Talkin' Loafs and 'Head Shots'

Hey! It’s been TOO long since we gazed at the Toronto Maple Loafs and their addled fans.

As I write, the Loafs hold a one goal lead over the Islanders, one of four teams in the thirty team NHL with a worse record than Toronto’s. Plan the Stanley Cup parade, girls ‘n’ boys!!!

There must be something in the water in these parts.  Loaf fans have convinced themselves that their team is making a late season playoff run.  Somehow the message escaped resident genius Brian Burke who traded away two starting defense men for prospects in the past few weeks.

From the ridiculous to good old hockey psychosis NHL style: everyone’s talkin’ ‘head shots’ and Sid the Kid’s concussion. Sports ‘journalists’ are wearing out their Blackberry digits wonderin’ jes wat the league is gonna do.  Bottom line, oh dear humans: as long as the NHL and its broadcasting partners (almost exclusively in Canada – led in the first instance on Saturday nights, by what passes for a public broadcaster) promote fist fighting as part of the game, all talk about concussions and better protecting players is sheer hypocrisy and nonsense.

P.S. 25.02.11 Son-of-a-moose!  The Loafs beat les Canadiens last night looking something like a legitimate team.  Hmmmm… 4 points out of the playoffs.  Are they preparing ‘the Leaf Nation’ for an extremely painful season ending, or will they prove me wrong, wrong, wrong? Stay tuned.

Denis Villeneuve's Incendies

Greetings Oscar aficionados…  this past week I saw Incendies by Quebecois filmmaker Denis Villeneuve which is nominated in the Best Foreign Language Film category.

Incendies is about a couple of Palestinian-Canadian twins who return to the Middle East following the death of their mother to unearth some family secrets. It’s a film  about memory, multiculturalism, family, revenge and global conflict, set against a backdrop of twenty-first century Quebec and Lebanon. It’s a beautiful, tough-minded, lyrical film.

Villenueve’s previous effort, POLYTECHNIQUE, tackled the horrendous subject of the ‘Montreal massacre’ of female engineering students with both candour and subtlety. Incendies offers an even more unsparing and frank gaze at the human condition.

With Incendies, Villenueve joins Claude Jutra, Denys Arcand and other Quebec filmmakers at the highest level in a universal language of cinema.

Conundrum in True Grit

Confession time:  I loved True Grit.  It may mark the first time I felt moved by a Coen Bros. film.  I’ve often laughed, been disturbed, and have been impressed by Joel and Ethan Coen’s ever broadening cinematic vision, butTrue Grit got to me.  Maybe it’s the ‘road movie’ escapades of a 14 year-old character named Mattie Ross with vengeance in her heart (played brilliantly by Hailee Steinfeld), her horse, the grizzled gun-slinging Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges, unparalleled as usual) and a sometimes comic performance by the versatile Matt Damon as a Texas Ranger that worked so well for me.

The film is both a classic John Ford western with beautiful scenery, great sets and some well-filmed action (wait for the sight of Mattie Ross attempting to cross a very wide, fast moving river on her horse);  but it’s also an ‘acid’ western in the tradition of Arthur Penn’s The Missouri Breaks, or perhaps even more, Jim Jarmusch’s  Dead Man, in that it subverts the ‘western’ genre while augmenting it.

It’s also a re-make. None other than John Wayne won Oscar for his portrayal of Rooster Cogburn in a 1978 True Grit. Both films are based on source material by the novelist Charles Portis.

Here’s my dilemma:  the protagonists, under the urging of the wannabe vengeful angel Mattie, head off into “Indian Territory”.  A problem arises in a film that otherwise complicates many iconic ‘western’ approaches: with the exception of a few children who are swatted around by Rooster, there appear to be no Indians in ‘the Territory’. While I am unfamiliar with Portis’ novel, the absence of Indian characters seems odd.  I’m uncomfortable offering such a critique, that could fairly be considered awkwardly ‘politically correct’, because the Coen brothers have made a fabulously entertaining film. Still I wonder about that scripting choice.

