The Airportline: Observations

deflatedimpressions.wordpress.com

2010-04-03T18:46:00.002+02:00

I wanted to go back to basics.
So I moved here.
No drama.
Just more white.
And maybe a functioning comment section.
Thank you.

Poetry

2010-04-03T18:15:00.003+02:00

No Longer No Longer
What You Ask
Strange Steps
Heels Turned Black
The cinders the cinders
They light the path
Of these strange steps
Take us back take us back

Flow sweetly hang heavy
You suddenly complete me
You suddeley complete me
Flow sweetly hang heavy
You suddenly complete me
You suddenly complete me

Oh oh aaayyy
Oh oh ayyee
Hysteric
Oh oh aaayyy
Oh oh ayeee
Hysterical

No wonder no wonder,
Other half, strange steps
Heels turned black.
The cinders they splinter
And light the path
These strange steps
Trace us back trace us back

Flow sweetly hang heavy
You suddenly complete me
You suddenly complete me
Flow sweetly hang heavy
You suddenly complete me
You suddenly complete me

Hysteric
Hysteric
Hysteric
Hysteric
Hysteric
Hysterical

The racing tears

2010-03-31T12:12:00.003+02:00

She raced past me on the street, wind in her hair, tears from her eyes. I was always the one passing people by, leaving them behind me, staying ahead. Now she catapulted herself past me, left me among the other cyclists, in some slow stew of people who appear to stand still. 'I've got a devils haircut in my mind', Beck sang in my ears but the only thing I saw in the morning commotion was my speed being reduced to sand by the tears of a speeding woman. The fleetingness of the specialties we carry around.

Jet-lag without flying

2010-03-29T19:07:00.002+02:00

Everyone changed their clocks except for me, or that is how it felt when I biked along the canal to the office thinking that it was unusually quiet. Normally the roads are filled with biking people trying to avoid hitting trucks, tourists, trams, tourists, walking people, cars, tourists, and all the other things that constantly is thrown at you while you try and reach the office in a reasonable time. Not today, today life seemed quiet and I thought that it was a very pleasant way to start the week. Then an appointment called and asked where I was and I immediately realized that I was in a different time zone. Jet-lag without flying. When I flew the 45 minutes flight between Las Vegas and Phoenix (an airport with no clocks!) and missed my connecting flight to Charlotte I had a similar feeling. That time I got drunk on white White that I bought in a gas station, this time I biked a bit faster and played catch up with time during the whole day.

If you are looking for beauty

2010-03-26T12:07:00.003+01:00

In case you need something beautiful to rest your eyes on this weekend. Airportline present two visual stunning movies. New York I Love You has some great acting and if you are into love and dialog (as I most definitely am) it is a must, I found parts of it incredibly moving. Heima just makes you want to go to Iceland really bad. Really really bad.

wow

2010-03-24T21:47:00.001+01:00

The number of things in other places

2010-03-22T20:38:00.002+01:00

I'm working on something, many things, might be useless, although nothing is, might be brilliant, but that is unlikely. All I know is that it is stealing time from the blog and you might look at this space and expect certain things, and rightly so. All I can say right now is that watch your RSS feeds cause no one knows when Airportline might tumble along in a more coherent manner again. And I was gonna give you quotes and music tips and write something about how the birds look through my glasses and the sounds of certain people and all that kind of stuff that you are used to. All I can say it that I am not out of words, they are just being typed in another place. Maybe I will tell you later.

Its fucking... alright

2010-03-19T11:26:00.002+01:00

In Amsterdam right now according to the fucking weather.
Today my mission is to minimize me moving around since I got a bit too excited by the coming of spring.

Dreaming inside the office

2010-03-16T11:10:00.003+01:00

For music matching these dreams go here.

The Swedish family

2010-03-13T20:12:00.004+01:00

In Ukraine they have a saying when three people live together and have a sexual relationship with each other: a Swedish family. I learned of this yesterday and together with Bulgakov's master piece novel The Master and Margarita it made me sure that this nation is crazy. Not necessarily in a bad way, although their Swedish picture seems to be influenced by my home country's 1970s porn revival.

The life it is not

2010-03-10T18:54:00.005+01:00

I've been sitting on trains and in airplanes again, and I've heard people describe my life as something that its not, maybe its my blog, maybe they are under the impression that this space is a true reflection of my life. Be assured that it is not, if you are sitting there in your office thinking that Airportline sure is up to crazy shit all the time, be assured that this is not the case.

I travel the functionalist road as well, even though I do spend time playing ping-pong in squats and run after rabbits in Eindhoven occasionally. I don't say this to be apologetic, or because my life is really boring, to me its not. I just worry sometime when I hear people describe the life they think I live and I keep thinking: wow, that sounds amazing.

Then again, I am sitting with a freshly brewed coffee, listening to Beach House's magical song Walk In The Park after watching the latest episode of the Daily Show. To me that is quite amazing, so maybe I'm just really easy to please, at least today, when I know that I don't need to do anything more or be anywhere else before I go to sleep.

Twenties Paris anyone

2010-03-05T09:39:00.005+01:00

Perhaps I did not convince you a few days ago when I suggested you listen to Joanna Newsom. For you, I present this paragraphs from a very nice interview in The Independent:

She is after all, just a girl. A girl who likes fashion (she has modelled for Armani and tells me excitedly that the sisters behind the avant-garde label Rodarte are "in their own amazing artistic world"); one who dates the Saturday Night Live comedian Andy Samberg (probably most famous over here for his "Dick in a Box" comedy skit with Justin Timberlake); a girl who likes to "go out to eat with my friends and family", and listen to Dirty Projectors and Roy Harper. One who loves Hemingway and Nabokov. I ask her when she would live if she could live at any point in history, and she responds with, "Now. Twenties Paris I wouldn't have minded, or 1970s southern California, but I wouldn't have been able to know the people I know. The main things that matter to me are relationships and friends and family."

click here for the whole interview

The lawless Swedes

2010-03-04T10:00:00.006+01:00

File under: Fuck you I won't do what you tell me (Swedish remix).

'A 41-year-old Swedish man has been arrested at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport after flying for years on a false pilots license, the Telegraaf reports.'

The rest of the story takes some of the drama away, the pilot did have a license before, but only for freight flights and it had expired years ago. But with the success of Stieg Larsson and other block-buster crime writers, such as Henning Mankell, Sweden is changing into a dark place with crime, grime and prostitution. Now we have illegal pilots flying around to emphasize that the picture of a freedom-loving liberated porn paradise that people thought Sweden was before no longer is true.

The time when Sweden was seen as a moralist tranquil nation of blond diplomats (its peak doubles being Carl Bildts involvement in the Dayton Agreement and the end end of the war in Bosnia) is slowly crumbling together with that IKEA lap you bought for your first student apartment. Maybe the Italian made shockumentary above saw this coming before the rest of us Swedes.

I myself can't wait to head out to Schiphol tomorrow evening for some flying.

The ant fuckers of Eindhoven

2010-03-03T13:18:00.008+01:00

The Evoluon in Eindhoven which Airportline passed by while hunting rabbits

’I’m an ant fucker,’ he said and laughed while I struggled to keep a straight face.
‘Yeah, that is what we call it in Dutch when we are really anal about things. ‘Ant fucker.’
‘Ant fucker?’ You guys are weird, I told my friends colleague when we stood in their studio in Eindhoven, trying to figure out what to do with my lap top before going to a party. The studio was situated in a former Nazi building in the city built by Philips, only a free kick away from the PSV Eindhoven stadium.

It is this night I blame for my current state, for the knives in my throat, for the unappealing fleece I am dressed up in as I try and be productive from home instead of from the office while a cold is trying to grab hold of me.

Before the ant fucker discussion we had been at a lecture where three title sequence directors gave talks and showed of their skills in front of an international crowd of design people, and me. One of the directors was French and had a highly impressive mustache. He also quoted Jean-Luc Goddard: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to”. He was naturally my favourite. He was also a real quote machine and told us that he had ‘holes in his head’ when he didn’t find the right words. Even the designers found this to be amusing.

After some beers at this exhibition (now unfortunately closed) we went to a far away squat/art installation party where we got accordingly drunk and I engaged in a heated discussion about free press with a man with a giant Afro from Eritrea. He said that Dawit Isaak (Swedish journalist in jail in the country) should have known that you cannot criticize the government. And even though we did not come to an agreement, he had a very interesting perspective of the whole situation (which has been hotly debated for years in the Swedish media) and a revolutionary heart which he had taken to Geneva a few weeks before to protest the UN sanctions against the country. After a while he left me as he said that he needed 'to devote some time to the ladies’. We proceeded to get the Goddard quoting French man drunk and confused, we talked about French music and he brushed away my love for Phoenix, Tahiti 80 and Sebastien Tellier claiming that Serge Gainsbourg was the one and only true genius, which I personally felt was a bit cliché for a mustache wearing French man. This was not information I passed on to him.

When the party music was toned down, and my accomplices felt that it was time to leave, we jogged home (I still have no idea why, or how, we did that) through Eindhoven in the middle of the night. The city was quiet and strange buildings were lit up and industrial sites were abandoned. I was also chasing rabbits. Unfortunately they were faster than me.

Something to turn your ears to

2010-03-01T12:38:00.002+01:00

Joanna Newsom's new album is called Have One On Me and it is absolutely brilliant. I know I say a lot of music is great, fantastic, breathtaking, etc, but this is something that together with the new Beach House album truly stands out. I'm too hungry to have the energy to write something, but for those of you who likes this harpist playing folk singer before, you will most likely embrace this without thinking twice. For those of you that could not stand her voice, this is the time to give her another chance cause she has toned down some of her most extravagant sounds and gone for a more toned down expression. And as a writer, her dreamy perspective is as poignant as ever.

What in the world are we waiting for-
building glowing cities along the shore,
where the wind batters in
baiting my kin like a matador

So much value, placed upon
what lies just below our plans:
waiving my handkerchief,
running along, to the end of the sand

Long-life, speak your name.
I'm so tired of the guessing game
But, something is moving
just out of frame:
Slow-heart,
brace and aim.
'Occident'

The rules of finction

2010-02-26T10:00:00.004+01:00

Among the many fine Swedish authors I've read Bodil Malmsten stands out as one of the most important. This many people know. Bodil also has a blog (in Swedish), where she writes long and short things, sometimes fiction about a faimly of tejp, sometimes small sad observations of life, a life she used to live in France but now does in Sweden. She has humor, like when she linked to this article in The Guardian titled 'Ten rules for writing fiction'. Her only comment to this link, with numerous novels written? 'I've always wondered.'

The article lets authors give their advice on the writing process, and even though I am against rules in fiction writing there are some good things, like reading what you have read out loud or Magraret Atwood's suggestion of what to think about when writing on airplanes:
'Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can't sharpen it on the plane, because you can't take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.'

I finished a novel in Swedish this past week, and in the spur of the moment sent it out to some people who I trust. This was, according to Atawood a good plan as her number 8 rule is:
'You can never read your own book with the innocent anticipation that comes with that first delicious page of a new book, because you wrote the thing. You've been backstage. You've seen how the rabbits were smuggled into the hat. Therefore ask a reading friend or two to look at it before you give it to anyone in the publishing business. This friend should not be someone with whom you have a romantic relationship, unless you want to break up.'

Anyway, read the article, its funny and even though I do not agree with many things I always find it interesting when authors discuss the writing process.

Central European Monuments

2010-02-24T16:34:00.005+01:00

A new Vincent Van Gogh painting, depicting a windmill in the Paris area of Montmartre, has been founds in the city of Zwolle in The Netherlands NRC International reports. Pretty big news and perhaps a bit of consolation for skater Sven Kramer's historic mistake yesterday which has the whole country in shock. Otherwise Airportline is looking forward to Inter - Chelsea tonight , Sweden - Slovakia tomorrow morning and then a bit of culture on Saturday when the sweet twee duo Slow Club come to Amsterdam for an intimate show in De Nieuwe Anita. And, today was the official release date for the new Shout Out Louds album. I will get back to this soon, as they are one of my favorite Swedish bands, but until I do, have a click on the video bellow and keep your French dictionaries close at hand

Shout Out Louds - Fall Hard from Merge Records on Vimeo.

Too good to be true

2010-02-23T11:40:00.004+01:00

Do you remember that Belgian man who was paralyzed for 20 years and then suddenly could communicate again? Well, turns out that he can't communicate at all, he is just conscious (which I guess is a good thing). But I, who thought this story was amazing, it made me think of one of my favorite movies of all time The Diving Bell and The Butterfly (based on the true story of a French Elle editor who gets a stroke that leaves him paralyzed and goes on to write a book (as amazing as the movie) by blinking with one eye), feel cheated by this inaccurate information. In this story in NRC International a scientist claim that "It was too good to be true and we shouldn't have believed it". Don't like things that turn out out be too good to be true.

