wimptown

the second ten games

2009-11-16T10:41:00.000-08:00

christopher higgins of the new york rangers looks like kurt cobain of the living dead. he's only smiling because the RDSman asked him which of his former teammates trashed talked him most. ANS: gorges. couldn't have been all that much though, higgins sat on the bench for the entire third period.

—halak plays until he loses, which is four wins and a loss. since then CP#31 has won two anf YH#41 has won one. habs haven't won two in a row since the end of the first homestand
—george laraque has been on IR since the alcoholic energy drink controversy, he re-injured his back off-ice, somehow..
—halak's agent starts a twitter controversy when he (somewhat erroneously) suggests that CP#31 is 10-32. a disappointed and twitterless bob gainey thought it was a " 'My dad is bigger than your dad,’ kind of thing."
—SK#74 tries to bail on hamilton again, but somehow gainey talks him back into riding the bus. meanwhile, tom pyatt, ryan white, gregory stewart, maxime lapierre, guiaullme latendresse & andrei kostitsyn all can't score at all.
—hal gill is injured. suddenly, his play is missed.
—glen metropolit is a point-per-game player through his first eight games. his answer: "Well, it's an Olympic year!" GM#15 still gets nice slice of PP time, minutes more than AK#46 or GL#84
—plekanec and cammalleri are the best habs and aren't even scoring a point per game. SG#91 hasn't scored a goal in 11 games and is on course for a fifty-point season.
—brian gionta is injured. gomez's play is greatly effected.
—carey price stops 53 of 55 shots on a silly saturday night game in pheonix, two shots shy of the record for most shots ever faced by a montreal goaltender.
—the consensus from the talking heads is that CP#31 or YH#41 have to be MVP candidates in order for the habs to make the playoffs. the english radio is screaming for gainey's head. so is cyberpresse.
—maxime lapierre is on the fourth line, latendresse a healthy scratch. but then 30 minutes before game time GL#84 is told he'll play in phoenix. according to guy, he's still in bed at the hotel at this point.

if it's not BLEU BLANC ROUGE it's not a fucking habs jersey

2009-11-12T22:16:00.001-08:00

1.
woah did the habs not look like the habs or what? what does this prove? that MTL thought of the MIN and original NJ uniforms in the 1910s? honestly: worse retro jersey ever. but man o' man: is that a wicked C.

good albums of 2009

2009-11-08T20:15:00.000-08:00

in no particular order:

tim hecker // an imaginary country // kranky
at first i thought this album was soft but then i realized it's like a normal-looking guy on the bus who is actually muttering memorized manifestos to himself.

aidan baker & tim hecker // fantasma parastasie // alien8recordings
completely awesome. better than having a black mirror which shows the future.

current 93 // aleph at hallucinatory mountain // coptic cat
david tibet sings more like kevin spacey in se7en, which is a step-up from his tormented-zoomorphic-cartoon-minstrel-schtick.

nurse with wound // the surveillance lounge // united dairies
a soundtrack to a movie perhaps. nice spot varnish. a good one!

excepter // black beach // paw tracks
excepter does improv on the nudist beach. dvd included (true story.)

the no neck blues band // ...at 6 a.m. we become the police soundtrack // locust music
kinda like a comp, but of new material. so it's nnck's physical graffiti.

cold cave // love comes death // heartworm records & matador
at first it reminded me so much of joy division i turned it off and put on unknown pleasures instead, but then it hit me: a band that sounds like joy division enough to be awesome but not totally derivative and annoying is hard to find.. so i listened again, and it was good.

eddy current suppression ring // s/t & primary colors // goner records
no one but me thinks this band sounds like mclusky, but that doesn't mean they don't. but where mclusky was stupid, this band is clever (like the name!) check them out now before you hate them from their beer commercials and endless tours.

kurt vile // constant hitmaker & the hunchback // ugh...?
these two are pretty neat, and there were other good ones too. soft electric folk songs for the mellow-hippies of today. but the matador release sounds like devandra banhardt and once you make that neural connection it cannot be undone.

muslimgauze // cobra head soup // staalplat
all hail muslimgauze. ten years into death and his albums are still better than 95% of everything. (oh and 2009 also saw the release of four muslimgauze cds, two cds re-issued, another double LP of new material from staalplat and a 3xLP boxset re-issue of Uzi Mahmood.)

andrew liles & daniel menche // progeny of flies // betalactamring records
this might be my record of the year. i have to percolate on it s'more.

magik markers // balf quarry // dragcity
ugh yeah it was okay. shit sounds like shit falling apart, and i think i'm getting saturated.

richard pinhas & merzbow // keio line // dirter
this one is like "oh: i'm floating on some liquid, how nice. why, what's this bellow me in the liquid—half-crystal half-worm seacreatures, battling in perpetuity? well.. let's watch, just for a moment or so." also: this album is six LP sides long. or perhaps 5 sides and an etching of a bird. i do not recall. it may have come out in 2008, but i'm just finishing it now. (merzbow also put out at least 8 other CDs this year, as well as two LPs.)

throbbing gristle // third mind movements // industrial records
all TG albums since the reunion kinda sound like haunted museum exhibits, but that's okay.

zola jesus // the spoils // siltbreeze

think about life // family // alien8recordings

black feelings // alien8recordings

fever ray // rabid records
also a strong candidate for record of the year. will probably not place due to major-label connections. full pedigree audit pending final results.

mike komisarek doesn't really get it

2009-11-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

1.

"I guess if they didn't love me when I was here they wouldn't be booing, so I must have done something right when I was here,"
—mike komisarek

2.

i wasn't at the game, but i would have booed my brains out if i was. my boos would represent a great many things, none of them being boos of appreciation for the things MK#8 did as a player here.

one loud boo for taking the money and ditching the team. another one for joining the hated leafs. but the majority of my boos are boos of disappointment, shock and disbelief: who do you think you are, mike komisarek?

you lost your edge somewhere between attacking XXX? in 2003 and "fighting" milan lucic in 2008 and gainey was Still willing to give you $4 mil+ a year. because you were part of the team, man. you could have been captain here one day. you've changed.

3.

the boo is the inverse wave of the cheer. for every cheer we have leveled at the exploits of mike komisarek we are now due one boo. our fandom and enthusiasm have been betrayed and we exposed as simpletons, fools who thought far too highly of a player who took the first paycheck out of town at the earliest possible instant like a frontier-town whore.

my years of cheers and HOPE embarrass me now, as if i was taken in on some bunco swindle, i was sold a bag of rough diamonds and was left with only charcoal. or not even: i was left with only the empty bag.

mike komisrarek is a selfish swindler and perhaps the biggest turn-coat in habs history. he had no known enemies on the team like corson or souray or patrick roy and no grand scandal dangling over him like kovalev or theodore or even chris higgins and still evacuated the island instantly that warm summer morning of july the first, 2000 & 9.

he deserves to be booed in montreal until the end of his time and beyond.

gump worsley is not a wimp

2009-11-01T07:17:00.000-08:00

“How the hell can a mask protect you when it’s flush against the face? They say you don’t get cut, just bruised when a puck hits the mask. Well, sometimes it’s better to get cut than bruised.

“My objection to the mask is that it’s not necessary. Why all of a sudden after hockey has been played for 70 years do they decide we should wear masks? Aww, don’t tell me the game has changed. Besides, you don’t see college goalies wearing masks and they’re a careful bunch. Do boxers wear masks?

“Plante may make a pot full ‘o money on that mask idea. He can have it, I don’t want the thing.”
-GW, NYR, nov 1, 1959

no win streak, no sell out

2009-10-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

1.

guy carbonneau should be hired as JM's director of fashion.

no plekanec, no sellout

2009-10-26T14:43:00.000-07:00

1.

a funny thing happened to me on the way down to the BC with whistledog...

2.

the RDS broadcast of saturday night's Big Game against the NYR had a little kid doing pretty good play-action commentary for a powerplay. he was there to hype cancer research fundriving, which was all sqwashed up into 12 seconds by pierre houde mere moments before the NYR went up 4-2. the kid was cool, cancer is not cool. that the cool kid has cancer is a real bummer; but there's more: when asked who the kid's favourite player was, the kid snapped back, sans hesitation: "pleknec."

PLEKANEK?! you've got to fucking kidding. what have nos glorieus come to when a sick kid's—or any other kid's—favourite hab is TOMAS PLEKANEC?

the next day, in a shopping trip not completely unrelated to the win-streak or double-come-from-behind-overtime-hat-trick melee of the night before, i went down to the BC to get the 2010 media guide, being that there are so many new players with stats and birthplaces i have yet to peruse.

tomas fucking plekanec is the 2nd active hab after markov is all categories. actually, they were tied for goals, so #14 is getting his way-ups on non-captain AM. markov career is on temporary hold in the mid 560 GP, while tommy P. is at 320 and climbing.

why wouldn't the kid like plekanec, he's the only one left. who's he going to cheer for, glen metropolit? or josh gorges? or jaroslav halak?

higgins and komisarek were both hyped as future captains and they were both pretty thrilled to go play somewhere else. have markov and plekanec stayed because they're goofy europeans who don't know any better, that one's NHL career doesn't have to be lived in seven-column headlines like some gaudy, invasive reality show?

the habs ARE a reality show, and the ironman of the hour is tomas plekenec.

3.

why doesn't the NHL go to 3 digit jersey numbers and make sure everyone gets ONE number, like a barcode, when they enter the league. so that player will always be 888 or 123 or any of the boring numbers like 486 or 683.

