This World is Not My Home

Two New Albums

I've gotten two new albums in the past week from two new artists. The first is Fiction Family. Fiction Family is comprised of Jon Foreman (Switchfoot) and Sean Watkins (Nickel Creek). But this is not exactly Switchfoot meets Nickel Creek. Most of the influence comes from each of the artist's independent work.



Most of the songs are an eclectic acoustic/rock/folk blend. Both artists have a history of unorthodox chord progressions and melody lines which are present here.

An unlikely cover made its way onto this album. The song is called "Throw it Away", originally recorded by Abbey Lincoln. The original is a jazz tune, but FF's version is darker and heavier....definitely a reinterpretation of Lincoln's lyrics. This is probably my favorite song on the album, though I can't say why. My other favorite is "When She's Near" which you can hear here (hear hear!).



The next album is "Orange Days on Lemon Street" by Lex Land. I first heard Lex on iTunes last spring and was very impressed. I'm not sure why I didn't buy it then, but fortunately I was able to correct this mistake.

The first thing you notice about Lex's music is her voice. She is somewhere in between Norah Jones and Regina Spector--a good place to be. As Norah discovered, this kind of voice is perfect for alt Jazz.

I only got this album last night so I'm afraid I can't provide too much more insight. Click here to listen for yourself.

On a quick side note, I'm quite ready to come home. Denmark is great, but I would give a lot to hop in my car, drive to Zaxby's, then over to a friend's house. A lot.

Northern Denmark

This past Saturday I traveled up to the north end of Denmark to visit Helsingør and then took a short ferry over to Helsingborg, Sweeden. I traveled by train, which was neat. Here are a few pics from the adventure.




This is Haven Cafe, where I stopped for lunch and enjoyed Danish meatballs with bread, pickled beets, and sweet pickles. Good people at Haven Cafe.



This is Kronborg Castle, famous for being the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet. In the play, the castle is referred to as Elsinore (like Helsingør).

I elected not to pay the 100 DKK ($20) they wanted to see the rooms in the castle because I'll be visiting another castle soon that's supposed to be much nicer.

After walking around Helsingør a little bit more (and finding a glorious cheese shop that I wish I had taken a picture of and that I bought some Old Amsterdam cheese from) I took a ferry over to Sweden (which I have only recently discovered is spelled Sweden and not Sweeden) (sorry, I know I'm going a little parenthesis-happy right now). For some reason in Denmark, it costs about 40 Kroner for a beer, but only 47 Kroner to buy a round trip ferry pass to Sweden. Here are some pics from Helsingborg.



Apparently there are a lot of folks in Sweden who don't like Israel. They were yelling a lot so I quickly took this pic and left.



Later on the riot crew left and so I was able to climb the steps that they had been standing on. This is the view from the top. You can see Denmark in the background, across the water.



What's that, you wish you could experience the view from up there? Perhaps this will help.



Ok, that's all I have time for right now. Tomorrow, I'll post about Weinerbrød!

So Far, So Good

Hej! Greetings from Copenhagen (pronounced Kobenhown). I've been here for three days now and am starting to feel settled in. I'm living on the outskirts of Copenhagen in a town called Gammel Holte. The office is about 1.5 miles from home so I'm taking the bus for the first time since middle school. This bus is much nicer.

I'm living with a Korean family here called the Ryu's (ayuken!). Yunseong, the father, works for B&K and deals with acoustic solutions such as material testing and beamforming. His wife, who's name escapes me, and his son, Ji Hun, are both great. Ji Hun is 14 and is my guitar apprentice. He also serves as translator sometimes.

I arrived on Sunday morning and slept part of the day. Around 4pm I went out for a walk with the Ryu's so that I could see Dr. Per Bruel's (one of the founders of Bruel and Kjaer) house and also stop by the house of Søren Gregerson, who will be working with me these next several weeks. On the way we actually ran into Dr. Bruel! This cat is 94 and still rockin. He walks around the neighborhood with his "walking sticks" (they looked more like ski poles to me). Here are are some pics from the walk.


Misty, grey, serene, surreal


Dr. Per Bruel and myself


Dr. Per Bruel, Yunseong Ryu, and myself

I wish I had taken some pictures at Søren's house. It is 250 years old and as cozy as.....well, as a 250 year old furnace-warmed danish house. Søren proudly described his hip new furnace which burns compacted wood pellets and has digitally controlled temperature. We took off our coats and scarves and sat down to hot tea, coffee, and some thin sandwich cookies that I can't really describe but were amazing. We talked there for a while and then headed home.

I'm thinking maybe this weekend I will go visit Kronborg Castle in Helsingør. This is the Danish castle famous for being the setting of Shakespeare's Hamlet. A few miles down the road and across the Øresund from Helsingør is Helsingborg, Sweeden. I'll probably try to see both towns on Saturday.

