The Further Fall of Roger Clemens

If Roger Clemens can take back his civil suit against former trainer Brian McNamee, he'd be well advised to do so.

It was alleged this week that Clemens had a long term affair with country singer Mindy McCready. It isn't proven yet that McNamee is the source of the allegation. The New York Daily News initially broke the story, and some are saying that McReady herself is attempting a career comeback with the juicy gossip.

I don't see an affair with a tainted star helping anyone's comeback bid. It certainly didn't help the Yankees last year, and they have a better personal assistant than McCready. Still, it's an interesting theory and one that would jive well with today's standards: in the past, adultery was shameful; today, it's just part of doing business, whether in Nashville, Hollywood, or sports.

Everyone in this Clemens saga seems to have a screwed up past. There's no one to root for. Even the mistress is tainted. McCready's career headed south after she plead guilty to illegally obtaining the painkiller OxyCotin, then got busted for DUI a couple of days later. Her ex-boyfriend beat her up and was charged with attempted murder, and she's been hospitalized for attempted suicide. Of all the women in the world to have an affair with, Clemens picked a real winner.

I've been reading some opinion pieces from the sports guys, and they're pretty much sticking together on the idea that the McReady issue is a non-story as it relates to Clemens' baseball troubles.

I'm not so sure. As soon as Clemens went before Congress and told them he bleeds apple pie, he made his character and reputation an issue. But what makes character and reputation? Your past. So now everything and anything in Clemens' past is on the table, and McNamee's lawyers will be looking for dirt to discredit him. They'll be looking for anyone that had some alone time with Clemens, searching for someone that heard him whisper the words, "human growth," though perhaps not in the way that Mindy McCready would mean it.

It's probably not the way it should be, but it's the way it is. US law is pretty clear on this point: if you open litigation against someone, you open your whole life to the scrutiny of lawyers and, if you're a hotshot, the press.

No one seems to be talking much about Clemens' wife, Debbie, who's been lost in the shuffle. There she was, standing by her man. She talked to Congress, her name was in the papers, and she was exposed as an HGH user herself. Little did she know that she was playing the perfect politician's wife. If Clemens' marital affair turns out to be a fact, then Debbie is going to have a lot of egg on her face. Even if she knew about the affair beforehand, it won't matter. She's been embarrassed, and she knows that there's worse to come: once McNamee's civil trial starts, all of the skeletons could fall out of the closet.

As for McNamee, I'm neither here nor there. If he's telling the truth, fine, and if he throws mud at Roger Clemens, who can blame him? Clemens recorded a half-hour conversation with McNamee over the telephone, but failed to mention the recording to McNamee. A couple of days later, Clemens and his lawyers played the tape on national TV. After that bit of theater, McNamee must have thought, "All bets are off, old friend."

It's a sordid end to an allegedly sordid career in a sordid era of baseball.

Diver Down

The problem with sharks is that when they hit you, they might not mean it, but you're dead anyway.

A 66-year-old triathlete was swimming off Southern California yesterday morning when he got hit. He suffered a bite on his leg with a radius of 22-inches. He later died.

A 22-inch radius? That's a big shark. The fact that the animal didn't pull the man under and finish him off is a sign that the animal isn't a man-eater yet. No doubt, like most shark attacks, the animal bit him in a taste test. Neoprene, Coppertone, human hair and sweat, strange texture. Yuck.

Not that it matters much to us. A taste test from an eager shark with a 22-inch bite is almost always going to be fatal.

So now the beaches are closed and the people are scared, and everyone can run out and rent Jaws for one more go-round.

People love sharks as much as they fear them. When I lived in Santa Monica, they were just releasing the Jaws DVD. Brilliant marketers that they were, the production house plastered Jaws posters all over Venice Beach, and wrapped some of the posters around the beach's trash cans. The public flipped and the signs were removed a couple of days later, but the point was made: Jaws scared people out of the water, and the mystique of that movie remains to this day.

Ragged Tooth
I've dived with ragged tooth sharks and reef sharks, both times on purpose. I can't say I was afraid of them once in the water, but I did respect them (in the boat, I'm afraid; in the water, I'm not. I don't know why). During the ragged tooth (raggy) dive, I got within five feet of several large sharks. Our guide told us that as long as the pectoral fins stayed horizontal, the shark was cool. If the shark's fins started to point downward, that was the time to worry, because the shark was getting upset. Most shark attacks during a shark dive occur because a human being loses their head, and the shark responds by getting aggressive.

On this particular raggy dive in South Africa, I saw one guy panic. We were at 60 feet, and a current was taking him straight into a raggy's snout. The man pinwheeled his arms (never effective, and a sign of panic), but he kept drifting and drifting towards the shark. The shark jerked its head away and went around him, cool as a cucumber, and I thought it was funny. I literally laughed into my regulator.

After the raggy dive, we were in boat and laughing and talking. One guy brought out a tooth the size of a small tea cup and showed it to us. The guide said it was a Great White's tooth, and that people found them down there all the time.

I put two and two together, and a shudder went right up my spine. If people were finding porker teeth "all the time" down there, then that meant Great Whites were coming by all the time, too. Meaning that while I'd been hanging on a line at 15 feet during my decompression stop, I was just so much bait on the end of a hook.

But that's Great Whites for you. The movie star of sharks, one of the last true monsters left on Earth. Though I'd just been within a few feet of a dozen fierce-looking raggies, it was the mere thought of a Great White that made my spit disappear.

I hope they don't hold the Southern California attack against the shark too much. I am not an animal rights lover in the true sense, but I figure this shark deserves a pass. In a few days he'll find other waters to hunt in, and the beaches should be fine.

The funny thing about the poor guy's shark story is that it makes me want to go diving as soon as possible.

Late Night Muttering

Red Wings managed to pull out another one, but not before giving me time to think they'd blow it.

In other sports news, I see Frank Thomas has a new job with Oakland, his old team. So the Jays will pay him 8 million not to play for Toronto this year, and Oakland will pay him 300 grand to play for the A's. Ah, for the life of a baseball player.

On the political front, Hillary's still going and the media couldn't be more bummed out.

And on the Canadian political front, I'm now fairly certain that there isn't that much to talk about, ever. Same stuff, over and over, never going anywhere. Somehow, I guess it's a good thing, but we need a new scandal for the summer season. I went strolling around the conservative blogs, and they've begun to tighten up a bit. I could swear there's certain names that aren't appearing as often as they used to. Must be lawsuit/Human Rights Commission chill. And who can blame them?

On the liberal blogs, it's the same old, same old. Boring. No sex talk. Barely any swear words. Have these dudes ever been laid in their lives?

What Else Is New?

Montreal, 1955















Montreal, 1993



Montreal, 2008

Drunk on The Earth's Beauty

So it's Earth Day, an occasion for atheists to worship their god.

I looked back through my archives to see if I had anything smartass to say last year, but all I ended up with was a happy birthday message to Bill Shakespeare, and a rant about the Virginia Tech killings. That last one presents quite a problem. What's a wimp to do? If you burn a candle in memory of gun-crime victims, you'll risk setting something on fire and destroying the ecosystem.

For Earth Day, I plan to open a great big bottle of single malt scotch, get drunk with three blonde hookers, drive our way to the nearest gas station, fill up on premium, pass through the McDonald's drive-thru for a couple of quarter pounders, roar on up to where the polar bears prance, and play a game of Naked Seal Clubbing Twister.

