Whoops! And, Things That Are Awesome June 8, 2007

I sort of forgot about this blog. I’ve been blogging once a week at work (which is where I learned to do that tidy linking trick! Sweet), and that’s been taking up most of the original thoughts I have. (Yes, I only have two original thoughts per week. Sue me.) Anyway, sorry for the disappearance, Calvin, my lone friend and reader! I hope you had a great Western road swing.

I’ve realised that I think about things that make me cranky too much. I’ve been feeling really tetchy lately. So I’ve decided to make this blog a compendium of Things I Find Awesome. Every day, I see at least one thing that makes me grin or laugh or think, “Gosh, that is so NEAT,” and I’d like to share those snippets with everyone instead of complaining all the time. Maybe some days I’ll need to complain, but for now, I’d like to try to stick with the Awesome stuff. I’ll try to put up at least one thing every other day.

To kick start this new theme, I present two things I’ve really enjoyed in the past week:

1) The teaser trailer for Ocean’s 13. You can find it here, but you have to click on “teaser trailer” – I don’t know, the full one just isn’t as fun somehow. I love the music, and the montage with the music, and the prolonged shot of Clooney, Damon, and Pitt just sort of sitting there musing at the end. I think this is going to be a fun one, and I’m looking forward to seeing it. I don’t care what y’all said about Ocean’s 12; I enjoyed it.

2) A really interesting New Yorker article about plagiarism by Malcolm Gladwell. Reject the Kool-Aid posted a link on their own blog after commenting on the Quillblog post about how Rebecca Eckler is a crackhead and thinks the plot of Knocked Up was stolen from her oh-so-clever memoir. The article on Gladwell’s own site here. I don’t agree with everything he says, but he makes some very interesting points about who owns words, really, once they’re strung together. Can anything ever be truly original, composed in a vacuum, or are we all riffing on what we’ve read, heard, absorbed somehow? And is it plagiarism if it makes the original better and more beautiful? (That’s where I start to disagree with Gladwell, but he’s a fascinating writer nonetheless.) Also stop by Reject the Kool-Aid to see a project to discount Eckler, which is awesome.

Howard, for the win! April 9, 2007

(Photo courtesy of The Curling News – curlnews.blogspot.com)

Team Glenn Howard of Ontario wins the world curling championships. This is wonderful and I am very happy for them. They were – or, specifically, Glenn Howard was – totally kind and hilarious when Danna and I met them at the Brier.

So many props to them. But what I’m most interested in is this picture – I mean, how freaking adorable is it?! Too freaking adorable, that’s how much. I laughed so hard when I saw it.

Oh, curlers. Don’t you just want to give them a big ol’ hug and a donut or something?

I think my favourite recent Glenn Howard moment was from right after they won the Brier. He’s the manager of a Beer Store in Midland, Ont., and he said it was lovely that people kept coming up to him in the store and congratulating him – but that he was having trouble getting his work done! I say again: oh, curlers. Heart.

Such is life for amateur athletes. It’s a tough road, and I don’t envy them. I like watching them, though. Well, while they’re performing their sporting heroics – not while they’re at their day jobs. That’s just creepy.

Go team green! March 25, 2007

Spacing Wire is getting excited about the city’s new environmental plan: http://spacing.ca/wire/?p=1685.

Nice to see some optimism around here! The Star’s cover today and matching depressing feature are pretty dire. Chin up! It might not be too late. I have a little faith left.

We badly need to get a move on, though, so maybe it’s not a bad idea to scare the crap out of people periodically. Shaking up the non-believers. Whatever works. Let’s just get something DONE.

It feels like change is in the air, though, along with spring (thank Buddha). Maybe we’ll look back on the aughts (what is this decade going to be called?! argh) as the decade of realisation – widespread belief in and knowledge of the damage we’re doing to our planet.

Maybe in 2050, we’ll look back comfortably from our leafy, fresh-air-and-bicycle-filled city and think, “Yes, that was when everybody got on board and made it happen.”

Maybe.

I also wanted to post about neighbourhoods, great weather and fire – all in one story, it’s a doozy – but I can’t today. My thoughts are mostly with Jane. Take care of each other, everyone.

Figure skaters, represent! March 21, 2007

It’s been a frustrating and tiring day, and I am still utterly failing to get my work done. However, the thing that’s really making me happy is this: http://www.cbc.ca/sports/indepth/feature-davison-dube.html. Way to show up, Jessica and Bryce!

Jessica Dube and Bryce Davison are the pairs figure skating team who made national headlines at the Four Continents competition when Bryce accidentally sliced Jessica’s face open with his skate blade during a move. Yes, you read that right. Yes, it was awfully disturbing!

My sister said she remembers sitting in a campus pub at Queen’s when the incident was replayed on the evening highlights, and she and all of the drunken students around her spontaneously yelled ”AUGH!” in sympathy when they saw Dube go down.

People make fun of figure skating a lot, and though I love the sport – and yes, it is a sport, in my humble but emphatic opinion – I’ll freely admit there’s a lot to tease. Start with the fluffy and spangly costumes, and go right on through to the often-wacky arm flailing; there are some parts of the sport that make it – well, not so sporting.

But when it’s done right, it’s the most beautiful combination of art and sport. And figure skaters are some of the most dedicated and tenacious athletes out there.

I’d like to see any other athlete get his or her cheek sliced open by a sharp blade and walk it off. Jessica hopped back on the ice a mere 10 days after the accident, and she and Bryce delivered an absolutely gorgeous short program at the World Championships in Tokyo yesterday. They ended up in seventh overall, which is pretty terrific, all things (read: FACIAL STABBINGS) considered. 

You’re making me proud, kids. And you’re making my mom very proud. (She loves them, and has for years, because she loves figure skating more than almost anything else. [Just to reveal a part of my bias!] She hung up on me twice last year when she called me from the Canadian Figure Skating Championships. Someone more exciting came along! No, I didn’t cry myself to sleep. Of course not. …)

A shiny new blog March 21, 2007

How many posts like this has the internet seen? I shudder to think. Anyway, here goes: testing, testing, one, two, three! And so I leap out of LiveJournal (that was luminous4.livejournal.com, on the off chance anyone cares) and into the world of real-ish-looking blogs. It seems like a moderately good idea now. It probably won’t later. Oh well!

 I should begin with something interesting…hmmm. Well, today in magazine writing class – a strange experiment in torture by being berated for three hours straight about our poor story pitching skills – I decided I would really like to write about hiccups. What is a hiccup, anyway?

There’s this girl in St. Petersburg, Florida, who hiccuped 50 times in every waking minute through most of January and all of February – and now, the AP article said, she’s at it again. That poor kid. She’s now known as “the hiccup girl” in her hometown. What would it be like to have everything you do interrupted with 50 hiccups a minute? And for months on end? I couldn’t stand it. How does she?

 Anyway, I probably won’t end up writing this story. Who knows? Just thought I should give a taste of how my brain is working these days. To wit: there’s a lot of real news going on this week – the budget dropped, Gordon O’Connor is (hopefully) in a lot of trouble over Afghanistan mismanagement, the trial of the dreadful Lord Black is starting (and I’m sick of it already) – but I’m mostly thinking about hiccups.

In conclusion: hooray for minutiae! Cheers, and thanks for reading; I’ll be back soon-ish.