Chantelle in the City

2012 Oscars Predictions

Once again, I seem to have Oscar fever. Like last year, I have been on a quest to watch as many of the nominated movies as possible. Here are the nominees (my picks in bold, movies I’ve seen marked with an asterisk):

BEST PICTURE

The Artist*

The Descendants*

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

The Help*

Hugo

Midnight in Paris*

Moneyball *

The Tree of Life

War Horse

BEST DIRECTOR

Woody Allen, Midnight in Paris *

Michel Hazanavicius, The Artist *

Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life

Alexander Payne, The Descendants*

Martin Scorsese, Hugo

BEST ACTOR

Demian Bichir, A Better Life

George Clooney, The Descendants*

Jean Dujardin, The Artist*

Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy*

Brad Pitt, Moneyball*

BEST ACTRESS

Glenn Close, Albert Nobbs

Viola Davis, The Help*

Rooney Mara, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

Meryl Streep, The Iron Lady

Michelle Williams, My Week With Marilyn*

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Kenneth Branagh, My Week With Marilyn*

Jonah Hill, Moneyball*

Nick Nolte, Warrior

Christopher Plummer, Beginners

Max Von Sydow, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS

Berenice Bejo, The Artist*

Jessica Chastain, The Help*

Melissa McCarthy, Bridesmaids*

Janet McTeer, Albert Nobbs

Octavia Spencer, The Help

I will be looking forward to watching tonight’s broadcast on Skype with my girlfriends. Coverage starts on E! At 5:30 pm or 8:00pm on CTV.

26 February 2012 ·

Are you there readers, it’s me Chantelle…

I’ll admit it: I haven’t blogged in a long, LONG time. Since August 18th in fact.  I don’t know why, but I just stopped blogging. I kept telling myself that I was too busy, or that had nothing to say, but the truth is, I just stopped writing.I didn’t know if I should keep writing, or if I even wanted to keep writing. I was getting discouraged that no one was reading, and what’s worse, I just didn’t want to talk about baseball anymore.

I started this blog when I started working in digital marketing as a way to practice my coding skills and as a way to figure out how this whole interweb stuff worked. At first I didn’t know what to write about, so I wrote about everything: music, movies, HTML5, growing up in a small town… My mentor once told me that good writers challenge themselves by writing about everything and anything and so that’s what I did.

Then when spring came along, I started writing about my favourite sport: baseball.  And naturally I started writing about my favourite baseball team: The Toronto Blue Jays. Suddenly, I noticed myreadership crept up. And suddenly I was meeting people that loved the Blue Jays as much (sometimes even more!) than I did.

Then real life got in the way, and somewhere along the way, I just stopped. I listened to the people that said I wasn’t good at blogging. I believed that because I didn’t have thousands of twitter followers or thousands of pageviews a day I wasn’t a “real” blogger. I believed that maybe I should give up and focus my efforts somewhere else. But while my blog was static, I kept thinking, “I should write about that.” Or “That would make a great blog post!” 

To those of you who read my blog, I’m sorry I let you down. I love writing. I love the Blue Jays. But what I love most of all is reading the great blogs out there and tweeting to my Blue Jays family on Twitter.

Earlier this year, I toyed with the idea of re-branding my blog to be Blue Jays specific, but I reasoned that doing so didn’t make sense considering we were in the middle of the season. Now that the season is over, I’m still toying with the idea of refreshing my blog. I’m not sure what exactly I’m going to do, just know that I want to make it bigger and better than before.  

And I hope that when that time comes, that you will all give me a chance once again. 

I promised the few people that do read this blog that I would post my pictures from my Blue jays roadtrip to Cleveland, but I never did. If you want to see them, I’ve put them up here. 

Thank you for reading, I look forward to seeing you again in the spring!

28 September 2011 ·

Don’t quit your day job, Brett!

In the video below, Brett Cecil tries his hand at reporting for Sportsnet.ca:

18 August 2011 ·

Lawrie’s Grand Slam

Last night was an eventful night!  In between all the ESPN sign stealing nonsense, there was a game going on. And a damn good game too that the Jays won 8-4. 

I’ll let my friends over at Drunk Jays Fans give you the deats on that because I don’t even want to waste my energy typing about that absurd accusation. (If you missed AA’s priceless reaction, you really should check it out.)

And then there were all the funny signs that fans brought to the SpyDome to mock the sign stealing accusations:

Last night a was a night that saw Henderson Alvarez make his major league debut. The 21-year-old became the third youngest pitcher to ever start a game for the Blue Jays behind only Jeff Byrd (20) and Phil Huffman (20 years-21 days). Alvarez’s took a no decision and his final line was 5.2IP, 8H, 3R/ER, 1BB and 4K. 

