Tennis, anyone?

Watching the Australian Open has made me antsy for summer to come. 

It's not like I'm good at tennis, but it's one of those sports I wished I played more, and was better at. Except nobody plays with me except this random girl, who I can't hit it hard at or I'll bean her in the eye. 

If you play tennis, please let us know. We are desperately looking for partners because we get tired easily.

Nadal vs. Federer in the final. Gonna be a doozy.

I've said it once if I've said it a thousand times...

Physical observations

My lower body is freakishly strong.

This is the conclusion I have come to after (intermittently) working out for the past several weeks. When it comes to upper body or core exercises, I can't even come close to keeping up with those freaks of nature in the p90x videos.

The plyometrics session however is kind of funny. It's basically just squats and jumping, which is kind of up my alley. I can actually say with some honesty that I don't find that session very difficult, and can usually outpace the video.

Think about that. I have the upper body of a skinny desk jockey, but the lower body of a creatine enhanced muscle bound hulk. I find that hilarious.

Strong probability for an explanation likely resides in my lifetime of basketball and softball, but in general I have noticed that asian guys tend to have strong lower bodies. Like, really thick calves and quads. Have you ever seen Yao Ming's legs? They're tree trunks!

Compare his calves to Dikembe Mutombo's in this picture. They're almost twice as large, even though he's only four inches taller. Crazy.

I wonder why this is. Maybe it's evolutionary from hauling bricks up a mountain to build a giant-ass wall. Conversely, you'd think we'd be better at track and field sports, or cycling at least, with all that lower body strength. The day paddle boating becomes an Olympic event, the world had better watch out.

In due time I suppose, our lower body powers will be properly harnessed.

But for now we bide our time.

Please spend indiscriminately

You know, perusing the highlights of the budget (man are we boring. BUDGET 2009!!! WooWoo!) I realized that despite all our racial harmony, we really aren't making any progress at all in terms of finding some sort of harmonious long-term plan for Aboriginal Canadians.

Aboriginals
$515-million over two years for schools, water and key community services.
$200-million for skills and training.
$400-million for social housing on reserves.
$325-million to aboriginal organizations and provinces to deliver health programs and child and family services.

That's a whole lot of money for people who've been here longer than anyone else. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not against this spending (although I'm sure many might be) but I simply find it astounding that after 150 odd years we still haven't come to any sort of relationship. I simply don't know enough about this topic to take any stances, I'm sure there are complexities and ideologies against integration, but I'd certainly like to know what they are.

1.4 billion dollars to essentially tread water. There must be a better way...

Recession bingo!

First off, Novak Djokovic was felled from the Australian open due to heat stroke.

There are some problems where, even though I feel bad for someone, I am strangely envious of them as well.

Anyways.

Have you heard the radio commercials where two women talk about the coalition possibly shooting down today's budget? I wonder how those ads are received by demographic. Personally I find many Conservative ads are starting to sound more and more like propagandized state messages, but I can see how my relative liberal bias' might incline me to that.

I suppose it's the premise that negative advertising works at all that bothers me. One would think we'd place a priority on understanding how our country is run, but the whole pre-holiday debacle revealed all sorts of troubling trends: Who's our head of state? Is the coalition a constitutionally elected government?

If you're going to partake in the political process, shouldn't we all make it our responsibility to understand it? We don't even have complicated issues like a State College system to deal with like the Americans do. All things being equal, our parliament is pretty easy to understand. Only two years ago did we as a country shoot down a change to a mixed-member proportion system not because of an educated decision, but our general laziness to figure out what the hell mixed-member proportion actually meant.

We need a way to make Canadian politics exciting. There must be a way to inject intrigue and enthusiasm about how our country is run, and a lot of that has to do with our actual leaders I suppose. Not exactly a bunch of visionaries, these boys and girls.

Should be an interesting day still. I thoroughly enjoy the fact that as we have all been swept up in the Obamafication of western society, we've forgotten that here at home our own gong show of a government has been twiddling it's thumbs in time-out, still bickering and still doing no actual governing to speak of.

Hip to be square

I don't think I'm down with this newfangled use of the word "fail". It just seems too... nerdy. It's on par with saying pwned, in my book, which frankly no adult should ever do.

Kids these days.

Anyways, it's Friday night.

Flip on NBC and watch FNL, it'll make your evening I promise!

Mouthfuls of pride

I read the Fountainhead over my last vacation, which was perhaps an indicator of how much free time I had while in Asia, but I digress.

The protagonist is a completely uncompromising human being. He is made to be a virtuous dude, no doubt, by Mrs. Rand.

