This is *bleeping* Chai!

A while ago K and I – completely emotionally distraught with the lack of decent/cost effective Chai offered in our area – went on a quest to find a decent Chai recipe we could make at home. Five recipes and a lot of tinkering/testing later, this is what we found:

This is Fscking Chai!

1 tbsp fennel or anise seed.
9 – 12 green cardamom pods
18 cloves
1 and 1/2 cinnamon sticks
1/4″ ginger root, thin sliced
1/4 tsp black pepper corn
2 bay leaves
7(ish) cups of water

2 tbsp loose-leaf Darjeeling tea

5 tbsp honey or brown sugar
1 cup of milk

1) Add; fennel/anise seed, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, pepper, bay leaves and water into large pot and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes.

2) Remove from heat, steep for 10 minutes.

3) Add Darjeeling tea, bring to a boil.

4) Once boiling, turn down the heat and simmer for 5 minutes.

5) While stirring constantly, add honey/brown sugar and milk.

6) Serve and enjoy.

I like to tinker with the initial amount of water used. Partly because the burner we use on the stove likes to burn a little hot – the thing seems to have two settings, off or max. This recipe easily serves two with plenty of leftover liquid for seconds. You can also chill the excess and serve it over ice a little later. The pot included in the ingredients photo also has a strainer built into it, which is useful.

~J

Are Companies Desperate Yet? (Yes)

I’ve been wise to company hoop-jumping-tactics for a while now. Loyalty points, membership plans, “special selections” they’re all tools to ensure repeat business. TD used to hammer into our heads that if you can hook up a customer with 4 or more separate products, customers would likely stay with a company no matter what, because people are lazy. It’s too much work to transfer a chequing account, savings, brokerage account, credit cards and mortgages to another bank.

That’s their hook. Go far enough down the rabbit hole and eventually it’ll be too much work to get back to the top. Some people are comfortable with that. Fine, let them be comfortable with it.

However, never believe you’re special when a company tells you that you’re special.

This arrived in my mailbox on Friday:

Dear Mr. *name*

It’s great to get a break on interest rates. And that’s exactly what you’ll receive with this time-limited interest rate offer on purchased made between July 1 and November 30, 2009, available exclusively to selected TD Visa Cardholders, like you. Better still, you’ll have more purchasing power: your TD Visa credit limit was recently increased to $*amount withheld*.

Between July 1 and November 30, 2009, it pays more to use your
TD Visa Card on purchases more often!

You’ll automatically receive a low interest rate of just 8.9% on all purchases you make with your Card during this offer period. This is the ideal time to buy bigger-ticket items, such as electronics, appliances and furniture you’ve been considering. And, of course, your Card is great for day-to-day purchases, like gas and groceries.

The sooner you start using your TD Visa Card for purchases, the more interest you could save. As shown on the chart below, you could save money on interest with this special low interest rate, compared to other higher-rate credit cards.

I hope you’ll take advantage of the increased credit limit on your TD Visa Card. And remember, your special 8.9% interest rate starts automatically on purchases from July 1 and lasts until November 30, 2009. The sooner you make purchases, the more you could save on interest.

Questions? Please do not hesitate to call *number withheld* for more information.

Sincerely,
*name withheld*

PS: Don’t delay: This 8.9% interest rate is available only on purchases made with your TD Visa Card between July 1 and November 30, 2009. All you have to do is charge purchases to your Card: the special low interest rate is applied automatically.

Yep. That’s the letter exactly as it appears. Minus a graph and some small text on the bottom re-affirming everything said in the letter itself. (In big business nothing is official unless it’s repeated four times and once again in small text.)

Earlier this week I had a discussion with two co-workers about the professional writing hierarchy. We foolishly placed the poor fucks who write restaurant menu’s (Red Robin’s menu specifically in this case) for a living at the bottom. I’d like to amend that and place the poor bastard who was actually paid money to write the above shit at the bottom of the totem pole. I know as an unpaid blogger I’m not much better, but still. I’d like to think that even if I volunteered my time I could write something shorter and more informative.

I wouldn’t sell my soul to get into a position like that, but if I were working along side the person who wrote that gem, I’d have no problems with my job security.

