Ntuple Indemnity

And sealing it up is exactly what No. 23 has done in both series thus far – first with the overtime goal against Vancouver in Game 7 two weeks ago, and now the solitary goal in tonight’s elimination of the Detroit Red Wings.

I did not live in Calgary in 1989, the year the Flames won the Stanley Cup. By that, I mean to say that I have never lived in a city where the home team advanced past any round in the playoffs, let alone to the Western Final or its Campbellian counterpart – until tonight. The continuous citywide hooting, hollering and honking of horns following the overtime goal and the otherwise scoreless contest that preceded it was an indication like no other that yes, the spirit of Calgary hockey is more than alive and well. It was not dead these past eight to ten years, just comatose – and now it’s awakened to enact what the movie advertisements called “a roaring rampage of revenge”, though I suspect I’m confusing it with another story.

The funny thing is, I had tickets to the game. But it’s only so often that one gets a chance to trek all the way across the city to hang out with enlightened defectors from Edmonton in a sports bar – and besides, as far as going to a Flames playoff game is concerned, there’s plenty more of that coming.

On an entirely symbolic note, after years of never really adjusting to the new team designs with the colour black and the snorting-horse insignia, I finally acquired a new Calgary Flames jersey. I wear it with pride.

So I just returned from the first performance of Diana Krall on her latest Canadian tour at the Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, where she will be for another two shows. Suffice to say, she places pretty high on the list of people Nick wants to be – and while I’m halfway there piano-wise, the vocals have a long way to go. (Observe Steve as he takes the preceding statement as a cue to pose a similarly self-indulgent question to himself on his blog concerning people whom he wants to be, proceeds to laud Joe Clark and Paul Simon – not necessarily in that order – and receives a boatload of comments from his readership while the responses to this here post remains strictly in the single-digits.)

I was first introduced to Ms. Krall – or would that be Mrs. Costello? – back in 1997 or so when she released Love Scenes, which was being promoted on Bravo!, which I watched all the time because it was the only station at the time carrying Red Dwarf. As Dirk Gently would point out, everything’s connected, see. But I digress. Now, back then I had yet to become the jazz-head I am today, with the swing rhythms permanently hardwired into my brain and the corresponding pen-drumming and whatnot. In the past few years I have really come to appreciate her work, and it was a pleasure to finally see her perform live.

I won’t pretend for a moment that the Grammys (should be “Grammies”) and the like are very often legitimate, but if ever there was a deserving artist in recent years, it’s Diana Krall. It’s impressive what a controlled pianist she is when, often at the same time, she sings with one of the most recognizable voices in modern jazz, a sultry alto with an enunciation that could be described as smooth – not that my description counts for much, because she really speaks (sings?) for herself. Watching a jazz musician of her calibre – not to mention the diversity of her repertoire: everything from Irving Berlin to Joni Mitchell to her husband – is an experience in itself, in the sense that she and her band play with such professionalism, but by the very nature of their music seem as laid back as ever.

If she’s coming by you on your tour, you owe it to yourself to try and get tickets – though I warn you, that is in itself a difficult and expensive proposition. But I guarantee you it will be worth it, and even if you are not quite into contemporary jazz, this would make a more than fitting introduction.

The above statement, of course, contains all of the single letters that combine with “RETINA” to create a Scrabble-legal “bingo”, or seven-letter word. These phrases are known as anamonics, and I don’t know them nearly well enough, which did not stop me from winning seven games of eight in today’s mini-tournament in Calgary, one of which was a forfeit. The record was just enough to prevent my present NSA rating of 1267 from dropping, as I was the top seed in a division of twelve players in the 900-1300 range. Given the circumstances, I should have done better.

Let this not be meant as a slight to players of this calibre, however. Despite how low the numbers look – expert level is conventionally defined as anything above 1600 – they were no small fish to fry. The typical player above 900 knows her two- and three-letter words cold, likely has the big three stems (AEIRST, AEINST and the aforementioned AEIRNT) well on the way, and has a good sense of positional strategy – in short, enough to clobber anybody who’s never left the living room. Especially interesting to watch are players whose first language is not English; they are tremendously advantaged by a lack of “word shock” given that obscure words seem no odder than many one may consider common, but disadvantaged by a deficit of “natural” word knowledge outside the sphere of study lists. Today, a player who is on nearly equal footing with me in terms of ability arguably lost by way of sacrificing two turns, the first when she challenged REDUX, the second when I caught her tacking an S on the end of ALIT.

Really, this is just a microcosm for the differences one generally notices between naturalistic and academic langauge acquisition. Homonym errors are far more frequent in the writing of those who learn a language verbally and contextually, whilst grammatical mistakes committed by those who learn English in an academic setting, upon analysis, are very systematic.

It is quite unfortunate that most language curricula nowadays in primary and secondary schools – and I believe this is not just the case in Alberta – are merely immersive and never bother to address the elements of syntax in the same manner as second-language programmes. The consequence is that in many cases, native English speakers are sometimes just as, if not more writing-impaired than their ESL counterparts. We already see some degree of linguistic confusion, or even reduction, with the misuse/non-use of “whom”, and the conflation of past tense and past participles.