The problem is, I'm not entirely sure there's such thing as non-compromising beings in this world.

Or at least, I've yet to meet one?

Why I will always love Steve Nash

Last week I received the latest ESPN magazine in the mail, and upon flipping through the first five pages and getting to Bill Simmons' latest column, my eyes grew wide and my breath caught in my throat.

HAS ANYONE SEEN STEVE NASH LATELY? ... NASH WAS EXPLOITED DEFENSIVELY MORE TIMES THAN LINDSAY LOHAN. - pull quotes from the Simmons piece

You can see how I'd be perturbed.

Essentially, the argument is that playing for Mike D'Antoni and his offense inflated Steve Nash's numbers, ostensibly making his MVP years and overall legacy "asterisks'" in the history of the game.

I respect Bill Simmons. He's a witty, observant sports columnist who often provides more accurate insight using his sports savvy and gut instinct than many trained journalists wielding notebooks of research and calculators of statistical metrics.

In this case however, I call bullshit.

I agree that playing in Phoenix inflated Nash's numbers. This much is for certain. What I don't like is the idea that somehow that is wrong, or unfair to the players on all the teams that played in cities not ending in 'X' during D'Antoni's tenure.

The argument of players putting up career numbers being a fluke makes no sense. Yes, Chris Duhon is playing great, but how could that possibly mean he's playing better than he is? What does that even mean really? Doesn't that simply show that, provided with the right environment, every NBA players could put up better numbers? And in fact, isn't that what D'Antoni does? Foster an environment whereby his players produce to the greatest potential their talent allows (see; Marion, S.)?

Why is that an unfair advantage? How is that an asterisks? Frankly the greater logistical failure in the column is the fact that, for much of the 70's and 80's, teams played at a faster pace and had nearly 30 more possessions per game than even the heralded 2004-2005 Phoenix Suns.

Detroit beat Denver 186-184 on December 13, 1983 in a game that featured only one overtime period. ONE! Those two teams put up a combined 370 points in 53 minutes of play. To put things in perspective, the highest scoring game yesterday was Houston's 115-113 win over Denver in regulation, or in other words, 142 fewer points in 5 fewer minutes played.

Also, maybe the Nuggets should stop getting into shootouts. But I digress.

My point is that in that ridiculous game from 1983, only Isaiah Thomas averaged double-digits in assists out of all the players from either of those team's rosters. He finished that season at 11.1 assists per game. Again, for context, this is just shy of Nash's 11.5 apg from the 2005 NBA season.

You get where I'm going here? What Nash did in his MVP years is not merely a result of circumstance. Other players have, and will continue to play for teams and in games where pace is pushed faster than the league-wide mean. This strategy is not new. But Nash managed to thrive in this environment perhaps more than any other player the NBA has ever seen.

Replace Steve Nash in 2005 with the 2009 iteration of Chris Duhon, and do you think the Suns are still title contenders that year? I think the answer is pretty clear.

An asterisks on the Suns is ridiculous. What would it say? "note: this team scored a lot" ?

Stick to 90210 jokes Simmons. You got too big for your britches this time, friend.

Obamarama

Today's the day.

Three hours from now, Barack Obama will be sworn in as president No. 44 amid much celebration, fanfare and tears shed of joy. Meanwhile, the 43rd president will quietly slip away into the shadows, remembered almost exclusively as the punch-line to a Daily Show-esque political barb.

Watching the events this weekend, one can't help but be in awe of the absolute scale of this occasion. Not in some sort of metaphorical way, but in an actual way; the sheer volume of people in washington; the ridiculous amount of media coverage. Until this year, have you ever heard of people getting together and taking a day off work to have a presidential inauguration party? Were there t-shirts being sold at your street corner when Bill Clinton took the office?

It's unbelievable how much this man is loved. He is John Lennon, Michael Jordan, the Pope and the Dalai Lama all rolled into one.

It, frankly, is frightening. The burden of expectation on this man to change the world is crushing. That he handles it with such grace is either a result of supreme ignorance, or yet another example of what makes him perhaps like no individual who has ever gone before him.

And I suspect he is not an ignorant man.

Whatever happens next, however long this honeymoon lasts, today's moment is something special. Before it is tainted by reality, before it is brought back down to earth by bills piling up and people losing their jobs. By soldiers dying in wars and children wasting away to famine.

I have never, ever seen one man embody the hope of a planet like the man who is assuming power of the world's most powerful nation today.

Here's hoping it all works out.

When delicious pickles aren't enough to win our hearts

It's been a tough three weeks for Israel.