Allow me to now make a partial Oscar assessment.  Bear in mind that I have yet to see 127 Hours, Inception or The Fighter. Having stated that caveat: I say it’s a toss up between Black Swan and True Grit for best film. The King’s Speech is lovely, but very mainstream. And, as I have written earlier in this space, The Social Network struck me as an MOW worthy, shallow caricature that does not belong in the same conversation.

I’m off next to see Montreal director Denis Villeneuve’s, Incendies, Canada’s entry in the Best Foreign Language film category. 

 

The (lame) Social Network

So…I got all pumped up to see the multiple Oscar nominated film The Social Network.  Unfortunately, I found it to be a very disappointing cinematic experience.

The creation of ‘Facebook’ is one of the great media, communications technology sagas of our time. Mark Zuckerberg is a revolutionary. How is it that this film singularly fails to depict him in fully human terms?  The Social Network manages to evoke irritation very similar to that of relying on ‘Facebook’ for any authentic, meaningful connection with human beings – it is essentially superficial.

After watching The Social Network, I began thinking about Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ film based on the life of another media revolutionary, Randolph Hearst, the brilliant, if unsavory, American newspaper and broadcasting kingpin. Charlie Kane emerges from Welles’ film as a fully developed, complex, contradictory character.  The Mark Zuckerberg portrayed in David Fincher’s film is, to my mind, a barely believable enigma.

Welles made a film for the ages worthy of its subject.  The creators of The Social Network have produced, at best, a mildly interesting, trendy film trapped in its own time.

P.S. Black Swan is spectacular and as compelling as The Social Network is tepid.

 

Jays' Update

Goodbye Vernon Wells. Now that’s a major league baseball trade!

It’s a daring strike by Alex Anthopoulos.  Mike Napoli is a veteran catcher who offers protection for the emerging, promising, yet completely unproven, J.P. Arencibia.  Napoli can also play first base – which might be necessary if Adam Lind can’t adjust.

Principally, the move is a coup because the Jays are out from under Wells’ gargantuan contract.

If Anthopoulos is savvy, Jose Bautista will become the face of the Toronto franchise. Unloading Wells’ albatross of a deal should open space to sign Bautista, a player who seems capable of leadership off and on the field, to a medium term contract. I’m never expecting another 54 home-run season from Bautista, but he’ll provide steady power and stellar defense whether he’s in the outfield or third base.

Late last year, I wrote about the “hollowing out” of the Blue Jays.  Allow me to re-assess in light of recent developments.  The trading of Wells, a fine player and perhaps a likable chap, but a 32 year-old on a superstar’s contract without superstar performance, is a significant step forward. Further, the addition of Octavio Dotel and Jon Rauch means that the bullpen is reconstructed.

Boston is set to run away with the American League East. However, the Yankees are weaker; and so are the Tampa Rays.

Here’s hoping that Anthopoulos and Paul Beeston don’t resume their, ‘we’re in a development year’, blather in the few weeks prior to spring training. The Jays are maybe, just maybe, set to make a run for a playoff position this year.

 

"I Confess" - Hitch takes Quebec

This week’s audiovisual ramblings included Alfred Hitchcock’s I Confess, his 1953 thriller filmed in Quebec City.

I knew of the film from Robert Lepage’s brilliant narrative and visual references to it in his first feature film Le Confessional (1994). It’s about time I took in the source which so inspired Lepage.

I Confess is not one of Hitchcock’s great films. Even so, it’s extraordinary to watch.  Hitchcock uses the backdrop of Quebec City to great effect.  The Chateau Frontenac, l’Assemblee Nationale, many churches and the ferry across the St. Laurent to Levis figure prominently.  Many of the characters speak some lines in French. Hollywood actors Montgomery Clift, Anne Baxter and Karl Malden work seamlessly in a French language milieu which is well incorporated in an English language production.

I was startled to see Canada, especially Quebec, appear as itself in an English language, international film. Given present day English-speaking Canadians’ reluctance to watch films about themselves produced in their own country, Hitchcock’s evident fascination with his fabulous Quebec City location is noteworthy in itself.

