Category: Sports

"The blues is when you love someone don't love you"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

.:.

Last night was a great Toronto night…lots of snow, a (relatively) quiet downtown and some comfort food after a trying week. We took Nellie’s mom to Smokeless Joe which, despite the fairly empty streets, was packed to the ceiling. We finally got three seats together and put down some pasta and some beer before hitting the wall. We’d all had a long day so we just came home and watched some TV (The Wire…so good!!) before crashing.

I have to say, after a week of corporate finance, it did me some good to sit in cozy little Joe’s with my wife, drink a good beer, have some good food, chat with the excellent staff and listen to Leadbelly on the stereo. My recharging has continued today; with the snow now stopped we had some breakfast at Over Easy and I now have the place to myself as Nellie and NellieMom have gone to see Dirty Dancing. Me, I’ll be staying home and watching the Canadiens game on TV…oh, right about now.

.:.

United 93 has been playing on TMN lately, and I’ve watched bits and pieces of it over the past couple of weeks. I thought the film was unsettling and brilliant when I saw it, and thought it was one of the best of 2006, but I simply cannot watch it again. It’s too hard on me. Every time I watch it, even just a few scenes, my guts twist into a knot. It’s probably the most physical reaction I’ve ever had to a film, and it happens every time I see it. I want to watch it — Paul Greengrass is a master at that sort of emotional recreation — but I get apprehensive just thinking about it.

I guess I’ll just have to lot it from a distance.

[tags]berczy park, smokeless joe, leadbelly, united 93[/tags]

77.082%

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I don’t particularly care for the Superbowl. I’ll probably watch some of it this year just to see if the Pats can go undefeated, but really I’m indifferent.

What I hate about the Superbowl is having to listen to the media bloviate for 14 days between the semi-finals and the Superbowl itself. Two weeks of speculation about Tom Brady’s foot, about that idiot reporter proposing to him at media day, about whether Eli Manning is actually a real quarterback, about whether Plaxico Burress is the new Terrell Owens, blah, blah, blah. Enough already. Get to it.

When I am king those pussies will play two days after their semi-final games rather than making us all sit and watch their 2-week boondoggle.

[tags]superbowl[/tags]

Sure, that's a lot of silk, but…c'mon

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Incredulity, take 1: Shaquille O’Neal’s monthly spending. Granted, it’s probably no worse than any other NBA superstar’s spending, but I haven’t seen theirs broken down like this, so O’Neal’s the topic of discussion.

Among [the expenses]: $156,116 in mortgages on three homes (including his $20 million mansion on Star Island, Miami Beach), plus $31,299 in homeowners insurance; $3,345 in phone bills; $1,610 in lawn and pool maintenance; $12,775 in food; $1,495 in cable TV; $24,300 in gas; $6,730 in dry cleaning; $17,220 in clothing; $2,305 for pets, and $110,505 in vacations.

Believe it or not, the one that really threw me was the gas. I don’t get it. Let’s assume Shaq owns 6 Cadillac Escalades and drives them all every single day. Escalades get 13 mpg, and the highest gas price I can find in the Miami area is $3.39/gallon, which means that Shaq (or his family/whatever) would have to drive each of his six Escalades over 500 miles every single day. I think Shaq’s getting ripped off by either his driver or his accountant.

And don’t even get me started on his $220/day dry cleaner.

.:.

Incredulity, take 2: Paul Wolfowitz is back in the Bush administration, albeit as an advisor.

Paul D. Wolfowitz, who resigned as World Bank chief after serving as second-in-command at the Pentagon, has returned to the Bush administration, albeit in an advisory role.

That sound you just heard was every Iranian sphincter tightening simultaneously.

.:.

In 2007, for the first time ever, condos in downtown Toronto appreciated more than detached homes.

Condominiums in the central core appreciated by 12.2% in 2007 compared to 11.5% for single detached homes. West end condominiums appreciated by 7.3% compared to 6.6% for single detached homes. These stats generally capture activity in the resale market.

I’m actually kind of surprised it took this long, but I’m obviously biased toward condos.

By the way, if I see a sustained 12.2% appreciation, I’ll be pretty pleased with that.

[tags]shaquille o’neal, paul wolfowitz, toronto condos, toronto detached houses[/tags]

I am a happy fellow

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

My assignment, the last for this course, is done. I finished it off around 10:00 and practically skipped — pranced, even — to the couch to watch the Canadiens-Bruins game on the PVR.