4.

if i had a team in california i'd call it THE OTTERS.

the first ten games

2009-10-25T00:09:00.001-07:00

—l'affair sergei kostitsyn
—no captain, no sellout
—markov's foot, o'byrne's, ugh, what is it?
—metropolit on the powerplay
—why doesn't price start in calgary?
—why does price stay in for seven goals against vancouver?
—l'affaire george larauque and his sexy sexy alcoholic energy drink web ad
—everyone introduces themselves in french @ the home opener except for andrey kostitsyn
—beating atlanta 2-1 at home in a shootout to stop a five game losing streak and to avoid the worst team start in 68 years
–bonjour m-a bergeron! a plus tard weber, belle
—lapierre on the 2nd line, latendresse on the fourth; d'agostini has 1 point, pacioretty has 2.
—i do not like JM's double-breasted suits
—BIGGEST SURPRISE: kyle chipchura has made the team

scott gomez is not a wimp

2009-10-23T19:30:00.001-07:00

"Marky didn't really get hurt in Toronto, I actually knifed him in the foot."

did you fight with sergei kostitsyn at yr house?

"There's absolutely no truth to it. But it is a good story. Everyone's been calling. I guess that's what happens here in Montreal. But, like I said, the Markov thing is true. He was at my house and I knifed him."

ex-habs watch

2009-10-21T21:47:00.000-07:00

FOR THE NIGHT OF OCTOBRE 21 2000 & 9

—stephane robidas had an assist and was +3 playing 22 minutes in a 4-2 win over anaheim, while teammateexhab mike ribeiro also had an assist and four shots.

—saku koivu had no points and was -1 with two shots and 21 minutes for anaheim.

—frankie boullion played almost 23 minutes and had 2 shots and a -1 in a mashvile loss to boston, while jason ward had two shots and was -1 as well.

—michael ryder tied the game for boston and steve begin won it in overtime. ryder had three shots, begin two, and even mark recchi shot once and played 15 minutes.

—sergei samsonov had one shot and was -1 in 15 minutes in a 4-3 carolina overtime loss to NYI. tom kostopolous had six shots and was even in ten minutes of ice-time.

—mark streit for NYI was even and had three shots and two penalties over 27+ minutes in the win.

—craig rivet (captain rivet?) had one shot and was even in a 5-2 buffalo win over FLA, playing 19 minutes.

—darcy tucker had a goal and was plus one with two shots in a 3-2 colorado overtime loss to minnesota

mechant mardi #1

2009-10-21T11:05:00.000-07:00

1.

wimptown: "game days make me nervous. i even forgot to wear my scarf today."
sachtown: "you didn't forget!"

2.

100th home opener

2009-10-16T19:54:00.000-07:00

1. thursday night was the habs' 100th home opener, and the 26th i've existed for, and the 18th or so i've cared about, and i didn't see it because i was working. infact, i haven't seen any games in their entirety except for the road loss v. calgary, which (apparently) is the best game we've played.

i like that the players introduced themselves (in french!) we are in the future, where americans and slovacs and anglo canadians all speak polite french. let the simple verbs fly.

most of the gillet-era ceremonies were incredibly long but wonderfully entertaining. there were neat-o projections on the ice and short films about habs glory and immortal legends of days long passed, and nice speeches by inductees and buddies or what-not. the fact that the game later played (sometimes, quite later) was always dull and instantly forgettable doesn't seem to bother any fans, who smile and laugh and twirl their commemerative beer-sponsored pennant around their fingers as they cue for the metro, the trains and the buses. and the truth is the habs could retire another half dozen numbers quite easily, almost instantly. how will the new-molson-era be different then than our former smiley skier billionaire puppetmaster.

anyhow, retirement ceremonies aren't home-openers. i would like a big homecoming party, will tailgaiting and a big screen set up outside and bad bands and all that shit, to accompany the home-opener. why don't we do that? that would be so nice.

going to a canadiens game and shopping at an expensive boutique are not as dissimilar as most fans would like to believe.

no sellout, no bagskate

2009-10-09T20:29:00.000-07:00

mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush! mush!

2. l'avenue des canadiens-de-montreal

delaG starts at peel, best be updating yr garmins. or do they autoupdate?
it rained. JMol doesn't wear a jersey and i like that. people who aren't famous habs look as strange in habs sweaters as habs superlegends of yore do in civilian clothes, or aging or dying and the bits in between, helicopters and racecars and autobiographies.

new monument: a big slabby thing with the names of everyone who ever played a game for the habs, and (apparently) some one-gamers with habs unbrellas to gladhand and pose, interview and anecdote. i like the all-names, i mean to go see it early tomoro morning and finger it. goofball mayor tremblay in full election swing smiles and holds street sign: de la gauchetiere infront of the BC is now CdM.

okay: now how about renaming st-l and beaubien l'avenue des italiens and st laurent and rachel l'avenue des portugaize and so on and so on until every lamppost has its ethno-cultural bannerstuff and one can wander around drunk and stoned speaking a foreign language (american) and still be able navigate the 200 km2 of montreal centrale.

renaming a (dead end!) street after the business in the building which occupies its entirety is no great honour, its a navigational simplification, and apparently a stop on the stump for goofball mayor GT. it was cute and nice to do it the same day as the slabby ceremony (in the rain) but really, where's the prestige?

let's talk about de la montagne: old street, very famous, adjacent to BC, home de nos glorieux; not named after anyone, no political overtones possible from a historic descriptive change: yes, you used to be able to see and mount le mont royal, but now that you can't really see it anymore, the bell centre is just to your left. "de la montagne" and "canadiens de montreal" have similar sylable sounds whence mumbled.

or perhaps wellington street, snaking through downtown, pt-st-charles and verdun. there's about 10km of honour and prestige. sure, the locals would moan about it but what act of great honour Doens't involve a whole buncha people getting pissed off?

or the train station? that's like delaMontagne, just a description: central station. gare des canadiens de montreal. windsor station is now fancy offices and expo space, and new windsor station can be habs station. what am i saying? fuck windsor? basically.

place du canada? place des canadiens.

or how about the greatest honour of all? someone dropping the $30M it would take to buy the naming rights and allow the habs the dignity in playing in an eponymous arena, or one named after one of its brightest icon, maurice richard.

no streetsigns, no sellout

koivu looks forward to wimp-free future in LA?

2009-10-06T17:57:00.000-07:00

1.

former star player saku koivu tells jim rome how it is on the day he was named an alternate captain in anaheim before the season opener:

you had some options, why did you wind up with the ducks?

SK#11: "well, first of all in montreal i'd been there for a long time, at this part of my career i felt that i needed a new challenge, i wanted something else, something different... the long winter... a lot of snow, cold... and when anaheim came into the picture and they showed some interest we felt—my family—that this would be the perfect fit, for the family but for myself as a hockey player, you know, i want to win."

let's talk about the pressure and responsibility that comes along with wearing the "c" if you're a member of canadiens...

SK#11: "you gotta talk to the press quite often and and you're under the microscope pretty much 24/7.... you kind of—.... i got used to it. but at this point i'm going to wear an "a" but not a "c," and it feels good, i can more focus on my own stuff and lead by example and help my teammates but ugh you know you don't have to explain everything—what's going on in the practice, or if something happened wrong in the game."

you had been "the" guy for so long, the guy that everybody looks at—are you looking forward to being one of "them", one of those guys that can blend in?

SK#11: "absolutely. you know that was the one thing i kinda wanted to get into a market that you can breeze easily and enjoy life a bit more but at the same time i wanted to get into a place where i can win and be successful and like i said that's the reason why i came to anaheim."

it seems to me like there's so much less pressure: you're not wearing the "c," you're not in the fishbowl... but as we start a new year, and you're on a new team with a new artillery—are you nervous at all?

SK#11: "absolutely. i haven't felt excited, i haven't felt deserved in a long long time—but that was a good thing. but ugh ugh yeah ... like i said i wanted to find that spark again that i was kind of missing the last couple years, i have to go out there, i have to prove—to myself but also to my mates and coaching staff—that i deserve that icetime and this part of the team ."

JS#6 is not a wimp

2009-10-04T01:31:00.000-07:00

«Ça fait 10 ans que je suis dans la LNH. J'ai assez d'expérience pour comprendre ce qui arrive et j'ai certainement les aptitudes pour m'en sortir. C'est sans doute pour ça que le Canadien m'a embauché. J'aurai un rôle plus important, mais le hockey demeure le hockey et c'est le travail de tous les joueurs qui déterminera le succès que nous aurons»
-jaroslav spacek

no captain, no sellout

2009-09-30T18:55:00.000-07:00

holy fuck: let's make fucking youppi fucking captain.

2001: saku koivu is diagnosed to be very sick. for the season, there is no captain.
2008: koivu is injured. kovalev wears the C.
2009: koivu is injured. kovalev does not wear the C. weeks later, neither are resigned as free agents.

question: why can't markov be captain?

question: why are two of our new players wearing As?

question: why aren't 2009 holdovers gorges or lapierre alternates?

all of this makes me think that BG will be here for the long run. the total overhaul will be watched over by he for years to come. lou lamoriello has been in NJ for 20+ years, and i don't see why BG won't be GM in MTL as long as he likes. he's young, single, likes hockey, speaks french. my favourite hab is bob gainey.

in gainey we trust. goodnight.

west-coast koivu pt 1

2009-09-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

from mike v's anaheim "celebrity" blog (yeah, who? apparently some musician and stuntman) on nhl.com:

"Last night I attended an Anaheim Ducks Foundation charity event at RA Sushi in Tustin that featured Anaheim Ducks players Mike Brown, Saku Koivu, James Wisniewski and Scott Neidermayer in a head-to-head sushi rolling competition. Each player teamed up with a sushi chef and then went about creating and preparing their very own signature sushi roll for the RA Sushi patrons and Ducks fans in attendance to sample and judge. A panel of judges was also assembled, of which I was one, and our combined votes were to crown one roll and one chef the victor, which would see that player’s roll become an actual menu item at RA Sushi for a limited time.

