Ok Enough about Hockey
Yes... I know there are no faithful blog readers so this really just wasted bytes but I shall persevere. Maybe my blog is too much hockey and not enough about ideas... - so we shall move on to art appreciation. Yes the hockeyman loves art but has no appreciation for it...
however, inorder to satify both sides- the intellectuals who may troll here really looking for ideas and the piggish men who just troll I give you Earth Water.
The Union of Earth and Water.painted by Pieter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) in 1618... which would have made him 41... close enough to the hockeymans 47 .. What strikes me is the definition of beauty then and now.
The guy with the Trident is supposed to be Neptune and the woman holding the horn of plenty is the Cybele the mother of the gods. She is earth and he is water... The woman is beautiful yet has smaller breasts and more middle than current glamour magazines might define it today. Her legs are not thin and spindly. Her feet are - lets face it--- well grounded .. The men are muscular and hairy and would be attractive god like today. The man in the water with the hair would have women and gay men falling all over him.. Even the babies are shirleytemplish classic beauties ..
It seems the public definiton for women has changed but the men are the same. But what man would not find that female form alluring? Isn' that what would really attract men who are in their forties...Makes you wonder.... Beauty is not fair
Swiss Shock!!!!!!!!! Swiss beat Canada 2-0
I have heard all of the pundits. "Best thing that could happen for Canada", "We always need a wake up call", "This will get us going"
hmmm I wonder if this is a Canadian psyche thing- do other nations feel this way when their team gets beaten by a theoretically weaker team? I know intuitively I feel this way.. no problem- its like getting embarrassed 4-1 by the Swedes in 2002, we will be back.
It is no consolation that both Swiss goals were scored by the pride of Sault Ste. Marie Paul DiPietro.
I think the truth is that Canada failed to skate with the enthusiasm required. We had been playing the control game- and we needed to get the we will outwork them.
Back to my thoughts about good performances and bad. If we could only get an understanding of why this happens maybe civilization would advance at breakneck pace. Is jarome Iginla thinking "why did I play sluggish today?" is enzyme research the answer-- I wonder... I want to have great hockey game tomorrow, Jarome wants to score four against Finland and some scientist wants to do her best thinking on the interaction of various molecules tomorrow and find the cure for alzhiemers.... We all want it... We want our best more often---just how do we get it!!!!
Biorythms
I wonder about biorythms. As a boy I would always look at mine in the newspaper and it would never seem to quite fit my day so eventually I dismissed it as trash. I don't even know if they still publish them.
But then if there is no such thing as a natural rythym to our psyche -why do I feel so bad today?
There would seem to be no reason for it- work is fine, I feel physically fine, I went out and skated on frozen pond last night, the olympics are uplifting etc etc. Yet I feel like its a bad day- outlook is bleak.
This happens in hockey too. I play every Sunday. Everyonce in a while I have a glorious game where I can do nothing wrong and everything is working like it should. I reanalyze the game..what I ate, how I warmed up, sex the night before or not, routine in the morning the whole thing. One time I had to take the other car in for sevicing so before hockey I drove it over to Canadian Tire and rode my bike back then played hockey. Went crazy scored four goals-- the next four weeks in a row I rode my bike before hockey..nada back to my old self.
Why do we have better days or worse days than our circumstances predict?
More to the point..what will roust me of this crazy funk!!!!
Canada We Love You
The hockeyman wants to show blog readers taht while hockey is numero uno-- he likes other sports as well....
Yes I want to be an olympian. Live the dream. Dare to dream. Of course I am way too old for everything but curling and since I have never curled in my life (thank God) my chances are not that good.
But I love the olympics. I love the way Canada binds together -men get excited about watching womens hockey, Quebecers cheer for the spruce grove girl and Albertans cheer for the francophone speed skaters.
I was in america the last couple of days and I watched the olympics and I felt sorry for them. They get such stilted coverage. Way too much drama about Michelle Kwan and not enough about the events themselves. Limited coverage of events americans are not favoured to win. In Canada we get it all. We get the CBC trying to be journalists and reporting on the sport, we get many more hours of coverage in the day and then we can watch the american coverage too.
The american media made it seem like Bode Miller had the downhill gold in his hands and let it slip away. But we Canadians know that on any given day (like Ken Read did so many years ago) its more likely that someone will have an amazing run. The coverage is just more balanced in Canada.
Yes I love the womens hockey team, the mens curling team from newfoundland, becky scott and Sarah Renner for winning silver, I love the idea that people achieve their goals.
Now...we need the two hockey golds again!!!!! Go Canada
The Great One
The hockeyman has to talk about the controversy. For those readers who are not hockeyfans or Canadians- Rick Tocchet the assistant coach of the Phoenix Coyotes is accused of running a major gambling ring. Janet Gretzky wife of the great one is rumoured to have but up to 500K$ in the betting ring.
Two points- first the Great one is the great one and we expect nothing more than for his leadership to bring the hockey gold back to Canada from Turin (Wayne is retired as a player but is executive director of the effort) The hockeyman will still think that he is Great One - great player, great Canadian great person even if its found that he bets.
Second point the beautiful Janet wife of the great one.- Rumoured to have bet 75K on the superbowl last week. I wonder if she is like myself and some of the blog readers who are looking for something but not sure what. She is early forties I think and maybe she just has everything ever dreamed of- trophy husband, trophies, glamour covers, four kids, more money than she will ever need. Maybe there is nothing for her to look forward to ---no mountains to climb no goals to achieve- so she bets to feed the habit. I wonder if she bets to make her day or bets to feel good- the drug of choice for the rich and famous.
There are no perfect people. We all have warts. She probably doesn't want hers in the paper but that happens when you are up on the mountain flashing your riches to the peasants below.
I can never see myself betting 75K$ although I bought some RIM stock last year and its jsut about the same thing only you can live and die with it every day BTW it was up as high as 4 .10 a share US today but settled back for a small gain of 62 cents.
Life gets a little crazy...
On the plane last week I was completely pissed. Not being a small person and a little claustiphobic I always want an aisle seat. I work hard to make sure I am getting one. In Chicago they changed the airplane and all seats got rearranged. The net result with my luck I was stuck in the middle with a large fellow on the aisle and a woman about my age on the window. . Bored to tears... laptop battery dead., my book (Amsterdam by Ian McEwam) ok but not a page turner. I noticed the woman sitting by the window was so bored she was reading the inflight magazine.
This is incredibly bored.
So I ask her where she is coming from (Charlottle NC) and I find out she is from Nova Scotia and lived not far from where I lived when I lived there. I had just been there two weeks before. I started with all of the goofy things about living in the Maritimes. We were off to the races... I had her laughing so hard I thought were were going to get complaints from neighboring passengers. She was fun fun fun. Her stories of adjusting to Calgary made her a gamer even when she is finding the transition hard. The remaining two hours of the flight flew right on by. Some people you just click with.
When we went to get off the plane I wanted to say hey can we do this again but her situation and mine do not permit this- and so it doesn't happen. I wonder if she felt the same way? Society dictates that if we are not to be lovers then we are not to be friends at least in this kind of setting. You think about this. Friends are so hard to come by. In retrospect I should have given her my blog address and seen what she had to say of the experience.
When I was driving home I thought about human interaction and how we miss out on so much life because of societal norms. There is a fellow blogger whose tag line reads that everyone has a story to tell. They do. When they really tell it, it is fun and alive and it does not care how thick or thin they are or how attractive they are, their story can capture us.
So as I watch the superbowl today by myself I will consider that its because I did not engage enough people in my 40 plus years of life...
Seattle has in the bank since I am cheering for Pittsburgh
