg you.

Love, the skinny one.

2006-11-24T02:12:00.000-08:00

Goodbye Fru Hansen

We said goodbye to Fru Hansen, our cat, last night. Goodbye, Fru Hansen, and godspeed. You were a good friend and a sound companion, and in the end you even almost accepted Dante, despite his noise and his not always so finely tuned motor skills. Fare well in the afterworld, Fru Hansen.

On the bright side, we now have light in our apartment and electricity in all our sockets. That may not be shining news to you. But after awhile, living in the dark, you begin to appreciate small holes in the wall to plug into. The contractors are almost at an end, which means, that I soon will have no real excuse for not writing (or reading) price winning literature. Though, from now on, I will have to do without a small creature, lying on my desk, next to the laptop, looking at me with that look of doubt: “Is that really the best you can do, Mr. writer? Do you actually call that literature?”. And then the furry beast would look away, bored. And my response would always be: ‘No of course not, Ms. Cat. I’ll get to it, right away’

And then, in the midst of writing this entry, the day care center called: Come pick up that sick son of yours, please! Yes, mam! I get to it, right away ...
Have a nice weekend, people.

2006-11-23T01:39:00.000-08:00

Thanks for your order, Mikael R??mer!

Shipping Address:
Mikael R??mer
Vennemindevej 9, 3. th
Copenhagen OE, 2100
Denmark

Shipping estimate for these items: November 24, 2006
Delivery estimate: December 11, 2006 - December 22, 2006

"Money Has No Smell: The Africanization of New York City"
Paul Stoller; Paperback; $20.00

"Lost Cities of Africa"
Basil Davidson; Paperback; $21.99

Where can I get help with reviewing or changing my orders?

2006-11-22T00:06:00.001-08:00

Emotion of the day:

Hi, hi, hi

2006-11-21T01:39:00.000-08:00

From a fixed place

Copenhagen, Daneland. Our good Hong Kong-based friend, Kanokporn, has just returned from a trek in Nepal. Elijah is doing her life-changing wine business in Buffalo/Albany, in upstate New York before returning to her Oak Street home in San Francisco. And yesterday Peter told me about his plans for the spring semester at Bilga University – in Istanbul, where the main character in my own script escapes to ...
But if anyone needs me, I’ll be right here, waiting.

2006-11-20T00:16:00.000-08:00

Smalltalk about the underbelly here and there

After a late Friday night, said the dad, in great company with my friend Øivind and German Michael Glawogger’s great documentary ‘Megacities’ – the sad and poor underbellies of New York, Moscow, Mumbai and Mexico City – Sunday was all about children’s birthdays. Later on ‘The Woodsman’, starring Kevin Bacon and Roberto Benigni’s ‘La Tigre e la neve’.
Both, more than decent movies.
Only the latter was impossible to watch without thinking of Benigni’s evenly fantastic, and even more so ‘La Vita e bella’.
‘The Woodsman’, where Kevin Bacon plays a paedophile released from 12 years of prison, was – despite the horrible topic – perhaps slightly too nice. I argued that the story would have been a tad more believable, had the main character giving in for his urge, desire or sickness and gone back on the wrong track.
It probably would have been a disgusting experience to watch. But then again, Gaspar Noé’s extremely brutal ‘Irreversible’ probably wouldn’t have left such a solid trace in my memory, had it not turned my stommack from start to end (and to top it all, I came to the cinema straight from my then proofreader job at Politiken, where I’d had spicy Mexican sausages for dinner ...).

Jennie suggested, that such a storyline (where the criminal goes back to being a crimial) would had been the easy way out for the scriptwriter. Like a story about a man and a woman longing for each other – and actually getting each other in the ending. Her point was, that the longing, the craving and the urge is all we need for tension. Pure Kierkegaard. And as for the love story plot, I concur.

‘Megacities’ ended around 2.00 a.m. Friday/Saturday. Afterwards we continued to the only open place (or so it seems), the notorious Copenhagen downtown Andy’s Bar.
Andy’s is a great mix between longbearded old seamen who claim the place, and young, clueless people determined to prolong the buzz they brought along from trendy cocktail bars around the corner.
I went to Adny’s with Øivind’s crowd, who had spend an evening in Borat’s company ...
My own interlocutor, Rasmus, is a sound Africa traveller, who told stories from his journies to the infamous ‘Kony Land’ – in Northern Uganda. Joseph Kony, not a very nice man, to say the least.

Kony’s atrocities fills up a seperate chapter in Africa’s dark history book, or even a whole book in its own right. Sadly. And since I have to get back to work, I will leave it to Glawogger and other documentarists to tell the horrible tale to a broader audience.
[The abrupt end]

2006-11-18T13:03:00.000-08:00

Black

"What's with Homeland Security's colour coding? Code Orange, Code Yellow, and whatever the fuck the others are called. And they always need explaining. No, all we need is three leves of warning: 'Jesus Christ!', 'What the fuck!' and 'FUCK ME!'"
Lewis Black, funny guy.

2006-11-17T03:19:00.000-08:00

In Mungo Park’s footsteps - again

In the mess we call our apartment, I found a book that I bought in June, but never got around to read. ‘Sahara’ it is called; an introduction to the history of the world’s largest dessert. Starting with Ibn Battuta, Leo Africanus and my old friend, Mungo Park: the Scottish surgeon, who went to West Africa in 1795 to find the mouth of the river Niger.
Reading material: Great
Result: Now I think I am on my way to the Sahara, again. Great!

2006-11-16T01:17:00.000-08:00

A ride with Musa

Yesterday I attended a seminar on the topic of change management – perhaps my last outing as trade magazine editor. A psychologist present told us, that ICT is a good means to enforce unpopular decisions and processes in the organisation. And a so called change manager from the Royal Danish Mail had brought two dolls on stage, named U. Ser and C. Ustomer. Throughout his speach, he kept referering to the dolls, pointing at them:
“So when the IT doesn’t work, do you think U. Ser [pointing] is happy? And do you think that C. Ustomer [pointing] will be inclined to pay?”.
No, we didn’t.

During the cab ride to the museum Arken, where the seminar was held, the Turkish driver, Musa, told me that: “You have a very speciel clothing style. You do know that, don’t you?!”. “No, not really”, I replied, semi-flabbergasted. “Yes you do. Not many people dress the way you do”, he insisted. “Mmm, okay”, I said. “I bet you wear totally wierd shoes, too”. I showed him my striped Paul Smith shoes. “I knew it! Those shoes are sooooo weird”, Musa said. “People tell me, I dress like a gangster. But really, what is a gangster? What is a mobster? I don’t know. But my friend Djengis, people call a gangster, and we dress the same”, Musa said, as he parked the car in front of the museum.

As the seminar ended I called for another cab, and there was Musa. He didn’t utter a word, as he literally flew the car to the train station. I fastened my seat belt and closed my eyes. At the station, I payed for the ride, and Musa still didn’t say a word.

On the train back to the city, I read Morten Sabroe’s latest, very wellwritten and very funny book ‘The Journey to America – and other wild shots’. Morten Sabroe, a regular at Atlas Bar, is a journalist and a writer, and the closest we get to a Danish Hunter S. Thompson.
In 1990 Sabroe went to Aspen to interview Thompson for a Danish daily and got yelled at for 90 minuttes, before he sat on Thompson’s hat and sunglasses and ended up with an invitation to Owl Farm.

Tomorrow; at midnight I will be at the CPH:DOX to watch Michael Glawogger’s movie ‘Megacities’: “It is both a cutting commentary on the socially marginalized and poverty-stricken and a comprehensive vision of 'the world city'. Simple craftsmen in Bombay, petty thieves and prostitutes in Mexico-City, assembly line workers in Moscow and a swindler in New York”.
Thank you, Michael.

2006-11-14T01:10:00.001-08:00

Sicko

Home in bed, slightly feverish, watching MASH and Cheers and reading the paper, waiting for the contractors to barge in any minute and disturb the peace. I wish they'd at least bring me some breakfast along with our new bathroom zink.

