A while ago, a report aired on the CBS television show "60 Minutes" that can only be described as erroneous. In a segment on the recently discovered country of Finland, the reporter Morley Safer portrayed the Finns, who are the previously unknown inhabitants of that country, as a lugubrious and melancholy people prone to alcoholism and dancing the tango. I would like to correct that impression. The Finns, as I know them, are a lugubrious and melancholy people prone to alcoholism who think they are dancing the tango. This was made evident by several clips on the program that showed people tripping, albeit in a nicely melancholy way, while trying keep their tango partners from falling over. The Finns make great music, furniture, and cell phones, but you'll never see a Fred Astair dance out of their midst.
I grew up Finnish-American, which was convenient because I was born that way, and do believe I know something of the national psyche. Even though I have never been to Finland, where vowels outnumber people two-to-one, I have many relatives whom I have been able to observe over the years. They are hard-working, resilient lot, not without a sense of humor, who get slightly tipsy only during the festive period from Easter to Christmas. And it is true that the Finns are melancholy, although one could make the argument that any country plunged into darkness for six months a year is bound to produce a people whose idea of fun is to watch a lake freeze. In the dark.
The tango
Still, why the tango? Maybe because it's just a bit more fun than watching a lake freeze. Mr. Safer had no real answer, not that he expected one. My personal theory is this: in Finland, where reindeer outnumber vowels two-to-one, you have a country which has discovered approximately 7,000 ways to prepare herring; in which brightly dressed, short people called Laplanders traverse the Arctic Circle in search of new words for "snow"; and where the populace's idea of going south for the winter involves residency permits for Latvia. Indeed, why not the tango?
Of course, the Finns do know how to have fun in other ways, something I hope Mr. Safer will note when he returns for the second installment of his report, tentatively titled "Everything But the Kitchen Helsinki." Take the famous saunas, for instance. This is where you get naked with complete strangers and sweat a lot, and then, instead of watching a lake freeze, jump into it, which may be fun but is not a user-friendly experience for certain male extremities.
St. Urho
For another example of Finnish fun, March 16th marked the extremely important Finnish holiday, St. Urho's Day, which has never been heard of in Finland.
The reason St. Urho's Day has never been heard of in Finland is that it is an entirely made up holiday--not unlike every other holiday, obviously.
Apparently, in the 1950s a Finnish-American department store manager in a town called, wishfully one thinks, Virginia, Minnesota had a hard time getting excited about his Irish employees' upcoming St. Patrick's Day festivities. In order to avoid their fun, he created a story about a national hero of his own country named St. Urho, who was every bit as neurotic as St. Patrick. His legend contended that a plague of grasshoppers had once threatened the vineyards of ancient Finland, a situation dire and immediate, and St. Urho saved the grape crop by driving the grasshoppers out of the country. To this day, the made-up legend states, on the saint's feast day of March 16th women and children dress in purple and green and gather around the lakes of Finland to chant St. Urho's message: "Heinasirkka, heinasirkka, mene taalta hiiteen," which translates to "Grasshopper, grasshopper go away." Presumably, the men are elsewhere tending to grape-juice by-products, wondering why their families are shouting at lakes.
In an ironic twist, the St. Patrick's Day revelers, always eager to add another saint to the calendar, helped their manager celebrate the fictitious event, thus destroying his Lutheran determination to avoid fun.
The holiday grew wildly from there, and today most Finnish-Americans have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.
Pulla
Which doesn't mean the holiday isn't celebrated, albeit in a herringbone-in-cheek sort of way. We never celebrated it in my family, but we didn't tango either. We did, however, eat a wonderful sweet bread prepared by my father's Aunt Saimi, called "pulla." Yet, there is a down-side to Finnish cuisine. As St. Patrick's Day has its own green beer and corned beef, the Finns have their own St. Urho's Day dinner. It consists of, and this is authentic, fish stew, rye bread, hardtack, butter, and vegetable sticks.
After a meal like that, who could resist the tango?