A Hollywood Babylon bike-athon for breakdancers

2010-02-21T22:57:00.000+01:00

All of the stage names evaporate
And it's just a blood flushed and heart-rushing rates
Either to kick off too soon or stick around too late, to be far too dear or too cut-rate
Hold my hand again
Like at the lake

Hold that mirror, babe
Up to my face
Hear the whippoorwill
Am I breathing still?

A Hollywood Babylon bike-athon for breakdancers all broken down in their beds
Now intravenously fed
From a bag hanging over their heads
Can I put you down for some miles?
What do you say?
Cause don't you know, it's going to be a long, long way
But if you've got the cash
I'm ready to bust my ass

So, take this thin broken down circus clown reject and give her the name of a queen
Don't I know her from the mezzanine?
She didn't look like no princess to me
But with the proper words
Bestowed
And with her morning shoot
Her evening clothes
Don't call her a prostitute
Well, she ain't one of those
Just call her a proper little statue
Come unfroze

Sunday night pop number

2010-02-21T18:52:00.005+01:00

The Movie Dan In Real life is very influential in some of my writing. The music in this terrific Steve Carell movie comes from Norwegian pop crooner Sondre Lerche. I like this guy, and at times I become angry for never seeing him live although I've had my chances. Watching this clip from him playing at the Troubadour in Hollywood, when he is talking about he movies role in his career (somewhat ironically perhaps), shows some of that nice character. The song is a very sweet pop number about being in love and includes Lillian Samdal in the album version. In case you guys need a reminder, one week after Valentine's Day and all.

Make peace not love

2010-02-21T13:22:00.003+01:00

Reading Amos Oz 'How to cure a fanatic' in bed.
Page 44, 'make peace not love'.
He says that love is too rare to create peace, that there is not enough of it for everyone. Love is not the opposite of war, neither is brotherhood, or generosity. No, the opposite of war is peace. He then goes on to quote Robert Frost 'good fences make good neighbors' and I am reminded of how much I love the unsentimental clarity and position that Amos Oz takes in his writing.

Acoustic music in Amsterdam

2010-02-19T11:41:00.005+01:00

One of last year’s must under-rated album was Peter Bjorn and Johns Living Thing. Coming off the success of their breakthrough album Writer’s Block they made sure to alienate as many people as possible by throwing out the warm sound of that output and instead land in a colder, more detached and minimalistic landscape. On Living Thing the band steered away from easy to digest melodies of Writers Block favorites like Paris 2004 and Young Folks.

I struggled with that change at first but eventually grew to like their new sound as the songs started to settle, and even though there is a coldness creeping around, the band never forgot how to be blue eyed romantics (I Want You!), funny (Living Thing) and deliver of the most amazing pop anthems of 2009 (Nothing To Worry About). Peter Bjorn and John have always walked their own way and there is a lot to be said for that. In this video by Amsterdam Acoustics they turn It Don’t Move Me into a celebration of musical creativity aided by what must be one of the coolest pianos on the planet.

Below are two other noteworthy video from the people at Amsterdam Acoustics, one where one of my true artistic role models, Erlend Øye plays on an Amsterdam tram, displaying some of the cities stunning beauty when the weather is good (I forgot the weather could be good here!) and a beautifully toned down and melancholic version of Passion Pits normally over the top The Reeling. Thanks to Katharina and Antoinette for opening my eyes to these recordings.

Collectives and a decadent rebel

2010-02-18T15:33:00.004+01:00

Yours Truly Presents: The Morning Benders "Excuses" from Yours Truly on Vimeo.

A Singaporean friend of mine posted this video on someones Facebook wall. It was not my wall. But that is ok, it is still a great piece of video. A bunch of San Francisco musicians in a room singing a indie anthem. It feels very collective and cosy and nice. Those are generally seen as positive things, I've heard. In other news, my media blogging friend, and MW Communication founder has recommended airportline to an editor at a Swedish magazine by describing me as an 'international decadent rebel born in the 80s who loves indie music and movies like Me and you and everyone we know.' That does seem like a somewhat glorified description of myself, but hey, as Tracyanne Campbell in Camera Obscura sings: 'I need all the love I can get'.

Hazy waves of soft electronic whispers

2010-02-17T15:23:00.002+01:00

Destroyer - Bay of Pigs
Geüpload door 0take99. - Bekijk de laatste uitgelichte muziek video clips.

Is it the quest for productivity that destroys creativity? The computer screen that blurs the emotional mind? Does the cheer notion of an office numb what should be a freely racing mind? Who is it that answers all those emails, write and publish the reports, and write those functional and straight sentences that you flood other peoples in boxes with?

I’m listening to Destroyers’ Bay of Pigs, a over 12-minutes long song that Stereogum labels as ‘ambient disco’. What sticks out not the stories or cleverly phrased ideas, it is the whole concept of creating this kind of music, so long and overbearing, so grand and epic that it feels like its been made in another dimension with no connection to this reality. Something that definitely could not be produced in an office environment. It takes too much time, it starts slow, with hazy waves of soft electronic whispers, and when Dan Bejar starts to sing he starts out explaining that,
‘Listen, I've been drinking, as our house lies in ruin. I don't know what I'm doing: alone, in the dark, at the park or at the pier, watching ships disappear in the rain.’

It is a song about letting your mind wander, letting it break free of reason. Bejar knows how to do this (and admittedly have had trouble writing songs not pushing and breaking the 10 minute mark throughout his career) and it does not feel like a surprise when he sings about a girl named Magnolia. The song shares the same feeling of understated longing as the movie with the same name, same kind of detachment from society and its productive wheels that keep on spinning. Illogical ramblings, or profound ideas? It matters little when Destroyer portrays a drifting motion to a world we never seem to get to. Will we ever get there?

The art of flying

2010-02-16T18:28:00.005+01:00

I've been around flying and breaking things, and the snow and cold just won't leave Amsterdam, it refuses, it clings on the streets, covers the canals with ice, throws nails against our cheeks and paints our jackets with snow. And there is not much left to do than keep on moving, pull down our hats, put our scarfs on tighter and just face a reality that has no interest in giving us a helping hand. Airportline is past frustration, for now. Instead we make fun of the snow, fly over it, laugh at it, smile in the face its petty tries to put us down, to make us cave. 'Det är inte hur man har det, det är hur man tar det'. Put that in a Swedish/English translation program.

Another batch of brilliant London folk

2010-02-12T19:14:00.008+01:00

With connections to the regenerated London folk scene, or more than connections, they were Laura Marlins former band, Mumford and Sons released their debut album Sigh No More in 2009. With connections to Airportline favorites, and best Album of 2009 winners, Noah And The Whale, this orchestra brings another batch of excellent London based folk music. This special branch of folksters that have no problems with bluegrass, Irish folk tunes, pure storytelling and enjoy mixing it with a beautifully and earnest sounding modern folk that with great ease comes and fills the void that so many of us needed to fill after Fleet Foxes ordered beards on all popular musicians.

What comes out is earnest, and not seldom grand modern folk with a fantastically organic instrumentation. It is not surprising to learn that the producer also was behind the shifts when of the best albums of the 2000s, Arcade Fire’s 2004 magical and still unbelievably and impressive Funeral, was recorded. Sure, Mumford and Sons does not bring that kind of new tone as Arcade Fire did, or the same kind of daring drama and darkness of the latest Noah And The Whale output. But they do hit your heart in the same way as melodramatic British movies do, and if I were an atheist I would maybe even call this album a bit religious at times. Just listen to the pompous bluegrass soul chorus in Roll Away Your Stone or the thunderous chorus of standout The Cave (see above), a song that in its own would make me go and buy leather boots and move to the Amazons where I would listen to Bob Dylan and play some banjo.

Its not the new direction or the heroic risks that make Mumford and Sons such a terrific band, it’s the perfect touch they have on what works, like they made a country version of the surprisingly impressive 2009 Deportees album Under The Pavement The Beach, and even though they are not paving any new roads, Mumford and Sons know how to use the twists and turns on that familiar gravel road that so many folksters before them have walked down. They have undeniable potential and with some more bold reaches these guys can make something truly spectacular, the trumpet in Winter Winds tells me they already have. But then again, I was always weak for trumpets.

A question of animal magnitude

2010-02-09T16:14:00.003+01:00

So, are these animals lamas or are they something else? The office cannot agree on an answer. It is a shame that my comment function is not really working but if anyone knows, make an attempt. It is not good for me to live in uncertainty regarding the name of this animal.

For more nice pictures like this one, go here to Lisa Milberg, cause that is where it is from.

the sound of fleetingness

2010-02-09T10:52:00.004+01:00

I usually spend the first months of each year trying to catch up with the year before. Yesterday a friend of mine suggested Local Natives (A band for you Fleet Foxes fans out there, just played in Amsterdam without me realizing it) and for the past few days I've been deep down the melancholic songwriting of Cass McCombs, a traveling man who've lived everywhere in the US it seems, and now holds it down in Baltimore (where Beach House, who has created the best album this year so far, is also from). I like Cass McCombs for his dreaminess, his romantic shimmer and contained country influences. He is not doing something terribly unique, but there is something that moves me with this music, maybe it is the sounds of fleetingness, or moving, changing locations that is reflected in the music, and in me. This song reminds me of a music festival and makes me want to go to the US and drink beer from a plastic cup and stare into the sun.

A tribute to Quentin Tarantino

2010-02-06T19:13:00.004+01:00

I have few doubts regarding the brilliance of Quentin Tarantino, perhaps my generation’s most prolific film maker. From the beginning of his career he’s spread classics around him with an ease that is both intriguing, and at times, provoking. There are plenty of reasons to love this man, his movies do not only have intriguing plots, he is also a master of combining his movies with twisted music, something that in its own should place him among the modern masters of film making. In his latest movie, the Nazi slugging guerrilla fighting filled, Inglorious Basterds he ticks many of the boxes for a Tarantino classic.

One of my favourite aspects with the film-making of Tarantino is the characters in his movies. They are not only great on their own; they also interact with each other with an intensity that is remarkable considering all the loony elements he throws into his films. Few film makers can bring out so much suspense and bizarre moments as this man. Tarantino knows how to sequence the interactions between characters and pull them out so far that they physically hurt you; to create suspense between foes is something he’s done marvelously from the start, from the twisted monologues and discussions in between kills in Reservoir Dogs, through the post-killing bible quoting in Pulp Fiction, Tarantino has drawn out pre-murder suspense like no one else. He knows the anticipation of death is even more terrifying than death itself, not that anyone actually can verify that this is true.

In Inglorious Basterds he has never done this better, never done it with more intensity, never contrasted the characters with such suspense. From the brilliant opening scene it is a continuous trip through the twisted cruelty and humor that exist in every Tarantino movie. It is perfectly incorporated in the atmosphere and in the interactions between the characters. A master of writing contemporary dialog with pop cultural references, here he combines elite Nazis, farm boy Americans, and some Jews with a vengeance. It sounds like a field day for twistedness and Tarantino makes no one disappointed.

It is easy to see how this could have failed, I tell myself while the end credits roll down in front of me. Or maybe its not. I read that Tarantino waited 15 years to make this movie, that he has called it his master piece.

In the Airportline film book Pulp Fiction stand very close to my all time favourite movies. I am aware that this is a quite standard response for someone between 20 and 30. It is difficult for me to disagree with this but sometimes the masses are right I guess. Why is this relevant? Because for me, that is the only best Tarantino movie there is. My mind is filled with nostalgia that will never wash away, for me Pulp Fiction will always be the best, I’m defeated by my nostalgia.

But, for those of you not that are not emotionally and historically attached to his old classics, this could well be his best movie. It has beautiful filming, bizarre humor, glorious (if I may) bad guys, and the hilariously straight talking bad good guys. In Tarantino’s world no good man comes without some evil, and that evil has never been dressed better or served with such pleasing results as in this movie. Saying that Tarantion has done it again sounds a bit like a cliché, but not less true.

The mouse and the shin

2010-02-05T12:30:00.005+01:00

The High Road

Broken Bells | MySpace Music Videos

So you put together The Shins lead singer and principal songwriter James Mercer with Danger Mouse, perhaps most knows for being one half of Gnarls Barkley and for his surprisingly pleasant Grey Album, where he put together The Beatles White Album and Jay-Z's Black Album into his own little dreamy world. So yes, you put together these two, and what you get is Broken Bells who release their debut album in March. This is the first single from the album, a vintage sounding pop gem that works perfectly as a cure against the grey Amsterdam clouds this Friday.

