Syndicating various hours of existance

Everything's different! Yeah! I'm excited about this for real. I've decided to bring my internet worlds together; the blog and the music site now cohabitate. Don't expect the blog content to change at all. Once in a while I'll mention a new release or a show I've recently played but besides that it's the usual dose of whatever is currently floating my boat. I figured that since my music is such a huge part of who I am it made complete sense to link it all together and streamline the amount of links you have to click to keep up with my business.

As I mentioned in my last entry, this past weekend in Sweden was Midsommar. And as is the case with most of Sweden's holidays, you start early and go really late. A friend of ours drove us to the outskirts of town where we visited a public Midsommar celebration. Unfortunately you have to pay an entrance fee to join the party. What, no guestlist! And so I'm sorry to say this, but I'll go ahead and admit it here; myself and my counterparts jumped the back fence and breached their um, "secure" border. I can't say I'm proud of this, as the money surely went to the 3-man band that sang song after traditional Midsommar song as all danced themselves around the Maypole. We joined in for a few songs, I learned a few new dance moves and left feeling a couple percentage points more Swedish than I was when I walked (jumped) in.

I'll spare most of the details, but for the next 10 or so hours I consumed mass amounts of food and drink, talked to lots of good people and got embarrassed in a boys vs. girls game of kubb. By about 1:00AM we were in a taxi bouncing over the countryside in hopes to find m'sweet's brother, and did in the midst of his own Midsommar dance party. I stepped up to the CD player for my turn as DJ and graced the small gathering with a short set (details are fuzzy) that wrapped up with "Emotional Rescue".

I spent the taxi ride home trying to convince m'sweet's brother's girlfriend that Sweden had a great chance to beat Germany in the World Cup the next day and I think I may have been good enough to peak her interest. Sorry to get everyone all worked up about that one. If you didn't know they were pretty easily defeated. My USA is out as well. My plan now is to trace my familytree back on my grandfather's side and get in touch with that small bit of German heritage I think I might have.

Who loves the sun?

Here I am. I'm here again. I've been waking up at what I continuously think is 9:00 because the sun is blazing its way through the curtains; it's always 4:00 in the morning when this happens. Tomorrow will be the longest day of the year (read: I'll wake up at 3:50 instead). Friday brings the most Swedish of Swedish traditions, Midsommar. I plan on dancing myself around the Maypole donned in a flowered wreath atop my head, a strawberry in one hand and a Blå Gul in the other. First year abroad and I'm trying to do it all right.


Last weekend Nilla and I took advantage of a beautiful day and kicked around Stockholm. It turned out to be a great way to celebrate her birthday as well as to get out of Uppsala for a bit. Stockholm gives me really good city vibes, the same sort that Chicago gave me so many times. Do I see a possible change in location on the horizon? Possibly. We're working on moving our life that direction, as long as we can still live nextdoor to a forest and continue to pay dirt-cheap rent! We shall see...

But tonight, oh my, it's Sweden vs. England in their final World Cup group match.England is already guaranteed to continue into the second round but Sweden is in desperate need of a win to secure their spot. As crazy as it might seem, England has not beaten Sweden since 1968 and they've played each other 11 times in that timespan. England deserves a World Cup championship the same way that the Cubs deserve to win the World Series; tradition and a long streak of "bad luck" make it this way. But of course, come on, I want Sweden to win. A victory for Sweden tonight will do that thing it does where it puts one gigantic smile across the face of this entire country. I like that sort of thing.

Welcome home

Somehow, last weekend, a carnival circa 1995 made a wrong turn and instead of its scheduled stop at the Kankakee Fairgrounds landed here in Uppsala.

Kick it where they ain't

Finally, it begins today.
Now I've had to give up baseball in the sense that I can't sit down with a cold one, flip on WGN and watch my beloved Cubs. I really miss those West Coast road trips where you'd get some nice late-night baseball for a week straight, and of course 1:20. I miss sitting in Wrigley Field and I miss watching these games with great friends. The only baseball I've seen on TV in the last 8 months has been Bull Durham, and I fell asleep right before Meat goes to the big show. Sigh/cry. I even just received an email from my mom saying how her and some friends were going to a Joliet Jackhammers game, complete with Steppenwolf concert following. Baseball is the way of the summer.

But not here. And I'm ok with this for the time being because the World Cup starts tonight. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I've been able to reacquaint myself with the one sport I was better than average at actually physically playing, and not just burping in front of on the couch. FOOTBALL.

Note: I'm American and don't spell favorite as favourite or color as colour. But I do spell soccer as football.

I found an abandoned football in a parking lot about a month ago. I immediately tried to "juggle" it and after two feet and one knee bounce the ball was back on the pavement. But that was really all I needed to remind me how much I used to love playing this sport. Does the indoor facility in Frankfort still exist? It was called Sports Club and I spent many a winter's day there playing in its inner warmth. Sophomore year of high school I did my part in leading our Knights to a conference championship. By 1993 I had given it all up and joined a band. No worries; life is cyclical and it's back 'round again.

Still mostly an armchair midfielder for sure, I've made my predictions and caught a huge case of World Cup Fever (already blogged the song back in November AJ!). The excitement here in Sweden is pretty huge as football is the country's most popular summer sport. I've the pleasure of rooting on two teams (Sweden and USA) and luckily they won't play each other unless they both reach the finals which will not happen. That can't happen, right? Let's just assume that it's impossible and save myself a whole lot of worrying.

The sound of my beginnings

You'll all be proud to know that I've successfully completed the C-level of Swedish for Immigrants; feels good. D-level is the next and final class which starts in August. So if you'd like to send me messages and/or leave comments in Swedish in the same vein as you'd talk to a 10-year old, by all means. Let's have 'em. I'll respond to the best of my ability as long as you don't take off points for spelling. And you might have to get creative as some of my grammar is still in the early stages (read: word order). But as planned I'm progressing and moving right along.

A recent and semi-common question has been if I'll ever attempt to write lyrics and sing in Swedish. The chances of that are super slim, although even before I moved here I threw "kom hit" into a song simply because it happened to rhyme and make sense in the song's context. Kom hit = come here.

And because I'm in a sharing and revealing mood, here's that song:

Eight A - mp3
This is an outtake from the 'Adventure, Bless and Don't Be Sorry' recordings. There's really no good reason as to why it wasn't included on the album. If you've got the album you'll hear that after I ditched this song I ended up using most of the drum bits for the album version of "You've Your Spymap Out". Anyways, I wrote this immediately after I came back from a month-long stay here in Uppsala in the autumn of 2004. I'd be left to my own devices in this very apartment while m'sweet went off to school. These were the days of the beginning of a never-ending string of important information I'd be receiving from her: This is where the king sleeps, this is where the bus goes, this is how you get home, and possibly most importantly: this is how you say that.

Colorcoded

Thanks to librarianishish is the new black for bringing this to my attention. It's a java applet that presents html code as a graph. Here's how www.mike-downey.com looks:



Does your site look pretty too? Go find out.

What do the colors mean?

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

We're singing, "Come and intercept our love"

Five things you can do on June 1st:

1. You can start by digging this Guided By Voices song and use it as the perfect way to welcome yourself into the new month. Hey! June Salutes You

2. You can learn lots more about June 1st.

3. Go for a bikeride today. There's no better time than June 1st to do such a thing.

4. Tune into tonight's Phoning It In and listen to Quinn from Sleep Out play songs sure to tease/please.

5. Help an old person do something or buy a little kid an icecream (your choice depending on your relationship with today's youth and your elders). What better day is there to do things such as these than on June 1st!