The Pope has just passed, and I think it might be time to rewatch the excellent film “Conclave” again.

I’m not religious in any shape or form, but I was once a semi-serious candidate for a position as an altar boy at the Catholic church adjacent to my old school, Saint Victor’s, on Holloway Drive in West Hollywood, Los Angeles.

I attended St. Vic’s for four years and mostly had nuns as teachers. I also attended Mass every Friday. It was a very strict school, where corporal punishment was common and an effective deterrent. The principal at the time, Sister Mary, would pull out her ping-pong racket and whack the living daylights out of my disobedient schoolmates – especially a fellow from our street called Kevin McKenzie, who was a serial offender of the school’s rigid rules.

I’m not sure if I was a particularly obedient student or just never got caught. In any case, as far as I can remember, I never felt the full force of Sister Mary’s wrath on my uniform-clad behind.

I took this photograph about a decade ago during a visit to St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City, Rome.

#ThePope #Conclave #catholicschool #AltarBoy #saintvictorsurloire #WestHollywood #LosAngeles #SchoolMemories #strictschool #CatholicChurch #Nuns #sistermary #CorporalPunishment #ChildhoodMemories #kevinmckenzie #StPetersBasilica #vaticancity #Rome #Photography #Nostalgia #remembering

Yesterday’s book release and signing at Malmö Konsthall’s Bookstore was both fun and inspiring. I signed books for friendly folks from Denmark, France, and even from as far away as the exotic East Asian country of Kyrgyzstan.

The new book has sold just over 200 copies so far, exceeding my expectations for the first launch week by a wide margin. Best of all, I’ve heard from several hard-core Malmöites who’ve bought MALMÖ that the book provides a great showcase of the city’s highlights, which was my intention all along.

I saw these commuters on the way back from Antibes to Nice the other day. They reminded me of our roles, theirs and mine. How much I was paying attention to my milieu and how little they cared about theirs.

There’s a special kind of ache tucked into the end of a short trip — that quiet moment on the way to the airport or on the tarmac where you wish, not dramatically, but deeply, that you’d stayed just a little longer.

Short journeys are often like bursts of joy. They glow like sparklers — bright, immediate, but fleeting. They offer sunsets caught from a café table, the taste of salt on skin after a brief swim, or a conversation that opens and closes like a seashell, never quite finished. Wonderful, yes. But they rarely settle into your bones the way longer trips do. They don’t change you as slowly or as deeply.

And yet, there’s one place that never seems to mind how short my visit is.

The French Riviera — the Côte d’Azur — welcomes me like an old friend who already knows my rhythms. There’s no awkward small talk here, no pressure to rush. The scent of the sea, the warmth of the stone streets, the soft glimmer of lavender light in the late afternoon — it all feels like home, even if it’s been a while.

Nice in particular, with its sun-faded shutters and barefoot elegance, doesn’t ask me to explore everything at once. I can stroll the Promenade des Anglais with a slow heart. I can sit still and sip a cold, blonde beer while the city leans into the sea. I don’t need to conquer anything here. All I have to do is to just show up, breathe, and let the Mediterranean do the rest.

There were plenty of weekend-celebrating guests crowding around the hotel’s massive breakfast buffet this morning. I’m in Copenhagen to capture a few more images of the city before I start working my book “Classic Copenhagen” which should be out sometime this summer.

The collective assumption that we could all outsmart the horde of starving Swedes, Finns, Romanians, Americans, and other hotel guests by showing up a little extra early for breakfast completely backfired. The stoic kitchen crew did their absolute best to keep the bowls of crispy bacon, scrambled eggs, and waffle batter topped up and fresh.

I’m genuinely impressed by Comfort Hotel Vesterbro. Big rooms, gym, bar, great view, friendly staff at a fantastic location.