Maria Sharapova Would Be Proud

Recently I bought a Canon Powershot Digital Camera to take to Denmark with me (for those who don't know, I leave Jan 10 to work in Copenhagen for 6 weeks). I was playing around with the camera and ended up taking this picture. I don't know too much about photography, but there's something I like about this pic. And it's not just Tebow.



So anyway, now that I have a camera, look for plenty of pics from Copenhagen.

Song of the Day: Tonight

Today's song is Tonight by the OC Supertones. I listened to the Supertones a lot in high school, but never really realized the depth of the lyrics in their songs. It's a bit odd to see ska music paired with great lyrics, sort of like seeing a clown sitting in church. Clowns are welcome in church of course, but you'd think they'd dress in normal clothes. But then again if you got a church full of clowns in clown attire, you would have one crazy awesome service. And that's exactly what the Supertones are.

Listen

I can feel the old earth shake tonight
Mother earth feels labor aches tonight
I can feel the old world passin'
I can hear the whole world crashing down tonight

And if I died here tonight, I know my soul is with You
I'm sure about the promises You've made

Surely then I will be judged tonight
Surely I'm a little scared tonight
Surely now the sheep and goats are split upon the
Threshing floor tonight

And if I died here tonight, I know my soul is with You
I'm sure about the promises You've made

Lord, You are my only good, I will hold to You
Should the fires of hell sear and singe me
Lord, You are my protector
I will hold to the fold of your robe
Should the devil himself come to claim me

And if I died here tonight, I know my soul is with You
I'm sure about the promises You've made

"If I died here tonight, I know my soul is with You/ I'm sure about the promises you made". This kind of lyric could only be in a Christian song. Matt Morginsky realizes a fundamental Christian truth: that all hope, comfort, and security is found in God's promises for us and not in our own feeble attempts to be good enough for Him.

Click here to see a hilarious Sims video someone made to the song Jury Duty.

Choosing a Major

I ran across this article by Dave Berry today on choosing a major and thought it was pretty funny. No offense to my non-science friends....

Here is a very important piece of advice: Be sure to choose a major
that does not involve Known Facts and Right Answers.

This means you must *not* major in mathematics, physics, biology, or chemistry, because these subjects involve actual facts. If, for example, you major in mathematics, you're going to wander into class one day and the professor will say: "Define the cosine integer of the quadrant of a rhomboid binary axis, and extrapolate your result to five significant vertices." If you don't come up with *exactly* the answer the professor has in mind, you fail. The same is true of chemistry: if you write in your exam book that carbon and hydrogen combine to form oak, your professor will flunk you. He wants you to come up with the same answer he and all the other chemists have agreed on. Scientists are extremely snotty about this.

So you should major in subjects like English, philosophy, psychology, and sociology -- subjects in which nobody really understands what anybody else is talking about, and which involve virtually no actual facts. I attended classes in all these subjects, so I'll give you a quick overview of each:

ENGLISH: This involves writing papers about long books you have read little snippets of just before class. Here is a tip on how to get good grades on your English papers: Never say anything about a book that anybody with any common sense would say. For example, suppose you are studying Moby-Dick. Anybody with any common sense would say that Moby-Dick is a big white whale, since the characters in the book refer to it as a big white whale roughly eleven thousand times. So in *your* paper, *you* say Moby-Dick is actually the Republic of Ireland. Your professor, who is sick to death of reading papers and never liked Moby-Dick anyway, will think you are enormously creative. If you can regularly come up with lunatic interpretations of simple stories, you should major in English.

PHILOSOPHY: Basically, this involves sitting in a room and deciding there is no such thing as reality and then going to lunch. You should major in philosophy if you plan to take a lot of drugs.

PSYCHOLOGY: This involves talking about rats and dreams. Psychologists are *obsessed* with rats and dreams. I once spent an entire semester training a rat to punch little buttons in a certain sequence, then training my roommate to do the same thing. The rat learned much faster. My roommate is now a doctor. If you like rats or dreams, and above all if you dream about rats, you should major in psychology.

SOCIOLOGY: For sheer lack of intelligibility, sociology is far and away the number one subject. I sat through hundreds of hours of sociology courses, and read gobs of sociology writing, and I never once heard or read a coherent statement. This is because sociologists want to be considered scientists, so they spend most of their time translating simple, obvious observations into scientific-sounding code. If you plan to major in sociology, you'll have to learn to do the same thing. For example, suppose you have observed that children cry when they fall down. You should write: "Methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior tendencies of prematurated isolates indicates that a casual relationship exists between groundward tropism and lachrimatory, or 'crying,' behavior forms." If you can keep this up for fifty or sixty pages, you will get a large government grant.