Category: Sports

"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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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.

Where's Andrei Kovalev?

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Sorry, busy lately. Bad, bad blogger.

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Here’s why the Toronto Maple Leafs are just like the Republicans: they claim to be victimized, oppressed everyday joes who just want a fair break, when in fact they already get every break in the book. But by whining, bitching, moaning and crying foul at every given opportunity, they convince everyone that they’re the poor put-upon underdog and get preferential treatment. Witness the 12 minor penalties called against the Canadiens last night, including 7 in a row. The Leafs, meanwhile, got away with stuff like Bryan McCabe cross-checking Chris Higgins into the net, resulting in Higgins’ cheek smashing into Ed Belfour’s skate blade. No call, of course, and the Canadiens were called for another minor just when they were threatening to get close in the 3rd. Did the Canadiens deserve to win? Probably not. But when you’re playing your third game in four nights and the refs hand your opposition four power play goals on twelve chances, it’s pretty much impossible to pull one out. In general, the game was shit; the penalties called on the Leafs were equally ridiculous, just fewer in number.

Still on hockey, the Canadiens traded Jose Theodore to Colorado today. I, and every other Habs fan on earth, are remembering the last time Montreal traded their superstar goalie to Colorado and praying that history will not repeat itself.

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Two more basketball injuries, but nothing major. My big toe got cut last week — I think I broke the nail about midway down and it cut into the nail bed — and it got stepped on enough this week that I bled through another sock. I also pulled my tricep while working with a friend; I was pretending to guard her, slipped on the dusty floor and stumbled backward for a few steps…you know, those few seconds when you know you’re going to fall but just keep stumbling backwards, and it seems to last for an hour…anyway, I knew that I was about to run headlong into the wall so I kind of let myself fall, but my right arm kind of twisted as it bore the impact and I strained the muscle a bit. Still, I got it worked out before we started to play.

Some younger guys showed up with Miggles; they started off on fire, jumping all over the place and running up and down and just oozing energy…that lasted about 10 minutes. By the end of the night one of them looked like he needed oxygen…

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Wal-Mart, graduating from tacky to evil, has enlisted bloggers to say nice things about the company. They can all blow me, them and their little flying markdown happy faces.

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I’ve listened to the first 1/3 of the not-yet-released Fiery Furnaces disc Bitter Tea, and I fear what we have on our hands here is Blueberry Boat v2.0. It’s too bad; I had such fuckin’ hopes for us.

Beast Confessor

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A follow-up on yesterday’s post about the Enron documentary: Andy Fastow testified today that both Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were aware of all his funny business, and approved it.

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Hooray for eMusic. They had the new albums from both Mogwai and Neko Case (Mr. Beast and Fox Confessor Brings The Flood respectively) available for download today…and download them I did. Unless something goes really awry, I suspect both of these will end up on my year’s end top ten list.

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Even though I feel like ass, I’m playing basketball tonight. Gotta do somethin’; I’ve been a lazy, lazy man of late.

Low-tech

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Now that I have a short reprieve from economics, and I seem to have kicked my magazine habit, I’m enjoying reading an actual (gasp) book again. Not that I’ve strayed far from my school work; I decided to finally read Freakonomics.

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After my work computer mishap last week a colleague sent me a utility from Intel that would tell me whether my CPU was running hot. That’s handy, I thought, and brought it home. I installed it on my machine. Didn’t run it, mind you, just installed it. Some message flashed across my screen about “Now checking…” and then my screen went blank. The computer just froze up, and I couldn’t get it to come back. I believe the Intel utility may have given my BIOS the black plague. Sigh. I should’ve known better. And right now, I’m just disgusted enough with computers that I don’t even give a shit. I’ll fix it tomorrow; it’s sunny outside, so I’m going for a walk once the Raptors finish coughing up this game to the Nets.

[UPDATE: unplugging the computer for a minute and getting rid of the charge seemed to do the trick. Booted right up after that.]

Hey Mr. cab driver, can you take a look at my leg?

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I’m encouraged by this story in the Globe about Stephen Harper’s intention to talk about credentials for recent immigrants. There are entirely too many skilled professionals in this country who’re caught in a quagmire of bureaucracy, unable to work in their field.

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We tried Veda last night, the new Indian takeout place just up the street. Not very impressive at all; I tend to agree with Steven Davey’s review in Now. I mean, it’s pretty hard to mess up butter chicken, but it was pretty bad. Don’t think we’ll be going back. Trouble is, our local indian options are dropping off now that Banjara‘s closed up shop.

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The Olympic closing ceremonies might be more painful to sit through than the Oscars. Yeesh. Still, pretty exciting to see Vancouver get the handoff and get ready for their day in the sun. Or snow, as it were.

Own the podium

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Another event, another medal for Cindy Klassen (she finished third; Clara Hughes won the gold). Five medals in one olympics. Pretty incredible. Speaking of incredible, and speaking of Clara Hughes, not many people could win two medals in olympic cycling and two medals in speed skating.

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Still on incredible women: MacLeans talks to Neko Case. She loves her some Canada, and Canada loves her back.

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We’ve had a really easy winter so far here in Toronto. I can barely remember any sustained snowfall (certainly nothing like this storm in St. John’s; I hope they got all their curling-inspired partying over with before it hit!) and very few days of really numbing cold. Still, it’s been really grey and dreary, so I can’t wait for spring.

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The Raptors tanked another one today, blowing a 28-point halftime lead over the Mavs. Well, I guess they didn’t tank it so much as Dallas just caught fire from beyond the arc. Chris Bosh is good, but he’s just not as clutch as Dirk Nowitzki. Yet.

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Economics is almost done. One last bit of reading to do, and then one last assignment; if I finish it by the middle of next week, I’ll have three weeks off before the class starts. Good thing, too; I have a trip to New York and a ton of March Madness watching planned in there.