I'm sorry if that offends, but that is part of my Earth Day ritual. It's my belief system. Hey, we're all entitled to what we believe. Right?

Judge not. Yes, I am a golden god. No, you are not.

Peace.

Idle Idol?

According to Nielsen, American Idol has slipped 7% in the ratings compared to last season. Now show biz insiders are wondering if the show is doomed.

They wish. No matter how much you want the karaoke show to fail, it won't. Idol is posting 29 million viewers a week, making it the number one series on TV. If a show is "failing" with 29 million viewers, then I would love to be the producer of that failure.

I don't buy the Idol concept as a true "reality show." There's nothing real about shows that are lit, costumed, blow dried, and edited, whether they take place on a stage or in a house.

What Dreams Are Made Of
The idea that Idol is a place to find untapped talent is fairly absurd too, as proven by this year's contestants Carly Smithson (she had a flop album a few years ago), and David Cook (he also had a small-time solo album, which can be downloaded via the internet).

But who cares?

The point of the show is to sell various ideas. Teens get to dream that they'll be rich one day, if only they can impress some limey dude at an audition in Tuskegee. Older guys get to dream about banging the blonde Sonic waitress from Orlando. Ladies get to make fun of the contestants' clothes and point out who's losing more weight from week to week, then declare that the gay kid's going to win, anyway. Cynical bastards like me can tune in and hope to watch someone sing an Up With People ditty, so Simon Cowell can abuse them in front of millions by declaring them a "cruise ship act."

There is no stopping a show that appeals to so much escapism, evil or otherwise.

Tied to the Tube

A pretty good day in sports, all told.

Frank Thomas is gone, as I knew he would be. The Jays released him after he got angry for being benched. But when you're a designated hitter that isn't hitting, what can you say?

I always liked Thomas, and I hope he does well wherever he goes. Early in his career, he was one of the first to demand stringent drug testing in baseball, and for that he was ahead of his time and deserves credit. He is a no-doubt Hall of Famer.

The Wings are in, Calgary is taking the Sharks to game 7, and the Bruins/Canadians are back to their old rivalry.

Things are looking good this month.

Time To Go

The Big Hurt is pissed after being benched by Blue Jay manager John Gibbons. Frank Thomas hasn't been hitting well in the last couple of weeks. Known for the home run blast, he hasn't hit one of those since April 8, and he's got a meager .167 batting average. Thomas will be replaced by Matt Stairs, a Canadian crowd pleaser and currently batting .308 with one homer.

Thomas says he was benched because the Jays don't want his contract option to kick in, which is dependent on his number of plate appearances. Gibbons says it's because Thomas isn't hitting.

Whatever the case, it's time for the Jays to ship Frank out. I wouldn't have said that so soon, until I saw that he didn't shake hands with the team after they won today's game.

If a guy decides to take his lumps that way, you have to move him. He'll poison the locker room and kill a decent start to the season. How they'll move him is anyone's guess. The trouble with a DH is he's only attractive to other teams if he's hitting, but if he's hitting, then he wouldn't be benched or traded in the first place.

Gibbons has a history of run-ins with players, and Thomas has a history of talking smack about management, especially during his White Sox stint. The two of them together are going to be trouble.

However the Jays decide to do it, if they're not going to play Thomas, they have to move on without him.

Photo by Al Messerschmidt/Getty Images

Are You Part Of The Spike?

Boy, did I blow it.

I figured the OHRC would lay off the newspapers and let their press statement fade into memory. But no. Instead, they ramped up the rhetoric.

Quick re-cap: Maclean's ran a Mark Steyn book excerpt that somebody took as bigotry; they complained to various human right commissions, including the Ontario branch (you get to file a complaint in every provincial human rights commission, as well as the Federal one, a pretty good deal); the OHRC didn't hear the complaint, but called Maclean's Islamophobic anyway; in the same statement, they said the media had to be careful about what they printed; the media freaked; I said the OHRC would back off before they took too much heat from the press; instead, the OHRC's Barbara Hall decided to expand on her statement, a very strange move unless she wants a confrontation with the press; got it now?

The National Post interviewed Hall, and her statements are frightening indeed. The one that should scare you the most is this:

"I would say that for a province as large and as diverse as Ontario, to have 2,500 formal complaints a year, that that's a very low level," the activist lawyer [Hall] and former mayor of Toronto said. In the long term she would like to see human rights complaints decrease, but in the interim they "may have to spike."

Hmmm.

They may have to spike.

Right now you're saying, "Ah, cool it, Berry. The OHRC can't force the complaints to spike."

Oh? Perhaps you haven't heard of June 30, 2008. On that date, the OHRC will not have to wait for someone to complain to them about a human rights violation. Rather, they will be able to charge people with human rights violations themselves. Any writer, filmmaker, or artist will have to keep the OHRC in the back of their mind when they ply their craft, aware that the OHRC will have investigators prowling the magazines, art galleries, newspapers, and cyberspace.

And why wouldn't they be prowling? Their boss, after all, says that the numbers are too low and have to spike. It's simple, really: in order for everyone at the OHRC to keep their jobs, they have to find violations to process, day after day, year after year.

These are incredibly sad times in my homeland. Even an indignant smartass like me is going to feel the chill. "Should I write this? Can I say that? Why so many visits from someone in Toronto? Am I being...investigated?"

The morons that have defended these commissions simply don't get it: you've helped raise a monster. On June 30, it won't matter which side of the political spectrum you're on. Your piety be damned. All it takes is one unelected official to find your stuff troublesome, and they can turn your life upside down. They have quotas to fill. When they're done with your enemies, who do you think they'll turn to next? Way to go, buttheads.

Hey Jamil, do you hear me down there? My ex-pat Canadian friend, living in Australia? Did you think you'd see a day where a Canadian civil servant would be paid to bring people before a tribunal for something they'd written, even though they had committed no crime and offended no one except the civil servant?

The true north, strong and free.

Says who?

Kinky Quest

When traveling overseas, I'm often left with no choice but to watch CNN International. Bummer, I know. If you think the US version of CNN is bad, the International variety is sheer hell.

Anyway, Richard Quest is a big part of CNN International. Me and my buddies always laugh at how hyped up he is. Turns out, there might be a reason for that.

How about methamphetamine?

Quest and another man were found in Central Park at around 4:00 AM. Quest had a rope tied to his neck and genitals, a sex toy in his boot, and some meth in his pocket.

His lawyer says Quest was simply returning to his hotel with some friends. So that explains the rope. Tough to make it home without your ball-leash.

You can catch the rest of the story here.

Hot For Teacher

I was snooping around the net this morning and came across yet another woman who has been charged with having sex with a young teenage boy. Happens all the time, though you wouldn't know it because the press coverage is non-existent on these stories.

So, let's take a run through the epidemic of female teachers having sex with teenage boys:

A Grade 8 female teacher is nabbed grinding with a 14-year-old boy on her couch.

A Mississippi female teacher is arrested for having sex with her 15-year-old student, after sending him explicit text messages. In a text, she wrote, "I'm sensitive but not sore, you were good."

A Tennessee female teacher is busted for having sex with a 13-year-old student. After release from jail, she starts a MySpace page dedicated to "32," the number on the boy's basketball jersey.

A female Florida math teacher is caught after an 18-month affair with a student.