2006-11-13T00:24:00.000-08:00

Breakfast at Tiffany’s – dinner with Sufjan

It was a soothing experience watching ’Breakfast At Tiffany’s’ yesterday on tv. Not that I haven’t seen or read the story before. But the last time I had Truman Capote’s bestseller at hand, I left the paperback on board an airplane going from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Dallas, Texas – without me on it. I was nine pages short of the ending. Instead I got to spend four hours in Milwaukee Airport, while my wife were calming her nerves on spirits and smokes. I even have a T-shirt to prove it.

After watching old movies on a cold, rainy Sunday afternoon, we grabbed our coats and hit the Copenhagen venue Vega for an upliftling evening with Sufjan Stevens, the charming bird-fascinated musician from Detroit.
And yes; Sufjan and every member of his band were dressed in feathers, blowing away on their horns, while sufjan, the head eagle, were flapping his wings, singing his oh so euphonic and lovely disturbing and familiar tunes:
“His father was a drinker/ And his mother cried in bed// Folding John Wayne’s T-shirt/ As the swing set hit his head”

And in the spirit of the season (November?), Sufjan had brought a number of inflatable Santa Clauses, which he tossed from the stage, asking the audience to bounce them back and forth – whilst the band played ‘My Worst Christmas Ever’.

Today it’s Monday under a grey Copenhagen sky, not very Christmas. I woke up with a cold to an apartment, which is still under contruction, meaning no shower or running water – and no heat in the bedroom. I got on the bus, whith nothing but my nose running, and hit the shower in the conference center where I work. The towels I used last week still hang on a row, including the one the bicycle delivery guy used – aparently no one cares to do the laundry around here.

But I’m clean now. And I try to put as much enthusiasm into my soon to be old job as possible.
Writing a leader for a production magazine with my head full of sounds from Sufjan Stevens and his opener, the Texas gall St. Vincent. Perhaps I will begin my leader with this:
“I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighbourhoods”. And perhaps I will just put a sock in it and do my own laundry.

2006-11-09T04:23:00.000-08:00

A fresh start '07

After three years in the world of trade magazines, I am doing a 180 degree turn, when the ball drops: From January 1st '07 and henceforth, I will no longer be editing articles on supply chain management, Lean Manufacturing and other kinds of business optimization techniques.
Instead I will transform myself into an online tabloid reporter for Ekstrabladet.dk, Daneland's equivalent to The Daily Mirror.

As a New Years' resolution, I have decided to either terminate this non-blog or find out, what I want to do with it - publish more chapters of 'Escaping Orange County And Other Suburbs', or merely keep the world updated on the fascinating life of Mikael Rømer, Nobel laurate to be.

Let me just end by saying, in no context what so ever, that during a Danish journalists seminar last weekend, I met New York Times' database editor (of course NYT has a database editor ...), who is a wonderfull person and a big fan a believer og Second Life.

2006-10-25T03:19:00.000-07:00

The world in a blender

I am still not a citizen of Second Life. So needless to say, I am not practicing journalism in there, either. Not yet, that is. I am, though, still chopping wood at our temperary home in Lise’s garden cottage in the Copenhagen outskirt of Brønshøj. But only for a couple of weeks more; since we are moving back to the internet-connected civilisation in our remodelled apartment (modern people, yes) in two weeks’ time.
For now, I’m a reading Gogol in the outskirts in the 2 meters we have between ceiling and floor, drinking, when I’m alowed, and taking notes on people I meet on the bus. Like the handsome elderly Arabic gentleman the other day, who clapped his hands wildly singing: ‘Haleluja, haleluja, halejua’ to my flabbergasted 14 months old son, Dante - all the way from Nørrebro Station to The Lakes. A Danish woman next to may kept asking him to change the song. On our way home, a woman in a burka kept holding Dante’s hand. The boy just looked up in the big piece of black garment that covered everything but her eyes. Every now and then Dante looked at me – for aproval, I reckon.
My point is, that no matter how he decides to judge, whenever that time comes – and it will, mind you – his encounter with the minituare biosphere of Copenhagen will prepare him for the diversities in life. In this world and in other places like Second Life, wherever he decides to spend his time.

2006-10-03T08:09:00.000-07:00

Men in black from the local think tank

Copenhagen, Daneland. I am back. Not from outer space, but from lunch with the Danish economic liberal think tank, CEPOS (Center of Political Studies) – in Washington D.C. there’s some 30 independent think tanks, in Copenhagen, Daneland, there’s one. Please correct me if I’m wrong. Well, there’s one conservative, and one left winged.

So even though, Cepos has been portraited in the Danish media as a right winged gang, in comparison with The American Enterprise Institute or Cato Institute, Cepos is but a harmless product of the Scandinavian model, despite what people might say. But here, in faritale Daneland, land of LEGO, windpower, flexicurity and one minor Cartoon Controversy, Cepos is seen by many as Evil itself.

The chief economist of Cepos had recently been on a field trip to D.C., where he visited with fellow ‘think tankers’, a trip that clearly turned him on.
The two guys from Cepos, both in black suits, were nice and club soda-drinking fellows, who gave us some pointers as to how to get our own magazine stories qouted by the eight o’clock news. We shook hands and agreed to keep in touch, left the classic smørrebrød cafe, Kanal Cafeen, right behind parliament.

I haven’t changed. I’m still the same old beer drinking, Paul Smith shoe-wearing, politicaly centered untrained journalist who gets to discuss popular food streets of Islamabad with the taxi drivers.

On my way home, I picked up The Economist, and read about SECOND LIFE. Elijah ...? You’ve got three avatars, haven’t you? Are you still ‘playing’ in Second Life?
According to The Ecconomist, a California based psychiatrist has been inviting his students to join him in the San Francisco-based Linden Lab’s virtual world; Second Life – there, he feels, he is better able to teach the studens about schizophrenia.
Second life has one fulltime reporter, known as Hamler Au – but I am thinking of quitting my dayjob, joining Hamlet and having virtual luncheons with virtual think tankers – I plan to walk around in there barefoot, all the time, interviewing people, through my toes. But how will I support my familiy – in the real world – with nothing but Linden Dollars on my hands?
Tomorrow I’ll be in the very real Copenhagen suburb of Taastrup all day long, attending a conference on ‘mobile television’ – I will be reporting from Taastrup through my last nerve, and I think you all know what I mean. If not; use your wings.

2006-09-27T01:41:00.001-07:00

The blog is dead

Copenhagen, Daneland. This morning on my way to work, the bus stopped halfway there; “This bus does not go any further”. So I got out of the bus and into in the grey morning, and waited for the next to come. I was stranded at Mozarts Plads, contrary to what the name may indicate, a godforsaken and worn down part of town called Sydhavnen, literaly ‘The South Harbour’.
There I sat in the rain, reading The Economist’s Lexington column, this week about how American universities do everything in their power to admit privileged children and alumni offspring – hardly a big surprise – 40 pct. of the Harvard students are alumni offspring, according to Daniel Golden’s book ‘The Price of Admission’.

“I FUCKING don’t care, Oliver!”, a young mother woke me from my state of news trance. “You are already PISSING wet!”, she yelled and threw the one-year-old boy down into the seat at the bus stop. As she bend down to tie the boy’s shoe, a tatoo right above her ass crack revealed itself, and it read: PORN STAR, in big fat capital letters.

Oliver’s mum somehow got me thinking about a documentary I saw last night on DR2 (Daneland’s answer to America’s PBS), ‘Dope Sick love’ - about junk couples in New York City ...

The Bus arrived, and the next article I read, in the Danish business daily Børsen, was on the topic of blogging. According to New York Times editor Bill Keller, the blog is dead: the writers keep repeating themselves, the same topics, and the same patterns. “I think, that in order for the blog world to gain any meaning, it needs to be more edited. In other words ... look a little more like us”, editor Keller states. In that case, Keller is right; that will be the end of blogging.

2006-09-21T04:18:00.000-07:00

Food of today

Copenhagen, Daneland. I just ate a pear, and before that a Holly chocolate bar - my lunch for today (I still have a banana lying around) - and now I am on my way downtown to a meeting at the association of the Daneland specialized press - a lot less exiting than it might sound.
The topic for meeting is 'magazine concepts' - and right before I enter the building on Kongens Nytorv, I intend to buy a hotdog - and eat it too.