Jesse Litsch also earned his first career save after relieving Casey Janssen in the top of seventh.

But the highlight of the night was this:

Down by one with the bases loaded in the sixth inning, with two balls and no strikes , Brett Lawrie launched Breslow’s four seam fastball over the fence in left field for his first career grand slam. 

The Lawrie legend continues: in five games, Lawrie has collected seven hits in 18 at bats, including a double and two home runs. His slugging percentage currently sits at .778. 

Photo curtesy of @JimmyTraina. 

11 August 2011 ·

Bring on those damn Yankees

Now that the All-Star break is over, we can resume our regularly scheduled baseball schedule and I can post my regularly schedule series preview!

There’s no better way to start off our second half of the season than with a four game home series against the hated New York Yankees. New York sits just one game outside of first place in the American League East, while Toronto is two games under .500.

Tonight’s game has LHP Jo-Jo Reyes squaring off against the RHP Bartolo Colon.

Colon, despite allowing a season-high 10 hits and four walks in his last outing, had a good first half and has a 6-4 record and a 3.20 ERA. Reyes (4-7, 4.57 ERA) surrendered five runs in three innings in his last outing against the Yankees. 

Notably missing from the Yankees lineup is third baseman Alex Rodriquez who is undergoing rthroscopic surgery to correct a meniscus tear in his right knee. 

There will likely be a lot of long ball too, as 2011 Home Run Derby champion Robinson Cano (15) will square off against Home Run king Jose Bautista (31). 

The rest of the week’s pitching match ups look like this:

Friday, July 15:

RHP Freddy Carcia vs. RHP Brandon Morrow

Saturday, July 16:

LHP CC Sabathia vs. LHP Ricky Romero

Sunday, July 17:

RHP Phil Hughes vs. RHP Carlos Villanueva

Thursday is also 80s night at Skydome. In honour of special guest 1987 AL MVP George Bell, here’s a vintage McDonald’s commercial:

Thanks to Retrontario for the video. 

14 July 2011 ·

2011 All-Star Game Rosters

WE DID IT JAYS FANS!  Our beloved JBau was voted into the 2011 All-Star game by a landslide. Our hero led with 7,454,753 votes. That beats out the previous high-water mark of 6,069,688, which was set by Ken Griffey Jr. in 1994.

At the time of writing, Jose is hitting .331 with 56 RBI, and has a .471 OBS and .688 SLG.

If you’re still not convinced of his awesomeness, here’s Jose crushing number 26 off Doc in Saturday’s game against the Phillies:

Whatever your opinion is on the all-star game, you should be proud of the fact that a Toronto player had the MOST EVER votes. I’m not the biggest fan of the marketing efforts in Toronto, but I have to say that they were pretty good about getting fans to vote for Jose. There were TV commercials, lawn signs all over the place, and the Vote Jose t-shirts.

Pictures from Official Toronto Blue Jays Facebook fan page. 

Well enough about Jose (for now), here’s the rosters and such for the All-Star game.  

The AL Roster:

• C: Alex Avila (Tigers)
• 1B: Adrian Gonzalez (Red Sox)
• 2B: Robinson Cano (Yankees)
• 3B: Alex Rodriguez (Yankees)
• SS: Derek Jeter (Yankees)
• OF: Jose Bautista (Blue Jays) 
• OF: Curtis Granderson (Yankees) 
• OF: Josh Hamilton (Rangers)
• DH: David Ortiz (Red Sox)

The AL pitching staff consists of: starters Josh Beckett (Red Sox), Gio Gonzalez (Athletics), Felix Hernandez (Mariners), David Price (Rays), James Shields (Rays), Justin Verlander (Tigers), Jered Weaver (Angels) and C.J. Wilson (Rangers); and relievers Aaron Crow (Royals), Brandon League (Mariners), Chris Perez (Indians), Mariano Rivera (Yankees) and Jose Valverde (Tigers).

The AL bench includes: Russell Martin (C - Yankees), Matt Wieters (C - Orioles), Adrian Beltre (IF - Rangers), Asdrubal Cabrera (IF - Indians), Miguel Cabrera (IF - Tigers) and Howard Kendrick (IF - Angels), Michael Cuddyer (OF - Twins), Jacoby Ellsbury (OF - Red Sox), Matt Joyce (OF - Rays), Carlos Quentin (OF White Sox) and Michael Young (DH - Rangers).

