To boldly go where Newman has gone before

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A few days ago, I heard an interesting radio show about an experiment some Washington Post reporters ran, on themselves.

So when eight Post reporters got to talking about their attachment — no, addiction — to their BlackBerrys, phones, Twitter and Facebook, it was only natural that someone said, okay, let’s go without, if only for a week. No Web, period. If you need to talk to someone, do it in person or by phone.
Everyone got excited: What would our friends and loved ones think if we didn’t respond to their texts and e-mails? Would we be able to do our work? Could we make it five whole days?

Some of them did.

A dramatic photo here.

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NHL.com: A sleep-deprived nation cheers for its heroes

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Here’s one from NHL.com. Click here if you want to see it as is in the wild, or keep reading below.

Back in the day, when Finns dominated the world’s car racing circuit, an adage was born: “You need a Finn to win.” It hasn’t been as apt in the NHL, with only seven Finnish Stanley Cup winners, and with the first three earning their rings with the same team, the Edmonton Oilers dynasty of the 1980s.

No words.

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Coming out of the dark

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Last week, I shared an elevator with a Russian man who was wearing a pink pullover and pink pants. We shared the elevator going down and I went to see if I couldn’t find a place where I could buy chips and a Coke, he to see if he couldn’t own the dance floor at the Piano Bar in the lobby.

He was successful. I wasn’t.

A big man.

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Andy Niemi

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Finnish goaltender Antti Niemi is one of the big stories in this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. I wrote a piece about him for The Hockey News June 7 issue:

“One day, my father called me to tell me he had been at the local rink to see a junior game and had seen a goalie that impressed him,” said Markus Lehto, Niemi’s Helsinki-based European agent. “My father is no super scout, but he used to be the CEO of another rink and a team manager with Jokerit, so he knows his hockey.”
Still, when his father mentioned “Antti Niemi,” Lehto thought his dad was kidding. The only Antti Niemi he knew was the Finnish national soccer team’s goalkeeper. But Lehto made a note and went to see the kid.

Read the story here (pdf, 3.1MB).

The one-time Zamboni driver, yes.

Now you see me…

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Of all the superpowers, invisibility is my favorite. I used to love the 1970s show, The Invisible Man. There’s a Finnish children’s book I adored in which the protagonist eats some invisibility powder and walks through walls. I was a fan of another 1970s show the name of which escapes me, but in which the star, named “nobody”, would tug on his scarf, and turn invisible.

Now you don't see him.

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Greetings

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I admit it, I missed the memo on fist bumps. I guess I was still pretty much on the map when the secret handshakes were around, although the one me and Terry had in 1985 wasn’t ever used. It had three different stages, ending in a finger hook. Maybe even a pointing gesture. But it was never used in a real-life situation.

Nobody’s doing the secret handshakes anymore. It’s all fist bumps. I’m not saying that I don’t like it, because I kind of do. I get the bonding, and in some way, I like most hand gestures: the peace sign, the thumbs up, high-five, and the like.

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Road show

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Seeing the silver man, the Roman soldier, the clown, and the human water fountain do their tricks – or in silver man’s and Roman soldier’s case, doing absolutely nothing – on the square outside the Cologne Cathedral made me think what I always think when I see street artists.

The boys are back in town.

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