Ain't No Party Like a Swedish Party

Last night I attended a very nice sit down dinner at a restaurant overlooking the Oresund Bridge outside of Malmo Sweden. There was tuna sashimi in a lime sauce, some sort of veal filet, an unidentifiable triangle of shredded meat covered in mustard seeds, roasted beets, some vegetable with the texture of old gnarled tree bark and a delicious Jerusalem artichoke soufflé that I’d like to recreate (this recipe seems like a good place to start). I sat next to a pair of Swedes, both named Magnus (“it means the big one!” *NudgeWinkNudge*) and across from my travel partner Tonya who was next to a British guy who claims to have played drums on the Animal’s versions of “House of the Rising Sun.” The former Animal has been through a lot of therapy since his Rock ‘N Roll days and has "learned how to be a people." He has also learned about The Secret and would not shut up about the awesome miracle of positive thinking – it’s good to know that America has no monopoly on suckers. The dinner was sponsored by the company hosting the conference that I’ve been attending all week and was a forum for them to present their yearly awards for the best uses of their product.

Between finishing our main course and the promised chocolate cake the lights dimmed and smoke began pouring out from the stage area where the conference MC had been announcing award nominees and flirting with guests in broken English. I briefly considered the possibility that something was seriously wrong with the cake baking process but concluded that more than likely the smoke was there to create a celebratory high school dance-like atmosphere for the announcement of award winners. Luckily, what happened next was much more awesome than a fire or a prom.

Out came the youngest and prettiest of the conference hosts -- we’ll call them Swedish Classic (the blonde one) and Swedish Now with Pigment! (the brunette) -- dressed in matching long black glittery dresses and carrying microphones. They waved and smiled at the audience and then they began to sing “Hopelessly Devoted,” about 90 seconds into the song they segued via a move in which they rhythmically rubbed their asses against one another into Swedish Classic singing her version of “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend,” which was quickly followed by New Swedish with Pigment doing her best Axel Rose version of “Live and Let Die.” Throughout much of this performance I was forced to stare at the table cloth, praying that I would not pee my pants laughing. I could not look up lest I looked too closely at Tonya and caught her particularly deadly and contagious version of the giggles which were obviously very painful as she was crying. Between drooling over the contestants of Swedish Idol Mr. Animal kept insisting that we telling him the story that made this situation so funny proving that none of his group therapy taught him to develop a regular person sense of humor.

I am having a hard time imagining the sequence of events that lead to this karaoke performance at a technical conference but I hope it went something like this:

NSwP: This conference sounds kind of boring, it’s like: børk børk programming, børk børk technology, børk børk gross chocolate mouse that we’re calling cake just to piss people off. We should spice things up.

SC: Are you thinking find the licorice candy in the pickled herring cause I am!

NSwP: No, that seems unsafe. There will be Americans there, preserved fish terrifies them and they might start yelling about WMDs and invade. I say we wow them with a little love song medley!

SC: Børk!

There was obviously nowhere for the evening to go after the song fest was over. I had a couple more glasses of wine and briefly considered bedding a Magnus but a mere 20 minutes later I was alone in a cab back to the hotel with the knowledge that American conferences never offer this level of amusement. If we’re not careful we may lose our status as World’s Leader in Buffoonary.

(don't worry, I totally took pictures -- I'll update when I get home)