PRACTICAL JOKES

The line above is a word-by-word exact quote, and the father of the wisdom is – not surprisingly – Markus. And sure enough; we did pull our share of pranks. The all star team in this department is Masi himself as the center, with the representatives of the younger generation on his wings; Jasper and Iiro. Their standard tricks have been described in the other parts of this publication. The classic text messages and call diversions are familiar to the readers.

Other basic jokes – that will go down in history – are at least the following:

FACE PAINT, was performed to a person who had one too many, by writing different words and slogans (mostly vulgar) to the victim’s face, using a permanent marker pen. The protected area was one’s own bed or the designated seat in an airplane. In other areas, the victim was fair game. No mercy.

THE MUMMY, a prop dummy from the movie “Cutthroat Island”, very scary-looking. It was installed to Masi’s cupboard, to fall down on the face of the person who opened the door – or, as a bedmate of a person who was sleeping or, better even, had passed out.

THE TRICK SCRIPT, targeted to the maestro himself, who was in the habit of reading screenplays during his numerous, long flights (or at least of carrying them with him). The fathers of this prank were Antti J. Jokinen and the undersigned. The method was to replace every second page of the screenplay with a blank sheet – or with a page of a script of a completely different movie. The end result; we got caught. The Big Boss wasn’t happy.

SUPERGLUE, a must in every household. Very handy to attach e.g. cigarette butts to the chest hair of a person who has passed out. The bravura of ms. Taina Saikkonen, the target at least a few times mr. Aleksi Mäkelä.

THE LOOKALIKE, started 100 % accidentally and incidentally, when the paparazzis used to mix Markus with his very good friend Rabbit – the two are like dead ringers. The innocent, common mistake turned into practical joke with the fact that we never bothered to correct the ill-informed photographers.

This joke culminated once on an airplane, when two “high society” females spent several hours talking to Rabbit, thinking all the time it’s the governor Selin himself. Rabbit was calmly tipping a few drinks and nodding to the ladies’ babble, without saying much himself. Masi was sitting a few rows back, giggling.

And, as drama in general, it’s better finish the story on a high note. Once again, starring The Lord and Master himself; the targets were the participants of an ultra-luxury cruise in the Caribbean, reading books in their deck chairs.

What happened? During the lunch hour, everyone left the novel they were reading on their chairs – then The Black Avenger mr. Selin charged, tearing out the very last page of every book.

Mika Karttunen