Last night I ate candy whilst watching 'The Man Who Wasn't There' on tv.

2006-09-20T03:18:00.000-07:00

Lubien Kujawski

Copenhagen, Daneland. Tomorrow, the Danish company Superfos, Europe's largest manufacturer of injection moulded plastic packaging ... inaugurates a factory in Poland ... I can't even begin to knowing how to answer the question of why I store these kinds of information.

Anyway, I just wanted to turn everyone's attention to the name of the city, that lies app. 200 km west of Warsaw: Lubien Kujawski. LU-BIEN KU-JAW-SKI. How about that name. I wish Copenhagen was called something like that. Just every now and then.

2006-09-13T04:23:00.000-07:00

"Our House ... in the middle of the street ..."

... for now, that is. A lovely little 'garden house', lent us by a good friend for the next month or two.
There's no toilet, an outdoor shower and we simply love it - a small paradise, 6-7 km from downtown Copenhagen.

2006-08-30T03:01:00.000-07:00

Escaping Orange County And Other Suburbs #3

[draft]

My wife was, it turned out, half American half Danish. So eventually, we decided to move to California, where she grew up, so our daughter could get a sense of both countries, or something. I can’t recall exactly the reason why. But one fine morning … so I stood there in LAX with all my belongings stashed into two bags, a small girl’s hand in mine, and my wife looking like a fish in water. Los Angeles International frigging Airport, here we come, but who the hell is Tom Bradly, anyway. I never bothered find out.

So there we were. In Laguna Hills, occasionly Laguna Beach, and sometimes in Irvine. I had no business in those places. I lay sleepless at night picking my own brain, trying to find a way out of the surburbs, once again. But this time, I was not alone, which made escape all the same more difficult.

At night, when my wife and our daugther were asleep, I sad in the kitchen writing short stories that I would send to the Los Angeles Times and to the New York Times. My secret hope was, that some people in New York would discover my writing talent and hire me to write a coloumn for the Times or the Village Voice, since with a job on my hand she would have a harder time turning down my suggestion about living in New York City. And with no Orange County to cling to on the Eastern Seaboard we might as well live in the city. Or at least, that’s what I told myself. My secret fear was, that the L.A. Times would hire me, because that would make it even harder for me to leave Orange County. Ever.

2006-08-04T02:49:00.000-07:00

Escaping Orange County And Other Suburbs #2

[draft]

My parents were both born and raised Copenhageners but ended up in Horsholm by some odd coincidence. I know a Copenhagen surburb like Horsholm don’t mean the darndest thing to you, so let me just explain, that in round numbers it’s the wealthiest parish in the country: take a look at the mansions down in Newport, and you have got a pretty good clue, as to what I’m getting at. Because that’s what it looked like, where most my friends grew up, and on whose private shores I washed up again and again as a child playing in the sun and later on as a hapless teenager trying to pick up some maners among the offspring of Daneland’s Old New Money – you’d probably denote it plain old money, but in Daneland that term is reserved for the true old boys’ network who taught eachother – and the residing girls – undoings in the dormitories of the infamous 16th century boardingschool sixty miles south of Copenhagen. Only nowadays even New Money send their kids to school there. I am neither, but I once wondered why the Crownprince and his younger brother didn’t attend Herlufsholm, but it was problably to prevent them from banging their brains out, as it is customary down there, and instead keep them to the books during their royal hormon bursting teens.

Growing up in surbuban Horsholm, all I could think about was to graduate high school and go find my roots in the city of Copenhagen. So that’s what I did, thouroughly, I mind you, for ten-fifteen years in the underbelly of the city. Through filth and hoplessness, rejection and in hole-in-the-wall bars downtown. Stubbornly I pulled all-nighters on the wrong side of the bar, went through part-time jobs alphabetizing files, working night shifts at gas stations for ten cents extra per hour after six p.m., proofreading at the biggest Copenhagen daily for highly payed, ungreateful and slobby reporters, discovering Europe and the Americas on a shoe string, vomiting on Fifth Avenue in New York City half an hour before the Gay Pride kick-off, dropping out of college more than once, seeing my fairly large family disintegrate into a set of parents and a bad excuse for a Christmas Eve. And I know you expect me to blame my parents or my upbringing in posh Horsholm for all this, but I prefer to see as a need for a guys’ night out, that extended into a predictable nothingness, went out of hand, and simply had trouble finding a proper closure.
See, my going to the dogs continued aimlessly right up untill my wife came along. She literaly collected me from the gutter one warm summer, and night after night rode me back home on the back on her bicycle (in Daneland, grown-ups on bicycles is not an outlandish sight), until it sank in, and I realised, this was my way out, up or through, pick you direction. My wife boils the whole damn thing down to the longest adolesence she has ever witnessed. And you know what, she might just be right.

So basically I quit drinking, for awhile that is, and I never picked it up again, quite the way I left it. I feel like a god damn saint. I even have a retirement fond now, will you belive it!
But after the toxins slowly oozed out of my alchohol soaked body that summer, I took a sober look at her, this woman who couldn’t care less about my literary publications. She was a keeper alright, not a shred of doubt about it, only I didn’t know how to keep her. I was under no misaprehension that she believed she had struck gold by digging me up. I sure as hell wasn’t a keeper myself. No looking in the mirror was nessesary to double check. In Daneland we have a saying, that
’need learns naked woman how to spin a yarn’. And as I was butt-naked that summer, so I spun. I spun like a frigging Loony Toone, and it payed off. One day she was pregnant. No fun running away now, huh, I thought. Long story short she put up with me, figuring the kid needed his father, and after checking my mental credential, I ended like a cat on all four. On a leash, though, but with a family now.

2006-08-03T06:31:00.001-07:00

Lesser than Joyce, less tiresome ...

Copenhagen, Daneland. Vanja is turning 12 today. So that’s where we’ll be tonight; at her Angolan dad’s in ‘North West’ – Copenhagen’s where-the-sun-never-shines part of town.
And speaking of darkness, I’m reading James Joyce at the moment; ‘Portrait of The Artist As a Young Man’, which is a great work of art, but somewhat tiresome reading.

Less great, but hopefully also less tiresome, is my own work-in-progress ‘Escaping Orange County And Other Suburbs’. A story that came to life in a mall in Irvine, California in February ‘05, listening to Elton John-muzak, while my wife tried on clothes. It’s my first real attempt to write fiction in someone else’s vernacular; my Texas-born wife’s, my close Californian friend Elijah’s. Both of them has a gift for narratives, but they collectively refuse to tranform their talents into fiction. You’ll find them at http://copenhagenfollies.blogspot.com/ and http://ubergirlelijah.blogspot.com/

... draft # 1:

Escaping Orange County And Other Suburbs #1

It was my second time in Los Angeles, without actually being in Los Angeles.
But who live in L.A., anyway, I mean, people either live in Long Beach, West L.A., Malibu or some surburban sanctuary in O.C.

My first shut at Los Angeles was Marina del Rey. Do you know that area? I mean, do you really know it? I didn’t. But being a newcomer and all, I figured there was a good ring to the name, in its own worn-out sort of way. On my first drive through Marina del Rey, I couldn’t even tell the difference between there and Venice. So exstatic about the fresh start, away from Denmark, we rented a house in Marina del Rey, my wife and I. But only for a short while.

We ended up staying exactly one week in that house. To quote one of the greats, Charles Bukowski, ”We got in the Volks and heading for Marina del Rey. Strange territory”. And so it is.

But as it turned out, that was my only shut in L.A. My wife looked at me like she was saying, ’Is this really the best you can do?’. ”Hell, you’re the one who grew up in this country, you pick a spot”. But that was a big mistake. She started packing, before I had finished the sentence, and now I was stuck in Orange County.
Not that I mind Orange County, I just happen to be a city person, that’s all. Had I setlled in France, I’d be living in Paris or Lyon. Had I been from Argentina, I’d probably live in San Telmo, right in the heart of Buenos Aires. Hell, even back home in frigging minature Daneland I lived in the capital which despite its rather junior size remains a city with all there is to it. Like San Francisco or Austin, Texas, only smaller – everything is smaller in Daneland, even the military threats are smaller, but that’s a whole other story.

