I suppose that when you grow up in a country that has only two TV channels and no programming between midnight and 4 pm, films become a big thing and going to movies even bigger.

The first movie that made an impression on me was Escape to Witch Mountain. The 1975 version, not the 1995 version which I made Wife watch just as we had started dating, thinking it was the 1975 version, my version, the movie that explained my love for harmonica, and by extension, for Huey Lewis.

It was not. We did watch the entire movie, with me first complaining about how I didn’t seem to remember anything, and then about the poor quality of the re-make.

» Continued

So this is Xmas, and what have you done?

Last year, I published a Best of the Millennium list here, delighted to see that I had 40 entries on the list. This year, I only have nine, but that's fine, considering I made it a Top 9 list.

I’ll post a link to an archived blog entry every day between today and Christmas Eve. (That's why it's a Top 9 list). Consider it your R-advent calendar. Hope you like it. Tell your friends.

And without further ado … Nummmbbeeerrrr niiiiiiiiiiine:

» Continued

“Why don’t you put on your coach’s coat?”
– Son, on our way to his bandy practice.

It’s cold out there. It’s cold standing by the side of a huge bandy arena, with the winds blowing the full length of the ice, when the temperature is already in the double digits below zero. My new winter coat is a precious memento from the Vancouver Olympics that I covered for the IIHF, but that’s not the coach’s jacket that Son meant. That’s the 21st century version, but Son was talking about my other winter coat.

» Continued

It’s cold in Finland. It’s cold like in Russian hell, as the saying goes here. It’s especially cold for a guy who insists on not wearing socks, but as the Swedes say, “there’s no bad weather, just poor clothing.” So I’m not complaining, because only wimps complain, as my Dad says.

Besides, it’s not like I’ve never seen minus-25 degrees before. Listen up, kids. When I was a kid, I walked to school every day: ten kilometers, on barefoot, uphill both ways. After I had milked the cows but before I went to work in the mines.

» Continued

Helsinki in November is not exactly chicken soup for the soul. If we assume that today was an average day - and why not - it’s safe to say that on an average day, you can’t see the sun at all. Helsinki is dark, it’s gray, it’s wet. It’s cold.

Then again, it’s one of the best little cities in the world. Because it’s mine.

» Continued

Nine years ago, after I had recovered from the initial shock of the nine-eleven attack, I sent an email to a New Yorker friend, to see that he was OK. This is his reply.

» Continued

Turns out, I didn’t know anybody. I thought I could put all the names and faces together, but I didn’t recognize my best buddy. I probably would have had somebody asked me to find him in the crowd sitting in the sun, but when he came to shake my hand, I drew a blank.

Then again, he wasn’t sure who I was, either.

Almost like the first day of school.

Except a lot more fun.

Because on the first day of school I cried.

The last time I saw the dozen or so people I’m about to meet in six hours, Ronald Reagan had just sworn in as President of the United States of America, and a rockabilly fever swept over Finland. No cause and effect, at least I don’t think so, but simply a coincidence.

» Continued

The sports camp is about to end. We’ve had a week of fun, a week of cracking jokes in the dark when we were supposed to be sleeping, and getting ready for the sports activities we’ll be doing the next day. It’s always the same guys, too, with the same jokes, but they’re kind of funny, and I’m the new kid anyway, so I’ll just lie on my mattress and listen. And giggle.

» Continued

There’s nothing like a nickname to date you. Not to the whole world, but in relation to your buddies. What works in high school, may not work in the adult world. Sometimes people outgrow their nicknames. That’s why the Finnish Minister of Foreign Affairs doesn’t want to be called “Tico”, like when we played minor hockey against each other, but Alexander.

» Continued

“Dad, can we play that things-that-didn’t-exist-when-you-were-a-kid game again?”
– Son, from the backseat, yesterday

Oh, where to begin. Of course we didn’t have cell phones, flat screen TVs - color TVs, actually - remote controls, shoes with Velcro instead of laces, and in the words of a 4331-member strong Facebook group, “When I was your age, hockey bags didn't have [bleeping] wheels on them”.

There were no Crocs, no CDs, no DVDs, no Euros, no toy Kalashnikovs, and no Star Wars Lego merchandise. We did have clogs, and VHS, and my father used to make wooden pistols, and leather holsters for me.

