BREAKING NEWS: It’s official, as of 4:25 p.m. All hail the founding of Juniorvania! Spouse and I are headed out to the Kingdom this evening and will be spending the night there on an air mattress and in a sleeping bag. Bliss!
|
||||||
|
Parts of Hulk 2 (due for release in June of 2008, starring Ed Norton and Liv Tyler) were filmed here in Hamilton last fall. The Hulk 2 Movie Trailer is now available online (go clicky on the link). Many of the scenes featuring destruction in the streets that are shown in this trailer were filmed in Toronto, on Yonge – out front of Sam the Record Man and the Zanzibar Tavern (which looks to have gotten quite a facelift courtesy of the art department). There are, however, a couple of scenes in which you can quickly glimpse the set that was built here in Hamilton – you have to keep your eyes peeled, but there are a couple of scenes in which a club called “Apollo” is visible; that was one of the fake buildings constructed on the North side of King St. east of John. I posted about the production of some of these scenes here (posts include some video taken on scene during the filming). Here is some video of a bus explosion scene that was taken during the production: I wrote a post the other day about the Leafs/Flyers game on Wednesday night, listening to it on the radio, and the memories that awakened for me about following my teams as a kid; in particular, I wrote a little about listening to the radio broadcasts of Windsor Spitfires games. First, a correction: the games were NOT on CKWW; they were on CKLW AM 800 (I always had trouble, truthfully, keeping the two straight when I was a kid). Finally, I broke down and sought out the answer the old-fashioned way: I asked somebody who I though might know. I sent (in a somewhat less old-fashioned way) an email to CKLW and asked them if they could tell me the name of the play by play guy from the late 70s, early 80s. You will see from the comments following the post in question that my Dad and I were pretty sure the man’s name was “Dave”, and that I had previously hazarded a guess that his surname might have been “Quinn”. A very nice person by the name of Tania D’Angela, a programming assistant with the company who owns the station, emailed me back (within 14 hours, I might add) to advise that she had made some inquiries of her own and that indeed, the gentleman whose name I was looking for, was none other than – drum roll please – Dave Quinn. Apparently, Mr. Quinn did the games until 1987, possibly starting as early as 1972. Just in case there’s anybody out there searching for the answer to the question, “Who followed Dave Quinn as the Windsor Spitfires’ play-by-play man?” the answer to that question is “Steve Bell”, the current Sports Director at the station. Thank you Tania and Steve for allowing me to properly identify the man by name, and to thank him for the many hours of enjoyment I spent listening to his calls from the old barn on McDougall Avenue (pictured above in a photo copped from wikicommons): thank you, Dave Quinn, for helping me love the game of hockey. As if Leaf fans needed more discouraging news, here comes the science. Who knew the “power tie” concept would find its way into sports? But hey, they won last night! They’re now five points back of eighth place. Still, the observation by Leaf broadcaster, former backup goalie and chief bagpipe player Glenn Healy that the Leafs “need 13 wins” with 11 games left is pretty accurate. Back in the mid-1970s, when I was about seven or eight years old, I built a crystal radio set. The radio came in a kit, and I got it as a gift, I think probably for my birthday. Building the radio was fun, and I learned a little bit about electronics and how radios work; really just enough to whet my already substantial appetite for any kind of technology. It was cool fitting the pieces together and actually using a piece of technology that I built with my own two hands (thanks to heavily scripted and almost entirely idiot-proof instructions in the Radio Shack kit). In my mind’s eye, I can still see the little dark green box made of transparent plastic (all the better to see the resistors, capacitors and such). Even more fun than that, though, was listening to the radio at night when I went to bed. Once tucked away under the covers, I would pop the (one) greyish, ugly and bulky earphone into my ear and tune in whatever I could find on the AM dial (man would the kids today, with their fancy noise-cancelling iPod earbuds and 80 GB mp3 capacity be shocked by this whole concept). I learned that Elvis had died listening to my crystal radio. [ed. note: for clarity, Elvis died on the toilet – my radio was nowhere near him at the time. I learned about the King’s unfortunate demise while I was listening to the set; that’s what I meant to say. ] Click here to continue reading Trying to measure a moment: Leafs/Flyers March 11th, 2008 Evidently, the poor (on-ice) performance of the Leafs is being cited as a contributing cause to the cancellation of certain CBC programming (via bitterleaf):
Be careful if you go clicky; the linked post contains a throrough (and humourous) discussion of the pernicious influence of the Maple Leafs throughout history. I nearly spat tea all over my computer as a result of the first image. You’ve been warned. Seriously, though – what the hell is this nonsense? Are we really to believe that the inability of the Leafs to reach the bonus round the past few years is the problem here? Wired has a lengthy rememberance of Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax here. Certain to cause Spouse’s eyes to jump out of her head and a significant amount of associated sputtering is the following passage from the article:
H.G. Wells is SO not getting a Christmas card from us this year. You may recall when I did this:
The total number of submissions received so far, according to the crack combined Accounting, Correspondence and Bottle Return Department (3rd floor, past the washroom, in the back behind the photocopier) is, to say the least, rather underwhelming: zero. Accordingly, I have decided to extend the deadline for the competition; originally, there was a cut-off date of March 10th, 2008. That deadline has been extended to March 31st, 2008. Submissions should be sent here. In the meantime, I thought I’d offer you up a l’il sumpin’ sumpin’ to get the creative juices flowing. I have crafted a limerick. Ahem. “A po-em”:
Readers are responsible for dealing with their own tears, be they of joy, sadness or shame. Update: (March 11, 2008): I am sworn to secrecy, but verily my limerick has prompted a veritable outporing of creativity. Okay, maybe not so much an “outporing”, but we do have a submission. So don’t be shy – you won’t be the first any longer.
Done and done. We, um, got a little bit of snow here in the Hammer. It snowed Friday night and then again all day Saturday. I didn’t go outside when it was storming, because it was cold and not very nice out there. I did stick my head out the back door for a couple of minutes to take a couple of pictures. Here’s one from Saturday afternoon, showing the general blowiness of this model of snow. I took this one late yesterday afternoon from the (open) bedroom window upstairs. Never underestimate the strength of your marriage. If your wife comes upstairs and finds you – in the middle of a snowstorm, mind you – with the windows open and struggling to get the screens back on, it is not necessarily true that you will be thrown out of the house immediately; no guarantees or warranties are implied, reader assumes his own risk and your mileage may vary. I think it’s awesome how confused Popeye looks. Though he loves the snow, I think even the Popper was wondering where the hell all this stuff came from. You can see how deeply buried Spouse’s car is if you look to the left of the fence, in front of the shed.
Last night, I poked my head out the back door when it looked like the snow had finished hurtling out of the sky. I snapped a shot of one of the solar powered patio lanterns on our deck. For reference, the portion of the lamp visible in the photo below is about 8 to 10 inches from top to bottom.
I took this one this morning after the TWO HOURS worth of shovelling it took to make the driveway passable. That thing in the middle, covered in the white stuff in front of the house – that’s my car. It’s buried, it’s not accessible, it’s not going anywhere until May, apparently, but it’s my car. So now we use these for transport.
I have approximately seventy-seven pictures of this icicle now. This one is unique, because it shows the water droplet falling through space.
|
Roll of BlogThe Barilkosphere
|
|||||
|
Copyright © 2024 Heroes in Rehab: the blog - All Rights Reserved Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa |
||||||
