Oh Lordi

Some of you asked me about Eurovision and the Finnish reaction to winning the contest. So here's the deal in brief. (You could also check out this nice explaination from Slate Magazine).

The Eurovision Song Contest has been around for about 50 years. Basically, each country in Europe (this is broadly interpreted - and happens to include Russia and Israel) sends a song and a performer/group and the winner is determined by phone-voting. The contest is broadcast on tv and is widely viewed despite the fact that the performaces are often terrible and most established musical groups shun participation like a trip to the proctologist. The music is often called "schlager" and is either bubble-gum pop or cheesy ballad (one song this year included the lyric "Why do angels cry? Why do babies have to die?"). However, some widely admired music has come out of Eurovision, including some of ABBA's greatest hits. You get the idea.


So some of you have asAnyway, Finland usually tanks badly in the contest, and this year to shake things up a heavy metal bad, Lordi, was entered. This met great consternation in Finland, as the band is basically a Kiss-meets-Freddy Cruger latex-costume band with pseudosatanic rhetoric. They insist that the whole thing is in good fun and that their music is just entertainment. That's not to say the music, or even the concept of the band, is any good. By the way, the title "Arockolypse" reminds me of the classic Mel Gibson flick Mad Max 2: Road Warrior, where the bad guy is introduced as the "ayatolla of rock and rolla". But I digress - some people were pissed.

The contest was two night ago, and before hand the general concensus was accurately summed up by the Finnish TV host when he said, "We'll find life on Mars before Finland wins Eurovision." Sure enough, Finland won, and in fact set a new record for the highest score. Reaction of Finns ranged from "It was just a fluke. Don't worry, we won't win next year" to "This is as important to Finland as peace and happiness in Iraq is to America." My personal favorie reaction was "Lordi is the next Beatles, only uglier and with less talent." Lordi is getting a hero's welcome in Helsinki and will probably not be forgotten by Finns for many years. Their mark on the rest of the world remains to be seen.

By the way, I took more pictures. You can see them on Flickr. Here is a sneak preview:

Repetition: Helsinki, Sickness, Math, Photos

With my time here in Finland quickly coming to an end, I travelled once more this week to Helsinki for the Joint Centers of Excellence Seminar. There were lots of famous mathematicians there, but the talks were mostly by young people, including me! I talked about the work that Pekka and I have been doing, which has recently decided to somewhat miraculously solve itself (Hölder's inequality is a panacea if applied cleverly enough). However, the talks were only 30 minutes long, so I had to rush a bit and came off sounding a little hoity-toity (ie I just had to pretend that the audience knew what capacity and modulus were). Anyway, it's over, and I have only one more talk left to give before Poland, this time to in the Grad Student Seminar at Helsinki. My title is "What's a quasi-schmasi?" (apologies to John Lott).

Unfortunately, I've also gotten sick again. Suck! Nyt, mulla on vähän kipea kurkku ~ Now, I have a bit of a sore throat (kurkku = cucumber = throat = I love finnish).

The past few weeks have seen a variety of events, including but not limited to: the melting of the ice on Jyväsjärvi, Vapu (labor day), and lots of finnish speaking.

Vapu was really neat. Basically, it's on the weekend of May 1st, and though it is traditionally about labor, it is now more about students and student life. It's starts on Friday with huge parties attended by university students wearing brightly colored coveralls. The different colors represent different majors, and the students studying the same thing party together, in general. As far as I can tell, the main practical purpose of the coveralls is to keep your clothes clean during a night of falling down and puking. Anyway, on sunday evening there is a ceremony in which a "student cap" is placed on a statue of a famous Finn (in Jyväskylä, it was Minna Canth). The student caps are worn on Vapu by everyone who has graduated from highschool - and people really do wear them. It's a really neat tradition - can you imagine if everyone in the US wore their mortar caps once a year?! On monday, everyone goes to Harju for a picnic, and picnic we did, repeatedly.

So, here are my plans for the next few weeks.

• Do math like crazy so that I can finish the project with Pekka
  
• Buy souvenirs
  
• Go to Turku and Stockholm
  
• Visit Karoline's mökki (summer cottage)
  
• Write my dissertation
  
• Get to Poznan by June 18th
  

Don't forget to check Flickr for more photos! Bonus photo: