kotaraindustries.com, the helsinki branch

Editor's note: the events described here actually happened June 5, 2010.

I am a card-carrying Guns N' Roses fan.  Literally:



But sadly for me, I was just a teenager in G'n'R's heyday, so I was never able to see them live before the band (and Duff's pancreas) exploded.  Although I did get to see Duff and Slash in Velvet Revolver before that exploded, but it just wasn't the same without W. Axl Rose.

Back in May, my client randomly offered to buy me and the rest of my team tickets to the Helsinki Live Festival, where Axl and the nouveau Guns N' Roses would be headlining.  While I felt it also wouldn't be the same without Slash and Duff...at least seeing pieces of the original lineup strewn across different years and bands was better than nothing. 

So, we went!  I had no idea what to expect.  Would Axl play any of the Appetite for Destruction / Use Your Illusion songs, or would he be a jerk and insist on only playing Chinese Democracy?  Would he be super fat and have those weird cornrows again?  Would he punch anyone out?  Would he swim with dolphins while wearing a flannel shirt and high tops?  Would he keep us waiting for 3 hours until he felt "ready" to go onstage? 

Yes, he played the old stuff AND Chinese Democracy.

No, he wasn't super fat.  He certainly wasn't super wirey with a washboard stomach, but he didn't look that bloaty, either.  He did wear a holographic blazer with bootcut/flare jeans.  He did have a handlebar moustache.  He did wear the red bandana on his head.  He did have a few wardrobe changes, but never into white cycling shorts or kilts.  No, no cornrows. 

No, he didn't try to assault anyone.  He was incredibly well behaved and charming.

No, there was no dolphin tank on stage.  I honestly don't even remember if they played Estranged at all.  All I remember is the weird and random 10 minute Pink Panther Theme Song guitar solo.  (?)

No, he did not keep us waiting at all.  It was almost a disappointment that he was actually on time!  I don't think any of us were expecting that.  In fact, there were a bunch of sluts going around selling specially branded condoms for the event, and the condom manufacturers were banking on his tardiness:



This note on the condom package translates roughly to "Just in case Axl is late coming to the stage and you need something to do."

Editor's note: the events described here actually happened May 27-29, 2010.

Full disclosure: I am not a fan of France.  Or the French people.  Or the French language.  I am not one of those people that thinks "trip to Europe" = "trip to Paris".  I would have been totally happy to never, ever visit France.  But there are two things that I have always said that I wanted to do if I was ever in the unfortunate situation of being in/near Paris:

1. Visit the catacombs, which are tunnels underneath the city lined with the skulls and bones of dead Frenchmen.
   
   
2. Attend Roland Garros, aka the French Open grand slam clay court tennis tournament.  (This is the biggie.  One of my life goals is to attend all of the grand slam tennis tournaments in person, so I knew that I would have to suck it up and go to Paris to be able to achieve that goal.)
   

So after my day in Antwerp, I hopped on a train and headed to gay Paris.  It was a crappy, rainy day.  My jeans and shoes were completely soaked through after walking around for the first hour.  I had to eat my stupid baguette while walking through the rain.  I got lost repeatedly.  The trains stunk of French B.O.  But!  I finally found the right neighborhood for the catacombs!


French for "catacombs that-away!"

I got so excited and was so ready to go underground and see the creepy tunnels and get out of the rain.  And then...


As if I needed another reason to hate France.

Then this dead Frenchman / catacomb mascot mocked me...

0
"France hates you, too, Halee."

So the catacomb adventure was a full-on French failure.  I made the best of the rest of my day in stupid Paris by visiting the stupid Louvre and looking at the stupid Eiffel Tower from a stupid boat.  Also, I ate a stupid crepe.  Luckily for me, Sophie was meeting up with me in Paris that night and once she arrived, things got a million times better.  I got her singing the "Les poissons, les poissons, hee hee hee, hawr hawr hawr" song from The Little Mermaid.  (But we usually substituted "poissons" with "croissants", or whatever we were eating/doing at that moment.)  We met up with her friend, and turned in early so we'd be ready for all the hot tennis action the next day!

