Last Day of Paris

This was out last and final day in Paris. 3 days that felt more like 3 weeks.

The Palace of Versailles. Residence of 'The Dolphin' and Marie Antionette before their botched escape attempt followed quickly by their beheading. Interesting sidenote, according to a movie I just watched, the whole "let them eat cake" line she said when she was told the people had no more bread was a rumour started by her enemies. The yards are absolutely huge and need a full day in themselves. But pack lots of food and drink because chocolate bars cost 2.75 E, half a sandwiche costs 8 E, water costs 4 E, and it only goes up from there.
I think all of Paris was at the palace today... literally you have no idea how many people were around. There was no way I was going to wait in the 3 hour line to get in, so I ran back and bought a package that comes with headsets for 5 E more and we skipped to the front of the line. This is just a small example of how smart and awesome I am.
Napoleon Bonaparte. Great war strategist. Fell into the classic blunder of starting a land war in Asia. Founder of the education system we have today. Believed women's only useful purpose was making food and making babies... pretty smart guy...
The 'Hall of Mirrors'. My guess is the place where the Treaty of Versailles was signed. Germany was forced to pay a ridiculous amount of money in war reparations which they paid off in a ridiculously short period of time. In the end though it killed Germany's economy and in the angered and panicked aftermath came Hitler's rise to power.
The far end of the Hall of Mirrors. The throne of one of the Louis'. My guess is the 14th. It's a re-creation in cardboard, however, as the silver pieces were melted down only 2 years (I stand corrected at 3 years) after they were made to finance a war.
The chapel. This picture is probably the worst yet of not doing the place justice. Imagine how much better you look than your driver's license and passport photo combined and that's probably how much better this place looked than this picture.
This is the movie theater that Amelie used to go to in the movie. Danelle is supposed to be in the bottom of this picture but stupid camera people cut out the picture. Stupid camera people also cut out all of our Sacre Coeur pictures which is the place where the guy looks through the telescope and sees her at the bottom of the hill. Really great place and so mad you can't see it.
"My gift is my song... and this one's for you..." AND "The greatest thing in the whole world is to love and be loved in return." Restaurant with the bar at the top left in the shape of a martini glass... pretty cool.

Criticism, Confidence, and George Bush?

So the Oscars presented another opportunity for celebrities, who know next to nothing about the world, to make fun of the president... because possibly they think they could do better... or something? ... maybe?... and true, I'm not the biggest fan of Bush's political career... I'm pretty sure he's trying his hardest and all... but at the same time, the worst of results can happen from the best of intentions. Exempli gratia the LA Kings, Disneyland Europe, or the entire second season of the OC. But at the same time is critisism really helping the situation at all or is it just making everything that much worse?
One point of view tells me that critisism of the President is like a cancer that eats away a people's faith in the country in general. And take it from a pro athlete, there's nothing worse than a lack of confidence. Shannon Sharpe was a nothing and a nobody, according to himself, until he stopped looking at his own, his coaches, and his teammates weaknesses and started praising their strengths... suddenly they started winning Superbowls... Like I wonder if the stock market would be in as bad a shape as it is if people didn't press the panic button and sell everything off?
But at the same time passing the blame onto someone or something else can be an effective tool to keep confidence. Like, if I'm not scoring goals, chances are I have a bad stick that needs to be broken and thrown into the garbage. Or if I'm not playing well then most likely it's because of a bad skate sharpening job. Jimmy Carter was the scapegoat to get rid of in the 80s and the country rebounded with Lake Placid and Ronald Reagan... Bush might be one too and they rebound with confidence in the next president. Let's hope so, because heaven forbid regular people have to stop caring about the next big thing to buy, or next big show to watch and actually work together and participate in the world in order to make it a better place... "Be the change you want to see in the world?" ... Personally I wouldn't even know where to start.

Playoffs

Playoffs is the best time of the year. It's the time when all the old cliches start to mean something again... because there still is "no I in team" and it still does "separate the men from the boys"... and everyone looks themselves in the mirror to ask the question... "Do I have what it takes?" It's when scorers start to hit, and hitters start to score, and everyone blocks shots, and everyone battles through injuries, and everyone does whatever they can, wherever they can to help their team win.
And I know this is incredibly biased but no other sport brings it out as much as hockey. And nothing brings all of this out as much as the NHL. And I couldn't even come close to comparing Holland to any of it. But our mediocre attempts at NHL intesity can still show glimpses of it every now and then. And that's why we play.
First of all, we have a totally non-grueling best of 7 schedule of Friday, Sunday, Friday, Sunday, Friday, Sunday, Wednesday. But maybe the fact that it's not a game every night fight through injuries and fatigue kinda series means everyone is playing at their top level when games do come around.
We lost friday at home for our first home loss of the season. One of our best defensemen got slashed and broke his finger in the process. At the end of the game the other team cheered just a little too loud and our players turned it into a "sort of" bench brawl on the ice. And I say only "sort of" a bench brawl because there were only a few fights, a few punches, and a lot of pushing and yelling. Sunday we came back with a win at Geleen to even the series and get back home ice advantage. This time the fights happened in the stands as Danelle and the whole section got beer thrown on them which resulted in her having front row seats to a "freakin mob fight." Scary times. Happily she's alright. Not a bad crazy weekend to the start playoffs.

