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January 31, 2007
This week (so far) at Macleans.ca
It's all good over there, as I've said before. National Affairs. Bookmark it. But for my money, the pick of this week's litter is definitely Philippe Gohier's piece about the weird and wonderful people in Hérouxville, pop. 1300, aka "Quebec's Sault Ste-Marie". The quotes are just awesome.
Personally, I have contributed the following:
• How many more kids die before Canadians lose their spoon over the state of child welfare in this country?
• A Saskatchewan court decided this week that a flawed mother was the better choice to raise a child than a flawed father, despite — or even because of — the fact the mother had already given the child away. And, much to my surprise, I kinda find myself agreeing with the decision.
• And, er, a thrilling roundup of Dalton McGuinty's trade mission to India and Pakistan.
Posted by Chris Selley at 06:49 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Local Actor Accepts Role
How am I going to explain this to my kid?
I have a better question: Why are you taking your kid to see Equus?
Posted by Chris Selley at 06:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 29, 2007
Slip-sliding away
On the subject of a law mandating helmets for tobogganers, I've been asked "why not?" a few times since last week. "Why?" is the far more pertinent question — for any legislation, really, and especially considering the far more dangerous activities for which head protection is currently unregulated. You'll note in all the silly media coverage that even the neurosurgeons and safety advocates are really only going on record for helmets as a good idea, not as a law. And that's fine. There's no data to support toboggan helmets, but what the hell — they're your kids; they're your kids' heads. Protect them, or not, as you see fit.
But it only occurred to me recently, upon reading the umpteenth admonishment that parents more closely supervise their children while they slide down snow-covered hills, what's really at stake here. You could easily argue that supervision is more insidious a suggestion that the helmets. After all, the idea that children's playtime has become far too structured is no longer new — it's approaching the level of cliché.
To the extent cycling is a form of transportation, it falls under the eponymous ministry's purview. (Helmet use among mountain bikers is already around 102%.) Skiing and snowboarding are structured recreational pastimes. Tobogganing isn't either, or shouldn't be anyway. It should be a bunch of kids grabbing crazy carpets, cafeteria trays and other conveyances and sliding down a hill.
I'm 30. Isn't the idea of society going hell for leather against something me and my friends did on school trips, let alone outlawing it, just a wee bit nutso? Especially, not that I'm one to preach on body fat percentage, since the breeders in my generation appear to be raising very fat children? Maybe the real harm in this thing isn't the idea that people might do well to wear helmets whilst tobogganing, but that kids might be convinced that plummeting down a hill and then walking up it again in a sweat-drenched snowsuit, over and over again until they can barely drag their GT snowracers home and fall into bed, is a fundamentally dangerous activity.
Posted by Chris Selley at 09:54 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 28, 2007
Tortuous
I hope the "Dear Leader assures me Syria is part of the Axis of Evil, ergo there's no logical reason for them to have tortured Maher Arar" crowd took note of David Frum's explanation in yesterday's National Post. I have no idea if it's true, mind you, but Frum's word has been good enough for those folk on more than one occasion in the past. The question remains whether it'll be good enough for Frum's father-in-law, who is particularly fond of casting vague aspersions on Mr Arar and belittling his ordeal.
Posted by Chris Selley at 04:30 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 26, 2007
Friday night highlight
I can't remember where exactly in Montreal I was when the 1998 Olympic hockey team was announced, but I remember it happening in alphabetical order, and I remember just about plotzing when Patrick Roy's name was announced after Chris Pronger's.
Mark Recchi eventually got to Nagano (thank you very much Gary Suter, you unbelievable piece of shit), and was typically gracious in accepting his consolation appointment and indefensibly limited role, but it highlighted his status as one of the most underrated players of his era -- and that was when he was at his peak, if not points-wise then certainly complete player-wise. Rob Zamuner, Shayne Corson, Trevor Linden, Keith Primeau... but not, at first, Recchi. The mind boggles.
I don't have much good to say about the NHL right now, but its players remain its greatest asset and Recchi, it says here, is an all-time class act. Pure hustle. He, Saku Koivu and Andy Moog actually managed to briefly turn me into a Habs fan (now I'm just a Saku Koivu fan). And I hereby congratulate Mr. Recchi on his 500th career goal. He is, as they say, a beauty.
Posted by Chris Selley at 11:13 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 25, 2007
Helmets for everyone, for everything
Over at Macleans.ca this week, I took a deeper look at something that probably didn't need it. Should we legislate helmets for tobogganers? Answer: nah.
(Before you read it, ask yourself what this means to you: "The majority of severe injuries in tobogganing are head injuries.")
