that ring of confidence

It's Euro 2008 today

While I'm at work Euro 2008 is going to be winding up as the final is played between Germany and Spain at 11 am Pacific Standard Time today.  It's German versus Spain, and hopefully it'll be a fine ending to a fine tournament.  A tournament that for the most part I did not get to see, because it was held largely during the afternoon when I'm working.

Ah well, I'll try to catch updates online if it's not busy.  For my blog posts on the Euros check out my football (soccer) blog The Vancouver Gunner [av].  Likely it'll be another slow Sunday, what with the weather being so very beautiful.  It's like Okanagan level hot outside even this early in the morning, so I hope the air-conditioning holds out all day otherwise I'm going to be drowning in my own sweat. 

Holy shit, Rick Webber & Pat Kennedy were once young

I don't even know if they're still on television in Kelowna or not, but check out this CHBC coverage of the 1994 Canucks riot.  Pat Kennedy and Rick Webber were so damn young, and check out taht facial hair, it's pure Anchorman [wp].

The new blog // The Vancouver Gunner

IMG_0386.jpg
Originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

I mentioned a few days ago that I was working on a new blog, and finally it's up and running and I'm able to announce what's going on.  I've started a blog about the English football team Arsenal, and the blog is called The Vancouver Gunner [tvg] and can be found at www.arsenalvancouver.com as of today.  There is already a few posts up so feel free to go and take a look.

Now if you're not really interested in football I would suggest that this site might not be your cup of tea.  Granted I'm going to make it entertaining, and I'm going to try to tie it into life in Vancouver but at the end of the day it is about a sports team on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. 

Design-wise I'm quite happy with it.  It's sort of like the evil twin of www.jefferysimpson.com, going for black with white text which is the goatee of mirror universe blogs.  The one thing I'm going to have to get used to is not having much in the way of my own photographs to use with posts, since after awhile the dozen or so pictures I took at the  Emirates Stadium would get old.

Wenger interview from the Guardian's website

Chac chan co ngay minh se gap duoc ong ay
Originally uploaded by phunglan2011.

There's a really good interview with Arsene Wenger on The Guardian's website right now [fg]. Wenger's the brilliant manager of Arsenal, and probably one of the best working in football right now, if not the best. He's recently signed a new contract at the club, and with a somewhat unsavory Soviet Block Billionaire poking around and gobbling up shares in the club, he seems to be speaking for a lot of people who are worried for the fate of the English game.

Key quote:

Yes, and it's one of the things I'm most proud of. Arsenal has a tradition that I like to respect, but Arsenal also has moral qualities for which I feel responsible and which I defend in my team. Everyone has their values that they pass down to the generations that follow. That's why, when there was the Ashley Cole affair, I wanted someone at Chelsea to explain what their values were. I understand completely that they wanted to nick a player because he is one of the best. But what are their values?

Beckham´s last night in town

SPAIN SOCCER CUP
Originally uploaded by RuudKin.

Arsenal were not home in London when we where there, the English football season ending a few weeks before the Spanish, their last game was in Portsmouth the Sunday before we left for Paris so since it was sold out I did not make the trip south to see them play. Disapointed I had pretty much given up all hope for seeing a European football match while I was here, but things fell into place yesterday.

Real Madrid were at home to Deportivo and on the off chance there were still tickets for the game, the last home game of Madrid´s season, Lydia and I went to the stadium in the early afternoon to have a look around. There were tickets and after about thirty minutes in line we had spent €50 each on tickets to see Beckham´s last game in Madrid.

At the end of the season the former England captain is off to the LA Galaxy, and though I´ll be seeing him when he swings through Vancouver when the Whitecaps play the Galaxy in a friendly match, it was nice to see him playing at the highest level. Also, if you ever do get a chance to see a game in Spain take it. Though I´m not nearly as big of a Real Madrid fan as I am an Arsenal supporter, it was incredible. Canucks home games have nothing on it, especially given the stadium holds nearly 100,000 people.

