>Remember my rant about how James Bond never has trouble parking his cars? Well I found out this weekend that atleast Natalie Portman has trouble with that, as this picture shows 🙂
Another couple made in heaven, Tomas & Jenny, also had a happening weekend and adding to the “world is already overcrowded”-problem by having a daughter.
CONGRATULATIONS!
(and there were much rejoicing)
And so I’m back from a rather enjoyable weekend. Started off strong on friday evening with doing… my laundry. Ok, that wasn’t even an inch amount of fun (hey, if some can use lightyears as a meassure of time, I can use inch to meassure fun!). But I did get a chance to learn Warcraft III a bit better.
Then on Saturday it was time for a wedding. My friend Markus finally tied to knot with his “dude, she’s 16!”-Linda. When they met, Markus was around 22 and Linda was only 16. Now, 9 years later, they finally married. And out of all the couples I’ve seen, some of which have made me realise the upsides to being single, these two have been the complete opposite – making me realise that girlfriends aren’t mean and guys can still do their thing. We’ll see if that still applies now that they’ve taken it to the next level. The wedding was over and done with very quickly, less than 30 minutes (and last a lifetime. Hopefully!). Then it was time for the dinner afterwards. And that complicated things for me!
My “Rules of Conduct” include some gentleman-rules, like opening the door and picking up the bill at restaurants. Some gentleman-stuff I’ve ignored because they… in all honesty – make women seem incompetent. But during this dinner all these rules applied. Pulling out chairs, making sure her wine glass was never empty (I thought this rule only applied when you had other intentions in mind?) and so on. I didn’t know people still did that… Anyway, nothing happened that I’ll regret later.
Sunday arrived and off to the big city of Stockholm to take a walk down chick-lane (Drottninggatan). This is the kind of street that’ll make you twist your neck, especially in summer time. And then to O’Learys sportsbar to enjoy a Formula 1 race and the company of my two sisters and one of the Pauls (the other one is not into F1). Oh, and Jocke was there too. And for the first time that I’ve been there they got my order wrong. But me, being the “I’m not afraid of new things”-kindaguy, ignored that and just went ahead anyway.
So generally speaking – a very, very great weekend indeed!
Busy weekend. Work to 5 today, lots of stuff on NP.com, then a wedding tomorrow (although not mine, Markus’ is the lucky bastard that have ensnared Linda) and then a Formula 1 race again. And some Warcraft III… But before I leave, here’s my first “Top 5”. I’m starting easy with a simple one, “Top 5 Best Movies of All Time”. But it wasn’t easy, movies just kept coming up in my head that there simply wasn’t any space for 🙁
Top 5 Best Movies of All Time
This is actually the hardest one of them all. A movie has to live up to alot of things to come in here. Most of leave me changed in some way, have effected my psyche and my opinions. But still, movies are made to entertain, so that’s another thing it has to live up to!
# Movie Motivation
5. Chasing Amy The best Kevin Smith flic to date. It’s got some of the best dialogue ever written. Alyssa’s speech about how hard it is finding that right one that cutting off 50% of the population didn’t seem right is totally unforgettable. As is Holden’s speech in the car. And their fight in the parking lot outside the arena. Not to mention the “Star Wars is racist”-rant in the opening! Simply amazing!
4. Shawshank Redemption This movie may seem long, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it when you’re watching it. It’s a great story about the human spirit, hope and payback. Just see it and you’ll see what I mean.
3. Léon The best movie combining a very taboo romantical story all covered up in an action flic. All the actors were really great, but Portman just rocked as Mathilda! And it had good music too. It’s got such a different story and script that I just love.
2. Schindler’s List One of the best historical movies ever! A terrible but true story, and as long as there’s a movie made about it we’ll never forget it.
1. Contact This movie was just awesome! It asked some really interesting human questions (“are we, as a race, happier because of technological advancements?”), mixes some religious aspects into it, it had a great sci-fi story with amazing creativity and a surprisingly strong scientific background. Then it had some absolutely awesome effects and superb sound! And it also made sure to establish that USA isn’t running the world.
I saw the documentary of why the WTC collapsed, the one told from an architectrual point of view. And I found myself, every time they showed a replay, wishing that the second plane would miss. Am I the only one who does that?
Fortunately, I had taken a vacation day today so I’ve been just relaxing all day, looking at movies. And one movie gave me an idea for a new feature on this site – top 5 lists. Inspired by “High Fidelity”. I know it’s real “wanna be”-style to take after a cool thing from a movie like this, but I really like their quote “it’s what you like, not what you are like”. So over the next weeks you’ll be seeing a lot of “top 5”-lists on this site. Hope you’ll enjoy it.
