The Globe is Sweden’s largest entertainment venue and the world’s largest hemispherical building. Basically, it looks like a giant golf ball and besides hosting concerts and sports events, it also represents the sun in a huge replica of the solar system, built in the scale of 1:20 million. That last part I didn’t even know about until looking the Globe up on Wikipedia, and neither did anyone I mentioned it to, so it might not be well known. Chances are you can impress some Swedish people by dropping that little fact into a casual conversation.
A man in Hudiksvall, a small town in the northern part of Sweden, took a job working with adults with special needs and had some interesting ideas about what they could do. The story of how they formed a theatre company, became famous all over Sweden, traveled to New York, performed on Broadway and got their own TV-show, is out of this world.
The group has handled their stardom with grace. I had the opportunity to hang out with them when they visited a K-7 school and I doubt Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt would have gotten a better welcome. The kids treated them like rock stars and they did their best to sign autographs for everybody.
A family friend worked with them in the beginning and told me about how they were invited to go on the Swedish equivalent to Good Morning America. Toralf, one of the cast members who is well known for hitting on almost every single woman he meets, and his handler were going to be on. While they are sitting in their chairs waiting for their turn, Toralf suddenly spots the gorgeous young weather anchor and he gets super excited. He starts tugging at the arm of his handler and says, “I want to ask her a question, I need to ask her a question”.
Oh no, thinks the handler, he is going to say something super inappropriate and we will not be able to go on the air. So he tries to calm Toralf down and says, “OK, OK, you can ask her a question later but not now. Just sit down and wait”. But Toralf will not give up and keeps repeating that he needs to ask her a question. When she is done with her segments he shouts at her and she walks over. “Hey you, hey you, I have a question for you!” says Toralf. She looks at him.
The handler hides his face in his hands and hopes for the best. “How many lingonberries are there in the world?”, asks Toralf. That
later became the name of a movie based on the Glada Hudik theater group.
Swedes love fad diets. Just like the rest of the Western world, we are getting fatter by the second and loving it. Therefore, we are trying to find ways to both have and eat our cakes, thank you very much. Only I’m pretty sure GI - low glycemic indexed foods – doesn’t allow cake.
The basic theory is to swap all those fast carbs like white rice, pasta and potatoes, and substitute them with stuff that is slower. Somehow. Ah, this is not a diet book, I just know that all magazines (and even some fast food restaurants) have caught on to this trend and seem determined to keep it alive. So go ahead, try it. Who knows, maybe THIS will truly be the diet that saves us from eating our civilization to death.