In California, to get my daily fix of urbanity, I divided my time between Orange County and Venice Beach and downtown L.A. My wife loved California, where she grew up, but loathed Venice. ”We will never live there”, she told me, when she found me browsing through the papers in search for houses in Venice. ”Why?”, I asked. ”If I’d had to look at those freaks every day, I’d crack wide open”. ”But honey, we wouldn’t nessasarily have to live directly on the boardwalk”, I tried. ”There are other places in Venice”. ”True”, she said, like that solved anything. And somehow that was the end of the discussion. We found a place in Orange County, wich reminded me of the filthy rich northern suburbs of Copenhagen, where I spend my adolescence.
(...)

2006-07-25T00:46:00.000-07:00

Sufjan Stevens in my face

Copenhagen, Daneland. Hommage to Lauren Gitlin, Rolling Stone Magazine. I know her through a Spanish-American gay couple, whom I met at a family restaurant in the neighbourhood Naviglo in Milan, when I was there in March ’04 to do an interview with a Danish artist.
Thank you Lauren, for introducing me to Sufjan Stevens and his ’50 State Project’, and thank you for sending me Stevens' cd 'Illinoise'. Best of all; the magical singer songwriter from Michigan is comming to the center of the world to play his arcane glimps into the universe at the Copenhagen venue Vega on 12 November 2006 ...
Tickets, check!

His father was a drinker
And his mother cried in bed
Folding John Wayne's T-shirts
When the swingset hit his head
The neighbors they adored him
For his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things
Rotting fast in their sleep of the dead
Twenty-seven people, even more
They were boys with their cars, summer jobs
Oh my God

Are you one of them?

(‘John Wayne Gacy, Jr.’)

http://www.sufjan.com/50states.html

2006-07-20T03:55:00.000-07:00

Jean-Paul Sartre:

Copenhagen, Daneland. L'enfer c'est les autres ... (1964).

Sushi, wine and badminton in the park by the national gallery yesterday. As we came home, barefooted, I stepped in cat droppings in the dark hallway.
No writing.

2006-07-07T03:19:00.000-07:00

Without Title (2006)

Copenhagen, Daneland. BBQ yesterday in a Copenhagen city court yard, drinking wine and grappa till 2 a.m. with my family and old friends, getting up in the early morning, functioning workwise, or close.
I only read a bit these days, I don't write any. Sad, and probably due to apartment mess, that will last at all least through october when new, but hopefully not too shining, kitchen and bathroom are a matter of fact, instead of now; a collectors' item for people like the staff at The Tenement Museum on New York's Lower East Side. A crappy excuse for postponing the work I need to get done on my Istanbul script, I know.
Good news is; Jennie's close Pakistani friend, Irem, is getting married somewhen next fall. And we are invited for the wedding - in Rawalpindi ...!
Thank you, universe. That event, I am sure, will prolong my life by at least six years and eight months.

2006-07-03T23:13:00.001-07:00

Monday

Copenhagen, Daneland. Throwing out a big piece of brown furniture, with a little help from my friend, Martin Nyrop, whom I brought along with Jennie and Dante to our new, local, wateringhole, Café Pixi, some 900 meters away. But, and perhaps more inportant, I have taken the low bench from the hallway and put it on our very tiny balcony, where it makes a perfect reading place with the flowerpots as not at all bad resting places for wineglases.
No writing yesterday, no magazine dreaming/working, no wallpaper fight – except from cleaning up after the cat, who aparently considers pieces of torn wallpaper on the floor as one big cat toilet.

2006-07-03T01:36:00.000-07:00

Back in business

Copenhagen, Daneland. Please, give me a break! But I can't have that, now can I? Because I just had a two months long break. So here I am, checking 1,055 e-mails, reading through recently published magazines, doing my job. It is summer in Copenhagen, that's all I can say. The sun is actually shining, not very Danish, I tell ya', but very welcome. So I take pleasure in Erich Maria Remarque's prose, and dream myself down to the Swiss Alpes, and into my own novel script, that is slowly coming back to life. Here's to all of you out there, who makes it all worth while!

2006-06-26T23:15:00.001-07:00

Istanbul MS

Copenhagen, Daneland. After last night's entry, I found the Istanbul MS and read through all 48 pages and was done around 3 a.m. From what I remembered of it, I had almost decided, that it didn't work, that there were too many loose ends, that the whole story was too private. But it works. I haven't read the story for a year or so, and a fresh look at it was such a good experience. There are lot of loose ends, so I will have to do a lot of mental sit-ups in order to get from note & anecdote collection to an actual cohesive narrative. But I need to do the work, and I need to do it now. It's 8.17 a.m. and I'm of to the dentist ...

2006-06-26T13:05:00.000-07:00

Day one of Last week of leave

Copenhagen, Daneland. Jennie is watching a documentary on Iranian women's legal problem when they try to divorce their husbonds, I have been out in the rain twice today, we started taking down old wallpaper today, and yesterday at a spontatnous luncheon at Café Frontpage with Jørgen, close friend, theologian, musician and more, I was reminded - once again - that journalism is not enough, that I need to find time to write prose again. I have even started reading again; Erich Maria Remarque's 'Heaven Has No Favorites'. And now, I am thinking of going back to my old idea of a fixed, daily writing time, say 10-11 p.m., if no more. I need to find out if I need to do what I think I need to do; and forget about blowing life into the Istanbul script.

2006-06-25T02:55:00.000-07:00

Fiction, yes - but with my name on it ...

Copenhagen, Daneland. After a long day with good friends in their garden in Brønshøj on the rim of Copenhagen, I met up with Thor yesterday at Stefanshus Café. He brought me up to speed on his short story, the Cat Story. He has been writing a good part of it, whilst living in our apartment, at the time we were in Hong Kong. The Cat Story is pure fiction, only the main characters shares the name of my wife, my son and myself.
It will be an interesting test in how to separate fiction from real life. My plan was to laminate the story and hang it in the bathroom for guests to read. But Thor told me, that it might not be wise, and that it may not be for everyone to read. The story contains, among other, the funeral of one of my close friends, in what appears to be ten years from now.

I have always been a fan of documentaries; combining real life with the art of literature (E.L. Doctorow's 'Ragtime' is a good example), and just this morning I read an interview with the Danish-Argentine writer Pablo Henrik Llambías, who can't stand writers who pretend not to be in their own stories.
A couple of years ago, I wrote an entire essay devoted to that subject alone. Now, I find myself, vividly, in the middle of such work of fiction. I look forward to the day Thor writes the last word in his story and hands me the product. I look forward to that day, with anticipation, curiosity and trembling fear. One thing is to keep writing your own life and yourself into stories and into the world of literature - to live in literature - another thing is to read about someone else, in literature, who shares your name - and your life. Because although this person is a creation of fiction, he does share your identity and has, so it seems, taken over your life - and you have no say in how he decides to govern it. I am spooked.
Homage to Paul Auster, I say, and good luck to me!

2006-06-21T00:16:00.001-07:00

On important blogging (continued)

Copenhagen, Daneland. So here is what I ended up doing, last night: I opened a beer, spend some time on Sylvester's blog, read trough The Economist, read one page of 'Ham on Rye', looked at maps of Pakistan and Southeast Asia, thought about opening my Orange County-script file, but didn't.

Summer in Copenhagen is over. The sky is grey, our national colour in this country - in my profile it says "My main object in life is: never to live in Daneland November through March", I am now thinking of substituting "March" with "April". Dante chases the cat when he is not, like right now, eating my Marcel Proust books - he has now moved on to John Fante ...
I need to write the last bit of an interview I made in Hongkong with a Danish designer. Perhaps now (9.19 a.m.) is a good time to do so. Also, I need to take a look at the O.C. story.