This weekend I set a new standard in great timing. Unfortunately, I also set a new standard for bad timing 🙁
It all started on friday evening when I got a little stomach ache. Nothing serious, or so I thought. Then I woke up on saturday morning feeling even worse. But a Neurofen or two took the pain away so I could enjoy the saturday morning Formula 1 practice. After that my sis calls me up and tells me to get my ass down to my parent’s place in Ösmo (about a 40 minute drive) because they had to see the F1 qualifying. Trying to live up to my “never say no to women”-rule I obliged, and after my brother Jocke was done playing his round of Warcraft III on the ‘net I averaged 120 kph going there and sat down in their soffa and turned on the TV exactly when the pit exit light turned green. Talk about excellent timing!
But then my stomach ache started up again and I slept a little, hoping that’d help. No such luck, so by Saturday evening I had to go home and tried to go to sleep again. Sunday morning comes and I can’t even sit up. I managed to walk the few meters from my bed to my TV soffa and from the soffa to my cola fridge, other than that I’ve spent all this day tucked down in front of the TV.
| 6:10 | : | My alarm clock starts beeping followed by a THUMP as my hand come crashing down. |
| 6:12 | : | My cell phones alarm clock goes off which actually wakes me up. |
| 6:20 | : | I step into the shower. |
| 6:27 | : | I crawl back into bed. |
| 6:30 | : | I listen to the news. |
| 6:39 | : | I put my clothes on. |
| 6:42 | : | I shave. |
| 6:44 | : | I brush my teeth. |
| 6:46 | : | I put on some aftershave, deo and spray while thinking about the ozone layer. |
| 6:47 | : | I arm myself with wallet, keys, security card, coins (for the coke machine), buss card, food stamps, cell phone, sunglasses and the CD I burnt the night before. |
| 6:49 | : | I turn off all lights, lock my door and start walking to either the train station or my car. |
I bet that’s more than you wanted to know about me, huh?
Next big party-track that’ll top the charts will be Alexia’s “Don’t you know”. Time will prove me right. Again.
Hm, about this “women fearing strange guys”-thing, it reminds me of a problem that we guys have. Imagine this scenario that have happened to me alot ; coming home late, say around 11, and walking home from the train station. Now I take the scenic route home, it’s a bit longer but I’m the “smell the flowers”-kinda guy. And 15-20 meters ahead of you is a woman also walking home, alone. What do you, as a guy , do ? The women I’ve heard answer that says “walk past her, then she won’t see you as a threat”. But how do you do that without scaring her? I mean, if you all of a sudden start walking faster she’ll grab the mace! And I can’t walk slower to increase the distance, ’cause… well, women’s normal walk-pace is my slow-pace. If I’d walk any slower I’d be standing still, and we’re back to the mace. It’s a very uncomfortable scenario. For both of us I guess 🙁
And just when I thought I was the most charming man on the planet I get reality thrown in my face! As I was driving home from my parents place out on the countryside where the busses only goes once every two hours I saw a woman standing in the middle of nowhere waiting for the bus. Since I had been driving that road for a while and hadn’t seen any bus, I thought she might have just missed it and needed a ride or something. It turns out that she had indeed missed it (but she was hoping it was running late), and the next bus wasn’t due for another two hours. So I asked if she wanted a lift to catch up with the bus which she did, but she did not wanna get into a car with a stranger, especially not a single 100-kilo 27 year-old. And who can blame her? I probably would’ve reacted the same way if I’d been a woman. But I felt really uncomfortable just leaving her standing in the middle of nowhere like that, I just hope she lived around there so she had somewhere to go.
That’s another example how a few bad men can ruin it for the rest of us.
So my mother thinks I should stop using “So” to start these updates. But you know, it’s like everyone has a word or expression they use abnormally much. Like a F1 commentator uses “precisely” on average 1.21 times per lap, and Juan Pablo Montoya uses “you know”, and Schumacher “to be honest” and Natalie Portman “like” and so on. So I use “so”, so sue me 🙂
And Will Smith and Wycleaf Jean are in town. And boy do we know it, it’s been hyped to the max in the media. Are they really so bored they have to write what these two guys had for breakfast? It’s like a couple of weeks ago when the biggest headline was that princess Madeleine was finally old enough to buy her own alcohol. I can really see that happening, Madeleine buying her own alcohol. Exactly how would that go? In case you didn’t know, we have government control on alcohol so we have a special chain of stores that only sells alcohol, noone else is allowed to. You can’t stop at a 7-11 and buy anything stronger than 3.5%. And these places tends to get very overcrowded, especially around the holidays. So yeah, I can really see Madeleine waiting in line to buy her alcohol. And then being asked about her age and ID card to prove it. As if …
(now all the smart readers are thinking “how can you bash the media for talking about it when you’re just as bad”. Well, I don’t get the hundreds of thousands of hits everyday or sell a million issues! They should have something better to cover than that!)
So have I learnt to appreciate life on another level now after my car accident?… Not really. Probably because I never felt like my health was in danger, although now that I’ve gone over it a few times I realise it may very well have ended alot worse than it did. But what I do appreciate on another level know is the obligatory skid training we have here in Sweden. A 4 hour course in which you learn what it’s like to lose control of a car. ‘Cause without that training I’m pretty sure I would’ve reacted in the normal way by trying to make that turn instead of aiming for the softest place to crash.
