Observations

2011 Roll Up the Rim Final Count

2011-05-15T07:53:00.003-06:00

So, I just got back from a trip to Italy. I obviously have been neglecting this blog for a few months, and have very much toyed with the idea of getting rid of it. Jana and I are having a baby in September, and I just don't know how much time I'm going to have. But I think I'll keep it around, even if I only post something sporadically. What I will almost for sure do is change the URL of this blog for privacy's sake, so stay tuned for that.

Anyway, in the coming weeks/months, I will do a post about our trip, as well as the remaining posts in my Favourite Films of the Decade series.

Here are my final results from Roll Up the Rim for 2011:
58 Coffees Purchased
2 Winning Rims Revealed

Pretty pathetic. I won 2 donuts, one to make me 1/25, and one to make me 2/46. There were some long, long stretches without wins: 24, then a win, 20, then a win, and then 12 more without a win. Brutal. And now that I'm back from Italy where I got used to drinking espressos all day long, I find the coffee at Tim Horton's almost undrinkable.

83rd Academy Award Results

2011-02-28T10:42:00.002-07:00

Wow, that was painful! Not the show, which I generally enjoyed, but watching my predictions be so completely wrong. My final score was 10/24, 2 less than my previous worst of 12. I did manage to get the big 5 all right (Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, Original Screenplay), but that felt like about it.

Inception did a fair bit better than I'd expected, winning 4 Oscars. And while The King's Speech was obviously the big winner, picking up Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Director, and Best Picture, that's all it won, just 4. I was also surprised by how Black Swan was completely shut out, with the exception of Natalie Portman's Best Actress win, and by how Alice in Wonderland won not one but two Oscars.

The film student from NYU winning an Oscar for his thesis project is such an incredible story. Hopefully he's able to take that and turn it into a successful career.

I thought James Franco and particularly Anne Hathaway were pretty good hosts. Hathaway definitely seemed more comfortable, but she seemed a little too starstruck, considering how big of a star she is herself. I thought Franco had some hilarious moments, and I liked the opening montage, but mostly he just stood there and squinted. I guess the lights must have been pretty bright or something.

83rd Academy Award Predictions

2011-02-27T09:17:00.003-07:00

Okay, here it is, Oscar day. Jana and I did a pretty great job of getting out and seeing as many of the nominated films as we could, especially considering Jana went away to the Philippines for her brother's wedding. We saw 9 of the 10 Best Picture nominees, with 127 Hours being the only one we didn't make it to.

I'm trying to avoid discovering the consensus this year, so as much as possible I haven't read any Oscar predictions leading up to this post. Having said that, it's impossible to avoid the predictions of the big awards, and also impossible to avoid all the multitudes of awards given out over the last few weeks.

Best Actor - I think this is pretty much a lock for Colin Firth, and well-deserved. He's really developed into a great actor over the last few years. I've only seen 3 of these performances, but it honestly seems like a bit of a weak category (it's maybe a bit of a weak year, generally), so I think Colin Firth has this wrapped up.

Best Supporting Actor - I've seen all of these, and this is a stronger group than the Best Actor category. If I was solely choosing based on merit, and not making predictions, it would be a close call between Geoffrey Rush and John Hawkes. But I'm making predictions, and based on all the preceding awards, I think Christian Bale will win.

Best Actress - Again I only saw 3. I don't really understand why Annette Bening was nominated, to be honest. I thought Julianne Moore was far better. I thought Jennifer Lawrence was very excellent, but I'm predicting that the winner will be Natalie Portman.

Best Supporting Actress - I saw 4, but did not see Animal Kingdom. Hailee Steinfeld was really more of a lead actress, wasn't she? I don't think she'll win, though, her role was mostly just good writing. This is actually a tough call. Melissa Leo won the Golden Globe, but if a supporting actress from The Fighter is going to win, I think it should be Amy Adams. I was very impressed by her role. Could Helena Bonham-Carter pull it off? I don't quite think so. I think I'll go with my favourite, and choose Amy Adams.

Best Animated Feature - Well, the only one I've seen here is Toy Story 3, and I'm picking it as the winner. It was honestly one of my favourite movies of the year, and it's the only one of these three that was nominated for Best Picture. Plus, Pixar has won this the last 3 straight years.

Best Art Direction - This is one of those categories that a sweeping picture tends to pick up, but I don't think there will be a runaway winner this year. This could actually go to Alice in Wonderland, because it did have fantastic art direction, but the overall low quality of the film might be a serious detractor. I'm going to stand by my original prediction and go with Inception. (I saw all of these films, by the way).

Best Cinematography - Hmm, I saw all of these, too. True Grit did not impress me quite enough to steal this away from Black Swan, although it would come in second.

Best Costume Design - I did not see The Tempest or I Am Love, which makes this a really hard one to call. Rather than go out on a limb and pick something I didn't see (and probably a lot of Academy members didn't either) I'm going to play it safe and pick The King's Speech.

Best Director - Okay, I did see all of these. I'm going to make a bold move and pick a different winner for this category and for the Best Picture category. As much as I really liked Black Swan, I'm going to go with the director that took what could have been a bland pseudo-documentary and made it one of the most exciting films of the year: David Fincher for The Social Network.

Best Documentary - Now this is a wild stab in the dark, because I didn't see any of them. Based on the fact that it was recommended to me a few times when it was playing in Edmonton by friends whose taste I trust, I'm going to pick Inside Job.

Best Documentary Short - Okay, time to pick the most Oscar-worthy topic. Killing in the Name it is.

Best Film Editing - I am notoriously (in my own mind) terrible and predicting this category. And it doesn't help when I only saw 4 of the nominees. I'm just going to stick with my gut and predict Black Swan.

Best Foreign Language Film - Well, I saw Incendies, and was pretty impressed. Biutiful, on the other hand, has Javier Bardem, and he got a Best Actor nomination for it. I know nothing about the other 3. I'll root for the Canadians and pick Incendies.

Best Makeup - I did not see any of these 3 films. That's odd. None is nominated for anything else, either. I guess I'll go with Barney's Version.

Best Original Score - I saw 3 of these, and I'm having a hard time thinking of the music in each. It seems to me, though, that The King's Speech probably had a good score.

Best Original Song - I only saw Toy Story 3, and I can't think of this song. I really haven't heard any of them. I'll go with Coming Home from Country Strong.

Best Picture - Like I said, we got up to 9/10, only missing 127 Hours. This would be my personal ranking: 1 - Black Swan; 2 - Toy Story 3; 3 - The Social Network; 4 - Winter's Bone; 5 - The King's Speech; 6 - Inception; 7 - True Grit; 8 - The Fighter; 9 - The Kids Are All Right. That's not really fair, though, because I did like all of them. There were none I really disliked, but I think several of these will fade into oblivion. It's kind of a weak year. I think the winner will be The King's Speech. It's very formulaic (an adult version of The Karate Kid), but it's quite moving and well-acted.

Best Animated Short - I'll pick Day & Night, the only one I've seen.

Best Live Action Short - Here I will pick The Crush.

Best Sound Editing - I missed Tron and Unstoppable. My prediction is Inception.

Best Sound Mixing - I saw all of them except for Salt. I will choose True Grit.

Best Visual Effects - I didn't see Hereafter or Iron Man 2, but I think that the safe bet is Inception.

Best Adapted Screenplay - I saw 4/5, missing 127 Hours. This is a tough one for me. I think it's between Winter's Bone and The Social Network. I think I'll pick The Social Network. That was a good script.

Best Original Screenplay - Again, only 4/5, missing Another Year. I think I'll go with The King's Speech, since I'm predicting that it wins Best Picture.

So, here's my summary:

Best Actor: Colin Firth - The King's Speech
Best Supporting Actor: Christian Bale - The Fighter
Best Actress: Natalie Portman - Black Swan
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Adams - The Fighter
Best Animated Feature: Toy Story 3
Best Art Direction: Inception
Best Cinematography: Black Swan
Best Costume Design: The King's Speech
Best Director: David Fincher - The Social Network
Best Documentary: Inside Job
Best Documentary Short: Killing in the Name
Best Film Editing: Black Swan
Best Foreign Language Film: Incendies
Best Makeup: Barney's Version
Best Original Score: The King's Speech
Best Original Song: "Coming Home" - Country Strong
Best Picture: The King's Speech
Best Short Film - Animated: Day & Night
Best Short Film - Live Action: The Crush
Best Sound Editing: Inception
Best Sound Mixing: True Grit
Best Visual Effects: Inception
Best Adapted Screenplay: The Social Network
Best Original Screenplay: The King's Speech

The Organic Box

2011-02-25T14:38:00.003-07:00

A few weeks ago, Jana and I signed up for home produce delivery from The Organic Box. Every week or two (we signed up for every other week), you get a whole box full of organic produce. They also try to buy local as much as possible, although in the middle of February, that's not very much. Even when it is isn't local, though, it is organic, and bought directly from the farmers.

As you can see, you get a huge amount of produce (and this was actually 3 apples less than we were supposed to get, as the shipment didn't arrive). This is why we opted for biweekly delivery. Pictured are lettuce, mushrooms, onions, shallots, broccoli, potatoes, carrots, beets, pears (2 kinds), apples, grapefruit, oranges (2 kinds), avocado, bok choi, bananas, tomatoes, sprouts, and a loaf of bread (we paid extra for the bread). It's pretty incredible. And the quality is amazing; it's a far bigger difference in flavour from the grocery store produce than we'd expected. And at $50 a box, I personally think it's a pretty good deal.

83rd Academy Award Nominations

2011-01-25T10:16:00.002-07:00

Here we go again. As much as I know it's ridiculous, I really love the Oscars. I never get bored by the long show, nor do I mind the constant self-praise. I just really like movies, and the Oscars are a great chance to talk about the year in review. Most importantly, by trying to watch as many of the nominated films as possible, I always discover a movie that I might not have otherwise seen, but that becomes one of my favourites (I won't give examples, because that might just ruin by still-to-come Favourite Movies of the Decade posts).

Best Actor:
Javier Bardem - Biutiful
Jeff Bridges - True Grit
Jesse Eisenberg - The Social Network
Colin Firth - The King's Speech
James Franco - 127 Hours

I've seen only The Social Network and The King's Speech so far. Excellent acting jobs by both of those actors, with the edge to Colin Firth. I don't know if it's actually true, but it strikes me as unusual that a film that is nominated for Best Foreign Film (Biutiful) is also nominated for Best Actor. Also, I know that the Golden Globes does genre-specific awards, but it's weird to me that Paul Giamatti could win a Best Actor award (for Musical or Comedy) at the Golden Globes and not even be nominated at the Oscars.

Best Supporting Actor:
Christian Bale - The Fighter
John Hawkes - Winter's Bone
Jeremy Renner - The Town
Mark Ruffalo - The Kids Are All Right
Geoffrey Rush - The King's Speech

I have seen The King's Speech and The Town. Between those two, it's an easy choice to select Geoffrey Rush.

Best Actress:
Annette Bening - The Kids Are All Right
Nicole Kidman - Rabbit Hole
Jennifer Lawrence - Winter's Bone
Natalie Portman - Black Swan
Michelle Williams - Blue Valentine

I've only seen Black Swan here. Interesting to note that Nicole Kidman is the only former winner on this list. Even more interesting is that Meryl Streep didn't get a nomination. I know she didn't make a movie this year, but still, I thought they'd figure out a way to fit her in. Maybe she'll get the Lifetime Achievement Award or something.

Best Supporting Actress:
Amy Adams - The Fighter
Helena Bonham Carter - The King's Speech
Melissa Leo - The Fighter
Hailee Steinfeld - True Grit
Jackie Weaver - Animal Kingdom

Again, the only one I've seen is The King's Speech. I'm not sure I really saw anything Oscar-worthy in Helena Bonham Carter's performance. I have to be honest, I've never even heard of Animal Kingdom.

Best Animated Feature:
How to Train Your Dragon
The Illusionist
Toy Story 3

Back down to 3 nominees this year. I've only seen Toy Story 3, but you're going to have a hard time convincing me that it shouldn't win.

Best Art Direction:
Alice in Wonderland
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Inception
The King's Speech
True Grit

Here's a category where I'm already at 4/5 (only True Grit left to see). If there was one thing I liked about Alice in Wonderland, it was the Art Direction. As far as the widest variety of different sets Harry Potter and Inception are tied. I predict an Inception win here.

Best Cinematography:
Black Swan
Inception
The King's Speech
The Social Network
True Grit

Another 4/5 here. Black Swan for now, but I'll wait until I see the Coen Brother's film first.

Best Costume Design:
Alice in Wonderland
I Am Love
The King's Speech
The Tempest
True Grit

Nothing about Alice in Wonderland or The King's Speech deserves a Best Costume Oscar. I've never heard of I Am Love. This will be an interesting category.

Best Director:
Darren Aronofsky - Black Swan
David O. Russell - The Fighter
Tom Hooper - The King's Speech
David Fincher - The Social Network
Joel and Ethan Coen - True Grit

I'm going to take the full 33 days (and see True Grit and The Fighter) before making this prediction.

Best Documentary:
Exit through the Gift Shop
Gasland
Inside Job
Restrepo
Waste Land

I haven't seen any of these. I've heard a lot of good things about Exit through the Gift Shop, so it will be the highest priority one for me to see before the awards are given out. Plus, if it wins, Banksy will finally reveal his true identity! Ha.

Best Documentary Short:
Killing in the Name
Poster Girl
Strangers No More
Sun Come Up
The Warriors of Qiugang

Guess how many of these I've seen.

Best Film Editing:
Black Swan
The Fighter
The King's Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network

I've seen 3/5. I'm hesitant to make any prediction yet, but of the three I've seen, Black Swan is definitely the standout in terms of editing.

Best Foreign Language Film:
Mexico - Biutiful
Greece - Dogtooth
Denmark - In a Better World
Canada - Incendies
Algeria - Hors-la-loi (Outside the Law)

Have not seen any, but I've seen trailers for both Biutiful and Incendies, and I'm very curious about both of them. It's also interesting to see Canada nominated here.

Best Makeup:
Barney's Version
The Way Back
The Wolfman

Interesting that for all three of these films, this is their only nomination. I haven't seen any of them, and in fact, have only heard of Barney's Version.

Best Original Score:
How to Train Your Dragon
Inception
The King's Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network

3/5. Not sure, the music didn't stick out for me in any of them. The movie this year with the best score is Black Swan, but, of course, that's not an original score.

Best Original Song:
Coming Home - Country Strong
I See the Light - Tangled
If I Rise - 127 Hours
We Belong Together - Toy Story 3

4 nominees? I've seen 3, 5, and 10, but never 4. The only movie I've seen is Toy Story 3, and I don't remember this song. It was probably over the credits.

Best Picture:
Black Swan
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

At this point I've seen 5/10. I think seeing the remainder by the show is realistic. I can't really argue with this list, nor did I see anything else this year that deserves to be here and isn't. Whether that means the Oscars have it right, I didn't see enough 2010 movies, or it was just a year where the good movies all came out of the Hollywood system, I'm not sure.

Best Animated Short:
Day & Night
The Gruffalo
Let's Pollute
The Lost Thing
Madagascar, carnet de voyage (Madagascar, a Journey Diary)

I saw Day & Night, of course, at the beginning of Toy Story 3. I love how Pixar does that. I really like Pixar. I haven't seen any of the rest.

Best Live Action Short:
The Confession
The Crush
God of Love
Na Wewe
Wish 143

I have not seen any of these films.

Best Sound Editing:
Inception
Toy Story 3
Tron: Legacy
True Grit
Unstoppable

I've seen 2 of these. My guess is Inception.

Best Sound Mixing:
Inception
The King's Speech
Salt
The Social Network
True Grit

I've seen 3 of these. Greg P. Russell is nominated for Salt. That makes 2 years in a row where he's nominated without Kevin O'Connell. As a result, O'Connell is stuck at 20 nominations without a win, while Russell gets his 14th (and I'm guessing not a win).

Best Visual Effects:
Alice in Wonderland
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
Hereafter
Inception
Iron Man 2

I've seen 3 of these. Inception is probably the front runner. My guess is that Harry Potter will win for Part 2, next year.

Best Adapted Screenplay:
127 Hours
The Social Network
Toy Story 3
True Grit
Winter's Bone

I've seen 2 of these. Every one of these is also nominated for Best Picture. What is Toy Story 3 adapted from? The first two Toy Stories?

Best Original Screenplay:
Another Year
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech

I've seen 2 of these. Notably, Another Year is not nominated for Best Picture, the only one of the 10 writing nominees that isn't (Mike Leigh has now been nominated for 5 original screenplays). As a result, Black Swan doesn't get a writing nomination, the only Best Picture nominee that doesn't. Is it adapted from Swan Lake, or original?

Here's the breakdown, less the shorts and documentaries:

12 - The King's Speech

10 - True Grit

8 - The Social Network
- Inception

7 - The Fighter

6 - 127 Hours

5 - Black Swan
- Toy Story 3

4 - Winter's Bone
- The Kids Are All Right

3 - Alice in Wonderland

2 - Biutiful
- How to Train Your Dragon
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallow Part 1

1 - The Town
- Rabbit Hole
- Blue Valentine
- Animal Kingdom
- The Illusionist
- I Am Love
- The Tempest
- Dogtooth
- In a Better World
- Incendies
- Hors-la-loi (Outside the Law)
- Barney's Version
- The Way Back
- The Wolfman
- Country Strong
- Tangled
- Tron: Legacy
- Unstoppable
- Salt
- Hereafter
- Iron Man 2
- Another Year

That is a lot of movies. Last year there were 38 (not including documentaries or shorts), and this year there are 36. Oh. That's not what I expected. But last year there were only 16 films with 1 nomination, and this year there are 22. That's what threw me off. I guess that's because last year Avatar and The Hurt Locker tied for the most nominations at 9, while this year both The King's Speech and True Grit have more than that.

Anything missing? Honestly, no. There was nothing I saw in 2010 and liked that isn't nominated here.

The priorities for me to see would be: True Grit, 127 Hours, Winter's Bone, The Kids Are All Right, The Fighter, Biutiful, Incendies, Exit through the Gift Shop, How to Train Your Dragon.

My Favourite Movies of 2000-2009 Part 1: The Runners-Up

2011-01-12T13:31:00.034-07:00

As far as I can tell, I have seen 376 movies that were released in the decade spanning 2000-2009. That is a lot of movies. While it is far from being all of the movies of the decade, I think it is a wide-enough base for me to choose from that I feel comfortable making a list of my favourite films from the decade. The obvious disclaimer is that this is not a definitive best-of list, for two reasons. First, this is entirely subjective. You might hate some of my favourites, I might hate some of yours. Definitive is impossible. Secondly, I didn't see every film. I may not have seen your favourites.

Because I've spent all year on this list, I wanted to spread it out a bit. So here is Part 1: The Runners-up. These are movies that I really liked, but they didn't quite crack the top 15 for whatever reason (in some cases, just because it had been so long since I watched them that I feared my memory might be inaccurate). Really, the distinction between the Runners-up and the Top 15 is pretty arbitrary, as is the number 15 for that matter. Alright, here we go, in alphabetical order:

4 Luni, 3 Saptamani si 2 Zile - Cristian Mungiu
(4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days)

This Romanian film about obtaining an illegal abortion is very difficult to watch. It is really raw, and contains something in it to offend everyone. But this heartbreaking movie is probably the best Realist movie of the decade.

Los Abrazos Rotos - Pedro Almodovar
(Broken Embraces)

I love Almodovar's movies because, like Tarantino's movies, they are almost self-aware of the fact that they are movies. Almodovar just loves classic Hollywood so much, and it permeates this entire film. The only problem is that he just can't do a good ending. He's also in love with Penelope Cruz, and she is sensational in this movie, as always.

About Schmidt - Alexander Payne

In my opinion, this is one of the most underrated films of the decade. I also feel that this is one of Jack Nicholson's greatest performances. I've read a lot of books recently about growing old, but there haven't been a lot of movies made about it. This movie is one of them, and it's really great. I must warn you, though, the nudity in this film is not for the faint of heart. ;)

American Splendor - Shari Springer Berman & Robert Pulcini

This is a joyful movie about being miserable, a celebration of mediocrity and depression. Part documentary about the making of the comic, part re-enactment of the making of the comic, part re-enactment of the comic itself, this movie is unlike anything else. Paul Giamatti must be frustrated knowing that he'll probably never get such a perfect role again.

Amores Perros - Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

Okay, name a movie with Gael Garcia Bernal in it, and I loved it. This is one of those Magnolia-style interweaving stories movies (Inarritu also directed Babel), and it's superbly done.

Un Conte de Noel - Arnaud Desplechin
(A Christmas Tale)

There were several ensemble movies made in France about family reunions this decade, but this one is the standout. The list of great actors in this film is too long for this space, but Catherine Deneuve and Mathieu Amalric (one of my favourite actors of the decade) are the standouts.

Etre et Avoire - Nicolas Philibert
(To Be and To Have)

This documentary contains very little interference by the director. The teacher and his students in this one-room schoolhouse in rural France are the stars of this really cute, really touching movie. Every teacher or aspiring teacher should see this film.

Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amelie Poulain - Jean-Pierre Jeunet
(Amelie)

This is a fun, quirky movie about a psychopath. Seriously, if Amelie was a man, she'd be arrested. That said, how could anyone not thoroughly enjoy watching this very unique movie? I missed out on this one when it was hugely popular, so it was with a bit of trepidation that I finally saw the movie I knew a lot of people loved. It's hard not to be affected by something like that. But I loved it, too.

Fantastic Mr. Fox - Wes Anderson

I enjoy Wes Anderson movies a lot. I don't get sick of the same themes and style, not one bit. But I was still surprised by how good this movie was. It was a labour of love for Anderson (pictured), and I hope he's proud of the finished product. Oh, and 3 Beach Boys songs in one movie always gets a thumbs-up from me.

Les Glaneurs et la Glaneuse - Agnes Varda
(The Gleaners and I)

This is a brilliant documentary. Varda (pictured) is a kind of strange person, and her personality permeates this movie. She grabs the theme and runs with it in every direction imaginable, and touches on something at the core of what it means to be human. It's also a very political movie, but you barely even notice.

In Bruges - Martin McDonagh

This movie is really, really funny. I wouldn't have thought jokes about racist midgets and hating medieval architecture could ever be so funny, nor would I have thought I'd ever include a movie with Colin Farrell in this list. But they are, and here it is.

The Incredibles - Brad Bird

Pixar made a lot of really great movies this decade, and this was one of my favourites. I was thoroughly entertained from start to finish.

El Laberinto del Fauno - Guillermo del Toro
(Pan's Labyrinth)

This is an extremely violent, gory children's movie for adults. Del Toro does such a fabulous job of mixing beautiful fantasy and harsh reality in this film that the shifts in tone (especially lighting) are as necessary for the audience as for the girl.

Lat den Ratte Komma In - Tomas Alfredson
(Let the Right One In)

I reviewed the Hollywood remake in this blog, and concluded that I preferred the original. I am no horror movie fan, but this one is just so good. Chilling and horrifying, of course, but so good.

Das Leben der Anderen - Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
(The Lives of Others)

At first I was shocked that Pan's Labyrinth lost the Foreign Film Oscar, but then I saw this film. It's a voyeuristic film set in East Berlin, with one of the best endings of the decade.

Little Miss Sunshine - Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris

This movie about a dysfunctional family on a road trip to a beauty pagaent is completely ridiculous. It is definitely one of the funniest movies of the decade. What gets it on to this list, though, is its emotional power and great acting. Abigail Breslin was nominated and Alan Arkin won an Oscar, but I think Paul Dano should've been nominated, too.

Moartea Domnului Lazarescu - Cristi Puiu
(The Death of Mr. Lazarescu)

Another great Romanian film dealing with the shortcomings of the healthcare system. This one, however, is hilarious (in a black humour sort of way).

My Winnipeg - Guy Maddin

Guy Maddin, I think I can fairly say, is the most unique director out there right now. Part of this film's appeal is that I grew up just outside Winnipeg, but mostly it's just how strange and wonderful this movie is.

Paranoid Park - Gus Van Sant

A lot of people really liked Gus Van Sant's Elephant, but for me, Paranoid Park captures adolescence in this decade far more poignantly. My favourite skateboarding movie of all time.

The Squid and the Whale - Noah Baumbach

Dysfunctional families can make for some very interesting movies. This is a very personal film for Baumbach, and his feelings towards his father are not hidden. This film is full of great acting, particularly from Jesse Eisenberg, Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney.

Synecdoche, New York - Charlie Kaufman

Kaufman, for me, is the only screenwriter whose every movie becomes a must-see. This is his mind-blowing directorial debut.

There Will Be Blood - P.T. Anderson

I know that for a lot of people this one would be in the Top 15, if not in competition for the top spot on that list. While I really enjoyed it and it will be winning some of my "Oscars", I've never been able to connect with it as much as the films that are in my Top 15. Daniel Day-Lewis gives one of the best acting performances of all time.

Das Weisse Band - Michael Haneke
(The White Ribbon)

Now this is a disturbing movie. All of Haneke's best qualities (as frustrating as they may be) converge in this film about, arguably, the origins of the Nazis.

Wendy and Lucy - Kelly Reichardt

Reichardt makes very soft-spoken, understated movies that capture an incredible amount of emotion. I also enjoyed Old Joy a lot, but Wendy and Lucy, in spite of the fact that I'm not a dog person, is really amazing. Michelle Williams is really one of the best actresses out there right now.

