Category: Sports

Hoop dreams

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I just saw a clip on The Hour that freaked me out. It was about an autistic high school student in Rochester, NY named Jason McElwain who helps manage his high school basketball team. In the team’s last game of the year, with the large lead late in the game, his coach put him in the game, so that Jason could have a team jersey.

With four minutes left, the kid went six for seven from beyond the arc. SIX FOR SEVEN!!

Check out the video clips; you’ll see his teammates lose it every time he scores. And check out the quotes:

His coach: “I’ve had a lot of thrills in coaching. I’ve coached a lot of wonderful kids, but I’ve never experienced something like this ever in my life…I couldn’t stop crying.”

His mother: “This is the first moment Jason has ever succeeded and been proud of himself. I look at autism as the Berlin Wall. He cracked it.”

Wow. You can be cynical about a lot of things, but it’s hard to be cynical about that.

.:.

Via Spacing: Howard Moscoe wants condo developers building near subway lines to buy Metropasses for buyers. I think this is a great idea. In fact, I hope someone enforces it before we move into our building next year. 🙂

Russia 2, Canada 0.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

That’s it. Canada’s out. I could talk about how the referee fucked Canada in the last 5 minutes when he blew the whistle too quickly and Canada put the puck in the Russian net an instant later. I could talk about how stupid penalties — Bertuzzi’s and Pronger’s, both late in the game — killed the canadian chances. I could talk about how badly the defense — especially Chris Pronger and Bryan McCabe (in what little time he was actually on the ice) — played throughout the tournament. I could talk about how much the gambling scandal or Bertuzzi lawsuit might’ve distracted the team. I could talk about how the only players that actually looked good were Doan, Smyth, Richards, Sakic, Bouwmeester and Brodeur. I could talk about all that, but what it came down to was that the Canadians only managed to score a goal in one of their last twelve periods.

I wonder if this will set off a round of soul-searching like the loss at Nagano did.

Gold #4 [updated]

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

OK, how awesome was Chandra Crawford this morning when she won gold? Dancing on the podium, giving ecstatic interviews, getting mobbed by her teammates at the finish…she’s really become the face of the Canadian athletes at these games. Nellie pointed out that she’d make a good flag bearer at the closing ceremonies; unless Cindy Klassen wins another medal, I think she’s right.

[UPDATE] Klassen just won gold in the 1500m, her fourth medal. I think she’s got to be a lock for flag bearer now.

Thank god for Germany and Italy

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

It’s an unusual feeling, watching Canada suck at hockey. I guess this is how countries like Norway and Latvia have felt in the past when they played Canada, as if their team really shouldn’t even be in the same tournament as their opponent. Finland flat out dominated Canada today, in a way that Switzerland didn’t yesterday. The Swiss had a hot goalie; the Finns just beat Canada like a rented mule. Canada couldn’t get into the zone, iced the puck, went offside, lost faceoffs, lost footraces, gave pucks away, and so on, and so on. The Finns, meanwhile, were perfect; as much as I despise the trap for being the most boring hockey tactic ever devised, it wins games. And the Canadians couldn’t even string two passes together, let alone break the trap or win a dump-in. They deserved to lose. The only hope they have for a medal — any medal — is the famous Canadian ability to turn it on when it matters, but so far in this tournament they’ve not even been in the same league as a team like Finland.

The place is dead anyway

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Since Nellie’s sick, we’ve been laying low this weekend, which means we’ve watched lots of movies & recorded TV. Actually, because of her faux-OCD, Nellie’s holed up on the couch right now with the kleenex, her laptop and some downloaded Veronica Mars. But we’ve also watched:

  • XX/XY (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was something we’d never heard of, but IFC has been advertising it like mad. We both like Mark Ruffalo, so I recorded it. It wasn’t bad; a little whiny and self-interested maybe, but I’ve seen worse. I had to laugh at the tagline though: “There’s no room for honesty in a healthy relationship.”
  • Power & Terror: Noam Chomsky In Our Times (imdb | rotten tomatoes) was a Japanese documentary that just featured a couple of lectures and interviews with Chomsky shortly after the 9/11 attacks. It was interesting to hear his take on things when feelings were still so raw…he asked for perspective (“The best way to stop the practice of terrorism around the world is to stop participating in it…”) but also contradicted those proclaiming imminent doom by saying that, all in all, the world is a much better place than it was even 50 years ago, and *far* better than it was two centuries ago.
  • But I’m A Cheerleader (imdb | rotten tomatoes) started off as a pretty smart and biting satire about sexual mores, religion and politics, but ended up degenerating into a plain old girl-meets-girl love story. Meh.

.:.

I don’t get companies who treat their email address like a fax line. It’s not something you just check once a week, people. It’s a personal communication channel. You know, like a tel-e-phone? Catch up.

.:.

CBGB called us tonight from the pub around the corner and asked us to join. Since we hadn’t gotten off our asses all day, and since Nellie was feeling better, we did. They’d just left a chocolate-making class we gave CB for her birthday, and had loads of their own handiwork with them. We had chocolate-covered strawberries and truffles over pints of beer and nachos. Somehow it came up that they’d never seen Swingers (money, baby!) so we came back here to watch it. Then CB spilled tea on herself and we made her watch Family Business, which scandalized her. So not a good night for her.

.:.

And now: the NBA all-star skills competition. God bless the PVR.

Am I even awake?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Have I missed something? Who the hell is Neil Entwistle?

.:.

Canada loses 2-0 to Switzerland in men’s hockey. In other news, wood does NOT float.

.:.

If you’ve been watching CBC’s Olympic coverage at all, you’ve seen the ads for Yoplait Creamy yogurt. And you know that they are probably the most irritating commercials ever devised and set loose upon the world of man. Worse than the talking beavers. Worse than the McCain’s oeuvre. Worse than the horribly dubbed shampoo and deodorant commercials. Worse than Bad Boy. OK, maybe not, but…seriously. I’m thinking about PVR’ing the entire day so that I can skip the commercials and spare myself the pain.

.:.

Any now the guy who Cheney shot is apologizing to Cheney. It’s like I’m trapped in a nightmare of retarded news, commercials and hockey scores. He’p me.

Gender dysphoria, new-house euphoria and iambic pentameter

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Stupid Blogger…I tried to post this Saturday but it didn’t work, so it’s been sitting in a tmp file on my desktop for three days. Also: stupid me for forgetting about it.

.:.

We finally got to see Transamerica (imdb | rotten tomatoes) last night, which was a must-see before the Oscars given what we’d heard about Felicity Huffman’s performance. She lived up to the billing too; it must’ve taken an incredible effort to walk, move, act and react like a man who was trying desperately to become a woman. And for a woman to be confident enough in herself to take a role that requires you to play a man trying to look like a woman…that must be on the rare side in Hollywood. Good for her. If she doesn’t win the Oscar, something is seriously wrong with the academy.

.:.

CBGB moved into their new house today; we went over and had dinner with them. Couple of drinks too, to wind down the day and help GB forget about painting. We got Vietnamese from a nearby place called Mi Mi, which was pretty damn good…pork, shrimp & chicken, beef and chicken, some with rice, some with vermicelli. There were some spring rolls and sugar cane wrapped with shrimp and some other big salad roll-y things. Anyway, it was all good, especially when mixed with a Hacker Pschorr weiss bier.

.:.

Yay, Jen Heil. Boo, Atlanta Thrashers.

.:.

It’s funny how, despite studying Shakespeare throughout high school, it’s only recently that I’ve caught on to what iambic pentameter is.