A Delaware female teacher is arrested for having sex with a 13-year-old student.

A 23-year-old female teacher's assistant is busted for having sexual encounters with special ed students.

A Kansas female teacher is charged with having sex with a teenager in her house.

A high school female teacher is caught in her classroom with all the lights off. Oh, and a teenage boy.

A Chicago high school female teacher is charged with having sex with boys, and giving them pot and booze.

An Arkansas female teacher is charged with having sex with a 14-year-old boy.

A female gym teacher is hit with 13 counts of statutory rape and 15 counts of sexual battery.

A female English teacher throws a party at her house, complete with beer, porno videos, and teenage boys.

A female cheerleading coach and a female art teacher are busted for having sex with underage male students.

Had enough?

So, the Pope's in town and people are marching, telling him to take action on the pedophile priest syndrome. We can get into all kinds of arguments as to the definition of "pedophile," but whatever. Male priests had sexual encounters with boys, and people are rightfully outraged.

Yet female teachers have sexual encounters with boys all the time, and you hear nary a whisper. Once a year, you'll hear a story about it, but it isn't "pedophilia." It's a strange "love affair."

Why the difference?

Start your spin machine.

Super Flop Me

Poor Hollywood.

After years of making anti-war, anti-American, anti-soldier flicks in the post-9/11 world, they finally realized that audiences weren't interested. So, to switch things up and make some cash, they've listened to their marketing people and will now release...movies that make fun of Americans in the post-9/11 world.

Here's a heads up from Jeff Ressner:

Over the next few weeks, theaters will be screening far-out fare such as an Osama bin Laden documentary by the maker of “Super Size Me”; an absurdist slam against merchants of war featuring John Cusack; a zombie soldier flick with XXX star Jenna Jameson; a stoner movie about Guantanamo Bay; and a Sept. 11 parody — yes, parody — made by Uwe Boll, a little-known filmmaker often ridiculed as the worst director in Hollywood since Ed Wood.

I couldn't care less what kind of movies a director wants to make. But if this is Hollywood's answer to super-flops like Redacted and Lions for Lambs, they're in for a real beating this summer.

Director Peter Berg wondered if he'd gone too far when an audience saw The Kingdom and applauded when the good guys kicked some ass. He thought it might be American bloodlust.

No, Pete. You didn't go too far. It's just that you made the only movie about Americans in the last eight years that showed the good guys winning for a change. The heroes weren't high on drugs, didn't hate their homeland, didn't rape or torture anyone, believed in their mission, and had brains to match their brawn. It was a good flick, one that audiences had been desperate for.

Unfortunately, Hollywood hasn't learned its lesson. A bin Laden documentary by the guy who ate junk food for a month and stunned himself by putting on the pounds. I can't wait for his humorous and authoritative take on terrorism.

Winner and Loser

Here's a piece from Reuters. It says that British parents spend 30 millions hours a year picking out a name for their child.

According to Steve Shore of Abbey Banking, "There is no doubt that children's names reflect people's aspirations and parents believe names can affect career prospects."

Parents may believe that, but it doesn't matter what they think. Life has a funny way of deciding anyone's fate, no matter what their handle.

Let's talk about two brothers. Winner and Loser Lane. One went on to become a respected police detective, the other a crook with dozens of arrests on his rap sheet.

The detective is Loser, the criminal is Winner. According to Loser, some are uncomfortable with the name, and call him "Lou" for short.

The Great Achoo

I read a book a few years ago called The Great Influenza, about the flu pandemic that struck the world at the beginning of the 20th century.

Good book, and after reading it, I knew that flu vaccines were a sham. Like bad music, influenza mutates from year to year, place to place, and there's no way to make a reliable vaccine against it.

Here's a line from the AP:

This year, a Type A H3N2 Brisbane strain not in the vaccine has been responsible for most of the illnesses. A Type B Florida strain, also absent from the vaccine, has also been causing illness. Marshfield data showed that the vaccine didn't work at all against the Type B virus, and was 58 percent effective against the Brisbane virus.

Without knowing what "effective" means (people got sick but didn't die? People didn't get sick at all?) you can safely say that the vaccine didn't do squat.

Time Slime

Time editor tells MSNBC "there needs to be a real effort along the lines of World War II to combat global warming and climate change."

Lame publicity stunt from a lame magazine.

I don't know how far removed Time's editors are from the rest of the population. If they took their heads out of their asses for a few minutes, they might just get a better view.

"Needs to be an effort along the lines of World War II."

That's the statement from Time managing editor Richard Stengal.

With all due respect, Dick, how the hell would you know?

I've got a good idea: save trees and stop printing this old rag.

I'll stick with the original photo of men with honour (three of whom didn't make it through the war):

Big Media to the Rescue

Since last week's explosion of editorials regarding the OHRC, the bloggers and mag writers have been jumping all over the free speech debate.

The place to go for the latest stuff is Mark Steyn's website, as he provides a link to every new editorial on the matter. Many of them are pro-speech and anti-star chamber, but for good reason: most people in the papers say they're against the gagging of free speech, and even a couple of lefty bloggers have started to change their tune.

For the record, I think a great debt is owed to Levant and Steyn on this account, because they kept the debate going in the blogosphere for months before the media finally woke up to it.

Recently, Steyn linked to a George Jonas piece, in which Jonas asks why some stories draw attention, while other stories don't.

I dig Jonas. He's cool, and I like his stuff. I thought Vengeance was a great read, but Munich was crap. Anyway, Jonas says something in his column that I have been seeing a lot lately: the utter bewilderment as to why the human rights issue is suddenly worthy of an op-ed. Champagne corks are popping all around, as the editors and columnists pat themselves on the back for presenting themselves as champions of free speech. Yet, to their curiosity, they wonder what took them so long.

The Star, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Sun, The Hamilton Spectator, The Calgary Herald, so forth and so on. They've all gotten into the act. And nobody knows why.

I do.

I said it a couple of weeks ago, and I'll say it again: self-preservation. It is no coincidence that the heavy hitters in the newspaper biz didn't get into the free speech debate until the OHRC wrote a press release that contained the word media.

The gagging of free speech: not just for bloggers anymore.

After this press release, the papers started hitting the issue fast and furious. They were now all for the rights of free expression and free speech.

Hog wash. I find it very amusing that free speech defenders are linking to these editorials like mad. The editorials contain next to nothing about the on-going debate regarding free speech. The papers let Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn twist, and only entered the fray when the magical word "media" appeared. These editorials are chock full of the letters "OHRC," but not very many "CHRC."

There is not a doubt in my mind that if the OHRC's decision had only used Mark Steyn's name, and not Maclean's, then the Calgary Herald et al wouldn't even have noticed.

Bloggers and free speech defenders better watch it. I've said that framing the debate as freedom of the press is the winning strategy, as long as bloggers insert themselves into the idea of "press."

If not, here's what's going to happen: The OHRC will capitulate to the papers, and back off quickly. That will shut the mouths of the editorialists, who will go back to their day jobs. It will also put the internet and the bloggers right back where they were: a separate entity, and a separate issue. Isolated. This will let the CHRC (remember them?) continue to frame the internet as a place where hate mongers hang out and a place that needs supervision.

In a funny way, the lambasting of the OHRC is the best news the CHRC has had in ages. It let them off the ropes, just when free speech advocates were gaining steam. Vitally, it changed the topic from "private citizen rights" to "media rights."