...Saku’s roll had all of the elements -- taste, compatibility of ingredients and an eye-pleasing appearance. But I wasn’t quite sure it had what it took to best “The Big Wisniewski.”

no pictures yet. no tan. no sellout.

fake interview with saku koivu

2009-09-28T16:06:00.000-07:00

WIMPTOWN: hey saks! we share the same birthdate.

fake saku koivu: (disinterested) that's great.

what is your happiest memory as a canadien?

i think eliminating the boston bruins in 2002 was pretty spectacular. the welcome i received coming back during the 2002 season was also very special, but much more personal. on a professional level, coming in as the eighth seed underdog and winning in six, well, that was a pretty good feeling.

would you have stayed in montreal is gainey offered you a contract?

until the trade for gomez, absolutely. but after that, i knew we had to go in different directions.

what did the gomez trade say to you?

it said: "you've been replaced." bob gainey said as much a few days later.

did you feel the team was going in the right direction?

this year that is something no one can say. but since the lockout i would say on a whole, yeah, it was moving towards something. for a little while it looked as if vincent lecavalier would be the #1 center going into the future, where i could occupy the #2 slot and he could be captain. i think that would have been a hard team to beat.

not if it also had andrei kostitsyn and perezhogin and tomas plekenek and alex kovalev.

that's an interesting thing that you mention kovalev last, because i would say he had the largest impact on all those other skaters you mentioned. they were enchanted with his character, his regal attitude. perezhogin figured it was better to be a star in russia than a grinder here, and plekanek and kostitsyn and maybe both kostitsyns forgot what kind of play Got them to the nhl, and began emulating kovalev.

and who did chris higgins and mike ribeiro and jose theodore emulate? not you.

no, not me. i sign contracts to be a hockey player, not some paternal guiding force for youth let loose. the media say "well, gonchar mentors malkin and lemieux mentors crosby" and to that is say: go get a gonchar and a lemieux if you're so keen on them, and while you're at it a crosby and a malkin! this town is fucking ridiculous.

what is your dream season in anaheim like?

i play with teemu all year, he scores 50 goals and i score 50 assists and we beat the habs in final for the stanley cup.

that sounds a little like sour grapes.

habs fans need to learn some humility.

and you, mr. fake koivu, what do you need to learn?

how to get a tan without freckling.

the last breeze goodbye

2009-09-25T20:10:00.000-07:00

the breezer's pre-beliveau trophy press conference to announce his retirement. now vancouver's matthew schneider is the only active 1993 cup champion Hab.

in the dark days, i did not boo the breezer. i do not heckle locals, but i sure did want to. the money wasn't important to me--the difference between $2 million and $4 million is not as great as it appears to be--but brisebois #43 made me so mad that if i Could possibly boo the habs, he would be the one. it was as if he was only playing half the game: he could pass the puck and shoot the puck, but he couldn't Get the puck and indeed often gave up the puck. but when hockey returned after the lockout, his salary became a problem to management and when he was released during the post-lockout mega-clearance window, i was less moved or nostalgic than when brian savage was traded. it was, in the end, a huge pity he signed that huge contract because we probably would have kept him otherwise, and he could have played his whole wishy-washy eighteen year career right here in the 514.

brisebois #71 was a player i appreciated more than brisebois #43. he did less but did it better, and was more accountable. when #43 appeared in paris when he was a scratch with the cold angers and baffles me even now, almost ten years later. i don't remember #71 upsetting me at all, possibly because he was almost never a regular player. when he dressed for only one playoff game in the spring of 2009 it was clear he had reached the end.

until his release to free-agency in 2005 brisebois #43 was the last remaining 1993 cup champion with the team--including management, organist, skaters and trainers. this departure is an important and historic juncture in the MTL organization, the exact point of disjunction between Nos Glorieux and the Bleu-blanc-rouge, the RBK spaceage jersey squad, the sexiest brand in hockey and the immortal legends of seasons past, when the past became more and more oblique and irrelevant and the future became more and more uncertain and unknowable.

in 1993, brisebois played with patrick roy & guy carbonneau and OTHERS, who had played in 1986 with bob gainey and larry robinson and OTHERS, who had played in 1976-1979 with guy lafleur and serge savard and yvan cournoyer and OTHERS who had played in 1967-71 with henri richard and jacques plante and OTHERS who had played in 1950-60 with jean beliveau and maurice the rocket richard who had played and so on and so on right back to Aurial Joliat and Howie Morenz, the continuity of championship remained intact right up until 2005, when it slowly began to unravel.

post-1993 pre-2005 brisebois shared the ice with (possible? ostensible?) future un-winners saku koivu, jose theodore & mike ribeiro, as well as imports tervor linden and sheldon souray and mark recchi, and countless others, unnamable and unimportant. some of these players went on to win the stanley cup--elsewhere, of course--and some didn't: is that our habs mojo working the recchi-tranding-deadline deal to carolina? shocker.

in 2004 brisebois #43 was the living, skating, dressing room link to XX hockey hall of famers. when he was gone, so too was that link. it can never be reconnected, and none like it will ever occur again.

there was hope though, in bob gainey and his first five-year plan, which looking back was more like a 5-year cocaine partyboy pogrom, a cleansing. a resetting of the clock. but the idea was certainly win the cup with the players we have.

in 2004 brisebois #43 "passed the torch" to top players and potential winners saku koivy, mike ribeiro, jose theodore, michael ryder, christopher higgins, sheldon souray, mike komisarek, alexi kovalev, steve begin, francis bouillon and andrei markov, who didn't play the next year and today 2009 only markov remains. if the habs do not win the stanley cup with markov, the link will be totally severed.

and it's a flimsy fake-link, a parlour game trivia nothingness, that markov and brisebois shared the ice in a habs sweater. to share the ice as cup champions is now impossible, and the only shreds of living legacy left are the cup prospects of the quietest russian en ville.

brisebois #71, however, (and schneider #24) while not exactly direct continuity of champion foreverness, also gives meager quarter-lives of sustained glory to many of our current roster, everyone left from last year. maybe this was the witchcraft gm bob gainey was up to when he brought beleaguered brisebois back from the rockies to the pleasure of almost everyone, at a contract no one would barf on, and traded for MS24 when the 2009 powerplay when to shit, to atleast infuse the youngsters with a taste of history before jetisoning the KKK + higgins old guard and plowing bravely into the future aloft from the unconquerable legacy around the logo.

bob gainey: blackmagik hockey sorcerer?
stay tuned.

no excitement, no sellout

2009-09-14T17:16:00.000-07:00

and maybe i AM a bit excited for the season to start.
and maybe the habs won't stick as bad as i think.
in fact, i'm starting to like the new gang already.
and i haven't seen them skate, or talk, or score goals.

JM says gionta (#21) and moen (ugh... #37?) are really hard workers, and prepared for practice as if it were a game, something which was lacking in the past.

gorges said that the newcomers feel more at home in the dressing room than before. is that from personal experience?

methinks already--sight unseen and only through les medias--that moen and gionta wouldn't let wee higgins and price and the brothers kostitsyn get into as much goodtimes as they allegedly did. perhaps already a good start to the season.

fake interview with bob gainey

2009-09-10T21:11:00.000-07:00

wimptown: so, mr. gainey, why didn't any of our UFAs come back?

fake bob gainey: they were veteran players who commanded higher salaries than their production warranted. frankly, i'd rather pay someone $5 million a year before their glory days, rather than after. in kovalev's case, way, way after. koivu had to go, so it doesn't matter what we Could have signed him for, it was best for the team for him not to be here. tanguay is a player who personally upset me, and i happen to be the GM. dandenault and bouillon won't find work elsewhere, why should they keep their jobs here? am i making sense?

all too much, mr. fake bob gainey. when you relieved carbo, were you concerned about your own job?

no, i was mad at the players and frustrated with the coaching style. i just really wanted to ring everyone's fucking neck, i was so mad. it was less a case of "carbo has to get out of there" and more "i need to be closer." it never could have worked if i appeared on the bench along side him, so i had to clear him out. but i really had to get on the ground and figure this one out at eye level, because at that time i still wasn't sure what was going to happen with the UFAs, and i really did think these guys were winners, and i really did think carbo had gotten them aligned, was successfully implementing a coaching plan.

six weeks earlier you had said your best decision was hiring guy carbonneau...

exactly. and even at that point in the season, i could see the team was slipping. so for things to get so bad, both on and especially off the ice, something was wrong. the players were the same as the year before, but they weren't performing as good or better. this is always a very bad sign.

was the hiring of carbo your best decision as GM?

up to that point, i think it was. amusing as it is, i now feel that replacing him and not resigning those players was my best decision.

let's start with steve begin. you traded him shortly after firing carbo.

yes, begin was a player who had begun to act with a sense of entitlement, and this affected his level of play considerably, but also his usefulness as a role-player within the team and organization. begin was spoiled, and wasn't going to return.