More to the point is the offer itself. It could come from years upon years of building mistrust towards large companies, but anytime I see mail like this, I see it as a sign of weakness. “We need to coax you into spending more by convincing you that you need to spend money to save money so we can squeeze into our quarterly profit sales targets.”

When we buy into this bullshit. That’s where we lose our way. I need to spend more to save more? How is buying that item I don’t need going to save me money? Will those perceived savings enrich my life? No. They won’t.

We need to move past this concept of the society of debt. It didn’t work out for us. Game over! Start again? Sure! This time lets try a different strategy and see if that works.

I’m all growly and ranty tonight. Typically I’d run with it, but I’ll axe this here and leave you guys with a word of advice:

In the eyes of a large corporation, no one is special. Don’t let any company tell you otherwise. You are a dollar value. Your worth is measured in baseline profit. If there’s a chance that your spending will be reoccurring, a company will tell you what you want to hear. There’s a reason that companies toss that “The customer is always right” bullshit out there.

We’re in tough economic times and companies are not above begging you to spend if it means they get a slice.

A Healthy Dose of Update.

I’ve been away for a while. I let that three month test slide completely to the wayside. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It was meant as a test and take it from someone who ‘tests’ things all day, tests and built to be broken.

So if the test is a moot point, why no posts?

Truth is, I’ve been busy. Between the new job (which is amazing) and the hockey league (Back-up Hockey – equally as amazing) I haven’t had much time to dedicate to writing. At one point I even purchased a notebook with the intentions of using it at work during periods of long load times. I find myself mindlessly surfing the Internet and replying to emails while I’m waiting for the PS3 to load the game. Oh The Playstation 3, the bane of my existence. How Sony managed to pull off the 180 it did it still well beyond me. This is a system I will never own and never encourage my friends to own. I’ll reserve that recommendation for my enemies.

I’ll stick to PC gaming in the meantime. Not that I’ve been gaming much lately. Not in the traditional sense anyways. I consider my work in the BuHL to be gaming of sorts, only the game is played over several years and doesn’t usually require the instant feedback that most video games require. I’m patiently waiting for Starcraft 2 to make it’s gallant appearance over the horizon. Then I’ll dive headlong into non-work-related gaming once again.

Part of the reason for the silence lately has been the lack of real hockey news. I could just as easily rant about The Phoenix Coyotes and how despite losing an estimated 60 million dollars last season (that 1.42 million dollars lost per home game) Gary I’m-a-twat Bettman believes that hockey could survive in the desert. I have one comment about it, then I’ll drop the subject altogether. If the Coyotes were in Canada and the same scenario was put forward, the team would be moved to the USA.

I feel like I’ve been at my creative best since starting this job. Never have I been in a work environment where this much creativity was encouraged. Imagine every decent coworker you’ve ever had grouped in one place, doing something the majority of them enjoy. That’s Bioware. Companies like TD wish they were able to sustain the atmosphere and moral Bioware is able to maintain; and most of it comes from the dropping of the old “all about the profits” business model. Not in a “The halls are lined with thousand dollar bills” sense, but in the “A happy worker is a productive worker” sense. A concept that old method businesses don’t seem to be able to grasp. Or at least take seriously–

Blah, I’ve lost my train of thought.

Advice before I sign off: Find a job you like and never stop looking until you find it.

I Got Home And The Penguins Won The Cup.

Saw this one coming from a long ways off. Penguins win. Woo. I thought the conspiracy would come to a head on home ice in game six; but a game seven means more heat regardless of location. Suppose this is the beginning of a horrible run of unbridled popularity for the NHL. The Penguins will be likened to the Oilers of the 80’s. Bettman can bust his nut now; he got his “example” franchise and can now continue ruining our Canadian sport by insisting another one can be created in Phoenix. The torch has been passed and the Penguins – along with the rest of the NHL – are about to become the poster children for the American dream.

I still have respect for Crosby, Malkin and company, they are good hockey players, but the attention those guys are about to receive for the next (prediction) five years, is going to be insufferable. It’s enough to make me turn to the KHL for a few seasons and wait out the storm. Let them play, let us enjoy the sport. Leave out the product pimping and name dropping bullshit. I’m sure I’m jaded because I’m already sold on the concept of the NHL. But for long time fans, it’s annoying to be bombarded with the same monotonous bullshit day in and day out about the face of hockey and the strongest names in sport. It’s the corporate crap I’m against. Gatorade sponsorships. I bet Crosby moves to Schick and we see hundreds of new Reebok ads.

