Sean's Year in Review

Midnight of New Year's Day is only a few hours off, so it's time for me to crack open the diary and see what I was thinking about over the past year.

I'm not so Victorian as to actually keep a diary, so the blog will have to do. Neither am I much of a sentimentalist, though I do find it funny to look back and say, "Was I really that concerned about the price of Starbuck's coffee?"

New Year's is a time of renewal and resolution. Millions of smokers will quit tonight, only to light up during the hangover the following morning. A number of fat people will say that they are going to drop fifty pounds, then chug chicken wings during the college bowl games. Life's funny like that: any other day of the year, a broken resolution would be a broken promise. But a broken promise on New Year's is okay, because people just think you were being a drunken ass when you made the declaration. They never believed you, anyway.

So, let me see. It was New Year's Eve, 2006, and I was in Acapulco. I enjoyed Coronas on the beach, then margaritas in the bar, and then a gorgeous Argentinian girl in the...well, let's not get carried away, shall we? Some things are better left off the page.

January

Shoes

I bought a new pair of shoes yesterday.

That shouldn't be news, but it is for me. I've always had a problem getting over to the shoe store and making a purchase. Like most real men, I only own a few pairs of shoes. A black pair for the suit, a running pair for the street, and a pair of sandals for everything else. I have never owned a brown pair of shoes in my life, not because I don't like the color brown, but because I don't have a brown belt to go with them. As for Oxblood, the name alone turns me off, and besides, red shoes are for Judy Garland.

Tanning and Work

Today's tanning episode got me thinking about work. You see, these two chicks are showgirls. That's their job. They're great friends and I love them to death. So as they were lying there, they asked me if I'd mind moving their chairs (whilst they were still lying on them) so that they could get a better angle from the sun. As women do, they had unstrapped their bikini tops and were lying on their stomachs. It was much easier for them to ask me to move the chairs, rather than tie the tops, get up, move the chairs, lie back down, and untie the tops again. So the thought crossed my mind to do it.

Then I saw something. Over their oiled, tanned, gorgeous kick-line butts, I saw a man painting a light fixture. He was sweating his balls off in the afternoon sun, paint chips all around him, the stink of varsol and epoxy in his nostrils.

I told the girls to stick it.

Heat

I have spent years in the world's hot spots and amongst the tourists they attract. Tourists are a funny bunch. Anyone that tells you they travel in order to learn about 'culture' are full of baloney. After sailing, flying, and hitchhiking around various parts of the earth, I have come to the firm conclusion that nobody wants to learn anything about anybody. At least, not anybody that is alive. People might fly to Italy, but they don't do it so they can rent an apartment in some Palermo craphole and learn the culture of getting mugged. No, they fly to Italy to check into a hotel, look at David's genitals, take a stroll around the Colosseum, then have a pizza at an 'authentic' restaurant.

February

My Name

It was in third grade that funny things started happening. My mom or my dad bought me one of those iron-on shirts, the ones where people would put their names on the back in case they forgot who the shirt belonged to when they pulled it out of the drawer. On the back of that shirt was written SEAN. So it was my shirt with my name. I can't remember what was on the front, but it was probably an iron-on Twisted Sister logo or something.

Anyway, I put on that shirt and went to school. All day long people called me 'Seen,' as in, "I have seen the light." I had no idea why they were calling me this, until I realized that they were ripping on my name. Since that day, I have probably been called 'Seen' about 5, 342 times.

Flush

If one sentence can sum up how ludicrous this stuff is getting, it must be the following one from Fox News, talking about Ibrahim Ramey, director of human and civil rights work from the Muslim America Society:

"Ramey said he was unaware of any specific complaints regarding the direction of toilets in U.S. prisons."

Poor Kids

They didn't look poor. They had well-combed hair and they looked as if they'd had three squares that day. Yet here they were, life's little lost ones. Their eyes darted from tourist to tourist and drunk to drunk, looking for a sucker or someone that wasn't paying enough attention to their wallet. They knew more about the street than I ever would, and they weren't old enough to enter high school.

And that's the way it's going to go for them. Roses, to heroin, to jail, to infection, to death in no time at all, and we'll still be going to the clubs and telling the next generation that we don't want their crummy flowers.

The Environment

Our conceit is limitless. The Earth has been through ice ages, massive earthquakes, hurricanes, innumerable volcanoes spitting sulphur into the sky, catastrophic meteorite impacts, so forth. But hairspray and unleaded gas will be the planet's demise?

Ours, maybe. But the Earth doesn't give a damn about us. Ask the next skydiver whose chute doesn't open how fragile the Earth is, and how much it cares. You'll get two four letter words in response. The first is shit!, the other is thud.



March

Al Gore

“The Earth has a fever.” What kind of an arrogant ass goes before Congress (and the TV cameras; let’s not forget why he was there in the first place) and talks to senators as if they are three years old? This man is quoted as saying that global warming is going to be the end of civilization as we know it, and he uses “The Earth has a fever,” to describe this scientific catastrophe.

I would love to hear Al Gore describe other problems using his condescending, talk-down-to-children-tone.

The Leaning Tower of Pisa: “The marble feels dizzy.”

9/11: “The birdies hit your Leggo set.”

Oil spill: “Exxon made a boo-boo.”

Hurricane Katrina: “Someone pulled the Caribbean’s finger.”

Apartment suicide: “Little man fall down, go boom.”

Assault and battery: “The bullies played a mean game of tag.”

Out With Friends

I have often said that it is not where you are, it is who you are with. I stand by that. If I am with my buddies Dave and Pete in some craphole, I will have a great time. If I am at the best nightclub in Berlin with some loser who complains all the time, I will hate life. This is why I despise going out with a group of people that cannot make up their minds on where they want to go. You’d figure they’d have learned it by now: if you’re truly friends, then it truly doesn’t matter. If the location matters so much, I have bad news for you: you aren’t friends.



April

Eavesdrop

I overheard a woman talking to her friend outside a mall last night:

"You know Angela. If it doesn't involve manicures, pedicures, martinis, or jogging, she doesn't give a shit."

Such is the epitaph over many a woman's thirties.

Good-Bye, Old Friend

I remember hearing about a friend that died. He wasn't a close friend, but we shared some drinks and jokes together. He was a hell of a guy. He got married, and three years later he dropped dead. I hadn't seen him in a long time. When I got the news, the first thing that popped into my head was him cutting up a salami and asking me if I wanted some. That memory comes from an all-night bender that we'd had. At the end of the night he pulled out some salami, some bread, and a knife. He said, "You want some salami?"

I feel like I cheated him. Nobody's first memory after death should involve a damned salami. I like to think he'll forgive me for that.

The Virginia Tech Shooting

I'm fed up with the cops, too. We've got America's Most Wanted, COPS, SWAT, Protect and Serve, and all kinds of tough-guy cop garbage on TV. When a drunk driver gets pulled over, the police have no problem throwing him to the ground or using a Taser to zap him into submission. On the SWAT programs, fifteen guys get out of a van all dressed in black body armor. They look ridiculous, like schoolboys at Hallowe'en. When they kick in the drug lord's slum door, they find the 17-year-old menace to society passed out on the couch in his underwear.

When they shackle the drug kid and put him in the back of the van, they usually bring on a sergeant to make some remarks. "Nobody got hurt," he says. "Successful day."

No kidding, pal. You stormed a suburban home as if you were the Marines. The kid didn't even know you were coming. The chances of somebody getting hurt were pretty damn small. Where are these tough guys when somebody is shooting cheerleaders and university professors in the back?

Netspeak

I have a friend that is the master of Netspeak. She loves it. When something special happens in her life, she types :P. This means she is sticking out her tongue. When she types ;), she’s winking. When she types :O, she’s surprised.

What people like her don’t understand is that I already know all this stuff because it’s implied in the language. When I write to say that I fell down a flight of stairs, they don’t need to type colon-capital-oh to say they are shocked. When they tell me they won free tickets to the playoffs, they don’t have to stick out their tongue. I know they’re a braggart and a blowhard. No emphasis needed.

May

Rosie Quits "The View"

Rosie. Ah, Rosie. The big, round, mound of sound finally decided to pack it in. She was due to resign from The View in a few weeks, but after her latest tiff with Elisabeth Hasselbeck, she punched the clock early. Or as Rosie wrote on her blog: "When painting there is a point u must step away from the canvas as the work is done."

True. Or as I like to put it, "When done taking dump, there is point u must flush."

European Chicks

Women north of the Rio Grande are a terrible disappointment when it comes to the mystery and the allure of woman. Yes, the French chick at the bar in the black turtleneck smoking the long cigarette might be a snob. But there is something sexy as hell about women that can stand alone at a bar and not once - not once - look around the room. Sheer confidence. Like a cat. Utterly disinterested in what you have to say or who you are...or might she be?