2006-06-20T15:00:00.000-07:00

On important blogging

Copenhagen, Daneland. Around 10.05 p.m. tonight I felt hungry. But I didn't feel like cooking. So I picked up the phone with the intention of ordering food. But at two pizza places and one Thai food restaurant, the kitchens had already closed - and I was out of phone numbers. This is supposed to be a big city, or bigger city, and yet the consensus closing time is 10 p.m. in this part of town? Anyway, I hopped on Jennie's bicycle and rode down to Østerbrogade, the main drag here in Copenhagen's answer to Scottsdale, and found another Thai place, still open: Silom Thai, where the kitchen closes at 11 p.m. So I had chicken with cashew nuts and beef fried in basil and chili whilst watching the late news and an old episode of Will & Grace. Which brings me to my point: Yesterday, outside Nørreport Station, I ran into Sylvester, a theologian, musician, writer and oh so much more. We decided to sit ourselves down and have a quick spontanous talk about our ongoing project of publication for a qualified audience and at the same time obtaining a platform for qualified criticism, and not least the need for global documentations on local day-to-day changes; in our case: Copenhagenisms. But before our big plans, blogging came up. Sylvester, like myself, has been ifffy about why or how to blog. - My initial thought was to be arcane in every line I posted, and only to publish what could be justified as great literature in one way or the other. That has not quite been the case. Sylvester, on the other hand, has decided, that every entry he writes, has got to contain knowledge - and for every entry, he needs to read one book. I like the idea - and I admire the disciplin ...
Last year, when Jennie and I were in Orange County, I started writing something I called: 'Escaping Orange County And Other Suburbs' (I myself grew up in a Copenhagen suburb, not unlike Newport Beach). This year - when we were back in O.C. - I continued the story, and I believe I have found a plot for it, too. I told Sylvester, that I've been thinking of putting small chapters on my blog. One for each day. To keep my promise to myself and write literature in this particular non-space. And to keep the story going. I am still thinking.

It's past midnight now. Warm Copenhagen summer night. Jennie is reading up on the last bit for her Finish exam tomorrow. And I am thinking about reading 'Ham on Rye' by Charles Bukowski, and take a break from my Hong Kong-China-Pakistan reading. But perhaps I should read the piece on Google in The Economist first ... or just open a beer and hit the tiny balcony and enjoy the darkness and the sounds of police sirenes, I mean, now they are here - big city sounds and all that jazz ...

2006-06-18T15:18:00.003-07:00

Can Stephen Colbert live with us, Mum?

Copenhagen, Daneland. When we were in Texas, Jennie recieved an e-mail from her sister, Andrea in Ann Arbor, with the clip of Stephen Colbert's speech at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner. I have just watched it again. And oh how I love it. It is the best political satire, I have seen for many years. I can not believe how cool he plays it. I wish Stephen Colbert would swing by Østerbro for dinner every once in awhile, bringing along Steve Buchemi, Sufjan Stevens, and perhaps the singing nuns from the Scarborough Fair in Waxahachie, Texas. Then, I would probably stop complaining, even about the Danish climate.

2006-06-17T15:02:00.001-07:00

Hong Kong will have to wait, Sylvester ...

Copenhagen, Daneland. Today was a walk in the park, literally. After getting my head back on, recovering from a junior size hangover, the small family headed towards Fælledparken, where Jennie drowned herself in her Finish notes, and Dante and his portable cardboard boxes enjoyed eachother's company, while I drowned myself in book purchases from Dymocs Books in Hong Kong; 'A History of Hong Kong', and 'China - and Southeast Asia'. Not bad, lying there on the grass, reading, while the kid plays and the Danish band Kashmir was playing as well, just a football field away on the national stadium, Parken. Later on, whilst cooking, I listened to a radio program on the subject of, well, blogging ... from the living room I could hear Jennie singing along on The Star Spangled Banner, as the world cup match between the USA and Italy was about to kick off, "You are part American, Dante, so you need to learn this song", she told our ten months old son, who sat on her arm looking at his mum singing very loudly, and very much out of key.
I can see how I make the whole return to Daneland seem like seeing a long lost friend. It's not quite so. Actually it has been odd for the both of us. We are not moving to Hong Kong, quite yet. But experiencing Hong Kong, just a quick two weeks taste, was enough to remind ourselves, once again, that great places exist outside of Copenhagen, where our lives would make just as much sense as here in Daneland's capital, how charming and soulfilled it may be, particularly during the very few summer months. And Hong Kong is definitly one of those places. Like New York City, there is a lot of energy in Hong Kong, but concentrated on fewer square miles. Plus, the modernity of the city is mixed with ancient market forces, rituals and an intangible Eastern feel that transcends Hong Kong from the island's main areas; Central, Causeway Bay, SOHO and Wan Chai, through the crazy market streets on the Kowloon peninsula to the tranquility of the outlying islands. We need to go back. And I am working on it. With all I have, full time, till my dayjob starts again, 3 July ...
- And yes, Dante is drinking a Tsin Tao at Sun Kwong Chui Chow Restaurant, aka Spicy Crab, in Wan Chai - he was teething, and it was on doctor's order ...

2006-06-15T02:12:00.000-07:00

Details of today I

Copenhagen, Daneland. Jennie's at the university, studying for her 'Finish dialects and variations'-exam. Dante is throwing around with cardboard boxes, and I am enjoying this Thursday (this morning over the telephone, Thor told me that it is NOT Friday), trying to get my act together and planing my future. Nothing more. Oh yes; after Thor has been looking at the map of Capri for two whole weeks, whilst living here, taking care of the cat, I have taken down the Capri map and put up one of Manhatten ... Thor quickly found the highest peak at Capri, 588 meters above sealevel. Still he insisted, there had to be an even higher peak on the island, and kept stirring at the map for 14 days, in vane.

2006-05-29T16:28:00.001-07:00

Hong Kong, looking back ...

Back in Copenhagen, Daneland.
I am in the process of rethinking the reason d'être of this blog.

After six amazing weeks out there - in the world - we are back in Copenhagen, where it is actually summer, go figure ... Meeting up with good friends (Elijah, this is your moment, darling) in California and New York City, and getting together with familiy in Texas and California, too, was great, not least for young Dante. But Hong Kong was something else.
Just a few hours after we threw our suitcases on the living room floor in our old Østerbro apartment, I am uploading pictures of amazing Hong Kong, but can't for some reason be bothered to tell the tale. Now that's wrong, that much I know. My indolense is probably due to already having told the stories ten times or more, verbaly or trough letters, postcards, e-mails and to my own notebook. Not that the tale of Hong Kong doesn't deserve to be told yet another time, because it certainly does. You see, I am also in the proces of putting Hong Kong in the lead of my own private top ten list over cool cities of the world, which New York has reigned since my first visit there i 1996, only slightly threatened by Buenos Aires ...But since I can't even be bothered to tell how Hong Kong came to push New York of its first place, other than: ... 'this is the city where East truly meets West; a modern metropolis with all the modern city's conveniences and yet with all the Asian street markets so near and intact (Kowloon, Wan Chai, I declare you my love ...! ... and Thomas & Kanokporn, thank you for all, not least for introduccing us to 'Spicy Crab' aka Sun Kwong Chiu Chow Restaurant in Wan Chai)' ... I am now realizing, that a blog is only worth something, if it is kept as a blog, 'maintained' on a something close to a daily basis. I had hoped to do this, especially whilst travelling, only I didn't. I may be a writer, but I am first and foremost an Epicurean; I have my cake, eat it, too, and relax from day one of any six weeks long vacation granted me.
And so now we are back, and I celebrate the fact, that my paternity leave lasts three more weeks, by, soon, emptying the first of hopefully many bottles of red, before it's back to the editorial labour in the minor Copenhagen media house where I slave my day away, before the script is done, and the advance from the publisher is large enough ... so I can grab my lovely family and get out there again, in the world, with no return date, to New York City, Dakar - Hong Kong?
Was that clear?

2006-05-29T14:35:00.000-07:00

Tourist trap lesson #1

River Walk, San Antonio, Texas. The old mission town of San Antonio in the deep south of Texas, is a lovely little place - poulated by 1,2 mill. people - with a beautiful river, which of course has been taken over by the restaurant business and branded as the spot in San Antonio.
The tiles are all over the city, which I recommend other (not least Danish) cities to copy.

2006-05-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

Literature lesson #1

Irvine, California. Dante is reading/eating the graet Dane and Nobel laurate Henrik Pontoppidan in Patricia's city garden in Orange County.

