salty licorice fix

^ This stuff is mildly addictive for some of us

Carousel Candyland in Kahala Mall is the only place in Hawaii with a reliable source of black licorice and most importantly, the salty salmiak kind. Above are the four strong ones they had earlier this week.

The kitty kat one is very mild and sweet with a hard, gummi texture but sort of a waxy, shell coating. The diamond and the coin are Dutch, very salty. Both are usually chewy, but unfortunately this double salt coin is hard and stale. The lil gumdrop is somewhere in the middle flavor-wise, sweet but with a definite tang.

Course there is a blog devoted to salt licorice now. LOL. I’m adding this important resource to the blogroll.

Also happy to report I’ve got a lead on a place in SF that supposedly has “17 different kinds of salt licorice”?!? This I must see.

fashion styles for people who seem to like being naked

So I never knew about Current TV til anasarca posted the Wax Poetics bit the other day. It’s really neat. I dig the interface, and I keep finding great little clips from all over the world.

Here’s a funny, honest look at fashion in Finnish Lapland. Love it! hahahaha

Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators

Anasarca at Asita Recordings points out that the closing music on a Current TV show featuring the inimitable Wax Poetics magazine(!) is a funk band from Finland called Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators. She messaged me:

“I just thought you might be interested in this band, if you haven’t heard of them already. They bring a brand of Finnish funk that is both joyous and soulful. It’s really easy for these new funk bands to sound cheesy but they definitely overcome that. Also look for Didier Sound Spectrum it was an older release from the 90’s that recently saw a reissue. More amazing funky Finnish music.”

No I hadn’t heard of them, thank you for the recommendation, girl!

Here goes the video for “If this ain’t love (don’t know what is).” Yea it’s a few years old, but this can bump all summer long.

Turns out Nicole Willis is originally from Brooklyn (with a solid musical resume), but has apparently studied in Lahti, Finland and blogged about her schoolwork, including philosophy essays and paintings she’s done?! I’m listing to the songs on their myspace and it is enticing me to order their album for real… oh look, here’s a link!

Finnish design pwns my heart

Helsinki seems to be enjoying some springtime shine in the travel pages of the U.S. press.

There was the USA Today feature on Helsinki nightlife and a piece on Finnish design in the LA Times last month. Admittedly two articles don’t exactly equal a cavalcade of coverage, but hey, the sun shines weakly that far north, and is greatly appreciated! I love that the LA Times writer tours the central part of the city for its architectural and design riches, then tucks in for a sauna. Sounds like a fabulous day in Helsinki.

My credit card trembles at the thought of being in the Marimekko store during their annual sale. My plan of shopping attack in Helsinki includes Marimekko, the Moomin Shop, Akateeminen Kirjakauppa–Euro style notebooks in the basement–and Stockmann. And I’d have to hit Zara and H&M, too, cuz we don’t have those in Hawaii. Apparently H&M is collaborating with Marimekko this summer!

The shopping recommendations in the LA Times article are overall more upscale. I’m extra intrigued by these ergonomic chopsticks they mention, wonder how much they cost. “I wanted to design a totally new type of chopsticks that would be easy for everyone to hold. Entwined together the sticks also form a useful fork,” explains designer Mika Ihanus on the website of studio Kuudes Kerros. How very practical for the chopstick-challenged, i.e. my mother, who maintains she can’t eat with “them sticks.” I bet these would work for her in the same way Nokia understands how her brain works. ;~p

Also on the topic of Finnish design and travel, a little mini-documentary by PilotGirl™ about the Helsinki design district (read: expensive stores with cool stuff) was recently featured on the retail-sponsored Finnish design blog.

Really, my credit card is glad I am not there! It’s worth noting that many young people take pride in thrift-store shopping and home-made clothes cuz the Euro is no joke and the resulting styles are more unique. Which is fine for clothes, but please believe that when I have $50 to spare on a shower curtain, this baby is mine!

