Smug

I watched the newest South Park the other night. In this episode, Stan tries to convince every one in South Park to buy hybrid cars, since Kyle's dad has moved the family to San Francisco where they can be with more "progressive" and "intellectual" people instead of the backward thinking rednecks of South Park. However, the result of everyone in South Park driving hybrids was that a layer of pollution called "smug" developed over South Park as a result of the self-satisfied garbage all the hybrid drivers were spewing out of their mouths into the atmosphere, and this layer of smug threatens to merge with smug layer from San Francisco and the smug cloud from George Clooney's acceptance speech. This would create a smug cell that threatens the entire town.

Anyway, after watching the episode, I thought "I know a place like that!" And it's called university!

Think about it. University students are very smug and self-satisfied and probably love the smell of their own farts. They love being the so-called leaders of tomorrow. Just look at all the faculties. The Arts students think they know what's best for the world and they have a lot of well-meaning ideas about global development and political policy that don't work out well in real life. Engineering students think they rule the world. Medical students are in the life-saving business...how could you not be in complete love with yourself? Science students believe that they know better than everyone else on stuff like global warming and wish the rest of the world would just wake up. Actually, the only faculties that get a pass are agriculture and education, and in all fairness, they don't have a whole lot to be smug about. Hell, it was even smug of me to pretend like I was above it all by writing this post!

Anyway, I went flying today finally. I went to Calgary, and this was by far my longest flight. My previous longest flight was 2.8 hours and this one was 3.3 hours. I must say that Springbank Airport in Calgary is quite hard to find when flying in from the north, and even when it's right in front of you, it's still hard to find. I thought it was a pig farm at first, just because they have long metal hangars all over that airport and they look like barns. This is what happens when you try to consolidate all your air traffic to a single airport. I hope the same thing never happens to Edmonton City Centre airport...what a waste of a beautiful facility that would be!

How many more days till NFL?

While the Oilers were busy shitting the bed last night, the Falcons were busy completing a blockbuster trade. Atlanta sent the 29th overall pick to the Jets (previously acquired from Denver along with a 3rd round pick in 2006 and a 4th round pick in 2007 in exchange for the 15th overall pick in 2006) for John Abraham. Holy shit, Denver made out like bandits on that one! But now we've got Patrick Kerney on one side, and "Abe" on the other. I'm looking forward to it already. If Rich McKay replaces Tagliabue as commissioner, I will be a sad, sad man.

Hilarity

Christmas in March

The title refers to the NHL trade deadline, of course. It seems the "March trade" has been a hallmark of the Oilers organization since they came into the league. There's been a lot of player movement in the last month or so. Let's recap:

Departing:
Marty Reasoner
Tony Salmelainen
Jan Stastny
Cory Cross
Jani Rita
1st round pick
2nd round pick
conditional 3rd round pick

Arriving:
Dwayne Roloson
Sergei Samsonov
Jaroslav Spacek
Dick Tarnstrom

So basically, 3 draft picks, 3 non-roster players, a 4th line center and a 7th defenseman for a #1 goaltender, a top 6 winger, a #2 defenseman, and a good offensive defenseman. Sounds pretty good to me. I'm not really concerned about giving up draft picks given the Oilers horrible drafting history, especially in the first round. The last first rounder the Oilers drafted that cracked the lineup and made an impact was Ales Hemsky (2001), and before that, the last one was Ryan Smyth (1994). However, they have been able to pick up good players in the later rounds, such as Horcoff, Stoll, and Pisani. Comrie was also a pretty late pick (91st overall) but we'll just forget about him. I must say, I was quite surprised to see the Wild doing business with the Oilers since they're only 7 points out of the playoffs and still have 4 games to play against the Oilers.

I guess all this trade activity does reflect less than spectacular drafting, since it has been non-roster players flying off the Oilers shelf (let's not forget about Doug Lynch and Jeff Woywitka in the Pronger deal) but an Edmonton Journal article from May 10, 1984 said the exact same thing, and two pages later, several experts confidently predicted an Islanders win. But I'm not planning to riot down Jasper Ave. in June just yet...I'll wait until Roloson plays a few games first.

I was a little sad to see Mayor Quimby (Mike Morrison) go to the Senators. It's a shame because he was a player that MacTavish actually liked, and those seem hard to come by on the team these days (unless your name is Georges Laraque...)

Oscar aftermath

I know I've been absent for 11 days, but that's because I wanted to leave my Oscar predictions up at the top. This was the first time ever that I've had director, both screenplays, actor, actress, supporting actor, and supporting actress correct. The only shock came at the end of the night, when Crash took Best Picture despite having won only film editing and original screenplay up to that point. I thought Brokeback was going to take it easily, since it had director, adapted screenplay and original score. But that's how the voting process in the Academy works and occasionally they throw you a curve ball. Also, as I anticipated, Munich and Good Night and Good Luck were both shut out, even though I was hoping that wouldn't happen.