Talked to a few Danes yesterday, and most of them just laughed at our lunatic president over in D.C. The only real concern, someone said, would be if the dumb tariffs end up hitting Novo Nordisk — so that Denmark’s new cash cow, featuring blockbuster diabetes/weight-loss drug Ozempic, ends up costing even more than it already does when shipped to the U.S.

Who knows, Ozempic might just become a new favorite among transatlantic smugglers. I don’t know but you could probably fit quite a few condom-packed GLP-1 receptor agonist pills up your butt — as long as you don’t eat the kind of massive hotel breakfast I had this morning.

It’ll obviously be a lot worse, and a lot tighter fitting, for those trying to smuggle Champagne from France – not to mention smugglers going for Spanish Jamón Ibérico… those colons are gonna have to work overtime!

The photo was taken through one of the windows from my room on the 5th floor.

I honestly thought things would become clearer with age. That the fog would lift. That the incomprehensible would become less… incomprehensible and confusing.

That I, with a certain world-weary dignity, could lean back, shrug nonchalantly, and think: “Well, the world’s nuts, but I don’t need to understand or care about everything anymore.”

But that’s not how it turned out.

Instead, it feels like I’m stuck in an episode of The Twilight Zone, directed by David Lynch on a bad day, where every attempt at logic only leads deeper into surrealism.

What really eats at me is how many people – especially in the U.S. – seem to accept behavior that here in Sweden (and in many other parts of the world) would have made people change tables at a restaurant, ask for the manager, or cut ties altogether.

The authoritarian, mocking, aggressive behavior that Trump, Vance, Hegseth, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Musk, and the gang engage in – day in and day out – seems to have become the new normal. A model for how to act, despite being anything but. As long as you do it with swagger, it’s apparently okay to be a complete asshole.

And what I truly can’t wrap my head around is how many people not only tolerate this absurd behavior – they applaud it.

I don’t believe that everyone who voted for Trump and Vance saw them as great leaders. On the contrary. For many, it was more of a big, fat, “fuck you” to the Democrats and to the American system that’s been sliding downhill for ages – maybe since the ’70s.

To many, Trump isn’t a savior. He’s The Accelerator. The guy flooring the gas pedal while everyone else is trying to fix the brakes and touch up the paint job. He’s not in the White House to save anything – he’s there to blow it up. Popcorn, anyone? Grab a front-row seat – it’s about to blow!

Many who voted for Trump don’t care about politics at all – they just love watching the establishment with their pants down, sweating it out under the lights. They vote for Trump the same way they watch reality TV – for the drama, the crashes, the screaming. Not for the content. They simply don’t have the capacity to take it in.

We are clearly living in an age where the ends justify the means – at any cost. As long as you win, it doesn’t matter how – or who – you crush along the way. You can mock, threaten, humiliate, and stomp on others – as long as it results in headlines, clicks, nationalism, and a financial payoff. It’s Darwinism on steroids.

And I can’t help but wonder: if it’s okay to behave like a public asshole – what does that say about everyday life? Is it also okay to humiliate your partner? Your employees? Your neighbors? Is everyone who can’t fight back just supposed to take it? Apparently.

If it’s acceptable to insult people, give them disgusting nicknames, ridicule them, or tear them down just to win an argument – is a real punch in the face also okay, as long as it “gets results”?

If we only care about the outcome and don’t give a damn how we get there – then we’re not building a better society. We’re just busy rebranding cruelty as leadership.

And maybe that’s exactly what’s happening. Maybe it’s no longer about improvement, about progress, or about taking care of the planet, one another, and the collective wisdom we’ve gathered.

Isn’t it sad that so many seem to just want to watch it all go to hell – fast, loud, and preferably with red, white, and blue fireworks?

And for those who genuinely believe that Trump & Co will do something meaningful for the U.S. or the world – honestly, I mostly just feel sorry for them. They’ve become just as intoxicated by the power elixir as the incompetent leaders they helped elect.

I created the above illustration with the help of the folks over at chatgeepeetee.