Now that this has happened and there’s a fresh new bandwagon for everyone to jump on and that franchise is going to be milked for every dime it’s worth. Hell, the only reason it didn’t happen with the Wings is because by the time that ‘branding’ became the big thing in marketing, the Wings bandwagon was already well formed and stuck in their ways.

I’m not going to be talking about hockey for a while, so I’ll leave off on this comment. I do not feel bad for Marian Hossa. He makes millions of dollars to play hockey. It’s a physically demanding job with a chance of injury, but it’s a dream job. He makes millions of dollars to play a sport he loves to play. No sympathy. Get millions of dollars and try again next year. Repeat for fifteen or so years, retire, relax at home. I know people who work on the oil patch, and are put into potentially life threatening situations several times a year who would give their left foot to be in his situation.

I need to talk about something else.

Started my new job, quality control for BioWare. Task right now is to play through a video game. My boss coined it like this, “This is going to seem weird and when I tell you I want you to do nothing else, I mean it. For the next two weeks you are to play through Dragon Age. And. Nothing. Else. Don’t focus on breaking the game yet, just play. I don’t want any of you coming to me at the end of the first week asking for things to do because you feel guilty about this.” Today I ran around stabbing things, slaughtering enemies and stealing anything not bolted to the floor. I gotta say, if you liked Neverwinter Nights you are going to like this game.

I know it’ll turn into a job eventually, but it’s nice to be able to take a step back and be able to say that I contribute to something I’ve enjoyed doing my entire life.

Short post tonight, I wanted to push out my thoughts while they were still fresh in my head. I’ll try to have a more elaborate post up sometime during the weekend.

~J

Wait, I lied, one more hockey note. Gonchar gets a huge nod of respect for running to the dressing room to be alone with his daughter away from all the crowds and excitement. As soon as the Cup photo was taken, he disappeared from the ice. A nice and private celebration.

I had a dream last night. (but it looked unlike a dream)

With month two of the three month project now completed, here’s where we stand:
Posts: 17 (+7 from last month)
Tags: 64 (+8 from last month)
Comments: 15 (+7 from last month)
Busiest Day: 25 (Record is still 28)
Slowest Day: 1 (May 27th)
Total Views: 640 (+359 from last month)

Random search related traffic is starting to show up and the average numbers per day are picking up. The darndest thing thus far is how much random traffic has been generated by my Penguins’ conspiracy theory. It’s nice and validating to know that I’m not the only one who believes the NHL playoffs are rigged.







Kate and I were celebrating our third anniversary by going to see Rancid play an all ages show at Rexall place, the house was packed with fans and punks alike. The Penguins were up by four goals in the second period and Don Cherry had announced his retirement. The Oilers’ championship banners hung triumphantly, only being periodically harassed by a cloud of foil birthday helium balloons that had been released into the air to reflect the lazer light show that cut through the mist. The opening band rocked, the sound was great and a wonderful brawl broke out four rows down from us. *

How do I go about amending that with the truth?

The Penguins were never up four to nothing against the Wings. Despite my best efforts to watch the game on a big screen TV situated in one of the press boxes on the other side of the arena, I could only make out Osgood and one of the frequent close ups of Crosby. I was able to follow the major camera angles, rushes and back checks, but couldn’t pick out a single Penguin against the while ice. I did manage to pick out Don Cherry during one of the TV breaks. It’s awful irony to go to an NHL arena to watch a concert and while there attempt to watch a hockey game that’s playing on a screen over 300 feet away.

Turns out that the Penguins didn’t win. Don Cherry hasn’t announced his retirement. The Wings are up 3-2 in the series. I consider that a wash. Penguins will win on home ice to force game seven and Detroit fans packed into Joe Lewis Arena will be forced to witness the ‘passing of the torch’ first hand. The media will have a field day of “I told you so’s.”

Rexall wasn’t packed, faces were illuminated, there were no torches. Of all the cellphones being used during the show, you could be assured that for every ticket sold, friends who couldn’t make it were receiving text messages or tweets/tweetpics, likely in the following order:

“OMG, I can’t believe it. I get to see Rise Against!!!!111one”

“EEE chk out this foto!”

