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The 10 O’Clock: Slopestyle’s chased away some of the toughest snowboarders in the world. Not B.C.’s Spencer O’Brien

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I watched this movie last night. It’s called The Grey. Fairly preposterous stuff, on many levels. Crew of oil-drilling workers in the north — who love nothing more than drinking heavily and fighting each other — go down in a plane crash. Only a few survivors. And those who do survive the crash have to face horrendous weather and worse wolves, whose eyes shine in the dark and whose bellies yearn for oil-drilling worker meat. (Yuck.)

 

Right! It stars Liam Neeson!

Funny fellow, that Liam Neeson. Remember, he was once in The Mission. Rob Roy. Les Miserables. Kinsey. He was Oskar Schindler in Schindler’s List. Heck, he got an Oscar nomination for Schindler’s List! And he was a really sweet, non-violent father in the amazing movie Love, Actually!

I point this out only because Liam Neeson is, incredibly, now America’s greatest 61-year-old action hero. Seriously. In the last five years, he’s been a CIA guy who pursues the baddies who kidnapped his daughter (Taken); he’s been caught up in some confusing crap in Unknown; he’s even stooped to be in Clash of the Titans. Hell, he was in The A-Team! And Battleship!

My point? Nothing, really. I’m delighted that a man who would normally be marginalized by Hollywood, told to hang up his fists, is instead still punching out wolves and threatening to pound his colleagues. It’s a fascinating, unusual career arc. But if The Grey taught me anything, it was this: If I’m ever lost in a blizzard after a plane crash, and there are wolves hunting me, and there’s no way in hell that I’m going to survive but I’m still going to give it the old college try, I want to be right beside Liam Neeson. I will survive!

And on with the 10 O’Clock:

CURLING, EASY? LET’S SEE YOU ROCK THE TIGHT PANTS!

I must say, I get much amusement from USA Today’s Chris Chase, who last week ranked the last 20-or-so Super Bowl halftime shows.

His latest endeavour? Ranking the 21 Olympic sports from easiest to hardest.

It’s an interesting pursuit. After all, Chase hasn’t done most of these things, I would think. Which is why he probably doesn’t understand how hard curling — his presumed easiest sport — must actually be. Writes Chase: “Are you capable of standing on ice and yelling at inanimate objects? Congratulations, you too can be a curler.” Figure skating, he says, is the next easiest sport. Hmmmmm. It’s not just standing on the ice, Chris. You actually have to do extremely difficult things.

Anyway, Chase will no doubt succeed in outraging people who are fans of the various sports. Other than fans of Nordic combined, which of course combines cross-country skiing and ski jumping. (Writes Chase: “Exhaustion plus sheer terror equals the hardest of any Olympic sport.”)

DO YOU HAVE ANYTHING EASIER?

The last few days, we’ve been hearing how hard the slopestyle course is in Sochi. This is a new event, of course, so we really don’t know what to expect of these boarders shimmying down rails, launching off ramps, that sort of thing. But they’ve been hurting themselves. Shaun White actually pulled out of the event, which says something.

Well, it does look like fun. And now that I’ve had the experience of going down the course thanks to a Go-Pro, I’m happy to watch it and not even remotely attempt it.

And good news: earlier this morning, B.C.’s Spencer O’Brien placed third in qualifying, and will advance directly to the final, which happens late Saturday night. Four Canadian men have advanced to the semifinals or final, late Friday night.

EVERYONE’S A WINNER, BABY

Loved this piece by Neil Devlin of the Denver Post, which he wrote after Wednesday’s exciting times across North America, where thousands upon thousands upon thousands of kids signed their letters of intent to play college football. It’s a salute to the kids who didn’t make it, reinforcement that it’s all right that they weren’t picked. He calls it, “So what?” And it’s a nice, easy read worthy of your time.

UH, OK … HOW DO WE GET BETTER?

So what do the Seattle Seahawks have to do to get back to next year’s Super Bowl? Bob Condotta of the Seattle Times explains. Said Carroll: “I don’t see anything that we need to add. We just need to get better.”

And there is, of course, the epiphany of the 12th Man.



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