It could swing back just as quickly.

Embarr-ass-ing

There are no words to describe this story.

"He said his client was too drunk to remember how the body spray canister ended up in his body."

Now, that's a party story for the ages (and one that should never, ever, be told to anybody, let alone the press).

Just read it.

He might win the eventual lawsuit, but can you imagine the judge's face? "Well, your honour, it was like this..."

The Silencing of Brigitte Bardot

If you scroll down, you'll see that I made mention of Brigitte Bardot last week, and how her portrait sold for almost two hundred grand.

The French bombshell (well, used to be) is back in the news, this time for inciting racial hatred. She now faces a fine of around 22 grand and a two month suspended sentence. If that sounds like harsh treatment for the French lady speaking her mind, it's because the lead prosecutor is asking for the most "striking and remarkable" punishment possible.

How the times have changed. Throughout Brigitte's entire career, the words "striking and remarkable" were thrown at her in breathless whispers. Now those same words are being used to punish her for writing a letter.

How's that, you say? A letter?

Ah, yes. The story goes like this: Brigitte Bardot is an animal rights activist. Always has been (just ask the people in Newfoundland). But of late she's become the champion of French traditionalism, saying that immigration is out of hand and that Islam is growing bigger than the church. Being an animal rights activist, she's also concerned that Islamic people might be slaughtering sheep during the festival of Eid-al-Kabir.

She's been convicted four times for inciting racial hatred. Once for talking about "foreign over-population," and another time for writing, "...my country, France, my homeland, my land is again invaded by an overpopulation of foreigners, especially Muslims." This line appeared in her book, Pluto's Square.

Come again, you ask, a book?

Well, two actually. In another book, Bardot wrote about what she saw as the "Islamification of France" and said that more mosques are being built all the time, while the church bells are falling silent for want of priests. This prose got her busted again for inciting racial hatred (Islam and Catholicism apparently falling under the "race" banner now, as opposed to being what they are: religions).

I don't know about you, but to me "inciting racial hatred" implies someone standing on a corner and shouting racial epithets at the top of their lungs, or gathering people together and telling them to go out and beat people up because of their skin color. But lamenting in books and letters that church bells are falling silent, or talking about over-population? I thought over-population was the talk of the town. Hell, even Ted Turner thinks it's the biggest problem on the horizon.

Bardot's latest letter, by the way, was written to President Sarkozy back when he was the Interior Minister of France. Then it was leaked to the media, and Bardot was charged. So the way it goes in France, you can be tried and convicted for private correspondence. If Canadians thought they had it bad for being brought up on internet chatroom raps, that's nothing: if you write a rant to a friend in France, and that bon ami drops it off at the newspaper or prosecutor's office, you could be whistling to the tune of 22 thousand dollars.

A question: if letters and books get you arrested for talking about anything to do with immigration and religion, how long is it until nobody writes about those subjects anymore?

Oh, wait. Silly me. That's the point.

Photo: TLT News

Jimmy Carter - Sap

"He gave me a hug. We hugged each other, and it was a warm reception," Shaer told The Associated Press. "Carter asked what he can do to achieve peace between the Palestinians and Israel ... and I told him the possibility for peace is high."

That's a line from an AP piece talking about Jimmy Carter, who is on the latest leg of his never-ending quest to bury his inconsequential presidency. If the possibility for peace is high, there's no way it can be as high as Jimmy Carter.

This time around, Carter hugged terrorist leader Nasser Shaer, laid a wreath at terrorist leader Yasser Arafat's grave, and made mention of the fact that he has no authority to act as a middle man for Israel and Hamas. But he's there anyway.

It is what it is. An ego trip.

Buzz Kill

Two valuable rhino horns were stolen from a musuem in Cape Town.

Rhino horns are sometimes rendered into an aphrodisiac for randy customers. Unfortunately, these horns might prove to be the anti-Viagra. Musuem officials say they're coated in arsenic and DDT.

The whole story.

Sean Avery - Moron

Here's a clip of Sean Avery from last night.



A 5 on 3 powerplay. Rangers have the puck, up 2-1. Avery goes to the net and proceeds to wave his arms and stick in front of Brodeur's face, in a 6-year-old's street hockey move. He does it for about a minute.

He wasn't the only jerkoff in the building. You already know how I feel about sportscasters, but the guy in the booth proved what a loser he is by declaring Avery's antics, "Great stuff." He said, "Avery's tactics are like nothing I've ever seen before."

Newsflash, idiot. The reason you haven't seen it before is because no self-respecting professional hockey player would act like that in order to try and get a goal.

I was listening to the radio today, where the usual crap came out. The DJ deplored Avery's methods, but said he'd love to have him on his team. The producer of the show agreed instantly. To their shame, Kelly Hrudey told them during a later interview that he wouldn't take Avery, and that, "If people want that guy on their team, they can have him."

The NHL came out with the following rule this morning:

"An unsportsmanlike conduct minor penalty (Rule 75) will be interpreted and applied, effective immediately, to a situation when an offensive player positions himself facing the opposition goaltender and engages in actions such as waving his arms or stick in front of the goaltender's face, for the purpose of improperly interfering with and/or distracting the goaltender as opposed to positioning himself to try to make a play."

How embarrassing is it to have to add a rule like that? With any luck, Avery gets a stick in the teeth and his ass booted right out of the playoffs. Go Devils.

State of Denial

Baseball and its sycophantic sportscasters are still in denial, desperate to sweep the drug allegations under the rug.

Earlier this year, dozens of players were named in the Mitchell report as having used steroids or human growth hormone. Baseball and the sports media couldn't wait to bury the story. They gave it a couple of minutes on the sports programs, ran an editorial or two, and that was that.

Of the many baseball games I have watched this season, I have not heard more than two mentions of the Mitchell report, and both times the subject was instantly dropped. Never forget that the sidekick in the booth is always an ex-player. If a play-by-play guy brings up the most explosive story since the Black Sox scandal, the sidekick will respond with three seconds of silence until the next pitch changes the subject. Gregg Zaun, the Blue Jays' catcher, was named in the Mitchell report, but so far the crack media team in Toronto has yet to investigate it.

Gregg Zaun
To cover their ass-kissing ways, the sports media love to point out stadium attendance as a way of showing that fans don't give a damn about doping in baseball. Completely untrue. Downtown, the crime rate is up but I still go to clubs and bars. Does that mean I don't mind people getting mugged?

Over the weekend, I read a piece by AP sports writer Pat Graham. The last baseball that Barry Bonds stroked over the fence was auctioned off for $376,612.

If that seems low, it's because it is: ridiculously low. The Bonds homerun ball that broke Hank Aaron's record sold for $752,467. You would think that the last homerun ball that Bonds ever hit would at least come close to that figure. Instead, it sold for half the price.

As Graham has it, it's probably because Bonds isn't permanently retired. Bonds has said that he still wants to play baseball (the Giants dumped him last season), but no team has given him an offer.

Sure, Graham. Keep telling yourself that, and keep drinking MLB's Kool-Aid. Keep it up. Treat fans like morons. At least you'll still be welcome in every team's locker room.

Bonds is up on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. The drug allegations around him are as thick as his arms. Yet in Graham's piece, he makes absolutely no mention of the criminal charges, Bonds' grand jury testimony, or the drug scandal. You'd think that this would be a pretty big part of the Barry Bonds story, but Graham leaves all of it on the cutting room floor. So what is Graham? A sports reporter, or an MLB publicist?