'Keef' Essays

Back from the sunny Atlantic shores of Cuba where, in addition to sampling local liquid treasures, I read Keith Richards’ can’t-put-me-down memoir,Life. It’s a splendid and stupefying work. 

Richards claims that he’s been awake for the equivalent of three lifetimes. Perhaps.  What’s undeniable is that he has remembered a great deal.

In collaboration with his friend, the former Times of London journalist, James Fox, Richards has ingeniously fleshed out a narrative that is not only chock full of content; it’s humorous, tragic and, often, quite moving.

As social and cultural  history, Life supplies an unparalleled first person account of working class post-World War II Britain and London in the swinging 60s. Musicologists and rock ‘n’ roll fans will lap up Richards’ detailed account of recording techniques and guitar tunings. Equally notably, it’s refreshing to read one person’s unapologetic, frank account of the ecstatic highs and miserable lows associated with the extravagant use of mind altering substances over many years.

Life reminds one of the outlandish inventive energy and intelligence of a great Rolling Stones recording. Decades have past since LPs such as Beggars Banquet, Exile on Main Street or Some Girls. Richards’ autobiography approaches the prosaic equivalent.

It is fashionable in some circles to assault the ‘rock aristocracy’ of the 60s and 70s. There’s no denying that Richards’ account leaves much to question about the human cost of the drug and sexual excesses that Richards chronicles with glee and panache. At the same time, it is equally undeniable that a plucky working class lad from the edge of London fell in love with some classical forms of American music, and that along with a handful of British musicians like Eric Clapton and Peter Green, ‘Keef’ and his mate Mick Jagger, helped give Chicago blues and 1950s rock ‘n’ roll back to the world just when they were being abandoned by American mass audiences. Life is a suitably rollicking take on the singular rebel spirit behind that enormous contribution to world culture.

Woe the Toronto Sports Fan

Bah! Hum-bug!

How numb and uninformed are Toronto sports fans?

Let’s see:

Brian Burke spends millions to build a losing NHL team without centres. Waffle chuckers aside, the ACC still sells out and the pathetic ‘Leaf Nation’ remains loyal with its $$$$ – which is all that counts with MLSE.

The Raptors, another MLSE product, cannot and will not play defense. This does not require great talent. It takes will – which is lacking at an NBA outpost where even quality players excel only while plotting their moves back to a real basketball city.

Finally, let’s look at the Blue Jays.  Alex Anthopoulos gets a free ride from fans, perhaps because he’s Canadian,  young and has a cute family. This, while he has spent the off-season dismantling a winning, entertaining team.  Anthopoulos traded viable Major League pitcher Shaun Marcum for a AA minor league player (also a Canadian).

When will Toronto sports media cotton to the fact that dear Alex’ real agenda has been to assist owner Rogers in cutting costs?  As I wrote earlier, Jays’ fans, contemplate 75 wins this year on the upside.

Women Marching to the Right

5 million viewers tuned in for the debut this autumn of Sarah Palin’s Alaska,the former state governor’s manipulative excess in ‘reality’ television. Millions also follow her Tweets and Facebook posts; and her two books are selling like hot-cakes.

Once a joke of the self-admiring North American liberal class, the undeclared Sarah Palin is easily among the favourites for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Her uncanny ability to reach mass audiences, even her use of language…”lamestream media”…”refudiate”… may make liberal elites titter, but has her growing crowd saying, ‘You tell ‘em, Sarah!’

But let’s leave world headquarters in Washington behind us for a moment. Go north young woman…not all the way to Alaska, but to Alberta.  In that province, Danielle Smith of the Wildrose Alliance was holding a comfortable lead over the government of Ed Stelmach in polls taken earlier this year. Ms. Smith, a former journalist and climate change skeptic, champions more rapid development of Alberta’s oil sands. Significantly to the right of Alberta Conservatives, Ms. Smith could well be the next provincial premier.

November’s Republican sweep of America’s lower house illustrated many things. Obviously ‘folks’ were angry with President Obama. His inability to reduce unemployment; his unpopular, hugely bureaucratic approach to “universal” health care; and  his fawning approach to Wall Street interests and automobile manufacturers are among the factors that both infuriated his opponents and alienated his base.