The Wrestler - Darren Aronofsky

Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei give this movie everything they have in depicting two people who perform with their bodies. It is truly heartbreaking.

Y Tu Mama Tambien - Alfonso Cuaron

This is a movie about two young men discovering their sexual identity while out on a road trip. Gael Garcia Bernal is awesome, as usual.

2010 in Review; Goals for 2011

2011-01-04T12:40:00.002-07:00

I see that I haven't blogged in a few months. I'm probably moving in the direction of abandoning this thing altogether, since I've never really been able to hit on a theme or anything that I can do consistently. But I like doing these goals every year, so I'm making a return for that purpose.

First, I'll begin with a review of my goals for 2010 and see how I did at achieving them (spoiler: not well).

2010 - 1. To make the Dean's List for my second year at law school.

I know I'm smart, and my marks are above-average, but cracking the top 10% appears to remain out of my grasp, try as I might. I haven't let it bother me too much, due to my success in one of the later goals.

2010 - 2. Run an Olympic distance triathlon.

I did achieve this goal at the Alberta Challenge in August. My time was nothing impressive (other than the fact that I could push myself to keep moving for 3 hours, 23 minutes and 45 seconds), but completing that race was definitely one of the top moments of 2010. I probably chose the worst race to do it at, with a ridiculously hilly off-road running course and an extended bicycle course, but finishing the Alberta Challenge was an incredible feeling.

2010 - 3. Work out a minimum of 2 times every week.

This was actually a really bad goal to have. For the most part, it meant that I only worked out twice per week, which is not enough. And then once I missed a week due to exams, knowing that I'd failed this goal so early in the year made it really hard to get going again.

2010 - 4. Finish in the top 3 in my age group at a triathlon.

I did not achieve this goal. I finished 4th at Lacombe, that was the closest I got. I'm not too disappointed by this, though, as placement is not, ultimately, in my control. I can only do my best, and I can't have any impact on how well the other guys in my age group do on that particular day.

2010 - 5. Complete a sprint distance triathlon in under 1:20:00.

I did 2 official sprint distances this year: Lake Summerside (1:23) and Lacombe (1:27). I did not meet the mark I had set for myself, but I was pleased with my performances at both of those races.

2010 - 6. Watch as many films made between 2000 and 2009 as possible and create a personal "Best Films of the Decade" list that I feel is accurate due to the wide base of films from which it is drawn.

This list will be revealed in a series of posts over the next days and weeks. I watched around 80 films this year made in 2000-2009, and I'm excited to reveal my favourites. I revised this goal slightly as the year progressed, from "Best Films of the Decade" to "My Favourite Films of the Decade". That enabled me to rewatch films that I knew I liked and focus a little less on trying to watch everything that anybody said was good. So it won't be an exhaustive or definitive best-of list, but it will be drawn from a wide base (in all I've seen 376 films made in the last decade at least once), and it will be filled with good films.

2010 - 7. Reduce the "Jana needs to see" list to under 10.

We watched a handful of these, but not nearly enough to get it under 10. A lot of them are pretty mediocre films that Jana doesn't care to see and I don't care to see again, to be honest.

2010 - 8. Get a law-related summer job.

I did achieve this goal, which was very satisfying, getting hired to work for the Municipal Government Board. It didn't turn out to be quite as exciting as I'd hoped, as a legislation change meant we weren't as busy as anticipated, and the promised travel failed to materialize. But it provided me with some great experience, and I've been able to work on contract through the school year, which has been really great.

2010 - 9. Line up an articling position.

Achieving this goal was another one of the top moments of 2010, and the reason that I'm not too bothered about not making the Dean's List. I'll be starting in July 2011 at Alberta Justice as an articling student, which is where I really wanted to go. The whole process (all the firms do all their interviews in a one-week span) was incredibly stressful, but it worked out perfectly in the end.

2010 - 10. Read 20 new books.

I failed at this goal. I did read 10 new books, but I failed to reach the 20 mark for 2 reasons: first, one of the books I read this year was 100 Years of Solitude, which was a great book, but which took me way too long (3 or 4 months) to read, second, I re-read the entire Harry Potter series in preparation for the release for the movie this summer, and those didn't count as new books.

Since I mentioned a couple things as "top moments of 2010" above, I should also mention one more:

The 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics - even if I hadn't gone to Vancouver/Whistler to attend these in person, I think they would be a top moment. I had so much fun watching everything, and then it got ramped up to a new level by actually being at the events and in the crowds myself. This was an unforgettable experience, capped off perfectly by Canada beating the USA in the men's Gold Medal hockey game.

And now, what you've all been waiting for, my goals for 2011:

1. Replace the shingles on the roof.
2. Watch the remaining half of Jim Emerson's "102 Movies You Should Have Seen" list.
3. Watch 20 new Criterion Collection films.
4. Read 20 books.
5. Complete 3 triathlons.
6. Run 10 km in under 47:30.
7. Workout consistently through the year.
8. Take an online photography course.
9. Meet with a financial planner.
10. Go for a run in every city we spend a night in in Europe.

There are a few implied things in that list: first, because my job at Alberta Justice doesn't start until July, I have two months off after school ends in April. Jana and I are planning another trip to Europe. I'm also planning to do some renovations on the house, with the roof being the top priority. We're also planning to get a new camera through Air Miles in the near future, and I want to know how to use it properly before we travel. And then my new job means actually having an income for the first time in years, and we want to make sure we've got a good plan for paying off debts and saving for the future.

I have plans to check off 2 items from my list of Things to Do Before I Die:

- When we go to Europe, we're returning to Rome so that we can attend an AS Roma match against AC Milan.
- I purchased tickets for Brian Wilson's first-ever concert in Edmonton.

Attending those 2 events (an AS Roma match and a Brian Wilson concert) are on my list, and I am very excited to do them both.

Review - The Social Network

2010-10-21T11:06:00.002-06:00

I had seen the glowing reviews, and heard some of the Oscar buzz. It has a 97% rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Yet, going into The Social Network, I was still convinced that there was no way to make an interesting movie about a guy making a website, even if a few of his nerd friends felt he’d stolen their idea. I was very wrong.

Not only was this movie interesting, it was actually exciting. David Fincher moves things along at a steady pace, and establishes tension throughout the film. Mark Zuckerberg, the main character of the film, is a polarizing figure, and watching him interact with his friends, enemies, and lawyers is really quite fascinating. His relationships evolve throughout the film, particularly his relationship with his best friend and business partner, Eduardo Saverin. One could even make an argument that this relationship is the central focus of the film.

What really captured me about this film, though, was exactly what I thought would be the most boring: the development of the Facebook website itself. I am a user of Facebook, and have been since January 2007, within 4 months of the site being opened up to the general public. My interest in Facebook is waning, as Twitter now takes up more of my time. But there were times when I was on Facebook as much as humanly possible. For a couple of years, it took over my life. Mark Zuckerberg was able to get into my head, and I found it extremely interesting to watch how he did this, and to see some of the thought process that went into the development of something that captured not only my attention, but now has 1 member for every 14 people in the world. The great success stories in business and invention are always a combination of intelligence, luck, and timing, and they are fascinating to watch. I am far too risk-averse, I believe, to push forward as quickly as was necessary to make this work. If the founders of Facebook had held back too long on expansion, or brought in advertising too soon, they may never have reached the critical mass where its growth became unstoppable. But they did it right, and they are extraordinarily wealthy as a result.

This film was tightly written, and extremely well-acted. Jesse Eisenberg has been a favourite since The Squid and The Whale, and I love Justin Timberlake on SNL. This movie was exciting, entertaining, and thought-provoking, and I enjoyed it very much. The only thing holding it back from a better score is that, with the exception of the regatta scene, I wasn’t moved by the film itself as a work of art, which is something I’m always looking for. 9/10.

Review - Howl

2010-10-01T09:45:00.004-06:00

On Thursday night I saw Howl at the Edmonton International Film Festival. This film, written and directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, is all about the Allen Ginsberg poem, Howl. The film stars James Franco as Ginsberg, with a supporting cast including Jon Hamm, Mary-Louise Parker, and Jeff Daniels.

This film struggles, unsuccessfully, I think, to find its voice. There are essentially four separate films woven together into one, with no overlap, other than that they all quote heavily from the poem itself.

First, there is the re-enactment of the 1957 trial in which Howl’s publisher, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was charged with publishing obscene writings. The trial, as depicted in this film, centred on two issues: the literary merit of the poem, and the necessity of the “vulgar” words used in the poem. We see a series of English professors and book reviewers take the stand and offer their opinions of the poem’s merits and, in some cases, its meaning.

The second set of scenes is a re-enactment of a 1957 interview of Allen Ginsberg. This interview takes place during the trial, which Ginsberg is not attending, and offers up detailed explanations of certain lines. These scenes are presented as an ongoing monologue, and fill the viewers in on the background stories and people behind the poem. Appropriately, these sequences contain frequent flashbacks, narrated by Franco, depicting Ginsberg’s travels and relationships.

The third ‘film’ is a 1955 performance of the poem, which Wikipedia tells me was the first performance of the poem at the Six Gallery in San Francisco. Jack Kerouac, a friend of Ginsberg’s, was in attendance, and according to this film, so were several other people referred to in the poem.

Finally, this movie also contains a series of animated interpretations of the poem. These often form the bridge between the other three parts of the movie, as a reading or discussion of a certain line will suddenly slip away into the dreary, dreamlike world created by the animator, backed up by splendid jazz music.

There are definitely positive things about this film. I should say that I had never read the poem before, and that I’ve frankly never been a huge fan of poetry. This film, however, developed in me a deep appreciation of the poem. It’s a beautiful piece of work and seems to capture the heart of the Beat generation. This film pays homage to the poem very well. Also, James Franco is fantastic, and I think he may be in line for his first Oscar nomination this year.

What I did not like about this film was, primarily, its waffling between feature film, documentary, adaptation of the poem, and re-enactment. It was as though the directors, who are documentary filmmakers, couldn’t decide what they wanted to do with this film. As far as I could tell, there was no original writing. Every line was taken directly either from Ginsberg’s 1957 interview, the trial, or the poem. In that sense, every line could probably be read online. So if the purpose was purely to inform, the film comes up short, because it tells us little that we couldn’t easily find out on our own.

As a film, there were several things I did not like. I didn’t care for the animation; I thought it tried too hard to literalize the images of the poem, and I just didn’t think it was that well done. What bugged me the most, though, were the scenes in the San Francisco cafe. Every person there was sitting on the edge of their seat, enthralled, soaking in every word, and understanding everything immediately. I can understand people being captivated and moved by the poem, it’s that kind of work. But if the filmmakers expect me to believe that it’s a poem that the one can, at the moment one hears it, instantly understand exactly what the author is referring to in each word, then they’re selling it short. And they're insulting my intelligence. I just can’t believe that the reactions would actually have been what this film claimed they were.

The movie ends with a series of images and clips of Allen Ginsberg and the various people depicted in the film, telling us what they did for the rest of their lives. This is the sort of thing done at the end of a documentary, furthering the confusion. What bugged me, too, is the way that they used images and clips that showed how the various re-enactments throughout the film were actually exact re-creations of pre-existing images. This may be personal preference, but I don’t care for this. It demonstrates, I think, a distinct lack of creativity. It makes me question, once again, the purpose of the film. If the images already exist, and Ginsberg’s interview already exists, then why do they feel the need to substitute actors? Why not just make this a straight-up documentary, with a re-enactment of the trial, and an animated interpretation of the poem?

The friend that I went to see the movie with made an excellent point: he felt like he had just sat in a really good university class, where he left feeling like he understood a lot more about the poem and had a greater appreciation for it.

Honestly, I didn’t hate this film. For the most part I even enjoyed it. And again, James Franco was brilliant. I just was not left with a feeling that I had watched a great film. Instead, I was left with the feeling that Howl is a great poem. 7/10.

Review - Let Me In

2010-09-27T17:25:00.002-06:00

This past weekend I went to see Let Me In at the Edmonton International Film Festival. This film, directed by Matt Reeves, is a remake of Let the Right One In, a Swedish film that came out 2 years ago. It's kind of unusual for a film to be remade so quickly, so I was very curious to see it. Briefly, these movies are about two young kids, Owen (they have different names in the original), a shy, bullied boy, and Abby, the vampire who moves in next door. The original was fantastic, and I think the intention of making an American remake is to try to cash in on the American market that largely ignored the original. That's why I was so skeptical about this movie, and had pretty low expectations. Instead, I was very pleasantly surprised to see a really well-made movie, with superb acting and a haunting depth of story.

This movie is very unsettling. Most of this is because of the young ages of all the principal characters. We see a lot of violence carried out on and committed by kids and teenagers. The atmosphere of the movie is very dark and bleak. The music is haunting and Abby, being a vampire, is pale, with dark rings around her eyes when she is in need of blood. This remake did a fantastic job of recapturing the feel of the original, and if anything, I thought they turned it up a notch. I felt more scared in this one, and certain scenes were more tense.

I've struggled with deciding just how to rate this movie. Do I try to judge it completely on its own merits, or do I compare it to the original? Both films are based on a book, but it is clear that Let Me In is not so much an adaptation of the book as of the Swedish movie. There were far too many similarities for it not to be obvious that its a remake of the original film. So I've decided to do a bit of both, as it's impossible to completely separate it from the original.

I liked how this version spent more time developing the relationship between Owen and the bullies. The fear and hatred he felt around them was more understandable, I felt. That's the one thing that stood out as distinctly better. For the most part, though, it was not quite as good (the writing was not as clever) or equally as good (the art direction, cinematography, and particularly the acting are excellent in both films). One thing I did not like about this version was how it tied off the loose ends, especially concerning Abby's relationship with the man she lives with. Ambiguity and subtlety were some of the strengths of the original, and they were lost in this film (which, fittingly, was also more dramatic and more bloody, which were positives for the most part).

The question I am left with was "Why was this film made?" For all intents and purposes, this film already exists. Yes, this is a worthy remake, and it would be a very good film if it existed on its own. In fact, I'd be raving about it if it existed on its own. Alternatively, it might have been interesting to see a different take on the same book. But at the end of the day, this is merely a remake of the original movie, and I have to deduct marks for lack of originality. There's just no reason for a film to be made that's so close to something that already exists (and is only 2 years old). 8/10.

Lacombe RV Charity Triathlon 2010

2010-09-07T18:38:00.004-06:00

I was excited to go back to Gull Lake and Lacombe to do this race again after last year: the race was billed as a sprint, but was actually shorter in all 3 legs, a nice race to end the season off after the Olympic distance two weeks ago. However, the race organizers thwarted my plans by lengthening all three legs to regulation distance. Don't get me wrong, that is a positive thing, and the organizers should be commended for an awesome event. I definitely hope to be back for a third year next year.

The Lacombe Triathlon is a unique one for me. Both the swim and the bike end in diferent spots than they start, and that also means that the 2 transition zones are separated by 20 km. This year there were shuttle buses to take the racers from one zone to the other, which was extremely helpful, since I was at the race on my own.
(Thanks to Dawn for letting me use this picture. I'm right in the centre, waist-deep, wearing blue goggles.)

The swim was very difficult for me. For one thing, the water was ice cold! I didn't get as much time to warm up in the water as I would have liked, due to a mandatory race meeting right before the start, and I struggled with the cold during the whole swim. But what was worse for me was the wind. This made the lake choppy, and for most of the swim, we were swimming with the wind blowing from left to right. Unexpectedly, this had the effect of completely disorienting me halfway through the swim. If my face was in the water, the feeling of the waves sliding under me made me feel like I was spinning in the water, and every time I looked up, I expected to have turned 90 degrees. Of course, I hadn't, but when I was underwater, I lost all sense of what direction I was facing. That was difficult to work with, and slowed me down a lot. I forced my way through it, though, and surprisingly for me, passed a few people during the swim. Just like last year, the swim course (which was farther out, and thus longer than last year) ends with a 200 metre stretch of knee deep water. Like most people, I walked the first half of this, and then I ran in, passing a few people on my way into transition.

Swim time: 17:39
Rank: 27/72 overall, 4/10 in age group.

The bike course was almost identical to last year, with a few key changes. The course started along the highway, instead of going through the village of Gull Lake first, and the finish was in a different part of Lacombe. The highway between the lake and the town (sorry, City as of today) of Lacombe is beautifullly paved, and riding it is a real joy. The only problem was that we were biking directly into a headwind the whole way, which is the kind of thing that can happen when 80% of the bike is in one direction. The effect of moving the finish was twofold: it lengthened the course, and it added several more hills. The final 3 or 4 kilometers were almost completely uphill. I passed a few people on these hills, but it really took me a lot of time to recover in the run, considering we had to climb a hill into transition!

Bike time: 42:38
Rank: 20/72 overall, 4/10 in age group.

Like I said, it took me a while to recover from the bike when I started the run. And, just like last year, the run started with a long uphill. It was not the same run course as last year, though, not even close. For one thing, this one was actually 5 km long. Last year's was a relatively flat road course through a residential neighbourhood, while this year's was a twisty, hilly, narrow, muddy trail run through low-hanging trees. I loved it, though. I found a guy going at a nice, slow steady pace, and ran on his heels until I got my breath and legs back, then went past him and found a new pace-setter. This guy's pace pushed me a bit, probably faster than I would have gone otherwise. That was a good thing, and I stuck on his tail until a volunteer told me that we had 1 km to go. I had been stronger than him on the hills the whole time, so the next hill I ran past him and built up a bit of a gap. I clearly pushed a little too hard, though, because as we turned onto the final road (about 400 metres from the end), this guy blew past me and got about 30 metres ahead. With 150 metres to go, we hit the final hill, and I spotted the top of the finishing arch just around the next corner (until that point, I wasn't sure exactly how far we had to go). I broke into a flat-out sprint up the hill, feeding off the large crowd that had gathered, and motivated by a desire to beat this one racer. I passed him a few metres before the final corner, and sprinted across the finish line 3 seconds ahead of him.

Run time: 26:47
Rank: 14/72 overall, 4/10 in age group.

Final time: 1:27:02
Rank: 19/72 overall, 4/10 in age group.

I am very pleased with this result. The wind made both the swim and bike tough, and the run was another cross-country run, unusual for me. However, with the Alberta Challenge run 2 weeks ago and my last workout being a run on hiking trails around Lac Beauvert in Jasper, I felt comfortable with the terrain and pushed hard. I'm especially pleased with the fact that I came out of the water in 27th (after passing a couple on the run into the transition zone) and finished in 19th, a gain of 8. I only counted a gain of 5, so I passed 3 people in transition, which is awesome. I went without socks, which cuts out quite a bit of time.

What I'm most pleased with is how my overall rankings improved with each leg, culminating in the 14th best run! The field was not as tough as last year's, I recognize, as the same guy won, but with a 5 minute buffer, instead of having 14 guys within 5 minutes like he did last year. But still, I was in the top third of the field, and the top quarter on the run, and I'm very proud of that. I was 10 minutes behind the 3rd placed racer in my age group last year, and this year I was only 2 minutes out of the top 3. Unfortunately, I was unable to achieve my goal of finishing in the top 3 in my age group, but I know it is possible. I just got myself a bike trainer, so I'll be training on my own bike all winter, and I'm hoping to see some significant improvement. I'm excited about training through this off-season again, and looking forward to running triathlons again next summer (which will be interesting, since we're hoping to do some travelling, and I'll be starting my articles at Alberta Justice).

Alberta Challenge 2010 Race Report

2010-08-23T10:05:00.003-06:00

Yesterday I accomplished one of my goals for the year by completing the Olympic distance triathlon at the Alberta Challenge. That was definitely one of the hardest things I've done, and without question it was the hardest I've ever pushed my body. I was horribly unprepared for it, and completed it based on willpower alone. I could barely walk for the rest of the day, although today my legs have recovered enough that I can walk (gingerly).

The last few weeks have been very busy, with Folk Fest and lots of guests, so I haven't had time to train as much as I should. I've done much better this summer than last at keeping up my training through the summer, but have still found it much more difficult to find the time when I'm working compared to when I'm at school. My confidence was not very high going into this race as a result.

Jana came down to Lake Miquelon Provincial Park with me for this race. It was definitely great to have her there, both for encouragement and to drive home after the race.

We left the house around 6, stopped for gas, and arrived at the park around 7:15. I got set up, ran into a friend doing his first open water swim in the sprint triathlon, and got ready to race.

Fog started to roll in around 8:15, making it difficult to see the buoys. I wasn't too concerned, though, because the water temperature was 18 degrees, which was actually warmer than the air temperature (contributing factor to the fog?), so I knew the swim wasn't going to be too bad. My biggest concern for the swim was boredom, because it's hard to tell if you're moving or not when the water is so murky that you can't see your hand, and it feels like you're swimming forever. I had practiced a counting system in the pool that enabled me to keep track of where I was by counting my strokes, and I used it during the race. It worked wonders, because not only did I always know where I was in the race, I had something to occupy my mind. I had actually never swam 1.5 km before, so I was very pleased with myself when I hopped out. I'm definitely getting more comfortable with the open-water swimming, which does wonders for my confidence going into a race.

Swim time: 37:51

Rank: 42/64 overall, 7/7 in age group.

Transition went well (no times available because I lost my watch a few weeks ago). I definitely could have gone faster, but I wasn't here to put up a good time or beat anybody, just to get it done. So I made sure I got a drink of Gatorade and put my shoes and socks on properly, and headed out.

The bike was where I realized just how much longer an Olympic distance triathlon is than a sprint. The swim hadn't seemed too bad, but I was starting from fresh. Now I was starting on the bike more tired than usual, and then the bike was twice as long. The first 10 km didn't seem too bad, but I soon reached the point where my hands were starting to go numb, and my legs just wouldn't respond when I wanted them to push harder. I also didn't want to push too hard, or I knew that I wouldn't have anything left for the run, which is not something I've had to worry about in sprint races. The course was on good pavement, and rolling. No big hills, but no time to relax, either. There was also a bit of a breeze, just enough to make the last 5 km into it a little more difficult.

Bike time: 1:38:49

Rank: 36/64 overall, 6/7 in age group.

The run was an effort in sheer willpower. I was feeling pretty dead from the bike ride, and still had a 10km run left. I think that if I had seen the course ahead of time, I would have just quit right there. But I naively thought that a winding trail through the park would be nice, and started off. The trail turned out to be a cross-country ski trail, and had a ton of hills. I would estimate that there were 15-20 uphills of various sizes per lap (I had to run 2 laps). My legs were pretty seized up the whole time, and there were points when I was jogging so slowly that I was barely moving faster than walking. But I kept going, kept pushing, even up the hills. What kept me going was the thought that when I made it to the end, I would have finished an Olympic triathlon. That was surprisingly strong motivation. It seemed to take forever, but I made it. There were lots of spectators out along the route, especially for the last kilometer, and I fed off their energy a lot.

Run time: 1:07:06

Rank: 44/64 overall, 6/7 in age group.

Final time: 3:23:45

Rank: 38/64 overall, 6/7 in age group.

I learned a lot yesterday, both about myself (such as my ability to motivate myself and persevere) and about how I can be better prepared for next year. My last triathlon of this season will be a short sprint, so I have plenty of time to get ready for my next Olympic distance triathlon, which will definitely be happening next summer. For one thing, I need to be better prepared for the nutrition requirements of a longer triathlon. For much of the run, I was starving. I could just feel that my body was craving nutrients. I devoured everything in sight as soon as I was done, and I have no doubt that taking in some of those calories during the race would have helped me to have more energy and go faster. Also, I have a new determination to get into better shape. I'm definitely in way better shape this summer than last, but I still have a long way to go. The larger scale of the Olympic triathlon is good motivation, too, because there's more room to grow. The winner finished in 2:26:53 (which is actually a pretty slow time for a triathlon: my theory is that either all the fast racers were in Kelowna for the national championships, or the course was very difficult, and I think it was a bit of both), which is almost an hour faster than me. The fastest swim was 10 minutes faster than me, the fastest bike was 24 minutes faster, and the fastest run also 24 minutes faster. I think I'll be back here next year, and I expect to post a much better time.

Solitary Man

2010-08-20T09:36:00.004-06:00

I've stated earlier that at the end of the year I'll be posting a list of my favourite films from 2000-2009. Of course, as I've been preparing for this, I've been trying to get into the habit of writing a little more about films as I see them. I see too many movies to review them all on here; I decided that early on. But what I think I'm going to try to do is review any movies that I go see in the theatre. I don't go all that often, so I think this is a manageable goal, especially if I keep the review relatively short. I'll start with the movie I saw last night, Solitary Man, starring Michael Douglas, Susan Sarandon, Danny DeVito, Mary-Louise Parker, and Jenna Fischer, written by Brian Koppelman, and directed by Koppelman and David Levien.

This movie is about a 60-year-old car dealer, Ben Kalmen (Douglas) going through a major midlife crisis, and his attempt to figure out his priorities in life. His prestige and finances have taken a hit in recent years, forcing him to reevaluate his extravagant lifestyle.

This movie is solidly written, and very well acted. I was particularly impressed with Jenna Fischer: this was the first time I've seen her in anything outside of The Office, and I thought she did a great job of not being Pam. In fact, her character was quite different than Pam, so credit is due to the casting director for seeing Fischer's potential here. There's really not much to complain about in this movie, everything was pretty well done. I generally enjoyed it.