I had bought my Roland Garros tickets many months before, right when they went on sale, but even then I was  too slow to get seats at the big daddy court (Court Phillippe Chartrier).  I had to settle for tickets to the #2 show court (Court Suzanne Lenglen).  But once we arrived at the Roland Garros grounds and got our hands on a schedule, our crappy #2 court tickets suddenly got amazing.  We weren't able to see Rafael Nadal, because obviously they're going to put that boy on the biggest court.  But since Rafa was hogging the big court, that meant this guy was delivered to my court...



In case you don't follow tennis enough to recognize faces or have never seen a Gillette commercial, that is Roger F'ing Federer.  Probably the greatest tennis player of all time.  And I saw him.  In the flesh.  With my own two little eyes.  For about 40 minutes or however long it took him to dismantle his opponent.  It was the best, I still can't believe we got so lucky.  When you watch him on TV, he always looks really smooth and graceful...but it was 20x more apparent in person.  His opponent moved really well, but looked like a drunk Clydesdale in comparison. 

Afterwards we watched Andy Murray vs. Marcos Baghdatis, and then headed to some of the outer courts to watch a few women's matches.  One girl in particular caught our attention due to her super manly serving grunts.  The following week, that same Francesca "Grunthouse" Schiavone went on to win the whole tournament, oops!

So after a rocky first day in Paris, the second day at the tennis was awesome.  The third day we spent flying through the city on bicycles.  Macaroons were consumed.  Eurovision finals were watched.  All in all, a really good trip considering I never wanted to be there!

As far as returning someday to see the catacombs that I should have rightfully seen, don't count on it.  If I want to see dead Frenchmen, I can just watch a Gerard Depardieu movie.  (He's dead, right?)

Editor's note: the events described here actually happened May 26 and 27, 2010.  Oops.

When I was planning my trip to Paris, my newfound Belgian friend Sophie piped up, and started helping me plan my trip.  This inevitably lead to me stopping to visit her in Antwerp before going on to Paris.  Here are the few things that I knew about Belgium prior to visiting:

1. They have good beer there!
2. They have good chocolate there!
3. They have a secret neighborhood there with all the diamond merchants!
4. The guy who created the Smurfs is from there!
5. I do not understand the difference between Dutch and Flemish!

So of course I wanted to try to experience those stereotypically Belgian things, along with whatever else Sophie recommended.



BELGIAN THING #1: THE GOOD BEER



I like my beer.  But I would not really consider myself a beer snob.  I'll drink anything.  (Including Natural Light.)  As we went on our walk around Antwerp, we periodically stopped in little cafes and pubs to have a sampling.  And I discovered there is a reason Belgian beer has such a good reputation: because, well, it's good.  The Leffe was great, the De Koninck was great...but it was the La Chouffe that won my heart.  "A golden blonde ale whose freshness and fruity taste really make it stand out."  Mmmmmm....and the cute little dwarf/troll/elf mascot doesn't hurt, either.  That beer and that dwarf could possibly turn me into a beer snob.



BELGIAN THING #2: THE GOOD CHOCOLATE



I also like my chocolate.  But I'm used to truck stop chocolate.  Sophie took me to a place that could only be described as a fancy chocolate...salon?  We stopped in to the very stylish, shiny black store and asked to look at their selection.  They invited us to the secret upstairs chocolate chamber, where all the chocolates were kept on display in velvet-lined boxes, and the chocolate steward handled everything wearing little white gloves.  It was so very, very fancy.  This chocolate was so pure.  Being raised on Hershey's milk chocolate, I'm used to the main ingredient of my chocolate being sugar.  But Belgian chocolate is less sugary and more chocolately.  It just tastes real.



BELGIAN THING #3: THE DIAMONDS



My whole perception of the Diamond District is based on the movie "Snatch" and this article from Wired magazine about The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist.  The area I saw was much less like that, and much more like one of those "Cash 4 Gold" commercials.  But I did keep seeing examples where they were clever enough to combine the diamonds and the chocolate into chocolate diamonds.



BELGIAN THING #4: THE SMURFS



You remember Peyo, right?  He was Belgian!  But when he made the Smurfs, they were really called Les Schtroumpfs.  Which morphed (smurfed?) into "Smurfs" in English, "Puffi" in Italian, "Strumparnir" in Icelandic, "Sumaafu" in Japanese, "Pitufos"in Spanish, etc.  And when we were shopping around in some antique shops, I found ol' Grumpy Schtroumpf standing around, haating de Golf.