dandenault?

dandenault was another player who acted with arrogance, due like begin in part to his quebecois lineage but also having won the stanley cup with detroit a few times. he was a useful player during his stay here, but i have no reason to extend that stay at all. speaking french is in itself not a reason to play hockey for this team. and most late thirty-something defencemen can be replaced rather easily, as is the case with both bouillon and brisebois, replaced by younger, healthier players who have not yet peaked in their careers. we need pre-peak players.

kovalev is post-peak?

kovalev's departure from this team is a result of his personality and not his style of play, sadly. i continued to have faith in him as a hockey player, but could not afford to spend anytime on UFAday waiting for him to reach a phone. his personality got in the way of his career here but if there are any regrets they are on his side only, i assure you.

koivu never had a peak, he was all middle.

ha! true and not true. koivu was as much a mystery to me as kovalev, except koivu remained so over the years. he treated his status as captain diligently on the ice, and in the community, but really never did much for the team as a unit, an organism. it was very preppy, with koivu and the other prefects on one side and the young french canadians or the young americans or the young belarussians on the other side. koivu keeps acting like koivu, young players keep becoming cokeheads.

or let me put it another way, wimptown: if koivu wasn't captain when i was engaged as GM--but still acted the way he did as captain--then i wouldn't have resigned him. if he was a quiet contributor, fine, he can stay indeffinately. but snobs have to go. the problem was, he Was captain when i got here. i thought that with a significant upgrade in wingers and a more workhorse coach he would flourist, and CJ was hired 50% because i thought his style would suit koivu and open him up as a teamleader, but it just shut him down even more.

if he wasn't captain here, he couldn't stay. the media spotlight in montreal would never dim on saku koivu, regardless what his jersey said. i wish i could have ten saku koivus on the ice, but none in the dressing room. and i got one of my wishes.

new five-year plan, no sellout

2009-09-10T20:17:00.000-07:00

this is with seconds left in game 4 v boston. i thought it might be my last moment with bob, too. jarvis is wondering how much longer this is going to last, while captain kirk is in the b/g, listening to the radio.

ON WHY I AM SO NERVOUS...

i remember habs irrelevancy far clearer that habs supremacy, for i have lived it longer, and endured many season ending moments of lackluster "ohwell"s, for in montreal the end is always in sight long before it actually arrives. this is true about winter, and this is true about hockey.

when the habs scrapped into the playoffs in the miraculous spring of 2002, it was without saku koivu, who had cancer all year; it was without donald audette, who had almost lost his hand due to his shorty-short glovies and the swishing blade of some czeck NYR skater, HR**T**?; it was without sheldon souray, who broke both his wrists; the habs snuck into the playoffs on the amazing season of Jose Theodore, who won the league's MVP award and beat P. Roy for the Vezina. and doug gilmour was here, and richard zednik. and yannic perrault. and the rest of the gang of jokers on that very best of the worst habs teams, the ALMOST irrelevant team. indeed, that team upset boston and went to make a show of it with carolina before losing in 6, the first time post expansion that the team to beat montreal had gone on to win the stanley cup (except, of course, those teams that played montreal For the cup.)

the next year we missed the playoffs. the team was less sick but still quite bad, and jose theodore sank the ranks from MVP to good to leaky to traded. two coaches were sacked because they couldn't get XL back to glory, and he was traded in the afternoon, injured, not too long after he was banned from the olympics for a controlled substance.

but these were not dark days: in the six seasons/ seven years between the rise of the 2002 team and the collapse of the centennial squad the habs beat the bruins three out of four times in the playoffs, were eliminated by the eventual cup champions twice, and finished first in the eastern conference for the first time since the late days of habs bliss, 197x. it didn't feel like it at the time, because of our SOFT teams sublimating in the post-season, but those mostly-marginally talented teams sure did manage to deliver quite some excitement and entertainment on the way out.

the whole time jettisoning talented NHL players in ridiculous trades (or the gone but never forgotten waiver draft), regular players like: ron hainsey, stephane robidas, francois beauchemain (who we couldn't resign in the summer of 09), mike ribeiro, michael ryder, jose theodore.

the whole time picking-up useless meat and bags of pucks on the free-agent market, or in trade, players like: randy mckay, mariuz czercawski, sergei berezin, niclaus sundstrom (how did this guy play here for three years?), joe juneau, yannick perrault, andreas dackel, oh it makes me ill.

the whole time drafting never-were s, and passing on young superstars.
we still beat the bruins three fucking times. one year, we beat them 11 times in a row.

now, at the dawn of the post-koivu-era, we can look back at that 2002 team, the best of the worst, and ask some interesting questions:

-what does that team have in common with the new, as of yet unseen 2010 team?
-are we a better team today than we were then?
-what, besides beating the bruins, have the habs done of worth since 2002? (1993, really, but let's just say 2002)

and does it matter? there was a fucking protest at the BC to RESIGN KOVALEV, which is as close to maschocism as is permitted by the current CBA.

kovalev often contributed little more to the success of the team than youppi.

no koivu, no sellout

2009-09-09T07:12:00.000-07:00

i wanted to take a picture of saku koivu scoring a goal in his last game as a hab, but he didn't. he did get on the score sheet though, and i took this picture of him in the penalty box.

scary centennial summer recap
-jacques martin is our coach. this is like a little car flag that says "presently, we know we stink."

-we trade higgins and prospect mcdoughnough and valentenko for gomez and some others. i like gomez, but he is small. and because captain k is still in the mix, this move makes me feel awkward, both for the soon to be displaced koivu but also because gomez is another second line center.

-we sign spacek (a former sabre), gil (a former BRUIN?!), gionta (from the NJ devils) and mike camallerri from out west and spend something like $180 million american blooddollars in an afternoon. gionta is the smallest player in the league, and cams is not much bigger. spacek is signed for 3 years, his contract taking him into his 39th earth year. the addition of gil and gionta feel right immediately, while i am more concerned about cammallerri and spacek. later, travis moen is added, a big upgrade on kostopolous and begin combined. paul mara is here too.

-kostopolous goes to carolina and begin signs in boston (BOSTON?!). higgins signs in NYR and komisarek signs a huge deal to play in toronto. on the morning of the 1st it is reported that kovalev resigns, which made me both nostalgic and warm and pretty damn irritated. later it turns out he didn't, like, he wasn't answering his phone or something, so gainey got bored and signed cammallerri instead. i'll take cams over kovalev, i've riden the K train and it's too bumpy for me. dandenault is gone, bouillon is gone, and koivu is a duck, together with temu after all these years.

henri richard: "i'm surprised they didn't resign that koivu guy, he works like hell."

INTERESTING QUESTIONS

-if gainey suspected he didn't want to resign any of his 11 free agents, why did he sack carbo with 16 games left? if the habs missed the playoffs in their centennial would Both carbo and gainey have been fired? who would fire gainey, gillet or molson? was the team being for sale a big influence on gainey in stepping in on the coach's bench?

-why the split with higgins & komisarek along with koivu & kovalev? and why not a split with the kostitsyns? who was responsible for the awful locker room all these years, koivu, or a rotating cast of everyone else?

-if we are rebuilding, why did we bring in $30million american blooddollars of salary?

-with the early age of free agency, what makes gainey think he can keep carey price here and happy when the same could not be done for komisarek?

-why cams at $5 million USBD and not tanguay at $3 USBD?

training camp opens in six days and i miss: michael ryder, mike ribeiro, mike komisarek, christopher higgins, mark streit, even cristobal huet. maybe even sheldon souray.

no thrashing, no sellout

2009-05-09T21:20:00.000-07:00

http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/blog/puck_daddy/post/Atlanta-to-Hamilton-rumors-or-let-Sun-Belt-clea?urn=nhl,162318

[i][i.e. atlanta to hamilton via vancouver, ontario division, $300 expansion fee][/i]

you know how to stop a thrashing? you just Snuff it, just just SNUFF it right the fuck out. as sick and pathetic as a team the habs have been over the past 1x years they've generally been better than the thrashers, and this is probably ONLY because atlanta plays in a division which has reached the finals 3 times in the past 6 seasons and won the cup twice. that team was never worse than ours, only unluckier.

none of the teams in place now will ever move, for bettman must never be made to look weak, ever. and to people outside of a sport, the difference between phoenix and waterloo isn't so much about where the game is played as How the game looks: stable, with teams and rivalries and such? or rinkydink carnival trash, rolling into town for a few years and then moving along, a gimmick sport, a novelty to see once, maybe a few finals on tv: xfl, indoor footbal, lacross, soccer, hockey.

no obama, no sellout

2009-03-16T22:38:00.000-07:00

checking out alex jones' The Obama Deception, full report to come. until then here's professor griff on b.h. obama and the nwo.

les cent ans

2009-02-24T16:36:00.000-08:00

The competing teams of excitable nerds on RDS and TQS went too far last week, suggesting that the scandals set to hit the streets at one in the morning would devastate the morale of the 514 sporting community so completely that hockey would be no. 2 tomorrow to scandal and sadness, that Montreal would awake to a chorus of distant screams, people awaking and hearing the news, which would continue for at least fifteen hours. Even on public transportation there would be shocked eeps! of passengers who catch the disaster on the back of a strangers daily, and old ladies weeping into their babushkas in the Point and wandering the old parade route along the lachine canal cursing the disinterested european scum who have replaced her dickie moores and larry robinsons.

