Anaheim Ducks retain Todd Marchant; I say "I told you so"

Today, the Anaheim Ducks announced that they have re-signed forward Todd Marchant for two more years. Marchant was one of the team's leaders this past playoff run, essentially playing on a broken foot to help the Ducks beat the San Jose Sharks in the first round and come within one game of knocking off the defending Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings in the second round (no small feat; the Red Wings eventually came within one game of repeating as champs).

Above: Todd Marchant prepares to enter the ice during pre-game warm-ups at the second most recent Anaheim Ducks game I attended, versus the Vancouver Canucks at General Motors Place on December 30, 2007.

I'd hate to toot my own horn, but... Well, scratch that. I love to toot my own horn. For the past two seasons around the National Hockey League's trading deadline, fans have been calling for Marchant to be traded because of how he's occupying precious salary cap space without producing enough offensively.

Through all of that, I remained a big supporter of Marchant. I pointed out that his value lies not on what he puts up on the scoreboard, but rather through locker room leadership. For those who don't know, let me fill you in. In 2007, when the Ducks won the Stanley Cup, he probably showed the best example of leadership I've seen in the sport -- while he was injured, he created T-shirts with inspirational words.

That sounds extremely corny, but he started out with one word on the shirt and added another word after each successful playoff round (for a total of four words). Eventually, the shirts read, "DESTINY is HEART, SACRIFICE and PASSION." Those words had a huge effect on the team, and was significant enough to be eventually engraved on the team's championship rings. I cannot think of another instance where a player has come up with something powerful enough to be immortalized in this way.

In a press call today, even Marchant described his role on the team similar to how I feel about him: "It’s easy to put a value on someone who scores 30 goals, scores 60 points, plays on your power play and all that. Someone like myself, on paper, blocking shots, killing penalties, being a leader in the dressing room day to day doesn’t show up on the scoresheet. Successful teams all have players who fill those voids. I’m thankful that the Anaheim Ducks recognize that."

This reminds me of how Samuel Pahlsson was regarded during his earlier days as a member of the franchise. He didn't put up a lot of offensive numbers, but he was a grinding player who could effectively shut down the opposition's star players. It was only in 2007 when people realized that (to the point of naming him as a big reason why the Ducks won that year). Meanwhile, the Pahlsson supporters grinned and went like, "Neener neener neener -- I told you so!"

So with that in mind...

Neener neener neener. See? I told you so.

Bleeding children to reduce car accidents

In New Zealand, a billboard campaign has started with the goal of preventing deadly accidents on roadways.

The campaign entails of a face of a child which bleeds when it rains. Yes, bleeds.



This is probably one of the creepiest ideas I've heard of, but you can't really deny the fact that it's effective. Sure, you might not get the message right away or even get the message at all, but it's sure scary enough to make you slow down and wonder what the hell you just saw back there (and, if you're M. Night Shyamalan, whether you just came across a brilliant idea for the next big horror film).

When it rains, it pours, yada yada yada

I had the worst night of "sleep" ever. I drank a huge glass of cold milk tea during dinner, which kept me hyper and unable to sleep. So I decided to get a glass of milk to drink. I didn't notice that the milk had expired the day before, so that resulted in a stomach ache, which kept me awake even more. Finally got some shut-eye around 3:30am, but woke up at 5:30am and have been awake since.

So now I'm hyper, tired and enduring the tail end of a stomach ache. All that's left is someone to kick me in the balls and light my nostrils on fire.

Argh.

"Unendable" movies, part 2

First of all, a happy Fourth of July to our American friends to the south.

In a previous entry, I started a list of "unendable" movies. The first two films I listed were Good Bye Lenin! and The Parent Trap. In this entry, I will continue with the next 2 titles on the list.

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3. Speak

Above: Melinda Sordino (played by Kristen Stewart) releases her emotional pain through an art piece consisting of turkey bones, much to the discomfort of her former best friend and her eccentric art teacher.

Melinda: [voiceover] All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. No one really cares what you have to say.
Heather: So here's the plan. We join 5 clubs. One for every day of the week. Not like Latin club, but cool stuff. What do you wanna join? Hey, maybe we can tutor kids at the elementary school. What about your friends from last year? Don't you know Nicole?
Melinda: [voiceover] I wonder how long it would take for anyone to notice if I just stopped talking.

Based on a novel by Laurie Halse Anderson (who is excellent at writing fiction about teenage angst and drama, by the way), this movie tells the story of Melinda Sordino, a high school student who was raped at a house party. In the resulting distress, she phones the police and is quickly blamed by everyone at her school for being a snitch.

Call it sadism, if you must, but there is something beautiful in Melinda's suffering, in both the movie and the novel. In the movie, she is portrayed by Kristen Stewart (known more nowadays for playing Bella in the Twilight movies). The title is an indicator of what Melinda cannot do after the incident; she stops speaking to anyone, save for a phrase here and there, and because of this lack of information, one can't help but be curious about what happened to her.

