Category: Sports

Like he wasn't a big enough twat already

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Darcy Tucker loves him some Dubya.

“I would like to pick his brain,” Tucker said. “I think his political views are on the same line as my own. I think the wave of the future is someone who doesn’t back down to terrorism.”

Oy.

.:.

Sometimes I hate living in Toronto. Tonight, my only option is watching the Leafs play Calgary instead of being able to see Montreal open their home season against Ottawa. And can someone explain to me why even French CBC isn’t carrying the Canadiens game?

[tags]darcy tucker, dubya, maple leafs, canadiens[/tags]

Mystery, wonder, freshness

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TV notes:

  • I like the new trend of shows not having opening credits with a long stupid song. Even ER has scaled back their marathon jingle.
  • People playing teenagers on TV are usually much older than their characters, hence, I don’t feel so dirty ogling the cheerleader on Friday Night Lights (who’s actually 26). However, I feel extremely dirty now that I’ve learned the cheerleader (do we see a trend here?) on Heroes is only 17.
  • The Colbert Report: better than the Daily Show?

.:.

Sports notes:

  • The Canadiens took 5 of 6 points on their season-opening road trip, including a win over Philadelphia last night. Not a bad way to start, I guess.
  • Also: the Raptors don’t seem to suck too badly yet, though it is only the preseason. They won last night to go to 2-0.
  • The NBA has announced their plan to crack down on whining and bitching after calls (or non-calls). Say a prayer for poor Vince Carter.

.:.

Political notes:

  • Stephen Harper accuses all of the Liberal party leadership candidates of being “Anti-Israeli.” At least he restrained himself long enough to keep from calling them anti-semitic.
  • I don’t think the US can get out of Iraq right now. I think they should be trying their hardest to get out as soon as possible — and I don’t think they are right now — to minimize loss of life on both sides, but in the short term I think they need to stay. Obviously, I think it was a mistake of staggering proportions to invade Iraq in the first place, but now that they’ve made this mess they have to clean it up. You can’t kick down the door of a house, shoot one of the occupants, break all the furniture, set the place on fire, piss on the hallway floor and then just walk out yelling “My job here is done!” If you walk out of the house now, the guy you shot will bleed to death and the house’ll burn to ground. Now that you’re there, you’d damn well better put down the gun and grab a firehose to fix the problem you started. You broke it, you gotta pay for it. Tragically, the currency will be lives. Not that the guys who dreamt up the invasion care about that.

[tags]er, friday night lights, heroes, colbert report, canadiens, raptors, vince carter, stephen harper, iraq[/tags]

Brain –> page

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The Onion’s A.V. Blog reports that two of the TIFF films that I’m most anticipating might have trouble getting on screens south of the border. I suspect no such issues here in Canada, but it’s a sad state of affairs. As the article states,

“In both cases, films are being shut out of theaters for their ideas, not for any explicit or offensive content on the surface. These gatekeepers have basically decided that adults need to be shielded from ideas that they deem inappropriate. They’ve creating a special rating and it’s called GFY (Go Fuck Yourself).”

.:.

I might be in the minority, but I’m all for Hockey Night In Canada moving from CBC to TSN/CTV. Why? Because I, like most of the rest of the country, can’t stand watching the prime time game being called by a pair of Leafs homers who’re on the down slope of their careers. Bob Cole and Harry Neale may be nice guys, but you may as well go watch the game in your Toronto-fan grandpa’s rec room. Gord Miller’s a better play-by-play man, Pierre Maguire’s better at colour (and actually knows the names of some non-Leaf NHLers), and they have guys like Bob McKenzie, Glenn Healy, James Duthie and Chris Cuthbert to boot.

The best part: no more Don Cherry. I’d like it if they could salvage MacLean somehow, but if he has to be sacrificed in order to distract Cherry while they pack up the HNIC set, then so be it.

.:.

Because all my music is encoded at 128kbps (it’s the only way it’ll all fit on my Nomad) I’m thinking this would be a good investment.

.:.