The truth, of course, was far less devastating—and so one would assume this would be good. But beneath the relatively mild accusations of fraternizing with seedy elements, it is the lingering stink of deeper, darker rumours, which no one makes up but everyone repeats. Hamrlik had an orgy with twenty callgirls—les canadiesn sont la! I wonder whazt would happen if i called an escort agency and asked for an estimate of a similar experience for myself, like, if i had enough time could i work it out to how Many women would be paid for sexual services and which would be paid Less for hanging around in the nude. Or is Hamrlik counting, does this 30-something czech athlete really want to put it into twenty girls in a short span of time, short enough to have them all huddled together, anyway.

More shocking in Utah, maybe, but this sort of thing would probably seem imediately borring and redundant in the KHL, or NBA for that matter. And then the kovalev suspension—and THEN the kovalev return, three points and cheered from start to finish from the “home” team, then and always comprised greatly of traveling quebecois, not montrealers, who decided to come and cheer kovalev when tickets went on sale back in september and remembered to dance with the one they brought. Sergai “scarface” kostitsyn is safely riding the buss with the bulldogs (the busdogs) and the only live sport on tv Monday night is the tournament of hearts.

The big stink now will be a classic one, the timeless goalie contro. g/c is a constant here in montreal, and perhaps other places too, but in montreal there hasnt been a season since patrick roy left that the newspapers, fans and coaches haven’t made hotdogs out of at least one, and sometimes more, goalies. Theodore’s brilliant season ignited only after cohort and “1a” goalie jeff hacket went down with a broken-arm and jose was anointed the no. 1 without a doubt goalie. These are in the dark days, where our best players were eric weinrich and chad kilger and oleg petrov, when even the players showed wrinkled noses during games and tv interviews and knew full-well how much their team stank.

But it would be the last media interview—at very least with the habs—if anyone had said the truth about that horrible team then, or about the struggling one now... a sweaty postworkout rant right into the microphones:

“yes well, the team kinda stinks. We were all really excited to be here in the begining but things went to total shit. everyone’s kinda into their own thing, and no one likes carbo and carbo’s not going anywhere, so we’re all waiting for ak to pick it up because saku’s injured and tanguay’s injured and lang is injured and chris higgins and carey price and both kostitsyns are all dopeheads who spend more time melting their brains than watching video. Which sucks for the players who do commit 100 per cent, like kostopo-fucking-lous, begin, bouillon, komisarek, dandenault and max lapierre, but dont have the skills to put it in the net all the time, and certainly can’t be depended on if the team is healthy, which it is not. But that can be cured quickly, and suddenly. The work is the deathmask its conception. walter benjamin said that. Kovalev can play on my team if he works hard, this year or any other. I said that.

But that’s it: this year, and maybe some playoffs. And maybe not some playoffs, frankly; and maybe not even the rest of the year. Koivu is more certain—almost completely certain—to stay until the habs’ season is over, whenever this spring that is, but is guaranteed no longer. The habs should be able to split 10 or 11 millions between koivu and komisarek, but to make it work it will be an overpayment of mike and saks taking a big hometown discount, saks Wanting to stay. He Wanted to stay last time, when the team seemed like it was rebuilding quickly, with plek and pereszogin and more importantly higgins and ryder lighting it up. Ryder was given up on and higgins shriveled up, perez split for russia and plekanek lost his juice if he ever really had any to begin with. It makes good sense that koivu is playing (sometimes) with paccioretty because that is the wave of the future, not these wimpy kostitsyn brothers.

It almost seems inevitable that these are the last days of saku koivu as a hab, so few players stick with a team their whole career, even farve and ray bourque sometimes need to be somewhere else. Farve’s team tossed him away, tired of him, like and old plaything, while bourque’s wrapped him in velvet and passed him ceremoneously, like a valued heirloom. On july 1st, saku koivu might just move away, evaporate. We might not even be granted a press conference, perhaps no paparazi at the airport. Koivu might already be out of town by the time free agency arrives, and therefore might never come back. And koivu is as close to a personality as this team has had the whole time i’ve been paying attention, save for the three or four years of Team Clinic and 18 months of Les Trois Amigos. The habs have no players signed beyond 2011. what a better way to celebrate les cent ans than to make 11 free agents sweat it out all year. Markov resigned, souray walked. Streight walked, after being offered a decidedly optimistic but ultimately rude offer of $7m for 3 years, which was still a hefty increase on his salary of 800k. no hometown discount there, we MADE you streight, but Fuck you. Will the same sad scene go down when koivu asks gainey for a six year deal worth a cool $30 mil, which is worth it if saks gets to play with linemates of quality and a waste if he’s going to be grinding it out with d’agostini and kyle chipchura, winger, ne centre. Koivu at 34 looks like he could play two or three seasons more as a top 100 player and then maybe two or three more as a totemic luck charm, but certainly not at five mil a year.

The truth is, however, someone else would give it to him, team with good players who need a cold, dedicated warrior to lead them to glory. The Canadiens of the past 15 years have never come close to having any players as dedicated as Koivu, except for SOuray and Rivet which is maybe why they all got along so well. Koivu in miami, nashville, washington, los angeles, san jose, st louis, chicago, buffalo, long island are not hilarious, from either a hockey or money point of view. The point is Anywhere might be better than here, i give my eye for this team and my line mate is a 20 year old party dude and some rookie, and they don’t want to pay me $5m+ for the rest of my career because i dont put up much more than 70 points ever.

No, too late for koivu to be a 90+ point player with any linemates, on this team or any other, though perhaps if he was playing with simon gagne and jerome iginla for the past ten years we’d be singing a different tune. It certainly didnt help that during his career he’s had six coaches and three gms, but with the cap is becomes impossible to pay koivu for back pay, lost wages from lack of talent on the team and injuries in the course of battle. In a pre-cap world gainey and gillet would let koivu write his own cheques, monthly, at his whim. But now these monetary affairs are very serious matters, and Saks cannot be paid like a scoring-star when he is distinctly Not. If Dustin Penner is making $4 then Saku could make four, but that (d/p) contract was signed two years ago, almost three seasons, and ryan malone’s $4.5 last summer makes a strong argument for koivu and his agent to hit the market this summer and listen to offers from sweaty hockey backwaters in the south for long-term contracts at highly inflated value. If koivu signs in montreal it will be for a cap hit of less than $4.5mil a year at term long enough to ensure his staying here with a no-movement clause, probably heavily front loaded like a mini-zetterberg deal. But if he signs somewhere else, it will be at towards a cap hit of $6m. you would think it wouldn’t happen but look at paul kariya (twice!) and mats sundin: money talks, always.

So who knows about carey price, or yaro halak, or ryan smyth or alex(i) kovalev? All i can think about is koivu, and making a sandwich.

no palin, no sell out

2008-11-06T06:14:00.000-08:00

from the guardian, care of fox news:
Palin "did not understand that Africa was a continent and not a country". Nor, he adds, could she name the three countries [Mexico, the US and Canada] which are part of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

no mccain, no palin, no sellout

2008-10-30T21:54:00.000-07:00

Q: So, ugh, Nick... I can’t help comment on how much US election coverage you’ve been watching on TV. What up with that?

A: It’s the best TV show of all-time. I think after it’s over I’m going to stay away from the TV outside of Habhours, which is why we have cable to begin with... like in homage to it, however it ends.

Q: How will it end?

A: I think Obama is going to win. I also thought Kerry was going to win, and so did he if he believed CNN’s super-flawed election-day exit polls, which had him winning Ohio by three or four points. And EVERYONE thought Gore was going to win. What’s more exciting this time is I think I might be backing a winner, which is exciting not in terms of personal satisfaction, but, like... FOR the world. Chomsky says that every american President since Kennedy could be hanged for war-crimes if the international system functioned fairly, and its so exciting thinking that Chomsky wouldn’t have anything to write about the war-crimes of Barack Hussein Obama... Biden, maybe... but not Obama.

Q: So you want him to win.

A: I also believe he will win, but mostly because I was MSNBC almost exclusively, and the polls they source have him up low teens in tons of states. CNN makes it seem close sometimes, always playing the meaningless 49-47 +-4% overall vote poll, which of course is not how the decision is made. What the fuck do i know, I’ve been to at least 40 stump speeches from my aqua and pink loveseat. I don’t even know any americans. If Obama loses it will be the biggest bummer ever, a catastrophic aura collapse, a Great disturbance in the force. Not the bring beginning of a new future, but the latest, loudest ringing CLANG of the jailer’s baton teasing petulantly from behind greasy bars.

Q: That’s heavy man. You’re freaking me out.

A: It’s true. Shitty-ness and bad-vibes will be in the air for days, bad electricity in the air. Another good reason to avoid the television once it’s over: because everything will either be in a) good hands or b) too gruesome to watch. No need to see the away team run up the score, especially if you’re only cheering for the HomeTeam for hope... not as a real agent, with a real stake in the outcome. Sure, the President is the most important person on earth, but that’s a real bummer... I think even Obama would privately admit that, or at least i hope he would. But the fact of the matter is it’s just ONE election, and there’s a long legacy—in fact, perhaps the whole of US history—of oppression and aggression in America’s history and I don’t see how that can be changed without radically altering the “american way of life,” which is beyond contemplation, post-rational as rachel maddow would say.

Q: Okay, so why are you even watching?
A: It’s great TV, truly. They put tons of effort into it, everyone, and i’m always watching with very suspicious eyes, so it’s entertaining. It’s the real american idol, where one person becomes History and the other might become a Trivial Pursuit question, or Jeapordy! clue, in the year 2025 or beyond. An ironic t-shirt for the hipsters of the future: a faux-warhol portrain with “Joe the plummer” or “Yes we can.”