This as opposed to, say, the sexy allure of a chick from Kamloops wearing droopy denims when she shouts, "Canada kicks ass. Whoooo!" and then punches you in the arm harder than a lumberjack.

The Beer Test

The beer test is the ultimate indicator of how expensive a city is, because you can be sure that a city charging 1o dollars for a draft beer is not going to sell you a house for under a couple of million. To make a two million dollar house sound reasonable, just tell yourself that it's only worth two hundred thousand beers. Besides, what do you expect in a place like Monte Carlo, where Grace Kelly was a Princess and their Grand Prix has the Mediterranean for a backdrop?

Big Bucks

Any sports star that gets married and has kids before he retires is an idiot. I really believe that. Because man, if I was making ten thousand dollars every time I threw a ball or passed a puck, the last thing I’d want to do is go home to a bunch of screaming kids.

Planet Starbucks

The language of Starbucks amuses me. There is not a chance that any of these people knew what "grande" was ten years ago. Likewise chai, latte, or machioto. How did they learn the lingo? They must have been nervous the first time they used ten words to order a cup of coffee, some in a different language to boot. Or perhaps it just comes naturally to people that think there's no easier way to sound sanctimonious than to specify that their coffee be served at exactly 190-degrees. And what about the prices they pay? When a large (pardon me - venti) latte costs almost as much as a six pack of beer, you know things are seriously out of whack.

June

Gay Marriage

People that get upset when someone wants to talk about such a big issue, and have a good debate about it, aren't worth my time. When feelings drive laws, you should be very nervous. Today's good feelings about gay marriage could be tomorrow's bad feelings about not having Jews own supermarkets, blacks teach school, whites swim in pools. Seem ludicrous? 30 years ago, so did the very idea of gay marriage.

The Enviro-Boobs Strike Again

Poor guy. He's sane, but he doesn't get it: it no longer matters if the air gets cooler or warmer. All that matters is that it changes. Now that 'global warming' is called 'climate change,' the enviro-boobs and others of their mindless ilk can point at a thermometer or a thunderstorm any day of the week and say, "See?"

Personally, I can't decide which is better: global warming, so the babes are in bikinis throughout the year; or global cooling, so the babes want to spend more time cuddling in the Jacuzzi.

Growing up

Back in high school, I'm pretty sure we all wanted to get laid, but it rarely happened. Now, everybody's getting laid and they can't wait to post photos of the evidence all over the internet. It only took sex ten years to go from being the aw-shucks-red-in-the-face-sweaty-palms act it was, to a humdrum event you can now discuss over dinner.

July

Vegansexuals

Pardon the double pun, but sex in New Zealand just got harder to come by. According to one newspaper, Kiwi vegans have declared that they will not have sex with anyone who eats meat. They are calling themselves vegansexual. As if any red blooded human would care, since their “no meat touches these lips” mantra implies that they don’t agree with oral sex, either.

Tattoos

It seems like every woman in a tight shirt and low jeans was born with one of those Asian symbols just above their butt crack. I ponder what the symbols mean. I’d ask, but I know the ladies haven’t the foggiest. They got it because they thought it looked cool. Then the ladies give you dirty looks for staring at their butts, when all you’re trying to do is figure out what their butt is trying to say.

I wonder sometimes if they’re getting busy with an Asian guy, does the man ever think, “Why does this woman have ‘I’m With Stupid’ written above her butt in Mandarin?”

Sportscasters

I’ll give Sports Illustrated’s Rick Reilly a break on this. Years ago, in a face to face meeting, he asked Sammy Sosa point blank if he would take a steroids test. There was a great deal of controversy over whether Reilly should have asked the question. Not much controversy, though, over the fact that Sosa did not say yes or no. He still hasn’t. He just ignored it, it went away, and the sports writers let it, just as they let his corked bat slip from memory every time they discuss his homerun totals.

Soccer

The soccer tournament involved all of the qualifying countries in the Americas, including the United States. Canada didn't make it because Canada is so involved in soccer that they suck at it, ranking out of the top 50 countries in the world. When Bosnia-Herzegovina (28), Morocco (35), and Guinea (50) are better than you at a sport, you know it's time to stop asking when that sport will become popular in your country.

I flicked on CNN this morning and they were talking about David Beckham's arrival in Los Angeles. He used to play for Manchester United and Real Madrid. He's now come over to play with the LA Galaxy. Headlines on Yahoo are asking if he can save US soccer. The rest of us are asking if he can get out of the way so we can get another look at his hot wife.

Our Times

The other day I was on a flight from Washington DC to Toronto. It was a puddle jumper of an airplane, but it had jets, so it was noisy as hell in the cabin and the seats were too close together.

A little girl was across the aisle from me, looking out the window, and she turned to me and asked me how long the flight was going to last.

And I didn't know if I should say anything.

Such are the times we live in today, where speaking to a lone child is not something to cherish (the child might learn something; for that matter, so might you). Rather, speaking to a child makes you look over your shoulder, to see if anyone thinks you're some sicko who's trying to take advantage of a young innocent.

Look in the Mirror

The trouble with looking at yourself is the looking. Being bold enough to examine yourself, to be honest about what you see, is tough. I think it was Freud that said no one can psychoanalyse themselves (he also said the Irish are impervious to psychoanalysis, so I guess they can forget my whole point), but it's worth giving it a shot now and then.

August

Mother Theresa Dies

No one noticed the passing of Mother Teresa, and in a way I always liked that. She wouldn't have wanted the headlines, unless they came with a donation for her Missionaries of Charity. She had no crown jewels, and would have hawked them for food if she did.

10 years on, the news coverage still makes me laugh. A few days ago, a number of papers ran a story about how Teresa questioned her faith in God towards the end of her life. That's a great hit job on a devoted Christian, and a wonderful way to celebrate her life, isn't it? Diana, however, gets the tears, the flowers, and the orgasmic excitement of a nation in mourning. Fire up the TV. Replay the Elton John tune. Edit the video and photo montages. Set them to music, with soft focus and dissolve transitions. Nothing's too good for the Princess.

The differences in their deaths could not be more striking. One with malaria and heart failure, the other in a millionaire's limo. Guess which one gets the full blown Larry King treatment?

Senator Criag Bust

I remember reading a book written by a retired cop in Chicago. He went through the vice squad to pay his dues. For that detail, he had to watch gay men go at it in public bathrooms. He couldn't arrest them until they were virtually in the act of sex, otherwise there was no crime. He wrote some pretty disturbing images in that book, about Vaseline and all kinds of stuff, but it's an important example: to convict someone of a crime, there must actually be a guilty act. The lawyers called it mens rea (guilty mind) and actus reus (guilty act). You need to have both in order to constitute a crime.

To believe that the Senator is guilty of a crime, you must then believe that everything the arresting cop is saying is the truth, and you must assume that Senator Craig was looking for sex. It just doesn't stand up. If you believe it does, then God help you when you're in the hands of an overzealous cop.

Bill Moyers Shows His Colors

A few questions for Bill Moyers:

1) If the journalist's job is to provide the public with the "best thinking" out there, who decides what the "best" thinking is?

2) If there is a "movement" for impeachment, how can there not be one against it?

3) Since when was public broadcasting meant to be an alternative to anything? Just because you suck at your craft and have to appear between telethons and Nova re-runs doesn't mean you can give yourself a cool title like "alternative."

4) When did journalists "dare not" talk about anything because officials didn't want them to? Did you even watch the pre-invasion press conferences? I did. Guys were asking Generals if Baghdad was going to resemble Stalingrad. This proves two things: they don't toe the official line, and they are morons.

5) "The journalist's job is not to achieve some mythical state of equilibrium..." Really?

News to us. We lowly worst-thinkers always thought it was. It's nice to know that Bill Moyers believes equilibrium in a story of opinions is a thing of myth and legend.

The Flag

The flag looks pretty, but it means little. The rules that govern it don't actually exist. When you hear someone say that the flag shouldn't touch the ground, or shouldn't be used to wipe up coffee, they're borrowing from the Americans. There are no rules governing the use or misuse of the Canadian flag. You have every right to fly it over your house, or use it as a lobster bib.

Merv Griffin Dies

Merv Griffin died on Sunday. If you've ever watched Jeopardy or Wheel of Fortune, then you've seen his name at the end of each episode.

I remember staying in the Beverly Hilton about six years ago. It was one of his hotels. Merv's greatest hits were on one of the hotel's channels, and I watched an old interview he did with Richard Burton. Burton said to Griffin, "You're more successful than I am."

Merv looked suitably surprised, and asked Burton to elaborate. Burton said, "You're more successful than I am. Because you're on television." His emphasis on that last word was a sign of Burton's smarts.

