By Kuisma
Kuisma.Lappalainen@pp.inet.fi
 
 

The Finnair flight number 3, a Boeing MD-11, touched down at JFK airport
close to New York city at scheduled time. One of the passengers was a 6’2”
tall Finnish engineer. His name was Kuisma, and he had brown hair, brown
eyes, and he wore glasses. His left hand was somehow damaged because of a
hot iron in the summer of 1969, five weeks before the birth of a famous
actor who was picking him up at JFK and looked like him so much that if a
movie were made about the engineer, the actor would be perfect to play the
role. The actor’s name was Donnie, and his most famous movie had been
Ransom, directed by Ron Howard. Kuisma was wearing black jeans and a white
T-shirt with a picture of one of Donnie’s rock bands and lots of balloons
in the picture, and on the head he wore a cap with green and white colors
and the Boston Celtics basketball team logo. He walked through the passport
control and customs and Donnie was there, waiting for him. He had blue
jeans with blue coat, a white T-shirt with the text ”DRUGS SUCK” on it, and
a black cap with the text ”HARDWEAR” on it. He also had glasses but didn’t
wear them at that moment. His left hand was not as damaged and he had a
tattoo on his left shoulder. ”I’m very pleased to meet you man”, said the
actor to the engineer. ”My motorbike is just outside, let’s go, man!” The
actor was afraid of flying and that’s why he didn’t want to be a long time
at the airport. The engineer, on the other hand, had even once been sitting
at the steering wheel of a light aeroplane as a co-pilot and he had a
flight simulator in his home computer. The engineer, however, understood
very well why the actor was afraid of flying. Once when the engineer had to
complain to his boss’s boss about low salary levels and unpaid mileage of
driving his own car from the office to an official meeting, he had to fly
to meet the second-level leader and the weather on the day of that flight
had been more stormy than the weather this day, so the Scandinavian
Airlines Boeing MD-87 had been in a more turbulent weather than the Finnair
Boeing MD-11 at this time. The actor had also had to fly a lot in his music
businesses and it was so much of flying that it certainly contains a lot of
turbulent weather conditions.

The actor and the engineer walked hand in hand out from the JFK airport
terminal. A huge Harley Davidson was parked at the parking lot and those
two identically-looking men approached it, the actor showing the engineer
the way. ”Jump on to the back seat man!”, said Donnie. ”Once you’re seated
there and your feet securely on the support bars, I’ll start the engine and
sit down between your legs man. Then hold tight with your both hands at my
waist, so as not to fall down when the bike accelerates or slows down man.”
The engineer jumped on the bike and answered: ”Of course I know that I have
to hold tight. I have a videotape at home about a Mr Cubby Barnes. He was
riding on a four-wheel motorcycle near here at the Saddle River Road quarry
and he suddenly fell down it because he was shooting at a helicopter nearby
threatening him when he had to hold both hands tight at the steering, and
his neck artery started bleeding as he fell down. It’s far too risky for me
not to hold something tight, in particular as this bike is two-wheel.” The
actor answered to this: ”I know what you’re talking about, since I am Cubby
Barnes myself man. The Saddle River quarry is so close to the road to
Boston that I’d ask you: do you want to visit the quarry on our way man?”
The engineer said: ”Of course”. The actor jumped on the front seat of the
Harley, and he pushed the start pedal with his right foot. A loud noise
came from the engine. He sat down and the engineer put his both hands tight
onto the actor’s waist just as he was told to. ”Okay”, said Donnie, ”are
you ready to hang tough with me man?” The engineer answered: ”Yes, I am
ready for the ride.” Donnie turned the throttle handle with his right hand
and released the clutch with his left hand. The Harley started moving and
left the airport doing about forty miles an hour.

In about an hour these two men had gone through Manhattan Island to the
Holland Tunnel and further to New Jersey state. At the Saddle River exit of
the Garden State Parkway the big Harley slowed down from a speed of 65 mph
to a speed of 10 mph, and in no time after leaving the parkway the bike
arrived to the quarry. ”So why can’t you starve in the desert?” asked
Donnie. Kuisma answered: ”There are so many sandwiches there.” Donnie
started accelerating the bike again and riding around there and said: ”The
scene in Ransom with my neck artery bleeding which you were talking about
was filmed here man.” After about fifteen minutes of a visit to the quarry,
the Harley came back to Garden State Parkway and went on towards North,
back to New York state after a short visit to the New Jersey state.