Q: That’s disgusting. What else do you see in your awful black mirror?
A: I’m just really zoned in on the five days... day six is election day. I really enjoy watching live TV and us presidential election day is THE DAY. Better than the olympics, it’s almost become a Civil Rights Bloodsport jamboree, in 538 arenas at once. Complete brutality, long lines are always of black people. Meanwhile the malls in the gated communities not only have double the machines, but they are newer, quicker machines, gilded in bronze and chrome and servicing a community of 2500. meanwhile the paper ballots—which fall apart sometimes before they can be counted—are handed out in major urban areas: atlanta, chicago, muthafucking LA? Bullshit. It makes it extra nice to cheer for a candidate who’s a real winner, on the inside, someone who seemingly wants to do GOOD for america, instead of being a good President. No one was passionate for boring ol’ John The Kerry, my friends.

Q: So what’s on TV?
A: It’s over, really, the election. Something like ¼ to 1/3 of the votes have already been cast, apparently, so everyone is on holding pattern until Tuesday. It’s all about Tuesday now, no one really takes McCain seriously, no one being Everyone who works for either CNN or MSNBC... talking heads and pollsters appear to clarify McCain talking points. All the McCain coverage is talking about the McCain campaign, the actual corporeal campaign itself, not the ideas McCain supposedly has somewhere. All the Obama coverage is about The Future. Still, I’m so very, very concerned that the bubble will burst on the fourth, and Obama will lose somehow.

Q: Is that even possible, at this point?
A: I hope not, but I think it might be. What if the call went out to RNC hardcores to tell republicans to lie to pollsters, to throw Obama of the scent, so McCain can come around with a backdoor sneak-a-roo, keep the Bush red states which everyone is calling Lean to Obama minus Michigan, and take OH, FLA and penn for the win. “There is no paranoid.” I guess the most exciting part of the election, and maybe always was, since way back in late January when Obama got really moving—Can this be done? Is it possible for a Good Man to be President, or does going through the sausage machine change one, one-way? Like McCain, to a certain extent, who is forever more unhinged and cranky for this experience. I think all the goodstuff inside Obama has been galvanized by this enormous campaign, or i hope it has. I hope he wins, but if he doesn’t it’s not because he did anything wrong. It’s because They couldn’t allow it. And They got W. elected—twice. And Ronald Reagan. and that’s at least ten trillion dollars of defense spending. That’s a lot of owed favours. So yes, i think it is possible that McCain win the election, but it would be the grizzliest affirmation of everything that is whispered about america, everything that is wrong about america... it would be cosmically devastating. And everyone on earth will feel its sick, heavy, hopeless truth: earth is an empire with no emperor and a secret senate. Shut up and eat your “corn.”

Q: And if Obama wins?
A: Something different. The opposite. Hope in the future. At least to 2012.

Q: Final question: is it possible that Sarah Palin is the antichrist? And she will beat President Obama for re-election Nov. xth, 2012 and then the world will end on Dec. 21, as prophesized by the mayans or inca or whomever?

A: As possible as McCain winning, I guess. Something has always rubbed me the wrong way about her...

re: my $160.6 cable bill

2008-09-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

—23 days of european football. and somehow i became a germany fan? i was also, at different times, a russian fan, a turkish fan, ORANJE!, croatia, romania... france, even? french coach domenech wouldn't appoint any leos to the starting team (no kidding) and thurham and makelele were done like diner (au microonde, en plus!)

interesting fact: it's hard to get into games one has absolutely nothing invested in, besides interest.

—21 days of the tour de france—sans last year's winner and third place finisher, both ostracized by the tour's leaders—still keeps me up late. more than last year, i find myself getting up at almost 6 a.m. to watch the races instead of staying up until 4 a.m. watching the package. phil liget is awesome, i was to buy a book of his "accidental poetry" but the moment passed when ricco was kicked-out for doping.

(liget: "he's all alone now, dancing on his pedals in a most immodest way.")

i took the garmin-chipotle experience, mostly because they were the american team being profiled by oln/versus, but was wowed by kim kirchen and mark cavendish of the columbia team, and mr. george hincapie as always. ALL HAIL csc! the super team. schleck schleck cancellaro sastre eating the mountains like the cookie monster AAAAAARGGGAASGH MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH MUNCH!!!! mr. clean wins the race, but vande velde wins hearts!

—16 days of beijing olijmpijcs. quiet crowds the first few days, before they started commanding their volunteer army to go and "cheer equally" for both sides everywhere at everything. ron mclean's mother died and he left half-way through, just when we started medaling.

—four days of the dnc, prompting the department of obamarama to be opened. i first felt he could be elected when mrs. obamarama spoke on the first night. a few days later the palin thing sure took the wind out of camp change.

heavyweights

2008-09-09T17:53:00.000-07:00

films are like frankenstein's monster, except they're not murdered at the end. and so they wander our culture in perpetuity, and can be made to battle a la "hobo fights." i am always having hobo fights of frankenstein's monsters movies in my head when thinking "was that movie i saw any good?"

sure, most films are better than puking or being forced to eat grapefruit but was my time really well spent? so "jarhead" goes into the ring with good ole "full metal jacket" and jacket whips jarhead on characters and tension alone. first round knockout, "full metal jacket" remains the war movie heavyweight. eventually, as is the case with war movies, so many films have been knockedout consecutively that i rarely submit any films to the process anymore. to have a really great war movie we're going to have to have a really great war, and frankly i can wait.

WAR MOVIES
"full metal jacket." i saw this when i was 16. my friend anthony had gotten his license and we'd driven all the way up to cinema du park, and parked in their underground garage, one of the few times ive even done so. i thought the movie was going to be a wise-crackin' rock and roll war extravaganza, but felt really strange after the movie was over. i've probably seen it about five times now, not including recently in hilarious edited-for-tv form ("inside every gook in an american, waiting to get out" fade out. commercials.)

"full metal jacket" vs. "apocalypse now"
at cannes francis ford coppola said about "apocalypse now" that "this is not a film about vietnam, it IS vietnam." he said this, of course, because he was a little crazy, ravished by the 300+ shooting days and the anxiety assured sin of investing millions of one's own into a movie which was consistently burning, sinking and having heart attacks in the jungle. anyhow, the point is that he was wrong. "apocalypse now" is a movie about vietnam no more than a commercial of honey is a film about bees.

"apocalypse now" is a big, cathartic culture shit, where significant artists go blow up more southeast asian jungle in a vain attempt to make any personal sense out of the real war, which none of them witnessed. it is a wonderful, surreal film, but no more a war film than "alice in wonderland."

on the other hand, kubrick could have claimed that his film was like going to vietnam, and he'd probably be quite correct. the scary part of the film is the first part which is so intense that once we arrive in vietnam it is quite easy, almost exciting and liberating, to go around witnessing the carnage along with joker. sure, things get a little hairy, but its still easy to relax and sing. war is like a party compared to bootcamp.

in fact, a lot of war films suffer from apocalypse now syndrome in that their stories could be relocated to peacetime and told just as well (almost all tribunal investigation war films, so popular in the '90s, didnt need violent flashbacks to tell their stories.) what makes "full metal jacket" significant is that perhaps it is one of the few anti-war films.

the ways we war// are war movies all prowar?
what is a war movie? it is a movie about war. in which ways can it be about war?

first, films about war must correspond with wars we have filmed. historical and fantasy war films are different. war films should be classified by the ways in which they use war as a referent.

most war films are about the combatants. this is because refugees are too busy to write scripts, and their governments do not give out grants. sometimes, their governments do not give out food.

1. war can be the plot of a film. of course, if it is the plot it is also generally the setting, but i make this distinction to highlight that in some war films, the outcome of the war is crucial to the emotional climax of the plot. that both cinemastiste and audience are remouved from the immediate historical context allows them to reinterpret both military successes ("laurence of arabia," "patton," "zulu") and failures ("gallipoli," "blackhawk down," "thirteen days," "the battle of algiers")

2. war is most often the setting, in which case it would be appropriate to divide them into action films and war dramas.

•action films are just that, they revel in the violence of conflict and allow the audience to cheer for the protagonists ("indiana jones," "three kings," "the great escape," "enemy at the gates") especially if it is to their deaths ("pearl harbor," "saving private ryan," "bridge on the river qwai.")

unsurprisingly—because most of these films are about nazis and the axis—these films rarely question the merit of killing. indeed generally the arena of violence is a pre-given to the rest of the plot. therefore, normal codes of morality are suspended and replaced with WWII-era Allied values, which we can absorb gently while sitting on the couch.

action war films generally refer to war as noble and necessary and to the combatant protagonists as patriotic and valourous. in the few examples where the characters are not combatants ("empire of the sun," for instance) then it is the enemy who is portrayed as weak and underhanded, malicious and wretched. the killing of antagonists brings us to our feet, as in art we revisit our glories of battle. however, and say unlike a newsreel, what does else are we cramming into action war films besides proud references to our history?

(a good example would be the "fuck hitler/i love mickey mouse" guy in "saving private ryan" who's life is spared by benevolent americans and who ironically returns later in the film to kill some more of them, ones we like. what is this saying? IN WAR, KILL THEM WHILE YOU CAN. and while that may be true of nazis, what else is that message carrying with in into the '90s (and beyond)?)

