Friday, January 13, 2012

This and That


Less than a month now until I take off to Thun, Switzerland for my fourth season of adventure coaching American football in Europe. The hardest thing right now is making sure that I tie up all of the loose ends here before departing.

Equally hard is not being able to be with the Tigers as we start workouts for the season. It is hard knowing what to stress without any first hand knowledge of our personnel.

The Boxed Set of Swedish DVDs

I enjoyed both reading and then viewing the American film version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo."

At the Barnes and Noble bookstore in Westlake Village this week I purchased this box set of the three Swedish DVDs covering all three of Swedish author Stieg Larsson's crime noir novels.

We watched TGWTDT on Wednesday night in Swedish with English subtitles. Although I found Swedish a very difficult language to make heads or tails of, I still love to hear the melodic rhythm of this Nordic tongue.

On Thursday night we watched the first half of "The Girl Who Played with Fire." This second DVD gave us a "dubbed in English" option which gladly used. We will finish this action packed film on Friday night.

I am sure that the final DVD, "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" will be enjoyed before the weekend is out.

Noomi Rapace is a GREAT Lisbeth Salander!!!

Michael Nyqvist is also an excellent Mikael Blomkvist.

GREAT SERIES SO FAR!!!

Reading is FUNdamental


Another adventure novel in the Cotton Malone Series, this one had several factions in turmoil including Arabs, Jews, Christians, a U.S. Presidential assasination plot and, oh yes, a cabal of international multi-billionaires bent on controlling the known universe.

Simple, straight ahead stuff really.

Eric Slivoskey

The Slivoskeys in Stockholm
Eric, Estalita and their kids

Eric and his family spent two years in Finland while he coached the Seinakoki Crocodiles in the Finnish league's top division. We have been able to communicate by means of all of the social media and we all met up in Stockholm on a nice Summer afternoon in 2010 just before Laurie and I embarked on a cruise to Tallinn, Estonia and St. Petersberg, Russia.

Nice people.

Eric interviewed me about my experiences coaching in EuroBall and was able to get an article published in a Canadian magazine based on our talk. The magazine is named "Verge Magazine - Travel with a Purpose."

The article is titled "Moving Your Passion Abroad." Here is the link to Eric's article:

2 comments:

Ryan Bolland said...

I recently saw the American version of TGWTDT and LOVED seeing all the little authentic Swedish tidbits (swedish book titles, store names, trains, etc). I haven't read the book, but how would you compare the American and Swedish film versions to one another?

George said...

I agree, it is fun to see the Swedish tidbits.

They are both good but I think that the "American" Lisbeth Salander is a bit tougher edged/more sadistic.

Obviously I like that in a girl.

The American film left a good bridge to the next film/book in the series. I did not think that the Swedish one finished/transitioned as well.

READ THE BOOK!