trip to europe, a month ago - goodbye kuopio

Today was (is) our last full day in Kuopio, after which we spend a lot of time on a train to Helsinki tomorrow and then leave to return to Melbourne on Sunday. I realise my account of activities has trailed off a little in the last few days but really the intention has been to just chill in a town - for a few days - and that's what we have done - it worked. 

I bought a bit of tat here and there and some probably awful LPs as well, additionally some possibly great ones. Although I did buy some non-Finnish LPs in Germany (because like they don't have them there much) like the Family Fodder greatest hits, which is something I have long wanted to own, I basically bought Finnish records here. But I don't really know what I'm doing. 

I also bought a few silly old magazines, etc just for fun. Also perhaps to help me learn Finnish a bit, though I am not entirely sure how to best facilitate that - do I sit there with a dictionary and piece it all together? That won't help me get the grammar, surely. It might help me remember words, slowly.

Anyway, the last couple of days I have walked around Kuopio quite a bit, I'd like to see it when the lakes are not so frozen, which they are right now, completely. At the cultural history museum today we saw a 1943 film (no sound, oddly - probably had a soundtrack talking about how great Hitler was) of a boat trip I think to Kuopio which ended with a shot of the market square, which answered a question for me, sort of, about whether the market building which is at an odd angle to the town hall at the other end of the square, was ever part of a complex of other buildings. The answer is - sort of, there was another building there, but it was always (or at least since 1943) just exposing its flank to the square. It's a weird arrangement. 

Speaking of flank exposure the Finns used to, and perhaps still do, love images of themselves naked doing extraordinary nation-building/mythological things. Here's one from the museum which is btw the third oldest museum in Finland. 

homicide 'the hermit' (& 'a ticket to the grave')

This episode of Homicide aired two days before my seventh birthday, and I didn't watch it. I might have enjoyed, briefly, the central role played by Ernie Bourne in the show however as not only did I know Bourne's work from Adventure Island (he played Fester Fumble) I also, strangely, had met him - at a party (as previously discussed on this blog 13 years ago, remember?). 

In this fairly nonstarter ep he plays an unsavoury character called Dudley Roberts, by this time living under the name Dudley Brown. He is an artist (the Ds keep saying he's not a very good artist but I don't know, I've seen worse art) and kills a model because she says she'd charge him $20 more to pose nude for him. We don't see the killing. Not that I wanted to. 

This is a shot of the boyfriend of the mother of the model, Cindy. Played by John Stanton. I was more interested in the background, wherein you can see a point of sale poster for the very short-lived newspaper Newsday which confuses me as this episode went to air in early 1972 and Newsday closed in May 1970 (at least that's what Wikipedia says, can't necessarily trust that information). Maybe Crawfords had a standard bunch of newspaper posters for scenes like this. Or maybe I'm wrong and it's New Idea, though it's weird to think of magazines being advertised the same way as newspapers. Also, note the Taranto's gelati sticker in the window. Me and my mother used to love their Tartufo. 

I see why IMDB insisted the character we know through most of the show as 'Dudley Brown' is 'Dudley Roberts' - because that's what it says in the credits.* 

This has pissed me off for quite some time watching these old eps. If I went back in time and killed Hitler, could I also stop in 1970something ((c) Barry Divola) and fix this fuckin' apostrophe? 

PS note to self - 1972 is when the Homicide theme started to end on a different note. I mean literally. Like they re-recorded the whole theme, and ended it with that one change. 

* OK but weirdly the next episode, 'A Ticket to the Grave', features a character who calls himself Nigel but whose actual name is Norman. Yet here he is, credited as Nigel. 

OK I know what your eye was drawn to... Ian Smith! Here he is, age 34 and credibly playing someone surely at least ten years younger. 

Btw I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the dreadful habit of faking newspaper stories in Homicide. They did it again in this episode. 

What the hell is that picture?!