What’s less well documented are the crucial roles that politicized women of the right have played in the opposition to Obama.  Sarah Palin is simply  the prototype for a newer brand of female politician that is surging throughout the United States and influencing Canadian politics.

 Nikki Haley, governor-elect of South Carolina and Jan Brewer, who signed a shameful immigration bill as Governor of Arizona, are but two of the right-wing politicians who embrace the Tea Party’s program of radical change to American politics.

Of course, the role model for all these women is Palin.

What do these female politicians share?  They manage to extract the individualism and empowerment of earlier feminist movements while eschewing the social democratic components.  They often represent faith…usually evangelical Christianity. They revel  in poking a finger in the eye of older, more liberal, male dominated elites. They are often physically vigorous, active, attractive women with children.

Palin’s TV show works like a series of parables in which the heroine displays her pluck and shares lessons about life and America.   See Sarah shoot a gun…see Sarah overcome her fears to rock climb up the side of a mountain…see Sarah at the gym for a workoout at dawn…see Sarah and her beautiful family fly down a wild river in a raft. It’s raw, iconic, America as frontier, stuff. She wears her patriotism on her sleeve.

Sarah Palin, Danielle Smith and their ilk are no joke. Their mastery of twenty-first century media and the simple populism that they proclaim has a receptive audience.  It is likely they will have transformational appeal in the years ahead.

Hollowing Out the Blue Jays

From our sports desk: a wintery baseball flash report:

The Toronto sports media is oddly quiet about the evisceration  of a team that won 85 games last year in the formidable American League East. As I write this post, the dismantled Toronto Blue Jays squad that will arrive in spring training in just over two months time would be fortunate to win 75 once the regular season begins in April.

Let’s review: Pitcher Shaun Marcum traded for Brett Lawrie, a Double AA player; catcher John Buck signs as a free agent with the Florida Marlins, a team that no one watches; lefty relief pitcher Scott Downs takes his talents to Malibu; closer Kevin Gregg cut loose to free agency… The Blue Jays also added a player in the speedy outfielder Rajai Davis, but he is a minor addition in comparison to the flood of losses of established major league players.

Blue Jays management mollifies by talking about ‘talent accumulation’ and creating a mild buzz about the aforementioned Double AA player, Lawrie , because he’s a Canadian. It’s a public relations mirage.

At the moment, the Jays are a team without an experienced every day catcher, an experienced first baseman or a proven closer.  GM Alex Anthopoulos is the happy face on a movement to limit player costs while waxing smilingly about a brighter future ahead.

Yes folks, your 2011 Toronto Blue Jays: younger, cheaper and worse.

Hereafter - Clint Eastwood's latest

Greetings!

I’ve been engaged with other matters for a bit, but here I am shiny and new like a sturgeon.

 

Briefly, I suggest you take a long peek at Hereafter, Clint Eastwood’s latest film. No, there is no gun play; nothing remotely western-like; and there are really no tough guys. However, an achingly beautifully photographed Paris, Charles Dickens, and opera all figure into a triptych about death and wondering about the afterlife.

With the notable exception of a glowing NYT review, the film has generally met a lukewarm, mystified response from many critics. To my way of thinking, Hereafter like, Gran Torino, might be unexpected to some, but it’s yet another installment in the astonishingly rich oeuvre of Mr. Eastwood.  As usual in his most recent films, the music, written by Eastwood himself, is wonderful. As well, the opening scene of a natural disaster in an Asian getaway and and the grand visual shock of a terrorist attack in London bear the influence of the film’s executive producer, Steven Spielberg, to great effect. Clint Eastwood is a great artist who continues to renew his vision entering his ninth decade.

Exile redux: What a beautiful buzz!

I’m seldom one to vaunt a digitized re-release of an analog recording, but the Rolling Stones’ renovated Exile on Main Street is marvelous. If you have never experienced the magisterially murky, smoking evocation of Americana that the Stones captured in the basement of a French chateau and in studios in London and Los Angeles way back in the early 1970s, here’s your chance for satisfaction. There’s good reason the new release is currently the Number 1 CD in the United Kingdom.