(¿is "saving private ryan" a film about the intifada?)

• we'll say war dramas, though this can include comedies ("mash," "catch 22," "good morning, vietnam") and love stories ("casablanca," "the english patient") as well. the characters in these films function as agents, even if they are combatants. as such, it is not so much what they are doing as HOW they are doing it that drives the film.

it could be said that war dramas investigate how war affects individuals. ("apocalypse now," "the thin red line," "schindler's list," "platoon," "paths of glory," "deer hunter," "das boot," "born on the fourth of july," "coming home.") HOW DO WAR DRAMAS REFER TO WAR?

but then where is "dr strangelove," and where is "full metal jacket."

notes on cool: the 'cool' person is not a rebel

2008-09-07T20:54:00.000-07:00

the first time i was called "cool" it was by two chubby, big boned girls who were smoking cigarettes outside of the depanneur that the juniors at my highschool used. i was eating a giant oatmeal cookie and drinking strawberry milk. that depaneur is gone. am i still cool?

***

there is a war for our attention called marketing. 'coolness' is the ability to decide for one's self the quality and more importantly one's COMPATIBILITY with any given cultural product.

the 'cool' person functions exclusively in the cultural realm, constantly self-positioning in relationship to both cultural things and other actors on the street. without the culture industries there would be no cool. the person who is antagonized by the educational institution is not cool, but could be called a rebel, for instance. ditto for people who enjoy road racing or any other form of significant anti-authority behaviour.

the 'cool' person is an agent/consumer, deciding with grace what choices are appropriate and never failing because those choices can be canceled or are perpetually self-renewing—the 'cool' person can just "bail" on a "bummer" time

the rebel, on the other hand, is an agent/actor, and whose decidedly anti-establishment actions have sometimes (often, sadly) harsh and non-negotiable consequences (the rebel is expelled from school, the rebel is executed by the government and so on.) fundamentally, rebellion necessitates both far more action and far more risk than simply being 'cool.' and while iconic rebels in pop culture certainly employ coolness, they also "live dangerously" and have clearly exited the cultural sphere. (culture doesnt kill anyone, politics does. (even the politics to road race, or drive drunk and pop too many pills.))

rebels—pop culture or otherwise—often employ self-sacrifice to achieve their goal. the 'cool' person's goal is

only the queen can give us choices

2008-09-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

what has stephen harper's conservative government done for canada that i remember off the top of my head:

—some minor scandal involving an bigbusiness aisle-jumping liberal MP on day zero
—ending the us potato embargo on like day 10
—not going to the olympics on day 900 or so
—asking the government be dissolved this morning

way-to-go, minority government. and now what if all the ridings come back the same? three more years of stagnation and nothingness. our "plus brillants exploits" like cutting arts funding while holding our pubes in afghanistan, waiting for nato (i.e. america) to tell us we can go home now?

if we're going to have a unicameral parliament with multiple parties then we need a system of proportional representation so true coalition governments can be formed, so, ugh, i don't know, STUFF CAN BE DONE FOR CANADA.

the two real parties will win the election again, like always, since forever, etc. they will not end the war in afghanistan, because they are all business men, and to them we canadian are peons of the united states. our prosperity, quality of life and—*shiver*—"security" are wholly and completely 100% supplied by our cozy relation to our hegemonic neighbours, and nothing of any significance will happen through the canadian government without the us' tacit approuval.

so what are we voting for—who our mascot will be? supporting tertiary parties may give you a warm fuzzy feeling—and them a few more dollars for the NEXT election—but isn't democracy about allowing people to make some decisions?

the liberals took us to war, the conservatives kept us there, both against the vibe of the peoples. none of the other parties (that is, all the parties that truly represent Canadian on-the-street interests) are capable of forming even a minority government.

the choice between the party that has done nothing or nothing good versus the party that has done plenty bad but not uber-recently is no choice at all. we must go higher, above the petty party politicians and the charming but meatless g/g right to the highest earthly office of canadian affairs, to the annals of the offices surrounding Her Royal Highness, Queen Elizabeth II.

i fear that Her Highness might be our only hope of—one day—voting in a federal election with meaningful choices. instead of getting involved with any party this election organize a petition for proportional representation directed right at the queen. or write her a letter. it's been awhile, she'd love to hear from you.

snail mail her

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II
Buckingham Palace
London, England
SW1A 1AA

how many creationist politicians does america have?

2008-09-06T21:55:00.000-07:00

sarah palin makes me dizzy. on the day of her nomination i was wondering if she would still be on the ticket in november. smarmy laughing james carville looked like he was watching two girls one cup, he was so bemused and confudled.

no, being mayor of some alaskan town is not executive experience. yes, you're an outsider, but mostly because you're 1. a greenhorn and 2. from alaska. yes, a preggos teenage daughter is an indication of bad parenting. no, not giving interviews to the press is not okay.

her nomination is insulting to hilary clinton more than anything else. republicans: "oh look, america, another equally qualified woman." it's cruel farce that this woman could be president.

STOP BOMBING YOURSELF

2008-09-02T17:18:00.000-07:00

STOP BOMBING YOURSELF, STOP BOMBING YOURSELF, STOP BOMBING YOURSELF

the us military "investigation" in response to last week's accusations by the UN special envoy to afghanistan (i.e. 90 civilians dead, including 60 children) has repudiated these claims and offered the following death toll instead, (selon the nytimes):

30-35 taliban
5-7 civilians
2 civilian injuries.

while the UN said it was more like

60 dead children
15 dead men
15 dead women
15 others injured.

the unquoted, unsourced story explaining (i.e. defending) the american side of the story said the troops were rolling into town when they were attacked. their mission was called of while they destroyed the town. the rules of engagement then called for the us military to shoot-up the town and call in air-strikes, resulting in the grostesque deathtoll substantiated by the UN.

UN: "ninety dead."
US: "thirty, tops. bad guys."
UN: "sixty children..."
Afghanistan: "please: stop bombing us."
US: ****FAART****

the nytimes reminds us that the us investigator did not use information collected by other organizations, nor were troops "able" to return to the scene of the crime when the "villagers dug out most of the bodies of the women and children."

so, basically: "well, we weren't around to Count any of the bodies, but, ugh... i dunno... forty! sorry."

STOP BOMBING YOURSELF, STOP BOMBING YOURSELF, STOP BOMBING YOURSELF

meanwhile, the rest of the world isn't so interested in america's dispute of yesterday's war-crimes, there are fresh, bloody ones to marvel at. by nato's own admission three children were killed and seven injured when a bomb from an artillery strike hit their house on monday, says the guardian.

also on monday, in what the guardian calls a "separate incident" but i will be far more fair and balanced and say:

in another manifestation of the brutal stupidness of war, a man and a women and their two children were shot during a raid in another part of the country, and everyone but mom died. the raiding forces (all afghans: the us washes its hands of this one) arrested three cousins at the scene, but later released them.

STOP BOMBING YOURSELF, STOP BOMBING YOURSELF, STOP BOMBING YOURSELF

meanwhile the unbridled orgy of violence that is afghanistan seems appealing (again) to the russians, so they've agreed to send 225 "police officers" to help train the afghan national police, said the times, which i thought was just russia being petchulant towards nato until i read the story today in the guardian about how the afghan police force is super-corrupt, takes part in many of the kidnappings and has scared the afghan business class, who have shuffled off to the uae (snart move: a country that is not being bombed.) maybe the russians are re-learning police corruption, or atleast getting their mouth wet. when is anything with guns really "help"?

STOP BOMBING YOURSELF

2008-08-26T16:34:00.000-07:00

the guardian today reported that the afghanistan government is so furious with nato (i.e. american) bombing of small villages in the countryside that they have initiated an internal review process to determine if they have the clout to tell america to stop (sadly, they don't.)

"Afghan and foreign soldiers entered the village of Nawabad in Shindand district last Friday and called in air strikes, villagers told UN investigators."—the guardian

the un special envoy to afghanistan said in a statement

"[our investigation] found convincing evidence, based on the testimony of eyewitnesses and others, that some 90 civilians were killed, including 60 children, 15 women and 15 men. Fifteen other villagers were wounded.
"The destruction from aerial bombardment was clearly evident with seven to eight houses having been destroyed, with serious damage to many others," Eide said. "Local residents were able to confirm the number of casualties, including names, age and gender of the victims.
"This is matter of grave concern to the United Nations. I have repeatedly made clear that the safety and welfare of civilians must be considered above all else during the planning and conduct of all military operations.
"The impact of such operations undermines the trust and confidence of the Afghan people in efforts to build a just, peaceful and law-abiding state."

the us military claimed they had killed a terrorist organizer and 30 militants, and opened their own investigation.

olijpijc log #4: see phelps swim

2008-08-14T19:21:00.000-07:00

AUGUST 13: not enough cycling!

Days have passed now, how many? Im back to my usual routine now, up at tenish, up til three. I live half in my time and half in olympic time, but that’s just a coincidence. And lets face it: post-midnight is certainly my time.

Phelps took two gold in two hours, was that only yesterday? Tuesday night is Wednesday morning, Wednesday night is Thursday. The cbc loses the signal sometimes, their commercials irritate me to no end. I prefer radio canada in terms of packaging, but they’re always at least 30 minutes in the passed. With all these channels, one would think that live, thoughtfully commentate, cinema-verite style LIVE sportscasts would be abundant. But everything in a package or a rerun already, and the events are happening live. “bold” is quite good for live, sustained coverage, though it for mostly aristocratic sports like sailing (somewhat neat) and equestrian events (not so neat, but i’ll watch it. Olympics!)

