I said I would try not to talk about the NHL/Winnipeg Jets

AND I'm keeping my word! Todays topic is the new name for the relocated Manitoba Moose! They've moved to St John's newfoundland and of course they need a new name.

APPARENTLY The name in the lead right now is the St John's Caps or Ice Caps. Seriously. The choice is either name yourself similar to a Washington based team despite having no connection, or name yourself after a Tim Horton's beverage.

I have however heard some better names, and have even thought of a few of my own.

Some of the better names I've heard have been: St John's Aviators, St John's Pilots, St. John's Sealers, St John's Icebergs, St John's Explorers.. you could substitute Newfoundland for St John's, but either way, I've come up with the ultimate name.

The Newfoundland Labradors. Or Newfoundand Labs. Or Newfoundland Retrievers. Hear me out! It celebrates both Newfoundland and Labrador at the same time without being wordy, celebrates a cool dog that everyone loves, you can make the logo a Lab with a hockey stick in its mouth.. It works great! Heres a crappy photoshoop of a horrible concept jersey I created in 5 minutes..
It's a bit rough.. heh.. but It could work!

I like Aviators as well. Actually Manitoba Aviators or Winnipeg Aviators would have been a decent compromise instead of .. ah I won't go there. I promised myself I would try not to blog about the Winnipeg Jets for a while and dagnabbit I'm sticking to it!

But Ice Caps.. seriously? SERIOUSLY?

Phoenix Coyotes home opener is on October 15!

WOOOOO!!!

hahahahah. Seriously though.

The Coyotes’ home opener next season will be Oct. 15 against Winnipeg, according to an NHL source.

If, like me, you couldn't get season tickets.. well, the NHL brilliantly realized that playing against Winnipeg would guarantee a sellout and scheduled accordingly.

Lots of time left to plan a trip. Gonna be full of Winnipeggers. You could probably charter at least a plane full.

I'm seriously considering it, even though I hate the city of Phoenix for completely non hockey related reasons.

You know what I want to do?

I have an old IBM thinkpad. It's a 486. I love the keyboard and trackpoint. It actually still runs and I've got linux on it, but it doesn't have USB, it doesn't have a working battery.. and it's pretty much useless. I've also got a Coby Kyros tablet with HDMI out and a busted screen. If I could get debian running on the kyros, and get the keyboard/mouse/other ports working and just take apart everything inside the thinkpad, I'd have a nice solid little arm based laptop. dare I? Would it be wrong? Should I wait for someone to produce an arm based motherboard for just such a purpose? IE: Rejuvinating old laptops?

So Justin Bieber won a bunch of awards at an event hosted by his girlfriend

When was the last time I bought a music CD?

Exactly.

But new draconian copyright laws will save everything!

Just like making marijuana illegal and shutting down safe injection sites will stop all drug related crime.

as if.

Why does Much Music have an awards show dedicated to music anyways? What connection does that channel have with music?

Granted, Bieber can hardly be considered music.

D'oh a deer

Saw a dead deer on Bishop Grandin blvd today.  Hopefully whoever hit it got away with minimal damage.  It wasn't super big so it was probably fairly young.  Oddly enough I rarely consider the possibility that there are deer running around within the city limits but just goes to show that you should always be vigilant.  Might not be a deer but could be a dog or wolf or cat, who knows.  Has there been an increase in wild animals finding their way into Winnipeg this year? Someone should look into that.

On the uselessness of pundits and armchair quarterbacks

"Winnipeg will never get an NHL team again"
Winnipeg gets an NHL team
"Arena is too small"
Other arenas are too big.
"You'll never sell 13,000 season tickets"
Sold out in 2-3 minutes
"This will hurt the bombers. Winnipegers have no money to support 2 sports franchises."
Bombers are on the way to selling out their season ticket drive. People and businesses who couldn't get NHL tickets go after next best thing.
"Yeah but you still suck"
Colorado, Carolina, Calgary all won Stanley Cups after relocation.

Haters gonna hate. Winners gonna Winnipeg.

Green Lantern Movie Review/Analysis

Finally after years of waiting, Green Lantern gets its shot at the big screen treatment. So how did it turn out.

I've been a fan of the Green Lantern comics since the 80's, so obviously I'm biased towards supporting Green Lantern. At the same time, I'm not a really big fan of the particular Green Lantern being used in the movie. Hal Jordan, being played by Ryan Reynolds. I've been concerned about many of the choices WB made during the process of making this movie, and I've followed the movie creation closely. I'm a fan of the Guy Gardner incarnation of Green Lantern mostly, though I'd support a John Stewart or Kyle Rayner movie as well. Still, the nice thing is, if you start at the beginning, you get to go to the good stuff eventually in sequels. But that's all dependent on the movie being good. As well, being a fan of the Green Lantern mythology, I should theoretically hold this movie to a higher standard than others might.

The movie starts off with some exposition about the Green Lantern origins, then jumps into Abin Sur, Green Lantern of Sector 2814 (which includes Earth amongst its populated planets to defend) fighting against generic space cloud monster Parallax. It's a nice bit of action and lets us get into what a Green Lantern is all about. So far so good. Abin Sur gets injured, and gets into a spaceship and launches a trajectory to the nearest inhabited planet. Earth. Oh, he's also been infected with a piece of the alien monsters power.