That is my problem now with the MLB drug scandal. Not so much the doping (I think it'll be cleaned up after this mess, and MLB has announced more off-season tests, as well as testing for draft prospects), but the way the sports media are in bed with the sports they cover. One thing that this scandal exposed is just how prejudiced the media are. With all of the hardcore sports shows on radio and TV, and the dozens of sports magazines on the shelves, how is it possible that the last decade of drug-ridden baseball went unreported until Jose Canseco decided to write a book about it?

Bonds' last homerun ball sold for comparative peanuts because people don't believe it's real. With criminal charges and drug allegations drifting around him, memorabilia nuts are wondering if Bonds will ever make the Hall of Fame, or if the homerun ball will be branded with an asterisk. In other words, people are not convinced of it's value.

People ask why I don't trust sportscasters. I should print out Graham's piece and have it laminated.

Photo: AFP/Jed Jacobsohn
Brad Mangin/Getty Images

Yankee Stadium Exorcised

Damned Red Sox fans.

A smart-ass Boston fan worked as a construction worker at the new Yankee stadium for one day. His goal: to bury a David Ortiz jersey in the stadium's foundation in hopes of cursing the new venue.

Anonymous tipsters got in touch with the contractor. After five hours of drilling, they found the shirt.

Here's the whole story.

Photo: AP/Francis Roberts

Naked Politics

Why can't we get people like this to run for office?

In Canada, all we get are hacks that want to save the trees, raise taxes, or kiss David Suzuki's ass. It's all "free speech" this, "hatemongers" that, gas prices, education, and health care all around. Bummer-politics.

We could use a good dose of Italy right now. Something to take the edge off.

This is Milly D'Abbraccio, a former porn-star that's running for government in Italia. Her campaign promise is to open a place in Rome called Love City. It'll have strip joints, sex shops, and erotic dance clubs but, says Milly, no prostitution.

Well, you can't win them all.

Milly's campaign slogan is her rear end, which adorns posters all over the city. As she says, "People don't want to see these politician's faces anymore."

Millie would know about faces, as many a man's has probably been obscured by her butt. In any event, I wish her luck. How can you go wrong with a candidate that has Paolina Borghese, Imperial Nymphomaniac on their resume?

More on the story here.

Photo: Reuters/Max Rossi

Lonely Liar

The publisher of Lonely Planet guide books is red-faced at news that writer Thomas Kohnstamm made up some parts of the books, and didn't even visit one of the countries he wrote about.

I used a Lonely Planet book back in my hitch hiking days. It came in pretty handy when I wanted to find a two-bit hostel or a cheap watering hole. Today, I doubt I would even bother with a guide book, as the internet trumps them all. Besides, most of the guide books only want to tell you about museums, statues and river tours. Where's the fun in that? I was always more interested in where the hot chicks hung out, or where I could get a two dollar margarita.

It doesn't sound like Kohnstamm's lies did much damage. According to the publisher, they've vetted some of the books and couldn't find anything wrong with them. No shocker. The Lonely Planet series is short on descriptions and long on options. It wouldn't take a genius to Google "Buenos Aires" and copy the names of cheap hotels and restaurants.

Kohnstamm says he made the books up because Lonely Planet didn't pay him enough. I believe him. Writers' salaries are going further down the drain every day. Look up "Writing Jobs" on craigslist and you'll see that roughly 80% are non-paying gigs, the rest paying only enough to cover mileage.

Unless you're a bigshot, writing is a part-time gig or a hobby. The fact that Lonely Planet didn't see how they'd be had before now is the only surprising thing to come out of this story. Whether lonely of not, the planet has become www.small.

Does that excuse Kohnstamm? No. Do I feel sorry for Lonely Planet? Ditto.

Now the publisher has a whole new problem on their hands: how many other books have been done in the same vein, and how will they ever find out?

Answer: they won't.

More on the story here.

One Missed Call - Review

Director: Eric Valetta
Screenplay: Andrew Klavan
Starring: Ed Burns/Shannyn Sossamon
Runtime: 1 hr 26 minutes

There's no way this movie gets good grades from the critics and movie buffs. It's derivative and hokey.

Still, I think it's a decent movie for the PG set. I think that's what the producers were going for, because the gore is kept to a minimum, and the spooky parts are fairly tame. Movies like this always suffer from comparisons: the hard-core crowd will compare it to Japanese masterpieces, and never give a thought to the fact that each popcorn movie is not always meant for their sophisticated intellect.

There's nothing wrong with a semi-spooky, cheesy movie. One thing that occurred to me while watching the film is that I haven't seen a true pre-teen horror movie in a while. The kind of movie that used to appear on Shock Theater when I was kid, when my friends and I would stay up really late (10:30pm) to see it on TV.

So maybe it's a good thing to have a derivative J-horror picture for the younger crowd. When I was growing up, there were wall-to-wall horror movies. Every Friday and Saturday night, you could relish the fact that your parents were out with their friends, and you could watch of a few cheesy horror movies. Years later, you can't see why you were afraid of them, but back in the day it was great fun scaring the hell out of your brother when all the lights were off.

The plot of the movie is just like every other J-horror flick. Someone is dead, so they've decided to haunt people in the most inefficient way possible. This time out, it's phone calls. Not like The Ring's phone calls; in that movie, the ghost gave you a week to live before doing you in. In One Missed Call, the ghost is impatient and only gives you 48 hours.

So that's the movie. Your phone rings in an abnormally creepy way. You look at the screen and see "one missed call," and when you answer the phone, ooops, that's your own voice! And that's the sound of you dying. So now you know what your last words on Earth will be. 48 hours later, curtains.

The acting by the leads isn't bad, though the acting by a couple of the supporting characters is pretty horrendous. For some reason, Ed Burns turns up in this movie. Maybe he took a break from directing and wanted to play something fun and easy. He does a good job with it. He plays a detective, and like all detectives, his name is Jack.

Shannyn Sossamon is very good playing the (as always) feminine hero on a quest to find the truth before it kills her. Naturally, she's beautiful, but it helps that she has acting chops. I thought she'd rise to be a star after her role in A Knight's Tale opposite Heath Ledger, but that was over six years ago. If she's doing B-horror now, it's because of some duds in the last few years. It's too bad, because she's a good actor.

All in all, a movie for the kids, but not for the hard-core horror crowd.

Photos: Yahoo Movies

Stacking the Deck

I'd like to be modest, but screw it. I made this call before the OHRC press release even came out.

Big Media was saying nothing about the free speech deal until a few days ago, when the OHRC whispered the word "media."

Suddenly, the doors are open and the editorials are like Times Square confetti. The Toronto Sun, Winnipeg Free Press, Calgary Herald, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, and National Post.

All right, so the Post was in on the act early, but the rest? Nothing. Notice especially that the Winnipeg and Calgary papers didn't have much of a dissenting view of the CHRC, but are suddenly freaked out by what's happening in Ontario.

As I've said before, frame the free speech debate as a free press issue, and it changes everything. Nothing gets people going like self-preservation.