Minnesota Bridge Collapse

It took CNN exactly 12 hours to have a graphic that said, Who's to Blame? written beneath pictures of concrete in water. Jack Cafferty, CNN's most asinine reporter (and that's saying something) went on his usual anti-Fed rant. He blamed the bridge collapse on Bush, Iraq, Bush, Iraq. He hearkened back to the glorious mud slinging days of Katrina and the tsunami (tidal wave, to the rest of us). Then he read some emails from his fans that did the same. Then he tossed it back to Wolf Blitzer and returned to his corner, waiting for Blitzer to call his unqualified ass back onto the tube to read more emails later in the show.

This is what passes for reporting nowadays. Jack Cafferty rolls up his sleeves like some 1950's newspaper editor and pretends to do some investigating. The next time you watch this guy on TV, you'll realize he does nothing of the kind. He's a morning show has-been. He's a hack. He sits on a stool and reads emails sent to him by the unemployed of America. Who else is watching CNN at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and writing political diatribes to Jack Cafferty?

Girl Talk

Look, if your relationship is headed for the dumps, you don't need a stranger to give you a list. You need to go with your gut. Guy never calls when he's always three hours late? He's balling somebody. Woman doesn't want to have sex with you anymore? She's not attracted to you. Guy constantly picks on your appearance? He's a jerk.

You know these things, but knowing is not believing. No list in the world is going to help you with that problem. Everybody's been there. When friends are calling your boyfriend an idiot or your girlfriend a witch, you know they're right. You just don't want to believe it.

You're on your own with that one.

Sean Penn

Speaking of pro-Fascists, it looks like Sean Penn has decided to go a step further in his glorious career as a pro-Fascist actor. I used to think that he was a great actor, and still would, if I saw any more of his films. I wouldn't call it a boycott, so much as a bore-cott. Is there anything more mundane that watching a rich American celebrity punish himself for being just that?

Seeing Penn bootlick the heels of an anti-Semitic dictator is a good reminder that actors are just people and some people are morons.

September

French Ambitions

People that believe the US mission in Iraq is all about oil are stupid or misinformed. The US actually believes what they are doing in Iraq is right, for moral and security reasons both. The French are vastly more cynical. They are the true oil-believers. While the Americans and Brits get killed, France buys the oil, and they don't have to fire a shot. All good. But a nuclear Iran changes the formula. A nuclear Iran will alter the costs of French oil interests in the region. The French aren't going to stand for that. Far cheaper to bomb Tehran then be strangled by Tehran's control of the the entire Middle East.

Inviting Hitler

The news out of Columbia University gets more bizarre by the day. On the heels of inviting Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian anti-Semitic tyrant, to their grounds for a "robust debate," a Dean of the University has come out with this as their defence: if Hitler were willing to have a debate with Columbia students and faculty, then the Fuhrer would be invited, too.

When you have to use Hitler as an attempt to quell outrage, you know you've lost your grip on reality.

Cosmo Girls

Think about that: first, they're saying that prehistoric women sat around waiting to screw the losers that weren't invited on the hunting trip. Then they're saying that prehistoric man knew that sperm had anything to do with sex (a sophisticated leap, not quite believed by many island populations in the early 20th Century). Then they're saying that prehistoric man thought his penis was a sponge, and that he could use it to soak up another man's semen. Leap forward a few thousand years, and Cosmo tells every wife in America that if their husband gives them the apocalyptic sex they've always dreamed of, it means he suspects she's running around.

Great. Thanks, Cosmo. We try to show our ladies a good time and you turn it into another chance for "open dialogue."

Death Proof

First, the writing: it's tired. Kill Bill was so well written that we know Tarantino's still got the goods, but with this difference: Kill Bill is not about Quentin Tarantino, while Death Proof is nothing but. It has ten-minute lunch room conversations, but only a passable cast saying the lines. Reservoir Dogs it isn't. Tarantino is horrible at writing teenage girl dialogue. He should stick to bank robbers and assassins. Teenage girls talking about boyfriends for an entire scene is the stuff naps are made of, especially since none of these boyfriends are ever going to appear in the movie. In other words, who cares?

Sean's Baseball Prophesy - Before the Mitchell Report

Jose Canseco released a book a couple of years ago. In it, he fessed up to his steroid use, and said that while he was in the bigs, approximately 80% of the league was juicing. He was lambasted by sportswriters, players, and fans as a dirty rat.

It's turning out that he's likely the most honest man this league has produced in decades.

Michigan Blows It

Michigan lost to Appalachian State, 34-32. Appalachian who? I had to Google the school to find out where it is on the map (Boone, North Carolina; apparently they have quite a music program).

October

Sarkozy Walks

I've pointed out before that Sarkozy walks to the beat of a different drummer. Being French, he gets away with it. Still, I can't fault him for this one. If a reporter showed up from the "most respected news magazine show in TV history" and started asking about my wife, I'd say au revoir, too.

Tonight on 60 Minutes, they aired an interview between Lesley Stahl and the French President. In the interview, Stahl asked Sarkozy about his marital relationship (not long after the interview was taped, Sarkozy and his wife separated). Sarkozy got up, said, "Merci," took off his microphone, and walked out.

The press would have a field day with any British or American leader that did that. Instead, 60 Minutes promoted the piece by calling Sarkozy "smart, energetic, and tempestuous."

UN Wake-up Call

Starvation, by the way, is never caused by a food shortage. There's tons of food lying around. Famine has always been caused by political regimes keeping food from people, not by people wandering into a desert and realizing that there's nothing to grow so they might as well sit down and die. The UN could try to do something about thug regimes not feeding people, but they're too busy writing bogus reports on climate change. Not as messy that way.

Byrd Busted

Funny that his 2002 fear of a declining career coincided with the 2002 receipts of HGH, and continued after he had Tommy John surgery in 2003, then the receipts dried up in 2005 when the league banned HGH. Funny.

Byrd's excuse of a doctor's prescription grows even more shady, as the Chronicle reports that one of the prescriptions was filled out by a dentist whose license was suspended in 2003 for fraud. That does not sound like the kind of high-end doctor that teams provide to their players. I'm not an anatomist, but I do know that the last time my dentist asked me how my pituitary gland was doing was never.

Deborah Kerr Dies

Kerr will be remembered best for her charm and manner, but I especially liked her role in From Here to Eternity. That is one of my must-see Fade to Black films this week. The Sundowners and An Affair to Remember are two others.

Steinbrenner Hangs Them Up

In 1985, he told the press that a bad start to the season would not affect his opinion of manager Yogi Berra. 16 games later, Berra got canned.

On April Fool's Day, 1999, pitcher Hideki Irabu dogged it on a play to first. Steinbrenner called Irabu a "fat pussy toad" in the press, then refused to let him join the team in Los Angeles. Later, he apologized for calling Irabu fat, and said that the team needed Irabu "big time." At the end of the season, Irabu was traded.

Friends in the Facebook Age

I went on Facebook the other day and took a look at a few of the people that have labelled me as 'friend.' If you're not hip to Facebook, a friend is someone that knew you a hundred years ago, writes you an email, and then never writes you again. You're put into a "friend list," and there you remain.

You're like a collector's item from their distant past. Maybe they pull you out once in a while, blow some dust off, look at you in the light of the window, and put you back. Maybe they print out your picture and draw mustaches on it. Either way, you're theirs to keep, unless you 'unfriend' them, and who would want to be so rude as to do that?

Facebook is the Ebay of society. Instead of trading old lamps and hockey cards, you get the chick that sat next to you in first grade and the guy that made everyone laugh with the hand-under-the-armpit fart trick.

Al Gore's Nobel Prize

Alfred Nobel, master of dynamite and TNT, started the whole Prize game back in 1895. Back then, the prize was to go to a person that fought for peace and disarmament. It now includes poverty, economic growth, and the environment. In other words, it's being watered down to include virtually anybody for anything.

Why Terrorism Works

And here I thought this multi-cultural deal was supposed to bring us all together. Not so. Islam, however, is a separatist faith and culture, in word and deed. Yet a highly successful one. Jews have never had Hanukkah and passover celebrations in public schools, and they've been around these parts for centuries. Then again, they haven't blown anything up to show their displeasure about it.

November

Re: The Loser That Got An Operation to Not Have Kids

"We feel we can have one long-haul flight a year, as we are vegan and childless, thereby greatly reducing our carbon footprint and combating over-population.

"My only frustration is that other people are unable to accept my decision."

Au contraire, nitwit. I am more than happy to accept your decision. Knowing that you will never raise a child does not disturb me in the least.

The Gutsy Arts Crowd

Here's a piece I found on the Times (UK) website. It's a story about artists in Europe not standing up for themselves because they're afraid of getting their throats cut.

Gotta love the "artists." Whether they work in paint, film, or literature, the vast majority of these thought provoking individuals are a bunch of chickens.