Nothing, however, was excellent. I left the movie feeling empty, and the "message" of the movie was trite, obvious, and predictable. There were a few things that threw me off a bit, too, such as Cheston (Jesse Eisenberg from The Squid and The Whale) adopting Ben as his mentor, despite knowing a fair bit about him, based on a few minutes of interaction, or the mafia randomly showing up at the behest of Ben's ex-girlfriend to teach him a lesson. It's one of those movies that can't quite decide what it's point is, and despite only being 90 minutes long, I felt like it was rambling at points. Of the three "S-Man" movies I've seen in the last 8 months (A Single Man, A Serious Man, and Solitary Man), this was my least favourite. 7/10.

2010 Edmonton Folk Music Festival

2010-08-11T09:27:00.003-06:00

I have been having an awesome summer. With the exception of a job that hasn't turned out to be as interesting as promised, everything has been really great. I've been out golfing several times, including shooting my best score ever, been camping several times, and have spent a lot of time at home with other people coming to visit. One thing Jana and I set out to do this summer was to spend as much of our time in Edmonton as possible. Last year we felt that we were out of town almost every weekend, which cost us a lot of money, and meant we didn't get to experience Edmonton. This year, we've been able to go to the Farmer's Market, walk through the river valley, and go to festivals. Last weekend we went to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, which was probably the highlight of the summer.

After attending the entire weekend of three straight Calgary Folk Fest's, we missed out on our first one in Edmonton last year. Apparently tickets sell out way faster in Edmonton than in Calgary, and we were only able to go for one night. So this year I made sure to call on the day they went on sale, which turned out to be a smart idea as the tickets sold out completely on the first day. If anyone is thinking of going to the Edmonton Folk Fest, you should keep this in mind.

The Edmonton Folk Fest takes place at Gallagher Park in the river valley, which is a gorgeous setting. The park is a natural amphitheater, and there are really no bad seats at the main stage. Also, most of the side stages are on the side of the hill, so you always have great sound and a great view. The only drawback to the location is that there is no shade anywhere, which can make for some hot afternoons, and also leads to a lot of bright red skin around the festival.

I really like the format of the festival. There is more of a mixture of main stage and side stage shows than in Calgary: on Friday night, there are workshops from 6-9, and then the main stage starts, and on Saturday and Sunday there is a main stage concert from 2-3. It definitely makes it easier to meet up with people and to find time for meals, etc.

I also like how the festival works the tarp run for the best spots: instead of the first-come first-served system that leads to overnight camping in Calgary, the Edmonton festival does a lottery system. The first 1000 people who arrive at a certain time a few hours before gates open gets a coloured ticket, and then the colours are drawn to determine who gets to go first. It means you can't guarantee yourself a good spot, which is a drawback, but it makes those good spots a possibility without such a major time commitment. I found time to go for a run after the drawing and before the gates opened, which was a good thing on a very busy weekend.

As for the music, this was one of the best folk fests I've ever been to. The standout highlights for me were Ben Harper and Brandi Carlile. I'm not going to pretend to be a music reviewer, so I can't really describe why I liked them, but I was blown away by both of them. It is an incredible feeling to sit on that hill, looking out over the river valley and downtown Edmonton, hearing amazing music. I love just being in the moment at the festival, soaking it all in.

My favourite part of these festivals is sitting in on workshops where the musicians really click and are able to jam together. Without question, the best workshop of the weekend was at Stage 3 on Sunday morning. The three acts were Naomi Shelton and the Gospel Queens, Dailey & Vincent, and John Boutte. Shelton and the Queens are a Motown style girls group, fronted by a long-time veteran of the soul and gospel scene. Dailey & Vincent are a bluegrass and Southern gospel group, and John Boutte is a New Orleans-based cajun soul singer. Because it was Sunday morning, they decided to stick to a spiritual theme, especially since Dailey & Vincent were clearly used to having a very Christian theme to their music. What this meant is that they ended up singing a lot of spirituals that they all knew, and everyone could sing and play together. We spent a good chunk of this workshop up on our feet.

And just so I don't forget, here were a few other acts I really enjoyed: Patrick Watson and the Wooden Arms, Ray Bonneville, Sarah Harmer, The Levon Helm Band, Luis E. Mejia Godoy, and Bassekou Kouyate And Ngoni Ba.

The Folk Fest is a unique place, where you can leave your stuff sitting on your tarp all day without fear, with delicious food, reasonably priced beer, and street performers wandering through the crowd. I love being there. Can't wait for next year!

World Extreme Croquet Rankings

2010-07-19T09:33:00.008-06:00

Last weekend, the 6th Annual Gull Lake Invitational Croquet Tournament was played, and for the third time, David Klassen emerged as the victor. I came in as a very close second place, the second time I've come up short at the final stage. This had me thinking: am I the best player to have never won the Nedved Memorial Cup? In golf, soccer or tennis, the easiest way to determine who holds that title (of course, you would be talking about a Grand Slam event, the World Cup or a major, since none of those sports have a competition quite on the scale of the Gull Lake Invitational) is to look at the world rankings. These rankings are determined by assigning point values to results, and totalling them up. Points stay on the record for a certain number of years, and then drop off, allowing new players to climb the rankings, and preventing old players from resting on the laurels of historic victories. I decided that it is high time that the sport of Extreme Croquet adopt a similar system.

Here is the breakdown that I came up with:

- Results affect the ranking for 5 years.

- Points count for their full value for 2 years.

- In the third year, the points begin reducing by 25% each year (based on the original value, so in Year 3, points are worth 75% of their original value, 50% in Year 4, and 25% of their original value in Year 5).

- The only official Extreme Croquet event is the Gull Lake Invitational.

- There are no points for unofficial events.

This system rewards consistency, but also places a high value on recent results. I have devised the system before doing any compiling, so the results will not be twisted in anybody's favour.

Here are the point values (based on those used for the major tournaments of golf):

- 1st: 100 points

- 2nd: 60 points

- 3rd: 40 points

- 4th: 30 points

- 5th: 20 points

- 6th: 15 points

- DNQ: 5 points

This is, I think, an appropriate system. Winning is justifiably worth a lot more points than anything else, third through sixth are not separated by a lot, as qualifying is very difficult, and giving points for a DNQ rewards those who slog it out every year, never giving up or no-showing.

Here are the results that I worked with (for ease of reference, I used people's current names):

2010:

1 - David Klassen

2 - Ian Elford

3 - Rick Greene

4 - Andy Attard

5 - Amy Greene

6 - Jana

DNQ - Nathan Cooke, Boyda Johnstone, Scott Blackburn, Kelsey Everton

2009:

1 - Nathan Cooke

2 - Rick Greene

3 - Andy Attard

4 - Ian Elford

5 - Kelsey Everton

6 - David Klassen

DNQ - Amy Greene, Boyda Johnstone, Jana

2008:

1 - David Klassen

2 - Scott Blackburn

3 - Jana

4 - Jeremy Sergeew

5 - Amy Greene

6 - Rick Greene

DNQ - Lorelei Sergeew, Ian Elford, Kelsey Everton, Nathan Cooke, Boyda Johnstone, Jared McQuaig

2007:

1 - David Klassen

2 - Kelsey Everton

3 - Rick Greene

4 - Ian Elford

5 - Jana

6 - Amy Greene

DNQ - Scott Blackburn, Jared McQuaig, Boyda Johnstone

2006:

1 - Rick Greene

2 - Kelsey Everton

3 - Ian Elford

4 - David Klassen

5 - Boyda Johnstone

6 - Amy Greene

DNQ - Jana, Matt Greene

Thus, here is the current World Ranking:

1 - David Klassen (247.5)

2 - Rick Greene (156.25)

3 - Ian Elford (118.75)

4 - Nathan Cooke (108.75)

5 - Kelsey Everton (73.75)

6 - Andy Attard (70)

7 - Jana (61.25)

8 - Scott Blackburn (52.5)

9 - Amy Greene (51.25)

10 - Jeremy Sergeew (22.5)

11 - Boyda Johnstone (21.25)

12 - Jared McQuaig (6.25)

13 - Lorelei Sergeew (3.75)

14 - Matt Greene (1.25)

My suspicions are confirmed: I am the best player never to have won the Nedved Memorial Cup.

For the sake of curiosity and the official record, I have also compiled what the World Rankings for each of the other years that the sport has been in existence.

Thus, here are the 2005 results that I used:

1 - Rick Greene

2 - Ian Elford

3 - Jeremy Sergeew

4 - David Klassen

5 - Justin Cloutier

6 - Jana

DNQ - Boyda Johnstone, Kelsey Everton, Scott Blackburn, Amy Greene, John Heikel, Laura Platana

Therefore, here were the results going into this most recent tournament (the 2009 Rankings):

1 - David Klassen (210)

2 - Rick Greene (180)

3 - Nathan Cooke (105)

4 - Kelsey Everton (101.25)

5 - Ian Elford (92.5)

6 - Jana (66.25)

7 - Scott Blackburn (65)

8 - Amy Greene (45)

9 - Andy Attard (40)

10 - Jeremy Sergeew (37.5)

11 - Boyda Johnstone (25)

12 - Justin Cloutier (10)

13 - Jared McQuaig (8.75)

14 - Lorelei Sergeew (5)

15 - Matt Greene (2.5)

16 (tie) - Laura Platana (1.25)

16 (tie) - John Heikel (1.25)

So you'll note that Andy moved up from 9 to 6 in this edition and I moved from 5 to 3, while everyone else stayed the same or went down.

2008 Rankings:

1 - David Klassen (237.5)

2 - Rick Greene (180)

3 - Kelsey Everton (112.5)

4 - Ian Elford (95)

5 - Jana (71.25)

6 - Scott Blackburn (67.5)

7 - Jeremy Sergeew (50)

8 - Amy Greene (48.75)

9 - Boyda Johnstone (27.5)

10 (tie) - Justin Cloutier (10)

10 (tie) - Jared McQuaig (10)

12 (tie) - Nathan Cooke (5)

12 (tie) - Lorelei Sergeew (5)

14 - Matt Greene (3.75)

15 (tie) - Laura Platana (2.5)

Yes, when Nathan Cooke won, he was ranked 12th in the world. That was an epic upset. It moved him up to 3rd in the rankings.

2007 Rankings:

1 - Rick Greene (215)

2 - David Klassen (152.5)

3 - Kelsey Everton (123.75)

4 - Ian Elford (115)

5 - Jana (36.25)

6 - Amy Greene (33.75)

7 - Jeremy Sergeew (30)

8 - Boyda Johnstone (28.75)

9 - Justin Cloutier (15)

10 - Scott Blackburn (8.75)

11 (tie) - Jared McQuaig (5)

11 (tie) - Matt Greene (5)

13 (tie) - Laura Platana (3.75)

13 (tie) - John Heikel (3.75)

This was the era of the Old Firm. Also note that Rick managed to top the rankings despite not winning in 2007, such was his dominance of the early tournaments.

2006 Rankings:

1 - Rick Greene (200)

2 - Ian Elford (100)

3 - Kelsey Everton (65)

4 - David Klassen (60)

5 - Jeremy Sergeew (40)

6 - Boyda Johnstone (25)

7 (tie) - Justin Cloutier (20)

7 (tie) - Jana (20)

7 (tie) - Amy Greene (20)

10 (tie) - Scott Blackburn (5)

10 (tie) - Matt Greene (5)

10 (tie) - Laura Platana (5)

10 (tie) - John Heikel (5)

David was ranked 4th going into his first tournament win.

2005 Rankings:

1 - Rick Greene (100)

2 - Ian Elford (60)

3 - Jeremy Sergeew (40)

4 - David Klassen (30)

5 - Justin Cloutier (20)

6 - Jana (15)

7 (tie) - Kelsey Everton (5)

7 (tie) - Scott Blackburn (5)

7 (tie) - Amy Greene (5)

7 (tie) - Boyda Johnstone (5)

7 (tie) - Laura Platana (5)

7 (tie) - John Heikel (5)

Not much of a base to draw on for the 2005 rankings.

And one final compilation. For each of those who have competed at 2 or more tournaments, I have listed below the highest ranking that they have ever achieved, and the dates for which they held it:

David Klassen - 1 (2008-2010)

Rick Greene - 1 (2005-2007)

Ian Elford - 2 (2005-2006)

Kelsey Everton - 3 (2006-2008)

Nathan Cooke - 3 (2009)

Jeremy Sergeew - 3 (2005)

Jana - 5 (2007-2008)

Andy Attard - 6 (2010)

Scott Blackburn - 6 (2008)

Amy Greene - 6 (2007)

Boyda Johnstone - 6 (2006)

Jared McQuaig - 11 (2007-2008)

There is a lot to digest here. Discuss below (and my apologies to any readers whose minds are numbed by all these statistics that mean nothing to them).

2010 Lake Summerside Triathlon Report

2010-06-28T08:57:00.003-06:00

I don't know why I haven't written this race report already, but I guess three weeks late is better than never. On June 6 I raced in the 2010 edition of the Lake Summerside Triathlon, completing the Sprint distance in a time of 1:23:20.

This was my first time competing in a race for the second time, and it was amazing how my mindset had changed from last year. I knew what to expect from the swim, I knew how to transition, and I knew that I was in good enough shape to finish the whole race, so I didn't worry about pacing.

The course was slightly changed from last year, and the two changes the race organizers made dramatically improved the race. First, they moved the swim exit from the uneven concrete boat launch to the sandy beach. This made the runup to the transition area longer, but also made the swim exit way safer and more comfortable. Second, they changed the bike route. Now not only was the sprint distance more accurate (19.5 km compared to last year's 22.4 km), but the route didn't take us through the patches of extremely uneven pavement that we had to go through last year, which meant less flat tires and also made it possible to push hard for the whole bike portion of the race.

Okay, let me start from the beginning. I drove myself down to the race site early in the morning. I should note that one thing very different from last year is that I was all by myself. Last year I had 2 friends racing, and they both had their spouses and other friends along, so there was a large cheering section throughout the race. This year, those friends both live on the West Coast, and Jana wasn't able to make it out due to prior commitments. So it was just me, but in the end I didn't mind it at all. I was able to relax and focus, which put me in a really good mental space before race.

The one thing that caused some agitation before the race is that the water was so cold that the race organizers didn't make the final call on whether we would swim the full distance, or even swim at all, until about 15 minutes before the Olympic race started, which was an hour before my start. I couldn't decide if I wanted the swim to be shortened or not. On the one hand, the swim is the part of the race I fear the most. And last year in this lake, the cold water and long distances caused me to panic, forcing me to swim most of the course on my back, which in turn tired my legs for the rest of the race. I also remembered my feet being numb through the entire cycling portion of the race. So part of me wanted the race shortened. On the other hand, this is my only regulation distance sprint triathlon of the year, and I really wanted a shot at my goal of completing a sprint triathlon in under 1:20. So when they announced that the swim would go ahead as planned, I focused on the goal, and hopped in the water extra early to warm up.

I spent 20 minutes in the water, putting my face in (with new goggles since late the night before I'd realized that I'd left my goggles in my locker at the pool, and the only thing open that late was a Wal-Mart), and swimming around. The water was very cold, apparently colder than last year, but I spent long enough in that I could convince my brain that I could breathe normally, and the panic reflex faded away. As a result, I improved my swim time dramatically from last year: from 21:40 to 15:27, including a longer run into transition. I checked my watch when I hopped out, and I actually completed the swim in under 15 minutes, which is almost 2 minutes faster than my previous best 750 metre swim at Coral Springs last year. I think the addition of weight training to my workouts this year really helped.

Last year's transition was horrible, and although I don't have any exact times, I think I was probably 5 minutes faster this year than I was last year. My wetsuit came off with no problem, and since I've switched to using no socks, getting my shoes on took a lot less time. Also, having completed the swim faster, I was not as numb, and could still use my fingers.

The bike was pretty uneventful. I felt like I was pushing hard, and certainly passed more people than I let pass me, but I couldn't seem to break through to the sort of speeds that I was seeing around me. I know that part of it is my bike, but mostly I need to train more actually on my bike. I still have a lot of room for improvement here, and training on the stationary bikes at the gym only helps me so much. My final time was 42:13, which stands up pretty good to last year's time of 55:40. The major differences were the improved transition, and the shortened course, which make it hard to actually tell how my cycling pace compared. It was definitely a smoother ride and less windy, so I probably did bike faster.

My second transition was very fast, as always, with no shoes to change. I took a few seconds to have a drink of Gatorade, which was really helpful.

The run is always very difficult in a triathlon, because for the first few kilometres my leg muscles don't want to work properly, and then for the last few kilometres I'm completely exhausted. I was quite proud of myself, though, for how I pushed as hard as I possibly could. In my immediate post-race delirium, I thought I had actually cracked 25 minutes for the 5k run (which would be a slow run normally, but very good for me in a triathlon), but looking at the official results and at my watch again I'm not sure why I thought that. My run time was 25:41, which is still a pretty good time, and I ran the second 2.5 km lap faster than the first (reverse split). I don't have the exact lap times because I forgot to hit the button on my watch, but I know that I looked down at the turn around and my first lap was just over 13 minutes. So definitely a lot to be proud of there. And again a huge improvement over last year, where I ran 28:08 on the exact same course.

So in the end, my time of 1:23:20 was over 21 minutes faster than last year's 1:44:53. Some of that was due to the shorter bike, but most of it was personal improvement, particularly in the swim and transition phases of the race. I also improved in my overall placement: last year I was 40/80, and this year I was 22/70.

Unfortunately, I was not able to achieve my goal of breaking 1:20, and my two remaining triathlons won't give me an opportunity to do that (I'm doing an Olympic distance in August and then the Lacombe triathlon in September, which claims to be a sprint triathlon, but is short in all three distances). I came a lot closer than I thought I was going to through the spring, and I know that it is doable. I will be aiming for at least that mark next year.

My other triathlon related goal this year was to finish in the top 3 in my age group. This is kind of a silly goal, because it's pretty much out of my control, but the quality of competition is fairly consistent from year to year at these triathlons. Last year I was 7/7 in the Mens 20-29 category, and this year I improved to 6/9. Had I cracked 1:20, I would have been 4th. 3rd was a distant 1:16. I'll be looking to achieve this goal at the Lacombe triathlon, where last year I finished 4th. The gap between me and 3rd was a very large 10 minutes, but I think that my results at Summerside have shown that I'm capable of cutting that kind of time off. I know I'll be in the thick of things there, anyway.

There are a lot of positives that I can take away from this race, and I'm very proud of my result. I moved up the pack in each event: 34th in the swim, then 24th on the bike, and then 19th in the run. I ran faster than 5 people who finished ahead of me. I reverse split the run. I never let up through the entire race, pushing as hard as I could the whole time.

I continue to get more hooked on this sport. I don't foresee myself ever being competitive for the top spots, but I'm definitely going to keep pushing myself and seeing how fast I can go.

Italy is Out

2010-06-24T14:14:00.003-06:00

It didn't take very long. Italy is out of the 2010 World Cup at the earliest opportunity for the first time since 1974. There's not much to say about it. They played very poorly for all three games, except for the final 25 minutes of today's 3-2 loss to Slovakia. They came very close to making it through, with a goal cleared off the line and another called back for offside, but in the end they leave without a single win, out of the easiest group in the World Cup.

A new coach is on the way, which is definitely required. Lippi refused to take several young and dynamic players due to personality conflicts, and when Pirlo went down injured, there was no adequate replacement. The brief period where they played well in this tournament coincided with the brief period where Pirlo played. Cassano would have been nice to have around to fill that playmaker role.

Based on the team Lippi picked, I never expected Italy to challenge for the championship at this tournament, but like everyone else I expected them to make it out of the group. For the record, my prediction since before the tournament began has been an Argentina win. I still think that Maradona has what it takes as a motivator to take his team all the way.

So Close...

2010-05-16T09:01:00.002-06:00

It came down to the final day. Roma went into the final match 2 points back of Inter, so in order to win the scudetto, Roma would need to beat Chievo while Inter would need to lose or draw against already-relegated Siena. I knew it was foolish to even hope, but when it was halftime and the scores stood 2-0 for Roma and 0-0 in Siena, I let myself hope.

But, of course, Inter was too good to be stopped, and they got their goal and their win. Inter has now won 5 straight Italian championships. They've won two trophies so far this season, with the Coppa Italia win over Roma last week, and they still have the Champion's League final next Saturday against Bayern Munchen with a chance to win an unprecedented triple. They make me sick.

Roma had a fantastic season. As I've said before, it started off slowly, with 2 straight losses, and then 3 losses in the next 8 matches. From that point on, for the remaining 28 matches, Roma only lost 1 match: 3 weeks ago against Sampdoria. That loss cost them the title, as they went into it with a 1 point lead over Inter. Second again.

2010 Roll Up the Rim Count

2010-04-28T11:55:00.002-06:00

Roll Up the Rim to Win comes at a very bad time for me: right in the middle of exams and paper-writing. So right at the time of year when I'm sleeping odd hours and trying to frantically get as much work done as I can, there is a pseudo-gambling contest going on that involves coffee. It is a perfect storm. That is why I drank 56 cups of Tim Horton's coffee while the promotion was going on.

My final score was 9 wins: 8 free coffees and 1 free donut. The published odds of winning a prize are 1 in 9, and I bettered that, with 1 in every 6.2 cups being a winner for me. Now I'm trying my best to scale way back.

Forza Roma!!

2010-04-18T12:45:00.006-06:00

AS Roma and SS Lazio are the most bitter of rivals. Both are based out of the Stadio Olimpico in Rome, and twice a year they play each other in the Derby della Capitale. Roma won the first by a score of 1-0, and just minutes ago they also won the second, this time a come-from-behind 2-1 victory!! Mirko Vucinic is the hero, scoring both goals.

Lazio completely outplayed Roma in the first half, scoring the first goal in the 14th minute and not allowing Roma a single shot. At the half, Roma's coach, Claudio Ranieri, made two extremely bold substitutions, pulling off the captain, Francesco Totti, and the vice-captain, Daniele de Rossi, the two Roman-born players on the team. Both had picked up yellow cards in the first half, and it looked as though their drive to win the match at all costs was perhaps more of a liability than an asset. Not many coaches would have the courage to pull them both off, but Ranieri did, and his switches paid off. The game opened up, and it was the two substitutes that won first the penalty and then the free kick that led to the two goals.

The turning point in the match, though, was in the first minute after the halftime break, when Lazio were awarded a penalty kick, and Julio Sergio saved it. If Lazio had gone up 2-0 at that point, the game likely would have been over, and Lazio would have succeeded in both assuring themselves of avoiding relegation and spoiling Roma's chances at the championship.

The win is one of the biggest in Roma history. I posted a few weeks ago about how Roma was in with a chance at the league title: last week they moved into a 1 point lead, and with Inter winning on Friday, they had to win today to maintain that 1 point lead. Even more than that, this win means that Lazio are only 3 points out of the bottom three, which would mean relegation to Serie B, the second tier of Italian football. To win the scudetto and have Lazio relegated would be the perfect season for Roma.

There are 4 matches left in the season, and it's all down to Inter and Roma. Milan have dropped off the pace, and are 7 points behind Roma. It is going to be an intense finish to the season, as Roma look to finish off a massive comeback, and win their fourth ever scudetto!

In this video, you can see the passion and hatred between these two teams. What a game!

Neighbourhood Excitement

2010-04-08T19:29:00.003-06:00

I was sitting at my computer a few minutes ago when I heard some yelling and sirens in the distance. It's a brutal storm outside right now (60-90 km/h winds and snow), but I thought that looking out the window it seemed a little smoky or something. Sure enough, I went over to the window and our neighbours' greenhouse shed was on fire! Some guys from the neighbourhood were trying to put it out with fire extinguishers, but it was already shooting out of the roof. The fire department arrived and got it under control, but the greenhouse is destroyed. Sadly, I don't think we're getting free tomatoes this summer.

Everyone is okay, and it didn't spread at all. The initial prognosis is that an old heater short circuited.

I'd have taken a picture, except Jana has the camera with her, and she's in Texas attending a conference for the weekend. So you'll just have to take my word for it.

Fight to the Finish

2010-03-27T13:18:00.003-06:00

Thanks in large part to the two men in this picture, Luca Toni and Jeremy Menez, AS Roma find themselves in a position to fight for the scudetto in the latter stages of the Serie A season. As I write this, the match against Inter, the current league leaders and defending league champions (4 times over), ended about 20 minutes ago, with Roma winning 2-1. That win moves Roma to within 1 point of Inter. If AC Milan beats Lazio tomorrow, AC Milan will be tied with Roma for points. That means that with 7 matches left in the seaons, Inter will have 63 points, Roma 62, and Milan 62. That is a recipe for an intense finish to the season!!

In my opinion, Roma have to be considered the favourites at this point. Today's win was their 21st straight match in Serie A without a loss. Inter, on the other hand, have only 2 wins in their last 9 Serie A matches, probably due to a strong focus on the Champion's League, where they recently knocked out Chelsea. AC Milan have been playing very well, recently having a stretch where they won 5 out of 6, but lost 1-0 last match to Parma. Roma are completely healthy for the first time in years, and Ranieri has the difficult task of balancing the obvious desire to play Totti as much as possible with the fact that Toni, Vucinic, and Menez are in fantastic form.