1 2 3 4

2010-02-04T12:40:00.004+01:00

I've been writing plenty lately, so if you have some patience you can soon look forward to:

1. A review of the new Beach House album Teen Dream

2. A review of Mumford And Sons album Sigh No More

3. A discussion of character interaction in Tarantino movies

4. A short short story titled 'The coffee that left the office'

Until then I bring you some color in this Feist (who will play a part in the upcoming Broken Social Scene album) video which all of you have seen but might have forgotten about.

Something about that Mary

2010-02-02T11:23:00.002+01:00

Several times each day I get this message, from 'Mary', to one of the in-boxes I go through at work.

Hello my dear. Hey, want to marry a Russian beauty? I want you, my good man. Come to my profile - you'll get a surprise! You want what would you be good? Come to me.

Sometimes I wonder who came up with this, and how many people actually click on the link which is also provided in the email. How many people who secretly dream that Mary will be something so much more than another spam email in an inbox. Personally I mostly wonder about the second last sentence, what happened there, did someone put in a word to much or is it suppose to be a bit confusing and mysterious, just like Mary herself?

Self-abusing sexuality

2010-02-01T18:47:00.004+01:00

The main character, Alan Blair, in Jonathan Ames (creator of the fabulous TV-series Bored To Death) novel 'Wake Up, Sir!' on sexuality:

'The human sex drive is relentless, especially the homosexuall human sex drive. One finds it everywhere, it knows no dark corners - or, for that matter, dimly lit corners - where it cannot trespass. But it's not just homosexuality that is prevalent: old-fashioned heterosexuality is still the most popular form of sensuality between two people. Drive past any school yard - somebody is producing these children, though I understand that enrollments have been dropping. Homosexuality is perhaps then making headway in terms of overall subscription, while of course self-abuse remains the most popular form of sensuality overall, though not between two people, unless the two people are self-abusing in each other's company, which is often a happy compromise in both the homosexual and heterosexual communities.'

On the back cover someone from the Portland Oregonian (had to google that to make sure it actually was a real paper, it is) claimd that Ames is a edgier David Sedaris. I would agree and say that generally, that is a good thing.

When punched, heaven will burn

2010-01-31T17:37:00.004+01:00

The Airportline office was rocked with some bad news yesterday which will negatively impact our already poor cash flow situation. If there would not be so many more causes worthy of donations and aid I would consider putting up a donation box here on the blog. Then again, I expect that the bulk of my readers also venture around financial issues from time to time. Anyway, this is no time for public despair. Instead I look forward and take the punch on my cheek like a man, and with the help from this fantastic pop song from the Swedish indie-pop favorites The Radio Dept. who are gearing up to release a new album this spring I continue to venture forward.

What kind of rancid meet are you?

2010-01-29T17:31:00.003+01:00

Facebook. Ah, it is interesting isn't it? How people behave there, the fact that you see the same people over and over, many of them who you never actually talk to, or want to know what they are doing. I've been forced to delete some of my 'friends' after excessive updates about them baking, or chillin' in the couch, or whatever, most of them are in Swedish and are not translatable unfortunately. Anyway, The Oatmeal.com has made a Facebook personality outline on their site. And since it is Friday, why not head over there and have a good laugh.

The times and the days we fill

2010-01-28T16:53:00.005+01:00

10:30 someone drops a cup outside my office. ‘Ah, that’s my favourite one’ she complains while picking up the broken pieces. No one comments.

10:40 Inspired by the broken cup I venture to the kitchen for a cup of tea. Choose a for me foreign flavor advertised as ‘light and fresh’.

10:43 ‘Light and fresh my ass' I think as I throw the tea in the sink.

10:50 A boat pass by my window. I wonder if the person driving is smiling.

11:05 I write this sentence: ‘There is not one course in marketing that does not include questions with regards to satisfying customer needs and how to deliver, or exeed, the expectations that they have (in a profitable manner).’

11:30 I get a mail with a green neon palm tree

11:32 I write about the person dropping her cup since I wanted to write about it since it happened

13:47 Beach House –Norway in my ear and poster editing in front of my eyes.

13:52 Realize that Beach House is playing in Paradiso for 10 Euros on 23rd of February. Decides to go.

15:02 Trying to kill the content management system with my pen. Can’t find its heart.

15:22 Still listening to Beach House, used to think they were too slow and uneventful. I was wrong.

15:23 So wrong.

15:24 Editing hard to understand text. ‘Why is all this in italics’ I ask myself.

15:33 Amazed

16:12 Drinking strange vegetable soup from Maggi (the brand). Makes me think of Malaysia (the brand, not the soup)

16:22 Finished soup, receding throat ache.

16:24 Decides to play floorball tonight. ‘You have to live on the wild side’ I want to tell someone. No one else is in the office, I stay quite.

16:35 Trying to upload picture on website. Content Management System show no interest in complying.

16:49 Patrik 1 – 0 Content Management System

Talking shit about a pretty sunset

2010-01-26T23:31:00.002+01:00

I've changed my mind so much I cant even trust it
My mind changed me so much I cant even trust myself

One of Airportline's favourite lyrics, and song titles.

All of the first days of my life

2010-01-25T20:18:00.002+01:00

Biked to work in freezing temperatures.
Wrote things, many things.
Emailed people, many people.
Some answered.
One calling me Edvard instead of Patrik.
It's ok, its Monday I answered.
It was Monday.
It is Monday.
Still.
The cold is also here.
Still.
Soon I will be in a car.
Play some floorball, eat some food, read some Jonathan Ames, do some sleeping.
Then it will start again.
Bike to work in freezing temperatures.
Write things, many things.
Email people, many people.
You might see a pattern.
In all of the first days of my life that is lining up
In front.
Of me.

Guarding my time and space

2010-01-24T17:38:00.004+01:00

I lost track of time, or I didn't loose track of it, but I filled it. Never made it to Fanfarlo on Tuesday. Concert was sold out, went and saw Deacon (member of Animal Collective) at Trouw instead, it was not a great show, not including the fact that he was wearing a Mali football jersey with Keita (Barcelona player), which by all means was quite fantastic. Then a Swedish friend of mine came from Sweden and we had vegan food and ecological beer. We had lunch in my old University building, I bought a book from Jonathan Ames even though I lack money, and we saw some terrible Dutch pop musicians and had beer that was not ecological. We went shopping and saw an exhibition called Niet Normaal, had some more beer, some pizza and we went to Utrecht one early morning where I scored three goals in a floorball game. Then went back and did not have bitterballens with our beer. We saw the FA-Cup game between Preston - Chelsea and fell asleep to Man Utd - Hull. We bought Belgian beers in the snowfall and made videos with questions and watched several episodes of Bored to Death. Today we woke up with hazy minds and he made his way out on the snowy streets and headed towards Eindhoven Airport. I stay low, guard my time and space. Trying not to loose it.

An excellent meatballs chef

2010-01-19T18:44:00.003+01:00

Airportline was recently encouraged to write a short presentation message that would be sent to his new colleagues. This is what he wrote:

I’m originally from Karlstad, Sweden but have lived in Malaysia, the United States and The Netherlands. I really enjoy working and studying in an international environment and appreciate the fact that I will be able to continue to do this at Spark. I finished my Masters degree in European Communication Studies at UvA in October last year, in my master thesis I researched the role of organizational culture and core values in Greenpeace International and Philips. At SPARK I will mainly work with communication aspects and try and develop the newsletter and website and figure out how we can use social media to make an even bigger impact and hopefully intensify the community around our projects. On my spare time I am an aspiring fiction writer, floorball (kind of indoor hockey) player, music nerd and excellent meatballs chef.

Nothing like the sound of this album

2010-01-18T19:56:00.004+01:00

I biked with the other people through the streets of Amsterdam. The morning was young and the the streets paved with the gold that was painted by the sun on the water. The bike cues towards our office buildings, I used to stand on the other side and look at them, think that I am not those people, that they do not belong to my city. That they lived in their boxes, with time sheets, and money to buy shoes with their girlfriend/boyfriend on Saturdays in the Jordaan. Now I am on their side, biking the same streets, still wont have money for new shoes, but I will follow the pattern which modern society lays out for most of us. And now I will head over to the floorball court and yell at some floor-ballers, make them follow my instructions. Ah the smell of structure. It smells nothing like Laakso's 2005 Album My Gods. Maybe that is why it sounds to great right now. Specially the song Someone Somewhere, which you can listen to here. There is no 9-5 mentality there, is there?!

The promise of British folk-pop

2010-01-17T13:37:00.006+01:00

Airportline has had Fanfarlo's debut album from last year, Reservoir, on heavy rotation since getting hold of it in early December. After some hazy discussions over vegan food and underground rap music at OT301 here in Amsterdam it was decided that we should try and see if there are any good shows coming up in the city. This is something I normally do, but since my future has been in a constant flux the last few months I have not bothered investigating it very closely. But now, when I have tied up two jobs (one fun with very little money, and one less fun with ok money) which I will do parallel for the next couple of months I can start looking again. And, turns out that Fanfarlo is coming, on Tuesday, to Paradiso! Being lead by the distinct voice of fellow swede Simon Aurell this British folk-pop orchestra ends us sounding quite similar to Airportline favorites Noah And the Whale. Fanfarlo also brings the indie-crescendo masters Arcade Fire, and more acoustic and richly orchestrated folk-bands as Beirut, to mind. All in all it is a band that master to craft beautiful songs that should go down well in the rainy Amsterdam reality we exist in. This Sunday Airportline treets you to two acustic numbers with this wonderful little big band

The Flying cat

2010-01-16T13:44:00.005+01:00

One and a half years ago in a Short stories work shop. Choose a picture from a book with animals and write about it. I chose one of a cat flying into the unknown. A bit like this picture. Then we got ten minutes to write something. I remember that a Ukrainian artist who wanted to write a children's book liked what I wrote. This is how it turned out:

It represents movement, a forward motion in life. It’s about taking a chance and jumping into something unknown. It’s fun, elegant and natural. Standing still is missing out on everything that is moving, and since life is a movement, an organic evolution, its life you’re missing. A cost too great to bear, so you throw yourself out into something that is unknown and you might land on something unpleasant but it’s ok. It is what you learn from the movement that gives life meaning. Just as breathing is a movement of air, the physical movement of yourself is life: you stop either of them and it’s not only a stop of motion, it is a stop of life. Leaving is also entering and there is no use in looking back when life is happening in front of you. And even though there is knowledge in history, there is life in the future, and I choose life everyday of the week. Leave the motionless people behind, the once that are too afraid to let life shake them up. I have no time for them, as I move forward, they stand still.

The distinct lack of a functioning comment section

2010-01-15T19:01:00.003+01:00

The Airportline comment section is still not working. It is sad and true at the same time. I hate sad and true things. Long time Airportline friend, and now executive literary project editor, Gustav emailed this comment however:

Vecchio means old, I learned the other day. Or some word that resembles vecchio means old, at least. And now you use it on your blog. And I understand. It makes me proud of myself. Of some reason.

Gustav also blogs about his life in Rome and what he does at the United Nations World Food Program. Sometimes it is about trucks (yawn) and others about bookstores (yeah!).

The Foreground

2010-01-14T17:37:00.004+01:00

One week ago on Ponte di Santa Trinita in Firenze. Two brown shoes on a triangle with Ponte Vecchio in the background.

Japanese IKEA employees go dancing

2010-01-13T16:46:00.004+01:00

So I am working on this small project, which among other things, focus on IKEA's re-launch in the Japanese market in 2006. I am looking into the company's advertising strategy, which was very successful and where IKEA set up small museums around the city and did several very creative things. In the middle of this search I stumbled over this Japanese commercial that seems to be from last year. It made me laugh. So I though it might make you laugh as well. In case you are covered in snow, or just a bit cold.

A wounderful lyrical breakdown

2010-01-13T10:52:00.003+01:00

In Subbacultcha! Music Magazine December 2009 - January 2010 issue.

Top 5.
No 4.

Song: You Cried Me - Jookabox
Song of the year with that wonderful lyrical breakdown. No I can't let you do it! You should go, there's not much time. What? No! I won't let you do it! Ohw! Are you sure? Ok! Ahoooowahoow!