Bye-Bye Britain

Here's another laugher. Dress-up day at an English school shouldn't make headlines, but this one does. Students and teachers at the school had to dress as Muslims to belatedly celebrate the Eid festival. In the afternoon there was a party, but only women could attend. Of the students, most are Christian. Of the 47 teachers, 2 are Muslim. Yes, you just read that. No word yet on when everyone will have to wear a yarmulke or a Buddhist robe.

December

Brian Williams: Moron

Brian Williams: "My nominee for 2007 Person of the Year is a woman--a woman with a history of abuse, a woman who has never run for elective office, someone we all know, someone who makes her presence known on a daily basis in all our lives and, for my money, is better than any male alternative. That woman is Mother Earth. I think the environment is the compelling issue of our time."

Yes, he really said that. And yes, this is the man that reads you his interpretation of the important news stories on a nightly basis.

Juiced

You have to ask yourself, how is it that sports writers have not been unearthing these stories for the past ten years? The answer is simple: sports writers kiss the ass of every athlete they come across, because if they do not, they won't get 'access.' Gaining access also means keeping mum about the dirty laundry that they might trip over in the locker room.

The players that have been juicing should be ashamed to be on this list, but the sports writers should be equally embarrassed. Once again they have proven to be the most cynical people to ever hold a pen. I place no value in anything they say regarding sports. One minute they're defending Marion Jones to the hilt, the next minute they're holding the Kleenex while she cries in shame on the courthouse steps.

Fat Shopper that Honked at Me

Christmas gives me a chance to give thanks for many things. My friends. My family. My life. The fact that I don't drive a minivan or have floppy boobs and weigh as much as an NFL left tackle.

Perfect Season

The Patriots did it, and they did it well.

Beating the NY Giants last night gave them a 16-0 perfect season, a record that, for me, speaks louder than any individual mark. Football games are the hardest to win, and doing it 16 times in a row is a stunning feat.

Some have accused the Patriots and coach Belichick of cheating. Spygate was the story early in the season, and Don Shula said that an asterisk should be put beside the Patriots' name in the record books. This was sour grapes, pure and simple. Shula was the coach of the 1972 14-0 Dolphins, and he could not have wanted his record to fall.

I always found it a bit pathetic, watching the ex-Dolphins show up at games in the hopes that a perfect team would fail. The Dolphins were there against the Bears and the Colts, praying for their old team to win the day. I found it pathetic because of the word "old." That's what the ex-players were, and watching them strut the sidelines with bad knees was a strange sight.

No one can accuse the Giants of lying down for the Patriots. They played their guts out, and fans were treated to one of the better games of the entire season. The game wasn't a walk for the Patriots, and they deserve their spot in football history.

Most of the Patriots crew were humble. Belichick admitted to feeling great, but it was time to move on to the playoffs. WR Randy Moss had a different view: in a post-game news conference, he told the press that it was just nice to shut them up. Not politically correct but, if you know my views on sportscasters, then you know I won't hold a grudge against Moss for sticking it to them.

I'm not a Patriots fan, but even I can see the very grudging respect that the team has received over the past few years. Brady will never be Montana in the public's eye, and the Patriots will never be the 49ers, Bears, or Dolphins. Yet all they do is win.

I'm sure Belichick is fine with that. I would be, too. Now it is on to the playoffs, where the pressure will be back on the Patriots, and big time. The sycophants will be braying for their blood, wanting the team to fail so that they can be accused of choking in the final hour.

I'm neither here nor there on whether the team wins. If they cap a perfect season with a Super Bowl, fine by me. If they lose, it makes for an interesting story. Shula's team will retain the "perfect" moniker because his team ran the table on the regular season and went on to win the Super Bowl.

Whatever happens, it has been one of the more watchable and enjoyable seasons in a decade, not in spite of the Patriots, but because of them.

Photo: Chris McGrath/Getty
Bill Kostroun/AP

Bye-Bye Britain -- Again

I see that Peter Hitchens has decided to get on the bandwagon vis a vis the demise of the British culture. He uses his latest blog to rant against various topics, including the fact that Oxford may soon be playing the Muslim call to prayer over city loudspeakers.

Alas, Pete, you're too late. I've been saying for quite a while now that Britain is going down the tubes. Not that any Brit would notice. After Hitchens' long rant on loudspeakers, burglar alarms, and Tony Blair's conversion to Catholicism, most of the response comes from people that don't like noisy burglar alarms. The priorities in Britain are as mixed up as their own sense of purpose.

I remember being in England when the Euro replaced the Franc, Deutschmark, so forth. I thought then that the European Union was a disastrous idea, and that Britain's last bastion of culture would be the Pound Sterling. I was wrong. Nothing can save Britain from the tidal wave caused by the EU. What were they thinking? France, Germany, England, Spain. Surely a lowly Canadian (me) could not have been brighter than their political elite. For them not to see that tearing down their borders meant everyone and anyone could now move into their iconic cities at will was lunacy. Given the choice, where did they think people would go? Prague? Warsaw? Or London, Paris, and Madrid, cities with a culture for the taking and government subsidies to boot.

Adios, Europe.

I Am Woman - Hear Me Doublespeak

I was listening to the radio this morning and caught Carrie Underwood's Before He Cheats. I've heard it a few times in the last month, and it raised my eyebrows a couple of millimeters.

It's a song about a woman that's been cheated on by a boyfriend. Nothing new there. Women-revenge songs have been around as long as there's been women and songs. Before He Cheats chorus goes on to say this:

And he don't know...

That I dug my key into the side of his pretty little suped up 4 wheel drive,
Carved my name into his leather seats...
I took a Louisville slugger to both head lights,
slashed a hole in all 4 tires...
Maybe next time he'll think before he cheats.

The first time I head the song, I thought, "Interesting. Domestic violence towards men is still acceptable." When I heard it again, I thought, "Oh, I forgot. Only men cheat." This morning when I heard it, the song reminded me of just how hard women are.

Underwood
Women are harder than men. I learned that a long time ago. It's the reason that most songs sung by women don't talk about never living or loving again. Men sing most of those songs. Women sing about being strong, getting over it, living a good life, getting revenge.

That isn't to say women are wrong, only that they are strong. Men pine for lost loves, even the ones they didn't really want. Women do not. It is a rare woman that tells a friend to get back together with a boyfriend. Women are masters of making a decision about a relationship, and sticking to it. After a break-up, a few tears, a Cosmopolitan, and a dry hump with a man ten years their junior, they will usually get back on track. Men sit around and bore their buddies with endless questions like, "Why?"

Our society hasn't changed much in its false belief that women are fragile, innocent flowers. Though women are responsible for half the child abuse that goes on in our homes, it's a man's face that pops to mind when the term "child abuse" is uttered. The fact that most inappropriate teacher-student sexual relationships that end in criminal charges involve a female teacher and a male student doesn't makes the waves it would if it was a man and female student doing the extracurricular activities.

Women have cut themselves a pretty good piece of cake over the past 30 years. We are told that they are babes in the woods, victims of longstanding prejudice, and far less apt to be mean, vengeful, or more hurtful than men.

It's a crock, of course. Jeremiah Johnson had a very good line. When Jeremiah asks an old man if he every gets lonesome living up in the mountains, the old man replies, "I've found that a woman's breast is the hardest rock I've ever laid my head upon."

There's a lot of truth to that. Women are hard. Think about a typical relationship: the woman is to be taken care of, cared for, nurtured. She is the fairer sex, and people compliment her with words like, "caring, loving, compassionate." But when a man is a half-hour late at the bar, that woman is suddenly a beast. Women tell him that his wife will kick his ass. If the man looks at another woman's breats, it's nothing to say that the man's wife will "kill him," and nobody would blink if she cracked him one. If a woman slaps a man, it's just a tiff. If a man slaps a woman, it's assault. When lowly, pathetic men are asked what keeps a relationship together, the lowly man replies, "The words, 'yes, dear,'" and everyone cracks up, women most of all. Imagine a woman saying, "The words, 'yes, dear.'" She would be pitied and called a fool. She would be told to leave that domineering man of hers, because he is a chauvanist pig.

Which brings me back to Carrie Underwood's song. I don't have a problem with it, because it is a very honest statement of what women are capable of, both in life and music. Women can be extremely spiteful and mean, yet it can be found humorous and acceptable. Lorena Bobbitt can cut off a penis and get away scot free, while a man cutting off a breast would rightly be thrown in prison for years. One of Lorena's problems with John, beyond her "childhood post traumatic stress," was that John would "have orgasm and he doesn't wait for me to have orgasm." Well. Imagine a man using "my wife doesn't wait for me to come" as an excuse for mutilating her genitals. Do you think he'd be set free, as Lorena was? Or would he rot in prison?