Finnish Ducktales lost in translation

This is the Ducktales theme song, Finnish version. The joker who posted it on youtube offers a, erm, unique transcription of the lyrics in English; I’ve included them below. Silly yes, but made me laugh, which is always good on a Monday.

Morphine makes the holy known
Uncle Lina!
Eyein’ up/down that sappy nun
Uncle Lina!
I’m going to stroke it
Your arms are BROKEN!
Uncut! Ohh!
Hoot all you and an anus, aha!
Uncut! Ohh!
Your school’s stupid! Your school’s BaHa!
Uncut! Ohh!
If I’m not avail you, taco nazi!
Look around and count on Lassie!
Knit and dance and BAKE A CAKE!
Oh, Uncut! Ohh!
Hoot all you and an anus, aha!
Uncut! Ohh!
Your school’s stupid! Your school’s BaHa!
Uncut! Ohh!
And sanskrit ain’t got hoot to say ’bout
Uncut! Ohh!

Real lyrics follow, courtesy of another youtube poster.
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Helsinki nightlife, fisu and sisu

From ice bar to sauna bar plus communist kitsch in Cuban and Russian flavors, Helsinki drinking establishments are not lacking in novelty. This of course means they are slightly corny and very expensive! A recent travel-section article in USA Today confirms that this trend of theme bars is on the upswing.

After reading the article, I can’t say I’m sad that we didn’t actually make it to the Arctic Ice Bar when we tried a couple years ago, at my insistence. The hours were all messed up and then our party of eight balked at the cover charge. Didn’t even know at the time that the room only seats 12 and has an average visit length of 20 minutes! Sheeeeeeeeeit.

As my charming cousins had already shown us, there are much better places to have a drink in Helsinki. This sounds good tho:

“The most intriguing offering is the $7.25 Fisu shot, found throughout the city. It’s a blender drink made by mixing chilled vodka with pastilles of Fisherman’s Friend, a menthol-flavored cough drop. The result looks filthy brown-black, but the taste is all fresh, Arctic icy burn. It has supplanted in popularity the similar but far more vile [lies!] salmiakki shot, made from vodka and salty licorice candies.”

IDK about “Arctic, icy burn” but it sounds yummy to me, like mentholated Jägermeister, maybe? Or maybe not. This blogger Cracker Lilo from whom I, ahem, borrowed the “fisu and sisu” line (but who is wrong about fisu meaning fish; I think it’s probably based on the name Fisherman’s Friend?), tried it at home after reading the article, even going so far as to try other kinds of cough drops like Sucrets and Halls. LoL!

Another blogger at Necroblogicon was less inspired but equally LoL-able. “The body of a Finn seems to be immune to the nigh-magical hangover inducing quality of this concoction. As a weak American, I spent the next two days dancing on the razor’s edge of vomiting and contemplating suicide. I didn’t cough at all, though, although that may have been because of the acid reflux ripping my esophagus to tiny mentholated pieces.”

In related news, the stereotype of Finland as a nation of alcoholics remains undiminished.

Moomin and Lost: the revelation

I forgot I had this in my queue of things I might blog about. Very funny and astute. From Matt Madden’s blog, Moomin and Lost: the revelation.

However, Lost is now on season four (I only watch because it is filmed in Hawaii…), and there has been an incident where a helicopter(!) has left the island and completely disappeared! Crash landed? We don’t know. Presumably the characters are not dead.

I’m not ready to make more Moomin-Lost connections but if anyone wants to go ahead and do so, I’m all ears.

ketch-up: links, media consumption and political miscellania

From the comments in an on Stuff White People Like (a hilarious site whose authors need to stop stalking me!) I happened upon a gaggle of DC bloggers who made me feel fat and provincial.