Your trashy neighbor has a child who constantly pees on your lawn and sets flaming bags of poop on your porch.

You retaliate but laying some hurt on said child, but his parents protest (yet also refuse to discipline him themselves) and to top things off, children's aid comes and reprimands you for your abusive ways.

It's just not a cut and dry situation. With that said however...

It can't be good for the PR battle to bomb the UN Headquarters in Gaza while the U.N. Chief is in the vicinity.

Ban expressed "outrage" over the bombing. He said Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told him there had been a "grave mistake" and promised to pay extra attention to protecting U.N. installations. The Israeli military had no immediate comment on the bombing, which a U.N. official said injured at least three people.

That must be the most understated paragraph I've read in a while. You think Barak is sending Ban an apologetic fruit basket as we speak? What do you even write on a card for that situation? "Sorry for almost blowing you and your international peacekeeping efforts up. Lunch on me next Tuesday?"

Anyways, in completely unrelated news, the following excerpt from the latest Simmons mailbag really puts all this upcoming inauguration hoopla in perspective:

Q: Did you know Gabrielle Carteris turned 48 this month? Forty-eight! Barack Obama doesn't turn 48 until August. An original 90210 cast member is older than our president.
-Nora L., Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

SG: Are you trying to get me to kill myself?

Kobe Bryant outdone by former Raptor

Roger Mason Jr. hit another dagger tonight, the shorter of the two ex-Raptors who are now playing crunch time minutes for the perennial contender Spurs.

My thoughts are not with the Christmas Day deja vu ending though.

I was thinking more about how everyone contends that LeBron James or Kobe Bryant are the best basketball players on earth.

Now, I like to think of myself as a well rounded individual. But, can you even imagine the prospect of being the best anything on the planet? I am rather curious what that feels like -- to know that you are better than any other living human being at your job. Number one out of 6-billion.

That must be a strange, warm and fuzzy feeling.

Kind of like how I feel when I play Cranium against the girls.

Twitter for masochists

I briefly debated following this feed.

Then I decided to just take a nap and pretend it's not happening instead. Twitter should be a happy place...

Beginning in earnest

When people say they're looking for a job, they really mean one of two things:

1) They are unemployed and content but open to the idea of a job should one fall into their lap

2) They are (pro)actively seeking employment

By-and-large, I'm going to say most of the unemployed people we know (guilty as charged!) fall into the former of the two categories.

I think I've pretty much hit the unemployment wall however, where waking up everyday with nothing to do has finally gotten a little boring. It's been three-and-a-half months, so this makes a lot of sense to me, as any further weeks where accomplishing my P90x goals are the highlight of each day would pretty much cause me to throw myself in front of a subway.

So this week, I started the "actually looking for a job" phase of my extended break, posting resumes on all the job search sites and checking websites and applying for multiple jobs a day with the goal of at least 10-15 a week.

Step two will be to finally canvas friends and family to see if anyone can help out at all with a hook up.

I am in general a rather kind human being, and although I don't have an awful lot of wealth and power, I find over the years I have been able to build up a fair amount of good will, connections and mutual respect. In general, these things are pretty meaningless when all I want is to pay off my credit card bill, but here's hoping that being the good guy pays off for once. I'm cashing in my pay-it-forwards!

Cold calls started coming in today, surprisingly quickly considering I only put up my resume two days ago. Sketchy companies abound, but I'm open to most interviews just for the experience. Rejecting people is something I must learn in facets of life.

I think the toughest thing is just deciding what I want to do. Obviously I'm seeking a journalism job, but frankly the market it... horrible. My list of what I want out of a job are also not necessarily isolated to journalism positions:

- work for a good cause

- opportunity to write and express creativity

- challenging projects that demand learning some new skills

- enjoy the company of my peers

- decent pay

That's it, really. I'm debating whether to take unrelated positions in companies where I'm interested in that field. Is getting a foot in the door -- albeit not in the capacity you'd like -- worth the investment in time both short and long term? Would it be detrimental down the road to say, work in administration for a creative company when eventually you want to get into the creative aspect?

Questions questions questions...

There is no price for awesomeness

It has recently come to my attention that, despite being a funny movie, Kung-Fu Panda is essentially a giant death match where endangered species' all try to destroy each other.

This is at once a hilarious and strangely unsettling realization.

I think I need to sit down for a little bit.

Applebees is a metaphor

I am a huge fan of Friday Night Lights (the television show, not the movie). Some of you may know this, some may not, almost assuredly none of you care. Regardless, I will proceed with my FNL love-rant.