A quick search of the net finds dozens of women leaving comments about Underwood's revenge song, telling men to lighten up, or saying that Carrie's got great ideas on how to get even with cheating men. Here's a few comments picked at random from lyricsandsongs.com:

omg! carrie i love that song i sing it every day in class and then my friend starts singing it and i love it...if i didnt mention it or anything..hahah! - Mary

It's somthing i would do to my boyfriend if he were to cheat on me....!!! - Molly

hey! everyone says that this is something that I would do to my x or who ever had the nerve to cheat on me! - Hillary

omg i love this song mke and my sis sing it all the time and we say thats what's gonna happen to our bf's if they ever cheat on us - Alicia

When i first seen the video i didnt even know it was Carrie! I love this song so Kris if you ever cheat on me then expect this to happen lol! (no really i will!!!) - Rebecca

This song rocks. Its one i love to crank up in my car and just sing along to. I that the song has so much balls to it. Its gritty and raw and any male that cheats deserves what carrie sings about. - Amy

me and my friend were going to do this to a guy's car but her parents told her she wasn't allowed to use baseball bats after she socked him... so we're going to use golf clubs... - Erin

Admittedly, the women or teens that wrote these comments are total morons that cannot spell. But what else is new in the internet age? In any event, I could not find one comment from a woman that disagreed with the song's message. All of the women agree that violence (or "domestic terror" as the women's libbers call it) is an acceptable answer to a cheating man, and in one case, the girl's parents told her not to use a baseball bat so they're going with a 9 iron.

There's a few conclusions we can draw from this. One is, without a doubt, that we have been indoctrinated into the belief that only men can be vicious and vindictive, while women are always the victims. Nonsense. Another conclusion is that women are walking around with the age-old lie that men are the only people in a relationship that cheat.

This is one of the bigger absurdities that I've been shaking my head over in the past few years. When I was growing up, I always heard about marriages breaking up because the man was running around. When I was in University, I heard all kinds of cheating men stories, and how the woman was pissed and wanted to kill him, etc. But when I entered the big, bad world of so-called adults, that's when the blinders came off. Because women cheat as much as men do, if not more, and they get away with the innocent babe in the woods crap for no reason at all.

Now, to provide full disclosure, I don't know if I've ever been cheated on. I don't think I have, but I don't know it for a fact. I only say this to close the mouths of women that will say, "He's bitter." I'm not, but that doesn't mean I'll let women get away with playing the little ol' me tripe.

I have seen women cheat first hand, and I've heard them talk about it. And I will guarantee you that if any man trashed their dopey SUV, the chick would be the first one screaming for a restraining order and asking that the man be put away for life. Still, I would like to think that if a guy did trash a lady's car, he wouldn't pull an Underwood and be so stupid as to carve his own name in the driver's seat.

My message is not so much that people shouldn't throw rocks, but if you're going to, don't do it in a glass house. Or car.

Photo: Fanscape

Happy "Holidays"

It was a holly jolly Christmas, and I have to say that I was impressed with the radio stations: almost all of them played Christmas music up to and including December 25th, and they did it with gusto. I heard the twenty-five or thirty versions of White Christmas over and over again, and there was no escaping the country singers trying to beat Luciano Pavarotti at O Holy Night.

There were some hold outs. I guess the hard rock stations would feel a bit too wimpy if they played Christmas tunes, so whenever I flicked the radio dial, I'd hear Frosty the Snowman, then Welcome to the Jungle, then Winter Wonderland, then Smack My Bitch Up.

I can't blame them. Christmas music has never translated well to hard rock. Springsteen's live rendition of Santa Claus is Coming to Town had always been a good foot-tapper, but when he giggles during the closing chorus, I blanche. I've been involved in live theater for far too long, and I know when a performer is kidding the audience. Springsteen's giggle sounds cheery and unplanned over the airwaves, but in reality he probably rehearsed it about two dozen times.

The stations didn't just play Jingle Bells, either. They actually had tunes with the word 'Christ' in them, which was pretty amazing. Perhaps my pessimism of the changing Western culture is unfounded after all. Whatever the case, the radio DJs did a fine job except, as I said, when they played country singers trying to beat the best tenor in history at his signature Christmas ditty.

So now it's time to get back to work. Mary Steyn has pointed out that Christmas in North America is a hell of a lot different than Christmas in Europe. In Europe, they take a month off to think about Christmas, warm up for Christmas, celebrate Christmas, get over the celebration, celebrate the New Year, and then take a week off for the hang over. In the USA, it's back to work immediately, and if Christmas falls on a Sunday, tough tittie, see you Monday. In Canada, they give you a little more time, but not much. Christmas is followed by a Boxing Day shopping spree, and then it's back to work you go (unless you're a shop clerk hosting the Boxing Day shopping spree, in which case you're already there).

I've never had a problem with the 'getting back to work' deal. I'm a huge Christmas fan, but at midnight on the morning of the 26th, Christmas is over. The candles go out, the satellite station is tuned from Christmas Hits to Sports Talk, and the turkey is stuffed into brown bagging sandwiches. Nothing is more depressing than hearing Christmas music after Christmas is done, except maybe seeing Christmas lights on someone's house in late February. I can give people a couple of weeks to get over the whole Christmas thing but, cold or not, get your ass on the roof and take down the cute blinking lights that are still giving passers-by a facial twitch.

Christmas is a great celebration, whatever your reason for celebrating it. If it's the birth of Christ, fine by me. Gluttonous materialism? Heigh ho, let's go. Whatever it is, it can be a hell of a lot of fun. It also beats the pants off the holidays that supposedly make December the time of "Happy Holidays."

I realize that this time of year encompasses Eid, and the nouveau phony-holiday "Kwanzaa," and the Jewish festival of lights Hanukkah. But...what do they do? I haven't heard a Kwanzaa song any time recently, and aside from the odd shopping market or four door sedan going up in smoke, there aren't too many fireworks during Eid. This is made up for by the Haj, which occurs every year and gives people a chance to trample each other (362 people died last year in one day, and so far this year, a couple of hundred have died on the pilgrimage).

As for Hanukkah, if my Jewish friends are an example, the festival of lights is a chance to boost the economy of Florida. I know for a fact that Jews don't mind Christmas. My Jewish ex-girlfriends told me that their families loved Christmas because it kept the goys (us gentiles) out of the way while the Jews hit the beach. As for Eid, that's going to be harder and harder to crowbar into the "holiday season." Eid depends on the moon, and next year it will be celebated at the beginning of October. The year after, in September. By 2015, Eid will be happening in mid-July.

I don't get why people make such a big deal about being inclusive during the holiday season, because I haven't seen much that needs including. If it's about "giving offense," then I apologize. I don't mean to offend anybody, but everyone else's parties seem to suck big time.

Now on to New Year's Eve. As the left-wing likes to say, we can do that "inclusively." We can still be "diverse" and celebrate the New Year together...can't we?

See you at the party. Or not.

God's Country

Jesus is Lord.

Or so says the rundown billboard in Pryor, Oklahoma. Red paint on a white background, faded and peeling.

The billboard doesn't have a rundown look because the sentiment it advertises has gone out of vogue here. It's been weathered, and Pryor is a small, working, weathered town. The Days Inn was obviously a mom and pop motel until the chain bought it out, and the only joint with a new paint job is the log cabin bar on the side of the highway. A local tells me that the bar actually has a name but, because of the fresh green paint job, everyone just calls it "the green bar."

Pryor may look rundown, but it isn't poor. It's a place where work is done, and it sits smack in the middle of nature's highway. Ice storms in winter, tornados in summer. Take your pick.

The vehicles people drive are big and powerful and expensive, and the locals wear fresh workingman duds. There's tattoos, but they mean something. The name of a girl, a place, or a flag (American).

In Pryor, you cannot buy beer without a photo ID. It doesn't matter if you're eighty years old and have the tell-tale gimp of a hip replacement, you must show an ID at the Wal-Mart counter. If that seems a little overboard, don't sweat it. Wednesday night is Ladies' Night at the green bar, and they serve free beer all night long. Just show your ID to the bartender, and he'll get you hammered in no time. The free beer is supposed to be for the ladies, but the rule slides further down the list as the night goes on.

The people of Oklahoma are resilient. Another ice storm hit this week, and the state's three snow plows and salt trucks can't keep up. I've heard local after local say that they've been without power for the past three days. One guy talked about his neighbor ripping out a privacy fence for firewood. A woman told me she slept in her long johns and a winter hat. Another guy told me he was burning gas because his wife wouldn't let him buy a generator and he couldn't take his family to a motel because "people that check into motels just come home to frozen pipes." Another guy told me about a truck he saw on the side of the road. Power lines fell on it and the guy inside, "was all cooked up and there wasn't nothing anybody could do about it."