The re-mastering of the original album is splendid (even if, as Keith Richards correctly argues, it’s unnecessary.) However, the selection of 10 outtakes and alternate versions is worth the price of admission. In re-working this material, Mick Jagger has reclaimed whatever is left of his artistic soul (not to mention, his voice). Like large parts of The Beatles Anthology, the result makes this Exile more like a new release than a re-hash.

If you figured the Stones had absolutely spit the bit out (I know I had), you might be surprised. As Ben Ratliff, a writer from The New York Times, maintains, the alternate take of “Loving Cup” is perhaps the best track in Stones history. He’s not kidding. On that track, Jagger effectively channels both Muddy Waters and Hank Williams. Charlie Watts’ drumming defies description.

As for The Keef himself, he might be a digital skeptic, as that fascinating article by the aforementioned Ratliff reveals, but his own vocal performance on an early version of “Soul Survivor” is a drawling, semi-improvised, book-marking joy. Only Keith Richards could make repeatedly growling ‘Et cetera!’  into primordial rock ‘n roll.

The Stones have traditionally been slow to plumb their own archive. Further, the early “re-mastered” CD releases of their 60s and 70s LPs were sometimes an audiophile’s nightmare. This re-release, however, shows the possibilities of a harmonious marriage of analog original and digital post-production by the likes of Don Was and mature artists such as Jagger and Richards.

Dome Ball

This Sunday the National Football League will feature two championship games played indoors for the first time in its history.  Yecccchhhhh!

In Indianapolis, the Colts will host the New York Jets; a few hours later the Saints of New Orleans will welcome the Minnesota Vikings. Both stadiums are antiseptic, over sized monstrosities better suited for truck rallies than football.

The spectacle of playing outdoors on actual grass (or ‘frozen tundra’), no matter what the weather has been sacrificed to a high-speed, pass dominated arena ball that, to my eye, looks false. In addition, as a filmmaker, I find the lighting of indoors football on television very unattractive. I know I am no doubt out of step with the times – in the era of video games, the NFL’s new indoor look might not dismay many fans. However, I wonder if the NFL does not risk diluting its product by limiting the range of tactical options that dealing with unpredictable nature demands.

There was a moment in the only good playoff game last week (played outdoors in San Diego) where you could see the wind move a shock of a hair on the head of a concerned Chargers’ coach Norv Turner.  Having just watched parts of a dreadful game from the Garbage Bag Dome of Minneapolis, it took me a moment to even realize it was the wind!  Perhaps the elements might have contributed to San Diego’s kicker missing three field goals that sealed his team’s fate at the hands of the surprising Jets.

btw The Colts will decisively terminate the Jets’ dreams and rattle the amazing rookie quarterback Mark Sanchez. And dog willing, the Saints will end the season of the anti-Packer Favre.

Lhasa de Sela

It’s taken me almost a week to process news of the all-too-recent death of one of the greatest artists who inhabited this country called Canada.  Lhasa de Sela died at her home in Montreal. She impressed as much as any new artist in any medium that I’ve encountered in the past decade. Her music was transfiguring; her voice an incandescent message from some unlikely sphere that only she seemed to know well.

Unfortunately, I never saw Lhasa perform live; but I did screen a number of concerts on television.  Her taped performance at Quebec’s Summer Festival from a few years back smokes with intensity. As an artist who worked simultaneously in Spanish, French and English, Lhasa represented much of what’s laudatory about Quebec and Canada. She was a twenty-first century powerhouse. It’s a crying shame that she died at age 37. Her first album in particular will long, long, long survive her.

Thanks for the tunes and that beautiful voice, Lhasa.  Travel safely.