“Ungh, Rancid has been on forever, git off the stage. Kthxbai.”*

“OMFG! Rise Against is about to take the stage. SQUEEE!”

“Dood spilt is beer on me, WTF!”

“This show rox’s!”

“Encore! Encore!”

I understand the luxury of having instant communication at your fingertips. It was by looking over someone’s shoulder that I thought the Penguins were up by four goals. What I don’t understand is the overwhelming desire to check the phone in the middle of a concert. I don’t mean taking photos, that’s kosher. People want to document the show for their own memories or to share with other people, fine. But why on Earth would you want to pay 70+ dollars for a seat, 5+ dollars for a drink and 10+ dollars for popcorn just so you can sit in a stadium seat and text to your friend/twitter about the show? Or check your Facebook. I have the same beef with people who do it during movies. Why? It makes no sense to pay to see something and stay glued to your fucking phone. The people on the other end can wait. Facebook will be there when the show is over.

Maybe it’s an over refined sense of self entitlement, “I paid good money for this seat! I can do what I want while seated in it.”

Come to think of it, given the generation gap between the bulk of true Rancid fans and Rise Against fans, I would bet dollars to dimes that the Rise Against fans were the ones on their phones. On our quarter of the stadium, I counted at least 90 phones – or little glowing faces. That doesn’t mean that the fans were trying to be overtly rude to the artists, I bet the notion never crossed their minds. It’s probably never been strictly taught that when someone is performing, you give them your undivided attention.

Of course that’s tough when the sound of the venue was god awful. Kate and I were sitting around the same spot for the Meatloaf show and he sounded much better. I blame the soundmen. Why? Because I remember several of my Live Audio classes at CATO being specifically dedicated to making stadium venues sound good. There’s a science behind it that any audio guru should know before tackling a venue like that. Nevermind the fact that punk shows notoriously don’t hold up against their pop counterparts in stadiums.

The whole Rise Against/Rancid show could be summed up with one brilliant* Rise Against lyric, “We’re okay until the day we’re not.” Or with the cheer of one emphatic Rancid fan as he left Rexall Place for the evening, “Rise Against sucks, Rancid fucking rules.”

~J


Advice Content: Turn your cellphone to vibrate, place it on top of your gentiles and watch the fucking show you paid to see. At least with the phone down there, you can get extra pleasure when your friends attempt to contact you.

* – The aforementioned ‘brilliant’ lyric is not brilliant, that was meant in a jest of sarcasm. I wanted to be perfectly clear on that.

* – There was no lazer light show, but there were helium filled foil birthday balloons floating around, I have no idea why. There was almost a brawl right in front of us, about four rows ahead. Sadly nothing was able to materialize before the cops hauled the fighting parties away for the remainder of the show.

* – kthxbai, the most annoying piece of garbage netspeak to ever evolve out of lazy language. People who causally toss this gem out in IM’s or chatrooms should be shot. With a shotgun. At close range. Flechette rounds. Then have sulfur poured on their wounds and left for the vultures.

It Gives Me Great Pleasure To Announce:

How many of you have fallen victim to the above comic? It’s a great laugh, “Heh, you got me, I do play a lot of video games” “Yeah, I prefer to influence the images I see on the TV or computer as opposed to just sitting and watching”. It’s all in good fun and fortunately the novelty eventually wears off, but behind every fun poke lays a grain of truth. The comic will disappear for a couple of years until someone clever comes across it and connects the dots. Thank-you Gary Larson.

Being a product of the Super Nintendo Age – before playing video games was cool among the sorts of asshats that used to pick on me for playing them – this comic was pointed out to me several times during my youth. I’m sure others experienced the same fate.

So on behalf of everyone who has ever fallen victim to that comic, it gives me great pleasure to send out the following .gif :

2009 NHL Stanley Cup Finals Prediction: Penguins have Wings.

I don’t hate Sidney Crosby. I know I’ve mentioned him a few times and if you’ve ever talked to me in person, you’d know I don’t always paint him with the nicest brush. Allow me to clarify my position. He’s a good hockey player, playing with Geurin seems to have lightened him up a little, I’m sure off the ice he’s one hell of a stand up guy! Or at least that’s what Tim Horton’s would have you think. What I’m not a fan of is how he’s shoved down our throats by the NHL and all the associated marketing brands. That’s where the irritation lies. He’s the poster child and new face of a younger faster NHL. Just let the kid play hockey and enjoy his impending Stanley Cup win.