Roma have been incredibly exciting to watch this season. This season began with a terrible stretch of form, losing both of the opening matches, resulting in a coaching change after the season had already begun. There was a long transition period, as well, and 10 games into the season Roma only had 5 wins, with 3 straight losses to wrap up those 10. Since that point, though, Roma have not lost again, including a magnificent 7 game win streak in January and February. The prospect of a shot at the scudetto would have been unimaginable in October, but here we sit, 1 point behind Inter. I cannot wait to watch these remaining 7 matches, as Roma push for their 4th ever league championship.

Trip to the Olympics

2010-03-23T20:22:00.002-06:00

Alright, it's about time that I buckle down and put together a post about my trip to the Vancouver Olympics with Jana and my whole immediate family. If you want a review of just how excited I was to go on this trip, read this post.

The first stage of our journey was driving down from Edmonton to Calgary. The plan was to get there by supper time, and we were going to celebrate Jana's birthday with our friends David and Boyda. Unfortunately, a combination of leaving a couple hours late and realizing just outside of Red Deer that we'd forgotten our tickets to the Olympic events at home (I'd grabbed the envelope, but had taken them out of the envelope a couple days earlier to make sure they were all there, and had failed to replace them), meant that we arrived much later than that. Fortunately, our friends were very gracious and waited for us.

The next day was the first road trip I'd gone on with my family since 2000, in the summer after Grade 10. We left at around 6 am, and arrived at our condo around 10 pm. Along the way, we listened on the radio to Canada lose to the USA in the final game of the group stage for Men's Hockey.

The next morning Jana and I headed out to the beautiful Whistler Olympic Centre on a gorgeous sunny day to watch Cross-Country Skiing. We were able to watch 2 women's semi-finals, 2 men's semi-finals, and women's and men's finals, all for $25! We got there just in time for it to start, but still managed to find the perfect spot to stand, right along the fence, in the start/finish stadium. Because we were watching the Team Sprint Relay, the skiers were only doing short laps (3 minutes) and exchanging after each lap. We had an amazing day, with Canada making both finals. The women finished 7th, and the men finished 4th! We did our best and cheered our loudest, but unfortunately couldn't quite get them into that medal spot.

Sarah Renner

Devon Kershaw leading with 2 laps remaining

The next day was spent relaxing in Whistler. I was able to go for a run along the golf course, and we caught the game against Germany in a bar in town. They were very laid-back: they weren't serving any food (I'm guessing nobody wanted to work in the back and miss the game), so they passed out Domino's menus and let people order pizza into the bar. It was a fun, relaxed place.

On Wednesday, Jana and I along with my sisters Michelle and Shauna took the bus down to Vancouver to go to women's aerials. First we met up with our friend Kelsey, who showed us around downtown Vancouver (which is amazing). We stood in line to take advantage of our democratic right to an unobstructed view of the Olympic torch. And we had lunch at the Steamworks Brewery, where we watched Clara Hughes win a bronze medal in the Women's 5000, with an even faster time than when she won the gold at Torino. And she did it at age 37! She is remarkable. I saw her once, in Calgary, at the ceremony to upgrade Becky Scott's 2002 medal from bronze to silver, out to support her friend.

Shauna, Michelle, Kelsey, Jana, Ian

Eventually we made our way up to Cypress Mountain to watch the event. We had standing room only tickets, and had booked the first bus up to the venue to make sure we got the best spot. It paid off, because we were right up against the fence, right at the bottom of the aerials hill (most of the standing room spots were at the base of the moguls, and looked at the aerials from the side). The downside was that we then had to stand in that spot for 3 hours before the event actually started. It was very foggy and rainy. The men's hockey team was playing Russia, and they were showing the game on the big screen, but it was so foggy that we could barely see it. We stuck it out, though, and had a great time watching the event, even though there were no Canadian competitors. We stood with a bunch of Australians, so we had fun being with them as they cheered their skier to gold.

There's a skier in the air warming up - it cleared up in time for the actual event.

On Friday we were all back in Vancouver, this time for the Women's Curling Bronze Medal match. Again we met up with Kelsey, but this time she was able to come to the event with us. We had all been watching a lot of curling in the last couple of weeks, so we definitely knew what was going on. We were cheering for the Swiss, especially when they made that draw in the 4th end to score 3 and get back to within 1. But China ran away with it, winning 12-6 after Mirjam Ott left a draw shockingly short in the 8th end to let China steal 4.

We were done by noon, and had the rest of the day to spend in Vancouver. Jana and I went and explored Granville Island, and then made our way downtown. The highlight of our afternoon was spying who we thought was Peter Mansbridge taping a segment of the National at the CBC building across the street. We snuck down to right under the balcony he was in, and confirmed that it was indeed him. We couldn't believe that nobody else was stopping and staring. It's Peter Mansbridge! The day before we were watching the National, and I'd seen that he was in Vancouver. Half-jokingly I'd said that the one celebrity I hoped to see when we were in Vancouver was him. As we were standing below him taking his picture, he turned and noticed us. I waved awkwardly, starstruck. We crept away, and then I looked back and saw that he was still watching us. He motioned for us to turn around, and then he posed while Jana took his picture. It was awesome.

We went and stood in line at Steamworks at about 4:30 to try and get a spot to watch the hockey game against Slovakia. Fortunately, because we were a group of only 2, we got a spot pretty quickly, and stayed there for the rest of the evening. We had a great time watching the women's curling gold medal match, short track speed skating (that was the night Charles Hamelin won two golds) and the hockey game, of course, with a big room of excited people. When the game was over, we made our way out onto the streets. The crowds were massive, and we waded out into the middle of the sea of people making its way down Robson Street. We watched the fire and lights show at Robson Square, and then made our way back to the bus to go back into Whistler.

The next day we spent relaxing at the condo in Whistler, watching all the final day activities (like Jasey-Jay Anderson!), and went into town at night for a Beavertail.

We sat down as a family that and decided that we really wanted to watch the gold medal hockey game and were willing to do anything to make it work. We found a bar in Revelstoke, and my sister called them and convinced them to let us make a reservation for the next day at lunchtime. We promised them that even though we were in Whistler now, we'd be there in time for the game. They agreed to hold our table as long as we got there an hour before the game. That meant we had to leave at 4:30 the next morning.

Which we did. Jana's birthday was spent in the car all day, starting at 4:30 am. Fortunately, my Mom had brought a bunch of little presents which she spaced through the day, which made it not so bad. And, of course, we stopped in Revelstoke for lunch and watched the amazing gold medal hockey game! We were definitely very glad that we didn't miss it. We got back to Calgary around 8, and immediately got in our car and continued driving up to Edmonton. All told we did 18 hours of driving that day.

It was a crazy week. We missed a lot of school, and spent the next couple weeks scrambling to catch up, which is why it's taken so long for this post to get up. But we had an amazing time, and definitely do not regret it. It was so much fun to be a part of the incredible atmosphere in Vancouver and Whistler, and it was awesome to be there to experience Canada's best-ever performance at a Winter Olympic Games.

82nd Academy Awards Results - 12/24

2010-03-08T14:23:00.003-07:00

I really took a beating on the predictions this year, getting my worst result yet, and finishing well back of the winner at the Oscar party I attended, who got 15 correct. I think I gave the Academy too much credit on some of the categories, particularly Art Direction, Cinematography, and Costume Design. I also only got 1/5 on the Foreign Film, Documentary, and Short Films categories, which are the guesses through which an Oscar pool are won or lost.

There were some minor upsets on the night (both screenplay awards went to underdogs in the category according to the oddsmakers), but no surprises. So I don't really have a lot to say about the awards. I'm quite disappointed that the Academy gave Art Direction and Cinematography to a film that is essentially animated.

I was quite pleased with The Hurt Locker's performance. In particular, I was quite excited to get the Film Editing award right. Of course, it was also wonderful to see it win both Best Director and Best Picture, and it was a historic first win for a female director. Hopefully more women are able to earn some respect in that field now. (On a side note, they also said that no African-American has won that award. Does this mean that every single one of the previous 81 Best Director awards was won by a white male? That's just not right.)

I guess the one surprise was that El Secreto de Sus Ojos won the Best Foreign Language Film. As has become customary in the last few years, the one film in that category that I've actually heard of (usually, as is the case this year, for winning the Palme D'Or at Cannes) doesn't win. I'll be looking forward to seeing that film when it comes out.

As for the show itself, it did not come even close to being as good as last year's. I was excited about Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, but it was clear that Bruce Villanch is still the writer, and they were never really able to do anything of their own. Other than a few chuckles, their segments, especially the opening, just dragged on. Also, for a show that says every year they want to shorten the program, they did their very best to make it even longer this year. This was primarily done through a very long summary of each of the 10 Best Picture nominees. Also quite guilty was the 15 minute tribute to John Hughes, which left me baffled. His films may have been popular, and they are mostly good, but the director of Home Alone is not one of the all-time greats.

One thing I often enjoy about the Oscars is the musical numbers where they perform the Original Song nominees, especially when there are good songs nominated. This year they just skipped them, and instead did breakdancing to film scores. It was ridiculous. I did not approve.

Fortunately, great speeches from Mo'Nique, Sandy Powell (the Costume Design winner), and Sandra Bullock gave the show some high points. I also loved Waltz's "uber-bingo." And ultimately, it's about the awards, and there were a lot of movies that I genuinely liked this year and was rooting for, so it was good to see them get recognized.

82nd Academy Award Predictions

2010-03-07T10:30:00.002-07:00

I'm making my annual predictions of the Oscars, however, this year it is without the benefit of a final weekend blitz. In fact, this is probably the year in which I've seen the least of the nominated films. The blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Not only did we not watch any movies while we were in Whistler (expect a post soon about how amazing that week was), but we didn't watch any during the first week either, because we both got so caught up in what was going on over on the West Coast. A bit of the blame falls with our recent furnace replacement, which has made us tighten our belts a few notches as well.

Therefore, this will probably be fairly brief.

Best Actor - I saw 4/5 here, surprisingly. We did do our best to see the big category films, so the only one here that I didn't see was Morgan Freeman in Invictus. This is a really, really strong category this year, with wonderful acting from Colin Firth and my favourite performance yet from George Clooney. But all of the buzz, deservedly so, is that Jeff Bridges will win. Crazy Heart as a film is nothing particularly special, but it wouldn't even be worth watching if it weren't for Bridges' great performance. His character was in every single scene, as far as I can remember, and was one of those people who acts completely differently depending on who he's with, but Bridges made every one of those facets of Bad very real.

Best Supporting Actor - We only saw 1/5, and that one is Inglorious Basterds which we saw last night (I loved it). So without being able to say that he deserves it any more than the other 4 actors, I'm putting my money on Christopher Waltz. He was brilliant, and so funny. There are not a lot of funny Nazis in cinema.

Best Actress - I'm quite surprised to realize that I've only seen 1/5 (Jana saw Julie & Julia, so she's seen 2/5). The one that I saw is Carrie Mulligan in An Education, and I thought she was great. However, one must be pragmatic when selecting Oscar winners. Sandra Bullock has been winning all the buildup awards, but lately I've been hearing speculation that Meryl Streep may win her third Oscar. I'm going to go with Sandra Bullock, though, because I sense that if her performance really was Oscar-worthy, the Academy will want to reward it now, because she probably won't pull one out again. She certainly hasn't in the past. Streep, on the other hand, will hit 20 nominations very soon.

Best Supporting Actress - I've seen 3/5 of these (the 2 nominations in Up in the Air and Gyllenhaal in Crazy Heart), but honestly wouldn't give any of them an Oscar for their performances. I'll jump on the bandwagon sight unseen for Mo'Nique.

Best Animated Feature - No changes since the nominations came out, I've seen 3/5. I would really love it if Fantastic Mr. Fox won, but the Academy has never given an Oscar to any Wes Anderson film, and I doubt that's going to change (if the Royal Tenenbaums didn't win something, he'll probably never win unless he changes his style). In the past 5 years, three Pixar films have won this award (The Incredibles, Ratatouille, and Wall-E). All three were very deserving. In my opinion, this year's Pixar entry is not in the same category as those three, however I think that the Academy disagrees and will, unfortunately, give this Oscar to Up.

Best Art Direction - I've seen 2/5: Avatar and The Young Victoria. Looking back over the winners for the past few years, I'm surprised to see that it isn't the big winner on the night that usually comes away with this award. But since I don't think Avatar will be winning later, that doesn't exclude them here. With winners like Sweeney Todd, Memoirs of a Geisha, and Pan's Labyrinth in recent years, the Academy has shown a willingness to give this award to smaller movies. I'm having a really hard time on this one deciding between The Young Victoria and The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus. I do know, however, that like Costume Design, the Academy seems to prefer art direction set in a particular time over crazy fantasy, so I'm going to pick The Young Victoria to win this award. That's really going out on a limb, but in a fairly predictable year, that's what you have to do.

Best Cinematography - 4/5. The only one I wasn't able to see was The White Ribbon, which hasn't been released on DVD in North America yet. I'm sure it is fantastic, but I'm just going to pretend it doesn't exist. This is a two-horse race, in my opinion, between The Hurt Locker and Inglorious Basterds. Having said that, even though those two horses have built up a 6 length gap between themselves and the next competitors, the winner by a full length, based on sheer audacity and the pure joy and love of film that it exudes in every shot, is Inglorious Basterds.

Best Costume Design - Only seen The Young Victoria. The last three awards have all gone to films about European royalty: The Duchess, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and Marie Antoinette. Based on that, the easy vote is The Young Victoria. However, I don't think it's going to win. There is some buzz for Coco Before Chanel, based on how important the costumes were, but that's what I thought about The Devil Wears Prada, and it didn't work out that way. I think that the Academy loves period pieces in this category, but will be looking to make a shift away from royalty by selecting Bright Star to win this award.

Best Director - 4/5, the only one not seen is Precious. This is a tricky one for me, because Up in the Air is my favourite Jason Reitman film yet, and while I'm not completely positive, Inglorious Basterds is probably my favourite Quentin Tarantino film yet. But The Hurt Locker was just too good, and the voters are pretty much the same ones that select the Director's Guild Awards, which is why only 6 times since 1948 has there been a different winner of Best Director at the two awards shows. I think that tonight we will see Kathryn Bigelow become the first woman to ever win this Oscar.

Best Documentary - I have not seen any of these, so my vote will be based purely on subject matter. We have journalism in Burma during the protests, Japanese whale-hunting, the American food industry, Watergate, and Central American child migrants. I think that the Academy voters are going to care most about 2 or 3, but I'm going to go against the consensus (which seems to be The Cove) and select Food Inc.

Best Documentary Short - Same criteria, less explanation. I'm picking The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner.

Best Film Editing - 3/5, didn't see Precious or District 9. As I said in my discussion of the nominations, the editing is what drives The Hurt Locker and ratchets up the tension, making it such an enjoyable film to watch. In past years, it seems like I always get this category wrong, because it just ends up going to the sweeping movie, but this year that's part of what I'm counting on.

Best Foreign Language Film - I did not see any, so based just on it being the only one I've heard anything about, and Michael Haneke's reputation, I'm going to pick The White Ribbon. However, as Roger Ebert points out, to vote on this category, the voters are required to have actually seen all 5 films, which leads to a lot of surprises here. I thought The Class was a shoo-in last year, and Pan's Labyrinth even more so a few years ago, but neither one won. So I'm ready to be surprised.

Best Makeup - Saw 2/3 (didn't see Il Divo). From what I can tell, the makeup artists in Il Divo made the actor eerily resemble a famous Italian politican, in The Young Victoria made Emily Blunt look a little rounder, and created a Star Trek universe. The last 2 years this award went to films where the characters aged (Benjamin Button and La Vie en Rose), but this year I think they'll just go for the most dramatic, that being Star Trek.

Best Original Score - 4/5, never got to see Sherlock Holmes. I just went and watched a Youtube video with samples from all 5 of the scores. I really loved the Fantastic Mr. Fox score. I always love the music in a Wes Anderson film. The Academy, however, tends to love sweeping Hollywood scores, and Avatar definitely wins on that point. Up is very close. Very close. But I've made my selection.

Best Original Song - 1/5, only Crazy Heart. And I think that The Weary Kind will win from that movie. I really enjoyed all of the music in that film a lot.

Best Picture - 6/10, didn't see The Blind Side, District 9, Precious, or A Serious Man. Clearly the media expects this to be between Avatar and The Hurt Locker, and I'm voting for The Hurt Locker.

Best Animated Short - Didn't see any. I will pick A Matter of Loaf and Death because it has a terrible pun in its title.

Best Live Action Short - Didn't see any. I will pick The New Tenants because it sounds like it might just involve interactions between different cultures.

Best Sound Editing - Well, what do you know, this ends up being the one category in which I have seen all 5 films. So I guess that means I should be able to make an informed decision. Unfortunately, sound editing is not something I notice when watching a film, so I really have no clue. In past years, it's gone to big movies, fast-paced movies, and epic movies. For that reason, the obvious choice is Avatar.

Best Sound Mixing - 4/5, didn't see the Transformers sequel. This seems to go to the same movie as sound editing only about 50% of the time, so that doesn't really help me. This one is all about the ambience of sound and the sound effects. Therefore, I'm predicting that this is a year where both sound awards go to the same movie. Avatar is filled with forest sounds and lots of sound effects (especially whooshing during the 45 minutes of flying sequences).

Best Visual Effects - 2/3, did not see District 9. Avatar has currently grossed over $2.5 billion worldwide based in large part on its visual effects. It is going to win this award.

Best Adapted Screenplay - 2/5, pretty poor showing here. I only saw Up in the Air and An Education, both of which I enjoyed quite a bit. Traditionally, this goes to very good film that isn't quite good enough to win Best Picture. I'm going to go with that definition and select Up in the Air, because that's how I feel about that movie. Plus, the writing was top-notch.

Best Original Screenplay - 3/5, didn't see The Messenger or A Serious Man. Except for Milk last year, this seems to go to films that are a little bit odd, and not quite mainstream, like Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. Inglorious Basterds certainly fits that bill. It is also a fantastic and hilarious screenplay, which is very unusual for a World War II movie. And we all know how much the Academy loves World War II movies. I just took a quick look through past awards, and the most recent year I could find where no World War II movie won an Oscar was 2000 (although admittedly I used a fairly liberal interpretation of "World War II movie", meaning any movie that at any time depicts or is set in World War II).

Here's the summary:

Best Actor: Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart
Best Supporting Actor: Christopher Waltz - Inglorious Basterds
Best Actress: Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side
Best Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique - Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
Best Animated Feature: Up
Best Art Direction: The Young Victoria
Best Cinematography: Inglorious Basterds
Best Costume Design: Bright Star
Best Director: Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker
Best Documentary: Food Inc.
Best Documentary Short: The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
Best Film Editing: The Hurt Locker
Best Foreign Language Film: The White Ribbon
Best Makeup: Star Trek
Best Original Score: Avatar
Best Original Song: "The Weary Kind" - Crazy Heart
Best Picture: The Hurt Locker
Best Short Film - Animated: A Matter of Loaf and Death
Best Short Film - Live Action: The New Tenants
Best Sound Editing: Avatar
Best Sound Mixing: Avatar
Best Visual Effects: Avatar
Best Adapted Screenplay: Up in the Air
Best Original Screenplay: Inglorious Basterds

So I'm actually predicting Avatar to win the most awards, but mostly just the smaller technical awards. I'm predicting that The Hurt Locker will win the big two, the screenplays will go to two other Best Picture and Best Picture nominees, and I'm following the common wisdom on the acting awards. I'm pretty excited about the show itself, too, with Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin as the hosts.

The Olympics!

2010-02-12T09:19:00.002-07:00

I clearly remember on July 2, 2003, taking my clock radio in to work with me. I was working as a Data Entry clerk at the Regional Health Authority for Central Manitoba in Southport. I brought my radio in so that I could listen live to the announcement of who would get to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. In the first round of voting there were three candidates: Salzburg, Austria, PyeongChange, South Korea, and Vancover/Whistler, Canada. In that first round, Salzburg was knocked off the list. On the second ballot, the winner was announced as Vancouver. I raised my fists in triumph in my little office.

The first thing my family and I did after this announcement was made was look at the proposed dates. The reason for this is that my parents own a timeshare in Whistler in the 8th week of the year. We anxiously watched as the months passed to see what the official dates would be, and as soon as they were set as the last two weeks of February, we knew we would be going. We had some concerns at first that we would be forced to rent out our week (similar things had happened in Salt Lake City in 2002), but were assured that it was ours to use as we wished.

So my trip to Whistler next week has been about 6 1/2 years in the planning. When I first knew I'd be going to these Olympics, I had not yet met Jana. I am extremely excited that it has all come together, and that Jana and I will be joining my parents and my sisters in Whistler to attend the Games.

Jana and I have tickets to three events: the men's and women's semi-finals and finals of the cross-country skiing sprint event; the women's finals of the freestyle skiing aerials event; and the women's bronze medal match for curling.

There are a couple of problems with this trip, of course: because of the fixed week for our accomodations, we are having to go the week after our reading break, and are missing a week of school. That's adding some unfortunate stress to everything, but hopefully we can get a lot done during reading week. Secondly, we are going to be driving back from Whistler to Edmonton on the last day of the Olympics, meaning that if the Canadian men's hockey team makes it to the Gold Medal final, we will be driving and not able to watch it. Hopefully it will be covered on the radio, but we might be driving through the mountains at that point and not have a lot of radio coverage. We'll sort it out, I'm sure.

82nd Academy Award Nominations

2010-02-02T13:12:00.003-07:00

I am excited about the Oscars! I know that's not unusual, but I'm more excited than I was last year. The primary reason is that Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin are hosting it, and they are 2 very, very funny guys. The secondary reason is there have been quite a few quality movies this year, and there are still a lot I have yet to see.

Best Actor:
Jeff Bridges - Crazy Heart
George Clooney - Up in the Air
Colin Firth - A Single Man
Morgan Freeman - Invictus
Jeremy Renner - The Hurt Locker

I have seen Up in the Air and The Hurt Locker. All the buzz has been for Jeff Bridges, and I haven't seen that yet, but I do just want to say that Up in the Air was, in my opinion, George Clooney's best performance yet. It was classic George Clooney (playing a detached, independent, good-looking, witty, charming, and successful middle-aged man) but with an emotional depth that I don't normally expect from him. I really enjoyed it.

Best Supporting Actor:
Matt Damon - Invictus
Woody Harrelson - The Messenger
Christopher Plummer - The Last Station
Stanley Tucci - The Lovely Bones
Christoph Waltz - Inglorious Basterds

I have not seen any of these. All the buzz is for Waltz.

Best Actress:
Sandra Bullock - The Blind Side
Helen Mirren - The Last Station
Carey Mulligan - An Education
Gabourey Sidibe - Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
Meryl Streep - Julie and Julia

I have only seen An Education, and I thought Carey Mulligan was fantastic. I really loved her.

Best Supporting Actress:
Penelope Cruz - Nine
Vera Farmiga - Up in the Air
Maggie Gyllenhaal - Crazy Heart
Anna Kendrick - Up in the Air
Mo'Nique - Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire

I've seen Up in the Air, and out of those two, I preferred Vera Farmiga, mainly because Anna Kendrick's break-down scene made me want to scream.

Best Animated Feature:
Coraline
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Princess and the Frog
The Secret of Kells
Up

I'm glad to see that there were so many animated films this year that the category was expanded to 5. I've seen Coraline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and Up. My vote definitely goes to Fantastic Mr. Fox, which should replace Up on the Best Picture nominations list as well. Up was just too lowest-common-denominator, especially with those talking dogs. That joke wore thin quickly.

Best Art Direction:
Avatar
The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
Nine
Sherlock Holmes
The Young Victoria

I have only seen Avatar on this list, and a movie that is mostly animated shouldn't win for art direction, right?

Best Cinematography:
Avatar
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
The White Ribbon

I'm probably going to be offended every time Avatar gets nominated. It's not that I hated that movie, it was an amazing movie-going experience. But it was not a great movie, and it's not going to be something I'm going to watch again on my TV in 2d. Harry Potter does not deserve to be here. There was nothing innovative about its cinematography, although it was obvious the whole time that they were trying to have "cool" cinematography. I've also seen The Hurt Locker, which was amazing, but I want to see the remaining two before taking a stand here.

Best Costume Design:
Bright Star
Coco Before Chanel
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
Nine
The Young Victoria

Have not seen any of these films.

Best Director:
James Cameron - Avatar
Kathryn Bigelow - The Hurt Locker
Quentin Tarantino - Inglorious Basterds
Lee Daniels - Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
Jason Reitman - Up in the Air

Ahh, the epic showdown between James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow. I found out today that they are ex-spouses. Very fascinating. Again, The Hurt Locker is far superior to Avatar, but I'm not sure I'd count Jason Reitman out yet. I liked Up in the Air better than Juno, making this, in my opinion, his best film yet!

Best Documentary:
Burma VJ
The Cove
Food, Inc.
The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers
Which Way Home

Have not seen any of these films.

Best Documentary Short:
China's Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province
The Last Campaign of Governor Booth Gardner
The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant
Music by Prudence
Rabbit à la Berlin

To date, I have yet to see an Oscar-nominated short documentary. When will they clue in and start showing these on the Oscars website???

