FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW - IN THE AFTERNOON SUNSHINE

Four things right-right now.

The books above my head.

A cat in the after noon sunshine.

Reading the Egytptian Book of the Dead (but now I got distracted with a documentary on Marie Antoinette's coiffures.)

I want Mikael Hadreas pants.

As a side note; this was the first time I made a post in one sitting without moving anything else than my arms to take photos and grab the laptop. So now we know that!

FOUR THINGS RIGHT NOW: BLUE, GREENS, SHINY PINK, INVASIVE

Today I've been wearing blue.
From top to toe, rather literally; I have a new sky blue faux-scarf turban that I've been hiding my somewhat un-styled hair under lately.

And so today as well, serving also a practical reason to help my hair stay put and away while I finally got around changing the soil for all the plants in the house (all those plants that survived winter, that is). Re-potting and cutting and all however resulted in more plants than before.

The smartest thing is of course to dig in to the potting soil without any gloves when you've just had new fancy Fabergé egg-looking nails done.

My fourth thing now  today's sountdrack. I don't tend to listen that much to domestic music, even less to music of Swedish speaking Finnish origin (you know, like me) for some reason but today this has been playing.

UMK: TWO MORE DAYS TO GO

Most of my time the past months, or if not most then at least a lot, has been taken up by my participation in UMK; the competition for new music, which in other words is the national selection for the Eurovision.

It has been an interesting project in many ways, but we'll get back to all that next week when this is over!
 

Some time ago we were filming some inserts for the finals. Chrzu was directing and gave us lollipops.

Everyone loves our glitterboots. But hey who wouldn't.

 

But even awesome glitter boots need to be taken off every now and then.

Btw you did know that Dali designed the logo for Chupa Cups, right?

Last weekend it was our turn to do a Facebook live for UMK. Which we casually shot at Weird Antiques. Love that place. 

 

Tinker Bell and I play miniature bongos.

The place has monkeys. And you know who loves monkey? Me! Me! Me!

They have this monkey-o-matic BimboBox that I one day must own.

And today we had the first rehearsals at the Metro Arena. I'll spend the rest of my week there and on Saturday we go!

(And, oh, there's still time to pre-vote -nr.5- for a few hours, *wink wink*. Only in Finland though, and by signing in to Yle.)

DO THE TWIST, DO THE GO GO, DO THE -

Here's the music video for the UMK17 participation song that I am a part of!

We filmed it in November with a bunch of our friends and students taking part of the shoot.
Some people love it and others hate it but that's how it is with most things in this world.

It's going to be really interesting to get to do the actual show on January 28th because it's, of course, a production of a size a lot different than the ones I normally get to work with. It's also naturally a rather time and energy demanding process, albeit also a fun one, of which you can see more of in my instagram and the Ruby Knuckles instagram aswell.

SHOOTING THE MUSIC VIDEO

The other day we shot the music video for our UMK song.

The second look for the day.  That's a lot of brushing and hairspray there I tell you.
...and a lot of conditioner afterwards.

A bunch of fabulous friends as well as our burlesqe students joined in on the shoot.

My glitter boots are surprisingly comfy but after a whole day of dancing on an uneven concrete floor the only thing you want to do is take them off and put your feet high high up in the air.

 It's good the behind-the-scenes interview was done only waist up. Wool socks for the win!

Checking out the group dance shot with Antti; our director. I have worked with him on a few occasions before, when we shot Iskelmä Suomi for example.

Shoot done! All the videos will be out on the 31st of December!

UMK!

Photo: YLE / Miikka Varila

So, you know I've been rather (add ""...) lately, and one reason is the fact that I am part of UMK, which is the competition for the song to represent Finland in the Eurovision Song Contest.

I'm a huge lover of all things kitsch and camp and thus also a huge Eurovision fan (and prefer it at it's most glittery self) and I also have this thing of never saying No to anything as you never know what one thing might lead to. There are a lot of catchy tunes and both fun and interesting artists in the competition this year, and I know glammy rock n' roll is not up everybody's alley, so this will be an interesting ride. And I promise mine will be filled with a lot of glitter.

SIGN OF THE DOG

Here's the video for Dark Country that we shot earlier this spring!

You can see some behind-the-scenes footage and making-of in my previous post.

DARK COUNTRY: BEHIND THE SCENES

In April I filmed a music video for my friend (and total multi-talent) Sampo's duo band Dark Country (Sampo Marjomaa & Jami Pietilä).
The setting was something of a classic 50's horror tale with werewolf vibes but also a comment on on the wolf hate and hunting craze that still is around in this country (and hate/haters in general as well).

Here are some behind-the-scenes from the days of filming:

It was a big and nice crew to work with! But outdoor filming is always outdoor filming -I have never (well, almost) filmed anything anywhere that would actually be comfortable all the way, no matter how lovely it may look (me walking on a hey field in summer - so sticky! I had pants and my old harbour boots on underneath the dress! And last winter we filmed the Knucklebone Oscar video in a warehouse with -10C indoors for example...there's always something!).  This surely was no exception - it was an especially cold weekend for the time of year when filming the woods part, and it rained most of the night when we shot. But anything cold and wet just makes one feel real cosy and relieved afterwards when thinking about it and seeing the material now the rain really looks like it would have been ordered and suits the whole picture perfectly.
 We'll get back to the final video in just a bit!

Indoor shots by Minna Lehtinen, outdoor photos by Roscoe Lee.

ALL THOSE SOFT SUNDAYS

I have this one Spotify list for soft Sunday music; for those days when you just want to - and maybe even have the chance to - take it easy, tune down and listen to mellow music. But it just struck me that I have been adding songs to that list for as long as eight years! That is quite a long time already. It's more than six hours of the last eight years and looking trough the list it serves as a reminder of times that have been. I mostly listen to just the latest fraction of it, which often equals songs I've added during the past year, but sometimes let the whole thing play in the background and be reminded of how things once were and how they felt.

There's The Specials that we'd listen to in the summer of '08 when we hit the town with Ina. And Air's Playground Love that's always been one of my favourite songs and that I remember playing on repeat to when having the lone shift at Vuosaari harbour back in the winter of '09, sitting in the small little gate box by the sea, and for that time being very heartbroken. It was one Saturday morning in particular that I remember, an early, eerie foggy one when everything was white outside, snow and ice and an thick air, I was sad to begin with and read fractions on Facebook that in the end cleared out to be the story about how a friend of mine had found her boyfriend who had hung himself the night before. Whenever I hear that song now I think of that white lonely morning at the docks wen everything felt weird. And there's Chet Baker from when I used to take some long city evening walks in light pastel shaded May evenings later the same year thinking about THINGS and what to do with them. Lou Armstrong that I listened to when my grandfather had just died and Wandering Star that my cousin sang at his funeral, and Mother and Alphabet Song that I played when I was expecting Dag and Shades of Cool the summer that I misscarried plus a lot from late nights when I've been driving my car along road 51 from the city to the farm. I know it sounds like a mainly a lot of sad or blue memories but that's just when I write it out; I guess those are the things that are the easiest to pick out and spot. There's a lot of good one from sunny days and cosy rainy breakfasts too.

I don't add to it that often, just a handfull of songs per year whenever I am reminded of or stumble across something that suits my mood for the moment. Let's see what song will be next, and what it will make me think of a year or two from now...
(Soft Sunday on Spotify)