Hey, WOXY’s back.

.:.

Slides in a museum; bitchin’. My brother’s already mentioned it, but this exhibit at London’s Tate Modern looks very cool. When I was there that hall was filled with a giant (and I do mean giant; it was about a hundred feet tall) double-ended red horn.

.:.

If I have time tonight I’ll try to post more pictures from our trip. Day 3 was the motherload (400+ pics) so it could take me a while to slog through them.

.:.

I’ve finally had to pick up my next textbook. However, it’s a statistics course, and I find stats kind of interesting. Sick puppy, I know.

.:.

New TV: Heroes has me hooked. Studio 60 is, apparently, in trouble, proving once again that Aaron Sorkin is too smart to write for television. I haven’t watched Friday Night Lights yet, but if it’s as good as the movie I’ll stick around for the ride.
[tags]d.o.a.p., deliver us from evil, hockey night in canada, creative xmod, woxy, tate modern, statistics, heroes, studio 60, friday night lights[/tags]

A non-Rockies post

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Let’s see, what happened while we were gone and ignoring the news (apart from the obvious like the whole Foley-page thing and the continuing deaths of Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan)?

  • Nova Scotia seems to have quietly taken the Sunday shopping ban out behind the barn and shot it. Good for them; they can sit at the grown-up table with the rest of us now. Seriously, though, I’m glad; one day we’d like to move back there and we couldn’t do it while that ridiculous ban was in place. I couldn’t abide the idea of a selectively-applied religious Christian tradition telling me when and how I could spend money. When I lost some luggage before a friend’s wedding I couldn’t buy a replacement shirt and tie, but I could’ve gone to the casino or bought some tacky tourist kitsch on the waterfront. Foolish. Anyway, congratulations to NS for embracing change. Love the windmills, kids. Don’t throw your shoes at them.
  • If you need further proof that the Bush administration is batshit insane, look no further than the fact that Stephen Baldwin is a cultural advisor to the president.
  • The sting of the Canadiens blowing a 2-goal lead to the Sabres on Friday night, including allowing the tying goal with 15 seconds left, was soothed with a shootout win over the Leafs on Saturday.
  • Vinnie Vincent, brief guitarist for Kiss (just at the end of the makeup era) has been denied royalties to the one album he (officially) played on: Lick It Up. You know you’re in bad shape when you’re asking for royalties from a 25-year-old album that’s considered poor even by Kiss’ standards…

[tags]sunday shopping, stephen baldwin, canadiens, sabres, leafs, vinnie vincent, kiss[/tags]

In the home stretch

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About twelve hours from now we’ll be home. Or close to it; probably cruising somewhere over the midwest. Our flight is early tomorrow morning so we took it fairly easy tonight: we found some afternoon snacks, relaxed in the room (I watched the Habs beat the Leafs in a shootout while Nellie watched her new addiction: Battlestar Galactica) and went out for some microbrews and excellent pizzas at Hop In Brew. We’re now just packing up and and showering, trying to salvage all the sleep we can before the 5:00 alarm. It’s been a great vacation — probably our best ever — but we’re ready to go home now.

Next broadcast will either be a complaint from the airport or a sigh of relief as we get home.

[tags]calgary, hop in brew, canadiens, leafs[/tags]

Jetsam

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The Canadiens have traded Mike Ribeiro for…well, who cares? What’s important is that they traded Mike Ribeiro. The fact that Saku Koivu’s eye appears to be ok, combined with a rather pressing need for blueline help prompted the move (it was Janne Niinimaa coming the other way) allowed them to make the move. This frees up some space at center for guys like Tomas Plekanec and Steve Begin.

I just never liked Ribeiro. Nothing against him personally, I just don’t like watching guys who’re too cute with the puck and seem to float a lot of the time. But hey, good luck to him in Dallas.

[tags]canadiens, mike ribeiro, janne niinimaa[/tags]

You snooze, you lose; well I have snost and lost.

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You know, it’s all fun and games ’til someone…umm…ooh. Yikes.