Best Film Editing:
Avatar
District 9
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire

I have only seen Avatar and The Hurt Locker (this whole awards show is going to be a showdown between those two movies, isn't it, except for the acting awards, oddly enough. At least The Hurt Locker got one acting nomination.), and my vote goes to The Hurt Locker, surprise! Actually, the editing of this movie was what made it so great. Of course, every year I say that, that movie doesn't win.

Best Foreign Language Film:
Ajami
El Secreto de Sus Ojos
The Milk of Sorrow
Un Prophete
The White Ribbon

I have not seen any of these. The White Ribbon is the only one I've heard of. It was in Edmonton for the Film Festival, but unfortunately October was just way too busy to go see it. I hope I can get a chance.

Best Makeup:
Il Divo
Star Trek
The Young Victoria

I have not seen any of these movies.

Best Original Score:
Avatar
Fantastic Mr. Fox
The Hurt Locker
Sherlock Holmes
Up

The only one I haven't seen here is Sherlock Holmes (and I'm thankful for the excuse to go see it, because I sort of want to). Honestly, though, the score hasn't stood out in any of these films for me. I guess I should go try and listen to a bit of each.

Best Original Song:
Almost There - The Princess and the Frog
Down in New Orleans - The Princess and the Frog
Loin de Paname - Paris 36
Take it All - Nine
The Weary Kind - Crazy Heart

I have not seen any of these films, but I'm glad there will be 5 performed at the show this year, instead of just the three there were last year. Oddly enough, just an hour ago I saw a dance group performing Jai Ho as part of the International Week celebrations here at the U of A.

Best Picture:
Avatar
The Blind Side
District 9
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
A Serious Man
Up
Up in the Air

Another of the reasons I'm excited about this year's Oscars: 10 Best Picture nominees! I've seen 5 of them: Avatar, An Education, The Hurt Locker, Up, and Up in the Air. Up is my least favourite of the group. And you know what, I'd probably be less annoyed by an Avatar win of this category than any other (except Visual Effects), simply because as a full experience it was great. But if you look at any individual portion (acting, script, etc.) it doesn't deserve to be awarded for those things. Having said that, it really shouldn't win for Best Picture, either.

Best Animated Short:
French Roast
Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty
The Lady and the Reaper
Logorama
A Matter of Loaf and Death

I have not seen any of these films, since the Pixar opening didn't pick up a nomination.

Best Live Action Short:
The Door
Instead of Abracadabra
Kavi
Miracle Fish
The New Tenants

I have not seen any of these films.

Best Sound Editing:
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Star Trek
Up

Once I see Inglorious Basterds and Star Trek I will come up with an opinion here.

Best Sound Mixing:
Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Star Trek
Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

I swear they tossed in Transformers just to give Greg P. Russell a nomination. It just isn't the same without him or Kevin O'Connell losing the Best Sound Mixing Oscar. Just to recap, that brings Russell up to 13, so he's closing in on O'Connell's 20. And if you're not familiar with these two, neither has ever won.

Best Visual Effects:
Avatar
District 9
Star Trek

I really need to see District 9, and I guess I shouldn't make a definitive statement before seeing it and Star Trek, but I will be absolutely stunned if Avatar doesn't win this.

Best Adapted Screenplay:
District 9
An Education
In the Loop
Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
Up in the Air

I've only seen An Education and Up in the Air, so I will reserve judgment, but of those two, I liked the script of An Education better.

Best Original Screenplay:
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
The Messenger
A Serious Man
Up

So, let me get this straight: Avatar is leading the nominations count, but didn't make the shortlist for it's screenplay or for any of its acting? How can that movie be a Best Picture, then? Oh well. I've only seen The Hurt Locker and Up, and obviously I vote for The Hurt Locker.

And the breakdown, excluding shorts, documentaries and the foreign films, because they never get more than one nomination anyway (with the exception of The White Ribbon):

9 - Avatar
- The Hurt Locker

8 - Inglorious Basterds

6 - Precious: Based on the Novel "Push" by Sapphire
- Up in the Air

5 - Up

4 - District 9
- Nine
- Star Trek

3 - Crazy Heart
- An Education
- The Princess and the Frog
- The Young Victoria

2 - The Blind Side
- Fantastic Mr. Fox
- The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus
- Invictus
- The Last Station
- The Messenger
- A Serious Man
- Sherlock Holmes
- The White Ribbon

1 - Bright Star
- Coco Before Chanel
- Coraline
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
- Il Divo
- In the Loop
- Julie & Julia
- The Lovely Bones
- Paris 36
- The Secret of Kells
- A Single Man
- Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Okay, so what movies are missing? Broken Embraces, certainly. It was a great celebration of films and filmmaking, as well as, in parts, an homage to one of my favourite directors, Alfred Hitchcock. I'm said to see it ignored. I also thought Where the Wild Things Are might get something, but I'm not sure for what. Maybe Adapted Screenplay. Other than those two, there weren't any others that I liked or have heard a lot of good things about that weren't nominated.

It's a decently solid year, and I'm more excited about the prospects than last year's films, which seemed mostly to be a lot of dull dramas. There's a lot more action and comedy this year. Also women. Kathryn Bigelow is only the 4th female director to get nominated for Best Director in Oscar history! Not only that, but Up in the Air, The Blind Side, An Education and Precious all feature strong female actors, something that couldn't be said about the No Country for Old Men and There Will be Blood year.

Quick Movie List Update

2010-01-13T21:19:00.005-07:00

I'm supposed to be doing reading, but sometimes I need a little break from the constant stress that this semester already is (it feels worse than last semester, somehow). And since They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? has once again updated their "The 1000 Greatest Films" list, I thought I'd just write a quick post to show how it affects my personal completion of that list.

Because of the huge number of "best of the decade" lists that have just come out, most of the new entries to the list (which is made by compiling and weighting over 2200 different lists) come from the past 10 years. As a result, my net result from this update is a whopping +14!! I have instantly moved up from 162 to 176 films watched on the list.

There were 3 films that I have seen that were cut from the list:
Bad Timing
Empire of the Sun
Rope

There were 17 films that I have seen that were added to the list:
The Red Balloon
Cool Hand Luke
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Robocop
Pan's Labyrinth
The Lives of Others
Saving Private Ryan
There Will Be Blood
The Dark Knight
Se7en
Amelie
The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King
Million Dollar Baby
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Elephant
Kill Bill Vol. 1
The Truman Show

I'd be very curious to hear feedback from anyone else who's working their way through the list, or anyone's thoughts on some of these new additions. Personally, I find none of them surprising, although there are a few that I probably wouldn't have included on this list, such as Elephant or The Two Towers. Also, I'm disappointed to see this many films from the last decade, but no No Country for Old Men. But, now I'm getting into my much-hyped "Best of the Decade" list, due out next December.

Okay, back to the reading.

2009 In Review; Goals for 2010

2010-01-03T18:22:00.002-07:00

Last New Year's, Jana and I were in Calgary, and we spent the night with our friends Leah and Rhett. As midnight drew nearer, we headed to a party, in order to ring in the new year with a bigger group. Unbeknownst to me, this party would be one in which we were very seriously expected to draft up a list of goals for the year. It was a similar idea to New Year's Resolutions, but by making several, and publicizing them, we could get very specific and be held accountable. Surprisingly, these goals really stuck for me, and I am convinced that I had a much better 2009 than I would have otherwise. Here's my recap of those goals, along with my goals for 2010 (most of which are related to last year's goals):

2009 - 1. Make the Dean's List at Law School

The criteria here was the top 10% of the first year class, with a GPA of above 3.5. In my undergrad degree, getting a 3.5 was no problem, but with the higher level of competition, and the curve used at the U of A, this proved to be rather difficult. In the end, I did not succeed at this goal, finishing the year with a 3.4 average. However, I realize that I had become complacent and fatalistic, and was actually surprised when my marks came in and were as good as they were. I had resigned myself to just getting B's in every class (which is the mandated average grade for every class, so it's what most people get). This year, then, I have realized that higher grades are possible. I haven't received most of my grades for Fall 2009 yet, but I worked very hard on them, and felt very good about every final exam. This was tricky considering how busy I was with my SLS responsibilities, but I seem to perform better when I have more pressure.

2010 Goals:
1. To make the Dean's List for my second year of law school.

2009 - 2. Run a Triathlon

This was definitely the biggest and most challenging goal on last year's list, and I am very proud to say that I achieved it. In fact, I ran three triathlons last year, all (approximately) sprint distance (750 metre swim, 20 km bike, 5 km run). There are more detailed race reports located here (June 7 - Lake Summerside), here (July 12 - Coral Springs), and here (September 7 - Lacombe).

I am hooked on the sport now (although my training slacked off considerably over the fall semester). I've got a class schedule this winter that works very well for training, so I'm feeling very optimistic about the coming season. One area I really need to improve on is training over the summer. I don't know how I managed to still do as well as I did at those three races, because at none of them was I anywhere near the condition I was in at the end of March.

2010 Goals:
2. Run an Olympic distance triathlon (1.5 km swim, 40 km bike, 10 km run).
3. Work out a minimum of 2 times every week (ideally I'll be doing much more than this, but I need a minimum to avoid the mistakes of last year).
4. Finish in the top 3 in my age group.
5. Complete a sprint triathlon (official distance) in under 1:20:00.

2009 - 3. Reach 16% on the Top 1000 Movies List

Film is something I really love, and lists are something I love almost as much. So while I watched a lot of other movies as well (according to my tracker, I watched 106 movies in 2009), I tried to watch as many of the classics from this particular list as I could. I needed to watch 24 to achieve this goal, and in the end I watched 26.

This year, I'm doing things differently. A decade of films has just finished, and the internet if filled with best-of-the-decade film lists. One thing I'm really realizing is how little I've watched of the films of my own time. The classics are always going to be there, but keeping up with what's new is a constant effort.

For that reason, I'm taking 2010 off in terms of bulking up my viewing of classic film (as many as I've watched, I'm still only at 16% of that list, which means there's a lot more to the canon that I haven't seen). Instead, I've made up a very large list (somewhere around 200) of movies that could potentially be on a list of top films of the decade. I will focus on watching these (there are around 50 that I've already seen and want to rewatch, if possible), and then next December write a top 20 films of the decade post.

However, I also have a pet peeve where I hate it when I've seen a movie and Jana hasn't. It bugs me if I can't reference a film in conversation and not have at least Jana catch what I'm saying. So I've made a list of the films Jana has not seen but I have (and that are worth seeing). It currently sits at 24.

2010 Goals:
6. Watch as many films made between 2000 and 2009 as possible and create a personal "Best Films of the Decade" list that I feel is accurate due to the wide base of films from which it is drawn.
7. Reduce the "Jana needs to see" list of films to under 10.

2009 - 4. Get hired for the summer with SLS
I did indeed manage to achieve this goal. The summer was an incredible learning experience, and the fall semester challenged me a lot, as I had to balance a large caseload (I started the school year with 45 files) with being a full-time student (5 classes). I have decided not to go back to SLS this summer, but I do need a summer job. Also, the summer in between second and third year is when the push starts to line up an articling position for when I graduate law school.

2010 Goals:
8. Get a law-related summer job.
9. Line up an articling position.

2009 - 5. Read 10 new fiction books
I'm really glad I had this goal, because reading keeps me sane. I ended up reading somewhere around 15 novels, as well as some non-fiction books. I really enjoy reading non-fiction, and I didn't like the restriction this goal placed on me, so this year I'm opening it up.

2010 Goals:
10. Read 20 new books.

2009 - 6. Win a trial
This was a great feeling when I won my first trial on October 5, 2009. I haven't won another one since, but getting that first one in the bag helped me to realize that I am capable of practising criminal law, which is what I'm definitely leaning towards right now.

2009 - Other goals.
I had made 3 other goals in 2009, which I chose not to publicize at that time, and will not publicize now. I achieved 1 of those 3 goals.

Last year I made 9 goals. I achieved 6 of them, and I am very proud of that. It made for a great 2009, and with the goals I've set out for myself this year, I'm looking forward to a similar but also excellent 2010. Just like last year, I'll be tracking my progress over in the sidebar.

Of course, some things in 2009 were unexpected, such as buying a house. I've been doing a lot of work over the last couple of days getting the house organized, something we didn't really have time to do before we got caught up in school. This proves that I am capable of being motivated to accomplish things that don't appear on the formal goals list for the year. And in 2010, I will be travelling with Jana and my Elford family to Whistler and Vancouver for the Olympics, so I know that there's going to be a lot more to this year than just these goals. I'm pretty excited about it!

Oh yeah, and I'm hoping that Leif and Rhett will be doing a recap on how they did in achieving their goals for the year, the lists of which I've linked to.

The Moose

2010-01-02T14:22:00.005-07:00

Every once in a while, I do something that I have never done before, and whenever I do, I feel like I'm truly living life, while the rest of the time I'm sort of numbed. Yesterday Jana and I were driving back to Edmonton from Hythe with Jana's sister, and it was already dark. The highways were quite empty, being New Year's Day.

We were about halfway home when I saw some flashing lights ahead in the distance. I was watching them, flashing yellow and red, but wasn't sure what they were, or where they were in relation to the road, since the highway had lots of curves. As I got closer, though, I realized that they were the hazard lights of a semi truck, and that they were on the left side of the road (it's a divided highway), and that they were not parallel to the road. So I immediately started slowing down, because I wasn't sure if I'd even be able to get past. Then I suddenly saw something lying on the highway. I swerved, but it was completely in the left lane, so I had nothing to worry about. For a split second I thought it was a person, but immediately saw that it was a moose. I was now close enough to the truck to see that it had hit the moose and slid off into the median, where it was now resting.

We were apparently the first to come on the scene, so I pulled over to make sure the driver was okay. He was, although quite shaken. Within a few minutes, a few other vehicles had stopped, and 4 of us (Jana and her sister waited in the car) walked back to the moose. It was definitely dead, so we each grabbed a leg and heaved it off the road. It was an incredibly heavy animal, and we could only budge it a few inches at a time. It's two back legs were broken, but strangely there was no blood at all.

I have not had very much interaction with animals in my life. I have never had a pet, I have never hunted, and I didn't have any relatives who lived on a farm (a few friends, but I tended to not like going to their houses). While I'm not afraid of animals, I have a sort of general dislike of them, and tend to keep my distance, especially from dogs. So it was very much a new experience for me to be so close to and to touch an animal, especially one of that size. According to Wikipedia, a full grown cow moose like this one will stand 6-7 feet tall and weight 600-800 pounds.

As I mentioned, yesterday was New Year's Day. I'll be making several posts in the coming days about my Christmas holiday, recapping the last year, and making goals for 2010, so keep an eye out for those.

Europe Trip - Part 9 - Paris

2009-11-29T08:44:00.000-07:00

Here I go, starting into the final leg of my trip to Europe with Jana in summer 2008. It has now been over a year since I got back. It’s almost to the point where this is ridiculous, but like I’ve said all along, the purpose of these posts is to document the memories for my own sake as much as for anyone else. But I do know that a few of you still read and enjoy them, which is great as well.

I mentioned at the end of the last post that we were forced to reschedule our train from Zurich to Paris. On the one hand this was nice, because it meant we had a relaxing morning to catch our train, which left at 10 or 11 instead of 7:02. But on the other hand it essentially cut one day out of our time in Paris, because we arrived at 4:30 instead of 11:30.

The train ride was stressful, too. Unlike the direct train from Zurich to Paris we had originally booked, with our new reservation we had to make 2 transfers, one in Basel and one in Strasbourg. The Strasbourg transfer was no problem, because we had plenty of time. But in order to get us to Paris as quickly as possible, the kind ticket lady in Zurich had set us up with an 8 minute transfer in Basel, which we hadn’t thought would be a problem until we found out how the Basel train station is set up: there is a special section of the station, platforms 30-35, that is actually in French territory, not Swiss, and thus is separated off quite markedly from the rest of the station. We literally stood at the door of the train, suitcases in hand, opened the door the instant the train stopped, ran down the platform, up and down escalators, through shopping areas and bizarrely deserted areas, past where we feared customs would be, and onto our waiting train, which pulled out within a minute of us getting on. I’ve looked around online, and can’t figure out why we weren’t stopped by customs. Our passports were checked when we entered Switzerland from Italy, and until December 2008, there was no passport-free travel between Switzerland and the EU. It appears, though, that the customs booth at that particular crossing was not routinely manned, so we weren’t the only ones to get lucky. It was pretty stressful, though, and all the signs were indicating that we would have to go through customs, and we really had no time to spare to get onto that next train.

We arrived in Paris at 4:30, as I already said, at the Paris Est station, the same one we had departed from on our way to Munich back at the beginning of the trip. It was kind of a strange experience to be back in a place that we had spent a couple of hours in a few weeks earlier. It really made me realize how long we had been travelling for, because that station, while I remembered it clearly, seemed like a distant memory already.

We wandered around the station for what felt like forever until we found the booth selling transit and museum passes. If we had spent the 5 days in Paris that we originally intended, I feel that these would have been the economical choice, but we really only got 3.5, and we didn’t get our money’s worth from them, something Jana correctly predicted while I ignored her protests and bought them anyway.

Finally we were all set to go, and we rode the Metro to our hotel. We had ridden trains in many cities, but not since Munich had we been required to ride the train to get to our hotel upon arrival. We immediately noticed that, unlike most other cities, Paris does not have very many escalators in its Metro system, and we were forced to lug our suitcases up and down many flights of stairs, especially when switching trains.

My first view of the Eiffel Tower came when we were walking up the street to our hotel. What popped into my mind is the movie stereotype that every room in Paris has a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower. I thought it would be pretty cool if we had a view of it from our room.

Our hotel was a large chain hotel that catered primarily to business travelers. It had a very North American feel to it, which was disappointing but not unexpected. We had gotten a very good deal online, and although it wasn’t very close to the centre, we knew we could expect a nice, clean room for a reasonable rate. The first impression of our room was how nice it looked. It had clearly been renovated within the last few months, as everything was spotless and freshly painted, and all the furniture was brand new. The view was only of the suburbs to the north, which I found disappointing, but not a big deal. We quickly noticed, however, that there was a strong smell of cigarettes, especially in the pillows. We tried to live with it, but within five minutes it was clear that we couldn’t stand it, and definitely could not sleep on those pillows. The front desk was a zoo, and communicating my desire for fresh pillows was virtually impossible over the phone, even though the clerk kept insisting that she did, in fact, speak English. Eventually I managed to get across that my problem was with the smoke smell, and they told me to come down and get a key to a non-smoking room.

Our new room was not as nice, which was disappointing to Jana. The decor was rather dated and worn, although it was still clean. To my delight, though, our view was spectacular! Straight out of our window was the Eiffel Tower, with the Arc de Triomphe just off to the right. I couldn’t believe it! The stereotypes are true after all. Unfortunately we never did get a picture, for no clear reason, but I blame it on our hurried departure.

Ah, Paris! What a wonderful place to end our trip. We both absolutely loved exploring this city!

Strangely, our first night was far from spectacular. We picked a random walking tour, of the Montparnasse neighbourhood. It is very important to note here that this was not a Rick Steves’ walking tour. For Paris we had also brought along a few walking tours from a Frommer’s guide.

First, though, we were starving, and we stopped at the first restaurant we saw. It quickly became clear to us that this was a North American-style chain restaurant, and the food was accordingly mediocre and overpriced. It was also an Italian restaurant! So after spending nearly two weeks in Italy, we ended up eating terrible Italian food our first meal in Paris.

After dinner, we did the Montparnasse walk, which took us past such thrilling sights as the outside wall of a cemetery and the road above the catacombs. Here is a brief excerpt from the tour to give you a taste (she’s comparing Montparnasse and Montmartre): In terms of beauty, the two areas don't compare - concrete is abundant in Montparnasse, but it offers plenty of sights to keep you busy. I don’t know why we didn’t just stop there.

The tour seemed to go on forever, and it was getting late, and we were bored. We eventually called it a night.

The next day was far better. This time, we went to the neighbourhood that Frommer’s said Montparnasse couldn’t compare with: Montmartre. We spent the morning wandering up and down the hills, exploring the Sacre-Coeur Basilica, watching the artists, enjoying the view of the city, and being in the bohemian area made famous by Van Gogh, Renoir, Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso. And of course, we saw the Moulin Rouge.

We had lunch at a vegetarian restaurant tucked into a tiny Montmartre storefront. We were the only customers, which is not always comforting, but it turned out to be the best food we ate in Paris. Our waitress was also the cook, which was not a problem in the little one-room restaurant. She was English, and was quite insistent that she had seen Jana somewhere before. At first she thought Jana had eaten at the restaurant before, but she became increasingly convinced that Jana was actually a famous actress. It was a little strange. Fortunately, halfway through our meal, other patrons came in, and she was distracted.

After lunch we spent a little more time wandering the streets of Montmartre, just because it was so delightful. Then we returned to the Metro through one of the two remaining art nouveau stations designed by Hector Guimard, and made our way to the Arc de Triomphe.

The Arc de Triomphe is quite spectacular. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, in commemoration of France’s turn at the presidency of the EU, they were flying both the French and EU flags from the Arc. The French flag is only flown from the Arc for important occasions of state and national holidays, so it was a rare treat to see both flags flying. As we were walking over to the Arc, I also noticed a few people carrying paper “flags” with the Adidas logo on one side and the French Olympic team logo on the other side.

After so many weeks of walking, we were feeling in pretty good shape ourselves, and elected to take the stairs to the top. When we reached the first concourse, we sat down like everybody else to catch our breath, only to realize that neither of us was out of breath. So we hopped back up and climbed the rest of the way to the top, feeling pretty proud of ourselves for being in such good conditioning.

The view from the top was awesome. Baron von Haussmann designed the city so that there would be 12 boulevards all intersecting around the Arc de Triomphe. That makes for traffic chaos, of course, but the symmetry is quite pleasing from that vantage point. The main boulevard is, of course, the Champs-Elysées, with its trees and wide sidewalks and huge stores. Atop the hill to the north is Sacre-Coeur. And there is the Eiffel Tower, the closest I had been to that point. And off in the distance is the Grande Arche de la Défense amidst a cluster of modern skyscrapers (banned in central Paris, with the exception of the reason-for-the-rule Montparnasse Tower, and the Eiffel Tower, of course). The history of France over the last few centuries is symbolized in a number of structures that “happen” to fall in a perfectly straight line: the Louvre (palace of the French kings), the Place de la Concorde (focal point of the French Revolution), the Arc de Triomphe (celebrating Napoleonic victories), and the Grande Arche de la Défense (modern-day France).

When we got back down, I noticed even more of the Olympic flags than I had before, and Jana and I agreed that something was going on. People definitely seemed to be gathering for some purpose beyond seeing the Arc de Triomphe. Then we spotted a large group of police officers, and figured out that there was going to be some kind of parade. The Olympics had just ended a couple of days earlier, so we knew it had to be something related to that. It was just a few minutes before 3:00, so we decided to stick around until 3, and if nothing happened, we’d start on down the Champs-Elysées. Right at the stroke of three, the police moved in in an extraordinary display of precision. Each of the 12 boulevards was simultaneously blocked, and all remaining vehicles in the circle were herded out by a line of police cars 8 abreast (one for each lane). Within seconds, two open topped buses filled with medal-wearing French Olympic athletes pulled out into the circle, did a loop of the Arc de Triomphe, and continued on up the Champs-Elysées. As they passed each intersection, the police re-opened the boulevards one by one, so that traffic was only halted for this procession for a few seconds.

When you see the Arc de Triomphe, you of course think of triumphal marches by the Germans in 1940 and by the Allied forces led by Charles de Gaulle in 1944. There are also the military parades on Bastille Day and the conclusion of the Tour de France. I feel that we were extraordinarily privileged to get to witness a triumphant tour of the Arc de Triomphe by the medal winners on the French Olympic team. The French are very patriotic and very proud, and it was an incredible feeling to be a part of such a visible display of those emotions on that day, at the monument dedicated to France’s victories.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering down the Champs-Elysees. We stopped in some of the spectacular car dealerships and clothing boutiques. Near the end of the famous shopping street the Olympic buses had stopped and the athletes were out signing autographs. We watched for a bit, but we couldn’t really understand what was being said, and the crowds were huge, so we ended up crossing the street and going down the other side. I almost grabbed an autographed picture that one of the athletes threw in the air, but it bounced out of my hand and onto the other side of a barrier.

When we reached the end of the Champs-Elysées, after walking through the large, sandy park, we took the requisite tourist pictures of the Arc de Triomphe from the end of the street. We then crossed the street to the famous Place de la Concorde, site of the granite obelisk transported over from Egypt in the 1830s. The Place de la Concorde is even more famous, I think, for being the Place de la Révolution, and the site of the guillotine which killed Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, among many others.

We returned to our hotel for a much-needed rest after a long day of walking. After a nap and a bite to eat (I assume, although I can’t specifically remember where we went – that’s the problem with writing a travelogue over a year after the trip), we headed back out to spend the evening at the Eiffel Tower. We disembarked from the Metro at the École Militaire, and walked up Le Champ de Mars, which was filled with picnickers enjoying the warm evening. We were surprised to notice signs prohibiting the consumption of alcohol in the park, since it seemed like everyone was drinking wine with their picnic. We were planning to have a picnic with wine ourselves, as it seemed like a very Parisian thing to do, but we didn’t end up having to decide whether to obey the rule or not, since we weren’t able to have a picnic in the end.