It's been a bummer week for Pryor, Oklahoma. The temperature on Sunday morning dropped just a tad below freezing, and then it started to rain. And rain. And rain. The roads turned to ice and the branches of trees were sheathed in same. So it rained some more and the trees started falling over and the cars started to crash.

My neighbor in the Days Inn motel showed me the side of his truck where a hubcap came off when he went into a ditch. He told me that the two people in the backseat were now in the hospital because they slammed together during the crash and one of them had a broken collarbone. He told me the story while having a smoke, and when I asked him when all this happened he said matter-of-factly, "Couple hours ago." His girlfriend was inside the room and the door was open. She was watching something with a laugh track and when I said hello, she smiled and said, "Hi!"

Nothing fazes people here. You get the feeling you could set off ten tons of TNT over the next hill and someone would mutter, "Storm's coming."

The weather occupies their thoughts. The most popular question in town is, "You got power?" When the person answers that they have, they aren't called a lucky sonofabitch. They're answered with, "Huh. Mine's been out three days. But I saw it was back on east of town, so maybe we're next." Then the conversation moves on to Friday's weather, or the guy that fried under the power lines, or the fact that the people up north are going to get it because the storm's headed that way.

The weather occupies their thoughts, but it should be occupying their ballot box. This is the first "emergency zone" I've ever found myself in, and I can't say I'm wetting my pants. Oklahoma gets hit with ice storms all the time, but it's weather that would make a Canadian yawn. Yes, ice is bad. But after three days, you'd expect to see some salt on the roads. Instead, people just bear it for a week or two until it melts. When I asked about this, I expected some locals to get mad at me for calling them incompetent. They didn't. They agreed with me. One said their politicians had no sense, but common sense is the least common thing around.

They're friendly people, but they're not stupid people, and they're not shy about showing their feelings, either. Most of them work in the various factories that litter the emptiness of Oklahoma, and they know the difference between right and wrong. I've only been here a short while, and I've already heard half-a-dozen people tell each other off. When I heard a man in a hard hat order another man in a hard hat to go get him some work materials during lunch, the man said, "And when am I gonna eat lunch? You eat lunch and I don't eat lunch? That ain't right, man. That just ain't right, you know? Come on. That ain't right." The other man relented and they parted ways.

That wouldn't happen back home. In Toronto, the man would say, "Okay, no problem, boss," and not mean it. Then he'd bitch about it to his friends during work, after work, and into next week. He'd hold a grudge for months, and bad mouth the guy to everyone that said the boss's name. But that's Toronto. In Oklahoma, men in hard hats say, "That ain't right!" And their boss knows it, so he lets it go.

Wal-Mart is the town center. It's where you go for food, clothes, jewelry, you name it, they got it. When I went to the gas station and asked if they had some paper towels lying around, the lady said, "Sorry." I said no problem and she said, "You just don't want to truck up to Wal-Mart." As it happened, she was correct.

Jesus is Lord.

I guess that sign should make me think this is the land of the Bible Thumper. God's country. But no one here talks about God, or religion, or much else beyond the weather and how good their beer will taste after work. One guesses that Ladies Night at the green bar is as good a Sabbath as any, but I wouldn't push the religious talk if you paid me. I heard one guy go on about religion being bull and just a bunch of magic tricks, and the local that was listening to him got quiet and his eyes went stony and deep. He kept his gracious southern hospitality, but somewhere in there I could hear the bolts click back. This is a state where men wear camouflage jackets because they actually use them to hunt stuff on weekends.

If the chips were down during an ice storm, or if bullets were flying past my ear, I'd take a man from Oklahoma in a hard hat over a Californian with a Blackberry any day of the week.

Juiced

Former Senator George Mitchell's drugs-in-baseball report has hit the streets, and the names come as no great surprise to me. ESPN and other sports writers are treating the mention of Roger Clemens's name with distaste. Not, of course, for Clemens, but for George Mitchell. Surely Clemens, an old man with a bionic arm and a bull's neck, can never have juiced in his lifetime.

ESPN couldn't wait to trot their legal analyst onto the set to say that Mitchell's 20-month investigation contains no real proof, and that the word of former team trainers is questionable. After interviewing the legal analyst, ESPN went on to a football story, and an NBA story. They ended their newscast with a hokey sequence about funny news conferences from head coaches. In other words, they buried it.

Sportscasters never fail to make me laugh. ESPN tops the list as the biggest sycophants, and all other sportscaster and writers take their cue from the network.

The sports writers should be ashamed of themselves. Are they trying to tell us that there is no proof whatsoever of drug use in baseball, and that they never heard whispers of it while they covered teams around the country? What a joke. Jose Canseco came out two years ago with his tattle-tales, Jason Grimsley was busted by the FBI for purchasing HGH, Troy Glaus was caught with drug receipts, Barry Bonds has been indicted by the Feds, and Jason Giambi admitted juicing and apologized for it.

You have to ask yourself, how is it that sports writers have not been unearthing these stories for the past ten years? The answer is simple: sports writers kiss the ass of every athlete they come across, because if they do not, they won't get 'access.' Gaining access also means keeping mum about the dirty laundry that they might trip over in the locker room.

The players that have been juicing should be ashamed to be on this list, but the sports writers should be equally embarrassed. Once again they have proven to be the most cynical people to ever hold a pen. I place no value in anything they say regarding sports. One minute they're defending Marion Jones to the hilt, the next minute they're holding the Kleenex while she cries in shame on the courthouse steps.

Egotistical to the hilt, shameless liars, incompetent reporters. Anything they say about the Mitchell report must be taken with a massive grain of salt, because all of them are in The Club of big league sports. They hob nob with players past and present. Indeed, many sports "analysts" on the tube are themselves former players. ESPN's John Kruk has come out as saying that he wished baseball had kept this quiet and dealt with it internally. I'll bet you do, Kruk. Half the guys on the list are your pals (not that we would ever know it; it should strike fans as remarkable that sports analysts never admit a full disclosure statement when defending a former teammate).

The rest of the baseball off season will be a wash, as the sports reporters desperately try to bury this story. Their line will be that the fans don't care because attendance is up and the game is doing well. So what? This house of liars and cheats needs to be cleaned up, and the sooner the better. Besides, I'm not sure if I buy the argument that the fans don't care. Last night, Roger Clemens would have been a shoo-in for the hall of fame. Today, an ESPN poll has 46% or fans saying he shouldn't get in.

Another analyst on ESPN has said that many more players than the ones in the report are probably juicing, so what are you going to do, get rid of them all? I say, "Sure."

It'll never happen, but I wouldn't mind it in the least. Fire everyone in MLB over the age of 23. Bring in college kids and minor league prospects. Begin the league anew, and end this miserable baseball generation, the worst in the sport since the Black Sox scandal.

By the way. Here's the list. Strange we never saw most of these names until now. Enjoy the ride down Juice Lane.

Lenny Dykstra

David Segui

Larry Bigbie

Brian Roberts

Jack Cust

Tim Laker

Josias Manzanillo

Todd Hundley

Mark Carreon

Hal Morris

Matt Franco

Rondell White

Andy Pettitte

Roger Clemens

Chuck Knoblauch

Jason Grimsley

Gregg Zaun

David Justice

F.P. Santangelo

Glenallen Hill

Mo Vaughn

Denny Neagle

Ron Villone

Ryan Franklin

Chris Donnels

Todd Williams

Phil Hiatt

Todd Pratt

Kevin Young

Mike Lansing

Cody McKay

Kent Mercker

Adam Piatt

Miguel Tejada

Jason Christiansen

Mike Stanton

Stephen Randolph

Jerry Hairston

Paul Lo Duca

Adam Riggs

Bart Miadich

Fernando Vina

Kevin Brown

Eric Gagne

Mike Bell

Matt Herges

Gary Bennett

Jim Parque

Brendan Donnelly

Chad Allen

Jeff Williams

Exavier "Nook" Logan

Howie Clark

Paxton Crawford

Ken Caminiti

Rafael Palmeiro

Luis Perez

Derrick Turnbow

Ricky Bones

Ricky Stone

The following players were cited under "Alleged Internet Purchases of
Performance Enhancing Substances By Players in Major League Baseball."

Rick Ankiel

David Bell

Paul Byrd

Jose Canseco

Jay Gibbons

Troy Glaus

Jason Grimsley

Jose Guillen

Darren Holmes

Gary Matthews Jr.

John Rocker

Scott Schoeneweis

Ismael Valdez

Matt Williams

Steve Woodard

The following players were linked through BALCO:

Benito Santiago

Gary Sheffield

Randy Velarde

Jason Giambi

Jeremy Giambi

Bobby Estalella

Barry Bonds

Marvin Benard

Photo: AP

End of the Season(s)

The writer's strike has been going on for a while now, and it looks like it's going to continue. Variety reports that you'd better get read for some more "reality" TV. Catch the story here.