Today we went to an out door market that was jammed with people, and then the Prado museum which was also jammed with people but not as many. Now we´re both doing a bit of blogging before tapas.

* Note, it turns out that Beckham has one more home game before leaving Real Madrid, though it´s not for sure he will play it seems instead that we saw his second last night in town.

The Whitecaps and packing

My second Whitecaps game of my season tickets was tonight, and since I'm going to be missing two games while in Europe I was anxious to go.  The tough part was that the game started at seven, which was the exact same time my shift at work ended.  Leo had given his shift to Louisa who always has to leave by 4:20 on Saturdays for church so there was only me to close.  I hurried and made it out right at seven, but had to back track a bit to get Lydia who was at a friend's house.

We arrived at Swangard Stadium, which is in Burnaby, about three or four minutes into the second half and went right to our seats.  The stadium was packed, which was quite the change from last week where because of the Canucks' playoff game it was mostly empty.  Though I do think it was children's night or something, because there was an awfully large amount of children.

The game ended in a 2-2 draw, and now I'm blogging about it.  Which tells you how badly I must be trying to procrastinate if I'm blogging about a tie game.  I'm supposed to pack now for San Fransisco but I'm just stalling.  I've got to be at my parents' apartment by 5:30 am tomorrow so we can share a ride to the airport, so clearly I should already be in bed.

Oh I'm going to be tuckered tomorrow.

I'm going to see David Beckham

Taken from Metroblogging Vancouver [mbv]:

Beckham
Originally uploaded by deesarus.

The most famous name in soccer ball, otherwise known as football, will be coming to Vancouver in October. Thank the Vancouver Whitecaps for the media circus that will land in Vancouver like a dark tornado in Vancouver because by setting up an October third friendly match with the Los Angeles Galaxy who are the David Beckham's new team. Details are on the Whitecaps official site [wcfc].

The game is being played at BC Place Stadium, to accommodate the fact that this will sell more tickets than the usual Whitecaps versus Seattle Sounders match, and tickets are included in Whitecaps season ticket packages. Thankfully that includes me. Want to get in on David Beckham and his Golden Balls arriving in Vancouver? Visit the Whitecaps site and take a look.

From the official site:

"We are thrilled to bring such a highly anticipated event to Vancouver this year," said Lenarduzzi. "The Galaxy boasts a star-studded roster which includes David Beckham - one of the most recognizable celebrities in the world. The match against the Galaxy will be the culmination of an amazing year of soccer in British Columbia, including the Whitecaps defence of both the men's and women's USL titles, and the FIFA U-20 World Cup in host cities Burnaby and Victoria."

A Sunday avoiding the score

Arsenal and Man United : : Corner-kick
Originally uploaded by kjee17.

Currently I've got the FA Cup match between Arsenal and Bolton recorded at home.  I'm at work in an empty store watching the traffic on Robson trying to deal with the fact that none of the traffic lights are working [mbv].  Since I'm taping the game I'm trying really hard to avoid going to a few of my favorite websites, because they'll have the results of the game posted.

It's a tricky wicket at they say.

For whatever reason I showed up at work twenty minutes early, so even though I'm only about 45 minutes into my shift I've been here over an hour.  This is problematic because I'm going out of my head due to boredom.  Hopefully a flood of people enter the store and want to buy things from me, because if I'm just going to be sitting on this stool watching cars not quite crash for the next six hours I'm never going to avoid checking out the score.

2 -1 to the Arsenal

A Farewell to Highbury from Thierry Henry
Originally uploaded by atomicShed.

From the Guardian's Minute-by-minute match report for Arsenal versus Manchester United [fg]:

90 mins Four minutes of added-time are signalled for.

90+2 mins No chances of any note in injury-time as the game appears to be petering out for a draw.

90+3 mins GOAL HENRY: Arsenal 2 - 1 Manchester United Petering out, indeed. What a finish to the game! Eboué bursts down the right flank and beats Evra to deliver a curling cross. Ferdinand is caught out, missing his header: Henry makes no mistake with his. Firm and high past Van der Sar's right hand from 12 yards out, his header must surely have won the game.

