HiR:tb Toots (@warwalker)
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By junior on February 26, 2008, at 5:09 pm I haven’t had a chance to sit down and look at all the deals, but just off the top of my head, here are a couple of thoughts:
Biggest Trade: Atlanta sends Marian Hossa to Pittsburgh for prospect Angelo Esposito, Colby Armstrong and Eric Christensen. Sid the Kid gets some help – like he needs it with that guy Malkin around. If Pittsburgh gets any kind of decent goaltending out of Conklin/Fleury/Sabourin/Patrick Lalime/Ken Wregget/Bunny Larocque, they could make some noise in the Eastern Conference playoffs. The way is open for pretty much any club that qualifies for the dance to take a shot at Lord Stanley’s mug. Which makes the following all the more puzzling… Click here to continue reading Trade Deadline Day
By junior on February 25, 2008, at 9:42 pm  Some thoughts on volume 1 of Darin Cappe’s Static Journey “box set” retrospective on the Rheostatics (you can get it here):
- I was a little disappointed initially that the first track in the set – position of primacy, very important – was not in fact a Rheostatics track, but rather the Introduction for the band that was sung by Dave Bookman (accompanied by Steve Stanley) prior to the band taking the stage on the evening of the last concert. It all made sense though, right near the end of the track when you can hear the first thunderous applause as the band takes the stage; it sent chills up my spine again, just the way it did on that night, thinking of all the Sprouts assembled in the grand old concert hall. I remember it occurring to me that this last show was likely the first time ever that all the Sprouts were together like that at one time, just to see the Rheos (most club shows were good for maybe 200 attendees at most, and even the Bathurst Street Theatre shows in ’97 couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6 hundred at most, and at Maple Leaf Gardens or Molson Park Canada Day shows – well, those of us who were there had tickets to see other bands too, so that doesn’t count). Click here to continue reading Static Journey vol.1
By junior on February 24, 2008, at 10:30 pm  A couple of things, really quickly.
One, I can’t let this day go by without observing that it is the sixth anniversary of that day in Salt Lake City when Canada triumphantly reclaimed Men’s Olympic Hockey Gold after a loooooong drought, by beating a game, but overmatched, U.S. team. That’s us (in the picture to the left), singing ‘O Canada’ (badly out of key) at the Black Swan on Danforth Ave. in Toronto, as the final seconds ticked off the clock.
Two, TSN is reporting that Mats Sundin has announced he will not waive his no-trade clause and will be staying put as the Captain of the Maple Leafs. Leaf fans, it says here, should cut Captain Class some slack and respect his decision. He’s earned the right to choose.
By junior on February 24, 2008, at 2:29 pm James Mirtle pulls off a minor miracle by writing about the Maple Leafs, the trade deadline and Mats Sundin – all while retaining his sanity and a modicum of common sense (I wonder if common sense comes in any units other than “modicums”? If you buy common sense at Costco, is it in a jeroboam instead?). I thought one had to trade in hysteria and partially completed thoughts to make any kind of career writing about the NHL in general and the Maple Leafs in particular. No fair throwing facts and reasoned arguments into the mix, James!
By junior on February 24, 2008, at 12:58 pm Okay, well not exactly “new.” The band is still broken up, so they’re not producing any new material. Not to worry, though, because Green Sprout* extraordinaire Darin Cappe has been working on a project – a mega-project, actually – to celebrate the upcoming one-year anniversary (on March 30th) of The Last Whale, the final Rheostatics concert. I don’t know Darin personally, just via his intermittent postings to the Yahoo! mailing list dedicated to the Rheostatics and through his site dedicated to the band; He must be quite a fan, though, because he’s pored through hours and hours of recorded material in an effort to put together a “box set” of CDs functioning as a retrospective look at the Rheos’ career. The Rheos were one of those (all too rare) bands that didn’t mind if you recorded their live shows, and there was a pretty active sharing/trading market among the many Sprouts, so Darin’s task was an enormous one encompassing perhaps hundreds of hours of recorded material of varying quality.
Anyway, Darin has released the most recent volume of the project he’s calling Static Journey (he’s up to Disc 4 of a 9 CD set) here. Volumes 1, 2 and 3 can be found here, here and here. The price is certainly within the range of affordability – all downloads are free of charge. Click here to continue reading New Rheostatics Material
By junior on February 23, 2008, at 8:34 pm Great Migration – Staging Phase
Days remaining ’til Great Migration: 20
Number of times we’ve said “we better start packing”: 67
Number of boxes packed to date:0
Uh oh.
