1000 Words 1000 Days
1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 300 – It’s The Eurovision Song Contest Winners! Save Us All! (part 2)
by Marty Schwartz on October 28, 2012
According to my raven-haired mistress whom I call Ms. Wiki, there have been sixty top-prize winners in the Eurovision Song Contest since its 1956 debut. That’s fifty-seven years of winners, with an ugly four-way tie in 1969. Because today is Day 300 and I foolishly believe that history cares if I do something grand with such a plump, round number, I’ve decided to review each of the Eurovision winners.…
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 293 – Marking Music Matriculation
by Marty Schwartz on October 21, 2012
When the crosshairs of impending budget cuts find their way to a school board, one of the first programs to catch a bullet is inevitably the arts. Drama classrooms get re-tiled for use as math rooms, easels get boxed up and shipped to more affluent schools, and band instruments get hocked for extra spending cash and/or textbooks that don’t describe the Korean War as “our nation’s next big challenge.” Music …
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 280 – Big Rock Beer: Alberta’s Delicious Medal Of Honor
by Marty Schwartz on October 10, 2012
Many of my regular readers will remember that this website is sponsored by Rogue Ales, a fine purveyor of delicious delicacies out of Newport, Oregon. By ‘sponsored’, I mean that I receive no money for them, nor do they endorse anything I write or post. I do, however, write many of my articles through the hazy tint of their bottles, with the satisfying gurgle of meticulously brewed goodness slapping …
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 272 – Neighbor, My Neighbour
by Marty Schwartz on September 30, 2012
Many of my more astute readers will no doubt have noticed that I tend to favor the American spelling system above the British / Canadian system I grew up with. A number of people (and here I’m assuming we can utilize zero as a number) have asked why that is. I have spent my life living amid the Queen’s English, yet I forsake my national heritage to adopt the scandalous …
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 259 – A Drive Down 50th Street
by Marty Schwartz on September 23, 2012
Today I feel like Sam Beckett from TV’s Quantum Leap might have felt had he finally made the leap home. Wikipedia splashed a familiar landmark on my screen: 50th Street in my hometown of Edmonton. I’ve got some great stories from this street. Sure, it cuts its seam through the east side of this city, and I have never lived anywhere but central or out west, but I know …
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 244 – Blockheads Of The World, Unite!
by Marty Schwartz on September 2, 2012
It was the summer of 1989. Tone Loc was doing his Wild Thing on the radio, western civilization was somehow finding its way forward after the series finale of Moonlighting, and a 14-year-old me wandered into an arcade on the University of British Columbia campus in Vancouver. I remember the room, it was like an abyss of studious concentration, except the studies here involved Italian plumbers, Formula-1 racers, and pinball. …
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 234 – Class & Elegance From The Bradford Exchange
by Marty Schwartz on August 26, 2012
I have waited a long time for this day.
No online catalog of kitsch, from the Franklin Mint to the R2D2 replicas on Skymall, comes close to the sheer volume of quirky miscellany as the Bradford Exchange. Indeed, this may be the first topic I re-visit, as they continue to update their supply of unfathomable oddities.
Founded in 1973 as a way for collectors to swap trinkets and doodads …
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 230 – 17 Things I Didn’t Know About The Golden Girls
by Marty Schwartz on August 19, 2012
Like any red-blooded North American youth in the late 80s, I spent many a Saturday evening watching four retirement-age ladies talk about cheesecake and humping. I saw an episode of The Golden Girls a few weeks ago and it still made me laugh, which is more than I can say for most of my childhood favorites (I’m looking at you, Mr. Belvedere).
There was a lot I didn’t know about …
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 221 – When Math Attacks The Sports Page
by Marty Schwartz on August 12, 2012
The world of sports statistics can get ugly and math-y. This presents a dilemma for a lot of fans – they love the sports, but hate the math. I’m a football fan. Most of our statistics are pretty easy to follow: a running back’s touchdown count is calculating by adding up the number of touchdowns he scored, then congratulating yourself for counting sequentially. That’s it.
But in 1971, Don R. …
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 214 – Flipping Through Drek – Worst TV Part 1
by Marty Schwartz on August 5, 2012
Last month I picked on three films from Wikipedia’s list of movies considered to be the worst. Today we’re shifting to the small screen. It may surprise you to know that, in among those quality hours of flipping houses, making over ugly people, and voting top chefs off the island in an amazing race down a runway filled with top models and idols, occasionally something less than magnificent finds …
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 211 – Holding Back The Years (The Phantom Time Hypothesis)
by Marty Schwartz on July 29, 2012
Is history a lie?
Actually, history is filled with lies, depending on how specific you want to be. The winners tell the story, and those who penned the particulars were often doing so at the behest of someone in charge who was looking for something to inspire, influence, or quash a group of people. In other words, don’t believe everything you read.
But the general stuff is accurate, right? How …
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1000 Words, 1000 Days: Day 200 – A Man Confesses To His Friend, Using Two Hundred 80s Pop Song Titles
by Marty Schwartz on July 22, 2012
In honor of Day 200, I invite you to dig around and find all 200 song titles in the following dialog.
Two old friends, Peter and Ian, are having a drink in Ian’s apartment.
IAN: “Peter, what’s wrong? You seem to be under pressure. Do you need one more night of magic with those West End girls, buddy?”
PETER: “I’m gonna tear your playhouse down with this news, …
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