If Your Life Was A Movie, What Would Be Its Soundtrack?

Don't usually do these, but the randomness of it appealed to me (yes, I will mix in some music posts on here once in a while).

So here's how it works...

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For the first question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button TWICE
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...just type it in man!


1. Opening Credits
Pretty In Pink: The Psychedelic Furs

2. Waking Up:
Hello Dave - I Mother Earth

3. First Day at School:
Safe and Sound - Hawksley Workman

4. Falling in Love:
Fool To Cry - Rolling Stones

5. Losing Virginity:
Butterflies and Hurricanes - Muse

6. Fight Song:
In You Soul - Corey Hart

7. Breaking Up:
Things We Said Today - The Beatles

8. Prom:
Action - Sweet

9. Life:
Rebel Girl - Bikini Kill

10. Mental Breakdown:
Scarlet - U2

11. Driving:
Jizzlobber - Faith No More

12. Flashback:
Vertigo - Sarah Slean

13. Getting Back Together:
Perfect - Smashing Pumpkins

14. Wedding:
Brass In Pocket - The Pretenders

15. Birth of Child:
Rebellion (Lies) - Arcade Fire

16. Final Battle:
Haushinka - Green Day

17. Death Scene:
Tom Sawyer - Rush

18. Funeral Song:
Eyesight to the Blind - The Who

19.End Credits
NIB - Black Sabbath

The Twit: Sick As A Dog Edition

Alright, considering it's been over a week since my last true post, I'll bring you up to date, Twitter style, on the subjects that caught my attention during that time, in 140 characters or less (I promise to break that last rule a few times).

• The viewing of the 12 Hours of Sebring was a success, even though the race was surprisingly boring. Too few battles, only 3 cautions (which allowed the field to get very spread out). Father-in-law said he loved it, though, so it was a success in that sense.
  
• Hats off to Curt Schilling, who retired after a remarkable career. I don't care whether or not the bloody sock was a put-on: it worked and added to a magical World Series run in 2004. Another favourite Schilling moment: draping a towel over his head every time Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams pitched in the 1993 World Series, unable to watch. His gut feeling was right, it turns out ("Touch 'em all, Joe!!").
• Lots of back and forth about Montreal Canadiens ownership issues. I'm not convinced Gillett is serious about selling his sports assets. Just a gut feeling, but I think he might be genuine when he says it's simply an evaluation of assets and has no intention selling his stakes in Canadiens, NASCAR and Liverpool FC.
• Great post over at Out of Left Field about the Rapidz suing the Can-Am league and the City of Ottawa. The only thing I'll say in defence of the Zipperheads is that they were hard done by the City for quadrupling stadium fees from $250,000 to $1,000,000 for the upcoming season, making the whole venture unsustainable. It's no secret as a baseball fan and player that the City of Ottawa is waging a war against the sport to squeeze it out of the landscape.
• WBC crown stays with Japan for another four years. For some reason the magic that surrounded the original WBC failed to materialize this time around. Haven't put my finger on the cause, but expect a full WBC post-mortem on these pages in the coming weeks.
  
• Toronto FC starts the season undefeated! Great win in Kansas City and a plucky effort for the draw in Columbus, where 1,500 TFC fans made the trip. When's the last time 1,500 fans of a Canadian professional sports team travelled to the rival city to cheer on their team? Probably last season, again when TFC played in Columbus. Come on soccer less-than-enthusiasts, GET ON THE BUS!
• Dale Mitchell was fired as Canadian Men's National team head coach. Another indicator of the Canadian Soccer Association's incompetence: the man had driven the team into the ground during World Cup qualification despite our most talented team ever taking the pitch. The last game of that effort was in November. The team hasn't played since. It took them four months to determine he hadn't done a good job? Pathetic. Shameful. Ladies and gentlemen, the Canadian Soccer Association.

And there you have it. Did I miss anything (keeping in mind that I will have a full post on both Tiger's comeback and the Austalian GP)?