Posted by Chris Selley at 10:49 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
January 23, 2007
Utterly hopeless
The Battle of Ontario's "PPP" says: "The Leafs played the Bruins 7 times in 5 weeks. That is ridiculous."
Funny, innit? The current schedule was designed to create highly entertaining bitterness between teams -- erstwhile known as "rivalry." Now, not too long afterwards, everyone has decided it's no good.
Here's why: the product sucks. And the product sucks mostly because the refereeing sucks. I'm not blaming the refs, mind you, though many of them themselves suck. They're just following orders. The NHL decided more goals was the path to glory, and perhaps it is -- perhaps all those empty arenas are a sign of affection. But this rivalry-nurturing schedule is clearly the wrong one for this current shitty-hockey NHL, where the brightest stars play on teams that suck, that no one cares about, or both. People in Edmonton need to see those stars, dammit!
Rivalries develop at even strength, not during these innumerable 5-on-3 power plays that are essentially phoned in from Avenue of the Americas. Some Blue Jacket takes his hand off his stick to push some Predator into the boards -- perfectly legally -- and gets a bullshit holding call. Then some poor sap Blue Jacket defenseman accidentally shoots the puck over non-standard glass in some gaylord arena he's not used to playing in, and it decides the game. The only rivalry that nurtures is hockey players vs. Gary Bettman.
This has never, ever been rocket science. Stop tinkering, stop putting teams in hopeless markets that cheapen the game (Kansas City, here we come) and please, for god's sake, call the fucking rule book.
For tartcider.com, I'm Chris Selley.
Posted by Chris Selley at 12:38 AM | Comments (6) | TrackBack
January 22, 2007
The war of the trinomials
Jordan Michael Smith owes metaphors an apology for his column in today's Ottawa Citizen, in which he composes numerous pithy little comments on what Canada "is". To wit:
It’s the pencil sharpener on exam day, the eraser you can’t find.
This makes a little more sense:
It’s the immigrant who arrives on Monday and says “Canada” on Tuesday when he’s asked where he’s from.
... but I like Edward Michael George's better:
It’s the immigrant who arrives on Monday and says “Canada” on Tuesday when he’s asked where he’s from ... But then says "I don't really know anymore" on Wednesday, and "that white lady said I was 'facilitating cultural genocide' when I answered 'Canada' " to the same question.
Personally, I've always thought of Canada as your grandfather's golf clubs up in the attic, with the nine-iron missing. But feel free to add your own.
Posted by Chris Selley at 06:21 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack
January 20, 2007
What I did instead of blogging
My latest entries at Macleans.ca:
• Statistics shall stay 500 metres from journalism at all times.
• When it comes to the war on drugs, ideology trumps expert evidence every time.
• Outrage over Canadians murdered in Mexico is all very well and good... but it is Mexico after all.
Posted by Chris Selley at 09:52 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
For future reference
I'm not sure if anyone has rocked Toronto quite as devastatingly as AC/DC did in July of 2003 -- and if anyone has, with all due respect, I'm sure it's not the Rolling Stones. When the real pandemic finally drops on the Tdot, I hope we all realize which non-Canadian act should rightfully headline the comeback concert.
Posted by Chris Selley at 01:04 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
January 16, 2007
The National Black Pot & Post
On Saturday, as part of the Toronto Star's ongoing poverty shriekfest, David Olive argued that any will to fight poverty "derives from public pressure, sadly lacking because impoverished people don't advertise their stigmatized plight. They don't have a ribbon campaign."
No ribbon campaign, no. But they do have such carefully considered events as last April's "We've Come to Collect Our Money Night March on Rosedale," in which about 150 people marched through Toronto's richest old-money neighbourhood, harrassing and swearing at the sort of law-abiding citizens (and their children) whence that public pressure would have to come.
I think it would be dynamite if we could get rid of poverty. I think a fine start would be to ignore the hell out of organizations like OCAP. Why would I trust people who would organize such an offensive, self-destructive event on how many people are in poverty, or what the proper measurement for poverty is, or what the minimum wage should be?
So good on the National Post for taking the Star to task for its analysis, particularly its failure to acknowledge the debate around just how poverty should be measured. But still, for the Post to accuse another newspaper of statistical malpractice is... well, let's call it "brave."
A year ago, in the Post's hallowed pages, David Frum claimed that "Canada's overall crime rate is now 50% higher than the crime rate in the United States." This idea, which was rather insulting to anyone with a barely functional bullshit detector, turned out to be the result of a tortuously improvised proprietary formula copyright David Frum, 2006. It was, in a word, bollocks.