2006-05-27T09:15:00.000-07:00

Writer's blog

Irvine, California. After a way to short week in New York City and two weeks with family in Texas, we have reached the Golden State. Orange County, to be exact.

When I began writing this blog, I really had no idea, as to why I did it, beside to have a go with a new type of media. One purpose, though, I believed it may fit was as a means of communication, whilst traveling. And here I am, on the road, in the air, and the only way I have communicated, thus far, is through personal e-mails and old-fashioned letters - you know; papers in an envelope with a stamp on it, and down the nearest mail box.
I will say this, though, for travelling in Southern California; if you ever come close to Indio/Cabazon on your way from L.A. til Palm Springs, drop by Hadley, where the good people are serving the most amazing date shake, and has done so since 1931. Oh it's good, and a trip worth. We passed by on our way down from San Jacinto Mountains - yes, even big city people once in awhile need some clear mountain air in 6,000 feet above sea level. Idyllwild did the job, and so did The Hidden Village, a Chinese restaurant in the small town, run by the son of the infamous tv-chef, Yann Can Cook. Also I recommend The Greek Place.

I will leave you with Paul Bowles' definition on a traveler, according to the character Port, from Bowles' novel 'The Sheltering Sky' (1949):

"He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another".

2006-05-02T10:03:00.000-07:00

Prolific Tuesday II

Copenhagen, Daneland. Afternoon beers with Thor at Sabine's is over and done with, and the keys has been passed on to the poet of Copenhagen's North West; thus someone will be there feet the cat, Fru Hansen, while we're gone - and after Alexandra leaves for Lisbon to meet her relatives- Somewhen around June 1st. Thor claims he has a short story that needs to be written in our old, spacious, worn down apartment, so everything adds up.
I'm off to dinner at Alexandre's, in downtown, bringing one cat, Copenhagen microbrew and a lot of stories that doesn't add up. New York City, two days and counting ...

p.s. no additional maps are up.

2006-05-02T01:45:00.000-07:00

Prolific Tuesday

Copenhagen, Daneland. I am stalk naked, 10.43 a.m., this Tuesday morning. All I have accomplished so far, beside drinking exactly one cup of coffee, has been reading one small article on the Copenhagen Tivoli's new Mary-go-round, where the seats are made of plastic, suspended in necklace-thin wires 80 meters above the ground. That's all. Oh wait, there's more: I have just made plans to meet Thor for late afternoon beers at Sabine's around 5 p.m.
Perhaps I should spend the remains of the morning hanging up another map somewhere in the apartment ...

2006-05-01T01:13:00.000-07:00

Done

Copenhagen, Daneland. To quote great literature: 'Oh yeah', my first day 'on leave'. It's 10 a.m. this Monday morning, and I writing silly postcards, to good friends - I even make them rime. I promised myself, weeks ago, that when I left the editorial office Friday, my desk would be clean - and my face, too. Sadly, and all too predictable, that was not the case. At 8.30 p.m., Friday, I was not near done, and I had two theologians waiting for me in a bar called Pixie on Østerbro - I have finaly succceed in bringing people to my Mr. and Mrs. Nice-hood. So, fairly guiltdriven and annoyed with myself, I threw down Hoegaarden, Brooklyn India Pale Ale and gin and tonics like there was no tomorrow, whilst eating the one person tappas and discussing the spirit of our time, and how to capture it, with Jørgen and Sylvester.Yesterday I did what I had to do, and finished the remaining four articles, I had left hanging. Lovely; now I have two months to look forward to, with not thinking of much other than gin and tonics, microbrew, literature, my small family and how to seize the world with a pen.
I have just put on Anibal Troilo, a cd that I bought in Buenos Aires i June '04 - and you have to trust me on this: it makes more sense, than anything I have done at work for weeks.

2006-04-28T01:25:00.000-07:00

Travel plan for May-June

Copenhagen, Daneland. Just to make sure, no one has got any wrong detail; this is how the story goes:

Thursday, May 4th: Copenhagen-Newark
Thursday, May 11th: Newark-(Milwaukee)-Dallas/Fort Worth
Monday, May 22nd: Dallas/Fort Worth-LAX
----------------------------------------------------------------
Wednesday, May 24th: Irvine, CA-Idyllwild, San Jacinto Mountains
Friday, May 26th: Idyllwild-Irvine, CA
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Monday, May 29th: LAX-Hong Kong
Tuesday, June 13th: Hong Kong-(Amsterdam)-Copenhagen

I hope yo see you all either on the East Coast, the West Coast - or in Asia ...
All the best, and more ...
Mikael

2006-04-27T02:37:00.000-07:00

Copenhagen Grey

Copenhagen, Daneland. I am back from my brief voyage to Århus - the city where restaurants close at 9 p.m, aparently. Not a good premise for any country's second largest city, I would say. After five (5) attempts, we ended up in Århus' tourist area Åen, 'the stream', and found a restaurant which is actually called Römer. Nice name, I thought, and convinced myself that I ought to feel at home in a place that almost shares my name.
Allan, my editor, and I were the only ones there ordering fork & knife-food, and was thus treated accordingly. Perhaps the hapless youngster in sneakers thought we were big city food critics - despite being a small country, the different Daneland dialects are very hard to miss. Grappa, though, was a foreign word at Römer. But by then, the bottle of Morgon (a couple years younger than announced on the card) and three hours of storytelling mainly about food - and about travels involving great food experiences - had soften our view on Århus and the young kid, who clearly did the best he knew.

Back in Copenhagen the sky is Daneland Grey, a colour every child learns to deal with from early age. But in exactly one week, we'll be strolling in Central Park togethter with Woody Allen and all the other New Yorkers, who gets their daily park-fix there - exactly ten years after my first trip to the urban sanctuary of the western world no 1 (where I was kicked out of Polyester Club for being too Danish or too studid, I forget). After a week in New York, and after 12 days in Texas, the trip continues to California, where the latest news is, that Patricia, Jennie's godmother, has rented a cabin in Idyllwild in San Jacinto Mountains ... same place a fellow Dane recently got lost for days and almost lost his life.

2006-04-25T01:09:00.000-07:00

2 hours of sleep will suffice

Copenhagen, Daneland. Aparently, I have replenished my energy depots - so my body tells me. This morning on my way to work, my radio (or my inner voice) told me about a method, by which you can train yourself to go into REM-sleep immediately after closing your eyes. This way you can avoid any 'unecassary' sleep, that most people endure on an average night's sleep. Thus, no more than 2-3 hours of sleep will suffice for replenishing your energy reservoirs. Somehow it sounds awfully machine-like, but perhaps it's the answer to all my prayers: More hours in the day to do bring greatness to the world.
I just came out from the metro train, when I turned on the radio, so I only just caught the name of the method. Now it's gone. Anyone ...?!

Later this Tuesday afternoon, I leave for a conference which takes place tomorrow in Århus - capital of backwater Daneland, or the second largest city in the country, if you will (pop.: 300.000) - a three hours trainride from center of the world; Copenhagen.
In Århus, I am expected to listen carefully and take useful notes for at least two clever magazine articles. All I need is 2-3 hours of sleep tonight, after dinner and a movie with my editor, the former communist/advertising agency director, in what is considered the most snobbish city in Daneland - due to some weird Copenhagen complex. It's the same all over the world; eeeeeverybody hates the capital. I am rambling, and I am fully aware of it.

Mental note: Yesterday, at least 23 people was killed in Dahab, Egypt. In February 2003, I spend four days in Dahab om my way from horrible Hurgahda to amazing Cairo. Today a highway bridge in the Danish region of Nordjylland has crashed - at least one is reported killed, five is seriously injured.