Incidentally, you might like to read this statement from the Ontario Human Rights Commission. It concerns the new Act coming into effect on June 30, 2008. The statement is on their website, under the heading, Our Changing Mission. I found this part pretty interesting:

In some ways, the new law enhances the OHRC’s independence. We will file our annual report directly to the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, instead of through the Attorney General, as we currently do. We will have the power to monitor and report on anything related to the state of human rights in the Province of Ontario.

Our powers to review legislation and policies, for example will be very broad. The new law refers to our ability to consider whether legislation is inconsistent with the intent of the Code. We will have a role in dealing with “tension and conflict” and bringing people and communities together to help resolve differences. Our current role as a developer of public policy on human rights is made explicit in the new legislation, as is the way those policies can be used in issues that are before the Tribunal.

Hmmm. Notice the boldface? That's theirs.

You should always be nervous when the words very broad and power appear in the same sentence.

Interpreting law, skipping the Attorney General, lobbying the legislature. Quite a lot? That's nothing. Check out these two sentences:

"We will have the power to conduct public inquiries, initiate our own applications (formerly called ‘complaints’), or intervene in proceedings at the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO)...The OHRC may also apply to the HRTO to state a case to the Divisional Court where it feels the HRTO decision is not consistent with OHRC policies."

Just so you're clear: if no one complains about your actions, come June, the OHRC can file a complaint (excuse me, application) against you themselves. They can then bring that case to the tribunals. If the tribunals don't give them the answer they are looking for, they can tell the tribunal to send the case to a divisional court. If they don't like the answer from the divisional court, they can lobby the legislature to change the law.

And the Attorney General never has to see any of it.

I like that line from above: "In some ways, the new law enhances the OHRC’s independence."

No kidding.

Première Femme - Update

The Bruni portrait I wrote about a while back finally sold for $91,000, a hell of a lot more than they originally estimated.

In related news, a portrait of Brigitte Bardot (right) sold for almost two hundred grand. It wasn't this photo, but it'll do.

I should have studied harder in Meet Celebs and Take Their Picture class.

More on the story here.

This Bill's For You

Talk about the life of the party. This dude wants to raise the tax on beer in California by 1500%.

Assemblyman Jim Beall said, "The people who use alcohol should pay for part of the cost to society, just like we've accepted that concept with tobacco."

Ah. How did I know he was looking out for everyone's best interests?

Why is it Republicans in the US always get hit for being uptight and weird, while the free-swinging liberals want to tax everything and spend the money on dumb stuff like hospitals and schools?

Beall should just move to Canada, where the liquor tax is already to his liking.

Photo: SI

Blog Rant

Becoming Big Media

I've been thinking for weeks that the only way to turn the tide on the human rights deal regarding free speech is to change the focus. Not freedom of speech, but freedom of the press.

I notice that Mark Steyn has linked to a Toronto Star piece which shows that the Star has finally thrown their hat in the ring. It comes as no surprise to me that the Star only woke up to the HRC debate with these fateful words from the Ontario HRC: "Islamophobia in the media."

The word media changes the argument and brings the papers, magazines, and TV shows into the fray. These are the people with money, and the people that the politicians listen to.

The Star article plays it close to the vest. They say that readers should have been rightfully "repelled" by the Steyn book excerpt which appeared in Maclean's. Then the editorial goes on to to say that the human rights council should not have gone after Maclean's for running it. They make no statement of Steyn's freedom of speech, only the media's freedom to print that speech.

That's an interesting shell game: Steyn's a repellent bigot, but hey, Maclean's has rights. And that's my point: the media will rise to the defense of press freedom much more readily and vocally than they will freedom of speech. If it had just been Steyn charged with some hate crime or other, the Star probably would have let him twist in the wind. But question Big Media? Battle stations.

People that spend all day on the internet need to get their heads out of the box. Bloggers (including me) make no real difference. Five years ago, I didn't even know what a blog was. Two years ago, when I started blogging, I felt somewhat embarrassed by it. It had a kind of "geek factor" that I didn't want to advertise. Fast forward to the present day, and blogging is certainly more popular, but it still isn't in the same league as Big Media for influence and power.

It's getting there: most magazines and newspaper websites have a blog section, and the Toronto Sun provides a 100 word "best of the blogs" piece each day. Yet notice who the blogs are written by: mainly print writers with time on their hands, with only a smattering of "real" bloggers thrown into the mix. Until blogs have the same power as Big Media, blogs will still be seen as a fringe element: lonely people in basements, wanna-be journalists, American Idol fanatics.

Make no mistake: if you have a blog with a readership of 10 000 per day, that's a pretty good readership. But it's on the internet. It isn't real. People can click to the baseball scores, or simply turn off their computers and ignore it. The reason the papers and mags have more influence is that readers know a writer was paid to write it. Web MD vs. going to the doctor. Until a number of big-time popular writers publish their stuff exclusively on the internet (and readers follow them there), you can forget the power of blogging beyond the ability to merely entertain or irritate.

Papers and magazines are physical things. They sit on tables, they are delivered to doors. Their weight gives them weight. And most importantly, they are local. A blogger may have a million readers a month, but what difference does it make when half of those readers are in the US, another quarter in Australia, and another 10% in the UK?

You might say, "No way, Sean. I have thirty thousand Canadian readers per day, man. Powerful stuff."

And I say, "So what?" Emailing a politician a screenshot of your Google Analytics page is meaningless. First, it's lame. Second, it could be fabricated. A screenshot of statistics is nothing compared to a politician waking up, opening his door, and finding his name on a front page. Now he knows that the entire city is reading this over their morning coffee. That kind of power trumps a blog's "counter" every single time.

Somehow, someway, bloggers must get it through their heads to change the focus. They must change the culture of media, and define themselves as journalists. If, as is happening now, they are going to be sued for libel or dragged into a commission's tribunal, then they must start to act and talk like part of the Big Media. If newspapers and magazines have websites and are considered "media," then why aren't you?

Bloggers must remove the word "speech" from the argument, and insert the word "press." It may hurt their moral pride to do it, but it is the winning strategy. This will silence the crowd that chants, "Free speech is not yelling fire bah-blah-blah." Make it about the press, and you will find allies with bigger pockets and mightier pens, the people that can bring truly great pressure upon politicians, tribunals, and judges. Until then, you a simply one small person that can be picked off with ease.

One more time, this is not about freedom of speech, no matter how much you want it to be. It is about freedom of the press.

Use that strategy, and you have a shot. Otherwise...log out.

Tied Up In Court

"How can the tribunal determine if BDSM falls within the meaning of 'sexual orientation' if it does not have a full understanding of what BDSM means?"

That's Justice Anne Rowles, of the British Columbia Court of Appeals, who apparently doesn't have an internet connection to Google.

It looks like a guy applied to the cops for a chauffeur's license and was turned down. Upset, he decided to take the police to the BC -- you guessed it -- Human Rights Tribunal. He feels he is being discriminated against not because of the usual gender/religion/race stuff, but because he practices BDSM, which he believes should be protected as a human right of sexual orientation.

It turns out the appeals court isn't sure what sexual orientation or BDSM are, so the case will proceed to the Human Rights Tribunal as planned.

It seems we're treading onto ever-thinning ice each day. Maclean's brought to the Ontario Human Rights Commission for running a book excerpt. Ezra Levant brought to the Alberta Human Rights Commission for publishing the Danish Muslim Cartoons. Now the police brought before the BCHRC over fetish sex (but not fetish for long).