BELGIAN THING #5: DUTCH VS. FLEMISH

I still have no idea what's going on.  I'm so confused.  But Dutch is very English-ish, so it was a nice change of pace to be able to walk around and sort-of know what the signs said.  And if you just said things in English fast and slurred, it might even sound like Dutch.  For example, "thank you" in Dutch is "dank u."


So in conclusion, everything that Belgium is known for it deserves to be known for.  Now they just need to figure out how to make a chocolate-flavored, Smurf-branded beer and they'll be all set!

P.S. Huge dank u to Sophie for being such an awesome hostess and cook and tour guide!  Please come visit me in Texas someday, so you can try the Natural Light beer and truck stop chocolate so you'll know what you're not missing!

My last post was June 5.  Ouch.  And many, many wonderful things have happened since then, including but not limited to:

• A trip to Antwerp
• A trip to Paris (featuring French Open tennis!)
• The Eurovision Song Contest Finals
  
• Seeing Guns N' Roses for the first time ever
• Another trip to Estonia
• A trip to London with my sisters (featuring Wimbledon tennis!)
  
• Attending an opera festival inside an old castle
• Attending Tuska Open Air Metal Festival
• Summer Cottage Weekends
• Floating down the River Vantaa in a rubber boat

I think this can be chalked up to one of those catch 22's of life: when you're not busy and have time to write, it's because, well...you're not busy and there isn't much to write about.  But when you're busy and therefore creating fodder for lots of stories, you're too busy to sit down and write it all out!

So over the next week I am going to try to fire up my memory bank and backdate a bunch of posts about all these things.  Thank you for your patience as I've been off running around, having one of the best summers of my life.

It is now time for me to tell you about Hevisaurus.  My friendly neighborhood KISS Army member taught me about them, and they are basically a dinosaur heavy metal band for children.  This is one of those things that it's best not to explain, but just to witness:



These guys are actual real musicians from real bands (um, like DIO!?) and actually play wearing those costumes.  And even though it's obviously a total gimmick and geared towards the kiddies, their songs are actually good.  There is a particularly funny forum about them on cracked.com, but I've pulled out the choice comments here:

• "A triceratops. With a keytar."
• "This answers basically every question I ever had about Finland."
• "No matter what happens in life, a song where a dinosaur who plays heavy metal asks the audience 'Is it your bed-time already?' is awesome."
• "That's absurd. Dinosaurs and mammoths didn't live anywhere near the same time.  At the end of the Cretaceous, the only mammals were little nocturnal tree-dwelling varmints the size of rats.  I'm beginning to question the scientific accuracy of this entire enterprise."

They usually play at actual rock clubs (where they of course make it all ages, and it is hilarious to imagine Tavastia full of 3 year olds), but right now they're doing daily shows at Linnanmäki which is the local amusement park.  Last night, I had the honor of seeing these creatures play live.  It was the weirdest thing ever.  First of all, it wasn't really a concert, it was a musical/play thing.  On one hand it was a little bit disappointing because they used a soundtrack and only mimed playing their instruments.  On the other hand, it was totally great because I had to try to follow this plotline:

So there was a little boy who didn't want to go to sleep because he's nervous about starting school the next year and he can't say his "R's" properly, and so his mom reads him a book about dinosaurs and how they all died off 65 million years ago except five dinosaur eggs remained.  Then he falls asleep and/or doesn't fall asleep and gets his dagger and alarm clock and stuffed woolly mammoth toy and goes into the forest where these 5 eggs are, and these prehistoric girls in glasses and shiny skirts start dancing around and then suddenly the eggs hatch and dinosaurs burst out of the eggs already wearing leather jackets and holding instruments, speaking perfect Finnish and immediately start rocking out. 

