Finnish Fridays: And this little piggy went weeweewee

I've never associated pigs with Finland—except in the form of sauna sausage (mmm...sauna sausage)—so I'm not sure how we're ending up with a porcine theme here on Finnish Fridays, but let's go with it.

This little piggy was some sort of giveaway from the bank Postipannki, and it's so wee it couldn't hold more than a dollar or so in pennies—not sure what its capacity would've been for Finn markka, or Euro for that matter. You can't open this bank because apparently only the bank staff had the key. I guess this was fun for kids? Seems like you'd be making a lot of trips to the bank. Anyway, according to wikepdia, Postipannki closed/merged in 1997 so this pig serves no purpose, except as a repository for money you don't plan to use. But it is pleasant to look at, don't you agree?

In pursuit of vintage Signet Classics

I believe I've mentioned a few dozen times that I was an English major in college. In those days, I favored the black-and-yellow Penguin Classic paperback editions of the books I was assigned to read; as a result their black spines fill several shelves in my guest room (you never know when a guest might want to peruse The Princesse De Cleves or Gargantua and Pantagruel poolside). But over the past few years of estate and library sale shopping, I've become a li'l obsessed with the piquant eye candy that is the Signet Classic paperback, the first printings of which date from the 1960s. I now find myself buying duplicate copies of books I already own just because I love the covers so dang much—and, lo, another paperback collection was born (see: Edward Gorey Anchor Doubleday).

Of this batch, I've only actually read Defoe's Journal of the Plague Years, a fantastic book I recommend to all readers with a taste for the medieval and macabre. I'm sure I'll read Edwin Drood at some point, but it's at the bottom of my Dickens pile. And I like the cover, but I'm certain I'll never read Nostromo because Conrad is just not my bag (unless he's delivered to me in the form of Apocalypse Now). The Kenneth Grahame book is the most thrilling discovery, because for one thing, I never gave any thought as to whether the author of The Wind in the Willows wrote anything besides The Wind in the Willows. Apparently, he did, and the book jacket description suggests it's right up my street:

In this series of tales of five orphaned children who live with relatives in an English country house, the author's superbly modulated prose captures the sensuousness, the mercurial temper, and the fantasy life of childhood. Neither sentimental nor condescending, with perfect sympathy and gentle humor, Grahame creates a world in which each child is a distinctive individual, adults are regarded as doubtful guests, and every passing moment brings the promise of rare adventures.

Sounds pretty irresistible, am I right? To top it off, I'm convinced this cover was illustrated by the great Tomi Ungerer, or else by someone aping his style—though I doubt that: The Signet covers of that period were all done by super-accomplished illustrators, including Milton "I heart NY" Glaser. I'll feature some of his beauteous covers next time.

The Golden Age & Dream Days, Kenneth Grahame, 1964

The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Charles Dickens, 1961

Nostromo, Joseph Conrad, 1960

Strange bedfellows?

Something I've noticed on my estate sale travels is that bookshelves stocked with Bibles, religious tracts and volumes devoted to Christianity are likely to be sharing equal space with books whose esoteric subjects were probably featured on Leonard Nimoy's 1981 TV series In Search of. The Prophecies of Nostradamus. Chariots of the Gods. Anything on Atlantis, the Bermuda Triangle, Bigfoot, Pyramid Power, poltergeists, UFOs, Easter Island and Nessie. I can't even tell you how often I've observed this Mysterious Phenomenon. What does it all mean? If only Leonard Nimoy would explain it to me.

A bunch more things I didn't buy

I did not buy any old toiletries at this estate sale because, seriously, do you have to ask? I'm not sure which is more grim: the sight of unfinished tubes and bottles for sale, evidence of health and/or beauty regimes permanently interrupted. Or the sight of people actually buying the stuff.

Sometimes (a lot of times) I do just say no to my kids, and usually it's when we've strayed into the crafty section of a flea market or antiques mall. She did not get this red-white-and-blue $25 scarfy thing, even though it was 4th of July. I am that hard.

I didn't buy this totally 80s relic, Stay-Put: the Non-Slip Shoulder Pad, though I was sorely tempted. Just for the logo. Why is that lady so mad? Why is she yelling at that dog? What does that have to do with shoulder-pads-in-a-can?

Clueless is a great movie.

