des plus brillants exploits

Pictured: My own podium, which I offered to lend the Canadian Olympic team to save them a lot of trouble.

Let me begin by saying that I think Day 8 of the Vancouver Olympic Games is a perfectly reasonable point at which to begin my coverage. Any earlier would have made me seem over-eager and that, I’m sure you know by now, if you’ve read any other Olympic coverage, would be un-Canadian.

This question of Canadian identity – or as I like to put it, ‘Who are we and what are we doing here?’ – is the first Games-related topic I’d like to discuss.

Who we are is quite easy – we’re 30 million people, most of whom live within two hours of Toronto.

What we are doing, at this particular time, is equally clear – we are attempting to own the podium. Like DUH. That’s because when you own the podium you can, anytime you want, take it and go home. You can imagine the leverage this gives a country.

A few additional thoughts, after just over a week of competition:

1. Rather than abolishing the ‘compulsory dance’ component of the ice dancing competition (which I’m told ice skating officials are considering doing) I think they should, instead, liven it up by permitting the judges to shoot at the skaters’ feet. That is, after all, the tried and true way of compelling people to dance. I suggest each judge should get two surprise shots per routine.

2. “Des plus brillants exploits,” the French slogan of the games, is not a direct translation of “With glowing hearts,” the English slogan (it means “The most brilliant exploits”). Both came, apparently, from a Canadian anthem-based slogan-generator. The ‘slice-of-anthem’ Olympic slogan was also used, you’ll remember, in Salt Lake City (‘The bombs bursting in air’) inspired, no doubt, by Albertville’s stirring, “L’étendard sanglant est levé (The bloody banner is raised!)

3. To avoid embarrassing blowouts like the Canadian womens’ hockey team’s 18-0 defeat of Slovakia, the officials should borrow a few rules from ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.’ At the, I don’t know, let’s say 10-0 mark, the losing team should be allowed to call a friend or ask the audience for help. If they opt for the latter, up to three audience members should be allowed to leap onto the ice and assist the team. I think this would make the playing field more level (although, given the ‘playing field’ is ice, if it’s not level you’re playing on the luge track and a simpler way to improve things would be to get back to the arena).

These are just a few of my thoughts on the Olympics. I am sure I will have more over the final week of competition, and I will be quick to share them with you.

But for now, me and my glowing heart are signing off.

don’t answer me

Recently, it was drawn to my attention that the man in the pen and ink sketch I’ve been seeing on trams and telephone polls here in Prague is, in fact, Alan Parsons. He of the mysterious “project.”

Mysterious to you all, perhaps, but not to me. I happen to know (because it was general knowledge in my junior high school) that Alan Parsons’ project was to get as many hit songs as possible before all the members of the band killed themselves.

Didn’t know that? I’m not surprised. Not everyone was lucky enough to attend a junior high so attuned to the zeitgeist, so plugged in, so hip to the current trends and tendencies as mine was. But that’s the east coast of Canada for you.

That Parsons is still alive (and I’m assuming this to be the case, because the aforementioned pen and ink sketch is advertising an upcoming show) in no way contradicts my premise: the band simply hasn’t reached its quota of hit singles yet.

They also haven’t released an album since 1990, which could help explain the lack of hit singles. My advice to them would be: Buckle down! Back to the drawing board! The world needs more flute and autoharp!

And that’s all I know about the Alan Parson’s Project. Next: Tune in while I explain where “Journey” was going and where “Foreigner” was actually from.

brief encounters

I was on my way to work today, minding what a cousin of mine used to call her “own cursed personal business,” listening to my iPod (wondering if I should paint my Panasonic replacement headphones white so that everyone will KNOW i have an iPod) when I realized I was being addressed, loudly, by someone who had just realized I was listening to music (but who probably didn’t know I was listening on an iPod).

Being polite, I removed my headphones and conversed with him (i.e. listened to him) for the 15 minutes or so our paths converged.

Although we traveled a relatively short distance in actual terms — say, eight blocks? — we traveled far and wide in our conversation. Crazy ex-wives, confused sons,  learning disabilities, pregnant girlfriends, the comparative difficulty of division as opposed to subtraction, you name it, we touched on it. It was like ambulatory psychoanalysis, although he was better qualified as a patient than I was as a doctor (although I have watched most of Season One of “In Treatment,” so I’m not a total neophyte).

