Pixar’s 20 Years of Animation exhibition is currently on display at the Tennispalatsi art museum in Helsinki. I went to see it and all I can say is, if you’re anywhere close to Helsinki, you can’t afford to miss it (and hurry up, because exhibition’s next stopover is in Seoul).

Although most of us might not have been as radically inspired by Pixar’s animated movies as those kids who flushed their fish down the toilets after seeing Fining Nemo (to save them, of course), characters and stories created at Pixar are quite impressive when it comes to suspending our disbelief. Sure, cars and fish usually don’t talk humanese, but great characters and their believable expressions make us forget we’re watching cars and fish.

Anyway, I can imagine that most see a movie, either like it or not, but don’t give much thought to how it was made. This exhibition, however, provides such introspective opportunity; you get to see how Pixar’s characters and stories are conceived, developed, re-developed many times before they are polished, even sculpted and only then modeled and rendered. I was stupefied when I found out that three quarters of production time is spent just developing the characters and story, and only a quarter turning those ideas into a movie.

From what Pixar shows us in the exhibition, it definitely must be a dream job to work on their projects. They travel all over the place, some even had to learn how to scuba dive to be able to envision more realistic imaginary worlds. It must be a dream job most can only aspire to.

Besides abundance of quick sketches, conceptual drawings, detailed character sculptures and even some high art-like framed paintings, exhibition offers two brilliant gems: a superb four-projector wide journey through two decades of Pixar’s work and a large mesmerizing zoetrope full of Toy Story characters. The zoetrope itself is an unbelievably dazzling display of magic of bringing static figures into motion. I’d never get tired of it even if I had one at home.

For those who can’t make it to the exhibition, get a glimpse of the spinning marvel here.

Mladen

Kaizers Orchestra played in Tavastia in Helsinki last night. Their first show in Finland was outright brilliant. Not only because they took questions from the audience during the gig and were selling their own merchandise after the show, but also because they brought Geoff Berner along. Although Berner performed only a handful of songs, his sharp satiric wit delivered the punch line of the night. Geoff Berner is the Woody Allen of music, period.

And just in case if you know Smashing Pumpkins personally, please tell them to go see Kaizers Orchestra. Pumpkins could definitely take a lesson or two from the Kaizers about performing live (the picture above from the last night’s gig might already give a hint or two).

Mladen

iPod, a music player turned pop icon. It’s a continuous challenge for the nerds, its strong image was used to counter the war in Iraq, it inspired a book documenting its popularity and even sneaked into our daily vocabulary. Surprising? Not really. It looks nice, it’s easy to use and people love it. Apple sold millions, earn googols and marched onto new market.

Nevertheless, I was surprised to find that the talltale iPod player-earphone silhuette landed even on a Finnish rye-bread wrapping. It’s hard to tell if it was an easter egg cleverly smuggled by graphic designers or just a mere me-too statement by the Finnish food manufacturer Fazer gasping for street-cred with their Reissumies rye-bread. Whichever it is, iPod is now gone.

Since Apple jumped the fence onto the home turf of the most valuable Finnish brand, it was really just a matter of time before someone from Olli-Pekka’s office would again pick up the phone and order Fazer to replace that iPod with an Internet Tablet or a Nokia phone. And I wouldn’t be surprised if this is exactly what has happened, given the notoriety Nokia has gained when their head of security ordered a cleaning company to remove “Kallasvuo sucks” stencil graffitti from the walls of the E15 squat in Helsinki.

If that’s the case with Reissumies, I’m sure Nokia got a much more cooperative response and less resistance from Fazer than it did from E15. For the sake of posterity here are both old and new, con- and sans-iPod rye-bread wrappers.

Mladen

Not that I am looking for an excuse for not writing anything within the last few weeks, but I might just as well point a finger at something. It was the moving that kept me away from writing, or even thinking about writing. I don’t know how often you read this blog, but for all those who lost track, this has been my third move this year. So I hope you understand.

At this point it’s not only difficult to keep track of personal belongings, but I have to pause for a moment every single time when asked for my address. If I happen to recall the street, then I’m not sure whether the building is 3 and the flat 19, or is it the other way around. Not that important after all, although it adds dreamlike experience to everyday life. And it’s not just the address and belongings, also the surroundings become elusive. Every street and lane is familiar and strange at the same time. I’d be turning left instead of going straight, just to notice that the turn would have made sense three cities ago, but makes absolutely no sense here and now. A couple of weeks ago I set off to work on my bicycle just to cycle right by own front door quarter of an hour later with a mouth wide open. I’m sure I had made a ridiculously beautiful circle and confused the snoops, but I also discovered a space wormhole in my neighborhood and was late for work.