One sight we saw as we were leaving the Metro won’t soon leave me was a couple standing in a tight embrace in a narrow hallway, and the man was sobbing loudly. We awkwardly walked past them, and just as we reached the top of the stairs to the outside, he raced past us, still crying, and ran across the street, with the woman chasing after him. Oh, the French and their stereotypes. In the space of that day we saw poor artists on the streets in Montmartre, a victory parade around the Arc de Triomphe, families drinking wine in the Champ de Mars at the base of the Eiffel Tower and a passionate breakup in a Metro tunnel. So typical.

When we reached the Tower itself, we discovered that we had waited just too late. We had wanted to go up the Tower at night, but we really wanted to go to the very top, and they had stopped selling tickets to the very top. We decided, after much discussion, to hold off on going up the Tower and to come back another night. Instead we bought some French fries (they get a capital “F” when you’re in France) and sat at the base enjoying the view. The Eiffel Tower was all lit up in blue, with a circle of stars on the front, again in commemoration of their run as the President of the European Union. I really did enjoy taking the time to soak in just how huge the base of the tower is and note the intricate steel design.

The next day was another fantastic one. One of the reasons that Paris figures so positively in my memories of Europe is that every day we were there was really a perfect day.

We started off by heading east to the Père Lachaise Cemetery. This surely has to be the most famous non-military cemetery in the world, and figured prominently in Paris, Je T’Aime, which we had watched before our trip. For one thing, the cemetery is beautiful. It is a huge patch of grass, trees, narrow pathways, crumbling mausoleums, and jumbled graves. We also paused at the graveside of many famous people, most notably Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, and Frederic Chopin. We also passed dozens of holocaust memorials, the (unmarked) wall where 147 French citizens were lined up and executed by French soldiers for not cooperating with the invading Prussians, the graves of Gertrude Stein, Edith Piaf, Colette, Rossini, Baron von Haussmann, and the beautiful monument over the graves of Héloïse and Abélard (who died in the 12th century). It was quiet and peaceful, and surprisingly moving to see the memorials to these people. The art of (especially) Wilde, Morrison, Chopin, and Piaf continues to be a part of my life today, and they were all laid to rest in this same cemetery.

After we left the cemetery, we decided to grab a quick lunch. Across the street was a restaurant advertising a take-out deal on a burger, fries, and Coke. We decided to take them up on the offer, which turned out to be a little odd, because the restaurant was actually a pretty nice place and we had to stand there waiting for our food while people sat eating theirs. We were glad we got takeout, though, because it was a beautiful sunny day, and we walked around the corner to a little park and sat on a bench eating our food while watching the families and workers play and have lunch, respectively.

After our lunch, it was time to go to the Musée d’Orsay. This museum was only opened in 1986, converted from an old rail station, but already has built up a solid reputation as one of the world’s finest art museums. The reason it was created was to fill the gap between the Louvre, which contains art from ancient times, through the classical period, medieval art, and the Renaissance, and ends in the mid-19th century, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, which covers modern art in the 20th and 21st centuries. Considering how much of art history the Louvre contains, one wouldn’t necessarily think that a gap of 50 years would be that significant, but the art produced between (roughly) 1850 and 1900 is some of the most important and loved art in the world.

Jana had visited London and Paris in Grade 9, and the most prominent memory she had from that trip was visiting this museum. I understood why as soon as I walked in. Because it’s a former railway station (and a beautiful one at that), the main lobby of the museum is a huge open space, and it’s filled with sculpture and a feeling of excitement. The museum, while large, is a manageable size (unlike the Louvre), so we were actually able to make our way through the bulk of it.

We had a Rick Steve’s audio tour for this museum, which we always like, but we strayed from it a fair bit, simply because there was so much that we really wanted to look at. The museum contains quite a bit of art by the realists, like Manet, the impressionists, like Monet, Renoir, and Degas, and post-impressionists, like Van Gogh and Cézanne. It was quite amazing to walk into a room and realize that all of the 20 or so paintings on the wall were by Van Gogh. We took our time walking around that room, taking everything in.

Probably the highlight of the whole day was taking a break halfway through the museum at the café. Jana had a Viennese coffee (coffee with whipped cream), and I had a glass of white wine. We had never before, in all the museums we had toured, taken a formal break where we had a drink and relaxed. The café itself was quite beautiful, because one of the walls is dominated by the backside of a huge clock. When you look up at the Museum (remember – it’s a former train station) from the river, there are several huge clocks, and the café is right behind one of them. I’ve included a picture from the official museum website so that you can see what I mean (the overhead shot of the whole café). It was a cool view of the city through the clock. We also popped out onto the neighbouring balcony for some great views of the Seine and the Louvre.

When we were done we finished off the museum, including an exhibit of sculptures by Rodin. The first experience I had with art where it really moved me was a travelling exhibit of Rodin sculptures at the Glenbow Museum in January 2005, so it was really cool to see some of his works again. I consider myself a fair bit more knowledgeable on art now (although by no means do I consider myself knowledgeable on art), and especially by the end of that trip, on which we saw so much great art. The Rodin works were just as amazing as I remembered. I’m so glad I’ve had these chances to interact with and experience art; my life is a lot fuller for it.

After the Musée d’Orsay, we walked over a bridge to the other side of the Seine and took the Metro from the Place de la Concorde (the focal point of the Revolution) over to the Bastille station, famous for its murals commemorating the French Revolution, and the site of the beginning of the Revolution. We came up to the surface, to what was once the site of the Bastille fortress-prison. It was, of course, stormed by the revolutionaries, and was demolished within months. Today, it is a major intersection, with a statue of Liberty in the centre, and the view is dominated by the Opéra Bastille, a large and flashy building that sort of reminds me of a hockey arena.

From there we began Rick Steves’ Marais Walk, which took us down rue St. Antoine. We had a great time walking through this trendy neighbourhood, looking at the people and the shops. We also passed through the Hôtel de Sully, and relaxed in the Place des Vosges, a park surrounded by rowhouses, including the house where Victor Hugo lived for 16 years while writing Les Misérables. We also passed the house where Jim Morrison died. We had a chance to walk along the rue des Francs Bourgeois, one of the famous shopping streets in Paris, but not so famous that it has been taken over by global chains like the Champs-Elysée. The tour ended by passing through the Jewish Quarter and into the artsy neighbourhood of Beaubourg.

Located in Beaubourg is the Centre Pompidou, a large exoskeletal structure designed by Pritzker Prize winners Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano. It contains the Musée National d’Art Moderne, which was our second modern art museum of the trip, the first being way back in London. This time, we weren’t as eager to seek out the big names, and instead spent the evening (the museum was open until 10:00) wandering through this huge museum checking out art by artists we’d never heard of. A lot of the art seemed to be trying too hard, as I find is the case with modern art unfortunately, but for the most part we really enjoyed ourselves. One thing that is cool about this museum is the focus on design as art, including architecture, both exterior and interior, and furniture, both wooden and inflatable. Then we spent a while watching the sunset and enjoying the view of Paris from the top floor of the museum.

After the museum, we went for a late dinner, although it took us a while to find a restaurant that was affordable and comfortable. As we exited the museum, there is a large square, and an artist approached me to paint my portrait. At first he thought I was Italian, which I found quite flattering, but the best part was his reaction when I told him I was Canadian: “Oh! Canada Dry!” Apparently that’s what we’re known for in Paris, our ginger ale. We ended up at a crepe restaurant, and had what was to my memory the best meal we had in Paris: a fixed-price menu that came with cider, a ham and cheese crepe with salad, and then a sugar and butter crepe for dessert.

The next day was yet another busy one. We began by heading down to central Paris, grabbing amazing croissants from a kiosk in the Metro when we changed trains, and exploring the historic centre of Paris. Our tour (guided by Rick Steves, of course) began at the Notre-Dame Cathedral. When Jana had last been through Paris, they were planning to see the inside of this church, but couldn’t because there was such a long line and they didn’t have time to wait. So we had prepared ourselves for the fact that there just might be too long of a line, and we might not be able to get in, much like the Basilica in Venice. However, there was no line at all; we just walked right in. I don’t know, though, while it was a gigantic Gothic interior, we had seen several Gothic interiors on this trip, most notably Westminster Abbey in London, and this one didn’t particularly stand out. The Rose Window was fantastic, but what we really loved about Notre-Dame was the exterior. This church is very rare among Gothic cathedrals in this sense, because usually the exterior is rather unimpressive. But on Notre-Dame, the exquisite ironwork on the doors, the stonework in the windows, the famous bell towers and the intricate carvings all around the Cathedral were really amazing. We spent far more time walking around the outside of the church then we did on the inside.

Across the street we visited a rather sombre Holocaust memorial, which was quite moving. It’s pretty difficult to describe, but it is an underground, claustrophobic mix of concrete, stone, steel bars, jagged edges, and 200,000 quartz crystals, one for each of the people deported from France to the Nazi concentration camps.

Our tour continued, walking across a bridge (where we stopped to take pictures of ourselves with the Cathedral in the background), and then along the left bank of the Seine. The street here is lined with carts selling used books and souvenirs, where we bought the only cheesy souvenirs of our entire trip: fridge magnets. They were actually pretty nice.

We then continued through the oldest portions of Paris, with narrow, crooked cobblestone streets, slanting buildings, and dozens of gargoyle rain spouts. The tour cut back up through the Latin Quarter, past the Porte Dauphine, and back onto the Ile de la Cité, past the Palais de Justice, and the outside of Sainte-Chapelle. We did not go inside Sainte-Chapelle that day, as we had too much planned for the day, but planned to return on Friday, our final day.

We had lunch in Latin Quarter (mediocre lamb), and then walked back across the river to the Louvre. That reminds me, the entire three-hour tour we did that morning was an audio-guided tour, so Jana and I had it loaded on our iPods. That day, though, Jana forgot her iPod at the hotel. So we spent the whole tour sharing headphones. I think that’s part of why it took us so long, because it was just too hard to walk and listen at the same time. When we got to the Louvre, this tour was all on the iPod as well, so unfortunately we had to share the headphones again.

The Louvre was incredible, though. The size of it is unbelievable, and we were very fortunate to have the Rick Steve’s tour telling us where to go, or we would have just gotten lost. For the most part, this tour directed us to the greatest hits, which was fine with us, because there were quite a few. We started off by walking straight in, no line at all, which was a pleasant surprise, as the lines at the Louvre are legendary. We then proceeded directly to the Classical art wing, focusing primarily on the magnificent Venus de Milo. I got pretty frustrated with people at this point, as it was clear that they thought it was rude of us to stand in the way of their pictures. So many of them were just walking up, taking pictures, and walking away. This was not our first experience with this phenomenon, as at the Musée d’Orsay we had actually seen a man walking through the room, taking a picture of each painting and its label and continuing on. Apparently he was going to tour the museum and actually look at things once he got home. It felt the same here at the Louvre, as though people were accomplishing something, taking a picture so that they could prove to their friends that they were there, and moving on. Eventually we just gave up trying to be polite and walked up to the sculpture to get a good look, despite people yelling that we were ruining their pictures. We missed Italy where cameras were not allowed in the museums.

When you think of the Louvre, one painting comes to mind: the Mona Lisa. Unexpectedly, this was the highlight of the Louvre for me. I say unexpectedly for a couple of reasons: first, I’ve seen the thing before, hundreds of times. I’ve seen it satirized, and I’ve seen the original. The Mona Lisa is a major part of our culture. Secondly, I’ve heard so many times how disappointing it is, and especially how small it is. One thing I was surprised by, generally, in our trip to Europe, was the size of the paintings. Often they were much larger than I had expected, especially the masterpieces. So I guess other people had expected that the Mona Lisa would turn out to be a 10 foot high painting, because I found myself surprised by how large it was! Having heard so many times that it was small, I was expecting it to be 12 inches high. But no, it was exactly what I had always imagined it to be, 3 feet high, a pretty standard painting size. And I can’t explain why, but even though I’d seen it so many times before, seeing it in person was like seeing it for the first time. Jana and I think that it’s because we had seen so much art in the last 4 weeks, that we understood why it was a masterpiece when we saw it. Now, please don’t expect me to explain how I “understood” that it was a masterpiece, because I can’t. I just know that it struck me as amazing and beautiful.

We continued on from the Mona Lisa, seeing many other amazing works of art. A few other notables that I want to mention are the Winged Victory of Samothrace, a huge Greek sculpture that captures the wind blowing to perfection, Liberty Leading the People, by Delacroix, a famous painting commemorating the 1830 French Revolution, and the Raft of the Medusa, by Géricault, a 5 metre tall painting of the survivors of a shipwreck struggling to stay afloat on a little raft.

As we had the day before, we took a break at the museum’s café during our visit. This time, we sat outside, on a balcony overlooking the central courtyard of the old palace, with the famous pyramid at the centre.

When we were done our guided tour, we attempted to find two other paintings on a list I had made of notable works in the museum, gleaned from several sources. I had not anticipated how large the museum was going to be, and so I had imagined we would just come across them as we made our way through. Instead, we had to try to guess at where they might be, and then try to find them. It was actually pretty fun, and we found the first (Gilles, by Watteau) without much difficulty. Finding the second one was crazy, though. I don’t know why we were so determined to find it, but we were, and we must have spent about half an hour trying to find it. When we eventually did (after searching through several wrong wings, asking multiple employees for directions, most of whom had never heard of the painting – The Madonna of Chancellor Rolin, by van Eyck), it was 5 minutes before closing time. So you can imagine that for at least ten minutes before that the staff had been trying to shoo us out. In the end, we barely even got a chance to look at it, but it was a very interesting painting, in the early Dutch style, of the Chancellor (who commissioned the painting), Mary, and an infant Christ. In the background are two midgets, and a very small angel is placing a crown on Mary’s head. The detail in the painting is exquisite, and we felt that the search had been worth it, but it would have been nice to spend more time looking at it.

From the Louvre, we made our way across the street and through the Tuileries Gardens towards the Musée de l’Orangerie. This small museum contains, in addition to a collection of modern art by Cézanne, Picasso, Renoir and others, an installation by Monet, who designed the rooms to fit his paintings. It is common today to see paintings by artists in the space they intended them to be seen, but with the famous artists of previous generations, it is very rare, outside of churches. So we were excited to see this exhibit. We had stayed at the Louvre a little longer than we expected (right until 6, when it closed), so we moved very quickly, as the Musée de l’Orangerie was only open until 7. We made it by 6:15, but found the doors locked. We were not the only ones to come up and try the door, look at our guidebooks confusedly, and then walk away, so clearly we weren’t wrong in thinking it was open until 7, as we had been wrong back at the British Museum in London. Finally I saw an employee leave by a side exit, and I asked her what had happened. Apparently they had changed their hours that summer, after the guidebooks had been printed, from 12:30 to 7:00 pm (which are admittedly odd hours) to 9:00 to 6:00 pm, which is much more normal. But we had based our plans on the former hours, so we were disappointed.

We sat down with the booklet I had made for the trip, and plotted out our final day in Europe, the next day. We decided to switch the Musée de l’Orangerie with the Left Bank walk, so our final day would consist of riding the metro to the Ile de la Cité, seeing the stained glass of Sainte-Chapelle, then walking back over the Seine to the Orangerie, then riding the metro over to Rue Cler, which was the site of a Rick Steves tour down this shopping street, pointing out his favourite bakeries, butchers, etc. Our plan was to go down this street, picking up the ingredients for a picnic lunch, and then walk over to the Eiffel Tower for a daytime view and a romantic lunch at its base. Then we would ride the train out to Versailles, and spend the rest of the day exploring that famous palace and its gardens. Then we would get to bed early, because we needed to be at the airport by 8:45 the next morning for our flight, and it would take at least an hour to get there by train.

So we headed out on the Left Bank walk. There isn’t much to tell about the walk, because there weren’t any sights, but like the Marais and Montmartre walks, we really enjoyed exploring the neighbourhood, seeing little churches and cafés, and just walking down the streets away from the main sights a bit. One of the coolest things we did was go into the Church of St. Sulpice to see the murals by Delacroix. Unfortunately, it was already getting dark, so they were basically impossible to see. But we wandered around this church, almost in the dark, and virtually alone. There was an old gentleman who informed us that we were not at the church at the right time of day to see the murals well, which we’d sort of already figured out on our own. It was cool to be in such a large, dark, historic, and empty space, and we stayed until they kicked us out.

The final stop on the tour was the Luxembourg Garden, a large park. All I can remember is trying to find a place to use the bathroom, and any I found were closed for the night. It was very frustrating. Eventually we continued on, and found a fast-food restaurant to stop and use the washroom. We also got some really good food here, as the place made delicious fresh stir fries.

We ended off the night by returning to the Eiffel Tower once more, and this time we were there in time to ride the elevator all the way to the top. The views were spectacular, and it was still nice enough to stand outside. We had a really great time just sitting up there, relaxing and enjoying ourselves. We took our time, and when we finally got home that night it was well past midnight.

This marks the beginning of the story of the conclusion of our trip. When we arrived back at the hotel, there was an envelope on our door. We opened it up, and there was a phone message (in English, thankfully) saying that my Mom had called to tell us that our flight was cancelled. I can’t remember the exact wording of the note, but I thought it might mean that the airline itself was bankrupt, but we weren’t sure because a lot might have been lost in translation. So I grabbed the phone and tried to make a call. I was informed that there was no way to make an overseas call from our room phone, I would need to find a payphone.

So we went outside and found a payphone down the street. It was late, and there weren’t a lot of people on the streets, but the prostitutes were definitely out. So we weren’t feeling terribly comfortable as we squished into the phone booth and called home. Sure enough, my Mom told me, the airline, Zoom, had gone out of business, just announced that day. My Dad had looked around online and wasn’t having luck finding any flights from Paris to Calgary, but they told us that Zoom had been telling people to get in touch with their credit card companies.

So that was our next step. On the back of our credit cards is an “overseas collect call” number. It didn’t work. In all, we spent over $200 on phone calls that night. We got in touch with the credit card company, and they assured us that they would reimburse us for the flight. They also tried to see if they could get us a new flight, but eventually concluded that they couldn’t, because we hadn’t bought travel insurance through them. So we called our travel insurance company (again the collect number didn’t work), and found out that our travel insurance didn’t have trip cancellation coverage, so they couldn’t do anything for us. For some reason we had to call the credit card company back to let them know this, which we did.

At 2 or 3 in the morning, we went back to our room. We were not feeling good. We were emotional and pretty scared. It was late Thursday night/early Friday morning. Our plan was to fly out on Saturday morning, arriving Saturday afternoon Calgary time. On Sunday we had a U-Haul truck booked, and we were going to unload our storage unit and move up to Edmonton that day. On Tuesday, school started. We hadn’t built in a lot of leeway. We decided, before going to sleep, to cancel our morning plans and find an internet cafe where we could look up different Saturday flights. That would also allow us to sleep in a bit.

So the next morning we didn’t get up until 9 or 10, and then we went to an internet cafe down the street. We quickly discovered that no matter what airline we took, there were no economy seats from Paris to Calgary on Saturday. The only options were first-class, and they were over $5000 a seat. We had not budgeted for this kind of contingency, so we didn’t even have money to pay for any new flights, let alone flights that would cost more than the rest of the trip combined.

What we did see was a flight on Air Canada from Paris to Montreal leaving at 1:30 pm that day with seats available. It was already 10:30 by this point, and the train route I had plotted out beforehand took about an hour, as I stated earlier, so we really weren’t sure if it was even possible, considering that you’re supposed to arrive for an international flight 3 hours early. Because of this, we chose not to book the flight online. We had a quick debate where we basically had to decide whether to abandon all of our plans for that day and try to make it to the airport, or try to figure something else out. We quickly decided that the latter wasn’t much of an option, so we dropped our plans and ran back to the hotel. We went upstairs and packed up quickly and ran back downstairs to check out. However, we weren’t sure if we were going to make the flight, and we didn’t want to miss it and then not have our hotel, so we asked them to keep our room reserved. It turned out that we didn’t have much of a choice, because with the online discount we had, there were no cancellations or changes available, so we had to pay for the last night either way. The hotel also called a taxi for us, and then we sat and waited nervously.

When the taxi arrived, there was a bit of confusion with another party who was waiting for a taxi, but we managed to get the first one and get out on the road. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that we were located very near to the main ring road, and on the right side of Paris to get to the airport quickly, in about 20 minutes. We rushed in, feeling very stressed and emotional. We spotted the Air Canada desk and hurried over. Within minutes we were assured that, like the other people crowded into the room, not only was Air Canada going to get us on the 1:30 flight to Montreal, they were going to give us a discounted rate because we were stranded by Zoom’s bankruptcy. What they couldn’t do was get us from Montreal to Calgary, but getting over the Atlantic was our biggest concern.

Eventually we calmed down, and soaked in what had happened while we grabbed a quick lunch. We were eating lunch in the airport cafeteria, not at the base of the Eiffel Tower, and we were getting ready to go on an 8 hour flight, not a train ride to Versailles. It was very abrupt. This trip had become our lives for the last month, not to mention many months of planning beforehand, and it ended without closure. I think we went through the full grief process. In fact, even at the time, we described it as “grieving” the loss of the end of our trip.’’

Our flight left late, because the flight crew was delayed for over an hour on the main highway because of an accident. If that had happened to us, we wouldn’t have made the flight.

When we arrived in Montreal, after a far more pleasant flight than with Zoom (more comfortable seats, seatback televisions, only one hour late and with a legitimate explanation), we had to find our way to Calgary. We checked with both Air Canada and Westjet and elected to continue on with Air Canada. We hung out in the Montreal airport for a few hours (and took one last picture of our trip) and then flew into Calgary late that same night. My family was there to pick us up and take us home for a good sleep. The end.

I had feared for months leading up to the trip that something like this would happen. The flights just seemed too cheap to be true. I had checked the Zoom website several times a week, to make sure they still existed. But we knew people who had flown with them before and hadn’t had any issues, so we had no concrete reasons not to trust them. We’ve learned that next time we go on a trip, we’re buying trip cancellation insurance.

Aside from the harsh ending to our trip, this was our dream vacation, and was better than we had hoped. We had an incredible time. We had very few bad days, and always evaluated why they were bad, and adjusted our future plans accordingly. We went for walks in every city, and did our best to get a feel for the culture and the streets, in addition to the main sights. We ate as much local food and drank as much local drink as possible. We travelled by plain, car, train, bus, subway, boat, and funicular. Most importantly, we had a great time together. Jana and I are perfect travel partners: we talk things out, compromise easily, and are rarely very far apart in what we want to do in the first place.

I don’t feel like I am capable of really writing the conclusion and summary that this trip deserves. We are incredibly lucky to have been able to go on our dream vacation, at such a young age, with each other. It was something we will never forget, and will hopefully be the first of many incredible vacations to come.

Adventures of City Living

2009-11-21T10:36:00.003-07:00

Jana and I had an interesting night last night. At around 11:30, we were in our separate offices doing homework (ahhh, Friday night as a student), when Jana heard some yelling out in the backyard. I didn't, because I can't hear anything in my office when the furnace and my space heater are both running. Eventually I heard Jana calling and I came upstairs. The Edmonton Police helicopter was circling over our house, shining its spotlight down in ours and our neighbour's backyards.

What Jana saw and I didn't was a man running through our neighbour's backyard chased by the police. I got there in time to see them lead him away in cuffs. After we were sure everything had calmed down, we went out to see what was going on. Just behind our fence there is a parking pad, and there was a car parked in that spot. Apparently the police spotted a stolen car on Stony Plain Road and 135 Street, which is a fair ways away from our house. They chased him, and had the helicopter on him, all the way up into our neighbourhood, where he pulled into the alley, thinking he'd shaken the police. He then pulled into our parking pad, got out of the car, hopped the neighbour's fence (ours is far too high) and that's where the police found him. They had their infrared camera working on the helicopter, so they never lost sight of him once.

At this point, Jana and I realized that we had not been thinking too clearly when we left the house, because we had locked ourselves out. Sheepishly, we went back to the police who were writing their reports behind our house and asked them if they had a lockpicking kit or anything which we could use to get in our house. They didn't, but they were extremely helpful, and both dropped what they were doing, scoped out the house, found a window that looked easy to get open, and pulled all the panes out. Jana climbed in, and they went back to their work. It was a little disconcerting that it took them about 2 minutes to break into our house, needless to say. But we were very appreciative of their help.

I am still here, and I know that I haven't posted in ages. This semester has been the busiest and most stressful period of my life so far. I have, on top of a full courseload of 5 classes, been managing a caseload of about 40 files (which I have slowly whittled down over the course of the semester to 18), and acting as the dayleader for two shifts of volunteers, which means I help them manage their own caseloads as well. I have been in court several days a week, which means I've missed a lot of class (for my one class, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 10:00, I think I've missed more than half of the classes), and I've had a lot of trials, which means I spend valuable time at home when I could be reading or getting stuff done around the house preparing for trials. It has been a lot of work, and it's hard to balance everything. Right now, I have exams starting in two weeks, but I still have two trials and a lot of other work to get done in the meantime. Strangely, though, I'm optimistic about getting good marks on my exams.

