Potential bred

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The Toronto star does a little metareporting today, listing the Canadian CDs that have scored 80 or better on Metacritic this year. No surprises, really.

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Forgot to mention this last night when writing about the Habs-Leafs game. Darcy Tucker was dirty when he played for Montreal, but I think he now holds the unofficial title of dirtiest player in the NHL. The Leafs, as a whole, pretty much have the title locked up as a team as well — having cheap-shot hacks like Tie Domi and Luke Richardson on your team and whining about the refs after every game will do that — but Tucker may be the worst. Last night, as they were getting pounded, Tucker decided to throw an elbow at Alexei Kovalev and clipped him in the forehead. Kovalev isn’t a fighter by any means, but rather is the Canadiens’ most talented offensive player. He isn’t, however, small or week (unlike Mike Ribeiro, who Tucker had decided to jump earlier in the game) so two minutes later as he skated toward the corner — being lined up by Tucker for another hit — he skated into Tucker…elbow first.

I don’t normally like such plays, but the refs hadn’t called Tucker’s elbow attempt, and the little shit was determined to hurt somebody…so Kovalev did something about it. Tucker wasn’t hurt — he got up started punching Kovalev — so there was little harm done, but I honestly think thatbacked the Leafs down enough that the game didn’t spiral completely out of control. That loss practically eliminated them from the playoffs, and they seemed hell-bent on taking out the their frustration on the Canadiens.

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I’m off to my course in about an hour. Posting will probably be sporadic, or at least limited mainly to whining about how the week is going. These courses are usually a little better in that you don’t work until midnight or 1 AM every night, and I haven’t seen my classmates in four months now, so I’m kind of looking forward to this one a bit. That said, by Tuesday I’ll be more than ready to come home. 🙂

"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?

Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Ends.

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Busy day. Got to work around 7:30 and left around 7:00. I can’t really remember doing anything major today, just a pile of little things. Seems like that’s all I can get done anymore. I’m thinking about booking a small room for myself one afternoon every week…no email or phone, just a notepad and a pen and my brain.

Anyway, it was partly busy ’cause I’m away all next week. Course number…6, I think. A friend of mine from university is coming into town tomorrow, and I have about 10 other things on the go, so I have lots to do between now and Sunday morning.

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I just pre-ordered the fifth season of Six Feet Under. Good thing Nellie has her Young Riders nostalgia to keep her occupied, otherwise I don’t think she could keep her mitts off the SFU discs until I get home.

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I’ve been pretty silent on music & movies lately. This is what I’ve bought in the last month or so:

  • Living Things . Ahead Of The Lions
  • Cat Power . The Greatest
  • Rogue Wave . Descended Like Vultures
  • Trespassers William . Having
  • Mogwai . Mr. Beast
  • Neko Case . Fox Confessor Brings The Flood

I also have new albums from Ben Harper, Gomez, the Fiery Furnaces and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs in my ‘inbox’ waiting to be reviewed. The new ones from Clearlake, Magneta Lane, Rainer Maria and Beth Orton are on my wishlist.

As far as movies that are still out in Toronto that I want to see:

  • Ask The Dust
  • Beowulf & Grendel
  • Cache
  • Inside Man
  • Match Point
  • Tristram Shandy: A Cock And Bull Story
  • V For Vendetta
  • Why We Fight

The movies coming up this spring/summer that I really want to see: American Dreamz, Flight 93 and X-Men 3.

How to spot a baby conservative

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You know that any article starting off like this is going to get mentioned on this blog:

“Remember the whiny, insecure kid in nursery school, the one who always thought everyone was out to get him, and was always running to the teacher with complaints? Chances are he grew up to be a conservative. At least, he did if he was one of 95 kids from the Berkeley area that social scientists have been tracking for the last 20 years. The confident, resilient, self-reliant kids mostly grew up to be liberals.”

Mr. Levitt? Mr. Dubner? Anything to add?

[via The Toronto Star]

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.

.:.

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.

A damnable doctrine

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I was listening to an old episode of Alan Cross’s Ongoing History Of New Music podcast, in which he talked about the cocktail party effect.The Wikipedia article talks about recognizing one voice in a crowded room, but Alan talked about being able to recognize a song playing on a stereo, even in a very crowded and noisy room (like a bar). My brother and I have always been really good at this, to the point where I can sometimes name songs that no one else hears. I could never understand why that was; do my brother and I just subconsciously listen for music in the background? Could be. Do we happen to know way more songs than most people and therefore recognize something? I doubt it; I know a lot of songs but I’ve been in bars with people who know as many or more and who didn’t hear what I heard. Are some people better at “source separation” than others? I have no idea. Maybe I’m like Bruce Willis in unbreakable and this is my superpower. ‘Cept not-so-super.

Does anyone else do this? Identify songs from hearing one or two measures here, a couple of notes there, scattered in the background of a noisy bar? Is it that no one can do it? Or that no one but us music obsessives tries?

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Salon has an interesting interview with Edward O. Wilson about “why we’re hard-wired to form tribalistic religions, denies that ‘evolutionism’ is a faith, and says that heaven, if it existed, would be hell.”

“Possibly the greatest philosophical question of the 21st century is the resolution of religious faith with the growing realization of the very different nature of the material world. You could say that we evolved to accept one truth — the religious instinct — but then discovered another. And having discovered another, what are we to do? You might say it’s just best to go ahead and accept the two worldviews and let them live side by side. I see no other solution. I believe they can use their different worldviews to solve some of the great problems — for example, the environment. But generally speaking, the difficulty in saying they can live side by side is a sectarianism in the world today, and traditional religions can be exclusionary and used to justify violence and war. You just can’t deny that this is a major problem.”

It’s good readin’. It also reminds me why I’m eternally grateful to my parents for making me read and think, as opposed to memorize and recite.

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[bragging uncle] My nephew, who’s 6, finished second in his age range in a chess tournament last week. [/bragging uncle]