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT’s new image generator. At first, I approached it with cautious curiosity. As someone who’s deeply rooted in visual storytelling and artistic exploration, I tend to be a little protective of my creative process. But something about the ease and flexibility of this new version caught my attention.

What I appreciate most is how quickly it is at prototyping concepts. I can describe a mood, a scene, or even a feeling, and within minutes I have something visual to respond to. It’s like tossing ideas into the universe and having them echo back with form and color. Sometimes the results are exactly what I envisioned — other times, they surprise me in ways that push my thinking in new directions. It’s becoming a kind of creative sparring partner, throwing back visual riffs that I can build on, critique, or remix into something entirely my own.

The right image is from this past January, just outside of my hotel in Osaka, Japan.

I’m just about to finish the cover for a new book about our most common as well as some of our most weird phobias and fears. I’ve included some of my own personal phobias and fears, mild as they may be. One of these are an increasing disdain for restaurants and hotels with buffets.

I know some people love buffets. The freedom! The variety! The piles of lukewarm lasagna next to sushi next to a mysterious bowl of “Asian-Irish Fusion Chicken”!

It’s a dream come true for those who like trying a bit of everything. I used to be like that. Now? Not so much.

In fact, I have a bit of a buffet phobia. Okay, maybe not a full-blown phobia, but definitely an unease that sits somewhere between mild suspicion and physical disgust.

Let’s start with the utensils.

The communal spoons, forks, and tongs – innocent enough in theory, but in practice, they’ve been handled by dozens (hundreds?) of hands before mine. And while I’m sure most people mean well, I can’t help but wonder: did the person before me just sneeze into their hand? Did they just scratch their left nostril, bite their nails, fondle their phone, or – heaven forbid – lick their fingers before grabbing the neon green pasta scooper now in front of me?

Then there’s the food itself. I don’t like to, but I find myself often thinking about how often that tray of cheese or cold cuts has been in and out of the kitchen fridge. Are those fish cakes freshly made or have they been reheated for the third time today? Did someone forget to put it back quickly enough, and now we’re all playing a fun little game of “Will I get a case of serious food poisoning or just a really bad stomachache?”

I know I sound dramatic. (Okay, I am dramatic.) But there’s something about the combination of food sitting out for hours and the conveyor belt of people breathing over it that just doesn’t do it for me any more.

Give me a freshly plated dish – made just for me – any day. No offense to you buffet lovers out there – you do what makes you happy. I’ll be over here, gladly ordering à la carte and keeping my mini-phobia at bay.

Now – if I may escalate this into full-blown buffet hysteria for just a moment…

Buffets aren’t meals. They’re psychological obstacle courses. There’s something inherently stressful about being handed a tray the size of a satellite dish and told to assemble a dignified meal while weaving between screaming children and confused seniors.

The layout alone is an existential puzzle. Who decided sushi should sit two trays down from beef stew? Why are there pancakes next to shrimp? I once saw chocolate mousse slowly melting next to a bowl of garlic herring. That wasn’t a dessert table. That was a cry for help.

And while everyone else is out there double-stacking their plates like it’s some kind of Tetris championship, I’m too busy conducting a forensic analysis of the salad tongs. Did that guy just touch them after wiping his forehead?

So yes, my book will absolutely include buffet-induced anxiety under the Food chapter.

I shot this yesterday in (of all places) Borås. I spent 24 hours there checking out a few of the city’s excellent museums, including Borås Konstmusuem, Abecita Popkonst & Foto, and Borås Textile Museum. It was my first visit to Borås in almost 45 years and even if I don’t remember Borås being much fun back in those days (early 1980s), I was pleasantly surprised to find how much the city has evolved – especially culturally. It’s still “small-town Sweden”, but in a charming way and with much less of the “Hickville” vibe some towns never shake off no matter how many cafés and shopping centers they have.

Part of my trip was also to do some soul-searching, which is something I tend to do every spring.