It may sound like a joke, but it isn't funny (all right, it's a little funny, "Bring out the gimp," so forth), but let's say the BDSM deal falls under "sexual orientation." The next time somebody cracks wise about whips, chains, or handcuffs, they could be brought up on a human rights rap. Pulp Fiction would be tossed on a fire of censored films, and the police themselves might not be able to use handcuffs anymore because it offends the BDSM crowd.

Don't think it can happen? Stay tuned. And by the way, what's with all the provincial human rights commissions? Makes you wonder what happened to the Criminal Code of Canada.

Mind you, it does bring up a lot of interesting defences.

"Where were you on the night of the 15th?"

"I can't remember."

"Then you're coming downtown."

"But I read Playboy with my dog while I hang on the ceiling from bungee cords."

"Damnit. All right, you're free to go."

More on the story here.

Boll Stands Up

There's a petition going around on the internet, saying that Uwe Boll should stop making movies.

Here is Boll's response. It is probably the funniest thing I've seen all year. Very refreshing.

Personally, I don't think I've seen more than five minutes of the guy's stuff. But anybody who tells critics where to stick it is okay in my book.

The man does have a point: With all the social commentary going on in movies, there must still be a place for hacks that just want to blow things up for the sheer hell of it, while filming the heroine running to and fro in a skimpy T-shirt. Sure, I'd probably get on my high horse and give it a bad review, but if somebody digs it, what do I care?

Hedging Their Bets

The frequency of heavy precipitation events (or proportion of total rainfall from heavy falls) will very likely increase over most areas during the 21st century, with consequences to the risk of rain-generated floods.

At the same time, the proportion of land surface in extreme drought at any one time is projected to increase.

--Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Huh?

Free Press Scores One

The OHRC dropped their deal against Steyn and Maclean's. Here's my take in the Sun:

What a bunch of chickens.

The OHRC has decided not to hear the case filed against Maclean's magazine for running an excerpt of Mark Steyn's book, perhaps because the Commission already consulted its legal Magic 8-Ball and found the magazine guilty.

The OHRC won't hear the case, yet it "strongly condemns the Islamophobic portrayal of Muslims, Arabs, South Asians and indeed any racialized community in the media, such as the Maclean's article and others like them."

That's the judicial equivalent of a hit-and-run. Did they try the case on its merits? No. Did they allow Maclean's to defend itself? No. Did they find Maclean's guilty of Islamophobia and publicly censure them anyway? Yes.

Free press in Canada: 1. OHRC credibility: 0.

Bracket Time

Except for pro basketball, I consider myself a pretty knowledgeable sports fan. That said, I completely suck at brackets. I have resigned myself to the fact that I always have and (especially with college hoops) I probably always will.

Nevertheless, I'll make my hockey picks now, twenty minutes before the playoffs. The kind of first round I would like to see looks like this:

Jersey/Rangers: Rangers in 6.

Ottawa/Pittsburgh: Ottawa in 7.

Colorado/Minnesota: Don't really care. But I'll say Colorado in 6.

Calgary/San Jose: Calgary in 7.

Boston/Montreal: Montreal in 5.

Philly/Washington: Washington in 6.

Predators/Red Wings: Red Wings in 5.

Stars/Ducks: Stars in a 6-game upset of the champs.

Word Game/Head Game

I was reading an article by Brian Bethune in Maclean's today, which had the sub-headline, "The newest view of Christ - activist, politician, not very Christian - is hard to square with the Bible's. Now some believers even say the faith might be better off without him."

I'm not surprised to see that kind of stuff these days. Over the past two decades, we have been in a terrible hurry to remove all memory of Jesus Christ from the culture's language.

Again, I am not a religious person. But again, I think this swift dismantling of one of the cornerstones of Western culture is very shortsighted. (The very fact that I just felt a need to write those two sentences should speak volumes, huh? I wrote them without thinking, because I wanted you to read more without seeing me as a nutcase. Sometimes, I even amuse myself at how evolved I'm becoming -- don't you?)

In the Maclean's article, I found the term: 70 CE. I knew it had to be an abbreviation of something, probably a reference to when the second temple of Jerusalem got knocked down in 70 BC. So I went looking and found that CE is the new term for AD.

Common Era (more or less the Gregorian Calendar we use today), as opposed to Anno Domini (the year of our Lord). In my university days, the erasure of Christianity was still in its infancy. The profs tried to sell us on BP (Before Present), but that made you do math while hungover and writing term papers, so it didn't catch on. BCE and CE have a better shot this time around.

You'd better get used to CE, because if it's appearing in magazines without a footnote to translation, then it means it's already on the way to becoming part of the language. BCE (Before the Common Era), by the way, is what is replacing BC (Before Christ).

"Common" is an apt description of our increasingly bland world of Equality Through Sameness, though it is a bit hackneyed. "BC" and "AD" have been the "common" way of looking at things for ages, for Jews and gentiles alike. But that isn't the point: the point is to specifically remove the Christ element from the abbreviation.

If you don't think that is the purpose of the change, let me pose an example. Let's say a child asks you why some old book says AD, while a newer book says BCE. You tell the child that the term was changed some years ago. Then the child asks you why it was changed. And you say...?

Make no mistake, the changing of words is a conscious decision to influence the change of thought. If a word is changed, then the previous word must have been "bad," while the word replacing it must be "better." If that's the case, then the ideas behind those words must be taken into account, and judged "good" or "bad" accordingly.

Eradicating and changing words is the simplest way to destroy someone's ability to think, argue, or remember. As Orwell pointed out, if someone cannot say something, then they cannot think it. It has a wonderful simplicity to it, or as one of his characters says, "It's a beautiful thing, the destruction of words."

Remove Christ from the Bible, and Christ from the calendar. Pretty soon it's, "Who's Christ?"

Jon Lajoie - Good Laugh

I needed a laugh and gave this one another visit.

An insta-classic from Jon Lajoie. Funny guy from Montreal. As far as I can tell, he's a comic on the rise who's been putting his stuff on You Tube until some offers come in. I don't think it will take long.

Hold the Fries, I'm Having Grandma

I caught this headline today:

Climate change leads to psychiatric illness: WHO

Yeah, no kidding. Every enviro-boob I meet is a lunatic.

The article ties mental illness to bad weather and drought, then passes it off as an affect of global warming.

Says the piece, "Anticipating that severe flooding may become more frequent due to global warming, a WHO report said that independent studies in cyclone-affected Orissa and a flooded town in England has shown that post-traumatic stress disorder syndromes of different severity in affected people even after a year."

What a shocker. People who wake up to find their living room in three feet of water are stressed out. Even more shocking is that their stress is high a year later, when the bill comes due on the renovations. Now whenever you see a woman crying as she picks through the remains of her house, you'll know she's not upset: she's mentally deranged.

The assignment of blame is an age-old game. Used to be that Yahweh, or Vishnu, or Lucifer were the cause of all the strife in the world. Then atheism got hip, so you couldn't blame your troubles on a god. No problem: here comes global warming, the new gospel of the Environmental faith.

Drought? Flood? Hurricane? Not mystical Mother Nature, just little old us, and we're all going to die.

Here's a quick look at Ted Turner. Watch this clip and tell me who's the more psychotic, Ted or the drought-stricken farmer. Ted thinks there's too many people on the face of the planet, and that we need to cut back. He also says that we'll all be cannibals in thirty to forty years. So...where's the problem?

