Rockabilly Rebels

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Risto

Before the weekend hockey trip that turned me into a fan of a Finnish new wave band, and before I started to grow my hair long, accordingly, but after my favorite band was Alvin and the Chipmunks, I got into rockabilly. Of course I wasn’t alone in this, because that was an era when the 1950s came back in style.

Even Elvis was still alive, although, at that point, I was basically still rocking to the sounds of a chipmunk band, and loving it. I caught the trend a couple of years after his death when a friend of mine and I saw Kurt Russell in John Carpenter’s movie on Elvis. And we thought Kurt Russell was perfect as Elvis, but then again, we already knew Kurt was cool, because The Quest, a TV show, had been a big hit in Finland.

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What would Hulk Hogan do?

Posted on April 10, 2012 by Risto

Last week, when I saw the YouTube video of Scott Hartnell making his then-famous now-forgotten – nothing personal, Scottie, that’s just the way things go these days – Hulk Hogan impersonation, I thought of a friend of mine who did the same thing 20 years ago.

Only, he wasn’t doing it in front of 15 000 people, or to a guy dressed up as Hulk Hogan. He did it in an ice cold hockey rink 50 kilometers west of Helsinki, Finland, in front of 200 people, and purely out of frustration and to get back at every single one of those 150 people in the stands.

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Father and Son, Inc.

Posted on April 5, 2012 by Risto

Last weekend, Wife and Daughter packed their bags and drove south. Now, because it had been snowing when we got up, instead of driving to the cottage, as planned, they only drove south for ten minutes, parked the car at the In-Laws’, and spent the weekend at their imaginary cottage, giving Son and me the male bonding weekend we had talked about. (And the female bonding weekend to them).

This was to be a weekend of life lessons, something they would make a Hallmark movie about. Son and I would talk and hang out, watch movies, eat hamburgers, and while doing that, I would drop some words of wisdom his way.

Like, “Did you know that they just found the Apollo 11 engines?” or “Did you know that there are actual flying cars these days but they’re now called roadable aircrafts.”

And Son would nod, and take notes like I was going to ask him to. That was the plan. But first, we had to run to the train so we’d make it to the 12.10 showing of the 3D version of “The Phantom Menace”.

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True fiction

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Risto

I don’t know if we were friends anymore, although I’m pretty sure we were. I know we weren’t enemies, which is natural since we were teenagers, and at least for me, there were just buddies and other people. When I look back now, I think we had been pretty good friends because we went to the same school, but I also know that we only went to the same school for about a year and a half, two years maybe, and I had lost track of him a little bit.

Maybe I liked him because he seemed to be always smiling, or because he was nice to me, a new kid in town, or maybe because he shared a name with my father, which made his name unusual for somebody his age.

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Blood, sweat and fears

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Risto

“You’ve got big dreams? You want fame? Well, fame costs. And right here is where you start paying in sweat.” – “Lydia Grant”, dance instructor in “Fame”

Yes, I’m old enough to not only admit to remembering “Fame”, the 1980s hit TV series, but also having liked the show. Now, rushing home on Sunday afternoons so I could watch Danny and Bruno and Leroy, and of course Valerie, Coco and Lori work on their art, and get their lives straight, wasn’t something I told my teammates, but then again, since nobody talked about it, maybe I wasn’t the only fan of the show. All I know, “Fame” was never discussed in the locker room.

I’ve quoted “Lydia Grant’s” – played by Debbie Allen – words many times over the years, sometimes jokingly, but most often seriously, because it’s true. Fame does cost, and the price is sweat.

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Jedi lessons

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Risto

FADE IN.

INT. CAR – EVENING. RISTO’S driving on a highway, SON sitting in the backseat, playing Angry Birds on RISTO’S iPhone. The radio’s on, playing Ulrik Munther’s “Soldiers”.

SON
Louder. This is good.

RISTO cranks up the volume.

SON
“See and be seen”. That’s my motto.

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Heartbreak Hotel

Posted on March 17, 2012 by Risto

Stuck On You

They’re playing Elvis in this coffee shop. The barista behind the counter is singing along, and when the song reached the end, she was really belting it. Don’t look now – I can’t – but I know she’s even doing the moves.

This must be the best coffee shop in Stockholm, this “V. Street Coffee” almost across the street from the main station. It’s small, but it’s got character – like you know who – like all the cool coffee shops in the world. It’s not a franchise, not a copy of somebody else’s idea, it’s its own thing. On the walls there are posters from the 1950, the price list looks like it’s from the 1970s.

And of course, the barista knows everybody.

This is what Street Coffee be like on Monday.

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Cookie, Steve, and the Bolts

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Risto

“Hockey is simply the best sport out there. This coming from someone who did not grow up with hockey (Miami Beach is not exactly your hockey Mecca). I place being at Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals and watching Dave Andreychuk lift Stanley over his head just beneath the birth of my children!”
– Cookie, May 27, 2007

The kids thought it was a little funny that we’d be visiting somebody named Cookie, or “Kakan” as Son called her, translating “cookie” into Swedish. Wife and I thought it was a little exciting, almost a little wild, to make travel plans to Florida and include in them a night at a complete stranger’s house, even if she is a retired school teacher, and a redhead named Cookie.

Of course, Cookie wasn’t really a stranger, she was just somebody we had never met. After all, I had been emailing with her since that first message in May 2007 which she sent as a reply to a blog post of mine on NHL.com. And, we’re Facebook friends.

Over the last five years, she had sent us hats and posters, and her favorite children’s book – “The Giving Tree” – and I had helped her write signs in Finnish and Swedish and I, too, had sent her books (of mine that she had bought, but still), and in the process, we had become friends.

And of course, we did know that she was a hockey fan.

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IIHF.com: Teemu and Saku

Posted on March 13, 2012 by Risto

HELSINKI – The stars were almost perfectly aligned on Monday night when the Anaheim Ducks played against the Colorado Avalanche. Teemu Selanne scored his 22nd goal of the season, with a wrist shot from the faceoff circle like so many times before, passing fellow countryman and childhood idol Jari Kurri on the NHL’s all-time scoring list to become the highest-scoring Finn in the history of the NHL.

The game was also Saku Koivu’s 1000th regular season game in the NHL, the 274th player in the league history to reach that point.

Between the two of them, Koivu and Selanne have been a big part of the finest moments of Finnish hockey history, both individually, and together. Koivu was an integral part of the historic 1995 World Championship team, Selanne broke records in the NHL, and together they’ve won 1998 Olympic bronze, 1999 World Championship silver, 2004 World Cup silver, 2006 Olympic silver, 2008 World Championship bronze, and 2010 Olympic bronze.

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World, meet Sweden

Posted on March 11, 2012 by Risto

In Finland, there are thousands of jokes about the Swedes. Entire books have been dedicated to the art form, and one of my all-time favorite jokes actually comes from one of those books. I read it when I was about 12, and I’m not really sure why I still think it’s sort of funny. It’s almost not even a joke.

“A Swede shot an arrow to the sky. He missed”.

Anyway, Finns like to tell jokes about Swedes, and often it’s the Swedish man who’s the butt of the joke. In the jokes, the Swedish men are slow, thick, and often, if not homosexual, then at least soft and feminine. They discuss things.

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