A short look in the rear view mirror

2010-01-12T11:22:00.005+01:00

the whitest boy alive 1517 street concert ic berlin

the whitest boy alive | MySpace Music Videos

2009 came and went like all years do, with a volcano of music washing over us in all kind of formats. I lost track for a while, went back, got tired of the new, sat long night listening to 2 Pac and wanting time to stop so I could catch up. But the time when you actually could keep up is long gone, there is not enough time for anyone to keep track of all those great tunes that crawl around the internet waiting for some hungry ears to explode into. This is not a list, just some comments on things I paid attention to at some point. I was suppose to make it better and longer but ran out of steam.

Best song title
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – This Love Is Fucking Right.
Sweet indie pop that combines Belle & Sebastian cuteness with Jesus and Mary Chain distortion. It turns out sounding like a cheerful in love version of Swedish pop masters The Radio Dept.

Best falling in love song based on a European capital
Camera Obscura – French Navy
2009 was the year that this Scottish outfit finally got the recognition they deserved, and with an album like this My Maudlin Career it was always going to be impossible for them to stay under the radar. Makes you want to book a trip to Paris even if it is on a Eurolines bus.

Best White Funk
Whitest Boy Alive – 1517
It was early in the year when they played in a cold Berlin in front of a functionally dressed Berlin hipster crowd (see video above). The music was warm as a thick Norwegian sweater and the funk was whiter than Nordic milk.

Best lets turn everything into maximum
Passion Pit – Moth's Wings
This band annoyed many this past year. It is not difficult to understand why. With a high pitch voice and 1000 kilos of emotions in each song it takes its toll on the ears. But while Passion Pit became unbearable in the album format they occasionally got things right. This song, with its twisted electro chorus and confetti sound, did bring plety of smiles to my face.

Best British darkness epic pop
White Lies – E.S.T.
Having been dominated by Editors the past years, this year brought another black and white loving band when White Lies burst through with this magnificent heavy song with a chorus that is lethal in case you happen to hear it while jogging. Great Joy Division throwback. No idea how the rest of the album sounds like.

Greatest pop number
Atlas Sound – Walkabout (feat. Noah Lennox) / Girls – Lust For Life
I’m not even gonna write anything about these songs cause they are both so epic, and both define all that is good with a pop single that you just will have to listen yourself. I don’t believe that there are musts in life but if I would believe in it, I would tell you that you have to listen to these songs. You must listen to these songs. See, now I said it.

Una giornata sportiva

2010-01-10T13:41:00.005+01:00

After what by all means should be labeled as a cultural day, crowned with a visit to Villa Manin (where Napoleon cruised around and gave away North East Italy and part of Croatia to Austria in exchange for some nice islands and recognition of France as a country) and the art exhibition The Age of Courbet and Monet, where some fine Impressionist art was hanging (among them the painting Poppies in the field by Pál Szinyei Merse (1845-1920) which immediately became one of my favorites of all time) in a great palace it is now time for a day of sport ('Una giornata sportiva'). Here is the plan:

15:00 Udinese - Lazio @ Stadio Friuli
18:15 Snaidero Udine - Carimat Pavia @ Palasport Carnera
20:45 Juventus - Milan @ the sofa a casa.

Only thing left now is a another cafe and then to wrap a Udinese scarf around my neck and venture out in the frigid temperatures that seems to follow me during my Christmas travels. Tomorrow I head north and back to Amsterdam which I hear is one big snow disaster. Oh, what joy!

Kings of Convenience

2010-01-09T12:07:00.002+01:00

One of Airportlines favourite bands talk about growing up and what sounds like the end of music making from one of my true creative role models Erlend Øye in The Independent:

"Doing this album and the tour is definitely the end of a chapter for me, of these last two years," says Øye. "There are the three Kings of Convenience album, and the other albums I've been making. I feel I've said a lot. It's not the end of the band, but as a recording musician, I would love to take it easy now. I've said a lot of things. I wouldn't want to write anymore after this unless it really came very strongly to me. I don't think I'm going to be looking for it anymore. I guess there is all the other life out there. When you record albums, tour, record albums, tour, it's a constant state of emergency. You are losing out on normal life, on having friendships with people, routines. I guess at my age, either you just continue at a constant state of emergency or you have to really slow the pace down, try to reconnect to normal life, if such a thing exists."

The non stop Italian man

2010-01-08T19:22:00.005+01:00

The indecisive Italian fire

He was talking non stop in his cell phone, pacing around the train compartment throwing out italian words as if he was appearing in an Italian rap contest. Outside the wet streets of Padova slowly lined up next to the train which hurried through rainy landscapes. We listened to my mp3-player and tried to cure the heads we forgot about last night while tucked into one of the few alternative places in what probably is one of the most stunning cities I have visited. Florence is proud and arrogant and I cast no blame. In Pop Café they played loud Hot Chip remixes and served beer from Munich. It felt like a pocket from Berlin. My friend who lives there but flew to Bangkok today bought Amaros and they were as dolce as most things are here. Now it was post Amaro time and the man had been talking since we entered the train in Florence. There was no indication that he was running out of words. He had words, some of them apparently about how bad his brother was, the others remain unclear. But he had them and there was no denying the fact that he had to get them out, outside his head, into our lives. We had no say in this. So I banged my legs to the sound of Arcade Fire and was told I looked like a boy.

The future remains unclear

2010-01-07T19:18:00.005+01:00

Last night Airportline walked the steep hill of Tarcento to witness the future, masterly disguised in a fierce fire which many a italian people, and one Swede, watched while drinking 1 Euro wine and eating some fine sausage. While on the top people were confused: towards which direction was the fire actually blowing? Turns out it went south, in what an expert is describing as "an unusually undecisive fire". This however did not hinder this expert, whose credentials remain unknown. He concluded that the "year will eventually be good although we'll have to make some sacrifices in the beginning". After the fire the city of Tarcento blew off some impressive fireworks in the cold air and when the final part of the giant fire fell to the ground to sheering Italians we knew that sometimes a giant fire on a hill is all you need to feel good, even though tomorrow might not look that great.

Picture of the whole event will follow tomorrow evening. I have 8 hours of train journey to cover until that. Arrivederci.

La prossima fermata Firenze

2010-01-06T14:16:00.003+01:00

Somewhere ten minutes drive from Udinese calcio's football stadium Stadio Friuli. Have just been served some gnocchi with ragu and other goodies topped with espresso and some home made Limoncello. Working after this taste explosion is proving difficult, but it has to be done cause in a few hours we are going to see some kind of end of last year bon fire that will predict the future. If the smoke blows towards the east it will be a good year, if it blows to the west a bad one. Some Italians apparently started burning the future already yesterday, with constant eastward smoke as a result. This is the real deal though, or so the tell me. I will keep you posted about the future when I hear more about it. Tomorrow the Aiportline excursion travel south to Firenze.

3 must reads from the snow

2009-12-27T14:02:00.007+01:00

Girls front-man Christopher Owens, A Modern Day Byron, according to Fader

The days between the Christmas munchies and New Years decadence is often spent with reading. At least in my family. As I am currently covered in Snow in Sweden I am surrounding myself with words. There are newspaper piles on all the tables, except for when my mom does one of her feared cleaning sweeps and suddenly make them disappear ('I thought you had already read it', her usual explanation for suddenly trashing tonnes of words that never caught my eyes) or when my dad burns some of them while lighting the fire place. Here are two columns and one blog post you should rest your eyes on during these days if you are in need:

1. Marina Hyde's hilarious The Guardian column: 1, Beckham. 2, Murdoch. 3, Britney's ex. Will this do for my list of the noughties?

She takes on the list obsessed media and manages to both pinpoint both a sad media development and what it says about our time. It's a bit similar to the corporate world where everything that can be put into numbers automatically is seen as something of value.

2. Joshua Bearman's International Herald Trubune story My half-bakes bubble

Where he manages to describe the root of the financial crisis with a very funny story about him selling cake futures during lunch break in school. Worth a read even if you have no interest in contemporary economic policy and a must if you do have an interest in it.

3 The Fader music blog's Listmania

A must for every music nerd and, among many other great things, includes this list concerning one of Airportline's absolute favourite bands this year, Girls:

Top Five Lyrics That Prove That Christopher Owens of Girls is a Modern Day Byron, Too Earnest to Be a Modern Day Don Juan, Just a Simple Man with Regular Desires and No Need or Understanding of How to Quell, Mask or Spurn What he Truly Wants
5. Lay in the park, smoke in the dark/ Get high like I used to do/ Summertime soak up the sunshine with you
4. No, I’m never gonna fix up and i might me crazy/ But I’ve really got it goin’ on
3. I’ve got an ice cream cone, and I’m feeling fine tonight/ And when I get you back home, oh you know I’m gonna do you right, oh yeah
2. I’ve got a sad song in my sweet heart/ And all I really ever need is some love and attention
1. Let’s be the people that we want to be/ Let’s live like we could never part

Karlstad, Sweden

2009-12-26T22:48:00.001+01:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/2454

Personal portraits in the Swedish winter

2009-12-23T13:37:00.003+01:00

Airportline is in Sweden. Next to me my sister is wrapping presents and the scent of freshly baked scones is still lingering in the air from the morning. We are listening to this pretty Christmas song from Sufjan Stevens epic 5-cd 'Songs For Christmas', as suggested by Swedish music journalist Kristin Lundell. Winter is all around and yesterday I sat in an airplane in Copenhagen in a snowstorm, waiting for a Thai Airways airplane to be de-iced while finishing the last pages of Amos Oz Black Box, admiring his personal portraits. Or how about this apt description a few pages from the end of the novel:

'A slightly stooping, balding man, with fine skin; his appearance reminds me of a Scandinavian village pastor, on his face a strange mixture of mortification, meditation, and irony, his shoulders sloping downward, his back bony and stiff. Only the grey eyes seem cloudy and damp, like the eyes of a confirmed alcoholic'

From the Airportline crew we wish you a Merry Christmas and we will be back after the celebrations with more observations from the world.

The giant snow man

2009-12-21T18:57:00.002+01:00

As the rest of the Dutch population made normal snow men, or in some instances snow dogs, they set their sights higher. It was an early Sunday morning when they met at the south entrance of Vondelpark. They spend the first few hours smoking and making drawings. Dutch families made circles around them with their snow hungry kids and functional strollers. After a few hours of preparation they began working on their giant snow man. Since many of them had not attended their biology classes their snow man did not have the ball shape structure of ordinary snow men, or the more straight structure of a real man. Instead it turned out looking more like an over sized object school children could practice putting on a condom on. When I told this to the architects they immediately tried to strangle me with the snowman’s scarf. I retracted my statement and choose to view its creative and aspirational qualities instead. After hours of hard labor, always accompanied by several professionally rolled joints, the builders were finally ready to show of their work as the sun slowly began to set over the snow covered trees. Cameras surrounded the young men as they proudly posed next to their giant creation. It was the proudest moment of their life, their own moon landing, their own Eiffel Tower. It was only a few days until Christmas but these tenacious construction workers showed that even a few days before the big day of giving, a giant snow man in the shape of a dildo can be provided for free to an appreciative public. There is nothing like giving a giant snow man to the people of Amsterdam, the architects concluded, before leaving the park and the snowman to its own devices.

Airportline takes over Princeton

2009-12-20T18:36:00.008+01:00

Airportline is listening to the new Fanfarlo album Reservoir (beautiful) while the cars and bikes slide around on the snowy streets of our now white city. Took a walk in Vondelpark earlier and the amount of snowmen (and one snow dog!) that Dutch people produced was highly impressive. No matter where I turned snowmen were parading the snow covered lawns and park areas. Then I went and drank some Glögg and had som pepparkakor, both highly Swedish Christmas things. We are now getting mentally ready to once again travel north: the editorial board will be flying to Göteborg this coming Tuesday.

As I told you on Friday Airportline's guerrilla advertising campaign has now hit the streets of Princeton, USA where we dominated the news and also went looking inside a bronze Tiger. We expect our readership consisting of bronze statue lovers and academics to sky rocket during the coming years, so make sure to spread this around to your friends, and foes. The guerrilla advertising scheme will continue and if you would like to participate in this global quest for recognition please leave a comment or send me an email and I will provide further instructions.

In the daylight I don't pick up my phone

2009-12-18T12:38:00.004+01:00

After a week of some technical issues and me trying to distance myself from my lap top a bit Airportline will now be up and running again, as you might notice (unless you consistently attend this website on strong hallucinogenic drugs, which by the way, we in secret would applaud) the layout has been changed again. This was a necessary thing to do since my Finnish technical advisor, and Dutch national floorball team member, informed me that my previous template was not finished. This meant that the Airtportline empire considered starting some serious internet warfare, but, since we don't know how to fight a war in real life, or on line (we blame Sweden), we decided to sit and grunt instead.