Lars and the Real Girl - Review

Director: Craig Gillespie
Writer: Nancy Oliver
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Patricia Clarkson
Runtime: 1 hr 46 minutes

For a long time, the set-up for Lars and the Real Girl kept me from seeing it.

Ryan Gosling plays Lars, a smalltown simple man. He lives in his brother's garage, is terribly shy, and has a social life of zero. Around any office watercooler, he would be termed "quiet" at best, "loser" at worst. His sister-in-law (Emily Mortimer) is desperate for him to meet a woman and find happiness, while his brother Gus (Paul Schneider) merely says "that's the way Lars is."

Later in the film, to the delight of sister-in-law Karin, Lars does indeed find someone. He tells Gus and Karin that he met the woman on the internet, that she's shy, uses a wheelchair, and her English isn't that good. The mystery woman's name is Bianca, and Lars would like to bring her over for dinner. Wonderful!

Cut to the stunned faces of Gus and Karin as they sit on the coach and meet Bianca. It turns out that Bianca, whom Lars mentions is from Brazil, is not a woman at all. She's an anatomically correct sex toy. She can pass as a human being from twenty feet away, until you notice that she doesn't breathe, doesn't blink, doesn't move.

This was the set-up that scared me away from the movie. I thought it was going to be a dumb retread of Weekend at Bernie's or some such, and that I would have to sit through an hour and a half of lame sex gags.

I could never have been so wrong.

The film is incredibly good, and I think it probably should have been up for the Best Picture Oscar last year, and that it should have won.

Elia Kazan was fond of saying that the lens captures everything. If an actor truly believes in what they're doing, they don't have to act. The lens will see that belief and translate it to the audience.

The key to Lars and the Real Girl is the belief the cast and crew have in the movie. Though it has plenty of humour, it never goes for cheap laughs and gags. Instead, it's a character study of a man who truly believes that this mannequin is alive. She has his same faults, his same fears. In her, he's found the one person who understands him.

The film is fresh, and gives you the feeling that you haven't seen anything like it before. The script and cast are excellent. Watch as the townsfolk first think it's crazy to see Lars going about the town with his plastic girlfriend. Then watch as they slowly come to accept it. Then they too begin to treat Bianca as a living, breathing person. The lady at the dress shop gives Bianca a "job" three days a week, posing in the window. The hospital asks her to "volunteer" in the kids section, so she can prop up the books the kids are hearing from her tape-player "voice."

It isn't treated as madcap comedy. Lars' doctor (an excellent Patricia Clarkson) has him come in once a week, so she can give Bianca the occasional check-up. This is, of course, a ruse for the doctor to speak with Lars and attempt to understand his delusions. It is handled perfectly by the director and the cast. Instead of going for easy laughs, the film digs deeper and deeper into all kinds of questions. What's wrong with Lars? What's wrong with us? What makes a person a person? If enough people treat anything with dignity and caring, when does the "thing" become a "life"?

It has been a long time since I saw a film that went from wire to wire without a hiccup. This movie is satisfying as hell and you should see it when you can.

Photos: Yahoo Movies

Fade to Black - Charlton Heston

I always had a spot in my heart for Charlton Heston. He wasn't so much an actor as he was an icon, a symbol of an era.

My favorite story about him comes from Burt Reynolds. Reynolds was at Florida State University. He was a student and football quarterback with aspirations of becoming an actor. He was in the auditorium when Heston arrived to give a speech.

The way Reynolds tells it, Heston looked magnificent when he came onto the stage. Tanned. Tall. Brilliant white teeth. Stunningly handsome in a camel skin coat.

Thought Burt, "I'll never be an actor."

Then Heston tripped and almost fell flat on his face.

Heston made over-the-top acting cool. I can't think of any other actor from his era that could pull off the parts of Moses, El Cid, and Ben-Hur, without looking like a pompous ass. Heston relished the high-drama act of lifting a fist to the air, cursing the heavens, tasting every consonant in each spoken word.

As a private citizen, he marched for civil rights, headed the Screen Actors Guild, and later the National Rifle Association. It was the latter that put him in the sights of those with differing politics. That's unfortunate. From now until the end of time, his name will be on the same page as Michael Moore's, though Moore only met the man once, briefly, in an ambush interview.

That's all right. Compared to that footnote, Heston's library of work stands tall. In any documentary on the history of film, you'll find shots of Heston riding a chariot, sobbing before the Statue of Liberty, parting the Red Sea, or saying one of the most famous lines in film history: "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned, dirty ape."

Maybe he should have saved that one for the interview.

Photos: Star Pulse

With But A Little Help From Miss May

You would think we'd hear more about this case over in Canada and the States, but for some reason...crickets.

Here's a pretty good breakdown of the case so far, in which 7 homicidal maniacs targeted US and Canadian air carriers, in the hopes of killing thousands. They hoped to get passed security with the help of porn mags and condoms, a sort of do-it-yourself kit for the Mile High Club. Didn't work.

It's these guys, by the way, that are the reason for you enclosing your cologne or Pepto-Bismol in a sandwich bag.

Here's what I had to say about it a couple of years ago, after a flight to Heathrow that got affected by these whack jobs.

Maple Laughs Blow It - Again

Another miserable season is ending for the Maple Laughs, the joke team of hockey.

What does the most expensive ticket in North American sports get you? A third year out of the playoffs, and a team that loses 8-2 against their hated rivals, the Ottawa Senators.

Bad enough that Laugh fans support their team every night for no reason. Bad enough that they put up with extraordinarily high prices for tickets, hot dogs, beer, and bad hockey. Bad enough that these same losers are already out of the playoffs, then declare their game against the Senators as the "biggest game of the season."

No, it gets worse. Last night, Mark Bell gave a cheap-shot elbow to Senators captain Daniel Alfreddson. Alfreddson had released the puck when Mark Bell's knee came out, hitting Alfreddson low, and simultaneously used his elbow to crack Alfreddson in the jaw. Alfreddson is probably out for at least the first round of the playoffs.

Who's Mark Bell? A Maple Laugh nobody. A coward that wears a full metal face-shield, but has the guts to cheap shot people in the head, then run and hide over by his bench. So long, Bell. Enjoy the off season. Shine up that face shield and maybe we'll see you next year, if you aren't back in AAA, you worthless boob.

Later in the game, over in the penalty box, you could then watch Maple Laugh Darcy Tucker warn the Senators' Heatley, "You'd better watch your knee." He repeated it several times, and pointed at his own knee to drive the point home. Everyone in hockey knows that a knee-to-knee hit is the most dangerous cheap shot in the game. Heatley knows this only too well, because a knee injury almost ended his career a couple of years ago.

So there's another Laugh tough guy, Darcy Tucker, proving what a joke of a team the Laughs are. Season over, no hope of the playoffs? Great! Let's go out and injure everyone we can get our hands on.

My contempt isn't reserved for Bell and Tucker. Maple Laugh coach Paul Maurice said of Mark Bell's cheap shot, "It was a good hit. It was clean."

Maybe you need to clean your spectacles, Paulie. There was nothing clean about the hit. To call that hit "clean" is disgusting.

It was wonderful to watch the Senators take charge after the hit and bury the Laughs 8-2. Yet another sellout crowd of losers watched their team completely come apart, and it was a thing of stunning beauty.

Bye-bye, morons. See you next winter.

Photo: Yahoo Images