Life Is A Lemon

Hey, just wanted to drop in and say I haven't renounced my blogging obligations, I'm just recovering from a bout of the flu with a heavy dose of a cold. I'll be back to catch up on all the events of the past week shortly.

If You Like To Laugh...

...then make sure you watch this. I found it while reading the Sports and the City blog. This one's for you, B-Mac and Matty.

Zoom Zoom: 12 Hours To The 12 Hours

After a long, sleepy winter devoid of any racing that fills my needs (sorry NASCAR), automotive excellence returns to my radar tomorrow with the 12 Hours of Sebring. As I wrote earlier, this is the kickoff event to the 2009 American LeMans Series. ALMS is a relative newcomer to the North American sports scene, its inaugural season coming in 1999.

Most people are familiar with the 24 Hours of LeMans, if only because of passing mentions in the media and Steve McQueen's classic movie "Le Mans". The European and American LeMans series are loosely affiliated in that the car classes have similar specs and that the winners of each class at the Petit LeMans, a 10-hour race in Atlanta in October, qualify for the 24-hour race in LeMans, France the following July.

The American series had been on a steady rise since its inaugural season, but some teams have pulled out this season, and the recession is probably to blame. Of note, Penske Racing and Andretti-Green racing, two giants of the racing world, will not be taking part this year. That is somewhat offset by the addition of Rahal-Letterman racing's two-car BMW entry in the GT2 class. There's no denying, though, that losing those two legends stings.

Another recent addition to the circuit, Gil de Ferran's Acura racing team (pic on the right) has claimed the overall pole position with his prototype entry (P1 is the top class in ALMS, followed by P2 and the two GT classes). It is shocking for him to beat the Audi and Peugeot's to the pole, but doesn't necessarily reflect who has the best car on the track. In a 12-hour race, having the fastest lap isn't enough - you have to be fast AND reliable.

My attention is usually focused on the GT classes. GT1 is kind of a wash - it consists exclusively of C6 Corvettes. No drama there. In GT2, however, there are 15 teams driving 8 different types of street cars: five Porsche 911's, three Ferrari 430's, the two aforementioned BMW E92 M3's, a Dodge Viper, a Panoz Esperante, a Ford GT MK7, an Aston Martin Vantage and a GT2-tuned Corvette C6. I don't really have a favourite, but I really want the BMW's to do well. In the prototype class, my French roots have my heartstrings being tugged by Peugeot.

We've made a mini-event of this in my home, with my in-laws coming over to watch it with me. A few firsts of note here; it will be the first time my in-laws spend a large chunk of time in our home, and it will be the first time my father-in-law watches this series (he prefers cars that go in circles and straight lines). So yeah, I'm a little nervous. Hopefully it's a good race. I think he'll really appreciate the strategy that goes into putting a car on track for 12 straight hours and everything that entails. Speed usually does a decent job of following the story lines and focusing on the racing. If the racing turns out to be a snoozer, I'll distract him with food. Hey, it works on me every time!

But seriously, if you find yourself twiddling your thumbs sometime tomorrow afternoon all the way to 10pm, tune in for a couple of minutes to check it out. ALMS might make a fan out of you.

The Pipe Dream Lives On

A few years ago I wrote about the possibility of the Québec Nordiques coming back to the NHL. It eventually turned out that the rumours were but another tease for fans of the long-maligned franchise.

What's old is news again (French): former players Michel Goulet and Kevin Lowe are getting behind an effort to build an NHL-ready arena in Québec. So far the initiative looks a little shaky; there is no franchise available, expansion is a non-starter in this economy (aside: I've quickly grown tired of the expression "in this economy"), and NHL ticket prices are way out of reach for the old Nordiques fanbase.

So far it simply has the appearance of a couple of ex-NHLer's going out on a limb for an old buddy. I would be shocked if anything came of this particular effort. Besides, building an NHL-ready rink hasn't exactly made the Jets rush back to Winnipeg.