.:.

Sports Illustrated thinks the Canadiens might be a dark horse this year. I hope so, but their 0-4 preseason record isn’t a great sign.

Ooh…but they’re leading the Senators 4-2 in the 3rd.

.:.

We watched episode one of the fourth season of The Wire, and I’m hooked already. Sooooooo hooked. I love that show.

.:.

By the way, that line up there in the subject is from “I Hear The Bells” by Mike Doughty, known to my wife as the song playing at the alternaprom in the last season of Veronica Mars. I just love the lyric.
[tags]sports illustrated, canadiens, senators, the wire[/tags]

56.21%

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’m a liiiiiiiiiiittle tired this morning. Had to re-write a bunch of stuff last night, but luckily I read far enough ahead on Monday that I’m already caught up for today’s lecture(s). Looking at the schedule, and knowing what we know about the marking scheme, I’m not too worried about the workload that suddenly fell in our laps yesterday. It is what it is, and we didn’t sign up for this thing to be coddled. Giddyup.

.:.

If I read one more article talking how Tie Domi — who retired yesterday — was “fearless” or “never backed down from a fight,” I’ll lose it. I suspect that if you so much as mentioned Vladimir Malakhov’s name around him he’d curl into a ball and whimper.

[tags]workload, tie domi[/tags]

"no one understands the mindset of a volume shooter"

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OK…how much do I want to see The Descent?

Umm…very much.

It’s running an 87% rating on Rotten Tomatoes right now; not bad for what looked like a cheesy horror flick at first glance. I expect it’ll come down as none of the mainstream critics have rated it yet, but still…it looks reasonably scary, so I’m in.

.:.

There are days when I’m reminded why The Mighty MJD sports blog is one of my favourite sites on the whole interweb. Today is one of those days.

[tags]the descent, fuck alonzo mourning[/tags]

An apology in point form

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Sorry, I’ve been too busy to blog anything terribly interesting because:

  • The course I’m doing right now is killer. I was talking to a classmate today, and he concurred: the workload for this one is much, much heavier than anything else we’ve done. It’s interesting, but it’s time-consuming. I guess I was due for one of these; too many so far have been crazy easy.
  • It’s the summer. Days that aren’t hotter than the hubs of hell draw me outside.
  • Family’s been visiting, and family trumps blogging.
  • I seem to be reading (for fun, in addition to for school; I finally finished Cluetrain, Planet Simpson and No War: America’s Read Business In Iraq) again, not to mention finally putting a dent in our Zip queue.
  • Work is busy…not so much because I have impending deadlines, but because I feel a bit rejuvenated. It’s just as frustrating and bureaucratic as ever, but I seem more determined than ever to kick bureaucracy’s ass. I’ll let you know how that goes.

However, I can report some things that grabbed my eye today, but only in point-form:

Music:

  • I’m going to miss Asobi Seksu at the Horseshoe in September as I’ll be away on course. Frig.
  • There’ll be a new Trail Of Dead album in October.
  • The Mercury Prize shortlist has been announced, and I couldn’t give a toss about any of the finalists. The only one I liked at all is the Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan album, and even that wasn’t great.
  • The Weeds theme song next season will be sung by a different artist every week. Lined up so far: Death Cab For Cutie, Regina Spektor, Elvis Costello and Jenny Lewis. Cool. “Little boxes…”
  • The new Johnny Cash disc, American V…magnifique.

Movies:

Sports:

  • Bill Simmons has picked a favourite English Premiership League team. He settled on Tottenham Hotspur, because “If London was the Corleone family, Manchester United was Sonny and Arsenal was Michael, then the Spurs would be Fredo with a little more street smarts.” Brilliant.

Right, that’s it. Back to work for me.

[tags]cluetrain, planet simpson, no war, asobi seksu, trail of dead, mercury prize, isobel campbell, mark lanegan, weeds, johnny cash, clerks ii, lady in the water, arrested development movie, all your snakes are belong to us, bill simmons, tottenham hotspur[/tags]