My view of life varies from one day to the next. that hasn’t changed much over time. My baseline is generally very positive and optimistic and I can usually deal with the slew of normal, everyday setbacks and obstacles that come my way without much effort. My survival strategy has always been to focus on keeping my journey going without dwelling on the stuff I can’t overcome or bypass and to not look too much or too closely in the rearview mirror.​

Push on, move forward.

I try to keep my eye on the long game and the exciting, creative stuff that each day provides. Even if each is short-lived and only gives a tiny burst of happiness, by stringing all these small joys together and looking forward to experiencing them, I’m usually able to maintain a healthy mindset throughout my day.

I suppose I could redefine “problems” as “challenges” just to put a more positive spin on tougher stuff.​

But tackling life’s inevitable hurdles and barriers might then become an exercise in semantics and minimize the achievement of coming up with more or less creative solutions that help me move forward.

I’ve always preferred taking on problems straight ahead and not letting them pile up.

Although some of my challenges can’t be resolved, especially chronic pain and general physical degradation that arrives as I age, I tend not to dwell too much on them unless they prevent me from doing really fun things, like skiing, which I will probably not be able to do this season as my back is still not completely healed.

I wrote this post mostly to remind myself of the book project “Happy Islands” that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

Lots of stuff going on right now. I don’t want to jinx anything, so this post will be about…popcorn…the single greatest snack in the known universe. I always make it with organic olive oil and seasoned with sea salt flakes. I use either a deep pot or a wide shallow pan, pour in the oil, pour in the kernels, put the lid on and turn the  heat to eleven. No fussing. Just popping. Once there’s only a pop a second, take the pot or pan off the heat. Done.

I’ve tried explaining to younger folks about how there used to be double and even triple features when I was a kid in L.A. We’d pay about $1:50 in admission and maybe another buck for a bucket of buttered popcorn. In between the first and second feature, you could get a “refill” of popcorn and a tasty beverage for just fifty cents. I have vivid memories of riding my Schwinn home from a worn and torn movie theater on Hollywood Boulevard and feeling like I was OD:ing on greasy popped corn and one too many root beers.

My love of popcorn probably started when I was a really young kid. Don’t remember who, but someone introduced me to the make-it-yourself-on-a-stove Jiffy Pop Popcorn. Here’s how it worked: you’d grab this little aluminum pan, already filled with popcorn kernels and just the right amount of oil and salt. The top was sealed with a crimped aluminum foil lid, which sat flat at first. But that was the best part – because the second you put it on the gas stove and it heated up – while you were shaking it around – you’d hear the first little pop, then another, then an all-out explosion of popping.

Slowly, that foil top would start to rise, inflating like a giant silver balloon. You had to keep shaking it so the kernels wouldn’t burn, but once it was fully puffed up, you knew it was ready. Then came the big moment – ripping open that foil and watching steam escape as the smell from hot, buttery popcorn filled the kitchen. It was like making your own little popcorn show. No fancy machines, no microwave, just pure stovetop excitement. Jiffy Pop was the closest thing to movie theater popcorn at home before microwaves took over. And honestly? It was way more fun.

I met the fellow above on a street in Tirana, the capital of Albania. Needless to say we at least one thing in common.

This shot is from a corner of Omonoia Square in Athens, Greece. Omonoia is a mixed bag of architecture, people, and atmosphere. A visually interesting place during the daytime but if the rumors are true, not very nice at night where I’ve read the square and surrounding streets are riddled with some of the capital’s most sketchy folks.

Feeling a bit bipolar in Athens. Once you’ve ticked off all the easy stuff – like the ancient attractions, the ridiculously good food, the spontaneous openness and generosity of locals, and the fact that the city gets around 300 days of sunshine a year – Athens isn’t exactly an easy city to befriend.

It feels like Athens plays in the same league as Mumbai or Bangkok: brutally large, endlessly dirty, and unbelievably chaotic. The paradox is that it’s precisely all that stuff that makes me feel such a strong pull toward Athens. There’s always stuff to look at, document, admire, or lament, something to feel inspired by or to despise.