So I’m sitting at .500 with my predictions this spring. A few surprises, a few obvious calls. My prediction for the finals should be as easy as calling Mike Keenan’s firing from Calgary. The real prediction will be where he ends up next. Minnesota? Maybe. Who knows. Maybe Colorado, if they chuck Tony Granato.

Flash, all the way back in time to the year 2008. The Pittsburgh Penguins had just beaten the Flyers in 5 and the Wings took it to Dallas in 6. The victors were set to meet each other in the finals.

Last time, it was Red Wings in 6. This time? The great conspiracy will come true, Penguins in 6.

~J

Short post this time. I’ve been busy. If things go well today, I’ll have a longer, better written, non-hockey post up shortly.

And Now For Something Completely Different

“It was only by going to Princeton that I realized that no one understands The Wasteland. That James Joyce was unintelligible, even to my professors. And, that graduates like Donald Rumsfeld, don’t know how to fight a war. So –”

“No, no, no no, sir. They don’t know how to *win* a war. There’s a difference.”

“You’re right, you’re right.”

“We wouldn’t have the war without that man.”

“A lot of my classmates were on the board of Lehman Brothers too. I wouldn’t consider them overeducated. Loaning money too people who don’t have any. It’s very possible to be undereducated.”

- An exchange between Walter Kirn and Stephen Colbert on May 19th. Kirn, promoting his new book “Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever”

Back when I was young, spry, full of piss and vinegar. I wanted to go here: University of Beppu, the plan was eventually to go for a Bachelors of Science in Marketing, come back home, fully cultured and ready to use my education to manipulate the masses into buying whatever product my employer hired me to push on my fellow man.

The school was exotic and renown on the Asian side of the Pacific rim, at the time I had a keen interest in Japanese culture and was learning to speak the language. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it) my interest in Japanese culture was horribly thrashed by little Otaku Fan Girls who overused the term “Kawaii”, wore over-whored schoolgirl uniforms, feverishly loved horrible versions of the Final Fantasy series and had an unhealthy addiction for Bubble Tea. I have a theory that Bubble Tea is prepping young women for lives of sexual deviance, but this isn’t the place or time. And I couldn’t reasonably afford to go to this illustrious school without a boat load of scholarships and student loans. Oh yeah, not to mention the Passport requirements, Student Visa and overall living costs. I don’t think a few of my grades were high enough either. I was a great Arts/English/Computer student, but force me to do complex mathematics and I’ll fail quicker than the Maginot Line. I realize that’s odd to hear from a person who has worked a bank and has an interest in finance, but for some reason financial numbers make sense to me. All and all, not going made a lot more sense than going.

Since, what could be dubbed, “the good old days” I’ve taken a keen interest in marketing and how products are sold to the general public. There are people who have built careers around peddling products to a society who doesn’t necessarily need ‘em. I find that fascinating, if only because of the wild divide between quality advertising and crap.

Originally, this blog was going to be a place to sit all those horrible little advertisements down and ask them a few questions, for example:

Dear Apple,

Why do you feel the need to lambast Windows Vista for being unreliable? Do you really need to depict a PC user transporting himself ahead in time to see if they’ve fixed Vista’s freezing problems? Or show legal text every time a PC user claims that a PC is flawless. Yes, they made a bad operating system. Move on. Apple, do you even remember the 90’s? You know, that decade of fuck up after fuck up? Remember the iMac G3? The computer without a fan. Remember every operating system before Mac OSX?

The continual attack ads against windows, no matter how simple and cute, comes across as horribly smug. Yes, at the moment you make a wonderful product. You have your chief competition on its heels and failing to copy your products. But what’s going to happen when Windows 7 comes charging through the door and kicks the hell out of your Operating System? Is the marketing strategy going to become all about the history of perseverance and loyalty? Are you going to continue comparing apples and oranges until you no longer feel you have this fictitious upper hand?

Suggestion, let Justin Long go back to his acting career and bring out a new ad campaign that highlights the superior features of the computer, instead of trying to mindlessly shit on the competition.

- Jack.