» Continued

“It feels so unreal, was it the same for you?”
– Brother-in-law, 48 hours before the arrival of his first-born

Apparently, only four percent of children are born on the actual due date, which, to me, makes the whole concept of having one date simply ludicrous. If that’s the best they can do, why not simply give the parents a good ballpark guestimate, say, a week, and leave it at that.

» Continued

“Do you remember the first time you watched a movie on a DVD? What was it?”
– Wife, last night

Sometime in 1978, my father brought home two boxes that did wonderful things. Both were really good at just one, of course, but together, they revolutionized the way our household worked.

» Continued

I’m in the water. I’m telling myself to stay calm. Breathe. I inhale and move my arms and legs fast. I seem to be floating. Maybe I can do this after all. I move my limbs too fast. Too fast. No, too slow. I’m drowning. I move my arms faster. I kick the water as hard as I can. It doesn’t help. I. Can’t. Stay. Afloat. The water tastes likes shit. I spit. I close my eyes. I want to rub my eyes but can’t because if I do, I will go under water, and I will never get up.

“Risto!”

» Continued

Here's a fact I'm 100 percent sure you didn't know: You're reading the collected works of the speed reading champion of the Oulunkylä Elementary School, circa 1976.

One day on third grade, each of us had to leave the classroom at some point, sit down with the teacher, and read as much of a book as we could in 60 seconds, out loud. I can't remember how many words I read, or even what the book was.

» Continued

It was a hot and humid Swedish summer night, I was up, translating a book. That was the night when Michael Jackson died. I saw the news first in a friend's Facebook feed, as he had posted a link to a Finnish site that ran a headline "Michael Jackson dead".

And it turned out they were right, even if the status in LA media at that point still was either "rumored dead" or "in a coma".

» Continued

Here's my childhood hero, Lucky Luke, circa 1979.


And here's Luke in 2009.



Turns out he's not just lucky, he's smart as well. And, turns out I'm slow again. Apparently, Luke quit smoking and switched the cigarette to a straw in 1983. (Then again, of the 73 albums, only 21 have been published in 1983 or later. I remember him always having that cigarette in his mouth.)

Or, thereabouts. But never losing it.

What would you say, if I told you that

“if your friend’s friend’s friend becomes happy, that has a bigger impact on you being happy than putting an extra $5,000 in your pocket.”

That's what a recent study says, anyway.

Happiness is contagious! You surround yourself with people that are happy, and you'll be happy.

So, thank you for visiting my blog. It makes me so happy. Nice to have you here, why don't you just click around a bit. Maybe this is is something you'd like? Or this one? And I know you'd be happy to find this one again, I bet you had forgotten all about it. Fun stuff, right?

Be happy.

There was an interesting story about swear words in the Atlantic Monthly. I happened to read it today on a plane to Switzerland. And the on the train, a few hours later, I saw something that looked like a huge cross up on a hillside, and I started to think about symbols.

I remember when I first saw somebody flipping the bird, or extending their middle finger at somebody else. I was in the seventh grade, and back then, my classmates told me that the proper way to reply to that one was to show the "extended index finger and pinky" combination towards the bird man.

To me, these gestures seemed weird. I remember not understanding the power of an extended middle finger, or how two other fingers would be the appropriate reply. I have a faint memory of starting a campaign of my own, by replying with just my pinky. Why would that finger be any less powerful?

As you've probably noticed by now, after all, it's been a good 25 years, that one didn't catch on. But I haven't seen the two-finger reply salute in a long time, either. Why wasn't that sticky? Too difficult maybe?

"Life magazine announced Tuesday that is is making more than 10 million of its archival photographs publicly available through a partnership with Google."

So, their entire archive gets scanned and made available, searchable, through Google Image Search. Among the classics and other super shots, there's quite a bit of hockey photos as well, from, for example, the 1940s and 1950s.

Like this George Silk 1958 photo of Jacques Plante:



More, and more, and more.

Warning: you will lose your sense of time and will thereby end up spending hours watching the LIFE magazine photos. (Like this one).

Here's Ricky and Jessie's girl.



And me, I'm Jessi's guy ... and I wish that I had Ricky's style! Fabulous!

My cousins are wizards with cars, just like their father, my uncle, who shares the name with a famous Finnish rally driver. When I was out shooting pucks and throwing a ball, my cousins were in the garage, fixing their mopeds and helping their dad.

So I was surprised when the younger one of them told me, years ago, that he was going to be a chef.

» Continued

I remember this game as if it was yesterday. But it wasn't. It was 30 years ago.

Happy New Year!