###
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Sunday, March 18, 2007
The Nearly Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors is indeed great---until you're actually outdoors. That's when you realize that the call of nature that summoned you away from ESPN has also called all the world's ticks, gnats, green flies, wasps, hornets, thorns, poisons ivy and oak, carcinogenic ultraviolet sun rays, and mosquitoes bigger than your Aunt Edna's head to drop by for a visit.
Don't get me wrong, I like nature…documentaries. But to go outside, especially during summer, is the kind of adventure I think best left to professionals who are paid to swim with sharks or dig potatoes in their Victory Garden. However, I'm no recluse, and I do force myself to get out once in a while, mainly for my kids' sake. In summer we go to the lakes, we slip the canoe into a pond, and when we're on vacation we walk miles along the shore to dig up steamer clams that, according to them, look like something that Hagrid, from the Harry Potter books, might have hacked up. We have our fun.
And, one of the positive aspects of stepping out your front door is that invariably you learn something about yourself. I, for one, have learned that I'd rather not be there, but you already know that. But take a couple of years ago, when we took the kids camping at a state park in Massachusetts. Here's what I learned:
1. If you buy a cheap tent at K-Mart because a real tent from a proper camping store is a commitment too painful to make, you should open it up to make sure all the parts and poles are there before you're standing at the campsite while the light fades, slapping mosquitoes on your sweaty neck, and looming over what appears to be a burial shroud. An important part of a tent is the "rain flap," so called because without it the tent will flap uselessly in the wind and will be completely unprotected from rain, but that's irrelevant---it wasn't packed in the box. I also learned that at times like this it's therapeutic to mutter colorful words under your breath, away from the kids, whom you've sent into the woods to find branches to help prop up the tent, and, at this point, your marriage.
2. If you decide to buy your 10-year-old son a pocketknife to mark his first camping trip, don't let him practice whittling by using the branches that are now attached to, and holding up, the tent.
3. The human capacity for S'mores in a single sitting is one per 20 pounds of body mass. Even one more than is allowed will turn the expression "happy camper" into the oxymoron it nearly always threatens to be.
4. The complete lyrics to "Freebird." The group next to us, meaning they were approximately eleven inches from our flapless tent, and who were, I think, from Dubuque because they kept commenting on how clams looked like something Hagrid from the Harry Potter books might have hacked up, enhanced their intimate evening campfire by sharing their Lynyrd Skynyrd tapes with us at high volume, endlessly, with no break. Until a skunk ambled through their campsite and sent them running.
5. I love skunks.
###
Don't get me wrong, I like nature…documentaries. But to go outside, especially during summer, is the kind of adventure I think best left to professionals who are paid to swim with sharks or dig potatoes in their Victory Garden. However, I'm no recluse, and I do force myself to get out once in a while, mainly for my kids' sake. In summer we go to the lakes, we slip the canoe into a pond, and when we're on vacation we walk miles along the shore to dig up steamer clams that, according to them, look like something that Hagrid, from the Harry Potter books, might have hacked up. We have our fun.
And, one of the positive aspects of stepping out your front door is that invariably you learn something about yourself. I, for one, have learned that I'd rather not be there, but you already know that. But take a couple of years ago, when we took the kids camping at a state park in Massachusetts. Here's what I learned:
1. If you buy a cheap tent at K-Mart because a real tent from a proper camping store is a commitment too painful to make, you should open it up to make sure all the parts and poles are there before you're standing at the campsite while the light fades, slapping mosquitoes on your sweaty neck, and looming over what appears to be a burial shroud. An important part of a tent is the "rain flap," so called because without it the tent will flap uselessly in the wind and will be completely unprotected from rain, but that's irrelevant---it wasn't packed in the box. I also learned that at times like this it's therapeutic to mutter colorful words under your breath, away from the kids, whom you've sent into the woods to find branches to help prop up the tent, and, at this point, your marriage.
2. If you decide to buy your 10-year-old son a pocketknife to mark his first camping trip, don't let him practice whittling by using the branches that are now attached to, and holding up, the tent.
3. The human capacity for S'mores in a single sitting is one per 20 pounds of body mass. Even one more than is allowed will turn the expression "happy camper" into the oxymoron it nearly always threatens to be.