Basically open ended letters to companies picking apart their commercials and questioning the message they’re paying top dollar to push on the consumer. I actually have a load of companies I want to write letters too. I might end up doing that for a while. Who knows, I may even mail off a couple of these letters.

Why mention this now? I received a piece of feedback that talking hockey all the time was a little boring. Or, ‘dry’. (Thanks Dad, hehe) Plus, with the NHL off-season on its way, I’m going to need to focus on blogging about something else between Free Agency and The Draft.

Not to mention it’ll be good practice to break free from the sports mould and write about other things.

~J

Advice Content: Apple Inc, stop with the “I’m a Mac” ads, before something horrible happens and suddenly the ’smug middle class market’ finds something else to be smug about and forgets your product.

2009 NHL Conference Finals: The Great Penguin Conspiracy

This is turning into the playoffs I can’t win. Or lose. So far, I’m 50.50 on my bets. I was one overtime glove save away from being ahead, but alas, you can’t stop them all. I could lament the fantastic breakdown that was Vancouver, but I’ll cut right to the chase.

The East:

4. Pittsburgh Penguins vs. 6. Carolina Hurricanes

I have this theory. Partly based around the fact that I believe Gary Bettman is decidedly Anti-Canadian. Before anyone comes to his defense and cries that he didn’t move Ottawa, Edmonton or Vancouver during their rough times, I’d like to point out that there’s a large difference between being Anti-Canadian and a stupid businessman. Gary is not a stupid businessman. The Canadian hockey market is a lock, we spawned the sport, we love the sport. The six teams we have in the NHL at the moment distribute our NHL exposure evenly enough to ensure that every Canadian is within some decent shot of a franchise. Exceptions being Atlantic Canada and the Territories. Maybe Manitoba and Saskatchewan. He did also move franchises from Winnipeg and Quebec, with what now looks like very little thought – when you compare their relocation against the controversy generated by a possible Coyote relocation.

No Canadian team has won a Stanley Cup while under Gary’s tenure as commissioner. He started his job in February of 1993 – midway through the last season a Canadian team took home lord Stanley. Montreal. Since then, every Canadian team has had a decent crack, exception being Toronto, and has lost to an American team in a weak hockey market. Carolina a team notorious for attendance problems, has had those problems taken care of ever since they beat Edmonton a few years back. The same goes for Tampa and Anaheim when they won their respective cups. All of those teams experienced large jumps in attendance season after they won the cup. Only New York had a solid attendance base when they beat Vancouver in 1994.

Gary Bettman has gone on record stating several times over that the Penguins are the model franchise. They have rebounded from their lowest attendance average 11,877 in ‘03-’04 (the year Malkin was drafted) and clawed back from bankruptcy. With the addition of Sid the you-see-him-everywhere Kid and a bunch of other youth, the Penguins were due for the same pop they received when they drafted Jaromir back 1990. A new arena with 2,000+ extra seats to fill due in 2010. It only seems logical that there’s going to be a push in the direction of the Penguins. Penguin merchandise, Penguin commercials, Penguin pride, Penguin hype.

I’ll put it this way, skill alone didn’t push the Penguins past the Capitals. There was something about game six and seven that was a major tell in favour of Pittsburgh. The Capitals star players didn’t play like themselves. Ovie was listless and he’s a guy who rarely takes a shift off. Varlamov let in goals that were completely uncharacteristic for him, even for a bad game. Washington played without the energy of knowing they were potentially one game away from the Conference Finals and anything is possible. Sure it’s crushing for Capitals fans, but a game seven loss was the only way to ensure that the series ended on a win/win. Gary gets to watch his prized franchise march to the conference finals, while still showcasing the grit and flash of a series against the new number 2 franchise in the East. Washington gets to end their season on a positive note, tinker with the roster a little and lose to the Penguins in the conference finals 2010. In the meantime, smart gamblers have a nice lock for the next few seasons.

To paraphrase the late Hunter S. Thompson: “The Kentucky Derby is fixed, Boxing is fixed, The NFL is fixed, why not the NBA?” and I’m positive the same could be said for the NHL.

Penguins in 7.