That’s the last schoolwork I have to do for a couple of weeks. Weeks, internet, weeks! On an unrelated note, there’s a bluebird on my shoulder and everything is satisfactual.

[tags]mba, canadiens, bruins[/tags]

'Tis the season to be forechecking

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

There’s no Christmas present quite like a 4-1 win over the Leafs. Fa la la la la la la la la.

.:.

Been watchin’ some movies. Not much else to do when it’s a squall out there.

The Illusionist (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was hard to like at first, and didn’t exactly thrill me with the ending, but in between it was pretty good. There was a very particular style to the film that I had to adjust to — the visual effect of being shot through amber, the simulated screen wipes that made the film look decades-old, etc. — but once I did, and I got into the film, it wasn’t bad. Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti are just good in anything, and pretty much made up for the useless Jessica Biel. It’s worth a watch.

Flags Of Our Fathers (imdb | rotten tomatoes) and…meh. I don’t know; I like war movies, and it was well done, but it was the same well-done war movie I’ve liked about six times in the past six years. I always compare them to Band Of Brothers, and they never stack up. Worth seeing, but there certainly won’t be anything shocking in it for you.

[tags]canadiens, leafs, illusionist movie, flags of our fathers[/tags]

Was Anna Nicole 2006? Or 2007?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

From OpenCulture: an interview with Stephen King. Normally I have no interest in what King has to say, but this is pretty funny:

STEPHEN KING: So who’s going to be TIME Person of the Year?

TIME: I really don’t know, there’s a very small group of people who make that decision.

STEPHEN KING: I was thinking, I think it should be Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

TIME: Really?

STEPHEN KING: Yeah. You know, I just filmed a segment for Nightline, about [the movie version of his novella] The Mist, and one of the things I said to them was, you know, “You guys are just covering — what do they call it — the scream of the peacock, and you’re missing the whole fox hunt.” Like waterboarding [or] where all the money went that we poured into Iraq. It just seems to disappear. And yet you get this coverage of who’s gonna get custody of Britney’s kids? Whether or not Lindsay drank at her twenty-first birthday party, and all this other shit. You know, this morning, the two big stories on CNN are Kanye West’s mother, who died, apparently, after having some plastic surgery. The other big thing that’s going on is whether or not this cop [Drew Peterson] killed his… wife. And meanwhile, you’ve got Pakistan in the midst of a real crisis, where these people have nuclear weapons that we helped them develop. You’ve got a guy in charge, who’s basically declared himself the military strongman and is being supported by the Bush administration, whose raison d’etre for going into Iraq was to spread democracy in the world.

.:.

I have to tell you, a Canadiens win over the Leafs puts me in a good mood for at least a couple of days.

[tags]stephen king, time person of the year, canadiens, leafs[/tags]

The only day of the hockey season that I don't hate Boston

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I got home from work late and I still have to read 25 pages of corporate finance, so tonight’s a link dump night:

.:.

This story makes me feel good each November: every year the people of Nova Scotia send a giant Christmas tree to the city of Boston. They do this in perpetual thanks to Boston for sending doctors and medical supplies to Halifax after the Halifax explosion in 1917. However, what I didn’t know until today (thanks, Wikipedia) is that this annual gifting didn’t start until 1971. Not sure why it took 54 years for the tradition to begin. Anyway, it just warms the cockles of my heart. Thanks Boston.

Oh, and thanks for beating the Leafs last night too.

[tags]jellyfish, giant scorpions, edgar bronfman, music industry, cristobal huet, chris higgins, nova scotia, boston, christmas tree, halifax explosion, bruins, maple leafs[/tags]

I wonder how it would handle DeSagana Diop?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Closed captions are funny. Sometimes when I’m studying I mute the TV, and the captions come on automatically. A minute ago I saw a basketball highlight, Tony Parker passing the ball to Manu Ginobli under the net for a layup. However, the speech-to-text software (or maybe it’s still humans?) must’ve been confused by the Argentinian name ’cause the caption read “Parker to a monitor nobly.” Apparently Philip K. Dick was calling the game tonight.

.:.

