Wednesday, April 25, 2007

TOP 4 Beard Styles

All right, dear readers! The time has come to address the topic that has been on everyones (and by everyone I mean the 4 people that actually read my doodles) lips for the better part of the early spring. THE 'STACHE!!

What started out as a personal endeavour into the mystical world of facial hair due to lack of warm water, soon escalated into a phenomenon of international proportions. I started getting e-mails, comments on this blog, facebook messages, text messages, and of course honest face-to-face dissing. I even got a threat or two, and one fan went as far as photoshopping a free sample picture more to his liking. And while I naturally enjoyed the attention, I had no clue that people cared so much. Anyway, here's a montage to bring this thing to a close.

4. "The Fisherman"
All out, uncontrolled pile of hair. Sported by Hemingway, Grizzly Adams, Pau Gasol, and most homeless guys.


3. "The Lover"
A closely groomed, greasy look. (notice the fake smile)
Sported by Italian football players, Craig David and Ali G


2. "The Original 'stache" (only a little thinner, but give me a couple of years..)
Not allowed to be sported at all, anywhere, unless the person has lost a bet.
Exceptions include Eddie Murphy, Tom Selleck, Freddie Mercury and the late Matti Tiilikainen.


1. "The Trucker"
A personal favorite, a Play-Off beard gone wrong, only for Badass Mofo's. (self not included)
Sported by Hightower, James Hetfield and Hulk Hogan.


And as a special treat for those who can't get enough of this hilarious and witty visual comedy I give you: The cop from Village people by NickRad: (notice the out-of-place 2Pac reference)

Vote for your favorite and win a personal Top 5o Worst Things About Spain-post!

Lastly I want to congratulate myself on the most useless blog post so far.

(And for any Senaior citizens out there, its called a "comment" because it's supposed to comment something, perhaps even the corresponding blog post..)

Next time: Tour d'Europe, Part I

Sunday, April 22, 2007

It's Friggin' Freezing Mr. Bigglesworth!

Well friends, life goes on, and so should we. SOO, today I shall tell you about the peculiar town of Segovia.

The drive was surprisingly uneventful up until we stopped for gas on the outskirts of Madrid. While the girls were buying only the bare essential, Make-peace and I discovered thus far one of the most curious contrapments known to man. A Pet-Washing-Machine!!

Apparently you're supposed to just kind of throw your cat, dog, ferret, or squirrel in, close the door and watch it get a heart attack/drown. At this point I felt that something was definitely awry, to say the least. My next sign was the fantastically dark horizon filled with ominous clouds and the fact that the uphills got so steep that our loyal C3 maxed out at 80km/h. I suddenly remembered what I wise Canuck once told me about European cars and their small engines. I started to think about some swear words that I hadn't already used 25 times on this magical trip, but before I could think of any my attention was needed elsewhere. For the car made a beep and a digit 3 C was blinking on the dashboard. I blinked a couple of times to find the 1
on its left side but it wouldn't show. Through a logic-defying thought process I managed to convince myself that the number was actually the current outdoor temperature. And soon enough it was snowing. Well..

We watched the thermometer manically as it went from 23 in Sagunto to 1(!) as we closed in on Segovia. Our feelings went from confusion to disbelief, followed by mild fear and finally amused hysteria.

Upon arrival to the mountainous town (which we later found out is meteorologically the COLDEST PLACE IN ALL OF SPAIN) I got out of the car to consult a city map, which was a horrible idea since it was now officially freezing and I was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Additionally, it didn't occur to me that we were in Spain, hence that map was going to be like trying to tell someones fortune from a pile of guano. And so, we had to drive around the city for 45 minutes looking for a hotel, which with the snow, the one way streets and the narrow uphill passages and alleys made it resemble a scene from the movie TAXI, only with an infinitely crappier car. But as the good book says, seek and thou shall find. And we did. An affordable hotel with big rooms, a nice concierge, and most importantly HEATING. YATZY! We decided to celebrate this by going to dinner to a nice local restaurant. The concierge was happy to recommend a traditional tavern close by, in which the king himself had dined more that once. And sure enough, as we entered the restaurant, on their wall of fame there was a picture of the king Juan Carlos together with the owner of the restaurant. And he (the king) was smiling, so our hopes were pretty high. Even the recommended house wine was outSTANDING, and the international menus had less than five typos per page, so we couldn't wait to get to the food. (Make-peace is just marvelling at my beard, which was at its prime then.)

