me against the world

A few weeks ago, my dad won a raffle draw at work and his prize was a pair of tickets to the Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Atlanta Thrashers game. He isn’t a fan of hockey and so he gave the tickets to me.

So on Tuesday, a friend and I went down to the ACC to watch the game. It was my first live hockey game (hence the title of this post), and I was going into it excited because I knew I had awesome seats. The tickets said that we were in row 9. It turns out that because of the set-up of the arena, row 9 was actually the 5th row from the rink!

We were really close and even more excited about the game then. I have to say, people who buy platinum seats get all this extra service: a menu to order food and drink at your seat (although I checked and every single thing was $1-$2 more expensive than if you got out of your seat and bought out in the foyer), the downstairs has a lounge and bar (really swanky), the change rooms are down there and we walked by but didn’t stay, and really… who wouldn’t love the private hallways that were crowd-free after the game?

So, the two of us were very lucky to have such a special night for free. The game was fun and exciting. It made me reminisce about the year or so when I used to watch hockey every week. The Leafs were winning 2-0 for the first two periods but then ended up losing 5-2. I have to say that it seemed like they deserved it. Yes, they had their chances, but the Thrashers played better - for one, just look at the shots on net stats. Anyway, I’m not about to get into any arguments with any Leaf fans right now because it’s been a while since I’ve followed the game.

But I will say this:

I will never understand, accept or respect any fan that leaves a game early because their team is losing. So many people, I’d say about 40% of the audience, left when the Thrashers scored their 3rd or 4th goal. How can you do that to the team you claim to be supporting? True fans don’t leave early. A true fan supports the team when the team is down, as well as when it’s up. I can totally understand that feeling of frustration, anger, shame, and even the hurt you feel sometimes when your team lets you down. But you can’t just give up and walk away, only to return when they are doing well. You really can’t share any of the glory then. Part of the sweet taste of victory is knowing that you were scraping along the bottom and you worked hard through all of the criticism and made it to the top.

Fans in every sport do it and it drives me nuts. My friends, the majority of those fans are those that I call “bandwagoners”. If you haven’t heard me talk about that before, don’t worry it’ll come around again in another post.

Anyway, my final comment:

I had a great time but came out of it thinking that I would really love to see the national team play. I don’t care whether it’s the men’s team or the women’s team. I would really get into it and I know I would have a great time. Go Team Canada!

So I was on The Weather Network website checking the weather (no really?) for this upcoming week and I ended up roaming through the various Weather Cameras.

They have webcams in various locations where you can actually see what the weather is now. Much like the traffic cameras you see online and on television. It’s actually pretty interesting because there are so many feeds to watch. Take a look at all the snow out in Western Canada for example.

Anyway, after clicking on a few links, I somehow ended up on MontrealCam and for two minutes watched people skating at the Old Port.

See but in one flick, the webcam showed three people on the ice: a couple and one single person skating. Then it flicked and refreshed again and that lone person was lying on the ice.

This means that many hundreds of kilometers away I basically saw someone wipe-out on the ice.

It’s a good thing I didn’t laugh. That would be even worse than physically being there and laughing, no? It’s like private amusement at someone else’s misfortune and that’s evil. Right?

*gives you all a look*

I finally watched Superman Returns last night. As I was watching with an amused grin on my face, I decided that I really needed to blog my comments.

First of all, I think it would have been nice to see the action scenes in the IMAX. The story itself was pretty bad though. It lacked any real depth - it was very simple and nothing special. I didn’t expect much from Mr. Brian Singer though after he screwed up the X-Men characters and their stories. I’ll just assume that you don’t want me to get started on that.

Anyway my random thoughts:

Kevin Spacey still scares the bejesus (sp?) out of me. Though, in this movie he also made me laugh quite a bit.

My dad walked by at one point and gestured towards Superman and said “he looks like a cartoon character”. I sat there amused thinking: Why of course he looks cartoonish dad, he’s a comic book character! Anyway in my dad’s defense, I believe he was referring to the CGI. But it made me laugh anyway.

Ok back to the script: there were many moments and lines that I found funny and probably weren’t supposed to be. One of my favourites was when Lois Lane hugs Superman and says:

I forgot how warm you are.

What?! Hahaha. It just did not fit.

I must say that I was really skeptical about Kate Bosworth’s ability to be a good Lois Lane but she did well.

Anyway so despite many of the unreal parts of these movies which I can choose to ignore since it’s a fictional world where we have superheros, there are many reoccurring questions about Superman that came up. The two most burning were:

- Where the hell does he keep his regular clothes when he is running off as Superman? Clark Kent is not rich by any means, so he really can’t afford to buy a nice suit and coat every single time…

- Why on Earth can’t anyone ever realize that Clark Kent and Superman are one and the same? Leave it to the little kid, the poor guy who ends up having problems breathing when he realizes it. But anyway, come on!

Here’s a question for you all: Who would win in a fight between Spiderman and Batman? Superman could beat them all since he’s the man (alien) of steel, but since the latter two are just humans with a few extra powers, who do you think would win?

My final thought:

I really do think that Kal Penn is yummy. It’s too bad he didn’t have any lines in this movie but at least he got to work with Kevin Spacey. Does anyone want to come see Van Wilder 2: The Rise of Taj with me?

This picture was taken a year and a half ago in the Niagara Falls area (on the Canadian side) - I believe we were heading towards the gorge.

Over the past few months I’ve been looking to review my grammar, punctuation, and overall writing skills. I’ve learned many things in school before but it’s easy to forget some. I had decided that reviewing these skills a few more times would definitely help to drill them into my memory. It has been moving along slowly, but at least it’s moving!

I read Eats, Shoots, and Leaves by Lynne Truss in September. It was very informative and highly amusing - at least for my easily-amused personality. I came out of it determined to beef up my hyphen and semi-colon use, as well as to reduce my ellipses use.

Now, I am currently going through When Bad Grammar Happens to Good People: How to Avoid Common Errors in English by Ann Batko.

I’ll post any other tidbits that I found helpful (as long as some from Truss’ book), but here’s one that I’m currently amazed by: The Who vs. Whom issue.

So many people pick and use the wrong word of the two. The book looks at Who is the present for? vs. Whom is the present for?

Without going into details and breaking down the sentence to talk about clauses, subjects and objects, etc. here’s a tip:

Think of how you would restate the sentence with the pronoun he/him or they/them, and if you use a form that ends in “m,” you need “whom.” For example, in this example, you’d say, Is the present for them? You wouldn’t say, Is the present for they.

So! Instead of incorrectly saying That’s the actor who Sally adores, you should be saying That’s the actor whom Sally adores. This is because Sally adores him and not he.

Right.