By junior on February 23, 2008, at 4:43 pm 
Spouse and I went out to the barn where Ralphie lives today. I brought along my camera and while I was standing next to one of the fields, two horses started fighting with one another. Flush with the excitement of photo-journalism, I sprung into action and got to actually use my “burst mode” (the thing that makes that cool autowinder sound) in an effort to capture the epic battle between Quest and….well, a horse whose name I don’t know. I was feeling pretty good about getting the pictures and I was admiring my handiwork on the little LCD display on the rear of my camera when the horses actually reared up at each other. I guess I’m not quite ready for Time Magazine just yet.
I bought this circular polarizing filter a few weeks back. I was given to understand that the filter would assist me to make my skies more deeply blue. I am reasonably certain that I need to rotate the filter slightly to get the enhanced colour effect, but I can’t figure out how to determine when the effect is being applied. Am I supposed to just eyeball it through the little viewfinder and notice the difference? There must be a better way, right?
By junior on February 23, 2008, at 11:49 am Around 5:00 p.m the other day, building maintenance staff were preparing to conduct some sort of test of the emergency alarm system. First, there was a piercing beep that came out of the speakers installed in the ceiling throughout the building. Next came the voice of some poor bastard (note to Mike: not “rat bastard”), probably from security, who had been elected to make the dorky pre-alarm test announcement over the intercom (so as not to frighten the living bejesus out of the harried worker drones, already stressed to the uber-max by their monotonous labours for The Man). I didn’t recognize the voice, so I can’t say for sure who made the announcement, and it is difficult to convey in words how the voice sounded (that’s a little bit like doing a dance about architecture), but for the limited literary purposes of this anecdote, you are requested/permitted to imagine that kid from the Simpsons, the one perpetually struggling with a puberty-related voice break. The announcement he made is as follows:
Attention! {ed. note: Good start there, that one’s straight from Chapter 1 of the Big Book of How to Announce Things} We are about to conduct – er, we’re gonna do a test of the um, alarm. You may experience some difficulty with your electrical computers or stuff.
…which was fine for me, because I was using no ‘stuff’ and a mechanical computer.
By junior on February 21, 2008, at 12:01 am I have been tagged with a meme by Mike.* For those of you unfamiliar with the concept – I’m looking in your direction, Geez – it’s definition time:
The Blog Meme
A blog meme is a type of Internet meme that requires active participation by the blogger and rarely traces back to an originating source. It’s often a series of questions that a blogger answers to share some personal perspective or experience on random topics.
Source: Quixtar Blog.
Aside from using the word “meme” in defining the term “Blog Meme” that definition seems pretty good. So I’ve been asked to answer a series of questions, basically. Here they are:
a) What issues/topic interests you most–non-fiction, i.e, cooking, knitting, stitching, there are infinite topics that has nothing to do with novels?
Honestly, I have such a great deal of difficulty narrowing the list of my topical interests down to the point where I could accurately specify that some interests predominate over others. I guess it would be fair to say that my curiosity is more likely to be piqued by articles/books/films/websites that concern technology, politics, science, music or literature than it is by knitting or decoupage but, as may already be evident, one of my enduring problems in life has been that I am (too?) easily amused, fascinated and distracted by detailed information on virtually any topic. I generally find such information infinitely more fascinating when I have a great deal of (other) work to do and very little time in which to accomplish it. I think that I could easily be mesmerized by almost any written material on any topic, provided that it is well-written and brings the historical context and the technical detail. Click here to continue reading Meme First!
By junior on February 20, 2008, at 10:07 am I was at the Leafs game last night in Toronto; they beat Columbus 3-1. All 4 goals were scored in the first period, which reinforced my belief that my buddy and I made the right choice – staying in our seats throughout the first frame and starving rather than going for a nine dollar hot dog (we didn’t have time to grab anything to eat after work). The game was moderately entertaining, certainly better than the snorefest Bruins game that Spouse and I went to in October.
I couldn’t help reflecting that it might be my last chance to see Mats Sundin in a Leaf uniform. I spent most of the night focussing on him, even when he didn’t have the puck, whenever he was on the ice. A graceful skater, powerful on the puck, gifted with vision and – at least if public persona is to be believed – a man with tremendous class. If our Captain is moving on, I will sorely miss him. If he is not, then we retain a tremendous talent. Whatever the case, he should finish his career as a Leaf in some future season. He has earned the respect and admiration of every Leaf fan; whatever happens, I hope it is what Mats wants and not merely something he is prepared to accept.
I don’t know who was picking the three stars last night, but Columbus only had 27 shots and for the most part the Blue Jackets seemed disinterested in mounting any kind of concerted attack. Toskala made three or four great saves, but it wasn’t first star material. Not to harsh on VeTo – I like the guy – but Sundin had more of an impact on that game than his goaler.
This just in: Sergei Federov is still alive and playing hockey. In Columbus, apparently.
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