The NL roster:

• C: Brian McCann (Braves)
• 1B: Prince Fielder (Brewers)
• 2B: Rickie Weeks (Brewers)
• 3B: Placido Polanco (Phillies)
• SS: Jose Reyes (Mets)
• OF: Ryan Braun (Brewers)
• OF: Matt Kemp (Dodgers) 
• OF: Lance Berkman (Cardinals)

The NL pitching staff consists of: starters Matt Cain (Giants), Roy Halladay (Phillies), Cole Hamels (Phillies), Jair Jurrjens (Braves), Clayton Kershaw (Dodgers), Cliff Lee (Phillies), Tim Lincecum (Giants) and Ryan Vogelsong (Giants); and relievers Heath Bell (Padres), Tyler Clippard (Nationals), Joel Hanrahan (Pirates), Jonny Venters (Braves) and Brian Wilson (Giants).

The NL’s bench will include: Yadier Molina (C - Cardinals), Starlin Castro (IF - Cubs), Chipper Jones (IF - Braves), Brandon Phillips (IF - Reds), Gaby Sanchez (IF - Marlins), Troy Tulowitzki (IF - Rockies) and Joey Votto (IF - Reds), Carlos Beltran (OF - Mets), Jay Bruce (OF - Reds), Matt Holliday (OF- Cardinals), Hunter Pence (OF - Astros) and Justin Upton (OF - D-backs).

You can catch the The All-Star Game on July 12th on Rogers Sportsnet and Sportsnet HD and Le Reseau des Sports with pregame ceremonies beginning at 8 p.m. 

4 July 2011 ·

Your Roy Halladay Etiquette

If you’re heading to the game today to see Roy Halladay take on his old team for the first time since being traded on December 16, 2009, there are a few things you should know etiquette wise.

First, wear your number 32s with pride.

Even though there was a tribute yesterday, be in your seat before the game starts.  If there is another tribute, you want to be there for it.

Around 12:50, Doc will likely emerge from the Phillies dugout and jog over to the right field bullpen to warm up before the game. Cheer him on as loud as you can until the Rogers Centre staff tells you to move or be quiet, or both.

Cheer loudly and give Doc a standing O when his name is called in the starting lineups.

Welcome him back with applause and cheers when he emerges from the dugout for the first inning and throws his pre-game warm up pitches.

But when the first Blue Jay steps in the batter’s box, it is game on.

I love you Doc, but now, I want to beat you.  I know you wouldn’t want it any other way…

Most important, remember this day and be happy that you were there.

See you there!  You better believe I’ll be sporting my baby blue number 32 shirt today!

2 July 2011 ·

Ready for the (Phillies) Weekend (Series)

Happy Canada Day (and happy Independence Day to my American friends)!

It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for for more than a year and a half (thanks G20!) as Roy Halladay and his Philadelphia Phillies roll into Toronto for a three game weekend series against the Jays.

After dropping 2 of the 3 games against Pittsburgh, the Jays are 40-42. While offense has be relatively good, our defense still remains shaky. 

Philly is undoubetedly one of the best teams in baseball: they lead the NL East with their 51-31 record, have all-star sluggers like Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins and a scary 5-man rotation.  While the Philllies have been practically unstoppable at home (32-14), they have been relatively average on the road (19-17).

Arguably, though, the real reason the fans will be flocking to the Rogers Centre Skydome is to see our beloved Roy Halladay make his return to face the organzation that drafted him at age 21.

I don’t need to remind fans, but Doc (who never won a World Series in Toronto and wanted badly to play for a contender) was traded to the Phillies December 16, 2009.

Here’s the pitching matchups for the weekend series:

Friday, July 1st:

RHP Kyle Kendrick (4-4, 3.23 ERA) vs. LHP Ricky Romero (7-7, 2.74 ERA)

Saturday July 2nd:

RHP Roy Halladay (10-3, 2.40 ERA) vs. RHP Carlos Villanueva (5-1, 3.15 ERA)

Sunday, July 3rd:

LHP Cliff Lee (9-5, 2.66 ERA) vs. LHP Jo-Jo Reyes (3-7, 4.77 ERA)

While Rogers hasn’t announced any attendence numbers, you can bet the Rogers Centre  Skydome  will be pretty packed.  I’ve been told that there will be a street party outside the Dome today, which if done right will be a nice change from the usual nothing.

Yours truly will be at the game today and tomorrow, and will be blogging about the series. What about you guys?  Are you going to any games this weekend? Predictions?

1 July 2011 ·