Lacombe Charity Triathlon 2009

2009-09-14T10:26:00.005-06:00

Last weekend, on Labour Day Monday, I did my final triathlon of the year, the Lacombe Charity Triathlon. This was an interesting and fun race, and I'm really glad that Joel convinced me that I should do it. I had registered for it months ago, but then when I realized how tough it would be to train through the month of August, I had been planning to drop out. Then Joel informed me that he had registered, too, so the pressure was on to stick with it.

August was a very crazy month. The biggest consumer of my time was the new house. We took possession on August 7, worked on it all of that weekend and every night that week, and then moved in on August 15. On August 19 (our third anniversary) we went on our holidays for the year, a week driving down to Spokane and back for Jana's sister's wedding. We got back on August 25, and spent the rest of that week doing more unpacking, and then school started the following week on September 2. There are a few blog posts planned about all of these things, so I'll go into more detail later. But the point is that it was very busy, and difficult to find time to train.

That's why I'm so surprised at how well this race went. Fortunately for me, this was definitely the easiest course out of the three races I did this summer. All three of the distances were shorter than advertised, and because the bike was one way, it was a net downhill ride. These things worked to my advantage.

The swim did not go very well. Gull Lake is a very shallow lake, and so when the horn went to start the race, it felt like we were jogging forever until the water was deep enough to start swimming. When we did, the first corner was only a few metres away, so the pack was very congested. There was no time for people to spread out before the natural bottleneck of a corner, so it was a bit of a mess. I apparently do not handle this well, and found myself keeping my head out of the water so that I could see what was going on around me. It wasn't until probably 150 metres into the swim that I found any kind of space and was able to start swimming properly. I was pretty tired by this point from swimming with my head up and was never able to get into a good rhythm. It didn't matter, though, because with at least 100 metres to go the water became too shallow to swim in any more, and we began walking and jogging our way back in. Walking through thigh-deep water is very tiring. My time was 15:05, but there's no way that was a 750 metre swim. I would guess 500 metres, at the most. 15:05 is over a minute faster than my swim time at Coral Springs, which involved no walking, and in which I did find a good rhythm and swim well. On this day, my swim time was 5/10 in the Male 20-29 category, and 44/88 overall. So I guess you could say I was somewhere in the middle.

As a result, my first transition was very slow. I didn't have any trouble getting my wetsuit off, but I did have a difficult time getting my socks and shoes on. My next training session after the race I ran without socks, and it wasn't a problem, so my plan for next year is to race without socks, which will make this transition a lot easier. I feel like I gave up unnecessary ground here.

The bike ride was awesome. We started by riding through the Gull Lake community, where the original site of the Gull Lake Invitational Croquet Tournament was located. Then we got onto Highway 12, which has recently been repaved. It was the most pleasant ride I've ever done, zipping down long hills on perfectly smooth asphalt. Towards the end of the ride I lost a couple of spots, but I kept track, and had a net gain of three spots on the bike. This ride was a little short, too, only 19 km (this based on several odometer readings plus a map of the course). My time was 36:59, which is an average speed of 30.82 km/hr. That time was 7/10 for my age group and 50/88 overall.

My T2 was, as always, very quick. I don't change my shoes, so all I have to do is rack my bike and toss my helmet on the ground. I know I made up a lot of time here.

My run was suprisingly my strong point of the day. The run started with a long uphill, but I'm used to running hills, so this didn't really phase me. Then we snaked through a neighbourhood for a while (there were lots of people out cheering, which was fun) and ended with a run along the lake with the finish line in sight. Again, I suspect that this run was short, but I've heard that based on one guy's GPS watch, it was only about 250 metres short. I know that I pushed very hard, a lot harder than I've pushed in previous races. My goal was to have nothing left at the end, and I came closer to that than I have before. My time was 23:29, making it the fastest 5k I've ever run, even in training. I'm very proud of that. That time was 6/10 in my age group, and 28/88 overall. I kept track, and had a net gain of five positions in this leg.

My final time was 1:15:32, good for 4/10 in my age group and 37/88 overall. If I was to pretend that the distances were accurate, that would mean that I cut 17:56 off of my personal best time, which I can't do in good conscience. But it is a very good time, and I'm very pleased with it.

By my calculations, I gained 8 spots during the bike and the run. I came out of the swim in 44th, so that would have me finishing in 36th. So clearly, between the two transitions, I had a net loss of one position. That should not be happening.

What I'm the most proud of is my age group result. At my first triathlon in June, I finished 7/7 in my age group, at Coral Springs in July I was 8/10 in my age group, and at this race I was 4/10. I recognize that this is very dependent on what kind of people from my age group are racing, but the fact remains that I am now faster than other triathletes in my age group, and I like that feeling. Surprisingly, I didn't finish higher than 5/10 in any of the three legs, but I finished 4/10, which means I was more consistent than some of the guys who finished behind me.

My bike time, as good as it was, shows that I was not in as good of shape as I was at the Summerside triathlon in June. My average speed over 19 km was 30.82 km/hr. This is much faster than my Coral Springs average speed of 25.10 km/hr, where I really struggled on the bike. Part of this, of course, is the downhill factor. But looking back at my past results, at Summerside, which had a 29 km bike ride and was on very rough roads, my average speed was 31.26 km/hr. So clearly I have a lot of potential, if I can just do a race when I'm in better shape. Even by that race in June I was not feeling like I was at the point that I had been in March.

So now it's back to school, and back to training in the gym. Even with my very busy schedule, I'm already finding it a lot easier to fit training into my day, since I'm down at the university already.

And I've decided what my two triathlon related goals for next year are: to finish in the top three in my age category at a sprint triathlon (and win a medal!), and to complete an Olympic distance triathlon.

Europe Trip - Part 8 - Switzerland

2009-09-12T17:09:00.000-06:00

I’m so close to being done these Europe travel blogs, and I love writing them, but I’ve been having a difficult time getting motivated to write this one. I think it’s because in reality I’m rewriting it; my hard drive crashed again, and while I’d been much more careful to have things backed up this time, some stuff was still lost, including this blog. But it’s been over a month now, so I think it’s time to move on and get this thing done.

As I mentioned at the end of the last post concerning our lovely days in Rome, we left Rome on a night train, which departed Rome at about 8:00. We had reserved couchettes, which meant we had two bunks out of 6 in a private compartment. We were quite worried before getting on the train, because we didn’t know what to expect: how much privacy would we have, what would our roommates be like, how comfortable would the beds be, etc.? Fortunately, everything turned out to be not bad at all. The 4 people sharing our room with us were not boarding in Rome, meaning we had the room to ourselves until midnight, when they got on in Bologna. The compartment was air conditioned, but the train had been sitting in Rome all day long and was quite hot. Our bunks, though, were the two bottom ones, meaning the air conditioning affected us the most, and it was quite comfortable on our beds. I stuck my hand up onto the top bunk, and it was probably close to 30 degrees up there, just stifling. We were very glad to have the bottom bunks. The door to our compartment locked, and the curtains had velcro strips so that we could ensure they were tightly sealed around the windows. We felt quite comfortable changing in our rooms. Each carriage also had its own washrooms, maybe even two sets, and its own steward. The steward came by to make sure we were comfortable, to tell us when our roommates would be boarding, and to take our passports and train passes for the night so that when we crossed the border out of the EU into Switzerland, we wouldn’t need to wake up for customs. He also came by to wake us up before we reached our stop at Bern so that we would be ready to go.

I really enjoyed the feeling of laying out flat on a high-speed train. It was very unique. We were provided with clean sheets and pillows, and I actually found it quite comfortable. It was nice to travel all the way from Rome to Lucerne without using up a day, too. That said, we did not have the ability to shower, so we spent the whole next day feeling dirty, so I don’t know if it’s something we’d make a regular habit of, but when we do go back to Europe, I’m sure we’ll take advantage of the couchettes again.

We arrived in Bern at 6:20, and then transferred onto a commuter train at 7:00 that arrived in Lucerne at 8:00. At Lucerne we rented a locker, put our luggage into it, and set out to explore the city.

We began by following the Rick Steves walking tour of Lucerne. Immediately we came across the Culture and Convention Centre, a large building on the waterfront designed by Jean Nouvel, the (at that time) most recent winner of the Pritzker Prize for Architecture. This beautiful building is built into the lake, with water flowing through the building. It’s large roof is designed to reflect the water, giving the illusion that the building is part of the lake. It is a very original concept, and we enjoyed looking at the building as we grabbed a quick breakfast.

The next stop on our walking tour was the famous Kapellbrücke, with its medieval tower. At first I was not convinced that we were looking at the right bridge, because I had expected the tower to be much taller. But then I realized that it was the bridge itself, not the tower, that is the reason this is Lucerne’s most famous landmark. The bridge, originally built in the 14th century, is filled with original medieval artwork, in addition to being a beautiful sight on its own with all the flowers. A portion of the bridge was rebuilt in the 1990s after a fire, but they had spare paintings in storage (the bridge used to be longer), so all of the paintings are still original.

We continued on through Lucerne, exploring a beautiful Rococo church, wandering through a bunch of “garage” sales, over the city’s dam system, and through the city’s many squares. Many of the shops are decorated with murals, which Rick Steves insisted on describing in great detail. I found the endless description rather boring, although the buildings and artwork themselves were somewhat interesting.

For lunch we sat on a covered patio (it was a cool, rainy day, a very pleasant switch from Rome) alongside the river, and had cheese fondue. While it was good, it was no better than the fondue we’ve made ourselves, and I would say not as good as the fondue at the Laurier Lounge in Calgary.

One of the tricks of the Eurail pass is that if you ride an overnight train that leaves after 7 pm, the arrival date is the only one that counts as a travel day. That meant that our Eurail passes were valid all day while we were in Lucerne. We had researched this in advance, and discovered that this meant we could ride the ferries for free all day. So after lunch, we caught one of the ferries that does the full loop of Lake Lucerne. The ferry was much nicer than the BC Ferries, meaning that Jana and I sat at a table with a tablecloth and had some nice drinks (I had a locally brewed cider) while we watched the amazing views of the lake. We hopped off the boat at Bürgenstock, where we had been planning to go for a hike. The rain, though, changed our plans. Instead, we immediately came upon a funicular train that was about to go up the mountain. We had noticed the tracks from the boat, and had remarked how nearly vertical they looked. When we asked the train conductor how much it would cost, we learned that we could get a 50% discount because our Eurail passes were valid that day.

We rode the train up the side of the mountain, which was a really cool experience. At the top we had spectacular views of the Alpine meadows (when you’re actually in the Alps, I think the word “alpine” should be capitalized) on the other side of the mountain, as well as of the lake (pictures didn’t work because of the mist). There was a lonely cow, with a cowbell on, wandering along the top of the mountain.

After enjoying a bar of Swiss chocolate (ie. Toblerone) at the little hut at the top (the entire “town” at the top is a row of 5 or 6 hotels), we rode the funicular back down to the lake. We had about 45 minutes before the next boat would arrive, so we wandered around through the houses and cottages along the side of the lake. In and around these houses were quite a few cows, and the sound of tinkling cowbells was omnipresent. It felt very Swiss (assuming "Swiss" means "Heidi" and not "neutral banking centre").

When the boat did arrive we rode back on the outside deck, taking advantage of a nice patch of dry weather (unfortunately we lost our umbrella at some point this afternoon, probably left on the boat when we suddenly realized we were at the Bürgenstock stop already and rushed to hurry off the boat). The views of Mount Pilatus, the city of Lucerne, and Culture and Convention Centre were particularly impressive.

After we disembarked, we decided that it was time to continue on to Zurich. As previously mentioned, our Eurail passes were still valid for this entire day, so we used them to take the train into Zurich.

Our hotel in Zurich was fairly near to the train station, and definitely not in the nicest part of town. After dropping off our stuff we tried to find a bite to eat, and across from the adult theatre and next door to the strip club we found a little sandwich place with about 3 sandwiches left in the cooler. We bought 2 of them.

We were feeling rather tired, having spent the night before on the train and then having a busy, although relaxing, day in Lucerne, so we decided to take the evening off. We paid the fee to get TV in our room for the next 24 hours, and sat in bed watching the Olympics all night. It was a very pleasant end to the day.

The next day was Sunday, which turned out to be rather significant, as it meant that virtually everything in Zurich was closed. I did not personally enjoy Zurich very much that day, as it just felt rather dead and empty.

We spent the day exploring the city, following the mandatory Rick Steve’s walking tour, and trying to find a place to have lunch. Like I said, everything in Zurich was closed, so this actually took us quite a while. Eventually we did find somewhere affordable and open, and had a very pleasant fish lunch.

The highlights of the Zurich walking tour were the churches (the Grossmünster and the Fraumünster), which both boasted stunning modern stained glass windows, especially the Cezanne windows in the Fraumünster.

One thing that always weirds me out a bit is people who dress up and pretend they live in a different historical era. A couple of weeks ago we were driving through Idaho and we spent a bit of time in a little tent village of people living as though they were explorers. They were selling furs, muskets, tobacco, and pots. I found them creepy. Likewise, in Zurich there was a large “Renaissance Faire” going on in one of the town squares. Jana wanted to go in, but I very much did not, especially since we would have had to pay. I was quite content to watch the big bonfire from the outside and hear the town crier tell an apparently hilarious story (in Swiss German, of course) from the outside. I’m not sure why I felt so strongly, I just dislike those kinds of events. (I realize that in neither of these pictures can you see anyone who is dressed up, but trust me, they were there.)

The major upside to Zurich was the lake. At one point our plan had been to go swimming in the lake, but it turned out not be all that hot, so we didn’t really feel like going swimming. And we never really found the beach. But we did go to a grocery store (in the train station) and buy ourselves a great picnic: salami, cheese (unfortunately I can’t remember what kind, maybe Jana can?), bread, little tubes of mayo and mustard, pure apple juice, and chocolate. It sounds so simple, but it was honestly one of the best meals of our entire trip. We sat on a bench down by the lake, watching the boats come in and the sun set and ate our picnic. It was amazing. We walked along the lake and then back through the deserted streets to our hotel, which we found by spotting the big strip club just up the block.

In the end, I had to admit that Zurich wasn’t really all that bad, although for most of the day I had found it extremely dull. I was probably just frustrated by how expensive everything was, and how everything else seemed to be closed. But I did have a very enjoyable evening, so at least I have a positive memory of Zurich to dwell on.

The other thing we did in Zurich on that Sunday was wait in line for a chance to talk to a ticket agent about switching our ticket to Paris the next day from first to second class. Back in Vienna (why is it that the two cities I think of as the most boring were also the two that I had to get my tickets switched in?), the agent had only been able to change the tickets in Italy, not for this final train ride. So unfortunately that meant we had to leave it to the last minute. And unfortunately this meant that by the time we requested the switch, there were no second class seats remaining on our train, meaning that we wouldn’t arrive in Paris until 4:30, not 11:30 like we had planned. This was disappointing, because in effect it shortened our time in Paris by one day, which turned out to be fateful foreshadowing.

Our New House

2009-07-20T12:44:00.006-06:00

If you recall last year when I did a series of blog posts about my lifelong goals, you may remember that one of them was to own a house. Well, this post is an acknowledgement of the fact that last week I checked that goal off my list. Jana and I have bought a house!

After two incredibly stressful weeks of negotiations (we did not use a realtor, meaning we had to deal with the seller directly), we lifted the conditions last Tuesday. Everything's moving really quickly, and we're getting possession on August 7, which is less than three weeks away already.

We have not taken any pictures of the inside ourselves, but here's what it looks like on the outside:

As soon as we have possession, I'll be sure to post more pictures.

This now means that Jana and I will be hard-pressed for cash for the next few years, as of course we're still both unemployed students, just now we have mortgage payments, utilities, taxes, and home repairs to pay for.

We are incredibly excited about this house. It has beautiful hardwood floors throughout the house, with ceramic tile in the kitchen and bathroom. There are two bedrooms in the second storey (the house is technically a 1.5 storey house, because the second storey has sloped ceilings), and then the potential for two more in the partially finished basement. There is a huge yard, with big beautiful trees and a firepit.

The neighbourhood, Prince Charles, is just south of the Yellowhead, and just west of the Municipal Airport, if you're familiar with Edmonton. It's a mature neighbourhood, with lots of trees, and low crime. All of the houses were built just after World War II, including ours in 1948.

Anything else you want to know, feel free to ask. And if you're coming through Edmonton, make sure to come visit, because we'll actually have a guest room soon!

Coral Springs Triathlon

2009-07-13T10:26:00.003-06:00

Yesterday I participated in my second triathlon: the Tri-It Triathlon at Coral Springs. Once again I did the sprint distance (750 m swim, 20 km bike, 5 km run). I was joined by a lot of friends: Leif did the Olympic distance, Laura did the sprint distance (her first triathlon!), Joel did the sprint distance, and my mom did the Try-It distance (her first triathlon, too!). We had beautiful weather down in Calgary, and the water was nice and warm!

I set a new Personal Best time yesterday, making that two consecutive races at which I set a PB. My previous PB was 1:44:53, and my time yesterday was 1:33:36, an improvement of over 11 minutes. This was the breakdown, with last race's times in brackets:

Swim - 16:30 (21:40)
Bike - 47:49 (55:40)
Run - 29:18 (28:08)

So as you can see, the major improvements were in the swim and the bike. But even that is a little misleading, because remember that the bike time includes the transition. That is where the real improvement was, because I had torn the narrow ankle off of my wetsuit, allowing me to take it off in less than a minute, as opposed to the 7 minutes I took last time.

Overall, I was in way worse shape for this race than I was for the first one. In the 4 week interim, I really slacked off on my training, doing only one bike ride, one run, and one swim. Pathetic, really. As a result, you can see that my run was over a minute slower, and I'm sure that my bike was as well. What helped on the bike was that this race was regulation length (20 km, although my odometer said 21.2), as opposed to the 22.4 at Lake Summerside. However, my swimming improved vastly, due to two factors: I figured out how to fit my wetsuit on properly, meaning the arms didn't fill up with water, and the water temperature was much warmer than it had been in early June. These two things enabled me to actually maintain a proper swim stroke for the swim, and that cut over 5 minutes off my previours swim time.

My next triathlon is scheduled for Monday, September 7, in Lacombe, which gives me almost 2 months to pick the pace back up in my training. Like I said, the large improvement in my time was due to being able to swim, getting the wetsuit off much faster in transition, and the bike course being shorter, and was not due to any improvements in my fitness.

My time of 1:33:36 was good enough for 53rd out of 127 overall, putting me into the top half of all finishers in the sprint distance. Notably, I finished 8th out of 11 in my age group (Male 20-29), a distinct improvement from last race, where I finished 7th out of 7.

I'm still definitely hooked to the sport of triathlon, but now I know better than to take my fitness for granted. There is a lot of room for improvement if I actually take the time over the next 2 months to get myself into shape.

Michael Jackson

2009-06-30T09:54:00.004-06:00

I have been feeling, as I'm sure many have in the past few days, that I've only realized how much I appreciated Michael Jackson since he died last Friday. This doesn't cause me guilt, as my opinion of Michael Jackson had no effect on the man whatsoever, but it does cause me to question how it is that we view artists/celebrities. If you'd mentioned Michael Jackson last Thursday, I would have instantly thought of the deformed nose, child molestation allegations, and bizarre lifestyle. But within hours of his death, his legacy transformed into that of a musical prodigy who changed the face of popular music and dance forever.

I can't claim this idea is original, but I can't quite get it out of my head: Michael Jackson is the Elvis Presley of his generation. Both men bridged the gap between "black music" and "white music," defining new musical styles all their own. Both men suffered massive falls from grace, turning into recluses with rumours swirling about what sort of debauchery went on inside their respective mansions. Both died relatively young, and I'm convinced that there will be many who believe that Jackson's death, like Elvis', has been faked. I'm also sure that within a few years Neverland will become a major tourist attraction on the scale of Graceland.

Every time I watch any musical talent shows (American Idol, Britain's Got Talent, etc.) I see a Michael Jackson impersonator. I can't think of any other music stars who are impersonated as much as Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley. Part of that is because there are few musicians with as distinctive styles as those two, and certainly none with as distinctive of dance moves. You can immediately tell when someone is dressed and dancing like one of those two, something that can't be said for other popular musicians of the past century, with the possible exception of the Beatles.

The golden ages of both Elvis and MJ were fairly brief. I think that my experiences with Michael Jackson are probably similar to those of the Baby Boomer generation with Elvis. Michael Jackson was ever-present. I can never remember not knowing who he was, or not associating the moonwalk with him. I do remember the first time I saw a Michael Jackson music video: Free Willy around 1993. Already by that point, he was becoming a disgraced star, and I remember being aware of rumours about him being transgendered. I would imagine that for a lot of Boomers, they were also aware of Elvis for their entire lives, but anything he did in their lifetime was already well past his peak: some movies, and then the famous Vegas concerts and the jumpsuits that he wore for them.

So many of Michael Jackson's songs are deeply engrained in my cultural consciousness. Billie Jean, Beat It, Black or White, and Thriller all seem to be default dance numbers at weddings, talent shows, etc. Free Willy is one of the most memorable films of my childhood, and Will You Be There was stuck in my head for years.

It's sad that a person has to die before we appreciate them. I realize that it was impossible to look past the circus that surrounded Michael Jackson over the last decade or so, and he didn't do anything artistically to distract from that. Even as I was becoming a big fan of the Thriller album, there was a disconnect in my mind between the man who lived in an amusement park and the man who sang those songs I love so much. It has only been after he has died that I've been able to bridge that gap and realize that they were one and the same person, and that his musical and dance achievements are far more important than how he looked, what he bought, or what he did with his children.

The death of Michael Jackson is a very sad one. He was a man who never had a childhood, and who perpetually tried to regain those lost years. He suffered from several severe illnesses, most notably vitiligo, which changed his skin colour rapidly. He faced a lot of pressures, and collapsed under them. His death is not a sad one for the loss to the musical community, necessarily, as I don't think he was going to ever put out new music that would come close to his older work, but it is a sad one for the man himself. He suffered a lot in his pursuit of happiness, something that it never really seemed like he achieved.

Photographic Proof

2009-06-09T16:18:00.008-06:00

Technically none of these pictures show me crossing the finish line, so you'll have to take my word for that.

The start: I'm the guy in the black wetsuit and blue swimcap.

Actually, I'm the guy in the very middle of the photograph whose hands are splayed out oddly.

All I could think about getting out of the water here was how happy I was to be done, and that I needed to be very careful not to trip or stub my toe on the large blocks of concrete.

There's probably a gap of 10 minutes between that last picture and this one, since my wetsuit is finally off.

Starting out on the bike, just before that old guy in front of me stopped suddenly and completely blocked the way out.

Coming back in on the bike. I was really pleased with my performance on the bike, and I passed a lot of people. I was 63rd coming out of the water, then had a terrible transition, but even with that transition I had the 37th best bike time.

I look like I'm sprinting out of transition here. Obviously I did not maintain this sort of pace for very long.

Like I said, none of these pictures show me crossing the finish line, but this is about 3 paces before the finish line. It was such a good feeling to finish that race.

My First Triathlon

2009-06-08T11:58:00.005-06:00

Yesterday I accomplished the goal I set on New Year's Eve of completing a triathlon! I raced in the Sprint division of the Lake Summerside Triathlon yesterday in south Edmonton. As you may recall, it was Leif who inspired me to participate in triathlons. Last year he started racing, and when I began swimming in the fall, I secretly decided that I might surprise him by showing up at a race in the summer. But at New Year's, when we were all writing out our goals for the year, I decided to go public with that goal, hoping that doing so would make it happen. Yesterday, along with Leif and my friend Joel Houston, I reached the culmination of all the training from that point on. It was an amazing feel to cross that finish line, and I'm incredibly proud of accomplishing this goal.

As for the race itself, here's how it went: the day before, Leif and I met up at the lake to go for a practice swim. This was the first time I'd ever tried to really swim in a lake, and also the first time using my wetsuit, and it didn't really go very well. The water was too cold for me to be able to keep my face in the water properly, and so I found myself completely unable to swim anything more than a breaststroke. Furthermore, the arms of my wetsuit filled up with water, and I didn't have the upper-body strength to lift them out of the water. It was a little bit frightening, and certainly didn't build up my confidence for the next day.

However, that night I focused my mind on swimming slowly and easily, flipping onto my back whenever necessary, and just making sure that I completed the swim, no matter how long it took me.

The next morning I was up bright and early, and Leif and I met Joel at the race site around 7:30. I checked in, got body-marked, picked up my timing chip, set up my bike and gear, and began the long wait. My wave (all the Sprint racers) didn't start until 10:00, so there was plenty of time to wait. It was good, though, because I could think through everything, make sure nothing was missed, and get mentally prepared for the race ahead.

Joel and I stood on the beach watching the Olympic racers go before us, and I was encouraged to see a lot of people going very slowly. In fact, we watched a number of people drop out of the race because they couldn't handle the swim, and I was very glad that I had done the practice swim on Saturday. I think that if I hadn't, I probably would have panicked and quit. Instead, I knew I wasn't going to be able to just do a quick, normal swim, and as a result I finished comfortably.