And just recently, on December 12th, the Post's lead editorial made the following claim: "Throughout the late 1990s, home invasion rates in Canada doubled, driven by a particularly pronounced trend in Toronto and Vancouver."
Again - doubled? It just sounded odd. I was informed that this statistic came from "Justice department material released at the time of the new sentencing guidelines in 2000" - but I couldn't find said material, and the Post refused to clarify further. Which would be their business, I suppose, if it weren't for the following easily obtained information from an identifiable, and reasonably well-respected source:
The fact is that Canadian columnists and editorialists across the political spectrum have a tendency to use statistics sort of like sherpas, to haul their logically deficient arguments up the mountain of credibility. And when they criticize each other for it, they have a tendency to look silly. The solution, as ever, is to stop trying to pull fast ones on their readers.
Posted by Chris Selley at 12:40 AM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
January 15, 2007
External content
My two latest at Macleans.ca, which you should be reading every day, and certainly not just because I'm there:
• Certain people in the BC interior think maybe Vancouverites should shut up already about the calamity in Stanley Park and just plant some goddamn trees.
• Not for the first time, the NDP gets backed into a corner and plays the "low-level class warfare" card.
Posted by Chris Selley at 09:38 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
January 13, 2007
"This is going to empty rinks throughout the NHL"
How right you are, Harry Neale. How right you are. In any sports league that wasn't run by monkeys, refereeing this appalling - and this appallingly inconsistent - would be the foremost matter of concern. In the NHL, because it results in more goals, it's a point of pride. Ruining hockey is a point of pride.
Posted by Chris Selley at 07:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, we hardly knew ye
Remember the whole swing revival? It was one of the odder musical developments of the last ten years, but even at the time it struck me as one of the more interesting. At least some good music came out of it, which is a damn sight more than can be said for nu metal. Case in point: the Squirrel Nut Zippers' "The Ghost of Stephen Foster," and its wicked-fun animated video.
Posted by Chris Selley at 12:34 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 11, 2007
In lieu of content, links to other content
Most Canadians seem pretty cool with abortion so long as they don't know any of the circumstances. It's none of their business. But recently, it seems to me, as Canadians have been informed of said circumstances -- from Down syndrome to conjoined twins to sextuplets and sex selection -- some have found, to their shock, that they actually have opinions. That's more or less the topic of my latest entry at Macleans.ca.
My second-latest was on the SARS report's rather agonizing (but probably well-founded) attempts to avoid laying blame when there was so very, very much begging to be laid. Normally I'd tell someone like Justice Archie Campbell to get stuffed if he told me that I was partially to blame for SARS because "we get the health systems we deserve," but if it can get Ontario hospitals to follow the elementary principles of infection control, I guess I'll suck it up.
Posted by Chris Selley at 10:15 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
January 09, 2007
Big Suck on the Suck
The Star's Vinay Menon says all you need to know about Little Mosque on the Prairie:
CTV's Corner Gas operates with the same philosophy and it's a bona fide hit. But whereas Corner Gas feels authentic, Little Mosque feels forced.
So potential enjoyment hinges entirely on comedic sensibility. If you want to be challenged or provoked or subjected to risky political satire, this is not for you. But if you want a feel-good show in which ethno-religious stereotypes are playfully exaggerated and gently prodded amid a treacly backdrop of cultural buffoonery and misunderstanding, this could be your new favourite show.
In other words, as predicted, it sucks. I think there might have been a Maher Arar joke in there, which was somewhat intriguing though still boring. Other than that it was all I could do not to change the channel. Clearly there's an audience for this Corner Gas-style tat, and far be it from me to suggest CBC isn't entitled to appeal to it. But that doesn't change for a moment the fact that it sucks.
And the idea that American TV isn't brave enough to show such a thing, which the Globe's John Doyle actually suggests with a straight face having seen the show... I mean, Holy Hannah. American TV wouldn't be brave enough to show it because for anyone under 50, after you subtract the traditional "aww, nice effort -- we'll put it up on the fridge" handicap for Canadian content, it just sucks.
Posted by Chris Selley at 08:52 PM | Comments (13) | TrackBack
January 07, 2007
Good work; bad leader
In the New York Times Magazine,The World Anti-Doping Agency's Dick Pound comes clean — to my knowledge for the first time — about his allegations of drug use in the NHL:
Take the ruckus he caused when he charged that one-third of players in the National Hockey League, or about seven per team, were using illegal performance enhancers. Sitting in his office, I asked him how he came up with that estimate. He leaned back in his chair and chuckled, completely unabashed to admit that he had just invented it. "It was pick a number," he said. "So it’s 20 percent. Twenty-five percent. Call me a liar."