In about three hours the bike had gone through Connecticut to Rhode Island,
still doing 65 miles per hour. Suddenly, at Providence, Donnie slowed down
and left the Interstate 1, turning towards downtown Providence. At the
junction, Kuisma asked: ”Donnie, where are we going now? Weren’t we
supposed to go to Boston which is further along the route 1 as far as I
know?” Donnie answered: ”It is already quite late in the evening and you
must be tired after your long flight, and your clock seems to be several
hours ahead from ours, so I think that it’s best to stay the night at the
Normandy recording studio of Twenty To Life Records. If you want, you may
record something there man. We’ll go further to Boston tomorrow afternoon
man.” Kuisma was interested in playing the organ and the guitar so he
asked: ”Is there an organ available for me to play at the Normandy studio?”
Donnie answered: ”Yes, and there’s also another one at my home which you
can play whenever you want man.”

The Harley stopped in front of a large building in Warren, just outside
Providence. There was a huge neon light with text ”TWENTY TO LIFE RECORDS -
NORMANDY STUDIO”.
The men jumped both off the motorbike and walked into the building. They
were both so tired that they fell asleep almost immediately after eating a
little.

The next morning they woke up very early and went to the recording studios.
Kuisma played and sang a few songs in Finnish, his native tongue, and it
turned out that Donnie knew the original names of the songs: ”Minne mä meen
täältä?” is ”Where Do I Go From Here?” and ”Vielä muistan kun” is ”I
Remember When”. He said that the melody sounded familiar but the language
is very strange, and then Kuisma played and sang the songs again, this time
in English. In the afternoon, Kuisma and Donnie jumped again onto Donnie’s
motorbike and then they went on forward to Braintree, a suburb of Boston,
the capital of Massachusetts. They went to Donnie’s place at 63 Pilgram
Road and stayed there for a long time. ”Actually”, Donnie said, ”when you
were recording at Normandy studios on our way here from JFK, you reminded
me about one promise of mine from December 1990 in Providence man. I had
totally forgotten it and now I know that I broke it in 1994, and I do
apologise that man. Would you like me still to keep this promise man?”
Kuisma answered: ”Yes, please do! I’ve been missing you and your band. Your
concert on May 11th 1991 in Lahti was a great evening for me! I have never
experienced another such a great concert with as cheap tickets as that!”
Donnie answered: ”Okay, let’s have a party and invite all those people who
are in the picture of your shirt man. We could have a great evening here
together, you could play and sing and so could they man. I guess this might
wake up great memories in us and I hope that it’d help us to get back
together man!”

The next morning, the doorbell kept on ringing. The first guest to show up
was a very short and young man with blond curly hair and blue eyes. His
name was Joseph, but he told that he’d like to be called just Joe. He was
carrying a guitar and when he got in, he started playing it almost
immediately. Suddenly, the doorbell rang again. This time it was Jonathan
Knight, a tall man with black hair and brown eyes, and he was there with
his younger brother Jordan who also had black hair and brown eyes but was a
little bit shorter than his elder brother. Jordan couldn’t wait to get to
play the organ, he went to it immediately. After a few minutes, the
doorbell rang again, and this time it was again a man with black hair and
brown eyes. His name was Daniel Wood. He was not the last guest to come in,
the doorbell soon rang again, and there was Donnie’s younger brother Mark
with some of his friends. Mark was the only white person among these five
people who came in at the same time, the other four people were black and
their names were Hector Barros (probably some distant relative of a local
hoopster Dana Barros), Scott Ross, Anthony Thomas and Terry Yancey. About
ten minutes later, the doorbell still rang once, and there were some people
that were not known by everybody else: there was Jamie Kelly, there was
Jonathan Shine, there was Paul Callaghan, there was Peter Fitzgerald. There
were a total of fifteen people at this party which lasted the whole day
long. It started with a little breakdance show where Donnie danced while
his brother Mark and the four black friends of his, Hector, Scott, Anthony
and Terry, took care of the rap and the music. After that Donnie asked if
Kuisma could play the organ and sing those songs he had recorded at
Normandy studio in Finnish language, and this request was fulfilled. After
this Kuisma asked if he could play some extra songs which he had not yet
recorded at the studio on the Northbound trip and he played ”Baby I Believe
In You”, ”Time Is On Our Side”, ”Cover Girl”, ”Let’s Try It Again”, ”I Need
You” and ”Please Don’t Go Girl”. At that point, almost everybody had joined
the singing. Then Donnie said: ”This was actually a reminder about one
promise of mine which we have broken and we now have to apologise the
breach of the promise and make sure that such disrespect towards our
promises never again occurs. So tonight I think that here will be a very
long, at least five hours long, concert by the New Kids On The Block.” Joe
said to this: ”I totally agree with you, Donnie! There should! I am with
you!” But Jon and Jordan were a bit thoughtful about this and it took them
a longer time to agree than to anyone else. Finally, when everybody had
eaten a lot, NKOTB started to give that long concert, and it really lasted
more than five hours, and also contained some rare songs that never were
released on albums, like ”Toasties”, ”Be My Lady”, ”Honey Don’tCha Leave Me
Tonight”, and so on. ”Should we make a tour on these rare hits?”, asked
Donnie, and Kuisma’s answer to that was: ”Definitely yes! You’re all
welcome to my country with that tour!” After that Hector told that he
really is a relative to Dana Barros and Donnie asked everyone: ”What about
a little game of hoops tomorrow afternoon at park?”  Kuisma said that he
would have wanted to start playing hoops in a team back in 1977 but his
mother had told not to, and to make his mother understand rather than being
afraid of failure to play, it had taken five very essential years, so he
had to cold start in 1982 in a team where everybody else had already five
years of experience of the game and grown together instead of growing apart
of each other so the coach of the first season unfortunately rather relied
on veterans than a rookie and therefore Kuisma did not yet get any second
of playing time on the first season. The fact that had rescued Kuisma was
that the coach of his team changed in 1983 and the new coach was very
friendly toward a later rookie and could help the new player feel himself
at home with the team. So Kuisma agreed to join the game, and Hector told
that he would bring Dana with him to the game.

