Tom of Finland

A long overdue coming-out

Finnish singer Jari Sillanpaa who was in the late 90's for several years the most wanted male artist touring around the country in the summertime, who a couple of years back represented Finland at the annual Eurovision Song contest ("It Takes Two to Tango"), and whose most enthusiastic fans are women ranging from 35 to eternity, has finally flung the doors of his closet wide open.

The past two weeks or so the media has been filled with rumors about a secret companion he told he had recently broken up with, a tragedy which caused him enormous heartaches. After all, this had been the very first time someone actually dumped him and not vice versa.

The peculiar thing about all the fuss was that the gender of the mysterious dumper never actually came up. This is quite easy in Finnish, as we do not separate between "him" or "her", its just the same word all along in our language.

Anyway, yesterday he finally decided to stop playing hide and seek and gave a straight (well...) answer to a straight question in a live TV talkshow: the person that dumped him was indeed a man. This hardly came as a surprise to anyone even remotely interested in Jari's personality, but some of his lady admirers might still have had some fragile hopes about him...

An interesting fact in his interview was that he had actually outed himself to Helsingin Sanomat, the leading daily newspaper in Finland, as early as 1995. But, back then the paper chose not to print the news.
Today it is all over the tabloids: "I was dumped by a MAN" Shoud you be fluent in Finnish, here is yesterday's interview from Tuomas & Juuso, TV4.

The times they are a-changin'. Thank God for that.

Scandinavian Hunks at the gay nightclub dtm

Finland's answer to Chippendales, the Scandinavian Hunks, performed last Friday at the (perhaps) biggest daily open gay nightclub in Scandinavia, Helsinki's very own dtm.






More pics of the guys at their website and at dtm's site (go to "Galleria").

Asafa Powell

I have always had a soft spot for track and field athletes, such as sprinters.
Asafa Powell is a 23 years old Jamaican who currently holds the world record in men's 100 meters (9.77 sec.).

Watch his in many ways impressive run in London a year before his World Record performance by clicking the screenshot below.

The Art of Tom of Finland

Tom of Finland (Touko Laaksonen) is no doubt one of the most famous Finnish artists worldwide.
Here are some of his early drawings inspired by lumberjacks and sailors.

And one more in the spirit of Brokeback Mountain...

To commemorate the 15th anniversary of Tom's death, the MSC Finland -organization and the Helsinki City Art Museum will organize a large exhibition of his original work this summer. The works will be brought in from private collections. More about this exhibition later.

Meanwhile, check out some material available on this artist and some other interesting stuff under Tone of Finland.

Mid-February morning

The morning was grey, snowing lightly, but the temperature pleasantly just below freezing point to keep the snow nice and dry. Not bad at all for a Monday 13th!

A beautiful Finn - Markus Pöyhönen

Last summer Helsinki hosted the 10th IAAF World Championships in Athletics. Sprinter Markus Pöyhönen was one of the guys in the Finnish 4x100 metres relay team. He is now 27 years old. First a picture of him a couple of years back, surrounded by young admirers. The second photo is more recent.



Markus with teammate Jarkko Ruostekivi, after the race in which the team failed to qualify for the final.

They are still posing happily for the photographers, here with Tommi Hartonen. The fourth guy in the team was Nghi Tran.

Watch the guys being interviewed (in Finnish!!) for the Finnish Yle TV-channel just after these pictures were taken.
Link to video: http://www.yle.fi/urheilu/mediasali/suurtapahtumat/id14665.html

Conan O'Brien in Finland

The American talk show host Conan O’Brien was greeted by hundreds of his Finnish fans yesterday on arrival at the Helsinki Vantaa Airport. Conan feels he has a very special relationship with our country as he thinks that he looks exactly like our president Tarja Halonen.



The presidential election was held this January and Conan campaigned in his show enthusiastically for Tarja’s re-election for her second and final 6-year term. Conan supported Tarja because he likes to look like a president and not one of the other candidates looked anything like him.

Conan is scheduled to meet the president for 20 minutes on Valentine’s day - although he wishes to extend the meeting to last at least six hours. Conan stated at the airport that, as customary in America for someone substantially promoting a president to be elected, he expects to be nominated a cabinet misister, preferrably the Supreme Sauna Inspector. Especially he would like to inspect ladies’ saunas, but would not mind checking out the saunas of handsome young men either.

See the Finnish channel airing Conan's show in Finland: http://www.subtv.fi/subnetti/

Welcome to my new blog!

Hi! Just created my new blog. I intend to write every now and then, time permitting, some comments and notes about the world, especially as seen from my point of view being located in Helsinki, the capital of Finland.

There will most certainly be pictures too, many of them my own but also some borrowed ones. The topics will cover a variety of things which reflect my interests and personality. A lot of fun stuff, but also something more serious.

To start with, a view from my neighbourhood, pic taken a little earlier this winter.

See you soon!