Then the little boy makes friends with the dinosaurs and gives them all high fives and they start talking about pizza and popcorn...then out of nowhere these gigantic muffins covered in popcorn come out on stage dancing.  THEN after a snack and another song, they move the little boy's bed to the middle of the stage and pull the covers back and find another giant egg, but this one is hot pink/purple and suddenly a witch appears who really, really wants that egg so she can make an omelet.  Then there is a big battle for the egg that equals more singing and dancing and then some spinning...and all this activity causes the egg to hatch, and out pops a baby DRAGON.  The baby dragon makes friends with all the dinosaurs and the little boy, then suddenly they're all floating around in the sky and then the dragon sings a duet with Herra Hevisaurus. 

Then the little boy realizes he really should be going home before his mom gets mad, so he says goodbye to all the dinosaurs and the baby dragon and treks home...but forgets his woolly mammoth toy.  This is a perfect segue for Hevisaurus to sing their "Goodnight, Last Mammoth" song, and then the baby dragon takes the woolly mammoth toy and finds the boy's house and sneaks into his bedroom and returns it while he sleeps, but can't get out because the magic closet door is stuck.  Then some other stuff happens and then the little boy finally learns to say his "R's" and everyone comes out to sing a big finale song together, including the witch, and the backup dancers.  (But not including the two roadies who have been moving the drum and keyboard risers around.)  The end.

1. Keep in mind that this whole thing was in Finnish and I only know a tiny tiny bit of Finnish, so my entire summary here is based on what I saw and the few explanations that Sinttu was able to whisper to me.
   
   
2. I had to ask Sinttu several questions throughout, and the question I asked most frequently was, "Am I on drugs right now???"
   
   
3. There was one part where the dinosaurs went backstage for a nap, and something happened with the witch, and all the little kids started screaming "HERATYS!!!!!!!" (This means "WAKE UP!")  I mean, these kids were going apeshit about it, particularly the little girl right behind my right ear.
   
   
4. Also this same little girl knew every word to every song, and sang them.  Loudly.  And off-key  It would have been annoying...if it weren't so dang cute.

And so dang weird.  Then the evening got even weirder when we went to a heavy metal karaoke bar, but that's a story for another time.  (Spoiler: it was a DINOSAUR heavy metal karaoke bar!) 

I have just returned from the bar where I met up with a group of friends to watch the first round of semifinals of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest.  I had originally planned to live blog this from home.  So instead, I took notes on my phone, and now I will simply paste said notes from my phone, uncensored, into here.

Before the paste job, I should explain that there were 17 entries, but only 10 advance to the finals.  Here were the 17 entries and my impressions of them.  When I have more time later, I will go back and add screencaps of each performer to give the full effect:

1 moldova "run away" - violinix espinning  neon violin bow pelvic thrusting sax playing ... All in vests

2 russia "lost & forgotten" - sensitive nickleBack yellow drums clutching neck, faux snow, singing to illustration

3 estonia "siren" - velvet jacket....no FOUR velvet jackets crooner spinning camera "turning their hips in motion almost in sync"

4 slovakia "horehronie" - 1st native language entry; nymphs dressed as trees doing karate, tulle monster

5 finland "työlki ellää" - accordian smoke "one half of abba on holiday" dirty dancing lift

6 latvia "what for?" - breathy toga party bronzer legs wind machine

7 serbia "ovo je balkan" - kajagoogoo hair veneer androgony handstand glitter tshirt

8 bosnia herzegovina "thunder and lightning" - smoke machine matchbox 20 zombies double wallet chain

9 poland "legenda" - native costumes wailing holding apple ... Nay, ALL holding and waving apples AND spinning  "george michael with gypsies" ... HEADLOCK!?

...interlude....male host is knitting....

10 belgium "me and my guitar" - john mayer unibrow

11 malta "my dream" - liza minelli with armpit hair, with animatronic wings!!!  It's a secret person hiding behind her the whole song to operate the wings!?

12 albania "it's all about you" - cross of bonnie tyler and steven tyler with pointy shoulderpads, howie mandell violin solo

13 greece "opa!" - underlit tattoo boys in white "singer is flexible as a refrigerator" OPA!

14 portugal "has dias assim" - prom solo

15 macedonia "jas ja imam silata" - same singer from greece dressed in black with lunging leather swimsuit models

16 belarus "butterflies" - zac efron of belarus with sparkle backup; synchronized hand moves ...  More sprouting wings!!!

