Category: Sports

Unique in his recollection

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From the BBC: Bush ‘ordered intelligence leak’.

“US President George W Bush authorised the leak of secret intelligence to a newspaper to help defend the Iraq war, a former White House aide has said.”

Seriously. If you can’t impeach him for that, what can you impeach him for?

.:.

We’re off to Montreal tomorrow evening. I’ve only been there once before, about 13 years ago. My brother and I drove in, ate dinner, watched Montreal play Hartford (!) and left the city…thus, I do not remember a bit of it (short of Turner Stevenson’s wicked goal flying down the wing). We decided to take this weekend away before the New York trip came to be, but since we already had our flights and tickets for the Canadiens-Devils game this Saturday, we kept these plans as well. We’re staying at a very cool-looking boutique hotel in Vieux Montreal, and planning to just enjoy a city that is, by all reports, quite beautiful. Looking forward to it.

But first…another day of work. Rawk.

Muse Sick N Hour Mess Age

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Reading Toronto taunts us with the idea of a high-speed Toronto-Montreal train link that could do the trip in an hour. I’d go for that, especially since we’re facing a half-hour taxi ride and an hour wait in the airport this coming weekend for a flight that only last 75 minutes. If you get it down to an hour, or even two hours, it’d be worth people’s while to take the train, especially if they made wi-fi access free.

.:.

Varsity.co.nz lists the best and worst album titles of all time. My basketball-numbed brain can’t come up with anything worse (and it’s pretty hard to argue with “J to the LO” or “Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavoured Water”) but I think Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live by Explosions In The Sky should be on the ten best list. As should Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven by Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Basically, anything by a post-rock instrumental band.
[via Largehearted Boy]

.:.

If there’s one phrase I’d like to see stricken from common use, it’s “rap mogul“.

.:.

Barry Bonds, Barry Bonds…I don’t know. MLB must really be shitting their pants right now; if Bonds goes on a tear this year, or sticks around (and avoids suspension) for a few more years and breaks the home run record, how big an asterisk would they have to put next to that? I mean, if they put one on Roger Maris’ record ’cause he played a few extra games, how could they not put one next to a guy who’s provoked such controversy and outrage?

Six + six

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We did the Six Feet Under marathon yesterday, finishing the last episode of the series somewhere around 3:30 AM. I don’t want to say too much, as some people who read this haven’t yet watched the last season. I think Big Chris said it best when he said, “It’s been emotional.”

.:.

In between SFU episodes I managed to watch the Canadiens eliminate the Bruins from the playoff race. Even though this is their sixth straight win, they’re still only tied for 6th; I’m really hoping they can nail down the 6th spot so they can avoid the Senators or the Hurricanes in the playoffs, both of whom dominated them during the regular season. The team they’re tied with? The New Jersey Devils. Buying tickets for this Saturday’s game against them is looking luckier and luckier all the time.

15.6%

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The Canadiens beat the Penguins last night to jump into a 7th place tie with New Jersey. Jersey, by the way, lost to the Leafs. This was one game that I didn’t mind the Leafs winning.

.:.

Managed to get lots of exercise in last night. There were only three of us out shooting hoops, so we played bump. Many, many games of bump. Still managed to get my work done and head to the bar for a drink too. A good night, overall.

"Only people who'll remember this is us."

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We just finished watching Gunner Palace (imdb | rotten tomatoes), a documentary about an American field artillery unit who took over Uday Hussein’s old palace in Baghdad. It was a bit uneven and slow at times, but overall a pretty informative slice of (shitty) life for these guys and the Iraqis they deal with. The soldiers have to duck rocks, worry about IEDs and deal with the fact that no one back home will every understand what their time in Iraq was like. The Iraqi people get held at gunpoint, woken up in the middle of the night by soldiers and sent to prisons like Abu Ghraib without much evidence against them.

“I don’t think … anywhere in history has someone killed someone else and something better has come out of it. It’s just … not possible.”

Whatever you think about the war, you have to respect the soldiers for the work they have to do, and feel sorry for them when the situation sometimes pushes them over the line. Gunner Palace was a good look at a bunch of soldiers standing at the edge of it.

.:.

I also watched Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior (imdb | rotten tomatoes) this week. Dopey martial arts movie, but holy smokin’ Joe Kubek, that Tony Jaa is one bad-assed squeaky-voiced mofo. No effects, no digital tricks, no “bullet time”, just a little dude kicking and elbowing and jumping and kneeing his way through a whole raft of baddies, including one creepy voiceboxed chief. If you appreciate martial arts movies for the action and don’t mind the thin plot or dippy dialogue, pick this up.

.:.

The Canadiens all but eliminated the Leafs tonight, winning 6-2 after beating them 5-1 two nights ago. Atlanta lost, so Montreal moves back into the 8th playoff spot. The way things are going, the Montreal-New Jersey game we have tickets for in two weeks could be big indeed.

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Clubbed today: protestors in Minsk, baby seals.

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My old friend from university, Farm Boy (ironic that he got the name, since I grew up on a farm and he did not) visited today. He, his wife, Nellie and I had lunch downtown at the Irish Embassy and then caught up for a bit before they left to have dinner with his brother. They were enamored with the cats; who wouldn’t be?

Good. Bad. Fugly.

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Good: the Canadiens are beating the pants off the Leafs, 5-1 as I watch this (though the Habs just took a double-minor and the only way the Leafs can score is on the PP).
Bad: the Devils have blown their 3-goal lead to the Trashers — the team the Canadiens are chasing for the last playoff spot — and given up the go-ahead goal.

Fugly: Duke just lost to LSU because J.J. Redick couldn’t hit his shot, and the Blue Devils couldn’t play defense or box out in the final few minutes. This, I believe, shall throw a lot of NCAA pools into disarray.

Holy crapinaw!

Dan Dickinson

After years and years and years of waiting, Nellie’s wishes have finally been answered. Season one of The Young Riders has been released on DVD. I’m not kidding. She was squealing with joy as she opened the packaging.

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I’m watching the Leafs and Canadiens play on TSN. Even though the game’s in Montreal and TSN’s usually a fairly impartial network, it’s like watching the game in a Toronto bar ’cause Joe Bowen and Harry Neale are calling it.

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Just ordered our festival pass for Hot Docs. By the time I get back from my course next wek the lineup should be announced. I love Hot Docs; dollar for dollar it’s the best festival value in the city.

Arrrrrrgghhhhhjroijgoherjhjtohjore

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’ve been having problems with…Bell’s DNS servers, I guess, since I’m randomly unable to access websites that I know are there. Like this one. As I hit ‘publish’ after writing a great honking post. I’m not typing that shit up again, so I’ll summarize:

That is all. We’re off to New York tomorrow; don’t know how often I’ll be posting.

Come to Tsukuba. We're Number 53!!

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Today was one of those days when I just didn’t sit down long enough to do anything until about 4:00. Hence, I forgot to post to Girlfriend Du Jour, forgot to update my hockey and basketball pools (costing myself some points) and haven’t posted anything to my blogs (work-related or personal). But all four of my meetings were good, I got a pile of work done between 4:00 and 7:00 and I still got home in time to watch Montreal pound Boston.

.:.

Another by-city quality-of-life index. Toronto tied for 14th, Vancouver finished 3rd. Five Canadian cities finished in the top 25, but 3 Swiss and 3 German cities finished in the top 10. And as if I didn’t want to visit Geneva and Switzerland already, they finished 1-2.