2006-04-23T03:49:00.000-07:00

Vaccination that will last for the next 20 years

Copenhagen, Daneland. Sunday afternoon, and I'm at the office - ironically enough it was only yesterday I watched the really not very important movie 'In Good Company'. It shows, if anything, that only people with no life works Sundays. Bummer for a bithmark, Hall. Sad indeed, but hopefully this quiet time - with noone around, but traffic 100 yards away - will bring me ahead of things and much closer to the clean desk Friday. How sad.
I do feel life, though, in my left shoulder from the pin prick Friday afternoon - and we're ready for Hong Kong. The hepatitis A shut I got, was my second and thus the last one I need for the next twenty years.
Yesterday we had lunch with Irem, Jennie's very good Pakistani friend, who grew up here on Vesterbro (left girl, tooting her horn, three photos down). Irem, a trained schoolteacher, works for the Ministry of Integration, and travels to Pakistan every so often. Her father recently build a house in Rawalpindi, twin city of the capital, Islamabad. Irem is going there with her familiy in October - and again in February 2007 ... with us. So we agreed yesterday! I make sure to tell everyone, so there'll be no turning back. 3-4 weeks with the small family, Irem and her familiy spread over Rawalpindi, Lahore and the megacity of Karachi.
So, in eight months time, it's back to the needle job to prepare ourselves for more of the world. For now, it's plain editorial-office work, for the remains of the afternoon, this cloudy Copenhagen April-day.

2006-04-20T22:34:00.001-07:00

Citypeople always talk about cities - and other citypeople

Copenhagen, Daneland. Woke up insanely early again this morning, after yesterday's dinner with our good friends Jens and Louise in the somewhat more funky Copenhagen-area of Vesterbro (old working class-junky-prostitution-quarter, now gentrified for Daneland's urban creative class - Thank you, Mr. Florida!).
Jens has just returned from his best friend's wedding in Shanghai, and last night's conversation was all about the world and the weird places in it - not least what we consider center of the world; our small town homogenous but somehwat vibrant capital of Copenhagen. The conversation was all about opium in China, the danger of Surburbia (rules & regulations) Daneland's favourite topic these days - religion - and surprisingly little about the otherwise fabulous microbrewed beers I had brought from what I consider the best equipped kiosk in town. Thus; Californian Sierra Nevada and Belgium Corsendonc went down like Corse Light or friggin Daneland Carlsberg. But seeing Jens' photos from Shanghai was amazing, though I really didn't need more travel gas in my inner tank. The estimated (official) Shanghai population is 17 mill. people, who actually live in the city, not in the surrounding surburbs. In Beijing the actual citypopulation is considered to be 8 mill, in LA the citypopulation is app. 3,5 mill. (Census 2000) and in Paris a little over 2 mill.
I thought of this as I stumbled out of bed and turned off the alarm clock, which I had placed strategicly on the bathroom floor - in order for me to be closer to cold water when waking up, thus having a better chance for actually getting up. The actual shower population was 1. At 5 p.m. today it's needle time, for the whole shower population plus one sleeping wife: We may not be on our way to Shanghai, but Hongkong is still crawling with hepatitis A, according to Danish health authorities.

2006-04-19T22:02:00.002-07:00

Towards the light

Copenhagen, Daneland. It's 7.00 a.m. Daneland time, and I am already clean all over all, fully dressed and halfway through today's paper. I find that incredibly disturbing. First of the last deadline meetings is today, for which I am only slightly ready. But the good news is, that I seemed to have found the path back to litterature again, starting after a long break with Graham Greene's 'The Honorary Consul'. Just like Vonnegutt Greene is my bad conscience, but I feel very clearly how good it is to be back, and necessary too. My own rewriting of the so far 80 pages long Istanbul-MS still needs a push, but oh how reading helps ... Yesterday, I took with me Evans Pritchard's - somewhat outdated - classic 'Nuer Religion' after lights were out. It's not exactly literature, but the stories of Nuer, and their myths about God, creation and their own spirits 'below' fits welly into the patchwork of straying knowledge, which I have been working on accumulating for some years now. And speaking of straying; Chinese top, Hu Jintao popped by Washington today. Hurricane Katrina put a stop to his visit in September, but this time he made it, "oh what joy", I can almost hear the American secretary of trade whisper, while drooling over the pages of James McGregor's bestseller 'One Billion Customers - Lessons from the Front Lines of Doing Business in China'.

2006-04-19T00:16:00.002-07:00

TIME

Copenhagen, Daneland. Time, huh ...?! 'Haven't got it. Or maybe I am just spending it wrongly. That is very likely so. In two weeks from now, we'll be off to New York with nothing on our hands but time. We have rented a small apartment in Chelsea, so I'll be surrounded by fit young men in tight T-shirts and clean faces, which is always a pleasant detail. We touch down on May 4th, and we won't be doing much besides eating, drinking and yelling at people, untill we continue our sojourn to Dallas, Texas on May 11th. On Friday next, I leave the editorial office, hopefully with a clean desk.

Yesterday I drowned myself in 'Broken Flowers' and 'Sophia Scholl' home by the 12" iBook screen. Somehow, I am always able to find the time to watch someone being decapitated in 1943-Germany. Now, magazines need to be edited in order to get published. There has got to be a way to find the time for that, too.

2006-04-17T13:14:00.000-07:00

Flirting with Surburbia

Copenhagen, Daneland. Don't say I never leave Copenhagen Proper: Easter 2006 brought us out to the notoriously evil surburbs more frequently than I like to recall. On one occasion, we went as far as Høje Gladsaxe (one whole bus zone outside the city), though for a Pakistani wedding party, which made the excursion all the more enjoyable. A lot more than surburban Høje Gladsaxe is according to known literature. And besides, the Pakistani food was delicious and the atmosphere all night long was wonderfully light and not in any way strain - like Protestant or North European parties often tend to be. And the drums, man I loved the drums! But not quite as much as eight months old Dante did, centerpiece blond kid.

In two weeks from now, we leave Copenhagen and surounding surburbs; first stop on the six weeks itinerary: New York City. And as my clever wife reminded me; after spending Easter all over town and with a busy past couple of months, our week in New York will be pure being - with no scheduled appointments. Not untill the big family gathering starts in Texas, the following week ...

This Sunday night, though, was all about Chinese - from Hong Fu Restaurant. A nice, not even that cold evening in Copenhagen, for listening to talk radio on global warming, whilst collecting Jennie's bicycle downtown, then picking up chicken with cashew nuts & shrimps on Østerbrogade, the maindrag in this part of time. That way, I missed this week's episode of 'Lost'. But hey ... they're still on that island, right?!

2006-03-30T10:23:00.000-08:00

Nothing to see here, keep crawling ...

Copenhagen, Daneland. Notice how the little fella' is crawling away from his fathers books. Eight months old, and already a rebel with no sense of direction - or literature.

2006-03-29T04:24:00.000-08:00

DOT-it

Copenhagen, Daneland. All though Dante - in my opinion - is now ready to seize the world; hitchhike in the Caucasus, wrestle gangsters and the IRS in urban jungles throughout the Western hemisphere and give lectures at Middle Eastern universities, the ostensible gifted child is still sharing his parents' bedroom. That means; no reading in bed to the rest of us. I therefore pay homage to the company Osram for the product DOT-it. A round gadget, palm-size, that I now take with me to bed, under the comforter, dot it, and with a fully lit urban cave, I joyfully read Ahmed Rashid’s 2001 non-fiction on The Taliban movement and its atrocities.
Osram – the sane choice ...

2006-03-27T00:14:00.000-08:00

Too big for its own metro

Copenhagen, Daneland. The metro trains in Copenhagen must be the bussiest in the world. Nor in Berlin, London, Paris or even Buenos Aires, have I been foced to 'wait a train', due to over crowded wagons.
The city of Copenhagen is of a rather junior size (500.000 people in the city area - app. 1-1,5 mill. in Greater Copenhagen). Nontheless, each winther, and mind you, it is still winther here, we stand on the platform breathing down each other's necks, watching full cars go by.

But this morning, I finaly got it: This is all part of a cunning plan, orchestred by the city authority in their effort to convince the Copenhageners, that they actually live in a metropolitan, big city - so big, that you can not even fit the population into the ever running underground trains.

2006-03-22T05:41:00.000-08:00

In God Blair trusts

Copenhagen, Daneland. It's old news, I know, but it's just now sinking in: According to Mr. Tony Blair, only God will be able judge, weather or not the war against Iraq was just.
George Bush must be going out of his mind for not thinking of that explanations a long time ago.

2006-03-01T00:37:00.000-08:00

First day of spring ...

Copenhagen, Daneland.

2006-02-26T09:55:00.000-08:00

Not only in New York:
Hell's Kitchen, Copenhagen.