Despite the suffering and emotional turmoil that Melinda goes through, there is also a surprising amount of sarcastic wit and humor in the writing (something that the book also has). Even when you get the feeling that Melinda isn't trying to be funny, the dry wit in the words and the acting of Kristen Stewart makes everything seem like a joke without making you forget that Melinda is still in anguish. It's a beautiful mix.

As the movie goes along, it becomes clear through her art and her interactions (or even lack thereof) that her suffering is also causing her to grow as a person, which is something that is so difficult to show in any movie, let alone a movie about someone who is giving the world the silent treatment. Even when the movie concludes, it is difficult to let go of Melinda because you can't help but get the feeling that there's so much more we can learn about her.

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4. Juno

Above: Ellen Page as Juno and Michael Cera as Bleeker in Juno.

Juno: You should've gone to China, you know, 'cause I hear they give away babies like free iPods. You know, they pretty much just put them in those t-shirt guns and shoot them out at sporting events.

Now, I know this is a cliche nowadays. Juno this, Juno that. And granted, I'm a little biased towards this movie because a) I was already an Ellen Page fan from her performance in Hard Candy and b) this is a Vancouver-made film. But there is also something in the character of Juno, underneath that smart-ass exterior.

Juno is an utterly unrealistic character. This is not up for debate. While some people in real life do talk like her (ie. myself), real-life teenagers are unlikely to have the vast cultural database that Juno has. It is not that aspect of the character or film that intrigues me. What does intrigue me, however, is what lurks beneath the sarcastic exteriors of Juno, as well as the peachy and overly innocent setting of Dancing Elk, Minnesota.

Juno is a smart-ass. That much is obvious. But the better question is, why is she a smart-ass? At the end of the film, she destroys that persona completely while in the arms of Bleek in the hospital room. She turns from this 14-going-on-41 character to what she actually is -- a teenage girl in a world littered with adult issues. If you look carefully, it is clear that she uses sarcastic wit to cope with her problems, and that it is merely a facade to her real character.

The setting is also interesting. It is not urban or rural or even suburban. It is just your average town in the middle of America. It is not a complicated place; it is a rather simple place with a school and community. There aren't a whole lot of things to it. It almost seems too perfect. In fact, it seems that its outside innocence is similar to Juno's facade -- by maintaining such an innocent-looking place, the town seems to be dealing with troubles it can't handle by acting like a clean perfect community. You can practically wonder if the setting could be an influence for Juno putting up the character facade.

The ending shows just a small glimpse of what could be the real Juno. While the movie ends quite neatly, you almost want to see it continue so we can really get to know her instead of only knowing the fake side of her. With that said, I'm one of those people who thinks that Diablo Cody is a total genius in this particular screenplay. She pulled off an amazing character.

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That's what I have for the first two titles on my unendable movies list. The list will be continued next time, with 2 more on the way.

North Korea airs first beer commercial

In an article published by the Los Angeles Times today, apparently North Korea has aired its first beer commercial.

True to the North Korean government mentality that everything must be bigger than everyone else's version of the same thing (ie. how their arch of triumph in Pyongyang has to be slightly taller than the one in Paris), this beer commercial has to be longer than normal -- the ad lasts for about 3 minutes (comapared to the normal 30 seconds for North American commercials).



According to the ad, "beer relieves stress and improves health and longevity." Don't tell that to people with liver poisoning.

Also in the article, a South Korean Unification Ministry official, "who has been monitoring the North's television for more than two decades, told The Associated Press that it was the first time he had seen any sort of advertisement for food, much less beer." Maybe they're just hoping their people can drink their hunger away.

There is also a mention of Kim Jong Il's love for beer.

I guess if it makes sense for him to test fire missiles wildly if he's drunk. Hopefully he'll remember what happened in the morning.

Giant sewer blobs -- apparently, they exist

Those of us who grew up in the late 1990s may remember the Goosebumps book series by R.L. Stine. There was one title in the series in particular that seemed both amusing and disturbing at the same time -- The Blob That Ate Everyone. It seems laughable that a blob would be scary enough to do such a thing.

Well, here's something that will make you stop laughing.

In a place called Cameron in North Carolina, a camera was going through the sewers (probably to check for blockage or something like that) and discovered a huge blob that isn't only incredibly gross, but also seems to be pulsing and very much alive.

If you're eating spaghetti or noodles, be warned -- this may make you lose your appetite.



What the hell is it, you ask? Well, officially it's an "unknown" organism. All everyone knows for sure is that this organism is a huge blob found in a sewer and is alive.

One possible explanation comes from Dr. Timothy S. Wood from the International Bryozoology Association. He explains:

They are clumps of annelid worms, almost certainly tubificids (Naididae, probably genus Tubifex). Normally these occur in soil and sediment, especially at the bottom and edges of polluted streams. In the photo they have apparently entered a pipeline somehow, and in the absence of soil they are coiling around each other. The contractions you see are the result of a single worm contracting and then stimulating all the others to do the same almost simultaneously, so it looks like a single big muscle contracting.