4. The complete lyrics to "Freebird." The group next to us, meaning they were approximately eleven inches from our flapless tent, and who were, I think, from Dubuque because they kept commenting on how clams looked like something Hagrid from the Harry Potter books might have hacked up, enhanced their intimate evening campfire by sharing their Lynyrd Skynyrd tapes with us at high volume, endlessly, with no break. Until a skunk ambled through their campsite and sent them running.
5. I love skunks.
###
Friday, March 16, 2007
Sprung
"Spring is come home with her world-wandering feet.
And all things are made young with young desires."
Francis Thompson (1859-1907), British poet.
"Where in the hell are those hay-fever pills?"
Richard (1946- ), my barber.
Spring--the cliches are enough to make even the hardest of hearts surge with pleasant feelings of warmth and renewal: bunny rabbits, ball games, flower blossoms, starry-eyed young lovers, and, of course, the realization that five months sitting indoors on a steady diet of Doritos (corporate sponsors please note) and Ben & Jerry's (my e-mail is below) seems to have shrunk our trousers several sizes.
To paraphrase Tennyson, in spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of what he will look like in bathing trunks, and I can assure you that it is not always a pretty sight. Not that it ever stopped your average gold-chain-wearing car salesman with a paunch the size of a small Toyota from strutting along the beach in bikini briefs which he can't even see--no, far from it. As a matter of fact, it is part of the sartorial code of automobile salesmen, also known as the Big Fat Gut Inverse Proportion Rule, that the larger the beer belly gets, so shrinks the bathing suit.
Rolling thunder
Still, there are those of us with some semblance of pride, and our intent is to get into shape before Memorial Day. We were once adolescents ourselves, and have spent many idle hours at the beach looking too sleek and sinewy for our own good, swearing we would never sells cars for a living and calling our oleaginousness-challenged beach-mates "Rolling Thunder," "Jello Jowls," and other less kind names. We remember those times, and swear on a stack of Rogaine that we will never get so far out of shape that we will be forced, by law, to buy gold chains and bikini bathing trunks.
And we intend to do this without breaking a sweat.
So how, you are rightly asking, can one hope to drop 30 pounds by Memorial Day without exercise--or severe liposuction?
Lipo
Good question. First, let me say one important thing. Men do not undergo liposuction. It simply is not done. As I understand it, the act involves sucking the living cells from the fatty tissues of one's body. These fatty areas are often located at the waist, hips, and thighs, and it just so happens that they are also located very close to another extremely important region of a man's body. If there is any chance whatsoever that this region will be reduced in any way, even by accident, you will never find a man willing to go under the vacuum. There are enough burdens in life without having to explain that one in the locker room. Of course, if the procedure could be reversed, we're talking lines around the block.
Secondly, let me say something else. Men are vain. We will do almost anything to again look like we did in high school, without a) admitting it, and b) the pimples.
Almost anything except exercise.
Men sweat, of course, but only when they're doing things like work, or playing a game. Exercise means something like aerobics, and Richard Simmons has pretty much killed that idea for all time.
Plane aerobics
Except for a new type of aerobics that I discovered recently. It is called, please catch the play on words here, "Plane Aerobics."
I saw this, as you might have guessed, on an airplane. It was Northwest Airlines, whose bonafide corporate motto at the time was "Some People Just Know How to Fly." Presumably, of course, those "Some People" are the very people behind the wheel of our airplane.
Anyway, just after the meal (my wife and I had pre-ordered the vegetarian special because we do not trust airline mystery meat, which was served by a hostess who said, and I am not kidding, "You are going to be sorry you ordered this") they started a video called "Plane Aerobics."
The video featured a woman decked out in the standard aerobic gear, including a sweatband on her forehead which would no doubt catch the one micro-molecule of sweat produced by these aerobics exercises. Let me remind you that every one of these is done in a standard sitting-down position, airline style:
1. Tap your left foot five times. Tap your right. Tap them together.
2. Role your left foot at the ankle. Roll your right. Roll them together.
3. Lift your left leg several inches. Lift your right. Lift them together.
4. Inhale.
5. Exhale.
It goes on, but I think you get the picture. It's enough to say that we were all invigorated by the workout, and were later better able to handle the stress of the customs inspector discovering the crate of oranges we seemed to have accidently packed in our luggage.