I had the pleasure of accidentally stumbling across Clueless on cable a few months ago, something that rarely happens since I almost never deviate from what's on my Tivo. I don't think I'd seen it since it came out back in 1995, but let me just say, it totally holds up. No Jane Austen update/adaptation holds a candle to it (I'm looking at you, Pride & Prejudice & Zombies). Alicia Silverstone? Simply brilliant. Stacey Dash? So gorgeous, why didn't she go anywhere after that? Come to think of it, that was the apex of Alicia's career as well. Brittany Murphy, sigh. R.I.P. Only Paul Rudd has gone on to fame and fortune, though more often as the disaffected friend than adorable love object, which he so totally was as the uptight Mr. Knightley-ish ex-stepbrother Josh.

I don't have so many laudatory things to say about this silly tie-in book, Cher's Guide to...Whatever by H.B. Gilmour ("based on the characters created by Amy Heckerling"). It's so awful I can't even bring myself to quote from it. But unlike the movie, which doesn't seem at all dated (well, maybe the Uptown Julie Brown cameo), the book is a time capsule full of quaint references to the ’90s, including:

The Watchman (as in the hand-held TV), MTV (that it was once relevant), CDs, Christian Slater, Marky Mark, Buns of Steel, Smashing Pumpkins, Coolio, Nine Inch Nails, The Bridges of Madison County, Arsenio Hall, Prozac, The Body Shop, The Nature Company...

Who knows? If the movie had come out when I was in high school as opposed to when I was 27, I might've dug the book too.

Scrabbled

I think I've sounded this theme often, but I'll reiterate in case you've not been taking notes: I don't like games. Board games are boring. I would always rather read. I might even prefer organizing Lindsay's recipes into clear plastic binders, or cleaning the birdcage. Anything else.

But if I must play a game, I always choose Scrabble. Not this Facebook phone stuff that Alec Baldwin seems to enjoy so much; I'm as baffled by that when I see it cluttering my FB feed as I am by those games about jewelry and farm animals. Don't try to tell me how great it is, how addictive if you're a wordsmithy-type person—cuz I'd be too busy reading novels on my phone.

The last adult I played Scrabble with was Lindsay. We were rusticating in Tobago, in a very austere cottage with lots of interesting insects and not a lot of intact mosquito netting. There was no nightlife to speak of; or at least not where a couple of Americans would feel welcome some six months after 9/11. We dined on the same fish special at the only restaurant in town every night. The service was grudging, if not hostile. When we revealed ourselves to be New Yorkers, we were grilled on our 9/11 experiences and informed that the whole thing was an American conspiracy, if it had even happened it all, which we assured everyone it did, since we were eyewitnesses, but they weren't impressed. (Later we'd learn that Hugo Chavez had found refuge in Tobago after a brief coup at the same time we were there. Like I said, Americans weren't too popular then—I wonder if anything's changed.)

Given the circumstances, then, what choice did we have but to hang out in our cabin each evening, with a couple of genial stray dogs for company, drink gin and tonics and play game after game of Scrabble while tropical rain pelted the rooftop? A lovely Scrabble memory, except that maybe Lindsay vowed never to play with me again because I was "too cutthroat" and a "sore loser." Or something like that.

So I didn't play until my kids got old enough to string some letters together and call it a word, and then to string some words together and call it a sentence. Have you ever seen the Scrabble Sentence Game for Juniors? Well, like most games made in 1973, it's pretty awesome (and there's plenty available on eBay for around 10 bucks). Like Scrabble for Juniors, the board has an easy side and an advanced side: The easy side just requires simple matching (good for learning sight words) and the hard side encourages the drolleries of fledgling Becketts, as you can craft all manner of absurd one-liners. If there's a scrabbulous or words-for-friends-like app for that, I might actually consider getting it for my kids.

Even more things I didn't buy

I did not buy this Igor painting because I'm not going to start collecting campy sex kitten art of the 1960s. This was one of a pair, however, and it seemed reasonably priced on the first day of this estate sale ($30), so I went back on the second day when it had dropped by 30% but I still didn't buy it because it was very grimy (its mate was water-damanged). Was it original? I spent a lot of time standing in front of it, conspicuously googling Igor Pantuhoff on my iPhone, but couldn't make up my mind. I resolved to return the next day, when the prices would be cut in half, and buy it if it was still there. I never went back. Probably for the best.

Despite my affection for obsolete technology and especially old-fangled writing machines, I didn't buy either of these typewriters. I didn't even consider it for a moment. I just thought they looked so picturesque, relics strewn about in the grass, like a kind of typewriter graveyard—the sort of image that's just begging to be instagrammed. What about replacing garden gnomes with old typewriters? In the hands of the right design blogger, I'm sure this is an idea that could be sold in certain hipster enclaves in Brooklyn.