SNL has showcased some incredible talent over the years. For the most part I'm content seeing these clips on "Best of" shows and YouTube but this is one I wish I'd been in New York for - front and centre. Unbelievable.

It's my birthday and I get to pick the music. It's like that...wot...and that's the way it is...

So apparently I'm not the only one with a little crush on George Stroumboulopoulos. (okay, his name requires far too much typing. From now on he'll be referred to simply as G.S.). Anyway, I was at a baby shower for Carrie tonight (she looks fabulous btw) where Sarah's sister and I compared notes on The Hour in general and the fox quotient of G.S. specifically. She's convinced he's already married. Meh. It takes away slightly from said f.q. but I've been addicted to The Hour since the first time I saw it, I'll still be a fan.
Before the taping the other night, G.S. came out to where we were lined up and introduced himself to each person. He seemed very sincere. In fact, when we shook hands he made very pointed eye contact, being sure I was completely engaged before shifting his focus to the next person. Impressive since I assume he does that for each show. At no time did his persona change; on-camera, off-camera, it's the same guy. And that guy is articulate, funny, informed, compassionate, quick-witted and completely comfortable in his own skin...
I believe the thing that draws me to him, I mean the show, is that my heart rate actually slows while I listen to him talk. I don't know if it's the timbre of his voice or a particular rhythm to his speech but guys, if you ever want to consider yourselves seducers of women, learn to do this. (note: I think Alan Cross has similar appeal).
I used to see G.S. in the Chapters/Starbucks at Richmond & John a lot and I always just thought, oh hey look, dude from Much Music. Now I wish I had approached him and had a conversation since he's such an interesting guy and seems very open to that type of contact. On second thought, it's probably better that I didn't. There's a big difference between being approached by an audience member in your studio and by a stranger out in public when all you want is a cup of coffee... Anyway, watch The Hour or go to a taping and let me know what you think.

This is awesome. WWII through the eyes of the WoW generation....

Thank god for Charlie Sheen. Well actually, thank god for the writers of Two and A Half Men.

Seriously.

Throughout the mid-to-late '80s and early '90s I watched the rise of "the sensitive guy" with increasing disgust. I'm a big fan of the hero, the cowboy, the bad-boy. So that 10 year span was hell as we went from "real men don't eat quiche" to "are you a metrosexual?". If I have to listen to one more condo-dwelling, yogo-instructing, lululemon-wearing castrato lisp out his order for a half-fat latte with extra sprinkles, I'll bitch-slap somebody.

Thankfully the pendulum has swung back almost 180 degrees and there's a trend in pop culture to bring back men with a capital "M". Out with characters like Frasier and Sam Malone from Cheers. Don't drink, don't smoke, what do you do? Woody Allen? Meh, gross. He slept with his daughter. Allan Alda? Judd Hirsch? If I want someone who cries more than me, I'll get a job at a daycare... Give me David Carradine in Kill Bill, Jack Nicholson in just about anything, Samuel L. Motherfuckin' Jackson on a motherfuckin' plane. Bring on the guy's guy; the one who pours himself a double rye when he gets home, cooks KD in a hot tub and eats it out of the pot, turns down a date (but not with me) to watch a play-off game with his buddies. Yes! They're back and I'm strapping on my pom-poms and a Frederick's of Hollywood bra to lead the cheer. God bless CBS for giving americans back their balls!!


btw, I went to a taping of The Hour last night and I think I'm a little in love with George Stroumboulopoulos. More on that tomorrow.

Two of my favourite characters from one of the most innovative television shows ever...I give it a special-edition-back-to-the-future-without-a-map-snap...

Flatwater World Cup 2 - Szeged Hungary
K2 200m A-Final

Okay. I heard this on the radio the other day and loved it. I thought the female vocalist was Macy Gray, especially since I heard she had a new album out. A quick check of her website cleared that up - this is NOT the direction in which she's moving. Too bad, I say.
Anyway, a random note from Adam O. on Facebook tipped me off - it's Tim Armstrong. You may know him because of his record label, Hellcat Records, or his work with Rancid and the Transplants. Anyway, I can't get enough of his stuff...The crazy coincidence of me finding out who it is tonight is that this record is released tomorrow, May 22nd.

Flatwater World Cup #2 - Szeged Hungary

Final Points

1 Hungary 1203

2 France 386

3 Canada 371

4 China 279

5 Poland 252

6 Ukraine 248

7 Germany 248

8 Belarus 206

9 Slovakia 199
10 Lithuania 197

Men's Kayak
1 Hungary 262

2 France 151

3 Canada 108

4 Sweden 99

5 Lithuania 88

Women's Kayak
1 Hungary 234

2 China 154

3 Poland 110

4 Australia 97
5 Canada 84

Men's Canoe
1 Hungary 227

2 France 135

3 Canada 127

4 Ukraine 114

5 Belarus 114

Flatwater World Cup #2 - Szeged Hungary - 200m

C1 A-Final
1st Yuriy Cheban (UKR) 00:40.669
3rd Yang Wenjun (CHN) 00:40.975
2nd Zhomart Satubaldin (KAZ) 00:40.873
7th Richard Dalton (CAN) 00:41.941

