Tina Fey as Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live has received massive press all around the world. A quick search on sesam.no (a Norwegian search engine) shows 46 news stories on her satiric performance.
But what the world doesn’t know is that we have our own Tina Fey or Sarah Palin, if you like: Pia Haraldsen.
See the amazing transformation in the links below and judge for yourself. Is she better than Tina Fey?
It´s pretty unbelievable, actually, what happened this week. The celebrity journalist Pia Haraldsen was denied a press visa by the U.S. Embassy in Oslo. As if that wasn´t a sensation in itself: The Department of Homeland Security was also supposedly involved in the process.
And why, you ask? Is this pretty (and seemingly) and harmless woman a threat to the Nation´s security? Last year, Ms. Haraldsen – who actually holds a visa that allows her to do journalistic work but had to apply for a new one as her passport had been destroyed – caused quite the stir when she prank interviewed New York Councilman James Oddo. The honorable Mr. Oddo did not like Pia´s intentions. And why, you ask? Pia´s interviews are staged. She plays the role of stupid blond who asks questions such as “Who do you think will win The Civil War?” and “Why are you staring at my breasts?”. Sarcasm. Humor. Right up John Stewart´s alley. But U.S. Authorities won´t have it.
So Pia´s original plans to report daily from the U.S. Election through her videoblog and text blog on tv2underholdning.no has been put on hold until further notice. But Pia won´t give in to American Authorities, and has started reporting about the same issues from her exile at her Oslo mansion.
Click here to read more about this story.
Click here to see behind the scenes video material from Pia´s interview with James Oddo.
Eight wonderful days have gone by. Here´s some of the photos I´ve taken to document our honeymoon.
My last name is now officially hyphenated. And the ceremony and reception also went well – at last.
The hours leading up to our commitment ceremony on September 12 at 2 p.m. at Kampen Church in Oslo couldn´t have been worse.
This is what Norway´s conservative paper´s online version had as its top story at 10.30:
The Bishop of Oslo Trying to Stop Gay Wedding
The evening prior we had given two quotes to the same paper stating that we were excited about tomorrow´s ceremony.
A few minutes later, the same message was revealed in all the major Norwegian online newspapers. Our phones started ringing off the hook, and reporters wanted our version of what was going on.
This is the short version of what had happened:
On June 11, 2008, the Norwegian Parliament passed the gender-netutral Marriage Law. However, the Lutheran Church and other denominations are excempt of this new ruling. Unlike most European countries, the Norwegian State Church still has the legal right to marry heterosexual couples. Homosexual couples, however, have to register their marriage by a judge. In reality, this gives the church the right to discriminate. In order to avoid this conflicting practice, Christians, who want a church ceremony, usually perform the judicial part of their marriage at city hall, followed by a church ceremony later in the day.
As we wanted our service to be as close to ONE event as possible (not city hall followed by church), we decided, with the parish priest´s blessings, to perform the judicial party in the church hallway, with the doors to the church open. After a brief, judicial routine, the service would continue as our priest would take over.
It was this attempt at making our service as uninterrupted as possible that made the Bishop furious. He would not allow us to perform the judicial aspect of our wedding in the church hallway at all, but rather demanded us to do it outside of the church. Paradoxically, the practice of enacting the judicial part of the ceremony in the church hallway, is common practice in several churches in Oslo and elsewhere around the country.
So what we had planned in good faith, and again, with the parish priests´blessings, was now being contradicted.
By the time 1.30 rolled around, we had talked to a dozen reporters that wanted to show up at the ceremony with their tv crews. As both my husband and I believe that we are worthy representatives of this noble cause, we had no objections – this would be a great way to show other gays and lesbians that struggle to come out of the closet in fear of how society will react, that we are here and that we are normal. That we have the same feelings and the same needs as our heteroxual counterparts.
As all this transpired, we started to fear that things may not go as planned, and when we entered the church hallway at approximately 2.00 p.m. (my best man later told me we were on the spot), we still did not know if the ceremony would be intercepted. But it wasn´t.
After signing the legal documents, Vivaldi´s Canon for Three Violins started playing as our four flower girls, followed by our best men/made of honor and the grooms approaced the altar. In front of crying moms, aunts, relatives and scores of tv crews, we repeated our vows in front of God and everyone present at Kampen Church that day.
READ MORE ABOUT IT IN LOVENORWAY´S BLOG
And this is what followed:
1. Interviews with all the tv crews and reporters (We hit all the headlines of all tv channels that day and the front pages of several major newspapers the next).
2. A beautiful reception with 64 dinner guests at Villa Lilleborg.
3. Departure for our honeymoon in Corsica, a beautiful island outside of France on the Mediterranean.
4. The media covered our story, in different versions for a whole week after we left. Even the Attorney General went public to say that the bishop is promoting hate crime because of his harsh statements about us on our wedding day.
PS.
(We decided not to send our picture to the newlywed column).
I did it. I beat my husband-to-be by four. I got drunk, or my friends got me drunk, four times at my bachelor party August 23 (Yes – this blog has suffered from a severe dry spell the past month, but I hope my one blog subsriber will forgive me).
This is what my best man had me do:
1. Down a bottle of Champagne at 10 in the morning after a 40-minute run.
2. Play sports games for two hours, after getting me drunk for the second time in three hours.
3. Enjoy a great lunch with 14 of my friends at a restaurant in Grünerløkka, next to Olaf Ryes Plass.
4. Record two songs at a recording studio: Whitney Houston´s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” and Stevie Wonder´s “I Just Called to Say I Love You”.
