Zinedine Zidane is in Vancouver, but after wrenching his back picking up his daughter to watch Canada Day fireworks, he has postponed his Zidane and Friends exhibition game slated for BC Place on July 4.
The wrenching of the back is the official explanation, but if you read the comments in my previous blog postings on the Zidane and Friends tour and read what I wrote, you’ll find it was easy to spot this postponement months ago.
The entire event smelled a little shady from the promoter to the promised stars to the proposed venue.
I was at the June 25th game in Toronto and all I can say is that this event was very misleading (to say the least) and way over-priced. I was very disappointed and didn’t even bother staying to watch the whole game. [comment]
From all accounts the blame lies squarely with Adlani - the promoter. He seems to be a really shady character and he managed to bamboozle Zidane’s brother Farid which is how he got Zizou to agree to do this thing in the first place. [comment]
In other words, you’re getting the equivalent of Gretzky and Friends vs. The Div 1 Rec League Champs from 8 Rinks.
How much passion, drama and pride can there be with a dozen retired footballers trotting around a huge pitch in a cavernous stadium? [Zidane and Friends]
We had the same problem with hip-hop acts coming to do concerts in Vancouver in the mid-90s. Fly by night promoters would try to do the whole thing on their own and the show would ultimately be cancelled last minute. Guess what’s happened here?
According to 24hrs, Zidane will attend a soccer academy on Friday morning, however a $250 a plate banquet for Friday night has been cancelled.
Also, the venue might be changing after only 8 000 of 59 000 BC Place seats were sold for the Zidane and Friends tour that quickly became Zidane and some people he just met.
The Zidane and Friends game will now be July 12 at either BC Place or Swanguard Stadium. I wouldn’t hold your breath for either.
The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?
Lance Armstrong leads the peloton in Troyes - Tour de France 2005. Photo by Buzz Bishop
Only 2 sleeps until I get married and 2 sleeps until Lance Armstrong goes for a mind blowing 8th Tour de France title.
Who am I kidding? Lance in Le Tour 2009 is all about cancer awareness and maybe, just maybe a few stage wins. Lance Armstrong is 3rd on the Astana pecking order behind Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer.
A win for Lance in Le Tour would be amazing not only because of his age and time off between title defenses, but because of the politics within his own peloton that he would have to overcome to allow a title ride.
TV coverage of Le Tour de France 2009 starts at 630a Pacific on OLN on Saturday morning with Le Grand Depart, a time trial in Monaco. I’ll be up. Will you?
When Jen and I get married this weekend, some things will be a little familiar to me. You see, I’ve been married before.
It was a tragic 13 month mistake a few years ago that never should have happened - but it did. Thankfully there were no children involved (she already had a daughter) and the cleanup, while confrontational during negotiations, didn’t really cause too much trouble.
I was able to wipe the slate clean of my ex and that brief moment in time pretty easily, but some details still remain. Like the wedding photos.
What do you do with those photos from your past? It’s part of my personal history, it’s part of what makes me the person I am today.
Do I delete them? Do I burn them to disc and bury them in a box? Do I print them off and burn them in a bonfire?
This wasnt a hard decision for me, I hit delete.
While vacation and party pictures with my ex are archives of my everyday life and places I’ve been and serve as great souvenirs of the world, or how I wore my hair, I don’t need to see the pictures of me making promises to someone else.
We have photos to relive emotions and memories. Happily, that day is one I don’t want to relive, so the pictures are irrelevant.
July 4, 2009 is the important day. That’s the one I will want to relive. These are the memories I will cherish.
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The Jonas Brothers, JoBros, Jonai are a trio of talented brothers Joe, Nick and Kevin, who know how to get the tween crowd screaming, but don’t dismiss them as a bro band hellbent on selling posters, backpacks and lunchboxes, they’re musicians who come by their talent honestly.
Nick was the first to move to broadway at the age of 7, then Joe followed. Nick was writing his own music and raised the interest of record labels who liked Nick, but liked the idea of 3 clean cut brothers in a band even better.
At first they were the Sons of Jonas before settling on The Jonas Brothers. Millions of records sold, grammy nominations, movies followed, even a JoBromance between Nick and teen queen Miley Cyrus cemented their spot in the hearts of the hardcore.
Their 4th album, Lines, Vines and Trying Times, was released 2 weeks ago and tonight they’re in town for 2 shows at GM Place.
The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?
They promise the Scotiabank Vancouver Half Marathon will be one of the fastest courses you’ll ever run. With a drop of nearly 80m over 2k in the first 1/3 of the race, you have plenty of opportunity to pick up a few minutes. The only drawback is the drop is at the beginning and you might blow your energy only to bonk heading up the Burrard Street Bridge.
That might have been the case for me if I didnt spot a pace bunny to chase for about a mile in the last 1/3 of the race. She had me peeling a good minute off my average pace to drag me to the finish in a new personal best of 1:48:29.
I’ve said before “I am Not a Marathoner”and after seeing the experiences of Easter Island and this Half, I might tend to go back and agree with that statement. I can complete marathons, I just can’t compete in them. Half marathons, however, are a totally competitive distance for me to tackle. I’ve got 4 more half marathons on the schedule for the rest of the year.