A last minute goal and Arsenal are back in the title race, though the odds are still of the longish variety, Manchester United lost as did Chelsea yesterday.  This could shape up to be one of the most exciting ends to the Premiership season in years and so I phoned in to get Fox SportsWorld added to my cable.  I thought I had it when I first subscribed, but Shaw never bothered to add it for me, so I had to call in again.

Lydia, myself and my family are trying to plan a trip to Europe sometime this spring.  I'm trying to organize it around seeing at least one Arsenal game.  I want to see them in person while Henry is still playing for them, having missed seeing them at Highbury.  The timing of the end of the football season though is sort of near the end of winter and thus not prime tourism weather time so it's being met with some resistance. 

The new jogging shoes

Despite the fact that I'm low on funds and have started to cook as a cost saving measure I bought a new pair of Nike shoes yesterday. The shoes, in a classic geeky Kelly move, link up with my iPod. The iPod link allows my iPod nano to track the distance, calories and speed of my jogging and walking. I wore them today to walk to work and just now finished fifteen minutes on a treadmill in the apartment complex's workout room.

The device is good, and it allows me to track my progress on a special Nike website. Plus it allows me to set goals for myself which then it rewards me for achieving by releasing tiny food pellets from a chute that goes into my cage.

No wait, that part is bullshit. Really though it's a personal goal tracking thing. As I try to get in better shape and lose the pounds I figured it might be handy. I will never like jogging but if I can turn it into some sort of geeky statistical exercise then I might start finding it bearable.

First off I set a goal for myself to burn 900 calories in the next 28 days. That's going to prove to be too easy since just fifteen minutes on the treadmill at a moderately high speed (running speed for me) burnt about 150 calories. So if I jog once every two days I'll be through the 900 calories in no time.

That's the real goal, to jog for at least half an hour every two days. If I do that and some weights for another half an hour I should start getting into shape. Then people will love me once again. Except for Lydia, she already loves me but I think she needs better glasses/contacts.

Maybe all I need is a shot in the arm

It's slow at work.  I'm pulling another shift at the Seymour and Robson store and Sunday apparently is not the day that people stream in here to buy cellular telephones.  At least I'm all alone so I can blog and surf the internet to pass the time, otherwise I think I'd probably go bananas.  I've got my Altec Lansing iPod speaker set, my iPod and the tunes to pass the time. 

Now if only I could fix these damn headphones.  They're now only working from the left ear.  This wouldn't be a problem if they were the cheap iPod headphones but they're very expensive $200 in-ear phones.  Hopefully I can fix them, because they do work if I jiggle the wire in the right way.  However considering I've had them over a year and use them on average of about an hour a day that's still a pretty good value.  The main problem is that I wrap them up, stuff them in my pocket and carry them around in there all the time. 

After work I've got a Whitecaps game.  Trouble is I forgot my ticket back at my apartment.  I've got an hour between work and the game, and it takes about 20 minutes to get back to my apartment if I hit the bus exactly right.  It then takes about 30 minutes from my apartment to the Skytrain and twenty minutes on the Skytrain, which leaves me with about... thirty minutes of the first half of the game missed. 

Sigh. 

Damn and I thought about grabbing the ticket this morning too.

My World Cup 2006

Earlier I blogged about where in Vancouver was showing the World Cup [jks] as I was filled with excitment, romance and wonder at the idea of watching England matches at a pub in the early hours on a misty morning in Vancouver.  However getting up and going down Denman to catch the games proved to be harder than it was to blog about them, and so I ended up watching all of England's game from the comfort of my couch.

While I managed to see all of England's game I did miss the bulk of the World Cup, following the scores live on the internet but only actually watching about a third of the games on television.  Contrast this with the 2004 World Cup where Cass, Delme and I would stay up to crazy hours to catch all the action live from Japan/Korea.  This year I was far less hardcore.