C4-A-Final
1st (HUN) 00:35.200
Pal Sarudi, Peter Balazs, Gabor Horvath & Marton Joob
2nd (CAN) 00:35.608
Gabriel Beauchesne-Sevigny, Dmitri Joukovski, Mark Oldershaw & Andrew Russell
3rd (ROU) 00:36.004
Mihai Simion, Gabriel Talpa, Liviu Dumitrescu & Loredan Popa

Men's K2 A-Final
1st Richard Dober & Andrew Willows (CAN) 00:32.982
2nd Egidius Balciunas & Aluydas Duonela (LTU) 00:33.366
3rd Olivier Boukpeti & Arnaud Hybois (FRA ) 00:33.516

Women's K4 A-Final
1st (HUN ) 00:35.459 K. Fazekas, M. Patyi, K. Kovacs & T. Paksy
2nd (SWE ) 00:36.101 S. Paldanius, J. Nordlow, K. Johansson & A. Karlsson
3rd(POR ) 00:36.179 H. Rodrigues, T. Portela, J. Sousa & B. Gomes
7th (CAN) 00:36.935 T. Tuttle, K. Gauthier, M. Barre & G. Beauchesne-Sevigny

Flatwater World Cup #2 - Szeged Hungary - 500m

K1 500m A-Final

1st Adam Van Koeverden (CAN) 01:41.158

2nd Anders Gustafsson (SWE) 01:42.406

3rd Shaun Rubenstein (RSA) 01:42.616

C1 500m A-Final

1st Andreas Dittmer (GER) 01:53.499

2nd Mark Oldershaw (CAN) 01:54.015

3rd Pawel Baraszkiewicz (POL) 01:54.399

8th Tom Hall (CAN) 01:56.853

C2 A-Final

1st Christian Gille &Tomas Wylenzek (GER) 01:46.283

2nd Gyorgy Kolonics & Gyorgy Kozmann (HUN ) 01:47.231

3rd Magsin Prokopenko & Sergiy Bezugly (UKR) 01:47.321

5th Gabriel Beauchesne-Sevigny & Andrew Russell (CAN) 01:48.401

K2 500m A-Final

1st Ronald Rauhe & Tim Wieskotter (GER )00:45.850

2nd Gabor Kucsera & Zoltan Kammerer (HUN ) 00:45.250

3rd Antonio Scaduto & Andrea Facchin (ITA ) 00:45.780

6th Andrew Willows & Richard Dober

Women's K4 A-Final

5th Victoria Tuttle, Kristin Gauthier, Mylanie Barre &Genevieve Beauchesne-Sevigny

Click here to see Danny Dichio score the first goal in Toronto FC history 05.12.07

Flatwater World Cup #2 - Szeged Hungary

The Hungarian canoe-kayak website for World Cup is usually really good but this year it's brutal. I don't even know how I found the results. I was so frustrated, I started opening every link and there they were. Apparently Graham is sending results from his Blackberry to Ann and she's forwarding them on through email. I've sent Ann the link via Carrie so hopefully they'll get it out through a canoe-kayak alert. Reports are that conditions are bad - wind & whitecaps are wreaking havoc on some lanes and crews have tipped. Here are results for Day 1 (racing is done for the day so if you don't see a final, we weren't in it);

Friday

A-Final - C1 1000m
1st Attila Vajda (HUN) 03:50.654
2nd Andreas Dittmer (GER) 03:50.750
3rd Bertrand Hemonic (FRA) 03:55.892

Final - C2 1000m 1st Gille Christian & Tomas Wylenzek (GER) 03:31.800
2nd György Kozmann& György Kolonics (HUN) 03:33.528
3rd Andrew Russell & Gabriel Beauchesne-Sevigny (CAN) 03:33.864
4th Attila Buday & Tamás Buday jr (CAN) 03:34.002

A-Final - Women's K1 1000m

1st Carrie Johnson USA 03:54.022 9 (congrat's Nathan)
2nd Katalin Kovács HUN 03:54.208
3rd Anne Rikala FIN 03:55.270
9th Jill D'Alessio 04:04.252

A-Final - Women's K4 500m

1st GER 01:31.454 C. Leonhardt, C. Wasmut, M. Knebel, K.Wagner-Augustin

2nd HUN01:32.096 T. Paksy, K. Kovács, D. Kozák, G. Szabó
3rd HUN 01:32.642 K. Fazekas, M. Patyi, A. Keresztesi, D. Benedek
5th CAN 01:34.082 T. Tuttle, G. Beauchesne-Sevigny, M. Barre, K. Gauthier

A-Final - Men's K1 1000m 1st Adam Van Koeverden (CAN) 03:27.639
2nd Zoltán Benko (HUN) 03:28.371
3rd Tim Brabants (GBR) 03:28.821

B-Final - Men's K2 1000m 6th Dave Anderson & Chris Pellini

B-Final - Men's K4 1000m 4th R. Dober, S.Jorens, R. Cuthbert & A. Willows

OH COME ON!!
Lindsay Lohan?? Hottest woman in the world?? If by hot you mean deeply disturbed, off-the-rails, slutty crack-whore then okay...but seriously. Jessica Alba - hotter...Sienna Miller, hotter. Maxim magazine has blown any journalistic credibility they might have ... what am I saying, it's Maxim freaking Magazine. Forget I brought it up.