The next morning, Donnie and Kuisma went to the shore on Donnie’s
motorbike, and from there they went on with Donnie’s water jet. After
getting back ashore, Donnie gave Kuisma a ride on the motorbike around a
lot of interesting places in Boston, and they also rode past Harvard, and
through the Melville Avenue, past the old Knightvilla, which had now become
the Salvation Army Building. After these sights, they went to the Hi-Fi
Pizzeria in Dorchester and after the lunch to its neighbour, Dorchester
Youth Collaborative. In the afternoon, they went to the park and there were
all the other party guests, and they started playing hoops. It was a game
where NKOTB was one team, with Jamie, Kuisma and Peter as additional
players, and The Funky Bunch and Dana, Paul and Jonathan Shine were the
other team. Five of the eight players of each team were at the same time on
court, just like in a real hoops game. After playing a while like this,
Dana said that he represents the local professional hoops team called
Celtics, and he would like his team to arrange a show at the Fleet Center a
few days later to the rock bands and the other guests who were now playing
with him at the park. He also said that it would be a real NBA game and
that he would ask another NBA team to be the opponent.

While the people in Boston were waiting for the other NBA team from Chicago
to arrive to Fleet Center, Donnie and Kuisma went together to a movie
theatre and watched there quite a lot of movies. Kuisma had told to Donnie
that it was quite a problem to see Marky’s films in Finland: Basketball
Diaries was only available on rental videotape and not on the big screens
at all, and it had taken thirteen months from the European premiere before
the official premiere of Fear had been in Finland so Kuisma had had to use
one contact person that he had in Texas, and she had sent a copy of Fear to
him so that he could see it four weeks prior to the official premiere.
There was also a problem of conversions between NTSC and PAL, and Kuisma
also told that he had had to buy a NTSC-compatible VTR to see the copy of
Fear which he had received, because the conversion company had refused to
transfer it onto a PAL-compatible tape simply because it was a movie.

After telling this, Donnie took Kuisma to the movies to see those Mark’s
films on the big screen which had not been available on the big screen in
Finland at all and rather gone straight onto videotape. So they saw both
Basketball Diaries and Fear together.

A few days later, all those people who had been at the park in Boston to
play hoops, went to the Fleet Center, and there Donnie again gave a little
breakdance show before the exhibition game Bulls at Celtics, and at
halftime, and at the end of the game. That was Kuisma’s last day in Boston.
The next morning, Donnie gave him a ride on his motorbike back to Normandy
Studio and asked him to record also those hits which he had played at the
party but not yet recorded, so Kuisma did that. The next day Donnie and
Kuisma went to Coney Island in New York and they went there together to
have some fun. And the next day Finnair flight number 4 took off at JFK,
and Kuisma had a safe flight home, while Donnie came back to Boston on his
motorcycle. At JFK, Kuisma had said to Donnie that he’d like to meet again
soon and thanked for the motorcycle rides and for everything else that had
been fun, the New Kids’ and Funky Bunch concerts, the NBA exhibition game
Bulls at Celtics, the playing of basketball at the park, the breakdance,
and so forth. He also invited all the New Kids to visit his home in
Helsinki.