At any rate, we eventually reached a point at which our paths diverged, and as I turned to say goodbye (or “I’m afraid our time is up, that will be $150″) he said, “By the way, I know I do this to you all the time, but I never remember – what’s your name?”

change of address

As you can see, I’ve moved. I hope you like the new digs. I’m generally pleased, although I’ve yet to meet any of the neighbors and neighbors really can make or break a place. But you know what they say, “Good firewalls make good neighbors.”

me and [insert clever blogging idea here]

I’m trying to think of a “Julie and Julia” gimmick that could win me more readers but it’s harder than that Julie chick made it look. She started with a cookbook so I figure I should choose another sort of reference material. Here are some possibilities I’ve been mulling over:

Atlas: I could try visiting every country in the atlas (Pros: I’d get to see the world; I’d finally figure out where Togo is. Cons: expensive, time-consuming, would require me to visit Poland, unless I based it on my actual atlas, from which I’ve excised all references to Poland).

The Guinness Book of World Records: I could try to beat all the records. (Pros: would involve a lot of eating. Cons: too many opposing goals — you’d have to be the fattest AND the skinniest, the tallest AND the shortest, the fastest AND the slowest; could also potentially require me to visit Poland).

Medical Dictionary: I could try contracting every disease in a standard medical dictionary. (Pros: could potentially be done from the comfort of my own home. Cons: wouldn’t make for particularly light-hearted reading; could actually kill me).

Phone Book: I could try calling everyone in a given phone book. (Pros: could definitely be done from home; requires no particular skill. Cons: they might start calling back).

FBI’s 10 Most Wanted: I could try to capture the FBI’s 10 most wanted fugitives. Failing that, I could at least hang out with them. (Pros: would make more interesting reading than an account of making boeuf bourguignon. Cons: I would have to learn Spanish, as five of them are Hispanic; none of them is particularly cute – see for yourself, this is the FBI’s actual 10 most wanted list. If they spent as much time looking for fugitives as they did experimenting with fonts, they’d probably whittle it down in no time.)

three days of the condor

Today, I will review the 1975 film Three Days of the Condor, directed by Sydney Pollack and starring Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway.

Available for rental, presumably, for years (in both VHS and later, DVD format I would imagine) it only went on sale at the Palac knih Luxor on Wenceslas Square in Prague recently, and I only bought and watched it yesterday, which explains why this review is 35 years late.

But let’s not get bogged down in recriminations.

The movie is about Robert Redford, whose character’s name escapes me now, but really, who cares? He’s ROBERT REDFORD. He works for the CIA except he doesn’t really, because he’s not involved in any nasty CIA business, he just reads books – apparently in search of plans the CIA has in the past implemented or could potentially implement in future. He claims to read EVERYTHING, but that seems a little nonsensical to me. For example, would he read, Jane Eyre, in case the CIA has in the past or may in future pose as a plain governess who falls in love with a man who keeps his crazy Creole wife locked in the attic? (Although, that is ringing bells…Chile? the ’70s? I must look that up.)

But let’s not get bogged down in plot details. (Because frankly, I’m not sure I really followed it.)

This movie made me nostalgic for the ’70s. In the ’70s, for those of you who weren’t there, or don’t remember, people used to smoke a lot. INDOORS. I think it says a great deal about how our culture has evolved that 35 years later, I find the site of the receptionist smoking away while typing more shocking than any of the (many) shootings in this film.

Of course, that could be because, in the ’70s, when people got shot, they bounced around a bit but they didn’t bleed much. They rolled down stairs and fell out of office chairs, but they did it with minimum gore. I have to say, I liked that about the ’70s.

But to get to back to the story, everyone in Robert Redford’s office gets shot and he’s saved only because he’s gone out to get them lunch. When he returns and discovers the carnage (or what passed for carnage in the ’70s) he realizes he’s in danger and goes on the lam.

There follow a number of plot twists and turns during which the alert viewer will no doubt realize who is betraying whom, and the less alert viewer will have no idea who is betraying whom but will be happy, nonetheless, just watching ROBERT REDFORD.

Max Von Syndow plays a pivotal role as a creepy gun-for-hire from Europe (in the ’70s, all the villains were European).

The opening credits note that the movie was based on the book “Six Days of the Condor,” and I am really curious as to what happened to those other three days.

In short, a film that really must be seen to be properly appreciated (and perhaps seen a couple of times to be properly understood).

troubleshooting

This morning I’ve arrived at work only to discover we have a client-facing pivot table issue!

It’s like reporting for duty on the deck of the enterprise just in time for a Klingon attack.

I’m psyched. I’ve been training for years for this moment. Bring on the client-facing pivot tables, I say! AND LET THEM PREPARE TO DIE!

Before beaming down to the planet of pivots, however, I need to find that one key member of my party – the character you’ve never seen on any previous episode of Star Trek, the one who really should have a big bull’s-eye painted on his forehead because he may be beaming down, but the only way he’ll be beamed back up is in mason jars. Or the distant-future equivalent of mason jars. I suppose the science of food preservation will have progressed by leaps and bounds by then.

Wish me luck!

(And if you’re wondering why I’ve been left to command the Enterprise, it’s because Captain Kirk is busy these days making goo-goo eyes at Gene Simmons.)