Back on Earth, hotshot test pilot and all around douchebag Hal Jordan flies some planes against some sort of UMV's and wins. This is important as it establishes Hal as someone who is fearless. Unfortunately the way the movie portrayed the overall theme of "fear" vs "will" was all over the place. This also bugs me in the comics. Hal Jordan, and many other Green Lanterns, have always been ridiculously broken characters who are fearless to a fault. Hal Jordan's father died in front of him as a child, and this in turn broke Hal Jordan mentally in some way. The idea being when you've seen your worst fear happen in front of your eyes, what is left to fear? But the movie does not do the greatest job explaining this fact. The idea that Hal follows in his fathers footsteps into a dangerous business, and acts just as recklessly, is an important plotpoint. But it is ruined by the notion that Hal is fearful. Which is it? Too many writers pulling this conflict in too many ways. Still, its not that huge a deal. I think most people can get the point.

Anyways, Abin Surs ship crashes, and Hal Jordan is chosen as a Green Lantern and gets the ring and power battery. He goes through a few amusing escapades learning to use the ring, and the concept of the ring is explained fairly sufficiently.

Meanwhile, weirdo stalker Hector Hammond (who conveniently is connected to all of the other characters) is assigned to look at the recovered body of Abin Sur. The government has recovered it and through his fathers influence Hector gets the job. Unfortunately he gets "infected" with Parallax and becomes a big headed monster with psychic / telepathic / telekinetic powers. Here, unfortunately, the movie suffers from the dated history of Green Lantern. Hector Hammond may have been unique looking in the 60's, but he looks pretty cheesy and generic as a villain nowadays.

The musical score is generic and rather uninspired. The CGI is passable yet the aliens come across looking plasticky. I don't know where they spent all their money on the CGI. The constructs were cool, and the special effects action were good, and the Green Lantern uniform looked decent, but aside from that, it seemed pointlessly wasteful. They could have just given him a regular uniform and mask. Why go so overboard with the CGI? Poor money management there.

Sometimes Green Lantern comes across a bit cheesy looking in the movie, but all in all I quite enjoyed it. Is it the best Green Lantern movie it could have been? Not by a long shot. They seemed to make mistake after mistake after mistake and even still the movie is entertaining. At no point did I feel like I was watching Batman and Robin or Catwoman. Was it as good as Batman Begins? No. Was the acting good? Yes. Were the villains the best? Probably not. But whatever. It's a summer popcorn movie. I think it was better than any of the transformers movies.

They diverged from the comics in a few ways, not the least of which is Hector Hammonds origin being tied to Parallax (everything was tied in to Parallax really.. it was overkill) and the fallen guardian (who is supposedly supposed to be Krona but I never got that). The end was perhaps anti-climatic. But I think they laid the groundwork and if they revisited the character and made some better choices with regards to SFX/CGI sequels could be much better and done much cheaper. Like I said, I really liked the way the lantern constructs turned out. They have that down pat. The 3D wasn't the best. It was clearly a conversion. Though there was so much CGI that in those scenes it wasn't a big deal. If they do a sequel I hope they use 3D cameras.

All in all a good 7 out of 10 in terms of being a fun superhero movie. I think this is the most serious movie review I've ever done.

There are two sets of credits in the movie. First one is with the stars of the movie, and afterwards there is a clip featuring a certain Green Lantern acquiring a certain weapon. Then the second set of credits start afterwards followed by an ad for the comicbooks ("PLEASE BUY SOME!")

Anyways, I really hope they make a sequel (on a smaller/more sensibly used budget) as it has the potential to be much superior having gotten the exposition and world building out of the way.

monkeys, turkeys, and donkeys

the only scenario where gene simmons should get the key to the city of Winnipeg is if it means he's never coming back. douchebag should be locked out, not given a fucking key. what has he ever done for Winnipeg ? idiots and sycophants the lot of city hall. even if you like his music, why the hell should he be given the key to the city?

oh, apparently you can get 50% off tickets to his speaking tour by going to pizza hotline. only downside is you're still paying 50% too much and now you're stuck with a pizza hotline pizza.

gene simmons is clearly doing this just to piss me off knowing from my previous posts just how much i dislike him and all people like him "stand for".

Did Stan Lee KNOW?

Take a look at this image. It is a picture of the Superhero created by Stan Lee that represents the thrashers in the NHL.


The thrasher has the power of.. a jet. In my last post on the NHL, I made a joke that Stan Lee would make a superhero based on a jet if the team was called the jets. Now I realize HE'S ALREADY DONE IT. Someone must have tipped him off that Winnipeg was getting the thrashers. Surely you don't think "Thrasher? has the power of JETS!". Of course not.

So here we go.
Clearly there is no alternative. This is providence. Fate. The team must be called the Jets. EXCELSIOR, TRUE BELIEVERS!!

Or can I at least get a No-Prize?