17 iceland "je ne se quois" - big red dress, two little red dress;

The 10 magical winners were:

Bosnia & Herzegovina
Moldova
Russia
Greece
Portugal
Belarus
Serbia
Belgium
Albania
Iceland

And all I have to say is that Malta must be SO PISSED that Belarus made it into the finals and they didn't, when they did the whole animatronic wing thing first.

P.S.  I voted for Greece.

If you're American, when you think of Estonia you think, "Oh, that is where Dave and Stoney told everyone that the caveman Linkovich Chomofsky is from in Encino Man."

If you're Finnish, when you think of Estonia you think, "The ferry costs 20€ roundtrip, and if I bring back 10 cases of beer then the trip pays for itself 5 times over in beer savings.  Also, I might as well get drunk on the ferry over, but that should NOT count against my beer cost-savings formula."

If you're Halee, when you think of Estonia, you think of the magical / fun / retarded birthday weekend you spent in Tallinn in 2010 with your favoritest girlfriends Tanja and Sinttu....


The Ferry

We boarded the ferry around 8am on Saturday.  Once onboard, I quickly realized that we were already hours behind schedule on beer consumption compared to all the other passengers.  Pretty much everyone at breakfast was enjoying an alcoholic beverage.  And I'm not talking light and breakfasty mimosas and bloody marys, I'm talking BEER.

After our breakfast, we decided to head up to the entertainment deck where the air was already soaked with the smell of booze, the live band was already rocking out, the karaoke was under way, rockabilly dudes were everywhere, and the power kept going out.  It was loud and obnoxious and ridiculous and awesome.  At one point the band and/or DJ was playing KISS's "I Was Made For Loving You (Baby)", and all the grannies were out on the dance floor rocking out.  The troubadour in the other room quickly switched from blues riffs to Metallica.  Shit got real, fast.  Reminder, IT WAS 9AM.  IN THE MORNING.  We only made it to about 9:30 before we started drinking, too.

        


Old Town

The ferry pulled into the dock around noontime, and all the tipsy folks (including us) started stumbling their way to old town in Tallinn.  If you don't know much about Tallinn, know this:  it is old.  Medieval-old.  It still has the old wall with all the towers surrounding the central part of the city.  The streets are covered in huge cobblestones (which doesn't seem to deter the women from walking around in 5 inch stilettos).  There are tons of amazing old-ass buildings to look at, including the ol' Kiek in de Kök.  It's all very quaint and scenic.

     

      


Miscellaneous Beers Drunken About Town

We spent the day walking around seeing the sights, and stopping every 30 minutes or so at a nice open air pub for a drink.  We drank at:

• Estonian pubs where we were not hit on at all
  
• Greek pubs where we were not hit on at all
  
• Texas pubs (!?) where we were hit on by Norwegians - We found a place called Cantina Texas and I waltzed in and declared my citizenship, and rated the authenticity of everything hanging on the walls.  Shockingly, they had Lone Star on tap. 
• Depeche Mode pubs (!?) where we were hit on by Russians - Apparently we missed the David Gahan birthday celebration by just a few days.

     


Miscellaneous Characters Seen About Town

Random people we saw around town included, but were not limited to:

1. Many, many maids and wenches and servants in tights
   
2. Russian transvestites
3. Men dressed in cheerleading uniforms
4. Pirates making off with a treasure chest
5. An executioner in a red hood offering to execute us
6. Evil dancing bunnies running through the street
7. The Blues Brothers lost and asking for directions!?

            



Dinner at Olde Hansa

The best part of the whole trip was our fancy medieval dinner at a place called Olde Hansa.  It's like going to Medieval Times, only you get to sit at an actual table, you get to use silverware, there is no jousting, and you have your choice of honey or cinnamon beer.  All the waiters and waitresses dress as wenches and serfs, and accept "with everlasting gratitude any squirrel skins or ducats" as tips.  Everything is lit by candle light, all the tableware is clay, and each dish is served with spelt.  Tanja and Sinttu both had leg of pork, while I finally...excitedly...after wanted to try it for months...ate bear!  It was prepared in the favorite style of Waldmar II, meaning it had been generously marinated in wine and was covered with berries.  Amazingly delicious.