The final was on last Sunday and I had to work while it was on.  Thankfully the store was slow enough that I could take my lunch break to coincide with the extra-time of the match against France and Italy.  Standing infront of the Shaw Cable booth in Metrotown I joined about thirty others who were crowded around trying to see the action on one of their flat screen display units.  The sight of Zidane's headbutt, the subsequent red card, and the pelanty kicks once extra-time ended, divided the crowd.  About half of us, me included where cheering on France, the other half seemed to be going for Italy who ended up winning.

Damn Italy.  Oh well at least all of their major teams are corrupt as hell [gu].

Whitecaps game post on Metroblogging Vancouver

Running to stand still, originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

As I noted earlier I went to the Whitecaps game tonight [jks]. A post about the experiance is currently on Metroblogging Vancouver [mbv] if you're interested in how it went. There's a few photos on my Flickr sports page as well [fkr].

Whitecaps tonight: it's soccer/football time

I blogged about buying season tickets to the Vancouver Whitecaps Football Club [wcfc], Vancouver's soccer team and today is my first game  [mbv].  So tonight after work I'll be taking the Skytrain from Metrotown to Patteson station and then walking to the corner of Kingsway and Boundary for some footie action.

The game is against the Toronto Lynx, whom I can only assume are rivals to the Whitecaps on par only with the Seattle Sounders and Hitler.  Okay so I'm not particularly well informed about the club yet, but I'm looking forward to the game and catching up a bit on the team and the league that they play in.  I'm not quite ready to start using the word "we" to refer to the team, as in "We're already near the top of the table."  For now rather than inserting myself into the team when talking about them I'm going to be a bit more objective.

The Canucks have hurt me this season.  No more identifying with sports clubs for me.  At least until it looks like we're going to win something.  Errr....  I mean them... the Whitecaps.

*This is a cross post between my own website [js] and Metroblogging Vancouver [mbv].

My last Canucks game of the season

Canucks v Flames, originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

At the start of the season I bought a ten game Ice Pack from the Canucks, which gave me a random selection of 10 tickets to games throughout the season. The price (about $400) was good, and even though I've missed about a third of the games due to schedualing conflicts and the Canucks have had a somewhat disapointing season, I'm glad I bought the pack.

Tonight the Canucks are playing against the Anaheim Mighty Ducks [can], and it's the last ticked in my package. Though I'm going to be late, having to work until 7 at Metrotown, I intend to be there and cheer on the Canucks one last time.

The good news for the Canucks is that they have not lost while I've been in attendence all year, so that means they'll be picking up points tonight.

*This is a double post and is also at Metroblogging Vancouver [mbv].

Arsenal in the Champions League

The other day I mentioned that Arsenal despite doing poorly in the English Premier League this year were doing very well in the Champions League, which is a league for Europe's best teams.  They beat Real Madrid, which they were not supposed to do and now they've beaten Juventus at Highbury 2-0 which means unless the Italian team can pull a miracle off in Italy this week Arsenal are into the final four of the CL.

Here is a video of Arsenal goalscorer Thierry Henry netting the winning goal against Real Madrid in Madrid.  Watch the replay and Madrid's reactions, David Beckham seems mighty pissed off with his funny hair.

Then they played the Italian giants Juventus in London at Highbury, as I mentioned.  One of the greatest Arsenal players ever Patrick Vieira left Arsenal over the summer for the big money in Italy and this game was his first against Arsenal since then.  It was going to be his game to shine, to prove how much Arsenal lost out when he left.

Didn't work out that way though, did it?  In the replay of the first goal watch Vieira being tackled by Arsenal's Robert Pires (Vieira's the one in black and white who falls down), and then watch Vieira's young replacement Cesc Fabregas score a blinder.  And just to be safe Henry adds another one.

Vancouver Canucks versus Edmonton Oilers ticket for sale

Canucks v Flames, originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

I have one solo ticket to the Canucks versus the Edmonton Oilers game at GM Place for Saturday the 25th [can]. This was the only time I was going to get to see my old team, the Oilers, work over my new team, the Canucks. Sadly it falls on the same night as the New Pornographers versus the Belle & Sebastian in Seattle [mbs].