The (bent) Hockey News

No Vincent? It says here that Team Canada will rue the exclusion of Vincent Lecavalier from its Olympic squad. Five years ago, the still young Lecavalier was clearly the best player on the ice when his Tampa Bay team beat Calgary for the Stanley Cup in a very tough series. He may be having an off year in the pathetic, fight polluted NHL, but my bet is that he’d still rock in international competition. If Steve Yzerman really believes that Patrice Bergeron is a better player, Canada’s hopes for the Olympics may be still-born. Oh, and if you think Quebec is under represented on the basis of merit on this Olympic team, you won’t get an argument from me.

Loaf Nation update: The team still bites. ‘Nuff said. But how weird is it that Toronto ‘sports journalists’ are barely noticing that the NBA Raptors are steadily becoming a competent basketball team? Oceans of ink and otherwise sensible people’s airtime is still wasted on the Loafs. In fact, the Loafs seem more popular the worse they get. Go figure. Toronto as North America’s official Loser-ville, anyone?

Finally, I am so glad I don’t have to hear another word about “our” junior team for about eleven and a half months. The pom-pom waving in The Globe And Mail and on TSN really became unbearable.

 

Best Flicks of 2009

In an entirely selective, non-scientific way, here are the best films I saw in 2009. There are many films I would like to see that I haven’t gotten to yet – top of the list would be Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, Capitalism: A Love Story, The Hurt Locker and Inglourious Basterds. Based on what I did see, here goes…

An Education dir. Lone Scherfig – an engrossing look at a sad slice of family life in 60s swinging London. Nick Hornby shows he’s an accomplished screenwriter as well as novelist in his adaptation of the source material, British journalist Lynn Barber’s memoir of an ill-advised first tryst. My only quibble, the lead actress Carey Mulligan who will deservedly garner an Oscar nomination, seemed simply too old to be cast as a precocious, intellectual, sexually curious 16 year old. To my mind, this film could have been one for the ages had the producers cast more convincingly.

Bright Star dir. Jane Campion – Campion is a great veteran filmmaker at the top of her game in this bio film about the poet John Keats and his doomed platonic relationship with a female admirer. A gorgeous, erotic film evocation of art and ideas. My favourite film of 2009.

Un transport en commun (English title: St. Louis Blues) dir. Dyana Gaye – Gaye is Senegalese, based in Paris. This mid-length musical features original songs, some African and some charmingly of the French variete tradition, sung by a driver and his passengers traveling Senegal by taxi. Fun, fun, fun with uncanny performances from a largely amateur cast. A musical that’s the  most intelligent portrait of twenty-first century hybridity (cultural theorists love that word) that I saw on screen last year. Try to catch it at a festival or perhaps on a TV network that takes culture seriously (most likely only BRAVO in Canada alas), you’ll be glad you did.

Up In The Air dir. Jason Reitman – a big surprise here. A dark, yet bitingly funny social satire of American decay featuring one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars, George Clooney who simply shoots the lights out. Fabulously entertaining with a sad, sad centre, this film establishes the young Reitman as the best Canadian director producing intelligent mainstream Hollywood fare since Norman Jewison.

The Vindication of Thompson & McCarthy

So I was wrong. Again.

Slightly less than two months ago (on this very site), I wrote off my beloved Green Bay Packers after an inexplicable loss to the execrable Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Since then, the Pack has been quite arguably the best team in the National Football League posting six victories against one last-play-of-the-game loss to last year’s World Champions. Yesterday, with a game remaining on the regular schedule, Green Bay clinched a playoff berth.

Many commentators (including this one) had argued that Green Bay VP Ted Thompson and Coach Mike McCarthy were mistaken in trading Brett Favre last year. In early November, with Favre leading the Minnesota Vikings to the NFC North lead and the Packers languishing in mediocrity, it appeared that 2008’s gamble on young quarterback Aaron Rodgers had backfired. Now…not so much. Yesterday, in addition to clinching a playoff spot, young Mr. Rodgers became the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for more than 4,000 yards in each of his first two seasons as a starter. The kid is a legitimate superstar.

Meanwhile Brett Favre was last seen arguing with his coach on the sidelines and the Vikings have lost two of their last three games. Stay tuned. Green Bay fans could be in for a very special post-season.