      


After dinner we bar hopped a bit, and then dragged our tired feet back to our hotel and quickly passed out.  (17 hours of drinking is hard work.)  At 6:30am the next morning we were woken up by a mystery blast of Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69".  We still don't know where it came from.  Was it from a passing car?  Another hotel room?  A Bryan Adams bar (a rival to the Depeche Mode bar) which opens at 6:30am and is only open until 6:35am until it finishes playing that one song?  We'll never know...unless we can get access to those secret KGB surveillance rooms at the Sokos hotel nearby.

All in all, it was an amazing weekend and a birthday I will never forget.  Thanks, Tanjela and Sinttu Ellen!!  The only thing that would have made it 100% perfect would have been if this pony sweater had been available in my size:

Yesterday I was quietly sitting in a little Russian cafe in Kallio with my friends, eating pelminis.  It was obvious the place was pretty authentic, but I didn't know just how authentic it was until HE walked in.

I wish I had been able to take a photo of HIM to better explain what I need to describe here, but the place was authentic enough and I've seen "Eastern Promises" enough times that I didn't dare.  What if some guys from the Bratva were in the back, sharpening knives or tattoo needles?  No.  I had to take a series of mental snapshots of every article of HIS dress, and I will try to recreate them here in the order I noticed them.

The Jeans



You know the real douchey designer jeans with way too much detail on the back pockets?  Kind of like these, if they were bleached and acid-washed until they were a pale, pale blue / almost white?  And possibly had some glitter on them?  HE was wearing those.



The Shoes



Let me put it this way: I couldn't find an image of snakeskin loafers that were pointy enough, this was the closest I could find.  And later when HE sat down it surprised me that HE was wearing common white tube socks. 



The Jacket



HIS jacket was actually somewhat understated, comparatively.  Just a simple little white jackety vest.  Although it was sleeveless.  And unlike in the picture above, HE did not have a sleeved shirt on under it.



The Tattoos



Ahh, there was a very good reason for the sleevelessness.  HE had several wolf tattoos to display.  There was one on each upper arm, both black one-color jobs that looked all melty and faded.  The left arm had a wolf howling at the moon, looking away towards the moon.  The right arm had a wolf staring directly at you with the moon behind it...but upon closer examination the moon was actually just the huge eye of another wolf.



And just when I thought it couldn't possibly get any better, he took off the jackety vest to reveal...

The Undershirt



Yes.  A white sheer tshirt to display even MORE tattoos.  I wish I could describe the other tattoos to you, but it was at this point that I had to turn away and quit looking at him.  Up to that point I was able to just casually and quietly enjoy his outfit...but when I saw the mesh shirt I almost choked on my pelmini.

Part 2 of this tale involves a Russian girl wearing sheer black control top pantyhose as pants, but that's a story for another time...

A few weeks ago, I was at dinner and was having trouble deciding between the options for dessert.  I decided to handle it like I did when I was a kid, closed my eyes, and did the rhyme for "Inka-binka bottle of ink..." And that made me think of something I had never ever thought about before.  Do other countries/languages have their own forms of "Inka-binka"?  So I asked my Finnish friends at the table if there was a little sing-songy rhyme they used when they were kids, and suddenly the whole table was chanting "Entten tentten teelika mentten..." at me.

After I calmed down and realized it was NOT a Satanic chant, they translated it for me and said that it's just like "Inka-binka" in that it's mostly gibberish and the last line eliminates something. 

This was all so cute and charming and got me very curious about other languages, too, so I surveyed all my bilingual friends and got them to share theirs.  Here they are...


English

Eeeny, meeny, miney, moe Catch a tiger by his toe If he hollers make him pay Fifty dollars every day My mother told me to pick the very best one And you are not it!

Self-explanatory....

Inka-binka bottle of ink Cork fell out and you stink!

Self-explanatory....

Finnish

Entten tentten teelika mentten Hissun kissun vaapula vissun Eelin keelin lot viipula vaapula Vot eskon saun piunpaun Nyt mä lähden tästä pelistä pois Puh pah pelistä pois!

