I didn’t even notice the first note myself. My buddy did. We were running late to our next class so I just shoved my jacket into my locker and grabbed my biology book, then locked my locker, when he picked it up from the floor.

“Hey, you dropped this,” he said, and handed me a piece of paper that had been carefully folded over a couple of times, just enough to conceal its message, but keeping it thin enough to fit through the small opening under the locker door.

» Continued

If you’re not already on Twitter, and are thinking about joining, don’t. If you, poor bastard, are on Twitter, why aren’t you following me?

Oh yes, I’m there, one of millions and millions of people thinking that there are people out there who’d like to hear what I have to say. All those funny observations that usually only Wife gets to hear - as well as links to my stories that I usually make Wife read - I can now broadcast to the world! To the world, I say!

» Continued

If you’ve read my hockey blogs before, you know that my favorite players include, among others, Valeri Kharlamov, Marcel Dionne, Theo Fleury, Wayne Gretzky, Sergei Makarov, Vladimir Krutov, Martin St. Louis, Håkan Loob, and Mats Näslund.

With the exception of Fleury and St. Louis, they’re all older than me, and they’re all forwards. So, yes, I was born in the late 1960s and, like my idols, I was a speedy forward in my more active playing days.

» Continued

It’s been such a long time since I went to school - any school - that I don’t even get the urge to go back to school anymore. I always liked school, almost as much as Son who burst into tears the other day when Grandma tried to high-five him, saying, “no school tomorrow!”

I liked school, I liked most of my teachers, and I’d like to think that I learned something during all those years. Well, I know I learned a lot but I also know that I’ve probably forgot most of it. It’s like going back to the gym after a break. I always put the same weights as always, “because I could benchpress that much last time.”

» Continued

“Can’t you tell me those funny George Lucas’s Beard jokes again, Dad?” said Son.

“Sure I can,” I said.

Sometimes I don’t even realize how funny I am. Some of those times I’m funny because I make a “cute” mistake in Swedish, and Wife just can’t get enough of it. Or, I’m so scared on a roller coaster that I hold on to the car with my knuckles white as snow, my arms all spread out, so that I practically push Wife over board, and when she then sees me on the post-ride photo, she tells me that I’m “doing that funny thing with my face again.”

» Continued

Vincent: Yeah, baby, you'd dig it the most. But you know what the funniest thing about Europe is?
Jules: What?
Vincent: It's the little differences. I mean, they got the same shit over there that we got here, but it's just... it's just there it's a little different.
– Vincent Vega and Jules Winnfield in Pulp Fiction

Last night, as we were driving home from Legoland in Denmark, Daughter started to draft a list of all the countries she’s visited in her five-year long life.

“Finland, right? Italy … Sweden … Norway … the US, what else?” she yelled from the back seat.

» Continued

“Oh, Sir, just one more thing.”
– Lt. Columbo, LAPD

Whenever I’m alone at home, with Wife and Son and Daughter away somewhere, I watch an episode of Columbo, the show about Lt Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department.

Because I own every single Columbo DVD box there is, I have a pretty good collection to choose from, and it’s just a matter of mood whether I want to go for one of the early 1970s cases, in which Peter Falk looks like he could still run after a bad guy if he wanted to, and in which his old Peugeot still looks mostly European, instead of just old, or a 1980s style Columbo.

» Continued

In the winter of 1998, Sweden was all abuzz about a movie about two young girls trying to deal with life, and growing up, in a small Western Sweden town called Åmål.

Two teenage girls in small-town Sweden. Elin is beautiful, popular, and bored with life. Agnes is friendless, sad, and secretly in love with Elin. Åmål is a small insignificant town where nothing ever happens, where the latest trends are out of date when they get there.

Everybody saw the movie, everybody (said he) loved it, so in the spring of 1999, the writer-director Lukas Moodysson got on stage at the Swedish Film Awards to collect his loot: Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Actress awards for the two young ladies who played Elin and Agnes.

» Continued

“You used to be great at giving those speeches”
– Wife, the other day

Now, first off, it should be noted that I am not much of a speaker.

My first public speaking experience took place in a church. I was nine years old and I had been chosen to read the gospel at school. Never in the history of mankind have Joseph and Mary got so fast from Nazareth to Bethlehem as they did in my recital.

» Continued

Hey kid,

I don’t like foul play, man. I saw you, dude. I so caught you, and you know I did!

And if there’s something that I hate even more than foul play, is seeing my kid getting the short end of the stick because of your foul play, kid.

Sure, it was a game of tag on skates, so you’re technically right: nobody got any end of any sticks. But, that’s not really here or there. The point is that there are rules to the game, and you cheated. See, I saw Son touch you, and I don’t care if your Dad is the manager of the team, and seems to have pretty darn hard shot, when my Son tags you, you stop. Boom. Just because he kept on going to the other direction - he’s still working on stops - doesn’t mean you can pretend he didn’t touch you.

This time, it was just an evil eye I sent your way. And when I made you say “please” a few times when I got your ball from the snow, I was just warming up. I heard you the first time. The first time after I made you say it. Before
- - -
Summer's here, and I'm cleaning up Mr. Pakarinen's files. Today, I found this unfinished blog entry from January. Not sure where he was going with it, but I think it perfectly demonstrates his pettiness and superiority complex, and it's only fair that the world gets to know what kind of a man I have to work with.

And hey, he's no David Foster Wallace so I'm not going to add any footnotes, but please note that
1. He stopped writing in mid-sentence
2. at 200 words = lazy.

/Webmaster

I wrote my first Tuukka Rask story seven years ago when he was a young, up-and-coming goalie prospect. Now he's backing up Tim Thomas in the Stanley Cup Final. Five years ago, another Finnish backup goaltender got his chance to play in the Stanley Cup Final, and I wrote about him, too. Sort of. So, here's one from the archives. From my nhl.com blog:

Monday, June 19, 2006
Streets of Helsinki

Yes, the NHL Final has been completely overshadowed by the World Cup. The World Cup that doesn't have to have the name of the sport in the title. It's just the World Cup. You've all read the stories about the ratings in the U.S., how the Americans apparently prefer professional eating contests and left-handed poker to hockey, so you know what I'm talking about.

» Continued

Every time people tell me that “it’s a small world..” when I know somebody they also know, my shtick is to finish their sentence with “… and Finland’s even smaller.” (When the person in question is Finnish, of course, I realize it doesn’t really work otherwise).

I see evidence of the smallness of Finland if not every day, then every week, or at least every month, on Facebook, when a friend of mine friends another friend of mine, and I didn’t know they were friends, too.

And then I go and “like” their friendship, a cyberversion of me putting my arms around them both and saying, “now, isn’t this fantastic?”

» Continued