2006-02-26T06:03:00.000-08:00

Shaping up

Copenhagen, Daneland. Last bit of the world, I saw live: Trianglen, the main square in the Copenhagen bario of Østerbro, my base. Fever has pased on for husbond to wife, just like it did generations before us. I am ready to seize the world, and all that jazz, with the words of the day, coming from the American Historian Deborah Lipstadt said about her 'colleague' David Irving: "Let him rot up in freedom of oblivion". I am not taking side, I am merely pointing out the beauty of the words.

2006-02-22T01:53:00.000-08:00

Sick

Copenhagen, Daneland. I don't really feel good today, d'you know? Perhaps I should just split.

On the bright sight; in my inbox this morning, I found a message from David Dencker - our man in Beijing - writing me from the sky, literaly: "Here is a brief e-mail from the plane to Delhi (I'm flying Ethiopian Airlines and I am the only white person on board! There are approximately 40 percent Chinese, 40 percent African Americans and 20 percent Indians".

Copenhagen is a cold place today, although the snow is gone, leaving its sad salty tracks in the streets and bicycle lanes. On a day like this, I like to remind myself, that David is out there, in vibrant Delhi by now.

I'm still running a fever, though, but it helps.

2006-02-21T00:36:00.000-08:00

Continuous dreams of Niger

Copenhagen, Daneland. Yesterday, DR2, Daneland's answer to PBS, exposed my oh so impressionable eyes to my old dream of crossing the Tennerè Dessert in Niger, West Africa. Agadéz, oh what moonscape-one fine morning ... and we're gone.

2006-02-20T04:22:00.000-08:00

Oh world ...

Copenhagen, Daneland. So now, Daneland's abassador to Pakistan and his people has gone home, too. The newspaper headlines about the cartoon controversy, as CNN denotes it, has faded a bit, just as daylight saving time is closing in. The story on the Danish embassy in Islamabad and the killings in Pakistan this weekend came in third on the national radio, after news on bird flue virus in Europe and local Danish municiplities's forcibly removal of children.

At the same time, Iran is beeing run by a teenageboy with no sense of what's happening around him. A lot like Daneland's partner in crime in Washington D.C. And the list, sadly, goes on. So Hamas, pretty please, govern your power like adults. It's bad enough as it is.

Back home in the old, worn-down, but spirit-rich Copenhagen-apartment, the talk of town is how we'll be able to fit in new kitchen and bathroom in the family budget. Oh world, what basic needs of your's drive us ...

2006-02-01T06:19:00.000-08:00

Let's build a mosque!

Copenhagen, Daneland. I am sure, you have all by now heard of what a sad place minature Daneland has filled on the world scene the past couple of weeks, months ... The reactionary and right winged daily Jyllands-Posten has published 12 paintings of the Prophet Muhammad, in disrespect of one billion Moslim people. Nice one! Now, Danish goods are beeing boycut throughout the Middle East, and the Danish flag is beeing burned with photos of the Danish Prime Minister. I couldn't care less about our flag, it's just a piece of garment - but it doesn't promise a lot of good for the future, for traveling as a Dane and for the security inside Daneland. All because some narrowminded editor at Daneland's perhaps most conservative newspaper has been toying with what actually means something to other people - and afterwards leans back claiming, that we can do whatever we want, due to freedom of speach.
Put freedom of speach to proper use and don't abuse it for kicks, for Pete's sake.
By bringing the 12 drawings, Jyllands-Posten didn't - as they claim - show the range of freedom of speach, but merely displayed how infintely small their world is: "Look what we can do! We can call your mother a whore - we don't do it to humuliate you, but to show you, that we can". Today, 1 February 2006, a Danish-Jewish senior editor from Politiken, another somewhat more visionary daily, suggests "Let's build a mosque in Daneland". Can you believe it, the Moslems in Copenhagen gather in worn down factories on the outskirts of town ... Some ignorant Danes are now even forwarding text messages encouraging people to boycut Moslem shops and stores.
Normaly I only have the climate to blame for wanting to leave Daneland November through March - I just bought myself a whole lot of additional reasons ...

Mikael Rømer,
Copenhagen, Daneland - leaving anytime soon.

2006-01-23T02:55:00.000-08:00

In the middle of Nowhere

Las Vegas, Nevada. "It's a weird place", I said. For the first time, the taxidriver seemed to hear what I said. He turned his head and looked at me with animosity. "What?", he said angrily. "It's a weird place ...", I tryed with a smile. "What is ...?", he demanded. "This place; Las Vegas". To me, the most obvious truth; this city that grows faster than any other urban hub in North America, but consists of nothing but flashing lights, loud speaker-commercials and slot machines as far as the eye can see. The slot machines even greets you at the gate in the McCarran Airport - just like one of the stops on the monorail takes you trough one of two casinos, before it drops you off at the sidewalk of The Strip. Las Vegas is one big, hollow shell. But the driver, aparently of a diferrent oppinion, turned to the trafic and said in a clear voice: "It's not a weird place, it's nice place. It's a nice city", then turned left at Koval Avenue.

Larry, another taxidriver, originally from "a little place called New York", told me "They don't respect history in this city", with reference to the mythological hotel and casino Stardust from 1958. Stardust won't live to be 50. In fact it's coming down this year to give way for a 4 billion dollar hotel-casino-shopping complex, Las Vegas Review Journal reported, while I was in town for the annual mega event CES. Just after my arrival, the medias was full of two major events; the tragic mining accident in Sago, West Virginia and the Texas Langhorns who came who from Los Angeles with the Rose Bowl trohpy after their 41-38 victory over USC.
The Texas quarterback Vince Yong was on everbody's lips that week. On the front page L.A. Time quoted him the day after the victory: ”It's so beautiful. Don't ya'll think it's beautiful?” Young said, referring to the trophy. “It's coming home all the way to Austin, baby”. Austin ... I thought, I'm coming with you Vince. Only I was in Vegas, and there was nowhere out.

2006-01-20T03:51:00.000-08:00

Detour - Metro-style

København. Danmark, dette åh så civiliserede og højtudviklede industri- og servicesamfund, uden nævneværdig korruption og med et attraktivt investerings- og erhvervsklima, med høj vækst og lav arbejdsløshed ... Her kan en smule sne om vinteren og en smule varmegrader om sommeren uden større ceremoni slå statsbanerne (og nu også metroen) helt ud af kurs. Spørgsmålet denne fredag er; hvor længe vinteren kan komme som en overraskelse på disse breddegrader.

Efter at have sneglet sig af sted ad Øster Farimagsgade, nåede linje 14 omsider frem til Nørreport Station - jeg kunne allerede da godt glemme alt om at nå til morgenmad i Bella Center. Ud over perronen gjalder stemmen i højttaleren sit budskab om, at alle tog mod Vestamager kører til Lergravsparken Station. "Pga. vejret har vi problemer med sporskiftet ved Sundby og Vestamager Station. Passagerer mod Vestamager bør blive på Christianshavn til driften igen er normal". Ja, ja, men hvor længe ... Det sner (som så ofte i januar), og så virker sporskiftet ikke? Jeg håber ikke, det er noget, der er brugt mange skattekroner på. Det kan vel ikke komme bag på hverken sælger eller køber (Kbh's Kommune, den danske stat ...), at der falder sne om vinteren ... i Danmark ...

Jeg kørte til Christianshavn, last frontier, stod af i håbet om at kunne finde en taxi. En ide andre også havde fået. I stedet satte jeg mig op i linje 19, der var næsten tom. Jeg anede ikke, hvor vi kørte hen. "Amager Centret", forklarede en fyr bag mig. Han og hans ven var på vej til field's og spurgte, om jeg var interesseret i at dele en taxi med dem. Vi steg af bussen, hvor Amagerbrogade møder Amager Boulevard og stred os fremad i modvind og fygende sne og viftede med armene, hver gang, vi fik øje på en Mercedes. Taxi nummer tre, eller fire eller fem stoppede og fragtede os ad Røde Mellemvej til Bella Center, hvor turen endte for mit vedkommende.
Pragtfuldt, Danmark, hvor alt fungerer!
Ugh, ugh!