As depressing as it is to admit, with Boston out, the Penguins are now my logical favourite to win the Cup. If they face the Red Wings in a rematch of last years playoffs, a Penguin win will signal a changing of the guard from the ‘Old NHL’ to the ‘New NHL’ – and a horrible screw job for Marian Hossa. A Blackhawks/Penguins final will be a rematch of 1991-92. Pittsburgh took that one in four. The media probably wouldn’t attack it like that, instead they’ll comment that in the ‘New NHL’ every team has a chance regardless of experience level. Everything has been opened up.

Chicago/Pittsburgh is possibly the best finals match up the NHL can hope for. The Red Wing era can end when they’re beaten by Chicago, leaving two franchises that were dealing with low attendance and possible bankruptcy to battle it out for the Stanley Cup and further the NHL’s march into the USA sports market.

The West:

2. Detroit Red Wings vs. 4. Chicago Blackhawks.

I telegraphed my prediction for this one already. Chicago in six. Osgood will be blamed for the loss, prompting a rebuilding process in Detroit.

This is one of the first times I hope my predictions are wrong. I hope everything that lines up perfectly in my head is nothing more than a mental flash bang; and Gary Bettman doesn’t have his finger on the trigger, telegraphing the playoffs for financial and market gain.

All I’m sure of is that Canadians will have to wait yet another year, while we have this Steel City franchise unfairly shoved down our throats for. In the off season, Sid and Malkin will sign a bunch of sponsorship deals that will ensure we see their faces and the Penguins logo plastered everywhere.

Canadian hockey is going to have to rely on looking forward to the Olympics and International Tournaments, because as far as the NHL is concerned, we have nothing to look forward to for a couple of years.

~J

Advice: When you’ve followed a sport your entire life, spice things up by connecting seemingly invisible dots and coming up with crazy conspiracies.

335 in 5 and Turn Off the Damn Blackberry!

So it was a real-time message. That meant it was either from Hal himself or someone aboard Leonov. There was no perceptible time lag; the origin had to be right here.

     Then who was speaking to me?

     I WAS DAVID BOWMAN.

Floyd stared at the screen for a long time before making his next move. The joke, which had never been funny in the first place, had now gone too far. It was in the worst possible taste. Well, this should fix whoever was at the other end of the line.

     I cannot accept that identification without some proof.

     I UNDERSTAND. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU BELIEVE ME. LOOK BEHIND YOU.





A lot has happened since the last time I wrote in here. My prediction about Franzen rattling Hiller seems to have come true. The Bruins have fallen apart, but are showing late signs of life. The Canucks are on the brink of falling into another late season breakdown. Canada couldn’t solve Bryzgalov in Berne and had to settle for Silver. The wound on my ankle is healing up nicely. I’ve seen two ‘blockbuster’ summer movies. And I’ve read Arthur C. Clarke’s 2010: Odyssey two from cover to cover.

The last of which is the most remarkable of the bunch. Star Trek, a close second, Abrams is a genius. I’m not much of a reader. Wait, that’s a lie. I read a lot, daily, but I never read novels. I read blogs and other things I come across online. I rarely have the time to sit down and read a good old paperback. Wait I lie again, it’s not that I don’t have the time to read a paperback, its that I’ve surrounded myself by consistent stimulation. I’ve made it difficult for myself to take the time to focus on the printed word. Also, I rarely find something interesting enough to warrant shutting everything down and focusing solely on it. World War Z was successful. Hey Rube was moderately successful, the great thing about collections of articles is that they’re quick and don’t usually require a long term of focus. A lack of continuing storylines makes it easy to put them down. Other than that, it’s rare when a book actually steals enough focus to tear through 335 pages in 5 days. I know many of you must be thinking “I’ve read through books quicker.” Hell, so have I, but not in a long time and very rarely that enthusiastically. There’s something about the romance and mystery of space that made this book a page turner.

I won’t dare touch the movie. I don’t know if I could stomach watching a movie done in the mid 80’s by the same director who has brought us gems such as Time Cop and The Musketeer (2001). With 2001: A Space Odyssey being one of my favourite movies, I’m afraid that it might be spoiled by the non-Kubrick sequel. Fun fact: Kubrick’s professional directorial debut was the movie Flying Padre, financed by RKO, a company noted for the original King Kong and Citizen Kane another two movies I fancy quite a bit.