And, so pumped, when I was offered the duty-free on-board shopping list, I was able to pass up the gold chains with a hint of smuggishness.
###
And all things are made young with young desires."
Francis Thompson (1859-1907), British poet.
"Where in the hell are those hay-fever pills?"
Richard (1946- ), my barber.
Spring--the cliches are enough to make even the hardest of hearts surge with pleasant feelings of warmth and renewal: bunny rabbits, ball games, flower blossoms, starry-eyed young lovers, and, of course, the realization that five months sitting indoors on a steady diet of Doritos (corporate sponsors please note) and Ben & Jerry's (my e-mail is below) seems to have shrunk our trousers several sizes.
To paraphrase Tennyson, in spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of what he will look like in bathing trunks, and I can assure you that it is not always a pretty sight. Not that it ever stopped your average gold-chain-wearing car salesman with a paunch the size of a small Toyota from strutting along the beach in bikini briefs which he can't even see--no, far from it. As a matter of fact, it is part of the sartorial code of automobile salesmen, also known as the Big Fat Gut Inverse Proportion Rule, that the larger the beer belly gets, so shrinks the bathing suit.
Rolling thunder
Still, there are those of us with some semblance of pride, and our intent is to get into shape before Memorial Day. We were once adolescents ourselves, and have spent many idle hours at the beach looking too sleek and sinewy for our own good, swearing we would never sells cars for a living and calling our oleaginousness-challenged beach-mates "Rolling Thunder," "Jello Jowls," and other less kind names. We remember those times, and swear on a stack of Rogaine that we will never get so far out of shape that we will be forced, by law, to buy gold chains and bikini bathing trunks.
And we intend to do this without breaking a sweat.
So how, you are rightly asking, can one hope to drop 30 pounds by Memorial Day without exercise--or severe liposuction?
Lipo
Good question. First, let me say one important thing. Men do not undergo liposuction. It simply is not done. As I understand it, the act involves sucking the living cells from the fatty tissues of one's body. These fatty areas are often located at the waist, hips, and thighs, and it just so happens that they are also located very close to another extremely important region of a man's body. If there is any chance whatsoever that this region will be reduced in any way, even by accident, you will never find a man willing to go under the vacuum. There are enough burdens in life without having to explain that one in the locker room. Of course, if the procedure could be reversed, we're talking lines around the block.
Secondly, let me say something else. Men are vain. We will do almost anything to again look like we did in high school, without a) admitting it, and b) the pimples.
Almost anything except exercise.
Men sweat, of course, but only when they're doing things like work, or playing a game. Exercise means something like aerobics, and Richard Simmons has pretty much killed that idea for all time.
Plane aerobics
Except for a new type of aerobics that I discovered recently. It is called, please catch the play on words here, "Plane Aerobics."
I saw this, as you might have guessed, on an airplane. It was Northwest Airlines, whose bonafide corporate motto at the time was "Some People Just Know How to Fly." Presumably, of course, those "Some People" are the very people behind the wheel of our airplane.
Anyway, just after the meal (my wife and I had pre-ordered the vegetarian special because we do not trust airline mystery meat, which was served by a hostess who said, and I am not kidding, "You are going to be sorry you ordered this") they started a video called "Plane Aerobics."
The video featured a woman decked out in the standard aerobic gear, including a sweatband on her forehead which would no doubt catch the one micro-molecule of sweat produced by these aerobics exercises. Let me remind you that every one of these is done in a standard sitting-down position, airline style:
1. Tap your left foot five times. Tap your right. Tap them together.
2. Role your left foot at the ankle. Roll your right. Roll them together.
3. Lift your left leg several inches. Lift your right. Lift them together.
4. Inhale.
5. Exhale.
It goes on, but I think you get the picture. It's enough to say that we were all invigorated by the workout, and were later better able to handle the stress of the customs inspector discovering the crate of oranges we seemed to have accidently packed in our luggage.
And, so pumped, when I was offered the duty-free on-board shopping list, I was able to pass up the gold chains with a hint of smuggishness.
###
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