Checking In

I can see why the horror writers have a thing for hotels. They're anonymous places where anything can happen to anyone.

Hotels have lost their wayward flavor, but they still retain that creepy anonymous feeling. Right now I'm in a Buffalo airport hotel room, passing the time and waiting for yet another plane flight in my life's history of plane flights. This is a hotel, not a resort.

The temperature outside is a little above freezing, and the temperature inside feels about the same. This is because, as a room attendant friend once told me, the stewards always turn the temp down to 65F when they're done cleaning a room. Apparently cold air feels "cleaner" than warm air. It gives guests the false impression that the room they're entering has never been lived in, eaten in, screwed in, or slept in before.

Hotels are creepy. Psycho used this, and Stephen King has turned to it a couple of times (The Shining, 1408). King has mentioned hotels so many times in his interviews that I know he's obsessed with them. 10 years ago, he said that he still checked under the bed in hotel rooms. He also said that a hotel room was the scene for him becoming a horror writer.

Early in King's career, he was sitting in a hotel room telling his agent a book idea. His agent frowned and said he didn't want King to become known as a horror writer: bad market. King assured his agent that it was okay, being a horror writer was what he wanted to do. Looking back, they were both right: horror writers weren't cool until King came along, and really they still aren't; name another horror writer not named Stephen King that has smashed the mainstream market.

Hotel rooms don't scare me, but they do give me the heebie-jeebies. I try not to think about all the things that have gone on in here. Over the desk there's a mirror, and I can see myself typing this. How many people have sat at this desk and contemplated blowing their brains out, leaving their wife, asking the hooker for another handjob? There's an internet connection below the mirror. How many people have plugged in and watched porn, written a love letter to their secretary, surfed the dating market looking for something better than their husband?

The hotel I'm in now isn't without a sense of humor. There's a gym loaded with exercise equipment, but it's directly opposite the smoking rooms. Every gym rat that works his layover abs into submission must walk into the hallway and want to barf when the Marlboro Man open his hotel room door.

I once heard a girl tell her friend that she loved having sex in hotel rooms. I didn't ask why, but I guess it has something to do with anonymity, like voyeurism in reverse. Or maybe it's just because she doesn't have to clean the sheets.

Modern hotels have taken some of the anonymity away. The phone has my name on it: SEAN BERRY, in big digital letters. They must have popped up while I was checking in. I wonder whose name was there yesterday, or last week? I know someone was here, because the room steward goofed: there was a grimy coffee stain on the bottom of the coffee pot, and I had to rinse it off in the bathroom sink.

These days, hotels have microwave ovens (the one in this room sounds like a plane taking off when I reheat my coffee), internet connections, and fifty channels on the TV. There's videogames, new-release films, and five sports channels. The restaurants have bars that serve pina coladas, and everyone has a nametag, make-up, and the most welcoming smile that $12 an hour can buy. And it still feels lonely.

I wonder what it was like in the old-old days. Back then, when you closed the door to your house and got in your Chevy to head across country, that was it. You didn't hear from anybody unless you called them person-to-person, and that was way too expensive. So hotels in those days were the loneliest places on earth. If the hotel had a diner, you might meet someone to talk to, but for the most part it was just you, the highway out the window, and last week's smell of cheap cologne. Great perks meant an ice machine located beside a Coke dispenser.

Sportscaster Vin Scully has said that he never got used to it: that loneliness on the road. Hotel after hotel, and trains to ballparks. That was his summer, every summer, for years. No internet, no cell phone, no satellite TV, no distraction. He always hated the loneliness.

Try as they might, hotels will never feel like home because they are what they are: places for people to crash, but never stay. Hopefully. And that's where the horror writers step in...

Butting Out

I've been hanging out in Toronto more in the last couple of months than I have in the last few years. I've been on the road a lot, so I haven't gotten in touch with the pulse of the city until lately.

Same-same. The city has a pulse, but it's the beat of an aging manic depressive on crack.

The latest installment in the "telling everybody what to do for their own good" way of Toronto life is the new suggestion for a smoking ban. The proposal says that anyone caught smoking in their car while a child under the age of sixteen is also in the car shall be fined a minimum of $200.

Laws are about power. I doubt highly that the anti-smoking politicians give too much of a damn about kids. If they did, they'd pay teachers more, put child molesters away for life without parole, and stop importing cheap lead-lined toys from China.

So no, politicians and busy bodies don't care about kids. But telling somebody what to do? They can't resist.

I'd love to see this law go into action. 17-year-old kids would be fined for bumming a light off their fifteen-year-old friends. Harried mothers trying to have a smoke before work (where they can't smoke within 20 feet of the door) would be fined while dropping off a kid at an underfunded school. Cops too lazy to do their job would be hanging out near the high schools, ready to humiliate parents in front of their children.

Ah, Toronto. I was listening to the radio today, while a dumb morning disc jockey (as if there's any other kind) told the city that Toronto would only be following in the footsteps of some parts of Australia, California, and a small town in Nova Scotia.

With company like that, what a party.

Mall Murder

Another idiot decided to go crazy with a gun. Here's what I had to say when it happened at Virginia Tech in April.

March of the Morons

Here's a nice shot of a balmy Toronto November, as seen in the Toronto Sun.

I love winter. Not because I freeze my ass, but because I get to watch other asses freeze.

Asses of the mental variety, that is. I'm not so lude as to suggest that I watch physical asses freeze, though it can be tough to avoid when you're standing in line at a Toronto nightclub around 11pm.

Anyway, here's a list of this week's asses. As winter settles in, the enviro-boobs (er, asses) ramp up their rhetoric and pump out enough hot air to distract you from the fact that you're scraping ice off your windshield and paying too much on your heating bill.

The founders of the Green Hanukkah Campaign. These are the losers that are asking for Jews to light one less candle for the occasion. Says co-founder Liad Ortar, "The campaign calls for Jews around the world to save the last candle and save the planet, so we won't need another miracle." No candles for Mr. Ortar. The only miracle is if the romantic Liad will ever get laid in this lifetime.

Brian Williams. He's the anchor of NBC News, so it should come as no shock that he is a fool. All network anchors are. Beat reporters are the ones that do the work. "Veteran anchors" are merely the failed actors that take stuff off the wire and read it. In any case, Williams decided to announce his stupidity this way:

My nominee for 2007 Person of the Year is a woman--a woman with a history of abuse, a woman who has never run for elective office, someone we all know, someone who makes her presence known on a daily basis in all our lives and, for my money, is better than any male alternative. That woman is Mother Earth. I think the environment is the compelling issue of our time.

Yes, he really said that. And yes, this is the man that reads you his interpretation of the important news stories on a nightly basis.

Here's another bit from the man that makes Ron Burgundy look like a genius:

"Last Christmas, my wife and I told [my father] to pick a spot on the planet, and for his present, we'd send him there. We were concerned that he was going to choose the Grover Cleveland rest stop on the Jersey Turnpike for a sandwich from a vending machine. But God love him, he's seen the light, and I think Gordon Williams is going to China this fall." -- Esquire

China? Really? But Brian, you pompous, shameless abuser, do you know what kind of a carbon footprint that's going to leave on the face of dear Mother Earth?

Shari T. Wilson. She's the Environmental Secretary for Maryland. She heads a 22-member group that is releasing a report that says the following: "As a coastal state with extensive low-lying land on the Eastern Shore and around the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland is exceeded only by Louisiana, Florida and Delaware in the percentage of its land vulnerable to accelerated sea level rise."

Poor Shari isn't the only enviro-boob in government. A US Senate committee is scheduled to meet on Wednesday to decide on a global warming bill. I hope they bundle up: the forecast for Wednesday in Washington DC is flurries with a low of 31 degrees (-1C for the Canucks). Could be worse. According to my Worrisome Warming Watch, the current temperature in Embarrass, Minnesota is 14F/-10C.

It's a busy fall for the Eco Nuts. I can't wait to see what they come up with on December 22nd. That's when the winter season actually begins.

Photos: Tracy McLaughlin/Toronto Sun
Glenn Harris/Photorazzi

Intelligence on Iran

The National Intelligence Estimate came out this week, and the press are loving that it says Iran suspended its nuclear weapons program in 2003.

President Bush gave a news conference this morning that was informative and comedic. The press peppered him with questions about the NIE, and asked if this made him look the fool: Bush has said before that Iran could lead the world into a WWIII, but now the NIE says Iran's leaders are pussy cats.

Fascinating. The press have vilified the intelligence sector for the botched Iraq WMDs, and said that intelligence officials are morons at best, criminally negligent at worst. Yet now one report hits the desk that makes Iran look good (and, of course, Bush look bad) and the press are using the document as Bible study.