After this grunting period we finally decided that unfinished templates is nothing for Airportline, thus, we were forced to take a journey into the wild (a.k.a. Google) in order to find a new design which would not dent out already fragile financial situation. After displaying some amazing google skills we found this template, and since I have heard very few comments about this, except 'more black = good' we will keep this for a while.

Tomorrow we will finally present the second leg on the guerrilla advertising campaign that was started to great applauds during the spring in Paris. One of our esteemed US correspondents has met some tigers and newspaper-stands in the US academic headquarters of Princeton. I smell some tweed!

Before that click play on the video and listen to one of the best remixes I've heard this year. Troublemaker pull of a perfect combination of the Matt & Kim slacker anthem Daylight pared with hip hop giants De La Soul.

Under construction

2009-12-16T13:05:00.002+01:00

After problems with the comment section work is being performed. A new layout might be on the cards. When we return to normal we have US guerrilla advertising, fantastic pop and some other goodies for you.

Nudity

2009-12-14T18:21:00.005+01:00

It seems as if nudity has gotten some kind of revival in popular culture lately. I am not sure why this is the case. Perhaps its all that normative conservatism that is floating around in the political sphere that is making people revolt, or maybe its just an extreme way of showing yourself off when comedic Facebook status updates or Youtube videos of a sleep walking dogs running into a wall is no longer enough? White bony indie musicians seem to have an especial interest in doing this and I personally have no real issue with it, although when it is sold in a music video I always get the feeling that they are trying to cover up the fact that the music maybe isn't that interesting without nudity. The Brooklyn duo Matt & Kim did pull the combination of good music and interesting nudity by throwing their clothes of in New York's Times Square to the tune of their very pretty melodic song Lessons Learned.

Sex conference report

2009-12-13T23:13:00.004+01:00

So, last Wednesday I went to a conference about sex. I told you I would report something about this, but as you know: I never do what I say I will in this blog. But our esteemed Airportline contributor from the Oil drinking nation of Norway felt that this was a great waste and took it upon her to explain what exactly went on there before that morning coffee and all those free drinks we had afterwards. So: this is what we learned:

Dr. Ken Kraaijeveld
Explained that in asexual mating all individuals are female. They get a lot more offspring, but since they reproduce through cloning there's not too much genetic variation and they are reliant on mutations to adapt to new environments. (Airportline does not really understand this)

So, while sexual reproduction yields fewer offspring, and provides a now sexual selection on both genders (fastest sperm, most attractive egg (Airportline finds the idea of attractive eggs very comedic), but also less depressive results, like clever females), it is the best and most sustainable evolutionary way of reproduce, because it combines genomes from different individuals and thus we have more variations in a population, which in return provide more protection against parasites. Ok, that sentence was ridiculously long, sorry. But this is especially reflected in our complex immune system, and it is believed that attraction between humans might be based on a search for mates with a different immune system than yours to make super-babies in the battle against pathogens. (Airportline: what?!)

What have we learned? If you must reproduce asexually, you should be tiny, i.e. unicellular, like bacteria, so that your generation time is minimal, and mutation rates should be high. However, if you want to become a complex multicellular being, sex is the way to go. Fewer offspring, but more invested in them.

Dr. Ellen Laan
Argued that there are 237 reasons for humans to have sex. i.e. it's not just for reproduction. The main reasons listed for men and women are similar (1. pleasure 2. Love and commitment 3. Experience searching).

(Airtportline was impressed that she quoted Woody Allen early in this lecture: ‘masturbation is sex with someone I love’ being the memorable line she used when she discussed the definition of sex)

However, the parental investment theory says that the gender contributing most energy and resources to the offspring should be more choosy in picking a mate. In most mammals, incl humans, this is the female, since we're going through 9 months of carrying a bowling ball in our uterus and need to feed it from our glands for at least some months after birth (WHICH IS LETHAL AND COMPLETELY INSANE WHEN YOU THINK OF IT). In that case women should be better than men at controlling their sexual response, such as mentally turning the sex drive off after getting turned on, but in her research she didn't find any empirical evidence for this (remember, the chair, the vibrator and the erotic movie-experiment?). Rather, men were better at controlling this.

She also said that the main reason that post-menopausal women experience a lower sex drive and a bad sex life is not hormonal, bur rather dependent on the state of their sexual state prior to menopause. So, an exchange of partner might be better than taking hormones. Haha (Norway oil drinking laugh)

Dr. Tristham Wyatt
THE PURPLE VELVET SUIT!!! (Airportline ads that he was wearing a highly impressive suit which I almost asked him about after three beers and four bitterballens)

Success of the smelliest? Pheromones drive sexual selection in many many phyla. this has been widely accepted for insects since 1959 (MOTHS!) but now we know that pheromonal attraction occurs also among higher mammals, and the elephant's pheromone consists of the same as the moths'. (so, why don't moths fly and try to mate with an elephant? because the composition is different in the different species!)

- Pheromones is not correct greek (or was it latin..?), it should be pheroromones, but that's ridiculous. (Airportline ads that this actually was a very funny joke, but maybe not so much in writing)

-Being smelly also means being easily discovered by enemies that want to eat you. Being smelly AND ALIVE sends signals to the females that your super-genes allow you to be super-quick in escaping from predators, or very strong etc..it's called honest signalling of good genes cause it gives the males a handicap they have to overcome, and it's very sexy for females. The classical example is the peacock's tail-feathers, which is highly conspicuous. Males with a poor gene-combination could never get away with that kind of ornament, they would be dinner.

Dr. Julie Bakker
Ok she was not so interesting but i noted that sex differences is also present in monkeys when it comes to preferring human gender-based toys.
Dr. Eva Becher
I fell asleep. twice. and drew a picture of a face on the note page. (Airportline also fell asleep, and then drew strange shapes that in no way resembles Picasso's Guernica.)

Dr. Rob Knell
He speculated whether resistance to STDs would function as honest handicaps (see above). Thing is, STDs are pathogens, often viruses attacking us just like other viruses, but exploit our reproductive strategies to spread themselves to new hosts. However, humans on the other side would not wish to have an STD so we should have evolved ways to discover which individuals are infected by these diseases and avoid them. So why do 50% of promiscuous Scandinavians have chlamydia (yes, it is an epidemic. yes, one should get tested!)?

Thing is, for a pathogen, the goal is NOT to destroy its host. The human body functions as their habitat, just like we exploit the resources from our habitat. First thing they should learn, and it seems like they're better than humans at this, is to apply SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT. Exploiting their hosts' resources all at once and killing it off is not very good, cause where do they go from there? I.e. strains of pathogens that destroyed their hosts quickly also died at the same time, and since the STD's are dependent on keeping their host still sexually attractive for their own spreading, their should evolve to become less virulent by time. Like syphilis.

So, therefore, we have not evolved detection of potential mates with STDs. STDs may be annoying, painful and shameful but not to the degree that humans stop reproducing. They're like the cold-virus, dependent of their host coughing at strangers to spread, and so keeping their host chained to their bed is not very good for them.

Airportline wants to thank our special biology expert and sporadic blogger for this detailed report from a nice conference day.

The deal

2009-12-11T13:32:00.005+01:00

The Quote:
'Is it a dream, is it a lie, I think I'll let your decide' - Arcade Fire - Power Out

The Video:
If you think a music video should contain the same kind of American realism, coupled with the imaginary and absurd that made Magnolia into such a special movie, this video with Beck and Charlotte Gainsbourg is something for you.

The bridge:
Our Dublin correspondent informs us that the Samuel Beckett bridge opened yesterday in Dublin. Looks very similar to the Erasmus bridge in Rotterdam.

The word:
Continuous Partial Attention coined by Linda Stone in 1998 and describe the fact that many people never focus on only one thing, instead we multi task and sleep with our phones and always have our laptops so that we can chat with friends and what not.

'Continuous partial attention describes how many of us use our attention today. It is different from multi-tasking. The two are differentiated by the impulse that motivates them. When we multi-task, we are motivated by a desire to be more productive and more efficient. We're often doing things that are automatic, that require very little cognitive processing. We give the same priority to much of what we do when we multi-task — we file and copy papers, talk on the phone, eat lunch -- we get as many things done at one time as we possibly can in order to make more time for ourselves and in order to be more efficient and more productive. To pay continuous partial attention is to pay partial attention — CONTINUOUSLY. It is motivated by a desire to be a LIVE node on the network. Another way of saying this is that we want to connect and be connected. We want to effectively scan for opportunity and optimize for the best opportunities, activities, and contacts, in any given moment. To be busy, to be connected, is to be alive, to be recognized, and to matter.' from Wikipedia

No Pussy Blues

2009-12-11T00:13:00.004+01:00

You leave the training with your sweaty hair folded into your second hand hat. You bike and the wind slaps your sweaty face when you pass the Amstel river, its yellow light laughing at you and your tired body as you push yourself towards what now feels like the possibility of infinite sins. In your ipod Grinderman cuts your ears with dirty blues rock and aggressive guitars that sound like an industrial meltdown. You press your fingers harder against your handlebars, you see red traffic lights but you pay no attention, you go straight to the beat of a drum, beating in the tune of insanity. 'I drink a liter of cognac and threw her down on the bed' Nick Cave yells and you pass by the green and red Christmas lights and the expensive stores of Hoofdweg. You give the now deserted street that is paved with meaningless personal wealth the finger in your mind. You can't let go of your handlebars, you don't trust the effect it might have.

'I got the no pussy blues' rolls over you over and over without any breathing space. All that is left is the wind gusting against your every push on the pedal. But you pay no attention as you pass a tram with boring people in their boring lives as you cross Overtoom. You are out in the wind and darkness and Nick Cave is yelling No Pussy Blues in your ears. Your legs hurt but you keep pedaling up over bridges where the peaceful canals turn into evil fountains when Nick Cave crawl around in your head with his band and his deperation which he wears better than anyone else. You turn on to Kinkerstraat and the Christmas lights are tacky, No Pussy Blues keeps parading down you veins and it is not until you lock your bike in front of the drug dealers, and remove your hat that you return to the real world again. Suddenly the canals look peaceful and you loose your need to throw your finger against anyone, that is, before you push play again.

Hit culture

2009-12-10T16:26:00.005+01:00

Do you remember when Christ Anderson came out with The Long Tail and predicted the end of the 'Block Buster culture'? People were suppose to go from mainstream culture to more specialized books, movies, music etc. that were more in tuned with their own needs and preferences. Of course you remember, well, turns out that this is not really happening, not in the way anticipated anyway. In a great exposé of modern media consumption the Economist analyzed what is happening in the world of books, news, music and film and came back with the conclusions that hits sell better than ever, and have a greater market share than ever. Nishé movies and music also do better then before, thus not totally busting the Long Tail theory. Everything in between is struggling, from medium sized newspapers who've seen their classified ads collapse, to musicians with a young fan base not buying albums anymore, the business of popular culture is relying more and more on big hits. And maybe Peter Cherning, who recently stepped down from a role overseeing the film and television business at News Corp, is right when he says that 'Hits are going to be the single biggest beneficiary of technology'. The Airportline thinks that this is a sad prospect. For those of you interested in contemporary media consumption I highly recommend this long but very informative article.

Giving the word to F. Scott

2009-12-08T19:04:00.005+01:00

I am occupied with different tasks, so today I will give the word to F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, and famously made fun in A Movable Feast by Ernest Hemingway for his weak tolerance for alcohol. The following quote was sent to me a few weeks ago and although I am sure many of you have read it, it deserves to be read again, cause it is beautifully written and based on an idea that I myself try and adhere to the best I can, namely, not judging people. So, while I continue to destroy my head and shoulders with some tedious tasks I give you part of the first page from The Great Gatsby:

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me, “just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”
He didn’t say any more, but we’ve always been unusually communicative in a reserved way, and I understood that he meant a great deal more than that. In consequence, I’m inclined to reserve all judgments, a habit that has opened up many curious natures to me and also made me the victim of not a few veteran bores. The abnormal mind is quick to detect and attach itself to this quality when it appears in a normal person, and so it came about that in college I was unjustly accused of being a politician, because I was privy to the secret griefs of wild, unknown men. Most of the confidences were unsought—frequently I have feigned sleep, preoccupation, or a hostile levity when I realized by some unmistakable sign that an intimate revelation was quivering on the horizon; for the intimate revelations of young men, or at least the terms in which they express them, are usually plagiaristic and marred by obvious suppressions. Reserving judgments is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth.