Even tho their leader gives Finnish girls some props… in his way…

Finnish - I used to call my Finnish girl “finn-skinned”. She almost cried. The upside is that a Finn chick is a naif in the art of head games, so you’ll never have to deal with her flirting with other guys in a bar just to make you jealous. Finns are introverted. … A Finn girl’s introversion hides a surprising strength of character. She won’t tolerate her man walking all over her. Fiercely loyal and commitment-oriented, Finns make fantastic girlfriends. More than other women, Finns appreciate small gestures like spontaneously buying her a rocket pop from an ice cream truck. Finn girls smell fantastic and look ten years younger than their age.

…I’m not really down with this whole anonymous bad-mouthing of the opposite sex. (I’m not anonymous for one thing.) But that site led me to a whole bunch of other blogs that got me thinking about why assholes are interesting. (Ew.) A thought I quickly banished with pop cultural tripe and life-stuff.

Read about it.

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Happy 2008!*

* yea, I back-dated this blog post, so what? :~j

supreme master moomin vision and the muumibuumi

Not everyone will find the “funky little moomin” clip I posted a link the other day entertaining–or even explicable, so I would like to offer a little background to those deprived souls not familiar with the stories that inspired the Moomin funk-phenomenon worldwide.

Saving me hours of typing is this 16 minute program from a series called A Journey through Aesthetic Realms, an episode entitled: “Moomin Stories, the World Seen through the Eyes of a Child.” Presented by a large-nostriled, Finnish-speaking host and captioned in 12(!) languages, the program heavily features the Japanese-Finnish animation but also includes some of the original artwork by their Finnish creator/author/illustrator Tove Jansson.

The show is a production of “Supreme Master Television,” which turns out to be a spiritually motivated channel that supports peace, the environment and vegetarianism, not some Orwellian master race propaganda (whew!).

The two styles of illustration–print and animation–are quite different, which is understandable given the different intended media. I was hoping for some commentary on these differences, but they don’t go to that particular aesthetic realm. The Jansson drawings (top - click to enlarge) are very precise with lots of quirky details. In contrast, the ones for television (2nd and 3rd) are simpler and more cuddly-looking, from what I’ve seen at least, which admittedly isn’t much actually voiced and animated as a real cartoon.

I grew up on the books and I study and buy select products from Europe and Japan. Most recently I’ve started collecting the bound volumes of the Moomin comic strip that are coming out, they are lovely! The old-school illustrations are the BEST! But I’m not the only one with my collection of Moomin goods.

“The Moomin Boom (muumibuumi in Finnish) started in the 1990s, when Dennis Livson and Lars Jansson produced a 104-part animation series in Japan. . . .

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funky little moomin

complaining as an artform

Why are there so many ways to make a simple, hard-boiled egg? Ice baths and timers, are they really necessary? Then when I find the perfect recipe, why do I tell it to my sis wrong, when she’s just trying to eat?

And why did my guestbook, attract so much comment spam? Every day a dozen messages about sex fetishes and drugs, when all I wanted was a place for fam to show me love. (I had to kill it.)

I’m not sure if singing about these minor irritations would really make me feel better, but apparently some folks in Finland feel it does.

Another clever Finnish invention: complaints choirs. Anyone who wants to can join the choir and submit complaints. Then the gripes are set to music and performed for fellow citizens and videotaped to post on the internet. [Source]

Here is the Helsinki Complaints Choir in action.

Apparently the concept is catching on in some other parts of the world, but the complaints of the Finns are just hilarious to me, especially the ones about public saunas and why our ancestors didn’t chose a sunnier part of the world in which to settle.

Thanks to my wonderful sister for listening to all my complaints, and not being mad even tho I made her mess up half a dozen eggs. :~j

of lampreys and shellsuits

Learned something new about Finland on this travel-video site. I wonder if they eat the heads, or they have to cut the teeth out?

Lamprey have nothing to do with this hilarious article in the Helsingin Sanomat about the “authentic Finnish national costume,” the shellsuit (tracksuit in U.S.-English). However, in the lamprey video, you can see a Finn citizen happily eating flame-broiled lamprey while wearing what looks to be the notorious shellsuit.

There is a reason this get up doesnt make it onto Hel Looks.