I’ve also learnt to appreciate helpful strangers, and hope to become one too some day 🙂
So “V” started on swedish TV last night. I love that TV series. It’s got everything good sci-fi should have – good entertainment, good premise, good characters, good actors, good dialogue, good effects (for the era) and something this series has plenty of – historical references. Watch the series and replace all the times they say “scientists” with “jewish” and you’ll find it pretty scary!
It could almost pass as a historical documentation of the rise of the Third Reich, the operation of the French resistance and the persecusion of jews. I think Kenneth Johnson hit the mark with that show. Too bad it didn’t work out in the long run 🙁
Btw, a question of human behaviour ; my sense of humor is pretty much based on sarcasm, irony and just mean quick one-liners. That’s usually ok because most people can take it. Yesterday I found someone who couldn’t. This person had sent over his new website he wanted me to put up for him and he asked me again yesterday to put it up, totally oblivious about my adventures behind the wheel. So I said “So what if I crashed my car last night, as long as I put up your homepage everything will be fine”. Any normal person would’ve replied something like “oh, sorry, I didn’t know. Are you ok?”. But not him. His reply was 33 capital letters screaming “how tha hell could I’ve known!?” and then a comment that I’m always “so f*cking rude!”. So how could he have known? Well my sister found out by reading this space. So had the guy that I called friday morning to ask for a vacation day. So how does this person react to the suggestion of reading my homepage? 43 more capital letters and another curse was the reply.
If you’ve followed this diary-thing a while you should know who in my circle of friends has a real hard time taking criticism.
So I finally did it – had a big accident with my car. I’m not surprised, I’ve had it coming for as long as I’ve been driving! I was at a party in Åkersberga, north of Stockholm. I stayed sober because I knew I was driving home. So at about 11 pm. I get into my car and start to drive home. Come to a runabout, turn into the runabout and just at the apex I lose all grip and just go straight forward into a 6 feet deep ditch and just go straight on for a good 40 feet until I come to a stop, avoiding everything man-made in the process. First a nice woman stops to see that I’m ok, then Markus and his future wife Linda drives by and doesn’t believe what they’re seeing but stops to see if I’m ok and what can be done. We look at the mess and I’m just thinking “shit, is my car ok?” while they’re thinking “shit, is Kris ok?”. Fortunately the answer is yes to both of them. Except a muddy car and a little unbalanced wheel everything is ok! I can blame it on bad grip (it had been raining), or bad tyres (I’ve always said they have terrible grip!) but the idiotic truth is that had I gone a bit slower I’d come home 1 minute later and made the curve.
The nicest surprise was a bunch of guys that drove by, saw that something was wrong, stopped, took a look at it and said “this is do-able” So in reverse they drove my car out of the ditch, which turned out to be a muddy little water stream. I was shaking a little so I wasn’t really in any condition to drive backwards. So a huge thanx to these guys I’d never seen before and probably never will – saved my day!
Well happy birthday to the United States of America. About 220 years old and they’re running the world, bombing Afghanistan, makes the stockmarkets crash , arming their citizens to the teeth, demanding the palistinian leader to be replaced , killing their own citizens in the name of justice and demanding that their soldiers get immunity from the first ever international court for warcrimes. Way to go 🙂
One of my favorite tracks at the moments is the “Star of ’45” medley with alot of 60′ and 70’s songs all bunched up into one. And the lyrics for one of them, some anti-Vietnam war song I suppose, is very applicable to Bush – “you say you don’t believe in war, well what’s that gun your touting?”
Busy, busy, busy. So much going on now, most of it fun.
So I was called as an expert in sci-fi movies and later Star Trek during the sci-fi convent here. And a very interesting thing happened. During the first discussion, “100 years of sci-fi” the conclusion we all reached was that sci-fi movies were alot better in the old days because they went more for good story than eye-candy (space battles, effects and whatnot). Back when they were deep and explored mankind instead of exploring the bounderies of CGI. Kinda frightening how close that conclusion is to my recent bashing of the music industry :).
The general consensus was that it all started going to hell after “Alien” and “Star Wars”. But there is hope now that sci-fi is once again going deep and making you think – A.I and Minority Report are two recent examples. (although I didn’t really like A.I)
In the second debate we were suppose to have a little battle over which sci-fi universe (Star Trek, Babylon 5, Star Wars, Alien…) was the best one. I was the voice for Star Trek. And I believe I was the moral victor because my initial statement was “Since I’m a trekker I shouldn’t be here, because the point of Star Trek is learning to respect other people and their opinions so I can’t really tell anyone that they’re wrong since in the Star Trek spirit no opinion can be wrong”. Hehe, tell that to any Babylon 5 freak who always sends in his navy of Whitestars…