Directing has been on my mind a lot lately after seeing two widely contrasting examples of how the movie making craft should be approached. I’m talking about X-men Origins: Wolverine and Star Trek. One of these two movies had the directorial due care and attention worthy of a summer epic. The other was trite with clichés and needless overhead shots of leading men screaming into the sky. Honestly, can anyone tell me they take a movie seriously when it uses the same set up and camera pans three times in the first two acts? I’m not a director, yet. And I’ll probably never have the task of presenting my take of a popular franchise to the masses. But I – the undereducated – acknowledge that there are certain things you need to avoid when directing a film. That’s why I respect Abrams so much, he trying to figure out new ways of storytelling and presenting it to an audience. Gavin Hood, not so much.

Holding two of the emotional high points of the movies against one another; the beginning of Star Trek against the end of the first act of Wolverine, it’s obvious which director looked at the script long and hard, then came up with a way to tug at the heart strings of the audience. Both movies attempted to showcase the emotional moment that is the driving force behind the character’s quest for revenge – or other motivations. The point is, I fucking hated Eric Bana’s character because of the emotional beginning to the story, I could empathize with Kirk’s disposition throughout the entire movie. Where as I could care less about the reasoning behind Wolverine’s rampaging quest to avenge a death. All because there was a poor emotional connection in the initial presentation.

I wonder what Zack Snyder would have done with Wolverine. I’ve gone on record lambasting his remake of Dawn of the Dead before settling that it was merely an interpretation, a poor one, but an interpretation of a classic. I’m of the mind that zombies can’t run, hearing George Romero debate on the subject during a 2004 Toronto ComiCon sealed that deal for me. But Snyder won me over with Watchmen , Wolverine could have stood as the tie breaker. On another plane of existence maybe. Now I’ll never know.

Of course, it could always come down to control. For all I know Fox could have pulled an Avi Arad and gone Spider-Man 3 on Mr. Hood.* Maybe Mr. Hood didn’t want to include those cliché’s, but was pushed into it by an executive number-cruncher who was completely and utterly convinced that the audience loves screaming-to-the-sky-overhead-pan-shots. The bean counter could have purchased marketing data from a information mining cellphone company and found that the scream-to-the-sky shot was the camera angle most texted about by the movie’s key demographic.

Of course if that key demographic could get off their phones, we might not have these problems. I don’t want to blame bad directing on in-theatre cellphone usage, but it certainly detracts from the experience. At very least, there’s a remote connection between using your cellphone during a movie and poor directing. I’m sure it’s funny to the parties involved to relay some of the witty thoughts about a movie, during the movie. But while that healthy little white glow that reflects off your face while you’re giggling in self satisfaction and documenting the clever commentary your brain has produced. The people who are trying to enjoy the movie behind you are being distracted and more importantly irritated. I’m sure that some of them might even be thinking of horrible the things they could do to you with the potential weapons they carry on them.

It’s Jim Balsillie’s fault. If the MO for Research in Motion hadn’t changed from securing the business market to reaching into the consumer market with what I can only imagine are amazing smartphones, we might not have this problem. If RIM didn’t push into the public marketplace with a superior product, none of the other companies would have had to pour money into R&D to catch up. The few kids who are hardcore enough to own a Blackberry wouldn’t be able to text their witty comments mid-movie to their friends sitting on MSN at home. They’d have to rely on their memory and wait until the end like the rest of us movie critics. (Don’t get me wrong, using a cellphone before a movie is fine, so long as it’s put away when the opening credits roll. Preferably during the previews.)

So Mr. Hood, you’re lucky. Balsillie will take the blame this time. As a reward for Balsillie’s foresight, Mr. Bettman give him a goddamn NHL franchise already. He sacrificed himself to give Gavin Hood the cinematic equivalent of a mulligan and an energetic new franchise owner in an already large hockey market might spice things up in the NHL a little.

~J



Advice: Turn off the Blackberry (or other smart-phone device) when in the midst of a movie. Whoever you’re texting can wait.



* – For those of you who don’t know the story behind that one. Raimi originally wanted to develop a Sandman film, but was convinced otherwise by the producer to introduce Venom as a marquee villain, citing his popularity. Which is why SP3 has a well developed sympathetic Sandman and a poorly done Venom who seems like he was added as an afterthought. Sadly, the movie did really well at the box office. Even sadder, Venom is dead, which cuts off Spider-man’s most memorable villain Carnage without some really clever writing, outright continuity breaking or a complete series restart.