Next year I’ve got Team Diabetes Rio staring at me in the face, I hope a solid back half of this year pounding out half marathons will set me up with a solid base to tackle the 26.2 again next year. I’m sure I’ll be able to find more than a few “pace bunnies” to follow along the beaches of Brasil.
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Canadians from coast-to-coast will be gobbling up the tax credit our benevolent leader has lobbed at the home renovation market to kick start the economy for the rest of the year.
How this is supposed to economically drive the nation out of a tailspin, I don’t know. But I’m not going to fight a 15% tax credit on a juicy new lawn for my backyard. You see, the asshats who we bought the house from did a half ass makeover of the place before they flipped it. They made it look good, but the work was awful. They tossed sod on top of rocky clay instead of laying new topsoil and while the yard looked great when we bought the house, the grass quickly died off leaving nothing behind.
The deck was rotting, the grass was dead and our yard was crap. So thanks to the tax credit and a great wedding gift from my parents, we had the great guys from Great Canadian Landscaping come by this week and fit out a new lawn for the yard.
It’s awesome, we can’t wait to run barefoot through the sprinkler with Z in the yummy grass.
I only wish the tax credit was good last year when I built the deck, put in a new roof, furnace and hot water heater!
The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?
We “thought” Michael Jackson was dead just before 3pm yesterday afternoon. That’s what TMZ was saying, but they were the only ones.
I couldnt go with it on air as fact. TMZ is the digital equivalent of the National Enquirer - highly sensational, ambulance chasing, eager to be first ant not always right. It’s their aggressive approach that lessens the credibility.
Even after the LA Times had confirmed his death, I still wouldn’t say it. Then MSNBC, Fox News, The New York Times all jumped on, and I was still cautious in the words I used on air.
Why was I waiting for Wolf Frickin Blitzer to confirm the story?
Maybe because I didnt want to believe it. I didnt want it to be true. I didnt want the music to be turned off. I couldnt believe a bunch of stuff I read on the internet. I needed more proof.
It was a crazy afternoon with Twitter immediately discrediting itself as a reliable and true source for information with Jeff Goldblum falls to his death in New Zealand tweets spreading seconds after Michael Jackson news broke.
New media was first on this one, yes. But it wasn’t true until old media said it was true.
I was interviewed by old media newspaper, The Province, to talk about what I did on my old media radio program yesterday afternoon.
Vancouver’s Virgin Radio said goodbye in its own way yesterday, by playing non-stop Jackson from 3 p.m.
The Rush with Buzz and K.J. opened up their airwaves to let listeners share their memories.
Among their favourite listeners’ stories was a woman who recalled posing with her E.T. doll as a child for photographs, just as Jackson had.
K.J. remembered her first trip to India to meet her cousins.
They didn’t speak the same language but they had something in common — Michael Jackson albums.
“The music was always genius,” said Buzz, noting Jackson had an influence on not just pop, but rock and hip-hop music.
“Everyone does M.J. . . . He was past his prime. His influence was felt 20 years ago, but we’re experiencing” the impact he had through other modern-day artists, said Buzz.
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33 year old Vancouver Realtor Sebastian Albrecht used to run a lot. But now, with bad knees he’s turned to a less punishing effort - climbing the Grouse Grind.
Last year, for fun, he ascended the 2.9km trail that soars with 800+m of vertical with a friend 12 times in 1 day. He didn’t really plan it very well, had to wait a couple times for fully loaded gondolas and was clogged on the route by a busy trail.
When the anniversary started to roll around, Sebastian challenged himself to break his own record and this time tie it to charity. With a $10 000 goal to raise money for The Shelter Foundation, Sebastian set off at 630a yesterday to climb the Grouse Grind 13 times in one day. He scheduled a pace that would get him to the top with time to refuel on the way down and not miss any gondola rides.
Here are some facts about The Grouse Grind: Length: 2.9 kilometres (1.8 miles) Elevation Gain: 853 metres (2,800 feet) Total Stairs: 2,830 Average Time: On average it takes up to an hour and a half to complete the hike. For novice hikers, up to two hours is recommended. Calories Burned: it all depends on pace, but average is 1 100 calories.
Now let’s multiply that for what Sebastian did: Length: 37.7 kilometres (a marathon is 42 km) Elevation Gain: 11 kilometres (Mount Everest is only 8 kilometres of vertical - his climb was 1.5 x up Mount Everest) Total Stairs: 36 790 (that’s 1226 flights) Average Time: 50 min (his fastest was 43min, his slowest was 1h10) Calories Burned: 14 300 (Michael Phelps’ insane diet is only 12 000 calories a day. Some diets recommend 14 000 calories a week)
Without doubt, Sebastian is one of the most accomplished athletes in Vancouver after pulling this stunt not once, but twice (and pumping updates to Twitter the whole time)! I got up early to tackle climb #1 with Sebastian, here’s the interview.
The Blog According to Buzz. Spread the word, ya heard?
We had the same problem with hip-hop acts coming to do concerts in Vancouver in the mid-90s. Fly by night promoters would try to do the whole thing on their own and the show would ultimately be cancelled last minute. Guess what’s happened here?
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