In other words, they are the sewer version of these worms:



Nevertheless, this is really spine-tingling to look at. Apparently these things can enter households through drains and toilets as well. Here's some food for thought the next time you're taking a crap or a shower. Maybe that's the next big horror blockbuster movie. Who knows.

"Unendable" movies, part 1

First of all, happy Canada Day to fellow Canadians out there. Hopefully your area wasn't as crazy as mine; it was a madhouse out here.

Anyways, for today, I thought I'd touch on something that I call "unendable movies." What are they, you ask? Well, put it this way. Have you ever watched a movie that probably wasn't the greatest movie in the world, but you just didn't want to see it end no matter how good the ending is? Did you wish that the movie could keep going on and on, because you love the characters so much?

That's what I call an "unendable" movie. And for this entry, I'm going to list a few of my favorite unendable movies, in no particular order. Today, I'll touch on 2 of them. In the next entries, I will touch on the other unendable movies on my list, 2 movies at a time.

Here we go...

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1. Good Bye Lenin!

Above: Lenin greets an incredulous Christiane in Good Bye Lenin!.

Ariane: You were in a coma. Eight months ago.
Christiane: Eight months? What happened?
Ariane: Yeah, it was...
Alex: It was in October, in the supermarket. There was this enormous queue and it was really hot and you just passed out.
Christiane: In October?
Alexander: It was a really hot October. At the time.

This gem isn't very well known to most people but for those who are interested in foreign films, this is a treat. The plotline involves East Berlin during the tail end of the Cold War. The main character is Alex and his mother Christiane is a devoted communist. Political backlash is at an all-time high, and Alex finds himself mixed in with the protests calling for an end to communist rule. One day, Christiane spots him among the crowd of protesters and faints from shock.

She slips into a coma and in the meantime, communism collapses in East Germany and the Berlin Wall falls. When she wakes up, the doctors warn Alex and his sister Ariane that Christiane is still extremely fragile and any shock could potentially kill her. Fearing for his mother's health, Alex develops quite an elaborate scheme to hide the fall of communism from her, including making fake newscasts showing that East Germany is still alive and well, and acquiring his mother's favorite East German pickle brand (which is actually regular pickles in a jar with the East German brand's label stuck on it).

The rouses get more and more elaborate and ridiculous as the movie goes along as Alex finds new ways to "explain" some of the slip-ups which occur. (One of the more memorable rouses is when a large Coca-Cola banner is unfurled outside the window; Alex quickly makes a fake newscast reporting that Coca-Cola is discovered to be an East German brand after all, not an American one.)

The continued escalation in desperate attempts to keep East Germany "alive" makes me wish the movie would keep on going forever, because each attempt is better than the previous, while simultaneously putting a human face on this aspect of the Cold War. The ending is quite fitting and well done, but it's an ending that you wish would come later than sooner.

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2. The Parent Trap (1998 version)

Above: Lindsay Lohan as both of the twins, the late Natasha Richardson as the mother and Dennis Quaid as the father in the 1998 version of The Parent Trap.

Annie: That's the lunch bell.
Hallie: [as she wipes away her tears] I'm not so hungry anymore. So if your Mom is my Mom and my Dad is your Dad... and we're both born on October 11th, then you and I are... like... sisters.
Annie: Sisters? Hallie, we're like twins!
Hallie: Oh my god!
Annie: Oh my god!
[they hug]

Before Lindsay Lohan's life started spiralling out of control with the tabloid reporters at full attention, she was quite a talented young actress whose debut performance put an exclamation mark on what could've otherwise been an average screenplay.

In the 1998 remake of the original Parent Trap movie, she takes what seem like skeletal dialogues for the characters of Annie James and Hallie Parker and adds meat and emotion to them. Like most people, I want to pull for Hallie and Annie in their ultimate goal of reuniting their parents, but at the same time I do not want to see the movie come to a conclusion because the acting makes me feel like I actually know the twins in real life. It's not often that this effect can be achieved, but it succeeds here.

For those unfamiliar with the plot, here it is. Annie and Hallie are twins whose parents divorced when they were babies. Annie went with her mother to London and Hallie went with her father to the Wine Country in California, with neither of the twins informed of the existence of other. In a freak coincidence, they meet each other at summer camp in Maine, where they are antagonists despite their physical resemblance.

They go after each other enough to warrant a "time out" in a cabin isolated from the other campers, where they eventually discover their identities as twins. In an attempt to get to know their parents better and to reunite them, they devise a plan to switch places after camp -- sooner or later, the parents will need to switch them back again and consequently be forced to meet each other again, face to face. Things are complicated when it is revealed that the father has met a rather cruel girlfriend and plans to marry her.

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That's what I have for the first two titles on my unendable movies list. The list will be continued next time, with 2 more on the way.