Video from World Cup #1

C1 500m
Mark Oldershaw
bronze

and

K2 500m
Richard Dober
& Andrew Willows
silver

I think I may have had the Perfect Mother's Day weekend. I had a great run and respectable paddle time for the national team testing on Saturday morning. Jackie dropped by the canoe club just as we were finishing up. She brought some of the cookbooks she published. I can't wait to try some of the recipes. They're a fundraiser for the arthritis society. Jackie was supposed to hike Machu Picchu in the fall but won't be able to due to a little bump in...her...err...belly. I believe all key people already know that she's pregnant so hopefully I'm not blowing the surprise for anyone. She looks great in spite of a little morning sickness! Anyway, she has lots of cookbooks left so let her (or me) know if you'd like one - $10.

On Saturday afternoon, Eve and I headed down to the Toronto FC game. There were a couple hundred Chicago fans there who had bussed in to support the Fire so it was especially sweet that TFC won 3 -1!


Ryan and Courtney had to work on Mother's day so they came over Saturday night. We went for an outrigger paddle on the river and then they took me out for dinner and on Sunday I spent some time with my parents.

National Team trials #2 were in Montreal this past weekend. The senior team is away in Europe so results were pretty much as expected. Here's the link if you're interested in times.

Slovakian kayaker Juraj Baca appeared on the Slovak version of "So you think you can dance" called "Let's Dance". I'm not sure what's more disturbing - the bad Norah Jones cover or the fact that she almost strangles him with the sleeves of that hideous dress.
Since 1998, this incredibly attractive man has won multiple golds at Worlds and an Olympic bronze in K-4 in Athens.

Click here for the video

You can see individual results in the last post. Overall rankings for World Cup 1 are as follows;

Country:
1 China - 86 pts
2 Italy - 57
3 Belarus - 56
4 Canada - 52

Athlete - Men's Kayak
1 Adam Van Koeverden - 40 - CAN
2 Tim Brabants - 22 - GBR
3 Anders Gustafson - 22 - SWE
4 Eirik Veraas Larsen - 22 - NOR

Athlete - Canoe
1 Mark Oldershaw - 34 - CAN
2 Nikolay Lipkin - 30 - RUS
3 Hemonic Bertrand - 20 - FRA
4 Wenjung Yang - 16 - CHN
5 Tom Hall - 16 - CAN

Athlete - Women's Kayak
1 Sofia Paldanius - 20 - SWE
2 Hongyan Zhong - 16 - CHN
3 Beata Mikolajczyk - 14 - POL
4 Carrie Johnson - 12 - USA
5 Jennifer Hodson - 10 - RSA
6 Špela Ponomarenko - 8 - SLO
7 Emilie Fournel - 6 - CAN

aaggggghhh....I know some really good news and can't say anything. You know how crazy that makes me but I think everyone will know by the end of the weekend.

Here are final results from the flatwater World Cup # 1 in Zagreb, Croatia. The Canadian team was awesome!

Canoe
Final: C1 500m Mark Oldershaw 3rd and Tom Hall 1st in B final
Final: C1 1000m Mark Oldershaw 1st and Tom Hall 2nd
Final: C1 200m Mark Oldershaw 1st in B final
Final: C2 500m Gabriel Beauchesne-Sevigny & Andrew Russell were 4th and Richard Dalton & Dmitri Joukovski were 7th
Final: C2 1000m Richard Dalton & Dmitri Joukovski 2nd & Gabriel Beauchesne-Sevigny & Andrew Russell were 4th
Final: C2 200m Gabriel Beauchesne-Sevigny & Andrew Russell were 4th

Men's Kayak
Final: K1 500m Adam was 1st
Final: K1 1000m Adam was 1st and Angus Mortimer 1st in B final
Final: K1 200m Adam 6th and Mark de Jonge 8th
Final: K2 500m Richard Dober & Andrew Willows 2nd
Final: K2 200m Richard Dober & Andrew Willows 3rd
Final: K4 1000m Richard Dober, Steve Jorens, Ryan Cuthbert & Andrew Willows 9th
Final: K4 200m Richard Dober, Steve Jorens, Ryan Cuthbert & Andrew Willows 6th

Women's Kayak - semi-finals
Final: K1 500m Emilie Fournel was 7th
Final: K1 1000m Emilie 3rd
Final: K1 200m Emilie 4th
Final: K2 500m Marie Christine Schmidt & Kia Byers were 8th
Final: K4 500m Mylanie Barre, Genevieve Beauchesne-Sevigny, Tory Tuttle & Jill D'Alessio 8th
Final: K4 1000m same crew 6th
Final: K4 200m same crew 7th

Chrissy! This one's for you...

World Cup #1 starts in Zagreb, Croatia in a couple of days. The draw is available here on the competition website.