High five for an awesome weekend!

So, I finally had my first visitor from Norway here in New York! My good friend Eivind (or, as my American friends have learned to know and love him; "IVAN!!") flew in for a weekend of fun and shenanigans, so I'm posting a bunch of fruity photos.


This is Eivind. He's an all around cool guy! His two favorite hobbies are 1) Taking pictures of himself and 2) Showing off his awesome cell phone. Apparently, the two are not mutually exclusive at all. (FINE, so I'm fucking jealous, and I want an awesome phone like that too.)


We did all kinds of fun stuff.. I won't bore you with listing it all, but one of the highlights was a Columbia party featuring incredible and crazy drunken magic card tricks, and a swanky party with my good friend Teresa from Washington, D.C. / Missouri / Texas the next day. It was fun, and filled with random events, such as a lady saying "Say, I'm being internet stalked by a famous Norwegian folk musician. Can you help me out?".

Oh yeah, I totally got a haircut, by the way! No more looking like Julie Andrews, no more mullets, and I'm officially back with the faux-hawk!


We went to some concerts too, with this one, with Brooklyn band The Jealous Girlfriends, the absolute highlight. We were completely taken by surprise how freakin' amazing that band was, and the singer was hot too! Actually, they're going to Austin for the South by Southwest festival, so I'll hopefully get to see them there too.

Wait, have I even mentioned that I'm going there? I'm heading there for work - 20 Norwegian bands are playing there, so I pretty much of had to go. It should be an epic adventure of debauchery and craziness: 120 Days are flying in in a few days - stopping for a concert in NYC first (Robbie, its gonna be fuckin' sweet) - and even Turbonegro, my favorite homoerotic deathpunk band is coming! It should be rad, and I look forward to being sprayed with fake blood!


We also went to a crazy Salsa bar (Inside joke alert: "Wuuuuuuuhhh!!!" -Thor, subtle as always. HAHA! I'm a smooth man, my friends!) in SoHo, which was a lot of fun, and filled with random events and girls named after flowers and bartenders with - GASP - a sense of humor. Apparently, going out on a Sunday night is the shit in that neighborhood, because the place was packed and shit was going down. SHIT I tell ya!


..As opposed to this bar in Williamsburg. Dude, that neighborhood is supposed to be the shit, and was actually where I was supposed to move when I first came here, but I honestly found the bar scene a there a tidge dull. It somehow felt a little lonely. Maybe because we were there drinking at 11 in the morning. We did spot a celeb, though - Angela from Project Runway! It was .. uhm, not that exciting.


We then went to MoMA. "What gives, Eivind, did you feel like you blossomed creatively whilst at MoMA?"


"Why yes, thank you for asking.. Indeed I did."


"Hup, there we are, old chap, all blossomed out, guv'nor!"



We also snuck into a video installation, thereby BECOMING art. Because we're the kind of guys who are not satisfied with only watching art. We want to BE art. If nothing else, having a weird video installation projecting onto us makes us look weird, and some art is weird. So maybe we are art. Or maybe we all are art? Or perhaps art is but a faint reflection of the powerful world around it. PERHAPS! I mean, an artwork is often assessed in quality by the amount of stimulation it brings about. And I was fucking stimulated, man.


Eivind's ventilated crotch: Art or not art? I would say art. Stimulating? Uhm. For some. Perhaps.


Anywho: We also went to Cielo after MoMA. Again, Cielo is like the best club in NYC, but it was a kind of weird night there, with really strange music - Francois K, what the hell was that? - but it was fun nonetheless! This is us acting like three-year-olds with some random girl (Haha! Actually it's my friend Rebecca, who was nice enough to brave the INCREDIBLY cold weather and come with us, even though it was a Monday night (technically it was a Tuesday morning / uhm, afternoon).) This is what incredibly overpriced alcohol does to two and 3/4ths Norwegians.

And in the middle of all this, we even had time to eat good old American junkfood.

Oh, and I almost forgot: Some asswipe stole my wallet on the subway! What lowlife fuckers!! Actually, it was fine, I didn't have much cash, and I was able to cancel my card, although my bank - Yeah, WACHOVIA, that's YOU! - created a LOT of obstacles! I mean, you'd think that when someone calls in and has lost his or her (or its???) card, it's in everybody's best interest to shut that fucker down immediately? Well NOT Wachovia! (Sorry for verbally abusing you, Wachovia lady, but it was a pretty poorly chosen moment to be a psycho-bitch, don't you think? It's nice to be nice!)

Either way, after 4 EXPENSIVE and LONG phone calls, an hour of internet searches, and lots of swearwords and racial slur, I got it canceled, and nobody had used it anyway, so I guess I'm fine. Fortunately I had a backup card at home, so I'm not starving either.

So yeah, overall it was fun and high fives all around! Actually, Eivind's visit sets off a large number of visits from Europe and elsewhere this spring, with Robbie coming next weekend, followed by Cecilie from Norway, Andreas from Denmark, and a number of other random people, so yeah, you all should use the opportunity when I'm here to come!