Tomorrow Airportline will attend a conference called 'Sex, an evolutionary success story'. If I learn something I will let you know.

No comment...

2009-12-07T15:10:00.004+01:00

HELLO IT'S Noko Jeans! from Noko Jeans on Vimeo.

...is an interesting part of the Euronews newscast, and now unfortunately also the definition of the comment section on my blog. I know this is not because non of you have anything to say, instead it is a technical problem which I will try and have a look at during the week. However, my technical expertise is admittedly limited so who knows how long this might take. Until this happens enjoy the design and keep your thoughts to yourself, and if you have urgent things to report or complain about or celebrate or whatever, you will find me at hypotetisk@hotmail.com. I do apologize for this little mishap!

Over to something more interesting. Swedish jeans label Noko hit the headlines last week when they unveiled their new jeans, produced in the tourist paradise of... yes... let it come to you... North Korea! With a video (see above) that hits every storytelling idea in the marketing world they had a glorious aim to try and maybe open up the country a bit. And what better way to lead a country towards democracy that to produce some super limited trendy jeans? Unless the trendy Stockholm fashion house PUB would not have stopped the brand they day after its launch (since they did not want to sell jeans from a country where jeans are illegal, since it is seen as a symbol for American imperialism, and working conditions generally are famously poor) it could have been Panda Diplomacy 2.0. Now its just another example of the power of marketing (even I am writing about it!) and both The Guardian and The New York Times have taken notice.

A tour around Paris with Phoenix

2009-12-04T16:26:00.004+01:00

Phoenix - 1901 - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

In a recent interview one of the guitarists in Phoenix explained the band's home town, Versailles, as 'very beautiful and very boring'. Boredom of course occasionally bring great creativity and Phoenix is certainly a great example of this. With their love for R&B, soul and funk and their way of fusing these influences with guitar indie, and on their latest album, a flirt with a more electronic side, the band has risen to well deserved fame. Airportline has been a great fan of this band ever since they had a song in the movie Lost In Translation and I saw them pull of a fantastic show in the hipster heaven of Amsterdam's Trouw this past spring.

However, when I was in Paris last year no one seemed to know about them, hopefully that has changed now. It is still interesting to follow the band around Paris where they performed a few songs (with the acoustic version of One Time Too Many on a tourist bus being my favorite) from the best musicvideoblog around: La Blogotheque. Vincent Moon has once again produced some classic music moments (note the married couple in the 1901 video!) to add to his long list of great videos. Airportline's favourite before was the apartment show with Yeasayer and the street performance with Beirut. Both magnificent.

Phoenix - Lizstomania / One time too many - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Phoenix - Long distance call - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Don't panic!

2009-12-03T16:05:00.004+01:00

I just needed a change. Let me know if something looks weird to you (not including the fact that my most listened to artist last week was Simon & Garfunkel). You Mac people were complaining about the text layout before, is this better for your little fashionista machines or are there still issues?

Doesn't really work

2009-12-03T12:15:00.004+01:00

I saw Whatever Works, Woody Allen’s latest movie, yesterday. The reviews have been mixed, both from friends and trusted writers. And even though it had its funny sides, and gave New York the great look it always gets from the eye of Woody, with its grand apartments, outdoor lunches and general visual pleasantness, it fails to reach high enough both regarding the comedy and acting. In the middle of the story an old Nobel price nominee with a death wish, played by Larry David, walks around. The story revolves on around the theme of luck and chance and portrays New York as the intellectual haven that can even make conservative swamp idiots into successful sexually liberated artists. People fall into each others lives, fall in love and out of love and turn gay and yeah, Woody made sure to press in so many parallel lives and stories in one and a half hours it is no wonder that it leaves you feeling a bit cheated. With so much life drama the characters never become more than comedic staples to turn the never stopping plot from racing through relationships and people as a normal Woody Allen movie on crack.

Even though its a nice movie I lack the emotional intenseness, the complex relationships and the characters in Woody’s best works. This is of course intended to be a light comedy, but it feels a bit rushed, a bit too loose and comfortable, and even though Larry David fits the bill as some kind of complaining Jewish math genius, his lack of any emotional engagement becomes tiring in the long run and feels misplaced and simplified when it suddenly arrives. While I would like to like this movie it simply reminded me of previous great Woody movies, but unfortunately it never managed to step out from the shade of its older cousins. Like ‘A O Scott’ (what kind of name is that?!) wrote in The New York Times:
‘Mr. Allen’s imagination has returned to Manhattan after that invigorating European sojourn afflicted by an extreme case of jet lag.’

Endorphins

2009-12-03T00:38:00.003+01:00

A friend of mine had an operation in his head last Friday. Not that serious, he reassured in an email. But still. This is a song for you David, I hope all went well and that you are recovering nicely, this song might help you on the way, if you need to release some endorphins.

Shout Out Louds return

2009-12-02T14:53:00.001+01:00

Shout Out Louds is an important band in my music upbringing. It was the first band I ever interviewed in person (the base player sat in dog poop when we sat down in a backstage area at the Arvika Music Festival) and their first EP, 100 degrees, and following single Shut Your Eyes are so overplayed that they barely hold together in my CD shelve back in Sweden. After two albums they are now gearing up to their third offering and a little nibble of a taste is avaliable right now with their new single Walls which you can see here above. Very nice video, and even though I'm not that found of the unmelodic intro, the song develops into a classic Shout Out Louds pop gem that eventually finds the band throwing themselves into all that desperation and The Cure pop they did so well on earlier songs like Tonight I Have To Leave It and Very Loud. The Airportline welcomes one of its favorite band back into the limelight. Go here to download the song for free

Album of the year?

2009-12-01T17:55:00.005+01:00

Noah And The Whale – First Day Of Spring (Mercury)

Broken love, a broken heart and broken dreams are fundamental concepts in human existence. They are emotional states that fill our best art with emotions because they are the core emotions in life. I think Noah and The Whale singer Charlie Fink is very aware of this. He is not afraid to state the obvious, to dress his songs up in clichés and simplistic descriptions of a broken heart. He knows it’s not about what you say but how you say it. He does occasionally put it beautifully also lyrically, he does, but as a listener you need not to be too concerned with some perhaps less novel descriptions of heartache. Noah and The Whale approached the need for love through beautiful orchestrations and a light-hearted melodies already on their surprisingly over looked folk pop debut album Peaceful The World Lays Me Down. These are feelings we all know but writing about them have proven to be difficult for many artist. There are those who claim that also Noah and the Whale can’t do this. I believe that these people are misguided and outright wrong. But as this is a matter of love and not hate I will not indulge in mudslinging. The topics Noah and The Whale circle around as heart breaking vulchers is how to move on from a broken relationship. It’s a magnifying glass into the feelings that this inevitably sad event so often lead to. This kind of albums often tend to become too navel gazing, too enforced, and too dramatically pompous. But when it is done with honesty, the most important ingredient in art that so many seem to forget, it can also catch you off guard, make you re-evaluate, think about things, and maybe face some truths that you were too afraid to face before. When art can hold your hand in these moments it can have both devastating and exhilarating effects.

I’ve talked a lot about Noah and The Whale since I heard their debut album and argued that it was one of the finest album of 2008. I always struggled to explain what it exactly was that made this London folk orchestra, who previously wore ridiculous colorful hipster wear, special. What made them hit my heart over and over while my surroundings shook their shoulders and moved on to something different. It can be frustrating to hear something that touches your soul while other people are unmoved. But I kept pedaling my bike over the Amstel river with Charlie Fink proclaiming that ‘if you give a little love you can get a little love of your own’ over piano and hand claps in Give a Little Love and thought that it was magical every time.

Perhaps it is my genuine interest for lost love and loneliness that immediately hit me when I listen to Noah and The Whale. Fans of Jens Lekman will recognize the upfront lyrics and the sincerity that I find rare among young Londoners. Its unfortunate that their colorful clothes and the, in indie circles, well covered relationship breakdown between Charlie Fink and Laura Marlin took focus from the bands music. When Laura went of on her own, becoming the poster girl for the new London folk movement with her pretty but ultimately somewhat disappointing (I know there are people that do not agree with this statement) debut Alas I Cannot Swim people assumed that Noah And The Whale would amount to nothing without her. Instead the vocalist break-up pushed the bands music into something much darker and emotionally engaging than before. At first glance it was quite a big step, but if you keep your eyes close to the lyrics you will still recognise the themes and sounds from their debut. Outstanding songs on the debut album such as Give A Little Love and Hold My Hand As I’m Lowered already touched the theme of lost love which on their 2009 output The First Days Of Spring bloomed into a haunting and captivating journey through the effects of love.

The First Days of Spring is an album that hurts to listen to, from the slow starting The First Say Of Spring, with its build up and crescendo end, to the album closing song, My Door Is Always Open, the band takes a long and sparsely orchestrated ride into a landscape that from time to time beat with some hope but ultimately still is in knee deep in mourning. The fluctuating emotional states occasionally becomes angry, occasionally filled with a feeling that it was for the best, occasionally portraying the feeling loneliness, and other times drawing a line and moving on. It is like looking into a journal where someone has written down his thoughts without editing, without hiding his emotions in distancing metaphors.

‘and its been a while since I starred at the stars’ Fink sings over a lonely guitar and sparse piano keys in Our Window as the world looks different while reflected in a lost promise. In stand out track Blue Skies Fink starts out boldly stating that ‘this is a song for anyone with a broken heart’. I’ve sent it to friends who have understood just how he feels. ‘This is the last song I will write while you’re even on my mind’ he continues as the song develops into an anthem celebrating the forward motion that life always needs to have. Like Alvy Singer says in Woody Allen’s master peace Annie Hall, ‘relationships are like sharks, they have to keep moving forward otherwise they’ll die’.

I’ve been surprised in my own life of the heavy impact, and the brutal loneliness that can come out of the end of a relationship. There are many artists that try and put these feelings into the music they make. But while so many choose to write about these feelings through metaphors or poetic verse Noah And The Whale goes straight on the pure emotions, and combines this with Charlie Finks voice that sounds like its been frozen in that exact moment when a relationship falters, when both parties realizes that all roads that leads forward are paved with sadness and disappointments. Although I don’t recognize myself in the stories of the album, I feel the emotions that are dealt with in these songs, I understand what Charlie fink and his voice is singing about and I can feel the honesty that travels through the songs on this album.

Broken love, a broken heart and broken dreams will always be important and difficult concepts to write and make music about, Noah and the Whale shows that disclosing honesty and dressing it up with well orchestrated pop numbers is an excellent way of doing it. The First Day of Spring might not make you smile, or turn a gray day into sunshine, but it might be the best sad album about lost love that I have heard since Ryan Adams album Heartbreaker and Red House Painters Songs For A Blue Guitar. It might make you realize that there are more people than you that go through heartache. It can be a comforting realization at times.

The hostility of rain and crowds

2009-11-29T22:44:00.006+01:00

I got stuck in rain a million times, every time I unlocked my bike this weekend it started pouring. Like someone upstairs was sitting, patiently and with great determination, and let all hell loose just when I got going. There was no end to the poring, I tried to move in the night but the weather kept me at bay. Plans were scrapped and in the middle of it all my phone batteries gave up on me. Fall is here and it is wearing its usual mix of aggressive storms and horizontal rain fall. There is no need for surprise or anger really, we all knew it would come, and all we need to do is dress accordingly and not get upset about it. But of course we do get upset, cause we are emotional people, and all rationality in the world does not help when your head is covered by cold rain and your wet jeans grasp your thighs.

In all this weather that worked full time against me I, and the rest of Amsterdam Agents, managed to destroy Amersfoort's floorball team (7-1) in front of a very energetic home crowd. I got send off for roughing and was responsible for the only goal we let in but otherwise I had a good game as a defender. Today I watched another trumping, when Chelsea went to Arsenal and showed who's boss in London and the Premier League. Drogba was magnificent, with two fantastic goals, and Mikel, Essien and the whole back four were perfect throughout the game. Former Arsenal left back Ashley Cole was behind two of the goals and was accordingly booed when he was substituted. Ah how nice it is to win away against a hostile crowd. That goes both in the Premier League and in the 1st Division of the Dutch Floorball League.

Quote of the day

2009-11-27T15:28:00.002+01:00

'I have read the right book to interpret your look'

Joanna Newsom - Peach, Plum, Pear

Come on let's go

2009-11-26T17:29:00.002+01:00

Here is a song that has this airy jazzy feel and combines it with 60s polka-dots cuteness that confidently flows through the sun cats it paints on the walls in your heart when you listen to it.