Interview

[What follows is, to the best of my knowledge, a recreation of an interview that just happened 5 minutes ago]
"Hey Brendan, how's it going, hope I didn't wake you..."
(Yawning... Rubbing my eyes... Clearing my throat) "No, ahem, of course not, it's 11:00 AM, people have been up for hours by now..."
"Okay Brendan, let's dive right in then.. I already interviewed your linemates together yesterday so I just want to round out the article with a few additions from you... Now, they said that you were mostly brought in as a defensive forward.."
"Ummm..."
"...they had said that a lot of what you do is to play the role of the decoy to distract the other team while Mike and Doug score... But that they realized that you should get some points so Mike had to teach you how to score... would you say that's accurate..?"
"Ahhh..."
"Do you feel your fitting into your role well?... Brendan?"
"Mike and Doug said all that?"
"Is it accurate?"
"Is what accurate?
"Well..ah.. is that how you see your role?" (this guy is obviously no stranger to the question game. One last very forced question..)
"Am I a defensive forward..?"
"Well... because you have a lot less points than them this year." (gotcha... haha ...chalk up another win in the question game...)
"Ya. I actually would like to see myself as a 'well-rounded' player... but Doug and Mike are the two best players on our team."
"So are you a little angry that your points are so much less?"
"No. You just can't feel that way. And also I try not to chisel as much as them. But I know that playing on their line I had something to do with their scoring, and if I've missed getting a few points here and there is just something you really can't worry about."
"Okay Brendan, thanks for your time..."
"Thanks for calling.."
[End Conversation]

Mental note: Never trust linemates NOT to sewer you... (Never trust linemates NOT to throw you under the bus)

Sick... But in a bad way

For the fourth straight day I've woken up feeling the exact same way. Sore throat, extremely tired, extremely weak, headache, and a fever (100.5). I've tried almost everything I can think of to fix it... Sweating it out by playing a hockey game, Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Codeine, Vicks Vaporub, Tea with honey, hot water and lemon, gargle salt water 4 times a day, cough drops, sprite, orange juice, soup with extra garlic, vitamins, coldfx, hot showers, cold wash cloths, sleep... I then missed a game because of this, which is, I guess, unheard of because North Americans are supposed to tough it out through anything... especially tough it out through 'just a small case of the sniffles.' Dutch people have a thing against antibiotics and use it only as a very last resort. As kids they are sick quite a bit, but they pride themselves in not being sick when they are older because they have developed such a strong immune system. Moral of the story is that antibiotics really aren't going to play a factor here. So... Just in case... does somebody I don't normally talk to have a miracle cure that I'm missing...?

Hard work never hurt nobody...

... but I'd rather be lucky.
Longshot, maybe my favorite X-men character of the original series, had a random super power in that in everything he did he was extremely incredibly lucky. Ask yourself, honestly, if there really is anything better than luck? They martyred St. Augustine when he said the Romans should do away with all their gods and just worship the female god "providence", but even in satire I think he had a point... ya it helps in Las Vegas for sure... but it helps that much more with life in general. Luck, as in sometimes when my lane in traffic is kicking the @#$% out of the other lanes of traffic, or at the airport when 10 minutes before my flight the airline worker brings me out of the 2-hour hate-my-life-I-just-wasted-$600-on-a-flight line and puts me into the 2 minute stupid-idiot-slept-in-and-now-you're-late-get-out-of-jail-free-card line. However, today I did not get that feeling when nice little old lady in front of me at the grocery store starts pulling out a bag of pennies to pay for her 9 Euro and 57 Eurocent bag of potatoes, can of peas, bag of radishes combination.