Dylan Reid at Spacing Magazine published what must surely be the definitive guide to the rules governing pedestrians crossing mid-block in Toronto. I specifically avoided using the term “jaywalking” as it suggests an infraction and, as Mr. Reid points out, it’s simply not illegal to walk across the street in Toronto.

It is legal for pedestrians to cross the street mid-block anywhere in Toronto as long as:

a) they are not adjacent to a marked pedestrian crossing, and

b) they yield to traffic.

This legal situation is a combination of Ontario law, through the Highway Traffic Act, and City of Toronto by-laws.

I like this. I cross the street away from crosswalks all the time, and I occasionally even do it right in front of a police car, but I assume I’d never gotten a ticket because the police were too busy with more important matters. Turns out I’m not doing anything wrong. It’s not even very dangerous; I’m very careful about crossing mid-block, and any Toronto pedestrian knows that drivers in this city treat crosswalks as loose recommendations, so it’s not like crossing there offers safety.

.:.

Today Nellie did something that made my very happy. She booked the linchpin in our spring trip: two nights at Lake O’Hara Lodge, high up in the mountains of Yoho National Park. We hiked there last year (description | pictures), but we had to take a bus up the mountain at 10 and down at 4. This way we can get a full two or three days of hiking up there. Plus, just look at the view!! Whatever else comes of the trip I’m happy. I’d fly to Calgary just for that.

By the way, it might seem like we’re booking obsessively early (we’re not going until late June) but this place fills up fast. They started taking reservations yesterday and by today they were nearly sold out for all of next season.

[tags]closed captioning, manu ginobli, jaywalking in toronto, crossing midblock, spacing magazine, lake o’hara, yoho national park[/tags]

Ten-year-olds and shut-ins.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

On the plus side, we had the day off today. On the other hand, it was an ugly day outside, so we didn’t venture beyond our doorstep much…just shut it down and conserved our energy for the week ahead. We did manage to put up a few pictures, and we just watched a movie: Hollywoodland (imdb | rotten tomatoes). Meh. Not bad, but I’ll forget it by tomorrow.

.:.

I’ll do the Toronto Star one better: it’s time to retire the national embarrassment that is Don Cherry. He is far from an impartial analyst (he openly cheers for the Leafs, “good Canadian boys” and anyone who doesn’t wear a visor), and his opinion is stuck in the goonish 1970s/80s.

“If the instigator rule wasn’t in you could get this guy and wipe him out,” Cherry thundered, apparently not sated by the first-period fisticuffs. “This is what’s bad about hockey when you have a little guy yapping around and you can’t do anything about it.”

Indeed. Retire him, CBC. There’re plenty of cavemen on TV to go around.

.:.

Oxford American magazine has a great article about the nature of indie music. It intersperses the history of a 2006 buzz band with a description of the tastemaking machine that turns out these hot new things with dizzying speed. It talks about the fever that infects these tastemakers, where the discovery of something new becomes more important than the music itself:

“But the second time,” he went on, “well, now it sold out early, and it’s at a bigger club. And I’m not that guy anymore. I’m not the guy discovering them. I’m just a guy who is with everybody else who also knows who they are.”

The article mentions how Pitchfork likens a band to, among others, Animal Collective. I thought for a long time that I just didn’t get this band, but I think now I do. I still don’t like them; I think I’m just on to the scam. I ranted on my friend Joe’s blog about them a while ago; rather than repeat myself I’ll just paste here what I wrote there:

Animal Collective is one of those bands that indie hipster nerds (by which I mean those people who want the label more than they want to listen to the music) profess to love because they know the band will never be mainstream and no one will, as a consequence, question their indie cred for having once liked a mainstream band. Nobody actually *likes* their music. It’s like a secret indie handshake. “Hey, you like Animal Collective? Yeah? Cool, we can hang out then.”

It’s like film students who claim to love Un Chien Andalou…no they don’t. But no one else ever will either, so they keep it for themselves so they can have their little club.

Indie became a scene not because it was a genre of music but because it wasn’t popular and mainstream. Now that indie music is just as mass-produced and marketed as any other genre, the indie hipster nerds who crave exclusivity more than they crave good music have made the pursuit of the next great secret thing more important than the discovery of a life-changing album. It’s to be expected; whenever there’s a little money or prestige to be had, there’s little that can stop people from trying to be the king.

[tags]hollywoodland, don cherry, oxford american, indie music, animal collective, indie music[/tags]