Gibberish gibberish gibberish Gibberish gibberish gibberish Gibberish gibberish gibberish Gibberish gibberish gibberish Now I am going out of this game Puh pah game off!

German

Enemenemiste es rappelt in der kiste Enemenemeck und du bist weg Weg bist du noch lange nicht Sag mir erst wie alt du bist 1 2 3 4 du bist weg

Gibberish shaking in the box Gibberish and you are gone Are you still a long way away? Tell me just how old you are 1 2 3 4 you are gone

Spanish

Pito pito, gorgorito Donde vas tú tan bonito A la era, verdadera, pin, pon, fuera, La vaca lechera, se cagó en la carretera

Whistle whistle, gargle, Where are you going so beautiful, To the thresher, ping pong outside, The milk cow is shitting on the road

French

Am stram gram pic et pic et colegram Bour et bour et ratatam am stram gram. Qui a pété? ca sent les chicorée 1 2 3 ce sera bien toi!

Gibberish gibberish gibberish Gibberish gibberish gibberish Who farted? It smells like andives 1 2 3 it is definitely you!

Dutch

Alle indianen, schieten met bananen Pief poef paf en u broek zakt af!

All the Indians are shooting with bananas Pief poef paf now you lost your trousers!

Swedish

Ällinga, vällinga, vattenspruta. Slog en käring mitt på truta Här ska du få, ditt otäcka troll för att du inte kan räkna till tolv! 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12!

Formula, water injection Slapped an old bitch in her face Here's for you, you nasty troll Because you can't count to twelve! 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12!

Trolls who are bad at math?  Andive farts?  Banana guns??  My stinky ink suddenly doesn't seem so interesting anymore...

Barbie was big in my house.  We had dozens, and each had her own name that was NOT "Barbie" and had a distinct personality from the others.  There was Jan and Tracy and P.J. (both her ankles were broken and she had perma-masking tape casts) and Andrea and Cara and Marie Osmond and Wendi Poobah and Kim (she was the one that would wink, but her wink eye got stuck and turned into a wonk eye) and Suni and Stephanie Baggie.

The Barbie to Ken ratio was not favorable for Barbie.  We only had 4 Ken dolls:

• Malibu Ken who was blond and tan and we called "Ken"
• Generic Ken who had dark hair and we usually drew in a mustache with eyeliner and we called "Steve"
• Generic Ken who had light brown hair and whose name changed depending on what Barbie he was with that week
• Weight-Lifting Ken whose muscles would actually pop up when you bent his arm to flex his bicep, and I don't remember what we called him...honestly he was kinda ugly and we usually popped his head off and replaced it with Steve's
• Headless Horseman Ken which was Steve's leftover body
  

My little nieces will sometimes still play with our old Barbies, and they've started to collect their own.  One of my nieces has a birthday next week, and my sister mentioned that they needed a Ken doll.  I totally wanted to get her one, but a surprise awaited me in the toy section of Amazon.com...

Every Ken doll is now totally, completely, flamingly gay.

Jewel Secrets Ken

Ken in a tux is not so gay.  Barbie does need a prom date or a groom for her wedding.  But Ken in a silver tux?  Ken who has jewel secrets?




Diamond Castle Prince Ken

Jackie and I were IMing like crazy over all this, and I think she summarized this one the best by saying:"Why does this prince have a guitar?"  And apparently Diamond Castle Prince Ken comes in two flavors: vanilla (Ian) and chocolate (Jeremy).



Rainbow Prince Ken

Thigh-high boots and a pastel rainbow glitter tunic with puffy sleeves?  Is this even real??




Mariposa Prince Ken

Jackie's reaction to this one: "....he's a fairy.  He's an f'in FAIRY."  Also, "mariposa" means "butterfly" in Spanish, but it's also Mexican slang for "queer".  Great job, Mattel.



Sun Sensation Ken

Gold.  Mesh.  Half-shirt.  I have nothing else to add.



Hot Skatin' Ken

I snarfed all over my computer when I saw this one.  As if the ice skates weren't enough...  As if the rollerblades were not enough...  As if his neon spandex unitard was not enough...  WHY DID YOU POSE HIM LIKE THAT??



I went so far as to create a poll for this one, so please vote below...