Bush did the only thing he could: he punted. He said that Iran is and always has been dangerous, and that this report shows that the Iranians did in fact have a nuclear weapons program. If the past few years of diplomatic pressure have made the Iranians call it off, so much the better.

The press weren't buying. David Gregory, NBC's reporter extrordinaire, took delight in paraphrasing Bush and saying that he had toned down his WWIII rhetoric. He then said that this new Bush junk sounded an awful lot like the past Bush junk: Bush could invade Iran anyway, under the "stop them before they have one" argument. Others in the front row of the briefing room asked the president if the rest of the world would now look at Bush as even more of a boob.

I don't give the NIE much import. Ahmandinejad is a holocaust denier that says Israel must be wiped off the map. If Iran was in fact conducting a nuke program up until 2003, it is pretty unlikely that the Iranians said, "Hmmm. We're unpopular at the UN. We should throw out everything we've learned and forget that we ever learned it."

Bush is right when he says Iran is a danger because they have acquired knowledge of how to build a bomb, and that they may transfer this knowledge to someone else. Just because Iran has stopped its own nuclear program does not mean that it won't hand over this vital information to any number of terrorist clients, if they haven't done so already.

The press have completely missed the point of the NIE document. Fact is, Iran was conducting a nuclear weapons program when they said they weren't. Though not quoted by the press corp, the document goes on to say that Iran could still develop a nuclear weapon by 2010.

The view of the press is that Bush is a fool and that the Iranians have turned good. This is the real danger of the NIE. Now that this news will be fanned for the next three weeks, Iran can do whatever they wish. Trying to convince the press later that Iran has restarted a nuke program or transferred the knowledge to someone else will be extremely difficult. Though they hang gays, stone women, and preach anti-Semitic hatred, the Iranian regime is suddenly a bunch of nice guys that have changed their evil ways.

The intelligence says so.

Bon Chance

French "youths" are at it again, only this time they come wielding shotguns and Molotov cocktails. This should make the burning of France in 2005 look like a cakewalk (if you even remember the burning of France in 2005; there wasn't much press on it).

Just Disaffected Youth
The media and their love affair with the term "youths" is about as disgusting as it gets. Reporters and editors are too timid to tell us what this story is really about, and you need a Rosetta stone to figure out who these "youths" are and what they're up to.

Read the following story. Count the number of times the article uses the word "youths." Then tell me what's going on. Bon chance.

So long Europe, it's been a slice.

Photo: AP - Monday

The Mist - Review

Director/Writer: Frank Darabont
Starring: Thomas Jane/Marcia Gay Harden
Runtime: 2 hours 5 minutes

Frank Darabont's film version of Stephen King's The Mist is an effective yet strangely cheap looking movie.

Several of King's books involve normal Maine bumpkins getting caught up in terrifying events, supernatural or otherwise. In It, Pennywise the Clown torments the citizens of small town Derry, Maine. In Salem's Lot, an entire town is taken over by vampires and only a regular joe and a little boy can save the day. Even in The Stand, a book containing horror that has global impact, King's heroes are far from the bigtime. The Stand's villain, Randall Flagg, enters the novel as a down-at-his-heels drifter. The heroes turn out to be a young chick, a fat slob, and a man that could have been cast as an extra in Rawhide.

The Mist is similar. The novella appeared in King's Skeleton Crew (1985). That book is chock full of short stories, with The Mist the longest, at a little over 100 pages. Every story in Skeleton Crew deals with smalltime characters confronting horrors big and small. Perhaps this is why King's movies are never cast with Bruce Willis in mind. Ed Harris, Tim Robbins, Tom Hanks, sure. Bruce Willis, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, forget it. You can believe Tom Hanks getting freaked out in Maine, but Brad Pitt would somehow seem ridiculous.

I enjoyed the entire Skeleton Crew collection when I was a kid, back in my Stephen King fanclub days. The Mist was probably my favorite of the stories, though I agree with King that the ending of the story is a rip off. Survivor Type was creepy for its self-cannibalism (yes, self-cannibalism), and The Monkey was probably my least favorite. The Monkey is rumored to be the next film based on King's works and I am not looking forward to it, if only because I thought the story was depressing as hell. Maybe it's because I hated dolls, and still do.

So, The Mist. If you haven't read the story, you won't have a hard time getting the gist of it from the word go. The story opens in smalltown Maine. A thunderstorm hits. The next morning, a mist comes down from the mountains, thick and creepy. It slowly makes its way towards the town as the inhabitants pick up debris and go shopping for supplies.

Thomas Jane plays David Drayton. True to King-type, Drayton is your average man. He has a son, a nice house, a loving wife. The morning after the thunderstorm, he takes his kid into town to shop for goods. He goes to the grocery store. Moments later, a man runs toward the grocery store, blood on his shirt. He enters the store and screams that something is in the mist. He says that whatever it is, it killed his friend. He says the doors should be shut, and they are. The mist descends on the store, blotting out the parking lot and everything beyond. Silence.

The director, Frank Darabont, doesn't waste any time getting into the story. In fact, he follows King's novella almost to a T, as if the novella had been written as a script outline. This should please the people that complain, "The book was better, why'd they change it so much?"

The story might involve a creepy mist and the creatures inside it, but what goes on in the store is the film's true subject. Real people under incredible pressure. First, is there anything in the mist? And if there is, what is it? And if it's dangerous, how do we get out of this situation alive?

Though old, it's a good setup: jam different characters into a small space, apply exterior pressure, and watch the interior pressure rip them apart. That is, the pressure of not being sure about one another, then not trusting one another, and finally turning on one another.

The beauty of a story like The Mist is that it rings true. The "monster" takes a backseat to humanity. If you were surrounded by fog and forced to sit in a grocery store, what would you do? Be afraid of the mist, or be curious about the people around you, wondering if you could believe them and, more importantly, trust them?

King has always been good at the blame game. Seldom do any of his characters place the blame for something on the something that is trying to kill them. King's characters undo themselves by turning on their neighbors. It's the Twilight Zone technique, and King is the master of it.

Unfortunately, movies are made to be seen. Novels can take place inside a reader's head, but a movie has to be splashed right there in front of you. This presents a problem. Because if I say, "Fifty pink elephants knock over a building, then leap over a hill," it doesn't cost me a dime. Readers will picture it, they'll hopefully get it, and the exercise of imagining it won't distract them.

Movies can't do that. So while The Mist's set up is fine, and the characters are presented fairly well, the film's effects are a distraction. That's a nice way of saying that they suck.

Darabont's a big name, and so is King, so I can't see this film as having had a miniscule budget. That said, I don't know where the money went, but it didn't go into the effects. There is one scene in the film involving the tentacles of a ferocious beast. The tentacles look like they are from a 1970s cheapo flick. They're certainly no better than the original 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea, and might even be worse. At least 20 000 Leagues used real footage of an octopus and some fake rubber tentacles. In The Mist, it's so obvious that the tentacles are computer generated that it's a supreme distraction.

I wonder why they bothered. The filmmakers had the mist, and all of the creepy what's-out-there stuff to go with it. If they had just kept it like that, the film would have lost nothing, and probably improved.

The film's story is good, as the people in the grocery store turn on each other and eventually split into two camps. One faction is led by Mrs. Carmody, played by Marcia Gay Harden. She is perfect for the role, because Mrs. Carmody is a hateful, shrill woman, and Harden can play those roles like they're nothing. Mrs. Carmody is a Christian fundamentalist, a Bible-thumper. She thinks the mist is an act of God, and that the creatures attacking the store are straight from the book of Revelation. The end is nigh, and Mrs. Carmody thinks she is God's messenger.

This is old territory for King. Many of his stories have crazy evangelical loons. It's a bit dated, and after a while you get pretty tired of Harden laying it on thick, but it works to a degree. Yet Marcia's ramblings feel very pre-9/11, and I was curious why Darabont followed the novella so closely and didn't try to update it.

Toby Jones makes an appearance. Remember what I was saying about King's characters? Jones plays a grocery store clerk who turns out to be a brave hero, and he is excellent. Jeffrey De Munn also shows up, and he is as good as always.

The entire film is enjoyable, though it doesn't nearly match Darabont's film versions of King's other tales: Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile. Indeed, you wouldn't know that The Mist is a Darabont picture unless the credits tell you so. The film feels a tad on the cheap side, and the production value is surprisingly lean.

The ending of The Mist is quite different than the story. It is satisfying, but a bit trite, as are the reasons given for the cause of the mist. The film simply feels like it is as dated as the story, written in 1985. You'll have to decide for yourself how you like the finale, because King has said that anyone who exposes the ending of this film should be hung by the neck until dead.

I'll take him at his word.

Photos: Yahoo Movies