We couldn't translate everything and Make-peace was like Ray Charles in the Louvre, so we went with the waiter's recommendations. You guessed it, BAD IDEA!!

I don't even want to know what it was. The brown things are some kind of peas or nuts, and the white things are fat. Not even meat with fat like usually in Spain, just plain fat. The other stuff, I have no clue. So we concentrated on the wine and the desserts, which weren't half bad actually. Later that night, to our great surprise, we discovered that Make-peace was fluent in Norwegian.

The next day we donned every piece of clothing we had brought with us and headed out. The town had originally been a medieval fortress, so it was bulging with old buildings and historical monuments, highlights being sub-zero temperatures,


a giant cathedral,

a roman aqueduct,

and an actual, real castle.

Initially the slightly nippy weather brought a bit of a smirk on the faces of our happy campers, but the castle itself turned out to be remarkable.

It even had an artillery museum, which we had to rush through in 10 minutes though, because the castle was closing, but that didn't mean we couldn't take ingenious photos on the way.

I also experienced a small personal triumph. While having breakfast on the last day we got a parking ticket, but I chased down the parking attendant and came up with a story so mind-boggling, that she ripped the ticket apart on the spot and APOLOGIZED!

So there you have it, Segovia, DONE. Next time, TOP 4 Beard Styles.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The Streets of Heaven Are Crowded With Angels Tonight

I was going to tell you about Segovia today, but I don't want to anymore.

Today I got only bad news. The first was about the 32 poor students of Virginia Tech whose lives were ended by a sad, sad man and his rifle. As I did not now any of these people, and it is not my country I will not speculate the tragedy further, but mark my words: no amount of metal detectors, or security guards with more guns, is going to reduce the amount of these annual killings, that have already become a twisted escalating game.

But the thing that really struck me was the news about a single man passing away. That man was a teacher of mine. Not one of the incompetent fools here, but a true teacher. I can honestly say that I probably learned more from him, than from any other human being in my life. And I would like to tell you a bit about him.

He was a wise man. Every time I tell someone about him I jokingly say, that during the years that he taught us, my friends and I could not come up with a single question, to which he wouldn't know the answer. And not just about religion, theology, or philosophy, that he taught us, but about anything. He would tell us exciting stories from the ancient Greece, Rome, Persia and the Far East. He could trace every word or term back to its Greek, Latin, Arab or African roots. He wouldn't just tell us the "what", he would tell us "why".

He was a just man. Not once did he have to raise his voice to me and my friends, even though we were the loudest boys in the class. Whenever we would start creating too much ruckus, all he had to do was to snap his fingers once, point at us, and give us a meaningful look, and we would quiet down. I remember one day; we were joking around loudly during a class and instead of throwing us out he told us: "Guys, you are so funny, that I am going to write those jokes down and laugh at them at home all weekend." And we knew that this man could take us down with his words in a blink of an eye. I don't think there is a single person among those, that he taught that would not respect him. He never forced his opinions on anyone. He always separated historical facts from his own views, and gave room to views of others.

He was a good man. Of course he, too, had his flaws like all of us do, but I never saw any. He was never boasting with his enormous amount of knowledge, never pretentious, never arrogant towads his students, he never made fun of anyone, at least not in a negative way. He was nice, funny, understanding and interesting.

So I ask you this. Picture this man for a while. Picture his round face, his wise eyes, his majectic moustache and a grinning smile. Picture his huge belly, his legendary suspenders and his brown shoes. And please think about him for a while.

He was many things, but to me he was a mentor, a model of character and a friend, I like to think, and I will miss him. I am not a very religious man, but I sincerely, truly hope that he has gone to a better place, and I hope you join me.

Lepää rauhassa, Matti Tiilikainen.