Absentminded? Maybe. But I have to admit it’s been great fun too. With the exception of yet again displacing what seemed like an endless stream of boxes and all that other stuff. Every move makes me scratch my head thinking if I need any of these items at all. By far most creative response to all this moving came from a friend of mine who asked if I only carry two backpacks with me after all these too frequent relocations. His remark was spot-on, as Britons like to say, and if I were smart enough, I’d shake it all off and stop carrying and caring. Of course, this wasn’t the first occasion leaving appendages behind crossed my mind. These kind of thoughts keep my cranium surprisingly busy every time I need to carry excessive amounts of things from place A to third floor place B. More than once I wanted to forget this or that box–as long as it didn’t contain any books.

Speaking of books, I could blame them for my long absence too. It’s so much easier to curl up in bed with a good book than it is to sit by computer trying to come up with something anyone would want to read. Especially when other writers have so much more captivating things to say.

Whenever moving I am always amazed how many books I rediscover, which makes for even scarcer and weaker attempts to write. Obviously I buy more than I can read, or even remember what all I would have wanted to read. Of course, when bought, most books are optimistically placed onto the pile next to the bed. At some point the pile grows too large and every so often I move the books to the shelves where they are all to easily overlooked and forgotten. But whenever I’ve been packing and unpacking boxes I unavoidably rediscover all these gems. First I have a hard time placing the books straight into the boxes as I’d so much more like to sit right there and then and read the book, any book (I believe you’d want to do anything else but pack too). And the same struggle recurs during the unpacking. It’s terrific and terrifying at the same time.

Even though you might think I’m kooky, I must admit that I love doing this. It’s like shopping for [place your favorite item here]. I find it very much resembles browsing in a great bookstore. Great majority of these books I have carefully selected and am sure that at least at some point I had a very good reason for getting every single one. This shopping-like instant gratification is particularly reinforced if I have completely forgotten about owning a certain volume. So when I hold it in my hands the desire to know what the covers hold immediately comes back.

And that’s what happens when I am at home; it’s nothing in comparison to how ape I go when in a good bookstore. Unless you’re a book nut, I encourage you not to come along. It doesn’t really take a Powell’s in Portland to tickle my book nerve for hours (size doesn’t matter, variety does); Akateeminen bookstore in Helsinki does the job just as well. And just as women usually park their male counterparts in a sports bar before they head out shopping, I park my missus in the shopping district and head out to a good bookstore. It would work perfectly, if only shopping wouldn’t exhaust her so quickly.

And what could be a better place than Finland for a book lover. I was stupefied when I read in Nick Hornby’s fantastic column that “forty percent of Britons and 43 percent of Americans never read any books at all, of any kind.” As if it wasn’t difficult enough to imagine that half of the population of these two countries never read a single book, the reading there seems to be in decline. So it’s not a slightest surprise I spilled hot tea all over myself when I read that Marcel Proust recently made a comeback by making the top ten list of the best selling foreign authors in Finland. And these sales figures were not just coinciding with Proust’s blockbuster hitting the big screens in Finland; Proust was among the best selling foreign authors for three consecutive months, even reaching the sixth place in the April 2007.

As I trust you knew already, the reason behind Proust’s success was not really Brad Pitt giving voice to the famous French writer, which could result in a massive hysteria and teenage girls rushing to bookstores grabbing Proust’s books off the shelves. Rather it was the Finnish translation of Proust’s seventh and final volume of À la recherche du temps perdu that caused the spike in sales. And it is probably safe to assume that whoever bought the seventh book has most likely already read the preceding six. Which only makes me wonder how many of the respondents in the research Hornby quotes knew that Proust is actually a writer and not a dessert or a salad dressing.

I’m heading to the Helsinki book fair this weekend. Let’s see if I can come home without any books this year. And you should stop wasting your time reading this blog; go tackle a book instead. (Tackling books was, by the way, exactly what bookmarks distributed in my US high-school were telling the students they should do. The bookmarks even portrayed a fully equipped football player (wearing helmet and all) holding a book like Hamlet usually holds a skull. I’d say you should read them, tackling’s no good on a book.)

Mladen

You’ve probably heard in the news at some point last summer that a couple from New Zealand wanted to name their newborn son 4Real, but the registrar of births, deaths and marriages rejected the suggestion. Couple’s explanation of the name was not so much surprising as it was dull: it was supposedly their first verbal reaction when they found out that she was pregnant. Not a safe way to choose a name, I believe. I don’t even want to think what my kid’s name would have been if my first verbal reaction would be turned into a name.

Anyway, I chuckled after reading the snippet in the papers and thought the newborn can be thankful for the effective administration in his country and should already begin thinking about changing his parents. But as it turned out the story had a twisted epilogue. About two months later the same New Zealand family made the news again, only that this time around there was no mention of administrative objections. The couple decided to name their son Superman even though they still insist on calling him 4Real. Is it just me, or are some people just dumb as a brick.

One of peculiarities which characterize my learning of a foreign language from scratch as an adult is that I still (and very often, too) read, hear and understand words too literally. Of course, most occurrences are not interesting, but those that are turn out to be great fun and my linguistic Eureka! moments. But judging by reactions of those in my immediate vicinity when I reveal such an instance and burst into guffaw, I’d say that hardly anyone but me finds it funny. So I’ve by trying to keep these chuckles to myself as much as I can. It didn’t take a rocket scientist inside my cranium to figure out that the way I look at this language that is still new to me, would hardly ever occur to a native speaker.

