Welcome to the suck

We just saw Jarhead (imdb | rotten tomatoes) over t’the Varsity (which is already decked out for xmas, by the way).

It was pretty good. A war movie about a lack of war, with some great actors. Too bad Chris Cooper was barely in it, but Jamie Foxx was great. It doesn’t push as deep into Swofford and Troy’s characters as I wish it had, but the mix of absurdist action and typical Mendes artistry made up for it. Put it this way: just as with every other book made into a movie, there was no way to cover all of what you wanted in two hours. So go buy the book.

ScaredSacred

We finally watched ScaredSacred (imdb) last night. I’d heard good things about it, and the criticisms I heard were pretty much what my wife and I felt: strong subject matter, but it was hard to listen to his narration. Still, very interesting and very moving, so well worth watching.

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Another Canadiens win, another Raptors loss. I don’t know what was uglier, the way they played or the way Aaron Williams’ hand got mangled when he hit the floor. We happened to flip over to the game just as they showed that highlight. This season could get really, really ugly. Like, their worst season ever kind of ugly. When your team only gets 3 offensive boards and two of them are by your Spanish point guard? That’s bad. When your two centres combine for 0 points and 1 rebound in 20 minutes of floor time? That’s also bad.

It’s pretty grey outside, so I think it’s gonna be an indoor kind of day. All the errands were taken care of yesterday, so today I just have to read some more useless cases for my upcoming course and then maybe it’ll be movie time.

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We tried a new place last night with CBGB: The Abbot On The Hill. It’s just up around Summerhill, and I’d heard it was a decent pub so we gave it a go. Nice downstairs pub, if a little small; the upstairs has more room for eating, but doesn’t yet feel as lived in as the downstairs. Still, they had a decent beer selection and the food was ok so I can see us going back there again when we crave some cool refreshments.

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Ouch. If there was even the slightest doubt that a premier NCAA division I basketball team would destroy a CIAU team, Duke pretty much put a stop to it last night.

I remember when I was at Dal our men’s team was ranked near the top in the country, and some junior college team from the US came up. Dal only beat them because of a huge last minute comeback capped off by a buzzer-beating 3 from Jeff Mayo; it was pretty freaky, but afterwards we were like, “Uh, yeah…that was a junior college and we’re supposed to be #1 or 2 in the whole country. Dang.”

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Here’s how sad my current course (it’s IT strategy) is: the case I just read was from 1997. It was about the FVIPS, an early Internet payment system that, ooop, disappeared in 1998.

So far the prof has barely sent/posted two words to us, he hasn’t marked either of the two assignments we submitted, and the comments we’ve gotten from people who’ve already taken the course have been in the neighbourhood of “The prof is an idiot!”, “That course was terrible!” and “It was a ton of work.” so I’m pretty excited about that. Whee.