A tribute to friends

2009-11-26T12:03:00.004+01:00

Thanksgiving is here but this is Europe so very few people care about this. This does not mean that it is a bad time to be thankful, so today I will try and think about the good things: about friends I have dotted around the world, who send me emails, text messages, who calls me from thunderstorms in Singapore, who write messages on cards, who comment on this blog, who give me space on couches and drive me in their cars, who make mix cds with music I send them, who buy me sushi, who give their time to my strange projects, and tell me that I am good when I question myself. It is a beautiful thing and now is as good as any day to give it up for you. I hope you think that I give something back, I hope that you occasionally take something from the music I send you, from the the short stories with spelling mistakes I give you, from my ears that listen to you concerns, and from the scribbles on this blog. We all fly different directions but hopefully we rub of each other, hopefully we make each other better people, give each other greater perspectives, and that, my friends, is something that I am very thankful for.

Where are your friends tonight?
If I could see all my friends tonight

Mos Def is back

2009-11-25T15:03:00.003+01:00

Listening to Most Def's 2009 album The Ecstatic and I am surprised how good it is, Mos Def hasn't really delivered anything noteworthy in book book in a while now. Airportline welcomes him back to the rap scene with open arms after a first listen to this album in my newly isolated room. The beat on Twilite Speedball is one of the best I've heard this year and those of you that counted out The Neptunes can take a break now.

The man behind the words part 3

2009-11-24T16:03:00.004+01:00

This is the third part of the Airportline founder and CEO answers random questions from a questionnaire that he has adapted from a Swedish blog and answered three weeks ago

Do you rather receive emails or letters?
There is something very nice with hand written letters, but since I receive more letters than I send I do feel a bit guilty about this. My mom send me letters with cows sometimes, I like that. But the message is more important than the medium.

Do you believe in love at first sight?
Yes, although it is a matter of definition because the love you feel at first sight is very different from the love you feel after getting to know someone. But they are both beautiful feelings and I believe in them both.

Have you puked in public?
Yes, in a friends lap on a bus in Karlstad. To my defence I told him I really needed to get of, but he assumed that I didn’t know what I was talking about. Never assume.

Are you satisfied with your life?
Yes, I am living it the only way I know how. Even though I lack some things which I might perhaps would have liked to have at this stage there are many positives in all the uncertainty I walk around in.

Are you spoiled?
I used to complain that I wasn’t but considering the people I've met and the places I've had the possibility to visit I think the only acceptable answer would be yes. Then again, I have no bed or money. But that is of course (partly) my own making.

What do you do tomorrow?
What I do everyday, do some work, do some writing, maybe meet a friend, make some food, do some reading. Listen to some music. I find amazing reward in some of these activities.

What is the worst thing you know?
People who only think of themselves. People who are not uninterested to meet new people or learn new things, people who complain that their life is boring but refuse to change even if they can, people who don’t know what they are talking about but still feel like they need to have an opinion, people who question art from a economic point of view, old ignorant people who claim that my generation is lazy and not willing to work hard, teenagers listening to bad commercial hip hop with their phone-speakers on busses and trains.

How much money do you waste during a week?
Depends on how you define waste, since I have very little money I feel that most of it goes to things I really value.

What celebrity do you think is a good role model?
Joyce Carol Oates

The man behind the words part 2

2009-11-23T10:08:00.008+01:00

This is the second part of the questionnaire I answered about two weeks ago.

Do you own a pair of Converse?
I did buy a bootleg pair in Bangkok at one point but I believe they broke. I need more comfort than Converese can bring my feed anyway.

Do you usually get too drunk?
It happens, this I will not deny. I tend to blame the company I am in and my national origin.

Are you allergic to anything:
Yes, cats, dust, kiwi (not sure anymore), lack of sleep.

Have you had sex today:
No

Next goal in your life:
Finish the book project that I have been working on for 1,5 years. And get a permanent job, of course.

How do you answer in your cell phone?
‘Yeah its Patrik.’ I don’t know why, and I do not think it sounds especially nice, but that is what I say. When one of my Italian contacts call I occasionally say ‘pronto’. And when someone in my family calls I sometime answer ‘Tjänsteutveckling I Karlstad AB’ which is the old name for my dad’s company.

Who did you last call?
A person who will participate in a study I am conducting

What did the person you last spoke to say?
No problem, I can help you with this.

Numbers of hours you slept last night?
8.

Did you sleep alone?
Yes

Are you usually on time?
Yes. It is indescribably frustrating because no one else (or very few) I know is.

When do you feel good?
When I am in the sauna, when I have showered after working out, when I like what I write, when I read something I like, just after I have booked a trip I look forward to, after, during and before sex, when I have conversations that are good, when I hear a song for the first time and have to listen to it five times in a row.

When were you photographed last?
A few weeks ago while working, I looked focused.

How do you feel right now?
Tired, shoulders hurt, ears are warm and a headache is looming, but I’ve become totally consumed with answering these questions so can’t stop now.

Most common colour of your clothes?
Blue

What do you think about feet?
I have no problems with them. I don’t love them either. But they are good to have, in case you want to run, or walk.

What do you lack?
Money, a plan, a bed, a comfortable office chair.

Did you have a good night last night?
Not really, I had floorball practice and I was awful. Had to throw my stick in the wall at some point to release all the anger I had built up.

Favourite thing to drink in the morning?
Tea or orange juice

Do you shave your legs?
No

When do you usually go to bed?
Between twelve and one.

Are you shy?
No

Do you do any sports?
Yes, I am quite the sporty character. I play floorball, jog, bike, snowboard and cross country ski. The latter two very sporadically since I live in a country without snow or mountains.

The man behind the words part 1

2009-11-20T18:06:00.007+01:00

This blog says nothing about my life. It is a bit cryptic and I think that was the plan. I think that is what I wanted. But, as a road to the person behind the words I will present a three legged series of posts that might shed some light on the individual that hides behind these words. Inspired by a questionnaire in one of the Swedish blogs I read I have made an Airportline version of it. So those of you that will be near a computer with an internet connection this weekend can follow this as it evolves. Here is part one, about sad songs and nicknames. Please note that the answers are about two weeks old. Can't let you get too close.

Nickname:
I’m not a fan of nicknames, except the one I created about a year ago: Dr. Mike Freedom. Calling it a nick name might be strong, its more of an alter ego, but it was a nice alter ego. Some of the nick names I’ve had include: Edvard, patte, hypotetisk and Patrix (a nickname me and two other Patrik shared, yes, it was around the time of the first Matrix movie). Lately P Diddy has been suggested and I’m sure there are many more but which I have repressed to a dark corner of my memory.

Songs that you mourn with when you are sad?
Have You Forgotten / Song For A Blue Guitar – Red House Painters, Ryan Adams – Call Me On Your Way Back Home (see video above), Aimee Mann – Wise Up, Bright Eyes – Lua, The National – About Today, Hets! – Du Är Också Dum, Håkan Hellström – Nu Kan Du Få Mig Så Lätt, Coldplay – Fix You, Frida Hyvönen – N.Y. and yeah, I have tons of great songs to be sad together with.

What do people think of you?
I think people have an ambivalent view of me. I think some people find me serious, driven and ambitious. Generally I think people struggle to pinpoint me but I hope most people find me kind, caring, unselfish and quite funny. This idea might be as far from the truth as the ‘serious, driven, ambitious’ idea. Maybe people describe me as calm; this is probably one of the defining things about me. This all goes out the window after a few beers though as I tend to be one of the most intense drunk persons that people have met.

Is this correct?
I think there is some truth to all these things, I enjoy being serious and not so serious. And I am a calm person.

What do you most often receive compliments for?
I think it is that I am funny, and that I have good taste in music. I respect both those opinions of course. Although it is worrying that the funny compliments often are highly correlated with alcohol consumption. I guess it is the curse of the Nordic man.

What do you tell people that you try to impress?
I make jokes about myself. Works surprisingly well since the world is full of self congratulatory motherfuckers. Yeah, I said it. I also enjoy showcasing my knowledge and interest in rap music since people find this highly unlikely based on my appearance.

How does one impress you?
By winning an argument. It might sound strange but I enjoy people that ague with me and win. Otherwise I am impressed by people that have qualities that I do not posses; for example, I am very impressed with people who have a good memory. I’m also impressed with people that have taken a chance and failed and who stand by it. The least impressive people are those that never risk anything.

Do you laugh on your own?
Yes, when I watch the Daily Show, when I read something online and watch youtube.

What does your last incoming text message say?:
I forgot my phone so can’t check, but it might have been regarding a police stake out in out apartment from my flatmate.

Where do you live?
In de Baarsjes in Amsterdam, apparently right by a major drug trafficking operation

What did you want to see

2009-11-19T13:12:00.004+01:00

It is a bit difficult to pin-point exactly what it is that is happening when Bradford Cox, member of Deerhunter and the headmaster of his soloproject Atlas Sound, team up with Banda Bear's Noah Lennox in this song from the album Logos. Being two of the most inventive musicians in the indie world it might not come as a giant surprise that this song is characterized by loose dreamy edges, but I was pleasantly surprised by the fantastic sun in the eye pop that jump out in this song. Walkabout sounds like the natural connection with the popier side of Animal Collective and the 'I want to dance all night feel' of those MGMT hits no one ever stops listening to. You can go and dream now.

2 books

2009-11-18T13:17:00.006+01:00

A few months ago, or maybe more, I saw an interview with the Israeli writer Amos Oz. He stroke me as being brilliant, his understanding of the world, the way he reasoned about life and his striking life which he usually began with a walk in the desert at five in the morning followed by very focused writing. I've never read anything by him and soon forgot that I was suppose to, until this weekend, when browsing the amazingly stuffed shelves in Dublin's The Secret Book And Record Store. There, among pages and pages turned by unknown people, I found 'Black Box'. 4 Euros later I greeted Dublin's Sunday sun with a paper bag containing that very book. Now I am reading it simultaneously with Ulf Lundell's Swedish coming of age novel Jack and some coffee. So far they are both amazing, with Amos Oz employing a practical and focused tone that feels almost judicial but somehow also very passionate. And then Lundell, with his airy and often hilarious spoken language and conversations combined with his philosophical and poignant metaphors that paints a Swedish summer landscape with endless beauty. Two books I highly recommend after reading about 100 pages in each.

The red carpet of the sea

2009-11-17T18:30:00.004+01:00

The CEO and founder of Airportline Inc. wanted to leave the internet and the world which was attached to it. 'My whole world is online!', he screamed one day in an empty café while finishing his third chai latté to the sound of his now upset stomach. He was a man in despair, so attached to his computer screen that his eyes could no longer focus on anything not digital. Even in the middle of the night while he was sleepwalking he found himself next to his laptop, hunching as if is was a cup of rice and he was a poor child in some African war zone.

His computer had become his altar, the tool which his life was lived through. 'This has to stop' he continued in the empty cafe, with only a black cat who was hunting mice acknowledging this somewhat unusual event. He rushed out from the cafe, out into the street where people lived without a computer in front of their eyes. They all looked depressed as they were pacing down the street in the spiky rain that fell. Like Forest Gump he began running through small town and villages where old men were reading newspapers. 'Why aren't you reading them for free online!' he yelled at them. Unfortunately for him they found the latest football scores more interesting than listening to a running CEO of a non-profit blog.

He kept on going although the worlds ears seemed deaf. Like a Duracell rabbit escaping the laptop which tormented him he cut thought the countryside like a knife cutting through a Christmas ham until he finally made it to the ocean. In a great salute to this man's quest the ocean bowed and drew itself back, showing its red carpet. Which happened to be brown and muddy. There he stood, with the wind blowing through every hole in his second hand jacked and starred out into the distance. A man finally free from his computer.

After a few minutes he returned to his everyday life and wrote a blog post about it. Unclear about the effect of his Forest Gump running he opened up an old newspaper which he had stolen from an old man which he passed by and read that the sea bows for anyone who walks there at the right time. This information pissed him off.

Computer get away

2009-11-16T19:18:00.001+01:00

I am on a computer get away in a foreign country.
The Airportline operations will resume tomorrow.
There is no need for concern.

The space between my mind and my fingers

2009-11-13T16:17:00.003+01:00

I know you're expecting words here, in this space, in this blog. Me too, I expect that they should just come out and put them self in order, make sentences that makes sense to you. Sentences that you can bring with you when you leave your computer and go out in that other world. That is why you come here, maybe. That is why I come here. I come here to read my own words. Sometimes they frustrate me, sometimes they anger me, sometimes they are misspelled or grammatically wrong.