Top 5 Worst Drills of All Time

This next verse is dedicated to the people in my life with nothing better to do after hockey than coach. With the exception of ex-NHLers, actually good coaches, and possibly me if I ever end up coaching... So question. How can an entire season with countless hours of practice, tonnes of work put in, lots of times watching Dumb and Dumber or going on Cruise Control (Tom Cruise movies) on road trips, blood, sweat, and tears leave you with an unimproved, unintense, and uninspired team?
Alan Iverson knows how...
5) 3 on 0's... there's nothing worse than doing something, or a combination of somethings, that you will never ever EVER see in a game. Especially a drill where you don't have to try.. don't have to go full speed.. don't have to think.. but do end up making a thousand passes/drop passes near the goalie all in hopes of a back door wide open net for the trailer. I can't say enough about how much I hate this drill... rivals only my hatred for the uncoordinated traffic lights that are South East Regina... It rattles me having to think about it to be honest. So congratulations coach and worst city planner of all time... You just wasted 15 minutes of my life and I have gone absolutely nowhere. Why don't you go off the ice now and have your players max out on bench and squats right, especially if you're right in the middle of season and have a game in 2 days...
4) 2 on 0's... This is just a continuation of #5 with all of the best parts of #5 taken out. Cause 2 on 0's are usually the drills where the coach tells you to do something stupid... like you get one pass across the blue and then you have to shoot.. or stay outside the dots the whole way down and get an outside shot (which is slightly better but only marginally so). Thus the only actual benefit from this drill (learning how to be automatic on 2 on 0's for the 0.001 times you might see it in a game) has now been taken away from you. It's like a person giving you the guitar and then telling you you can only play 3 chords: C,F, and G... or that you can only play songs that have already been made, you just play them again, only slightly different. Thus, sadly, you've already been cornered into the life of a multi-millionaire, platinum selling pop-music artist... when all you really wanted to be was a counter-culture unknown, playing in smoke-filled bars for $100 a gig in between your job as a waiter and a gas-pumper at the local Petrol.
3) The full ice horseshoe warmup drill... The go-to warm up drill for almost any coach in any level. The most mindnumbing drill in the world. Is a death trap to any player waiting in line behind the net if players miss high wide side on their shots. Is another opportunity to practice not scoring. And is yet again a chance to do things in practice that you will never do in a game. You have 20 players and a full ice surface... use your imagination... ask yourself... what would Brian Boitano do?
2) "Flow" drills or any rush drill where you don't play the rebound... I don't know how many times I see players not stop at the net to play the rebound in a game and miss an easy rebound goal... all because in practice they're used to taking a shot, turning into the corner, and going back to the back of the line to keep the "flow" of these "flow" drills going... Lest we forget that a garbage goal, third rebound chance from behind the net counts just the same as a pretty give and go backdoor pretty goal. "Flow" should be reserved only in reference to very cool and very awesome hockey hair or jokes about golf from Happy Gilmore. Remember... "Scouts don't ask how... they ask how many."
1) The infamous Peewee behind the net intimidation drill... to prove that you're not afraid of hitting and getting hit. You put a puck behind the net, line up a player on each circle, blow the whistle and they pretty much go full speed at each other to see who wins the puck, and who's afraid... Most of the time run by coaches scared of this drill when they were a kid. It'd be like me incorporating a fighting drill in the middle of practice. The drill is setup similar conditions to the infamous "bag skate" where the players have to skate until a few players start to throw up, except this drill is done until a few players separate or dislocate their shoulders. And I say a few because I can definitely remember a few times when we kept on with the drill even after we saw one or two players skate off to the dressing room.

Paris day 3: The Pantheon, Notre Dame, Ministry of Justice, and the Arc de Triomphe

Today was Danelle's turn for pictures. I had 357 pictures and 5 videos on my camera from Europe and the Louvre and was left with a maxed out, batteried out, camera. Paris is one of those places where everywhere you look there is some amazing building that you're like, "wow, what was that!? And then find out that it actually was something sweet all along." We passed Luxembourg Palace, Luxembourg Park, the University of Paris, the Law School of Paris, a couple of nice fountains... etc. etc.
And so the Pantheon... The Pantheon wasn't even on my radar and was definitely lowest on my list of things to go see downtown Paris. But it was absolutely amazing!! 2nd biggest surprise of the day...

Vertigo effect - the dome makes you small, dizzy and lightheaded, just the effect you would expect seeing the gods at the original Pantheon in Greece. There was an official shusher in this building to demand respect. If your voice got too loud it was surely to be followed by a great shush by the woman... and possibly a distasteful stare if she could see you.

All the great French people since the revolution are buried here...

Voltaire - Il vaut mieux hasarder de sauver le coupable que de comdamner un innocent.

"It is better to save the guilty than to condemn the innocent."

Rousseau - L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers.

"Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains."

Emile Zola - author of "j'acuse" where he stood up to the highest levels of government when they condemned an innocent man because he was a Jew... known as the Dreyfus affair.

"...but I affirm, with intense conviction, the Truth is on the march and nothing will stop it."
Victor Hugo - "An invasion of an army can be resisted, but not an invasion of ideas."

Almost every major thing in Paris is alongside the river... a lot of them are actually on an island right in the middle of it.

The girl getting our tickets here didn't believe that Danelle was younger than 25, and with no id she had to pay full fare. A double affront. But I realized that every person in line while we were waiting had a hard time with this girl, which made the line 3 times as long as it probably had to be. And always resulted in some kind of raised voices. It's like she was looking for it...

