It’s Canada Day today and the weather has been awful of late. The last few weeks we’ve been getting weather of 25-30 degrees only for the last four days to produce non-stop rain. Today, it didn’t really rain but it was overcast enough to threaten rain that I postponed our trip to Ontario Place water park for the morning, afternoon and evening. It was meant to be a day on water slide followed by a big firework display in the evening but instead we’ll go on Saturday, but without the firework display, when the sun is expected to be back out. MORE»

You know the profound meaning of “Wax on, wax off”

You rented VHS tapes, not DVDs.

You remember when it was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons.

You had a ghettoblaster

The WWE was the WWF and you had all the action Figures

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“In 1972 a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn’t commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team.”

To my amazement and excitement I just learned tonight that the A-Team is going to the big-screen with a movie due for release on 11 June 2010. This is superb news … MORE»

1. Thunder Road
2. The River
3. Jungleland
4. Atlantic City
5. Bobby Jean

“The Edge… there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over. The others — the living — are those who pushed their control as far as they felt they could handle it, and then pulled back, or slowed down, or did whatever they had to when it came time to choose between Now and Later.

But the edge is still Out there. Or maybe it’s In.”

— Hunter S. Thompson

From an article I wrote on prbsports.com

So yesterday the summer of 2009 officially began. At least for me that is how it works. I have always represented the F.A. Cup final as the opening of summer and the end of the English football season. I am sure I am wrong but I don’t remember rain falling on an F.A. Cup Final and you always associate it with a sunny day and a fine Wembley Pitch. This year was no different, in fact at one point on the T.V. they showed a thermometer beside the pitch reading 42°C — unheard of in British football, but no big shock on cup final day.

I don’t always get to see the F.A. Cup final on T.V. but I only ever miss it in the event that I am going to a live sporting event of some kind which usually turns out to be the North West 200 motorbike race. This year the NW200 fell a few weeks before the Cup Final so if I had been back in Northern Ireland I would have been watching the 6-hour build up before sparking up the BBQ, opening a few cold beers and getting ready for Britain’s version of the Superbowl.

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From an article I wrote on prbsports.com

I am currently reading a book by the writer Nick Hornby called Fever Pitch. It is probably the best Football book I have ever read and the style in which all footballing books should be written. I am into the final few pages of it now and am not looking forward to it coming to an end.

The book is basically an autobiography of Hornby’s life based around his memories of Arsenal games — the team is supports to an obsessive level — through the late-sixties, seventies and eighties all the way to Arsenal’s dramatic league win over Liverpool in May ‘89 thanks to Michael Thomas. Even as a Liverpool fan I find the book a brilliant read and any football fan will relate to the vast majority of stories within the book. Even non-fans of the game will gain a greater respect of what kind of animal the footballing fan is. The great thing about the book though is that it is more about the observing of the game rather than just talking about various matches. It is the kind of style you get now-a-days from various sports bloggers when they write about their own personal viewing of games rather than objective reports which you get in mainstream media. No doubt Hornby was ahead of his time. Go buy it.

As the cover says: In America, it is soccer. But in Great Britain, it is the real football. No pads, no prayers, no prisoners. And that is before the players even take the field.

One of the best sections of the book is from the chapter ‘No Apology Necessary’ were Hornby talks about what makes football great and what separates the game from nearly every other sport. The following is an extract from that section…

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1. Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen
2. Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan
3. Hotel California by Eagles
4. Won’t Get Fooled Again by The Who
5. Bohenium Rhapsody by Queen

Coming Close: Rainy Night in Soho by The Pogues, The Boxer by Simon and Garfunkle, Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison, Good Vibrations by The Beach Boys and In My Life by The Beatles.