In my head there is no grammar that is wrong, there are no spelling mistakes. Where do they come from? In that space between my mind and my fingers, why do they appear? I do not know and maybe that is the conflict that everyone that writes anything always have to struggle with, the words in your mind versus the words that you write. It would be convenient if my fingers that hammer these keys were completely controlled by my mind, it would even be something I would expect. But that cannot be true cause sometimes things come across as so much better in my head than on paper, or on a computer screen. Something is lost and I do not know where it is going.

Todays story and music tip is Melody Gardot. She got run over by a car, was advised to use music as a way to get back, and is now a ridiculously successful jazz singer. Read this and listen to this and you will see the beauty of life.

Just the season

2009-11-11T19:23:00.005+01:00

'I know its just the season' The Dodos sing in their song The Season from their somewhat disappointing 2009 sophomore album Visiter. There is no denying that the season is fall at this moment. The dark clouds hang over Amsterdam like overweight fruit just waiting to fall down on us and our bikes. I check my weather radar before I leave my house, time the small gaps without rain. In yesterdays the Daily Show Serena Williams sat with her powerful arms and claimed that she didn't know any 'child friendly dances'. I only know child friendly dances, maybe that is why Serena is sitting in a studio with John Stewart and I am sitting in a University library next to an abundance of Mac nerds and dress shoes wearing 21 year olds. I know its just the seasons. But it does not make it less real.

I know it's just the season
I sense no time or reason
The sky falls down; it's evening
The feeling goes; it's leaving

Talking breakfast cereal

2009-11-10T22:46:00.002+01:00

From the slowly progressing short story Love in the ruins:

'This is like that Pedro The Lion song Bad Diary Days,' he told her as she handed him his coffee. 'You know, when he sings: the breakfast cereal talked more than we did all day long'. He suddenly felt a wave of hopelessness coming over him. Who is going to pour the exact right amount of milk into my coffee, he wondered as he blew on the steam that was slowly rising from his cup.
She disregarded his music quote and the symbolism he found in it.
'So do you have any plans for the weekend.' she asked him in an attempt to not make the situation worse than it already was. She came across sounding like a business associate that just came out of the last meeting before the weekend, not really interested in the answer.
'I don't know,' he said, both to the question she asked and to the question he asked himself: How did we end up like this?

A misunderstanding of vanity

2009-11-09T12:13:00.005+01:00

Sometimes I've been surprised, and even annoyed, at some women and what I have interpreted as an obsession with regards to their own appearance. The constant looking in the mirror always made me think that these people are a bit too vain for their own good. However, after reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being recently, I found a passage that made me revise my opinion and realize that there might be a deeper quest to this, at first seemingly superficial, behavior. Kundera writes:

It was not vanity that drew her to the mirror; it was amazement at seeing her own `I`. She forgot she was looking at the instrument panel of her body mechanisms; she thought she saw her soul shining through the features of her face. (p. 38)

This is an interesting idea that might force me to reevaluate my disdain for all the fashion bloggers that showcase seemly selfobessed photos of spoiled teenage girls and their 'style of the day'. Maybe they are just looking at their own soul and trying to figure things out. Do I really have the right to ridicule that? Or is it an attempt to glorify and intellectualize a vain approach to life? I guess that is up to each one to decide for themselves.

Last.fm top 30 #8

2009-11-08T19:32:00.003+01:00

What is a good memory you have involving 30 Field Music?
I saw them at Paradiso in early 2007. I had a fever and felt high while I stood there with my head in the clouds and loved every minute of their quirky and ridiculously creative pop music. Field Music always felt like a band that wanted to have three songs in one. Some people probably found this frustrating. I however, loved it from the start. After the concert I went home and passed out, that might have been more due to the fever than their brilliance, but still. Its sad that they not longer exist, but nice that they became The Week That Was (who's song The Airportline gave this blog its name). Field Music is possibly one of the most underrated post millennium pop bands around.

Last.fm top 30 #7

2009-11-07T14:37:00.001+01:00

A few months ago I was encouraged to answer various questions concerning the 30 most listened to artists on my last.fm profile. During a feverish June evening I wrote more or less thoughtful answers to these questions which I amid to publish on Facebook at some point. That point never came, since I never do what I intend on doing. So, now I will make a new plan (which I most likely will fail to adhere to as well) and publish some of these short texts on airportline instead. With videos. Here is the seventh post in this series.

What is your favorite song by 10 (Billy The Vision & The Dancers)?
I don't listen to this Swedish pop orchestra much anymore, but Nobel Square from their quirky titled album 'I was so unpopular in school and now they're giving me this beautiful bicycle' is still a great song for a summer afternoon when you want a positive perspective on things, and a chorus with some nananana.

Lack of time and national stereotypes

2009-11-06T17:32:00.006+01:00

Its Friday and the week that just started ended, or will end, at some point, in time. Time moves at the same speed as it always does. I move with it, or past it. I have no concept of time, this is something I've returned to often during the past couple of years. The fact that I have lost the feel for time, a concert a week ago can feel like it was a year ago and the smell from someone in my bed can feel like yesterday. But the clock on the wall (If I would have one) just keeps onticking , relentless in it's chronic movements into the unknown. Or the time is known, but what we fill it with is not.

As chronic as the time, so is the Swedish mentality towards Marijuana. When deciding to move to Amsterdam I was confronted with more Marijuana jokes per capita than anyone should encounter during a life time. Many Swedish people believe that the only thing the Dutch do is play beautiful football without winning any tournaments, and getting stoned. Thus, I was very pleased to see this article in the NRC International. There it was conclused that the Dutch does not smoke as much weed as my Nordic country men assume. They even smoke less than the EU average. Turns out that pizza baking Italy leads the chart before day sleeping Spain and hockey hair cut Czech Republic. Ah, how we in the editorial board of Airportline loves when national stereotypes crumble. With that said I will go and buy one kilo of hair gel, cause that is what we do here in the Netherlands.

The cold Swedish winter

2009-11-05T10:37:00.006+01:00

I traveled north and south yesterday. North through the brown Swedish landscape and then south over the thick clouds. I fell asleep leaning on the train window as small Swedish towns passed me by. They stood still as if they wanted to hold time. I was in Sweden for a week. But it felt like a year. Or an hour. I told someone.

I left the light snowflakes behind at Stockholm Central and a few hours later I was walking from Amsterdam Lelylaan station towards my home in a thunder storm. I think we all struggle a bit when fall comes and steals all that energy that we recklessly threw around us this past summer. But the melancholia that seems forever built into the gray clouds, the cold rain, and the wind that blow through our clothes also evoke creativity. Two days ago you met Friday Hyvönen by a piano, today you meet Jens Lekman with a guitar. He is another amazing storyteller from Sweden who sings a heartwarming song about a love affair in the cold Swedish winter.

Up and down and rain

2009-11-03T12:05:00.002+01:00

There was darkness and rain between Stockholm and Karlstad. I bought a sandwich with egg and we came home and I sat in the sauna before I found an old Joyce Carol Oates book. I walked by a lake and met friends. I got vaccinated and was given an expensive pen which I will write expensive words with. I took a train south, and a drunk teenage couple almost stopped the train while they were smoking at a stop, and Göteborg is where I laid my head yesterday and it is dark and gray and wet today. Tomorrow I go north and then south and when I lay down my head in the evening it will be in Amsterdam again. Right now I am in a sofa listening to Frida Hyvönen and I think that you should do the same.

Adjusting not being first

2009-10-30T14:11:00.003+01:00

Sitting in a café on Södermalm in Stockholm. Opposite me and my laptop my friend and his colleague are working on their secret online project. I cannot say anything about it. Or maybe I can, but I won't. Its more fun that way. Stockholm is still sunny and cold, like it should be this time of year. Yesterday I saw some upcoming bands at a showcase gig for a record label at Debaser. One of them, Friska Viljor, were really great and made me think of Shout Out Louds during their more intense times. Think these guys might make it big and if they do, you know where you heard it first. Airportline is never first, and does not believe that being first is important. But in Stockholm it is very important to be first, or at least not last. So were are acclimatising to this fact here in the editorial board of Airportline. It's been a hard days night by the Beatles is being spinned in the café now. Think I need one more coffee. Tomorrow the Airportline tour continues by car to Karlstad.

A quiet understanding

2009-10-29T15:13:00.003+01:00

Airportline went to Sweden. Took a SAS flight to Stockholm. It was all very quiet, people don't talk too much when going to Sweden. The flight next to us was going to Budapest. But it souded like they were going to a Carneval. Maybe its all the spicy sausage they have over there. When we descended towards Stockholm, breaking through the thick clouds everything was brown and gray. This is the color of Sweden I thought. But today, after watching a great stand up show with the linguist and academic Frdrik Lindström at Norra Brunn last night, I took a walk around Vasastan/Östermalm in the sunshine and saw Swden from a much nicer view. It's still cool and quiet and everyone is wearing black and gray, as if it was some kind of Swedish Uniform, but the trees are yellow and red to make up for the loss of color among the people. I understand the news bulletins (have not decided if this is good or not) and yesterday while waiting for my friend to get some food I understood what the crazy old man who spoke to me said. That never happens in Amsterdam. Not the crazy people talking to me part, but the me understanding them part.

Written sword swinging

2009-10-27T11:19:00.002+01:00

After an impressive hat trick in Amsterdam Agents trashing of HDM 2, and an equally impressive stint at a party, Airportline felt he deserved a break from running after a round shape of plastic. He also had to prepare for his forthcoming Sweden trip. This was not supported by one member of the Agents Floorball team. This is how it looked on my facebook wall late last night:

M
Still too hungover to practice? :D
Yesterday at 11:00pm

Airportline
haha, yes, I woke up realizing that someone had painted on my face and I felt the need to lay low. But no, had to finish a thing for work and have shit to take care of before I head to Sweden on Wednesday. November 5th from 19:30 onwards I'll be kicking your ass again though, so do not fear the floorball future!
Yesterday at 11:12pm

M
you should know by now that I don't take your little swedish threats seriously buddy. How about you just stick to writing pretty little short stories that make me feel all warm inside. They have a better affect on me :D
Yesterday at 11:17pm

Airportline
Damn, you've seen through my artificially created bad boy image which I tried to steal from Nas video to Made You Look. From now on I will devote my passion to art and kick your ass on the floorball field without you knowing it. Ignorance can also be bliss, I suppose.
11 hours ago

M
The words. Of a poet. Are always. Stronger than their... Actions. I look forward to our following encounter. buddy. I'm stealing your punctuation trick.
11 hours ago

Airportline
haha, that was class:) You can swing the sword of the written word, I respect that.
11 hours ago

M
respect deserves a Guinness!
2 hours ago

clothing

2009-10-26T19:57:00.001+01:00

How do I have to dress for Drum and Base party?
I say; Neon, all neon.

Cowboys

2009-10-25T21:06:00.006+01:00

The rain stopped last night. We took our bikes and rode the wet streets like cowboys ride the desert, with posture and a clear aim. There was a party and the fridge was full of beer. My friend is leaving the place and the country. So we talked about things, and we painted and drew on the walls. I wrote something about dancing. People asked why I used so many full stops. I like full stops I said, it forced people to stop and think. Often. We listened to Finnish hard rock, to The Drums, to Girls, to minimalist techno. It was a mixture of people and music but the beer kept flowing in a constant order. Suddenly we were on the street, the gloomy sky and random taxi cars passing us by did not tell us what time it was. I checked and my phone said four. I said I should go. So I went and today was a waste. You take one night and loose one day. That is the logic of life.

Today I listen exclusively to Miike Snow and their songs Funeral and In Search Of. Just look down.

In one wrong place

2009-10-24T20:36:00.004+02:00

I saw an interview with singer/songwriter Jaymay maybe a year and a half ago. I think I was in Sweden. I think I felt that it was the wrong place to be. Jaymay said that she was between London and New York, it sounded annoying for someone in only one place. Annoying since I was not between anything. I was in one place and that was the wrong place. But I downloaded her album cause I thought her music seemed sweet. Then I didn't listen that much to it, felt that it was a bit boring, a bit too sweet. But now when I am waiting for the rain to stop so I can bike out and go to a party for a friend that is leaving. Now it seems perfect. My friend will be between countries for a year, in every place and no place. Then Jaymay sounds perfect, and as we turn the clocks to winter I turn the stereo to Autumn Fallin' and too sweet might be just what I need right now. Never underestimate time and space.