Hockey and Finns.

Don't laugh, we're going to see a hockey game this evening. Not the hockey we were forced to play at school, ice hockey, and there's the diff.
I know what you're thinking, won't my sports filter get in the way? Won't I trip over every time something sports related comes along - like GM place, the hockey stadium for example - well no. It seems my sports filter lets bits of hockey through. Not the boring stuff like the scores, just the fascinating stuff like the skating around on the ice. Although I find ice dance tedious so not quite sure how that works.

I have tried to skate. Just the once. I found it completely impossible. Mostly it involved me clinging to the side of the rink and not really going anywhere. Yet these huge hulking guys, who must have a similar centre of gravity to me just power across the ice and manage to play a game at the same time. How is it possible? Well, frankly it isn't, it's just magic.

Whilst I am watching hockey, my sister has gone to Paris to watch a rugby game. She likes rugby, this is another of life's mysteries to me, how did we grow up together in the same household where no-one ever watched sport and yet she now even watches rugger? Again, inexplicable. Well, I do exaggerate ever so slightly. For two weeks every summer my mother would watch Wimbledon. In the days before cable this pretty much meant that the television was out of commission for the whole time.

Hockey at school was a trial. It was muddy. Now I'm not averse to getting muddy, but at school it meant you had to go in the communal shower. No-one wants that. Hockey also meant permanently injured ankles. Those sticks were a lot more substantial than the ones they use on the ice. Why, bullying off alone could almost render you unable to walk.
Now suddenly, hockey has become a men's game. When I was at school it was strictly for the girls, the expression 'jolly hockey sticks' was used to describe that over-enthusiastic sturdy kind of girl who spoke with a slightly posh accent.

Still on the subject of ice, but with virtually no other connection, we managed to catch Conan O'Brien's trip to Finland on TV last night.
In the UK I used to watch Conan at the weekends on CNBC on cable. You'd get a selection of the week's shows or maybe some reruns over both nights of the weekend, starting at 20.00. I've told my son Ben to watch and see if Conan's trip to Finland is on.
For those who haven't seen the lead up to this, Conan it turns out, is a national hero in Finland and not only that, the President, a woman called Tarja Halonen, looks very much like him. Conan decided to back Tarja in the recent presidential elections based on this fact, and lo! She was re-elected with an increased majority. So Conan felt driven to make a visit to Finland. I know, I know, when he visited Canada it almost caused an international incident, but he seems to have learned from that and although there are some moments when you worry that he may be a little too amused by their names and such like, in general it's a very funny show.
There was one little man, a Lapp, dressed in traditional costume. He spoke the language of reindeer. He looked exactly like an elf. Well, he looked like all the ones I've seen at any rate. He took his reindeer wrangling very seriously, but was laughing when Conan was mangling the chant he used into a version of 'In the year 2000'.
One woman greeted Conan dressed as La Bamba. Another had to put up with Conan visiting unannounced and trying to solve her relationship problems.

When he finally gets to meet Tanja Halonen, she says to him,
'Well at least people in the United States know where Finland is now Conan.'
Yeah, don't count on that Tanja, but it certainly gave us a look at the Finns and they seemed quite startled that the world was looking.