You too might think that what you’re about to read is complete crap, just as my Finnish friends probably do when they treat my bellows with blank stares. But please bear with me.

In Finnish appetite is foodwant (ruokahalua), an airplane a flyingmachine (lentokone), a refrigerator an icecabinet (jääkaappi), a peanut a groundnut (maapähkinä), an explorer a findhiker (löytöretkeilija), a postmortem either a tracegame or an aftergame (jälkipeli), depending on how you look at it, I guess, a dessert an afterfood (jälkiruoka), future generation afterknee (jälkipolvi), attendance audiencequantity (yleisömäärä). I could probably list pages of similar examples, but you get my point; Finnish is incredibly descriptive. And when we use the language we don’t think about it; if we did, we would fail at using it. Since I cannot really use it just yet, I have plenty of time to think about it when others are chatting away.

So what exactly does this diversion have to do with infantile parents miserably failing at naming their son (twice to be precise)? Many parents obviously don’t really think much about the meaning of the name they are about to give. On various occasions I have bumped into a few really memorable Finnish names I’d like to share with you.

If you’re shopping for your kid’s name, please do your kid and yourself a favor and don’t name him Urpo. As a noun, urpo in Finnish stands for and idiot. Not only that I can’t imagine myself running after my own child around the playground shouting “Idiot, idiot, come here!” but it’s even worse to think how parents make life easier for bullies who don’t even have to make up a name for their kid; it’s right there. And just as I thought that Idiot must be one of the worst names, I came across Vomit.

Actually, I’d have a hard time deciding which one is worse, but Finns obviously don’t just have a knack for names, but gender equality too. So they have both male and female version of names, which in everyday parlance stand for puke: Yrjö and Pirjo.

Since Yrjö also stands for George, I’ve been wondering at which point did puke (or George) get into the midst of it. I could come up with two plausible explanations. It is either that Yrjö was originally a name of a widely popular pagan god, a proto-Finnish Bakkhos (who else could bear a name with such meaning), whose name the Church took over during the Christianization to make the whole Christian ordeal more popular among pagan locals. However, they somehow foundered at understanding what it really means until it was already too late and all their publications were already in print. Although I’d rather bet my luck on the agile, crafty and sharp-witted local pagan population who deliberately named the Christian saint as an inside joke to gibe at newcomers who forced them onto church benches.

The latter could even be seen as a precedent for one of the many modern-time Finnish mockings of Swedish. Håkan is a very common Swedish name, which unsurprisingly ensured its ease of entry into the Finnish slang. However, during one of the assimilation stages the meaning was slightly shifted. On the streets of Finnish towns Håkan is an insult not very different from English faggot.

I’m sure that in every language there are cruel name combinations, which must be especially difficult when you’re a kid. This may sound a trifle odd, but when I was in high school in the US my calculus teacher’s name was Dick Large. He was probably the best math teacher I have ever had, but also one with the name combination that makes you think if his parents wanted to make fun out of their own kid. I can still remember debating on more than one occasion with a devout Christian friend who, on account that it is a “dirty word”, refused to say out loud Dick’s name. But Dick Large is his name, I insisted. It did not help. We ended up calling him Mr. Large.

So learning that Finns also have a male name which means dick was nowhere near as entertaining as idiot and vomit were. Just like Dick, substantive version of a proper name Jorma means a male genital organ. Coupling this knowledge with the Finnish custom of giving one or even two middle names to their offspring, I already felt compassion for kids whose parents for some reason lack enough common sense and name their kids Urpo Yrjö Jorma (idiot vomit dick), or Jorma Yrjö Urpo (dick vomit idiot). I don’t know which one is worse, but these kids must go through nervous breakdowns in school.

But wait, this is not all. It must be quite rare, but you probably wouldn’t consider yourself lucky if your name was Anu Saukko. An innocent looking name turns vicious the moment you pronounce it. When spoken out loud Anu Saukko inevitably melts into anusaukko, which coincidentally sounds exactly the same as anus aukko, or ass hole. Just imagine how long it takes to get used to introducing yourself as Asshole. Imagine shaking your blind date’s hand and saying out loud “Asshole, pleased to meet you.” Or at a job interview. I can’t even begin to imagine how difficult it must be to land a job as an Asshole. But then again, if you’re a Dick Vomit Idiot, what a relief must it be to find out that there’s an Asshole in the same class. You probably don’t ever want to leave that school.

In conclusion I’ll return to where I begun. Just like New Zealand Finland too has an administrative unit governing population naming. Not long ago Finland got slapped on the fingers for violating the European Convention on Human Rights for refusing to accept a couple’s wish to name their son Axl. I don’t know about wise men sitting on the naming commission, but given an option I’d much rather be called Axl then Urpo Jorma Yrjö, Raivo (Rage), or Anu Saukko, for that matter.

Mladen