1. Liverpool v Milan, Champions League Final 2005
2. Irish Cup Final ‘93 - All 3 games.
3. Northern Ireland 1 - 0 England, 7 Sept. ‘05
4. 2001 F.A. Cup FInal, Michael Owen 2, Arsenal 1
5. Italy winning the World Cup in 2006

Everyone celebrates a little more when they turn 18, 21, 30, 40, 50 etc. They are seen as milestone moments, but when you think about it they come along at least every 10-years so why when something even more rare comes along do we not celebrate it at all? Probably because it is too hard to keep count to 10,000 but that is the number I missed out on celebrating by just five days. Yep, just five days ago on Wednesday 13 May 2009 I turned 10,000 days old. Pretty dam big huh and I missed out on a big time party, I even spent the event in a shopping centre buying a ‘normal birthday’ present for someone else!!

To get an idea of the significance of this I won’t celebrate my 20,000 days old birthday until 28 September 2036. If the skeptics have their way, by then the world will have ended long ago either through Nuclear war, global warming, financial meltdown, alien invasion, metior strike or all of the above.

So here is a belated 10,000 days old to me five days to late. Maybe I’ll open a beer to that tonight.

That has been the make-up of things the last month or so. It might sound like one hell of a boring routine but believe me it isn’t and the reason it isn’t is one of the elements in that list — Playoff Hockey. I have been addicted to playoff hockey since the first puck dropped in early April. Here we are in early-mid May and we’re only halfway through the competition. The first round is over, the conference semi-final’s are 80% complete and the tournament is set to run until early-June. Fantastic.

I am a Philadelphia Flyers fan in the N.H.L. The reason why is a simple story but one I am sure I have told many times before, but the bare bones of the story is that they were the first team I seen on the TV one day circa 1999. The Flyers went out in the first round however to their state rivals Pittsburgh Penguins and so I have hopped bandwagons with drastic speed and landed on the one driven by Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals. Alex Ovechkin is the games best player, he scores goals, he throws hits and he has a wonderful personality in front of the camera. It is hard not to like him and so I’ve been spending every other night plonked in front of the TV cheering on the Capitals.

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Everyone else is talking about it so I may as well throw my two cents into the ring before I become infected myself. Yes Swine Flu is upon us and it is ready to strike a home near your. At least that is what the media would have you believe while the reality right now is that a fraction of a percent of the population of Mexico has been struck down and a small percentage of them have died from it. In America the percentages are eve n less, yet we are being lead to believe we are one step away from a severe outbreak on the levels not seen since that movie were the whole town gets infected by monkey’s I think it is, and are quarantined inside the town.

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Welcome to my day of sport in Toronto presented by myself. From cycling, to hockey (playoff hockey), to baseball, to football, to the F1, this is a day were I will use twitter and link it up with coveritlive as I run around the city watching lots of sports in bars, on my TV at home and potentially in person. It’s a bit of an experiment and we will see how it goes. There is no set schedule for my whereabouts, just a tentative one that could change at any given time, especially once the beer starts to flow. What is scheduled is the various sporting events. Follow the link below for what all is going on in Toronto and all over the world for that matter.

Well, my first Easter in Canada now. It also marks the start of my cycling season. Having joined up to a local club last weekend the weather finally got good enough at a point when I had free time to coincide and I was able to sling my leg over the saddle and finally put the first miles of 2009 in. I headed out and rode the suburban roads of Mississauga and did about 33 miles or 53 kilometres before heading back. Felt pretty good actually and won’t be long before I’m up over 50 miles and further. MORE»

With mum and dad over visiting it has been a week of eating out. I’m not sure how my body is reacting to eating on the town and washing it down with beers but I sure as hell am not complaining. It’s been a lot of fun. Each night we’ve been on the town and tonight we’re heading up the CN Tower for a feed in the 360 revolving restaurant. Tomorrow night is the biggie though – the Leafs/Flyers game. I’ll have my Flyers top on and am looking forward to that one. It’ll be mum and dad’s first taste of NHL action. Wednesday will also be my last day of work for the week as I take Thursday and Friday off. I can’t wait for that.

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