Phelps now has the most gold medals. Phelps now has the most medals. See phelps swim. Swim! Phelps, Swim!

Somewhere in the smog today i missed the road time-trial. Yesterday, i was urged by the cbc to watch it live, streaming on their website. Hi, cbc, its nick... if i wanted to watch webcast quality tv, WHY WOULD I HAVE FUCKING CABLE!

I find the radio-canada guy very soothing, the primetime-latenight one, with the manicured beard. He’s very gung-ho and pleasant, and his naivite to sports makes his questions to experts all the more charming. His tossing is very possitive, it makes me think he’s actually 1. interested in and 2. has seen already the packaged clip they’re about to run. Ron mclean in a pro, but ian handsomemanthing seems very uncomfortable in the cbc’s sky-pagoda studios, and seems at ease only when emptily and listlessly thanking an absent presented for their clip he clearly didn’t watch. No wonder the cbc didn’t keep in the olympic bidding, they don’t know what they have anyhow.

If i was the cbc, i would be cutting the live footage like a music video, koyaanisqatsi BAM BAM BAM. Five minutes of diving, ten minutes of cycling, back to diving, toss in some weighlifting. ALL OVER. This is why they don’t let me into the editing truck.

What am i even talking about. Olympics rock, but tv sucks. Who is right?

olijpijc log #3: olijpijc tug of war

2008-08-12T19:20:00.000-07:00

Wrrrrrrrr...

Team mcdonalds? Team visa? Team rbc? The american women’s indoor volleyball ball coach is chinese legend, they’re everywhere!

Olympic sailboarding? Didnt my dad used to sail? Rs:x open women???

Cnn didnt mention georgian war at all. Instead was laughing at the olympics with former events: pistols, live pigeon shooting, tug of war, golf, rugby... are the olympics home only to those sports that are not financially self-sufficient i.e. commercially marketable?

Windsailing athletes are really, really fit. But racing two races in increasingly dense algae. volleyball match btw usa and cuba is packed, and really close,24-24 in the second set.

olijpijc log #2: “i’m not supersticious, but whenever i fly i wear my habs socks”

2008-08-10T21:18:00.000-07:00

August 10. i wake up on the counch again, just in time for live coverage to begin again. The american swimmer forgets to extend her fingers and loses gold by 7/100 of a second. Phelps’ 4x100 freestyle team somehow win gold in the last 10 meters, and he screams like a warrior. Watching it is not cathartic, i am jealous. Nothing in life pleases me or excites me to the extent where i feel the compulsion to scream my enthusiams... is it a lack of them, or an example of the differences between me and an olympic legend. I am as equestrian. 50 year-old Canadian woman wins a fencing match (she won china’s first medal in 1984), canadian men equal old world record in 4x100 freestyle, brent hayden (team visa) pulling out of the 200m butterfly (semis?) after swimming everything at the world’s last year.

Women’s bike race in the rain... canada gets it’s ass kicked in judo... some 17 year-old chinese kid lifts 160 kg above his head. He looks like chinese superman, short but built like and inverted triangle... i hate the air canada commercials, in english the voice is so fey that i am moved to change the channel to french, who’s coverage is far more interesting than cbc’s anyhow.

“i’m not supersticious, but whenever i fly i wear my habs socks”

yesterday’s basketball game was a huge blowout, but atleast i got to watch with 1 billion other people, 500 million in china. Yao ming wasn’t 100%, but he was still on the cover of every chinese newspaper for like the last three days. Why is no one concerned that china is clearly breeding supermen? The west must be doing it too.

Speaking of the cover of the newspaper, chris schwartz is arrested in tiennamen square and deported for staging a five-person die-in in props of tibet. He’s on the cover of le journal de montreal, which kinda paints his as an activist type. I know the truth, and make a note to look into the tibet movement with more suspicion. I know chris schwartz to be a douche, and suddenly suspect the free tibet movement for distracting massive amounts of international attention away from such real crisises as nicaragua, honduras, palestine i.e. america’s imperial attrocities. The mass media is clueless, and manipulative wimps rise to the top. Does it take conviction to go 12,000km to do the easiest, most obvious thing? Couldn’t his thousand dollar plane ticket be better used in this cause otherwise? And what is this hyping: chris schwartz or tibet?

Lots of beach volleyball. I biked to the mall and bough a team canada tshirt, which was cheaper at the cash than labeled. The hottest cop ever checked me out—either as fresh meat or potential criminal. A fit young cop with bright, died blonde hair is hot enough, but stuff her into tight, faded jeans and throw a red cap and sunglasses indoors and you may as well be setting up a porno. With my summery white t shirt and liberty spikes, i look like a real fan, like someone you’d find in a seat at the event, except it seems there are few people there besides the chinese and the press. I realize the seven spikes of lady liberty as equal to the seven tips of a pot leaf, and i wonder if i will be so gung ho about the olympics when i’m fifty if i’m not still a big pothead.

More and more i’m feeling the elitist nature of the events here. Sure, anyone could swim, but to reach the olympic level, the sport as healthy activity or hobby has to become lifestyle, and who outside of the north can really afford that. Even old powers like russia and france are all over the place in the first few days, while african countries (country) has to be given a buy into the beach volleyball. If cycling and equestrian events are sports, why not surfing and skateboarding? The IOC is wack, the olympics are the demonstration of political stability and prosperity domestically. Fucked up countries don’t have it together enough to play water polo.

olijpijc log #1: "lone nut" means "mk ultra"

2008-08-10T08:18:00.000-07:00

slept on the couch for the first time on saturday night, i must have fallen asleep somewhere in between replays of our teenage gymnasts and the live start of the women's road race, which it seems is over when i briefly wake up at six or seven or later. sure i could move to my bed, but there'll be no int'l sports seeping into me as i sleep, and for the next few days that's not sleep at all. there is an extra tv in one of the closets, and i wonder how long it will take me to set it up somewhere, perhaps on the balcony. (i also wonder if the free tibet movement isn't a huge distraction from darfur and palestine.) at ten i am awake just just just in time for the start of the epic usa vs. chine basketball game, with bushes and hintao in attendance. i don't like it when w doesn't wear a tie.

the stadia are mostly empty, the weather is super-humid when it's not raining, and the chinese government gave such a hardtime to tourists worried about protesters that it seems the lot of 'em said "screw this: i'll watch from home" and so they did. there's an article at the guardian.co.uk with a quote from a bemused cabdriver: "(where are all the people?)" except at the hype games and swimming finals (held in the morning, primetime in EST), even gymnastics events were nowhere near capacity.

the usa men's volleyball team beats venezuela a day after their coach's in-laws are stabbed at a tourist tower by a lone nut who jumps to his death.. the father-in-law dies, the coach takes the game off, america barely beats venezuela. "lone nut" generally, but not always, means "mk ultra," right?

canada comes in last in the 4x100 freestyle WMS final.
canada gets whooped by spain in water polo 16-6.
brazil beats mexico's greatest ever beach volleyball team.

and good for kyle shewfelt. feels nice to feel nice.

missed over 4 hrs of the roadrace but caught the last lil bit when cancellara catches the group but is good only for bronze. i guess he's officially my favorite rider, seeing as i've never chanted for vande velde or contador the way i did that morning: "fabianfabianfabianfabian."

that was all day one, after a fireworks display right out of the end of 2001: ASO, unrelenting, mind-expanding.. that little man running slow-mo around the stadium, the gigantic cauldron and BOOOM: the greatest fireworks displays in the history of man.

back to usa vs. china in basketball, usa's led by 11 at the break and by almost 30 in the last quarter. packed crowd is very quiet and bored. cbc commentators are also bored, praising china's athletics programs and saying things like "i don't think... the usa... will be first in the over medal count... for a long long time" when yesterday they led 8-2 over all, tied with china on gold.

here's china's redemption: they're honest about what they do. "it's our tibet. we control it: it's our." america denies its empire, and so are liars And oppressors. china are just oppressors, which seems more honest, seeing some of the people got serve some of the people some of the time.

soon there will be a thirty-minute pothole in olijpijc coverage, as i failed to add nbc when i switched my channels this morning. in between cbc stopping (?!) for the duration of sunday afternoon, and new country canada channel "bold" starting the rowing heats—i will escape to the mall and buy some team canada gear. when i saw it last time i laughed at its awful designs but now it is so, so clear: i need one of those shirts, i've found something about canada i can get behind, almost as if on a 24 month cycle...

sudokart

2008-08-04T22:12:00.000-07:00

sudokart

2008-08-04T22:11:00.000-07:00

sudokart

2008-08-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

wordstuff & sudokart

2008-06-12T12:16:00.001-07:00

"wordstuff" was a column i created and managed while an editor at the link. it was a collection of definitions from words selected from that issue of the newspaper, interested primarily in contemporary urban and internet language. the phonetic definitions were in fake phonetics, and it ran from august 2007 to march 2008 under my direction.

(this week's) wordstuff (cause understanding can be hard) created by nick cabelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

***

sudokart is a visual column/ art instalation, an image of sudoku number-square puzzle(s) superimposed on photographs, or manipulated in a digital manner generally resulting in the puzzle being difficult if not impossible to solve (though that is not necessarily the objective.) it ran most weeks from nov 2007 to march 2008 in the link under my direction.

sudokart created by nick cabelli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License.

2007-10-10T11:08:00.000-07:00