OH-TAH-WAH (Land of Giants)

I recently spent a few days in Ottawa. I was primarily ensconsed in the Library and Archives of Canada conducting research. A few obserations:

Ottawa has winter! It’s a welcome relief from Toronto where the mere thought of snow is greeted by media and many citizens with a fright that approximates the coming of the apocalypse. In Ottawa, people actually dress for winter; some of them, stunningly, appear to enjoy walking in the snow; and of course, soon, quite fabulously, the Rideau Canal will open for skating as it does each winter.

A few less savoury notes:

Traffic along Wellington in front of Parliament Hill is a deplorable  national disgrace. It’s a great pity that six lanes of tangled traffic should mar what could be one of the finest walkways in Canada. As Richard Gwyn has noted, Canada’s Parliament buildings represent a triumph of visionary art over calculated, cold ‘reason’. In the middle of the nineteenth century,  a country that did not yet exist deemed fit to nearly bankrupt itself to celebrate refreshingly non-fascistic architecture. Sadly, the pedestrian can no longer appreciate the vista. The air along Wellington is foul; and the cacophony of cars and buses inescapable. Where trees and a broad pedestrian walkway might exist, an ugly snarl of dinosaur technology prevails. Sigh. It seems fitting that Canada would dedicate what could be its primary boulevard to the automobile. After all, I was in Ottawa at the very moment the Canadian Prime Minister was a leader among those ensuring that climate change talks then ongoing in Copenhagen would lead to nothing more than its vacuous result.

Speaking of the Prime Minister…his party has left its own cultural mark on ‘our Nation’s Capital’. I take you now to the early evening hours in the bar at the Chateau Laurier. The place is littered with the new Tory elite. Twenty-somethings that would not look out of place at the Yuppie bar at a Republican convention. The ‘girls’ with garish scarves that tastelessly affect a garish misunderstanding of Parisian couture; the young men with quasi-military haircuts, ill-fitting suits and very shiny shoes; and for that unisex look, the ubiquitous Blackberry in paw. It would appear that among this crowd in Oh-Tah-Wah, no one is actually listening to the person they’re with. To be someone means that you must always be simultaneously looking at an electronic device while pretending to listen to the person in front of you. Virtual social conservatism meets sheer rudeness. How sweet! In this way, Bytown is almost as annoying as Bay Street.

Finally, back to the theme of fascist architecture.  The American Embassy on Sussex Drive is, as the saying goes, butt ugly. Fortunately its position below Parliament Hill obscures it from many sight lines. As the lads on that NFL show would bellow, ‘C’mon man!’ Couldn’t someone have designed something attractive?!

Truculence & Head Shots

Brian Burke is enough to bring a smile to my face on the grayest of November days. His “truculent” Loafs are once again the worst team in the NHL. His coach Ron Wilson is showing signs of serious brain wear. But that’s not ‘Burkie’s’ greatest achievement these days. No, it’s his response to the truculence of others that gives pause.

Burke’s acolytes among Toronto sports “journalists” are now commending him for taking charge in a recent NHL General Managers’ meeting. The panelists and scribes now assure us that there will be action against dangerous “head shots” because of the efforts of Burke and like-minded NHL hockey brainsters.  Puh-leez!

Perhaps taking a blind-side run with an elbow or cross check at an unaware opponent might merit a tougher penalty in future. How much does that really matter in a league that encourages fighting? Would any neurologist suggest that allowing, indeed inciting,  a 220 pound man to grab his opponent by the sweater and punch him in the face does not constitute a dangerous head shot? The blindness of the sports “journalists” in this regard is mind boggling.

The networks, with public broadcaster the CBC in the lead with Don Cherry basically waving pom-poms every time he sniffs a fight, are all complicit.  I shudder to think of the hypocritical sanctimony the CBC, TSN, The Score and Rogers Sportsnet will affect the first time an NHL player lapses into a coma or worse after a fight. In the meantime, the GMs and the broadcasters are equally hypocritical in feigning concern over head shots unless they’re delivered with a fist.  Ask Steve Moore whether he thought Todd Bertuzzi delivered legal fist shots to his head.