5. Enjoy a cook-out in the park.
6. Get drunk for the third time during a pre-party at my apartment.
7. Get drunk for the fourth time a second warm-up party at a friend´s house. Regardless to say: I was passed out before midnigth, and the club crowd was unfortunately robbed of my bachelor presence.
I finally got access to the US version of iTunes. See, the Norwegian version is a limited one that lacks all the tv shows, all the movies and some of the music. The major Networks have, of course, made sure that Apple geo-blocks its content so that only American viewers can access its online content. Kinda self-explanatory, really, when you think about it. If all the content was accessible to everyone at all times, they Networks – or the owners of the content – wouldn´t be able to
1. Sell Desperate Housewives to foreign tv stations.
2. Make revenue from The Wire dvd box sets.
Anyway – last night I managed to trick my iTunes into thinking that I´m American, or at least reside in the US. After Googling for a few minutes, I found the following about obtaining a US version of iTunes:
1. Get a US mailing address. Easy. After living in Baltimore for five years, I had plenty of streets past to choose from.
2. Order an iTunes gift certificate from eBay. Also simple. The only thing I had to do was to connect my eBay and PayPal accounts. Six hours later, the gift code was in my inbox.
3. Create a new iTunes account. Make sure to change the country settings to US and don´t forget to register your newly obtained US address.
4. When asked for payment options, choose “none”.
5. Enter your gift code and your in.
6. Right now, I´m watching episode 1 of The Wire´s fifth and final season.
7. Earlier today, I bought an Apple TV to be shipped to AngerHangover who´s bringing it across the ocean (cheaper to buy it in the US. I save 35 percent).
I love Will & Grace. I love Will & Grace so much that I had to share this blooper with my one blog subscriber.
This clip is from my favorite Will and Grace episode (Season 5). The guest star is Madonna, who plays Karen´s roomate, Liz (a professional in the music biz who works for the company that makes “The Best Of” collections).
Best quote from episode:
Karen (pulling up a jug of white wine from the grocery bag): “Look, Lizzy, I rented us a video!”
The online publication I work for is one that has been directionless for several years. It has had some good strategies throughout the years, but due to conflicting interests in how to best offer our content online and on screen, the site has only reached the Top 15 list a couple of times this past year.
Anyway, when I became the managing editor of our online Entertainment Section, I was convinced that it was going to take a while to rebuild our brand. Give us a year, and we may reach 500 000 UVs/week, my boss said. Today, we average about a fourth of that on a good day. The company I work for is one of the most recognized and attractive brands in Norway, but as far as online standing, our users mostly think of us as a promotional venue that serves our entertainment shows. In some ways they´re right; in others, they couldn´t be more wrong (but that´s not what this entry was going to be about).
What I was just thinking is how amazed I am by how important external traffic is to a site´s success. Take any given Tuesday during off-peak season (we peak during prime time as we use reality shows and other entertainment formats to direct our viewers to attractive online content). We reach about 10,000 UVs a day. Take the next day: In addition to our regular content, we spruce things up with a sexy, scandalous title, a daring picture and a provocative lead. At midnight, our UVs have tripled compared to the previous day, just because other popular sites (portals mostly) linked to our stories.
The questions I would like to ask are:
1. How long does it take to build a faithful crowd?
2. What does it take to keep that crowd there?
3. Why do we have to click on every headline that includes Britney Spears and sex?
Last Friday, G and I packed our camping gear, left work early and embarked on the six-hour drive from Oslo to Glitterheim, located in the heart of Jotunheimen National Park. The Glitterheim cabin (we slept in our tent, about a quarter of a mile away from the cabin) is situated at the foot of Norway´s second largest mountain top, Glittertind. With its 2,452 meters above sea level, it´s only beaten by neighboring Galdhøpiggen at 2,469. Alas: We were in for a majestic view once we hit the top on Saturday afternoon.
Although the forcast had called for rain the entire weekend, we were lucky enough to wake up to a sky that was only moderately covered by grey clouds. If we kept our fingers crossed hard enough, we could possibly avoid rain on our hike up the steep mouintain sides and look forward to one of Norway´s absolute best view
Judging by the pictures above, it wasn´t half bad when we around noon started climbing hiking up the fairly steep hills that would turn into rocky trails and icy, glacier-like paths. However, as we approached lunch time (wonderful Dry-Tech), troll-like clouds and thick fog began to descend on us. In order to stay warm, we grabbed our gloves and hats out of the bacpack and continued fueling up on that genius invention that is Dry-Tech.
Four hours into the hike, we begin to feel fatigued. Fatigued because we haven´t hiked in a while; fatigued because it´s windy, steep and cold. On several occasions we´re about to turn around and head back to the tent, but we manage to convince each other that it´s girly to let the weather rule your quest for the mountain top. Finally, we´re at the top, but because of the previously mention clouds and fog, mixed with sleet that´s borderline snow, one of Norway´s best views looks like this:
This is what it could have looked like:
It did feel like quite an adventure, though. And on our way back down, through sleet, fog and thick clouds, we start to look forward to a damp, mosquito-filled tent. And that wonderful red wine that´s waiting for us.
MANDATORY on any camping/hiking trip is box wine. Why?
1. You need alcohol after a long day´s hike.
2. You need alcohol to fall asleep early, as there´s nothing to do in the tent when it rains outside.
3, You need the taste of nature. Moss, roots and rocks, that is.
Below is the box that satisfies all of the above:
CHEERS!
I found this cool widget on abc.com. The show is intelligent, funny and quite addicting. Although your average family doesn´t have members that all look like models, make $1 mill. a year, drink $200 bottles of wine with every meal, the subject matter is relatable to many of us. I love the acting and the dialogue on this prime time show, which is yet another success to come out of ABC the past years.