Soccer Pimp: Toronto FC - No Ticket To Be Had

So much for those who said Toronto FC's success would be a flash in the pan, an anomaly that would right itself in time: for the third straight season, Toronto FC has sold every ticket of every game.

There's a wonderful write-up in the Globe and Mail by Neil Davidson, which explains how the stadium had a lot to do with the franchise's success. It's caught a lot of people by surprise, including those that brought the team to Toronto:

"I get asked this question all the time. 'Did you ever expect it to be so successful out of the gate?"' says Tom Anselmi, executive vice-president and CEO for Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment. "The answer is 'No, we didn't actually.'

"We believed that soccer was going to succeed in this market, we knew there's lots of soccer fans. The question was would they buy into Major League Soccer? We didn't really know that."

I have to admit that although I thought the team could thrive in the Toronto market, I wasn't expecting this kind of over-the-top success. No one did. The Toronto Lynx had toiled in obscurity for years in the USL, a league just one notch below Major League Soccer. In this respect, Montreal was a better logical fit for an MLS team, considering they had been drawing thousands of fans per game operating in the same league as the Lynx. However, the Toronto bid had the backing of the MLSE behemoth, and a soccer-specific stadium plan to go with it. I bet there was a lot of nail-biting from the MLS and MLSE offices once the franchise was awarded to Toronto.

I was present at that first home game in 2007. It was a chilly April afternoon and I had made the trip with my buddy Daddio, the tickets being a Christmas gift from Laura. I knew the game was sold out, but I didn't quite know what to expect. If anything I expected the typical Toronto crowd from Leafs and Jays games that sit on their hands. Boy was I wrong.

MLSE made the brilliant decision of assigning a section of the stadium to the most hardcore fans, the Red Patch Boys. These fans, many also associated to The Voyageurs, took the bull by the horns and created an atmosphere I had only experienced in European football stadiums and during the NHL playoffs (actually, it was better than the NHL playoffs). Singing, drumming, chanting, throwing streamers onto the field - they made a 1-0 defeat feel like a resounding victory. They showed everyone what an organized group of supporters could create, something North America is not used to (except for college football). BMO field became the story that day, and has continued to offer the best soccer atmosphere in North America. No one even comes close.

The success of Toronto FC is what has me optimistic about soccer's chances in other non-traditional Canadian markets. I'll have more on this in the future, but the tide is turning in this country, and the old guard better be on alert because the cliché, go-to put downs are becoming moot and their worst fears - a soccer renaissance in Canada - are coming true.

Soccer Pimp: Hooray! (I think?)

And so the next frontier in Canadian soccer history has been breached: Vancouver will join MLS in 2011. They will join Toronto FC as the other Canadian entry in what is (in theory) an American soccer league (although with Montréal and Ottawa in the on deck circle, how far can we really be from a true North American league?).

Part of me is thrilled that Canada gets another top level professional soccer club to cheer on, but I can't help but feel that this was Montréal's time to get a franchise. The Impact have already built a soccer-specific stadium and fill it regularly for a team in a lower division than MLS. They recently filled Olympic Stadium with over 55,000 fans for a CONCACAF Champions League match (and would have done it again had the Impact not choked spectacularly down in Mexico!). They have strong ownership in the Saputo brand and are deeply involved in the community. Plus let's get real: Canadian or not, Vancouver is 5,000 kilometers away, making it cheaper for me to see a match in Columbus, or New York, or Boston.

It will potentially mean more MLS soccer on television and increased media coverage, and that's always a good thing. It will heighten the rivalry with Toronto FC, and make the Voyageurs Cup more competitive (now the Impact will have to defeat two MLS teams to represent Canada in the Champions League, not just one). It will pave the way to more Canadian teams joining the league. These are the positives. But I can't shake this feeling that Montreal got jobbed.

Montreal seemed well on it's way to be the next MLS team just a short year ago. It made the shortlist of potential expansion cities and all logic pointed to the awarding of a franchise in La Belle Province. So what happened?