Doomsday cult preacher suffers stroke

"(Shirley) said he was doing good "... and the only thing that's affected is his speech."

If there is a God, he's clearly telling Harold Camping to STFU.

bad commercials for desperate newspapers

it's a Winnipeg thing..

ALL JETS ALL THE TIME or WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Not really. I hope to get off the topic soon, unless they choose a name that isn't Winnipeg Jets, in which case I'll be ranting on that for a good two months straight. Anyways here are the reasons I am against renaming the team.

#1 - Tradition. People claim that the Jets belong to phoenix. While the team that is the operational descendant of Winnipeg lives in Phoenix and suffers from possibly worse mismanagement than the Jets ever did, they have no history. Do they truly honour Winnipeg's hockey history? No, only Winnipeg can truly do that. Sure they retired Hawerchuk's and Hull's jersey, but they don't appreciate what that even means. And when they in turn move from Phoenix one day as will most surely happen at this pace, will the third city honour that history? Aside from Shane Doan still playing there, and lamely trying to pull off the whiteout, they have no real ties to Winnipeg. Hell, Keith Tkachuk was an Atlanta player, realistically it's almost a wash! The Jets name and history, for better or worse, belongs to Winnipeg. If the Maple Leafs moved to oh, I dunno, Kansas City and were renamed, and were later given another team, you bet your ass they'd call them the Maple Leafs, despite their horrible modern record. Same with the Habs. The NHL is all about history. More than 100 years of it.

2. No other name sounds good. Moose? That belongs in the minor leagues. Wapiti? Nobody knows what that is. Polar Bears? Mosquitos? Falcons? Shutup those are stupid animal names. When the Jets were around, the one-two combo of the Jets and Bombers made it sound like Winnipeg was a hotbed of the aviation industry. Yes the bombers are named more after a football play than a type of plane, but all the same.. I've always loved the dual meaning. Also Go Jets Go is so easy to say.

3. Merchandising with a new name won't necessarily be better than with the Jets name and a new logo. And True North doesn't even get the full pot of that money ANYWAYS. They only get like 30%! You bet your ass with a new logo people will be snapping them up just as much if not more than the old logo.

4. Bettman said he'd give it to True North for free. Now I want to find out if he really meant it or was just pissed off at the interviewer for implying the NHL is nickle and diming True North (They probably are)

5. It should be named after MANITOBA! NO! FUCK YOU! Winnipeg is the capital city of Manitoba. I don't see anybody in BC bitching about the Vancouver Canucks or people in Ontario bitching about the Toronto Maple Leafs. Yes Winnipeg appreciates your being a fan, rest of Manitoba, but more than 50% of the province is in the city of Winnipeg. WE OUTNUMBER YOU. How many of those season tickets belong to out of towners? Yeah I'm sure more than 50%. Not. Naming it after Manitoba does nobody any favours. Guess what, Toronto has fans outside of Toronto and even outside of their province. Same with every team. If you don't want to root for them just because you don't feel included, well, maybe you shouldn't be included. Hell, why not call every Canadian team the Canada whatevers. They're all in Canada! Idiotic thinking. Have some pride in your province by supporting your capital city, Manitobans.

6. Whatever you've come up with is not better than the Winnipeg Jets. If it was, you'd have said what it is by now. Without locking people into a contract for 3 - 5 years. Nobody likes bait and switch. A majority of ticket owners bought Jets tickets. You know it. Which leads us to..

7. Everyone will be pissed off. Why would you kill this thing as soon as you started it? Why woud you destroy all of that goodwill and momentum that sold out an arena in minutes for the next couple hundred years?

8. So this city can move on and continue growing and building the new stadium, building new residencies and towers and highways and growing Manitoba as a place of infinite potential. We've got the Jets back. We've got Ikea. NOW WHAT? What does someone do when they win the lottery and get everything they ever wanted?

9. I just really like the old Jets jersey design and colours.

10. I'm just gonna make something up here cause I've run out of reasons. Okay how about calling them the Winnipeg WestJets. Branding and sponsorship with WestJet, everyone's happy. Yay.

Now they should get Stan Lee to make a superhero based off of Winnipeg's NHL team. You just know if it's called the Jets he'll be some guy called "The Jet" with some sort of jet. I want to see that. Okay that's number 10, screw the westjet thing.

Also, DO NOT bring Benny back. Nobody liked Benny. Everyone hated Benny. Get the costume for Kaboom the polar bear from the defunct Winnipeg Thunder basketball team. give him some blue colours and change his name to something jet like sonic-boom or Mach 5 or Turbo. Hmm, I kinda like Turbo. Give him some aviator goggles or something and a scarf and a flight jacket. That would play well in Winnipeg.

In conclusion, it's too late to do anything about it. The team has to be called the Winnipeg Jets.

Also who doesn't want to see the Jets vs the Sharks?

Image Credit: chunkysmurf at deviantart

Winnipeg NHL season tickets sold out

They announced it about 20 minutes after they started going on sale to the general public. I tried buying them at about 12:01. they were all sold out then. I'm positive it took less than a minute. Or maybe I just had horrible luck.