UPDATE Tuesday: At Macleans.ca, my short history of Pound's oratorial excellence.
Posted by Chris Selley at 12:46 PM | Comments (5) | TrackBack
January 06, 2007
Just three more days...
Actor Carlo Rota, who has a part in this show, as well as the hit U.S. series 24, says he thinks Little Mosque on the Prairie could only be made in Canada.
"I get heavy guys, bad guys, guys that garrotte, guys that strafe with machine guns," he says of his usual roles for TV.
American TV is too timid to make a show with such a fresh perspective, he said.
Snort. Sputter. Wheeze. If it wasn't self-evident to everyone, CBC television is currently running incontrovertible proof of Mr Rota's error every single weekday at midnight in the form of Arrested Development, a briliant American sitcom that's 500 times less timid than any comedy CBC has produced this century. Other than that, though, I'm sure the program fits squarely into the network's mandate -- it's got the flag and everything!
Look, I'll give Little Mosque a chance. I'll resist the temptation to judge it based on the god-awful trailers that are out there, for instance. Maybe they chose to highlight the worst parts of the show for some reason. So what follows isn't a promise or a guarantee or anything -- just a prediction, one I'll be happy to say was in error if that should occur.
Ready? Here goes. Like most of the original fictional programming CBC TV puts out there, the show is going to suck.
SUCK.
(UPDATE: It appears the Canadian flag accompanying the Arrested Development description will only appear to one in every five visitors. Others will be treated to a car on a prairie road; flowers; or sailboats. Now you know.)
Posted by Chris Selley at 07:39 PM | Comments (15) | TrackBack
January 03, 2007
Political poison
I respectfully disagree with Adam Radwanski. For my money, the funniest sentence in the report comparing the toxicity of four Canadian politicians -- though I couldn't tell you why -- is as follows: "Of the four politicians, the highest number of chemicals was detected in John Godfrey, but Health Minister Tony Clement had the highest levels detected in three out of the seven groups of chemicals."
Though it's in pursuit of a good cause, that document is utterly bizarre.
Posted by Chris Selley at 11:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
I'm going to kill myself, and I suggest you all do the same
Having read Peter Gorrie's article in today's Star, I see few other options. Reader's Digest version: "By 2050, literally every single consequence of global warming that anyone has ever predicted — anywhere in the world, at any time, in any language — will have happened. And then won't you all be sorry."
On New Year's Day, also in the Star, Tyler Hamilton complained that conservatives have used "superior messaging skills" (Joseph Romm's words) to counteract the incontrovertible facts that the earth is warming, humans caused it, and humans can stop it from happening. No doubt. I'd wager that Gorrie's piece alone probably created at least 50 new climate change skeptics by making people want him to be wrong for subjecting them to such a humourless, credulous screed.
Some free advice for the climate change soldiers from a guy who's pretty much on board with the aforementioned incontrovertible facts: Fellas, tone it the bloody hell down.
Speaking of inferior messaging skills, this line from Hamilton's piece is impossible not to love:
The [conservative] tactics are simple yet highly effective against a scientific community that, while largely unanimous about the causes and potential effects of global warming – and it's the same peer-reviewed science ... which has the world's scientists on high-alert for an Avian flu outbreak – aren't as savvy when it comes to publicly communicating their findings.
Well, at least he didn't mention Kohoutek.
Posted by Chris Selley at 06:09 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
January 02, 2007
Oh, amazing
YouTube continues to astonish. Here is Hamilton's Simply Saucer -- Canadian rock's lost city of Atlantis -- with their awesome "Bullet Proof Nothing."
Posted by Chris Selley at 10:56 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Then they say Danko would have sounded just like me... *
It borders on rock and roll blasphemy, but it says here that Richard Manuel's falsetto goes a long way towards buggering up The Band's studio version of Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released," which is certainly one of the finest songs ever written. Every time I hear it I want to fire up the Delorean, go back to 1967, take Manuel aside and suggest in the strongest possible terms that he sing it in the range he used for "Tears of Rage." As yet, no luck.
Fortuitously, no one need ever wince through the Big Pink version. As Colby Cosh highlights via YouTube, Dylan laid down the definitive rendition -- live, with the help of The Band and a few other somewhat famous musicians -- in San Francisco in 1976. For me, other than the sheer quality of the performance, the best part of The Last Waltz version of the song has always been the look of boyish astonishment on Neil Young's face (at 2:30 of the clip) as he sees musical history unfold before him. (He might also have been utterly arseholed on something or other, but I lay my cynicism aside in this rare instance.)
Posted by Chris Selley at 10:00 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack