Fool me twice

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When I got to know one of my best friends in middle school, he told me that his father was a Member of the Parliament in Finland. I’m not sure if I really knew what that meant, but it sounded important and cool, so I told Mom about it that night.

“Really? What’s his last name?” Mom said, mostly out of curiosity than anything else.

“Ekman,” I said.

“Huh. I don’t remember a Member of the Parliament by that name,” Mom said.

The Finnish unicameral Parliament has 200 members. Father may know best, but I figured Mom knows a lot, too, so I confronted my buddy the next day. With the best possible argument, of course:

“My Mom says there’s no Ekman in the Parliament.”

This is I.

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The show must go on

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I’m writing this while sitting at a desk at the NHL head offices in New York. New York City. Behind me, under me, I can see the 6th Avenue, the Avenue of the Americas, with all the people scurrying back and forth like ants, jumping in and out of taxis – very un-antlike behavior.

When I look up, I see a wall with the photos of all NHL captains this season, from Jonathan Toews to Nicklas Lidström to Mikko Koivu.

Ants and taxicabs.

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Free falling

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Seeing people fall down is funny. It is, admit it. They look so helpless, and out of control, and that’s hilarious. Sure, you don’t want them to dislocate their hips or break their shoulders, but that’s not what you’re thinking when you see a big dude run as fast as he can and then slip and fall into the swimming pool.

I didn’t used to be a slapstick kind of guy, but hearing Wife laugh at all the people falling in movies, and in America’s Funniest Home Videos – why AFV, and not AFHV? – has made me appreciate the genius of looking stupid.

The skating track here has nothing to do with the story, or the maniac pictured in the photo.

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Self-made King

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“Great athletes never have lousy names. If your name is Frederico Trepalano, you are not going to be a great ballplayer. Michael Jordan is a great name. Easy to remember. Seven letters and six letters. Usually, if they combine to thirteen, they’re good names. I’m into numbers.”
– Larry King, Esquire, August 2010

Easy for Larry to say, isn’t it? Larry King is the perfect name, nine letters and all. The “L” kicks it off nicely, then there’s wide, American “arr” that makes your face really work, the “y” ties the “arr” to the hard “K” perfectly, with the ringing “ing” as a radio stinger, leaving audio ripples in the air, a pause that you don’t want to break when you hear the name so you just sit there, in awe.

S-u-s-p-e-n-d-r-s. Nine letters. 3 x 3 = 9.

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Raging bull

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I’m not very good with conflicts. Never have been. It doesn’t matter which side of the argument I’m on, or whether I think I’m right or wrong, I feel almost physically ill when I’m stewing in conflict soup.

My personal problem is, though, that my brain is almost too quick to cook up pretty good oneliners to strip my adversary. Even worse, my mouth is just as fast to spit them out.

Hulk is more of a man of action.

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Military operations

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Not only do Wife and I quote movie lines, such as “Let’s ride!”, back to each other, we also imitate movie action in our lives. Not to the extent that we’d fly to Mexico to save a poor village from El Guapo, or that I’d be working on a time machine in our garage – although I do like Doc Brown’s hair, a lot – but when we like something in a movie, we’ll make our own version of it.

(Writing the above sentence, I also realized that there’s another line we do use with each other. A lot. Whenever one of us says something like, “Oh I hate that” or “I really liked that buffet”, the other one says, “Oh yeah? How much”, to which there is only one correct answer: “A lot”. It’s a scene in Life of Brian, a movie that Wife can recite from beginning to end, which really makes me admire her. How much? A lot).

Casting: Son, Stage design: Son, Photo: Risto

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Sunday tradition

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A few years ago, it may even be a full decade ago, time goes so fast that I can’t really be sure just off the top of my head like this, so I’ll just say that it wasn’t “recently” which is a word Wife uses often to describe any event she can remember, it seems, most often when she talks about movies that she’s seen even if I it’s been, say, three years, or so, although in this case, I’m not even trying to say it was recently, and now that I think about it, it must have been a good ten years ago because Sister-in-Law was probably single and since Wife and I celebrate – every day, mind you – now eleven years together, I was in the picture ten years ago, too, when, and I am slowly getting to the point here, she, Sister-in-Law, had this Sunday tradition of having brunch, or afternoon tea, I can’t be sure, with this one special fellow.

The coffee cups in the photo mayor may not be from the coffee shop mentioned in the story.

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Blowing off steam

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I saw something strange at the gym the other day, and I guess I could try to use it as a metaphor for something bigger in life, or spin a tale about things that people do.

And if I tried to reach to the inner corridors of my memory, I might be able to come up with another incident like the one I saw the other day – whoops, there it was – but since it’s not something I’d like to spend a lot of time or brain capacity on, and let’s face it, both are a limited commodity – I’m not going to do that.

Blue as my eyes

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