But is it really so strange that I’m drawn to the chaos, the grime, the cragginess? Maybe not.

Oddly enough, Athens feels much bigger than it actually is. Even bigger than many other major cities I’ve visited. With “just” 3.1 million residents, Athens ranks only eighth among Europe’s capitals. Its population is actually a third of London’s and barely half of Berlin’s or Madrid’s. This is partly due to Athens’ lack of skyscrapers and partly because the city has slowly but surely sprawled out over more than 3,000 years.

At least half of the buildings we see here are either in really bad shape or in need of some serious upkeep. I’m constantly reminded of Havana, Sofia, and Tbilisi – wonderfully beautiful capitals that are slowly deteriorating without authorities caring or being able to stop it.

The Greeks we’ve spoken to about Athens’ decaying state mostly just shake their heads and shrug. They explain the problems as being caused by deeply rooted nepotism, which operates relatively openly, and corruption and bribery scandals that follow one after another. Regular people try to make ends meet and balance life’s challenges between moments of hopelessness and cautious optimism, like when a new charismatic politician appears on the scene. Probably as they’ve been doing for thousands of years.

The Greeks love to talk about politics. Complaining about the country’s problems is almost as popular as playing backgammon. Just like in many other countries nowadays, people here are trying to find scapegoats to explain all the misfortunes and why life is so tough. We’ve heard about several scapegoats here: the Roma mafia, undocumented Pakistanis, Afghans who’ve been smuggled in to the country, and wealthy foreigners who buy up property, renovate it, and then make big money renting out IKEA-furnished apartments on Airbnb. We’re currently staying in one of those apartments. The owner is from Iran, and I haven’t yet found anything in the flat that wasn’t designed in Älmhult, Sweden.

This Friday, Greece will come to a standstill. Various unions will go on a nationwide strike to protest the train disaster of February 28, 2023. That was when a freight train and a passenger train collided head-on between the cities of Tempi and Evangelismos, killing 57 people. It was by far the country’s worst train disaster, and according to the strikers, the crash would never have happened if the Government had modernized the long-neglected railway safety system.

The Athens metro is among the most modern and well-maintained systems I’ve ever used. It’s clean, well-kept and the trains run on time. The metro was financed through loans from the European Investment Bank and supplied by French firm Alstom and German company Siemens.

Portion sizes at ordinary restaurants here are almost American-sized. You never leave the table without feeling properly full. At some places, you get a small bottle of raki before dinner and sometimes a little dessert after.

Most Athenians we chat with are super friendly. They’re curious about where we’re from, how long we’re staying, and what we think of the city. We love the country, the people, the food, the culture, and the climate, so some get a little overwhelmed by our enthusiasm. Surprisingly many have some kind of connection to Sweden, and almost everyone knows who Kojak was.

During winter, Athens suffers from chronic temperature inversion, where cold air settles over the city like a lid, trapping the exhaust fumes from the intense traffic. I haven’t seen many electric cars here. Most people drive diesel, and you can feel it in both your nose and lungs. I’ve already gone through a whole container of Ventolin.

The other day, we walked from Syntagma Square in the heart of the city all the way to the sea – a total of 25,000 steps. The road there wasn’t particularly inspiring, but it gave us a glimpse of a few of Athens’ suburbs. Not exactly uplifting, but it was humbling.

There’s a tiny Shell gas station a couple of blocks from our apartment. It’s probably the smallest Shell station I’ve ever seen. The man working there mostly sits inside his little office smoking. It can’t be more than 4 meters to the nearest gas or diesel pump. The other day we saw a grill with smoldering coal placed on the gas station’s lot. Amazing.

Walking along the sidewalk at a leisurely pace is no guarantee that you won’t get hit by a motorcycle here. Fortunately, we’re used to it from walks in among other Asian cities, Ho Chi Minh. You need to stay alert and definitely not drink too much raki or ouzo if you have a long walk home.