Day *&%$#@...

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised but air guitar champions have a history of being circus performers and world record breakers and other such fringe entertainers. Just curious to note.

A couple hours of mid-day napping and I was ready for one last night in Oulu. I bought my girlfriend some Finnish liquorish (which I will abstain from giving her until after sufficient kissing - bleckkkkk, black liquorish…mmmm, kissing my girlfriend...), I got my roommates some Finnish beer, and I found a large bar of Finnish dark chocolate for my mom. Then I picked up some tickets for tonight’s high class, formal Oulu Music Video Awards.

We rolled in style to the awards show which, as I mentioned, was a high class affair. Most of us were dressed up and didn’t look like complete dirtbags while sitting in the back two rows of the pavilion.

The gala centered around the winning videos of the year. Rather than listing a handful of finalists and then announcing “And the winner is…” they just showed the winning videos in their entireties. The rest of the show was fleshed out with dance routines, fire-juggling, and colored commentary by a woman whose left boob threatened to escape her dress the entire show.

The videos were very award-worthy but far away the crowd favorite (our crowd anyway) was the winner for Best Use of Old Footage For A New Video. It began with a woman in hot pants. The pants seemed to ride up further and further as she danced against a pinball machine. Despite the film obviously being 30 years old it had the succinct feel of a booty rap video. The camera slowly panned back and we could see the woman was wearing a matching gold lamé halter top. She continued to dance with the pinball machine (another 70’s staple) and did one of those quick zip down/zip up moves with the front of her top.

My first thought was, “Yes, thank you liberal European sexuality.”

I was pretty sure we were gonna get to see some boobs, and we did. And some ass. And some, you know, hoo-hoo. And then a big black guy showed up with no pants on and before we knew it we were watching bona fide porn. In a classy auditorium, with like 1000 other people no less. The second the video ended Ben the Kiwi, delirious from only 6.5 hours sleep in the last 108 hours, clapped like he was trying to fly.

But the porn didn’t stop there…

Following the gala everybody met back up at the karaoke bar. This time, however, we had the smarts to show up early enough to ensure ample space on the song queue. One of the first songs to come up was Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love Of All” featuring one of the best karaoke videos of all time. It was lifted straight from a late 80’s Playboy playmate video centerfold, replete with the little bunny insignia in the corner. What made it so inspiring (besides the simple pleasure in seeing boobs) was that certain lyrics took on very different meanings when juxtaposed with the video. Picture a woman slipping out of a nightie with the words “you can’t take away my dignity” scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Or two huge breasts on the screen with “give them a sense of pride” underneath. Better yet, “the greatest love of all is happening inside of me” during a simulated masturbation scene. It just got better as the song went on. It was so hilarious that even the Italians had to stop singing for a while until they caught their breath.

Again we stayed up till the breakfast bar opened but we opted to get an hour of sleep first before meeting back down for one last group breakfast. The French documentarians flipped for the three of us to take a cab to the airport. We checked in to our respective flights then reconvened in the food court for a few remaining minutes before departure. We watched the video of all of us on the Finnish TV show on Yann’s laptop and it was a mellow, relevant way to end our time in Oulu. We shared some hearty franco-american hugs and then we were off.

Leaving here was not unlike leaving 8th grade summer camp. It was bittersweet, heavy on the bitter. I have been lucky enough to do a lot of traveling and it is nice to know I can spend only a few days somewhere and still long for it when I’m gone. I’m not that jaded, but I guess the fact that I’m 32 and still playing air guitar like I did when I was 8 already says as much.