The third season is winding down, with only one episode remaining that, from the looks of it, will be the series finale for this astoundingly underrated show.

So much of our entertainment these days is about reality, but none of it is actually real. For this reason it is with baited breath that every week over the last three years (during sweeps at least) I downloaded each new episode of FNL.

This entirely fictional drama (I will concede it could somewhat accurately be described as a teen-drama, but I'd rather not), has managed to portray on television a reality that so often is completely lost in the flashy razzle dazzle of our ADD demands.

I know it seems odd, but to me, FNL is the closest television show to The Wire (excluding Generation Kill, for obvious reasons) that's around right now, and that's probably the highest praise any show can be bestowed. It builds its characters and story arc slowly and deliberately, drawing you into another world much like the reading of a good book. The show highlights the nuances of life, and that's what makes it both incredibly real and often remarkably touching.

I'm not saying this show is perfect. In fact, I dare say that season two was actually somewhat forgettable. I also am not lamenting its demise, as with the aforementioned The Wire, a good show has to know when to pack it in. Stories are made to end. And so, bittersweetly, FNL must as well.

But if you haven't seen this show yet, I'm not entirely sure what else to tell you.

I just want to scream it from the rooftops. I don't know why we don't say it more often.

I love Friday Night Lives.

You bet your hamas

Does this seem like a lose-lose situation for anybody else?

It seems counterintuitive perhaps at first, but to me the whole situation seems to be solved more by typical childhood psychology. You catch more flies with honey don't you?

Why retaliate to rocket fire with indiscriminate violence? Israel will never remove terrorists from Palestine. That must be done be the palestinian people. It sounds nuts, but I think the best answer is to agree on a concession of land, pull out the occupation then help provide supplies, and people to build the infrastructure of a Palestinian state.

If Israel is a prime supporter of that state, conditional on peace, I cannot fathom citizens in Palestine would support a Hamas government. Indeed, one would suspect they would take action into their own hands to ensure peace is kept and these extremists do not foil a golden opportunity for statehood, peace and a more hopeful future.

Short-term, obviously Israel would be making a huge sacrifice. It will be sending in aid to its enemy even while rockets are lobbed back in return, and civilians will likely suffer or possibly die with no recourse.

But is there any other way? Short of genocide, I suppose.

Wait a minute

OK, so I decided I'd give this workout routine a shot, since I spent days downloading it. I'll do it everyday for a month, and see what kind of results I get. Today I just did an hour of plyo, which was probably stupid considering I'm playing basketball in 3 hours, but oh well.

Anyways, here's something they don't tell you -- you're supposed to buy this special drink formula from them and drink it after every session (i.e. every day). You know what's in the drink? CREATINE! No wonder you get results! hahahaha

Oh well. Let's see how this works au natural. 3 days down....uh...27 to go. To be fair, they work you pretty hard. Like, I am constantly on the edge of throwing up hard.

A 12 step program for hockey

When I was a kid, much like every young Torontonian, I used to plop myself in front of the television every saturday night to watch the Leafs sort-of-almost play hockey. There were the dark days of the early nineties, then the great days of the mid-late nineties, then more dark, thennnn now a very general indifference to the team's complete and utter mediocrity. 

That being said, my interest in the sport of hockey in general has waned considerably over the past five years, but every so often something comes up that reminds me why although it's a great sport, it is considered just a notch below the glorified demolition derby known as NASCAR in the professional sports hierarchy. 

This sport still glorifies fighting. 

Think about that. It's a game, played by grown men, that promotes having a talentless goon on your team just to fight the other team's talentless goon or hurt the other team's best players.

If all the Raptors did every game was send Jake Voskuhl out to clothesline the other teams best player, and that action was condoned by the league, and every team did that, how seriously would you take NBA basketball? 

What about if every NFL game, one of the offensive linemen was assigned purely to rip off the other team's best d-man's helmet and challenge him to a fist fight on the field, as if it was two boys fighting during recess. THEN imagine the game stopped, and everyone watched the fight and clapped afterwards, patting them on the back for a job well done for reverting to 5 years old. Then 5 minutes later, those players were allowed back on the field. 

Watching Sportsnet, it's pathetic seeing people like Nick Kypreos and Bill Watters defend fighting in this sport. Their arguments are completely illogical, and even when confronted with this fact, respond just by yelling really loudly but saying nothing at all intelligent. 

Hockey shows are a lot like watching Fox News in this respect. Don Cherry is our Bill O'Reilly. Does that make you proud to be Canadian? 

And yet... for many, it does. 

Grow up, hockey. Please. We miss you, but the first step is to admit you have a problem.