I've decided to go to the B&S/TNP show in Microsoft Land, so my ticket for Canadian hockey goodness is up for grabs. It's a single ticket in the balcony section of the rink, positioned exactly like in the picture here. Though the players aren't so small in real life, and they also have more mega-pixels in real life.

Email me (jeffersimpson at mac dot com) if you want the ticket. I'm looking for cost of the seat right now, so there's no markup.

Canucks VancouverCanucks NHL hockey NHLhockey Canuckstickets EdmontonOilers Oilers

Henry to stay at Arsenal

Thierry Henry has declared that he will be staying at Arsenal.  There was talk that since his contract was going to run out next year that like former captain Patrick Vieira he might be sold for the money before he was out of contract and could leave for a large and rich European club like Real Madrid.

Guardian Unlimited Football | News | Henry: I'm staying with Gunners

"The truth is I love this club and I've made up my mind to stay," Henry said. "I can say to all my fans and the people who care about me, I want to lead the team out in the new stadium. I'll talk to Arsène Wenger, to [the vice-chairman] David Dein and the board and talk of the future. My mind is to stay and we have to sort this out. They said the ball was in my court. Now the ball is in their court.

Which is good news, Henry's probably the best player in the world right now and he's only going to get better over the next few years.  To have him leave the club at his prime would have been devestating.

Technorati Tags: ThierryHenry, Arsenal, football, EnglishPremierLeauge

Hockey pool

I'm loosing my work hockey pool.  Alright, I'm not in dead last place but out of seven players I'm sixth.  What's worse is that I've been there since the start of the pool and there seems to be no sign that I'm going to be able to move up.  At first I was talking big, sure that I was going to win the whole thing, but now I'd be happy with a top half finish.  Every morning I login just to check to see if I was able to make up some ground and get a step closer to the fifth place player.

None of my trades has paid off, I just keep slipping further away from the pack.  Why can't I win?  Why on a night where everyone else gets 50+ points do I get only 9?  If there is a Santa Claus he'll right this wrong and give me a big night of points, goals and other things that'll sort out this cosmic injustice.

A day of hockey in Vancouver

Steve Yzerman and Todd Bertuzzi
Originally uploaded by Jeffery Simpson.

Metroblogging Vancouver's Best of Vancouver poll recieved an entry (in which you can still vote here) that said that sports where for the unwashed masses I'm still going ahead and making a hockey post. I might be unwashed but with all the rain I had to walk through on my way to the Skytrain at least the outer layer of dirt has washed off.

The first bit of hockey news is that Todd Bertuzzi is now on Canada's Mens Olympic Hockey Team. He'd been at the training camps for the team before the NHL season kicked off, as the included photo shows him in Kelowna practicing with Steve Yzerman.

After an uneasy start to the season Bertuzzi has returned to the forum that makes on of the keys to Vancouver's success. Acceptance onto Team Canada is the final step in his redemption from the Steve Moore incident.

Ed Jovanovski is in the defence corps, and the only other Canuck on Team Canada, despite the fact that Morrison skated with Team Canada during the summer training camp.

Meanwhile the Canucks dropped another game last night, loosing a fast paced high scoring affair to the Oilers. If a 7 - 6 loss doesn't demonstrate the need for an actual starting goaltender, then I'm not quite sure what will. At least when Markkanen started to collapse like a house of cards the Oilers were able to put in Conklin.

Meanwhile Canucks.com's game recap has perhaps the most insane lede paragraph in the history of sports journalism.

Like unicorns, the yeti, and the tooth fairy, defense proved little more than a myth Wednesday night in Vancouver.

I know it's tough to go through an 80+ game season and keep game recaps interesting but lay off the LSD okay.

*This is a mirrored post from Metroblogging Vancouver.

NHL ToddBertuzzi Vancouver Canucks Oilers Olympics hockey