I still can't believe that this is the actual cross that Marie Antoinette wore around her neck while in prison.

Here is me showing off the jacket around the waist to full effect. It's so not embarrassing and totally looks like a cape... I say.

St Michel... the last of the buildings in the same complex along with the ministry of justice and the conciergerie. Not a bad way to solidify power. The throne, the church, and the jail all within 30 feet of each other. The guillotine right down the road.

Up until the revolution the front of St Marie's housed the cross and the crown of Christ. They cost far more to obtain than this building did to make. And that's hard to believe looking at the building.

The back of the Notre Dame. With it you can kind of see how this church is actually a succession of churches built on one another... dating back a pagan church even before christ.

Part of me thinks that it is a waste of money to build such a magnificent structure when it could feed the hungry, take care of widows and orphans, and shelter and cloth the poor, etc. Possibly why the same dedication to the arts is overlooked in North America... I'm not sure. The church said that it is a way to show beauty, which is one of the ways that a person comes to God. Not according to European statisticians though...

I couldn't stop laughing... Danelle was in shock... when this French clown pulled her out of the crowd to help him out in his act. I think he made fun of us stupid Americans in French most of the time. And ya, I should know French... but not really fast slang French that he was talking... I only figured because he made sure Danelle couldn't speak French, kept saying the word American a lot, and everyone kept laughing just after anything he said...

This is my birthday... Bastille day... the day they stormed the Bastille and their national independence day. My brother's birthday is surprisingly Quebec's holiday along the same lines... minus the total independence thing...

This is the 1st most surprising thing of the day... the fact that you can climb up it and get a view of the whole city. Only around 400 steps or so... Underneath is the "grave to the unknown soldier", and the fact that it could be any person giving their life for their country, and not some "important" person I think is the power of a democratic nation.

So many more pictures are on facebook... just so you know.

Paris Day 2: The Louvre

Anyone who has been to the Louvre should realize that there is no easy way to show the whole thing. It's massive, it covers all of history and every great empire, and every part of it is worth a day in itself. But, I was told going into a gallery if you try to take the whole thing in you'll be too overloaded. Try to find one piece that really sticks out at you and take it in. So I decided to show the parts that struck me the most.

This depicts the survivors of the shipwreck Medusa. Of the 200 or so survivors not more than 10 survived due to starvation and murder. These are the murderers that survived... and look for salvation from the ship on the horizon... but do they deserve it?

Of all the artists in the Louvre trying to copy the masterpieces this one was far and away the best.

The three women are Mary Magdalene, Mary mother of Jesus, and a servant girl who is taking the crown of thorns off of Jesus' head. The guy on the right is taking part in the scene through prayer. One of the tougher parts of theology is trying to figure out how God can know the future even though it hasn't happened. One answer is that God is outside of time (an element he created and through science we realize can be relative) and sees things happening all at the same time. This priest believes that his prayers for God to comfort these women can directly affect their lives. Interesting to say the least.

The room of Apollo... the Sun God.


And in the room the 140 Carat Regent Diamond.

The founding of Rome on rape and bloodshed. Romulus and his men kidnapped the daughters of the Sabines because they had no wives. The Sabines attacked. Here is Titus, leader of Sabines facing off against Romulus the founder of Rome. Caught in the middle is the wife of Romulus and her children... yet she is also the daughter of Titus. Life is beautiful but complicated...

The two different sides of David slaying Goliath. Placed back to back in the middle of the hallway.

OZYMANDIAS
I met a traveller from an antique landWho said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert. Near them on the sand,Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frownAnd wrinkled lip and sneer of cold commandTell that its sculptor well those passions readWhich yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.And on the pedestal these words appear:"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"Nothing beside remains: round the decayOf that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,The lone and level sands stretch far away

Most every culture in history seems to worship the bull as a god of fertility and plenty. Baal. If you think that America escaped free of all this then you've obviously never seen the "golden" bull in the middle of Wall Street.

Nike, the goddess of victory. Wings outspread as she steps down from her ship onto the land. The wind the only thing keeping her garments pinned to her body.

And her hand raised in some sort of victory salute to the opposing army...

I realize how cheezy this picture probably is... and probably how historically inacurate... but I still like it.

Constantine... according to my history teacher at Harvard the second, with a strong argument for the first most influential person in the Western Civilization.

I'm missing so much it's actually kinda sad that you don't get to see it. The big ones... The Book of the Dead, The Mona Lisa, The Venus de Milo, The Turkish Bath, The Wedding Feast at Cana, Busts of Alexander, Marcus Aurelius, Caesar and the other Roman Emperors... and the list goes on and on...

Paris Day 1

Bored on the train to Paris...