The time came for our race to begin. The horn sounded, and I slowly jogged into the water, letting most people go in front of me. There was some congestion initially, which is impossible to avoid with 91 people starting at once, but nothing too bad, just some bumping. Pretty quickly I found some space, and almost immediately flipped over onto my back. The cold combined with the wetsuit just made me feel too constricted, and I couldn't hold my breath long enough, so I didn't really try. I probably completed about three-quarters of the swim on my back, and a lot of it just chugging along with my legs. Whenever I did flip onto my front I could go a lot faster, but I just couldn't keep it up for long enough. But my emphasis was on finishing the swim, and that's what I did. In the final 250 metres, I picked one guy who I would try to beat, and I did, by about 20 metres. Final swim time: 21:40, 63rd (these places are out of the 80 people who finished the Sprint race).

My transition was horrible. Absolutely horrific. I knew going in that I would have troubles getting my wetsuit over my heels, but hadn't realized how tired my arms would be. It must have taken me 5 minutes to get it off. I'd estimate my transition time at around 7 minutes, which is unacceptable. There is a lot of room for improvement here. Unfortunately this race didn't do separate times for transitions, so I don't know how much of my bike time was taken up in this transition.

I felt really good on the bike. I kept up a good speed the whole time, and passed a lot of people. The bike course was not very well planned, as much of it was on nearly gravel roads, and a lot of people suffered flat tires due to the poor conditions of the roads. There were also some very strong headwinds, which made the ride difficult, but I like to think that my leg strength is my strongest point, and I was able to push past quite a few people. The bike was pretty uneventful, even though it was the longest part of the race. I couldn't feel my feet the whole time, which was weird, as they were still numb from the swim. Leif passed me with about 7 km to go, and it was nice to see him and call out some encouragement. Final bike time (22.4 km, including swim-to-bike transition): 55:40, 37th.

My second transition (T2) was amazing. Because I don't have cycling shoes, all I had to do was rack my bike, pull off my helmet and start running. I think I was probably in and out of the whole transition zone in less than 30 seconds. The announcer called out my name as I started off on the run, which was a pretty cool feeling.

The run was two laps of a loop through the Summerside neighbourhood, including running along a gravel path and over 3 wood bridges. It was overall a very pleasant run, and there were lots of places to pass by runners going in the opposite direction so I could know exactly how my friends were doing. I had, as a bit of a joke, set a goal of finishing my Sprint distance race before Leif finished his Olympic distance race (all distances doubled). Leif had a 30 minute head start, and it turns out that this was actually not a guarantee, given his super-human speed. I passed him going in the other direction as I started out on my 2nd lap and he was finishing his 2nd, so I realized that I just needed to finish my lap before he could do two, which I did, finishing about 5 minutes before Leif did. The first lap of the run was tough, because my legs were very tired. The swimming on my back had been a lot harder on my legs than I had anticipated, so they were starting to cramp up. Also, running after a long bike is a major switch in muscles and doesn't feel very natural at all. I'm certain that my second loop was a lot faster than my first one. I turned on the speed in the final 300 metres, and passed 2 or 3 people so that I could have the finish line all to myself. I came around the corner, heard Jana and our other friends that had come out to watch cheering me on, and sprinted across the finish. I felt so great!! Final run time: 28:08, 38th.
At various points in the buildup to this race, I had set different goals for myself. At one point, I wanted to finish in 1:30. However, I abandoned that goal early on, realizing that it was both way too fast for my abilities and also didn't factor in any flexibility for a longer bike (such as in this race) or race-specific factors (like the headwinds and road conditions on the bike). Later I set a goal of finishing without walking. I abandoned that goal after a heavy workout in the river valley in which I realized that some hills are just too large to run up. But after seeing the racecourse, I re-adopted that goal, and yesterday I achieved it. That is probably what I am the most proud of out of the whole day: I finished the whole triathlon without walking, and pushed as hard as I possibly could.

My final time was 1:44:53, good for 40th overall out of 80 finishers. I am extremely pleased with that result. I was mentally prepared to finish in last place, as long as I finished. To finish in the top half (91 started) is much better than I had expected. There is a lot of room for improvement (especially on my swim and T1), so I find myself in the position where I am now hooked to the sport, and must do more. I've registered for the Lacombe Triathlon in September, and am planning to register for the Coral Springs Triathlon in Calgary in July (in addition to Leif and Joel, I also know that both Laura and my Mom are planning to run their first triathlons that day). I can't wait to get out there and do another one!

By the way, I know that pictures exist of this day, I just don't have them yet. As soon as I have them, I'll post them.

Europe Trip - Part 7 - Rome

2009-05-24T18:43:00.000-06:00

Exams are looming over me, but it’s lunch hour and I’ve only got a few minutes before class starts, so I may as well write a bit of this. I enjoy writing these blogs so much, and from the Florence one I see that other people besides myself actually do read them and enjoy them as well, so it’s not difficult to get motivated to write them. This post will concern Rome, the final Italian city on our trip, and what ended up being the longest we spent in any one city. (Note: it is, of course, several weeks since exams ended, as once again this post took me over a month to write. I should forewarn you: we took less pictures in Rome than anywhere else, for some reason, so there will be a lot more text than photos in this post, sorry. And the photos I do include may be of lower quality, since I have less to choose from.)

I had a hard drive crash a couple of weeks ago, which wiped out all of the pictures on my computer. Fortunately, Jana had the Europe pictures saved on her laptop (and we’ve printed quite a few of them), so none of those were lost. And my law school notes were backed up online, so I only lost a few days worth of those. But it was a good reminder to start backing up regularly.

Anyway, I’m off topic already and on my third paragraph and haven’t talked about Rome at all.

We left Florence bright and early on the 7:52 train which took us directly to the Stazione Termini in Rome, arriving at 9:30. That was a really great bit of planning on our part, because it meant that we didn’t have a travel day between those two cities. Between Venice and Florence we had still done stuff on the travel day, but the whole afternoon was taken up on the train. This was great, because we had the whole day in Rome.

Our hotel was right by the station, so we went there immediately and put our luggage into storage for the day. The hotel was pretty nice, and well air-conditioned, which was very much appreciated. Our stay in Rome was very, very hot. The highs were in the high-30s every day that we were there, and the sun was always beating down. It was definitely too hot at times, and we didn’t always enjoy things as much as we could have because it was so uncomfortable, which is too bad. But that’s what you get in mid-August.

The best part of the hotel, though, was its location. Rome has a pretty terrible transit system, but it’s all focused around one hub: the Stazione Termini. That’s part of why it’s so bad, in fact. The subway consists of two lines, and they make a giant “X” over the city, converging only at the Termini. This was also the hub for nearly every bus line. It must be very frustrating to get from one side of the city to the other using transit, as you would have to make your way to Termini first in order to get anywhere. However, for us, this was great, because our hotel was one block away from every transit line.

We learned, as the week went on, that central Rome is actually a lot smaller than we thought, and had it not been so hot, we would have done more walking. We also learned that taking the bus was always quicker than crowding onto the train, especially since we usually only wanted to go a few stops.

This first day in Rome was our second wedding anniversary. I’m not sure why I’m mentioning that now, but it’s good to remember everything that we did on our anniversary, even if most of it we would have done anyway.

The first thing we did that day was ride the train over to the Piazza del Popolo. This is a beautiful square, famous for the two matching churches flanking the street leading out of the square, and for the Egyptian obelisk in the centre. I’ve seen it in the previews for Angels and Demons, so I imagine it figures prominently in that movie. We then walked up the Via del Corso, past the two churches, and up this high-class shopping street until we turned and reached the famous Spanish Steps. We could not understand the hype about these steps. After all, they were just steps. The sunken ship fountain is interesting, but that’s about it.

Then we decided to head out on a walking tour, so we got back on the train, and headed to the nearest train stop to Trastevere. This was poorly planned, as we could have gotten there much quicker by a bus and then tram (a route we used several times later in the week), but I was never able to find a good transit map of Rome, so in these early days we were rather reliant on the metro. In this case, it meant about a 45 minute walk to get to where we would start our walking tour, down a street with no trees, in 38 degree heat.

Fortunately, we loved Trastevere. This neighbourhood became our default place to go, and we came back here 3 or 4 times while we were there. One of the main reasons was an early stop on our walking tour: the Sora Mirella grattachecca stand along the Tiber River. The picture of it here is not my own, as bizarrely we did not take any pictures of this place that we would plan the rest of our days around coming back to. A grattachecca is a drink made from fresh shaved ice, fresh fruit, syrup, and some dried fruit on top. It is absolutely delicious. We started planning our days around getting back to this little stand, because the heat was so unbearable otherwise.

The rest of the walking tour took us through the tiny, twisting streets of Trastevere and to the beautiful little Church of St. Cecilia. Then we went back to the hotel and got dressed for dinner. We had not planned a place for dinner, but we started looking for a place nice and early so we never really felt rushed. Italians eat nice and late, probably due to the high heat during the day.

While we looked for a restaurant, we explored a lot of central Rome. We made our first visit to the Trevi Fountain with its vast crowds and the Piazza Colonna. Quite unexpectedly, we came around a corner and were face-to-face with the Pantheon, which is a very, very impressive building. It was just a block or two beyond the Pantheon, on a tiny street that was little more than an alley (in fact, there was no vehicular traffic on the street) that we found the amazing restaurant that we ate our anniversary dinner at. We sat out on the patio, as the night began to cool off, and had one of the best dinners of our entire trip, which was a great treat for our anniversary. For our first course, the pasta course, I had Spaghetti alla Carbonara, my all-time favourite pasta dish, and Jana had pasta with fresh Porcini mushrooms. For the main course, Jana had salmon with a tomato sauce, while I had a beef tenderloin encrusted with pink peppercorns. It was delicious, served with fantastic fresh-baked bread, and all washed down with a great Chianti and sparkling water. I can’t remember exactly what dessert was, but it was some sort of chocolate, and I know I had an espresso (I’d check with Jana on the dessert, but of course she’s away in England right now). It was a beautiful warm night, the patio was full of locals enjoying a beautiful evening at a restaurant that they clearly knew was superior, and we had amazing service. I think we’ll be hard-pressed to ever have a better anniversary. We walked back through the Pantheon, wandering through the huge columns in the dark, and back up the Via del Tritone to the train station.

The next morning we started with a visit to the Galleria Borghese, for which we had a 9:00 am reservation. This Renaissance villa is filled with the private art collection of the Borghese family. By and large, it was a bit of a disappointment, as the Borghese’s taste was rather tacky. However, a few works were among the very best we saw on the entire trip, most notably Bernini’s “Apollo and Daphne” and Canova’s “Pauline Bonaparte”. It was really nice to be up and about in the morning, though, while it was still cool, especially as the villa is located in a very large park, which we were able to walk through for a while.

We then made our way over to the Vatican. We had been warned of very, very long lines to get into the Vatican Museums, so we wanted to get there around lunchtime so that we could still get in even if we had to stand in line for 3 or 4 hours. As it turned out, there was no line at all; we just walked right in. The Vatican Museums were fascinating, a huge collection of art spread throughout the Papal Palaces. We started with the famous spiral staircase, and then made our way through art history starting with Ancient Egypt and ending in the Renaissance. My favourite part of the museums were the Papal apartments painted by Raphael. This is right near the end of the museum, and these rooms, combined with the final exhibit in the museum, are probably the pinnacle of Renaissance art. The most famous of the many frescoes in these rooms is certainly “The School of Athens”. The final exhibit, which I just mentioned, is of course the Sistine Chapel. Jana found the Chapel slightly disappointing, as it was not what she had expected. Personally, I found it overwhelming. There is so much art in that room, and so much of it is so far away, that it is impossible to really take in what you’re seeing. We sat in that room for quite some time and soaked it in. Some of the segments are of course very famous, such as “Creation of Adam” and “God Creates the Sun and the Planets.” The most impressive part, however, for me at least, was “The Last Judgment”, which takes up the entire wall behind the altar. Thanks once again to Rick Steve’s audio guides, we were given a detailed description of this work of art, and pointed towards many of the fascinating details found in it that we might very well have missed otherwise.

Following the Sistine Chapel, we made our final stop in the Vatican: St. Peter’s Basilica. Once again we had an audio guide that we were both listening to on our iPods, starting with the exterior. As a result, we walked in through the front doors on command and gazed up into the most breathtaking sight of the entire trip. This cathedral, the largest in the world, is stunning. The sun was beaming down onto the altar. As I stood there, and tears came to my eyes from the incredible size and beauty of the place, I heard a choir sing a heavenly chord. I turned to Jana in amazement, and said something to the effect of, “My mind is playing tricks on me: it was so beautiful, I swear I heard an angel chorus.” Jana laughed, and informed me that I had indeed heard that chord, in fact she had as well, as it was recorded on our audio guides! It was a little embarrassing, to say the least. But it was perfect timing, because I honestly thought it was real.

We spent the next hour or so slowly walking through the cathedral in silent awe. Everything in St. Peter’s is larger than life, and designed to fool the eye: for example, the writing you can see in the picture, which snakes all the way around the entire church, is made up of letters that range from 6 to 8 feet tall. This completely changes the scale of the church, because one assumes that they are maybe one-third that height, and so your brain is tricked into thinking the space is smaller than it actually is. Furthermore, the letters get larger the farther away they are from the entrance, so that they all appear to be the same size when you are standing in the nave. You can’t really comprehend how large it is until you take the time to walk all the way up to the altar, which is fully 200 metres away. And of course, the Basilica is filled with incredible artwork, most notably Michelangelo’s “Pieta”. This marble sculpture, with the folds in the robe and Christ’s twisted body, is yet another example of Michelangelo’s mastery. Looking back, it is quite astonishing how much art we saw by both him and Leonardo da Vinci, and how all of it was so extraordinary. I learned quite a lot about art on this trip, and have developed a very deep appreciation for the Renaissance in particular.

We made our way back to our hotel, through the famous Piazza di San Pietro in front of the Basilica, but we didn’t pause for long because it was so overwhelmingly hot outside. After some relaxation in our air conditioned hotel room (and watching the Olympics, of course), we headed back out for supper. Again we stumbled across a great restaurant in the back streets of Rome, and enjoyed another relaxing evening as the sun disappeared and the temperature became bearable again. This time we ate in the Trastevere neighbourhood, where we had spent our first afternoon the day before. The restaurant we ate in was a packed, lively place, again filled with locals, which is always a good sign. I went way out on a limb and had gnocchi with clams, something I’d never had before. It was delicious. Afterwards we explored more of that neighbourhood, including the Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere and walked through the very lively nightlife scene in that area of the city.

The next day, looking back, was probably my favourite of our days in Rome, and the evening was one of the best of our entire trip. We started off the day by heading to the Palatine Hill, the site of the Roman Emperor’s Palace. The Palace is in ruins now, but there is enough still there to get a sense of the size and grandeur of the place. Behind the Palace is the Circus Maximus, famous for its chariot races, such as in “Ben-Hur”. It was a pretty weird feeling to stand on the spot where the Emperor’s throne stood, knowing that a couple thousand years earlier Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Constantine, and Nero had all stood in the same spot. There was also a museum containing several pieces of Classical art. One thing that stood out in my mind a lot on the trip was the huge gap in time between the Classical period and the medieval period, when art began to flourish again, and the Renaissance, when it finally regained the glory that it had in the last centuries BC. It’s really a strange thing that the Romans and Greeks lived before the Dark Ages, because their societies were so similar to ours in so many ways, and yet for centuries after that humanity seemed to descend into ignorance. It’s quite a strange phenomenon.

Another interesting thing about Rome that you can see in these pictures is how the city has been built up around the ruins. All throughout the city you see little pieces of ruins, either on its own or with a modern building built around it. This city embraces its history and has integrated the old with the new in a very unique way. These sites are not separated from the rest of the city.

The biggest problem with this day was that we were outdoors at midday, something we did a pretty good job of avoiding on the other days. That did put a damper on things somewhat, but I think that what we were seeing was so wonderful that it all balanced out. From the Palatine Hill we made our way over to the Colosseum. I don’t know what to say about the Colosseum that hasn’t already been said, so I’ll just say that it is a brilliant example of classical architecture and that its ability to endure for so long is amazing. It was quite fascinating to see the underground workings of the Colosseum, such as the dozens of elevator shafts for bringing up props and wild animals in order to keep the masses entertained during the gladiator games. Outside the Colosseum is the magnificent Arch of Constantine, erected by Constantine to commemorate his conversion to Christianity after his victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in AD 312. This huge arch is the inspiration for many other such arches around the world, including the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

We then crossed the street and made our way through the Forum, the heart of ancient Rome. It was very interesting to visit all three of these sites in a single day and to get a sense of their proximity to one another. The first two pictures below were taken from the Palatine Hill, so you can get a sense of how close these sites actually are. Located in the Forum are the immense Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine with its huge barrel vaults, the Temple of Saturn with its famous columns, and the Temple of the Vestal Virgins, among many others.

After the Forum it was time for another grattechecca, and then back to the hotel to cool down. For supper we made our way down to the area around the Trevi Fountain again and had yet another very enjoyable dinner. Oh, but first we slipped into the Pantheon just before it closed to be awed by the massive dome. After dinner we set out to do what is in my mind the most memorable walking tour of the whole trip: Rick Steve’s Night Walk Across Rome. We began by making our way towards the Camp de’ Fiori, the starting point for Rick’s tour. On our way, we passed by the Largo di Torre Argentina, the ruins of the ancient Theatre of Pompey, where Julius Caesar was assassinated. While looking at the ruins, we noticed a cat wandering amongst the columns. Soon we realized that the ruins were absolutely overrun with cats, and I think we counted somewhere around 30. Having researched it more fully since coming home, I’ve discovered that the Torre Argentina has a permanent cat shelter set up, due to the immense number of feral cats living in the area. In fact, it is estimated that there are 300,000 feral cats in Rome, and the city has declared the ones living in the Torre Argentina, the Colosseum, and the Forum, to be protected as part of the city’s bio-heritage.

The walking tour took us through the Campo de’ Fiori, with its statue of Giordano Bruno, through the streets of Rome to the Piazza Navona, with its famous Four Rivers Fountain. Unfortunately for us, the Fountain was undergoing major restoration, and so only parts of it were visible, and there was no water flowing. However, the square itself was alive. There were artists, street musicians, street performers, and tons of people. I loved how Rome was more vibrant at 10:00 pm than at 2:00 pm. It is a lifestyle I could get used to quite easily.

We departed from Rick’s walking tour at this point, because I realized, in looking at the map, that we were not very far from the Castel Sant’Angelo, which we had not yet seen. So we walked, in large crowds, through the streets from the Piazza Navona to the Tiber River. Once at the Tiber, the crowds disappeared. We descended the steps onto the walkway, where we were all alone. It was a beautiful night, the lights were reflecting on the water, and there was nobody else around. We walked down the river for quite a while, enjoying the romantic moment. By the time we returned to ground level, we were nearly at the Vatican. We crossed the river, and made our way back on the other side. We passed by the Castel Sant’Angelo, which was hosting a festival of some sort. Out front was a huge market, and we strolled through all the booths, which were open at 11:00 pm. Finally we crossed back over the river and returned to the Piazza Navona, where we sat for a while longer watching a street performer make jokes we couldn’t understand. From the Piazza Navona we walked through an area we had become quite familiar with, past the Pantheon and the Piazza Colonna and to the Trevi Fountain. This was the first time we’d seen the Trevi Fountain at night, and it was magnificent. The roaring water, the huge crowds, and the lively sculptures made it a really fun place to be. We took a few pictures, and then tried to get the courage up to ask someone else to take a picture of us (something neither of us is very good at). Then suddenly, at midnight, the police arrived and started blowing their whistles and herding everyone out very quickly. In a panic I grabbed the nearest guy and asked him to take our picture, which he did while the police shouted at him to get moving. The picture, as you can see, is of very poor quality, but there was no time to take another one as the police were quite insistent that we get out of there.

The walking tour continued through the emptying streets of Rome to the Piazza di Spagna, home of the Spanish Steps that we had visited a couple of days earlier. This time there was nobody there, and even less to see than the first time.

It is important at this point to recount an overarching theme throughout this entire walk: I had to use the bathroom rather desperately from the point we first reached the Piazza Navona. So if you’ve been following the times at all, you’ll notice that it had been about two hours at this point. Public washrooms are very difficult to find when you need them, I discovered all over Europe, and especially late at night. Instances such as this, with me anxiously keeping an eye out for a washroom while we explored a city, repeated themselves over and over again throughout Europe, because I insisted on keeping myself well-hydrated. This night was the worst, though.

Having now reached the end of the walking tour, we went around the corner to the metro station to head home. As we entered the station, we noticed a barred door and it struck us as odd. Also odd was how empty the station felt. When we reached the top of the escalator to descend to the platform, it became very clear that the Metro was closed for the night. Apparently, the Metro in Rome, one of the world’s major cities, stops running at 11:00 pm. Unbelievable! We wandered through the station, eventually coming out at the other end, in the Borghese gardens of all places. By this point it was getting close to 1:00 am, and the sight of plant life was enough to make me risk a public urination ticket. It was a very relaxing experience.

We found a bus stop, and figured out that a night bus would be coming by on its way to the Stazione Termini. We caught the bus, and rode it 5 minutes to the Termini. I think this was the point that we realized just how close everything was. I think, after having walked for 3 or 4 hours already that night, that we could probably have handled walking the equivalent of a 5 minute drive, but we just didn’t realize how close we were to home. We felt foolish, though, that’s for sure.

The next day was an odd one. The night before had been our final night in Rome, but our train didn’t leave Rome until about 8:00 that night. So we check out of our hotel, but still had the whole day in Rome. Fortunately, the hotel was very accommodating, letting us leave our luggage there while we went out, and even encouraging us to sit in the air-conditioned lobby in the heat of the day.

We basically took this whole day off, just lounging around all day. We walked a couple of blocks over to the Sana Maria degli Angeli church, which Michelangelo designed. The church was originally the ancient Roman Baths of Diocletian, and Michelangelo converted them into the church. From there we proceeded past the Art Nouveau fountain in the Piazza Repubblica down the Via Nazionale. It was my turn to go shopping, and I took about 15 minutes to get both of the items I had wanted to get on the trip: an AS Roma jersey, and brown Italian leather shoes. I found the shoes on sale, on the clearance rack, with only two sizes left, one of which was mine. I’ve never loved any article of clothing more, and at this point I can’t imagine ever owning a more beautiful pair of shoes. I really love them.

We continued on down to Trastevere for one last visit to the grattachecca stand, and our last real meal in Italy. We picked what may have been the best restaurant yet, and Jana had her favourite Italian dish, the Caprese salad, while I had delicious tortellini in a meat sauce. After lunch we returned to our hotel and spent a couple of hours cooling off in the aforementioned lobby, playing checkers and reading.

Once the heat of the day was over, we made a foolish attempt to visit the catacombs. I knew they were a ways away, because my map of Rome didn’t extend far enough south to where they were. Not having them on the map, though, meant that I didn’t know exactly where they were, and it turns out they were a lot farther south than I’d realized. Fortunately, we figured that out at the metro station just before we got on the bus to go all the way south. In fact, I feel like we were even on the bus and then jumped off when we realized that there was no way that we had time to go that far and make it back in time to catch our train. So instead, we wandered around the area of the Porta San Giovanni, a Renaissance gate in the ancient Roman wall (the Aurelian wall). We found a park that ran along the wall, and spent the next couple of hours sitting in the park, just enjoying the evening sun on our last day in Italy, looking through the pictures of our trip for the first time, and watching people enjoy the park.

Eventually we got back on the train and returned to the hotel, picked up our luggage, and returned to the train station. I will tell the tale of our night train in the next blog, due out sometime in 2012 if I keep up this pace.

At the time, Rome mostly consisted in our minds of searing heat. Looking back, though, we did a lot of things that we really enjoyed, had spectacular luck with restaurants, and had, overall, a really relaxing visit. We had our second anniversary there, and some of our favourite moments of the whole trip (the anniversary dinner, seeing the Pantheon for the first time, the night walk through Rome, stepping into St. Peter’s). Our memories of Rome have definitely become more positive over time, and we both want to return there, just not in August ever again.

Summertime

2009-05-12T12:41:00.004-06:00

On Sunday I ran my first organized race since I was in Grade 6. I ran the 10k race in the Mother's Day Run and Walk in Calgary. My official time was 50:17, which was good enough for 90/222 in the Male 20-29 division, and 398/2329 overall. Which I happen to think is really good considering that the first time I ever ran 10k was last Wednesday. It was a beautiful day, and a lot of fun. My Dad and I ran the 10k together (until about the 5k mark), my Mom ran the 5k, and my sisters walked the 5k.

I have started my new job, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm getting very valuable hands-on experience, which is rare for a first-year law student to get. I've already got 11 trials scheduled, so it's going to be a very busy summer. The days just fly by, which is a welcome change. I've never had a job before where I consistently have more work to do than time to do it in.

I'm working on my Rome travelogue, so hopefully that will be posted in the next couple of weeks.

Goal update: I did not accomplish goal #1 (make the Dean's List), because I fell short of the minimum GPA threshold by 0.1. That still leaves me in the top 20% of my class, though, so I'm still feeling good.

Done

2009-04-24T17:21:00.002-06:00

I feel like I've been beaten up. In the last few weeks, I've developed a coffee addiction (seriously), and am sleep deprived. But I have finished all 5 of my law school exams, ending with today's, the one I was most dreading: the closed-book Constitutional Law final. I think it went pretty well.

Now it's just the waiting game to get my marks back.

Jana leaves for England next Friday, and then I'll be on my own here for three weeks. Hopefully I'll find a few things to blog about.