The sequence of events is troubling. At first, all the right things on both sides were being said. "Great city, no brainer, foregone conclusion", etc, etc. Then at a press conference, MLS commissioner Don Garber announced that Montreal had withdrawn its expansion bid. This caught everyone by surprise, including Impact owner Joey Saputo, who denied anything of the sort! A few days went by and the right things were being said again: "Next round of expansion, tickets prices were an issue,"etc. The pricing thing made sense, since the Impact have prided themselves on low ticket prices that make the Impact an ideal family outing, and MLS have minimum ticket prices that could be difficult for Impact fans to stomach. That's fine. But was this the real reason, or was the veil being dropped over our eyes?

It's difficult to tell, but remember that George Gillett (pictured, right), owner of the Montreal Canadiens and Liverpool FC, has made it known he'd love an MLS franchise. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Don Garber is much less comfortable with a French-Italo-Canadian-cheese and Jos Louis maker than with a WASP Texas businessman with much deeper pockets that would immediately link his MLS club to the storied Liverpool FC.

If I'm right, and this is what truly happened, it would be quite unfair to the Saputo family. They have nurtured the soccer culture in Montreal from its embryonic stage to the solid franchise it is today. To have the rug swept from under them by a swaggering cowboy would be sad indeed.

But hey, today is day of celebration for Vancouver and its Whitecaps. Canadian soccer is a winner today. Let's keep this momentum going and hope Vancouver can be as wild about their soccer team as Toronto ended up being.

Zoom Zoom: Another Day, Another Blunder

Fresh off yesterday's post announcing my tepid enthusiasm regarding the upcoming Formula 1 season, Bernie Ecclestone dropped another bomb on racing fans.

It appears Bernie thought that a points system didn't work. It appears he somehow thought that of all the things ailing F1, the way a champion is determined is what deserved his attention. Now, whichever driver wins the most races wins the Championship.

I wonder if it's just a coincidence that a Ferrari driver would have won the Championship had this rule been in effect last year? Having failed in all his attempts to foil Lewis Hamilton and McLaren last season, he will try to re-write the record books going forward. Of note: 13 past champions would not have won the championship if these rules had been in effect.

How are we to measure their accomplishments now? Have we empowered revisionists to claim: "Oh, he wasn't really a Champion, that's from the old era's rules"? Bernie has essentially opened the door to a "win at all costs" mentality that could lead to erratic teams and drivers winning the Championship in a best case scenario. Worst-case scenario? Drivers become dangerous to protect their place at the front of the pack.

Since there are 17 races this season, it is now a first past the poll system where 9 wins guarantees the Championship. And so if we get to round 13, the Italian GP, with a driver winning his 9th race - the season is over. No need to get up on Sunday morning anymore. And do you think teams will compete as hard as they can once a Champion is crowned in mid-season? Fat chance. Teams, including the Champion's team, will protect their assets, save on costs and start preparing for the following season.

One thing sports fans demand is consistency. Consistency in rules is the bedrock on which we can evaluate our current heroes against the annals of history. Is Lewis Hamilton as good as Ayrton Senna? Michael Schumacher or Jackie Stewart? It just got tougher to tell. You can change the rules governing the size of your rear wing and substitute slicks for grooved tires, but once you start messing with the barometer with which we crown our Champions, that's where we get ourselves in trouble.

Zoom Zoom: I Suck at Boycotts

Here I was, all set to boycott F1 this year after Bernie Ecclestone yanked the series out of North America completely, choosing some oil-rich country with lots of money-filled envelopes over the 30-year loyalty of the Canadian GP. That, and the continuing bias towards Ferrari that the organizers have clearly demonstrated over recent years had me completely set on turning my back on this sport, which I love.

To quote Michael Corleone from the Godfather, Part 3: "Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in." My brother Mathieu was the culprit this time around, courtesy of this informative video from Red Bull Racing:



The changes coming into play this season, which become mandatory in 2010, are very intriguing. This article about BMW is an indicator that we're in for an interesting season.