Matti

In the eighties, there was a ski jumper named Matti Nykänen. He wsa said to be the very best jumper in the world; he won olympic gold five times.
I remember vaguely, that when I was in daycare* that we made gold medals to honour him. I brought it home, and showed it to my mom. I was very happy.
Then I went to Africa for few years**. When I came back, no one of my peers in the class remembered him. While I had been in media void for two years, they had seen new things and forgotten the man, the legend. There were new ski-jumpers, and thought they tried to be like him, not one had that "something" that made them interesting. I have the impression that back in the rich eighties skii jumping was something cool, and Nykänen appeared in commercials and whatever; I returned to Finland during the depression of early nineties ****; there were "promising future stars" appearing in few commercials, but after that, nothing.

Of Matti, I didnt know what happened to him. Then I grew older and mom judged we kids were old enough to read rumour-magazines she liked to read, but didnt earlier dare to leave to us kids; and therefore I learned that Matti had become a stripper. That didnt last long. Even later, I heart that between his Golden Days and strippers, Matti had been a singer. A very bad one. mp3's of his songs are still common laughing stock on the hard drive of nearly every male teenager on this country.
Even later, he stabbed a friend of his while drunk, as he was leering on Matti's woman (who he has married three times, I think). Got him jail, and was freed after two years. I heard that few months ago he had repeated this deed. Did he go back to jail, I dont know, I only read the headlines.
I think he has some arrangments with the journalists; he seems to be the equivalent of Royal Family in UK. Thats the regularity he appears in covers. It has been statistically proven that his name in the cover rises sales as much as 20%.

And now Matti is back. They made a movie out of, telling of his later days as a jumper till the time his life starts to fall apart. I havent personally seen the movie. I only write this post as huge intro to the Matti merchantise shops are full here, these days. You see, Matti had this habit of making deep philosophical remarks by mixing finnish and english;
"Elämä on laiffii" (Life is life"), "Jokainen mahdollisuus on uusi tsänssi" (Every oportunity is a new chance) etc. And of course "Ehkä join, ehkä en" (Maybe I was drunk, maybe not).
And there was one thing he made so popular everyone forgets he said it first; "putki päällä", literally "pipe on", meaning everything from getting thru Pac-Man without dying or doing many things succesfully one after another. The orginal meaning, of course, was drinking without pause for days.

I so want one of those black t-shirts or headgear, one of those phrases above printed on it on big white letters.

*I can remember so little from those days, I think I was like three then. Mostly impressions.
**My childhood is divided into parts "before Africa", of which I remember very little, "during Africa", of which I dont remember much more, and "after Africa" which is my life till I was 11***.
***This is when I moved to where I grew into adult.
****Soviet Union fell, and with it most of foreign trade. And after that came the bank crisis. Nineties was not a good time to be in Finland.