NFL Picks Week 7: Vick, JaMarcus, McNabb and the First Ever Can’t-Miss Caption Challenge!

By Scott Feschuk - Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 5:14 AM - 17 Comments

Scott Feschuk Last week: 6-8 Season: 45-45

Scott Reid Last week 7-7 Season: 51-39

Kudos to the Oakland Raiders for defying the odds, the skeptics, the sane and all known human logic by defeating the Philadelphia Eagles last week after a three-game stretch in which they were outscored 96-16.

It was a memorable game. For instance, there was that crazy pigeon. Man, that pigeon was crazy! Also, Donovan McNabb called a timeout when his team didn’t have any timeouts. Man, that pigeon was crazy! Also … well… uhh…. oh yeah! – the game gave us this tender photograph, featuring former dog enthusiast Michael Vick and former good quarterback (college only) JaMarcus Russell, with McNabb as the date’s third wheel.

Here’s the challenge: Come up with a funny-type caption for the picture and enter it in the comments below. The winner, selected by a jury of us, will receive a gift valued in the tens of dollars. Winner announced Monday morning.

New England (minus 14.5) vs. Tampa Bay (at London)

Reid: There are worries that the short week, brutal travel schedule and five hour time-change will play hell with New England. But Brady says not to worry, he’ll still find the stamina to nail every model in London. Beating Tampa Bay by at least 14.5 points – that’s for sure the easy part. Frankly, I don’t really understand what the NFL is up to with this overseas regular season game. Sure, people will tell you that American football has lots of fans in Britain. But are we ever going to have European teams? Sunday games with the Oakland Raiders versus the Liverpool Lorries? (Incidentally, the Lorries opened as 13-point favourites). Why go through this nonsense? Does Belichick want to see Billy Elliot: The Musical that badly? Pick: New England.

Feschuk: New England was a sight to behold last Sunday against Tennessee, scoring with a passion and intensity not seen since Pinky Tuscadero rolled into Milwaukee and hooked up with the Fonz before the big demolition derby. The football world hasn’t seen so total a defeat since Wade Phillips tried to open that bag of Doritos. But were the Titans much of a test? I wouldn’t be all that surprised if Continue…

At the lonely end of the rink (III)

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, October 22, 2009 at 1:55 AM - 82 Comments

The Stars gets Gerard Kennedy’s numbers on hockey rink stimulus in Toronto ridings.

Toronto 23 ridings — all but two held by Liberal MPs — got about 38 per cent less than the average Conservative riding in Ontario, prompting accusations that the government was again playing favourites as it doled out its massive stimulus fund.

The Toronto ridings got an average of $1.3 million, compared with an average of $2.1 million that was approved for Conservative ridings in Ontario — a difference of $777,787, according to Liberal MP Gerard Kennedy (Parkdale—High Park).

Kennedy’s office provides various figures and tables here.

The Commons: 'It depends'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 8:40 PM - 88 Comments

The Scene. Michael Ignatieff stood looking serious, perhaps a bit unimpressed.

The Prime Minister, he reported en français, had admitted it was wrong for the government to put Conservative party logos on giant novelty cheques announcing the arrival of taxpayer dollars. But what of the public funding itself? What, for instance, of the fact that 75% of a fund for unemployed youth had been allocated in Conservative ridings?

On the government side, there was much yapping and whining.

“Having admitted it was wrong to put logos on cheques,” the Liberal leader wondered aloud, “will the Prime Minister admit now that partisanship in spending must stop immediately?”

The Prime Minister would not, if only because he was elsewhere. Absent too was John Baird, the government’s usual choice to enunciate a response on this file. So here, instead, came Industry Minister Tony Clement, waving his arms and pleading for your respect.

“We are on the side of Canadians,” he declared. “We are producing these projects because they mean jobs and opportunity. They mean getting behind and beyond the recession to a better and more prosperous economy through economic recovery. That is our message to Canadians and that is what Canadians want of us.”

Oddly enough, Mr. Ignatieff did not find satisfaction in this explanation.

Continue…

Now We Are So Unhappy and Bored, We Do The Dance of Joy!

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 6:16 PM - 3 Comments

Everybody has been talking about Bronson Pinchot’s comments on Tom Cruise in his AV Club “Random Roles.” Including Cruise’s legendarily touchy publicity team. I always enjoy reading anecdotes about how a Cruise or a Denzel Washington or a Bette Midler was no fun to work with (you notice how often B-level actors have to keep up the pretense that everybody is great to work with? they have to; they need to keep working). But being me, I focused even more on his comments on Perfect Strangers. I loved that show as a kid, but even then I had a suspicion that, as he says right off the bat, “the writing was weak.” So what does an actor when he’s on a show with weak writing and only one other good character to play off? Particularly when the actor thinks (wrongly, in this case) that he deserves better material? Well, he channels his energy into the stuff that’s not scripted, or the things that the script gives a lot of leeway for the actor to create.

I mean, I received my training in Shakespeare, Shaw, and Beckett, and all of a sudden I’m doing this stuff, like… What the hell is this about? Who cares? And so I put all my energy into coming up with physical business, and all of a sudden I was a physical comic, and that is exactly how it happened. I’d always admired physical comics, but I didn’t think there was that much going on. The character wasn’t stupid, but you’d look at the script and say, “What is this about?” So I made my own life up, and I had a lot of fun doing that with Mark Linn-Baker, because he loved all that stuff, too.

That show was pretty much saved by the physical stuff, not just the pratfalls but the bits of physical business and interaction that the two actors created along with their director (Joel Zwick, the best director of bad TV). It gave some kind of individual identity to a character who, on the page, was just a Latka Gravas ripoff. Today, it’s actually quite surprising how few shows — but particularly comedies, which need this most — have any kind of physical characterizations for the leads, the stuff that has to be worked out on the set (albeit in consultation with the writers). How I Met Your Mother does (for everyone with the possible exception of Ted), but on mediocre comedies, everything is talking heads. Which is too bad, because a mediocre comedy can actually be salvaged by encouraging the actors to do more non-verbal things. It’s a way of giving the audience something it hasn’t seen before, even if there isn’t a single new thing in the script itself.

Actually, I shouldn’t use “talking heads” as a pejorative, because The Office has shown that you can have physicality even in the segments that are literally called “talking heads.” The posture the characters adopt during the talking-head segments is one of the quickest and easiest ways to characterize them, and the actors are usually pretty careful to have the right kind of body language in those segments. On quality shows or TGIF shows, movement and body language are tremendously important things.

Ti Jean, 40 years dead today

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 4:33 PM - 0 Comments

He was just 47 and, though married, still living with his mother when he died from complications related to alcoholism exactly four decades ago today. “Who was Jack Kerouac?” asks The Guardian’s David Barnett. “Not the best writer in the world, but a writer nonetheless.” A pretty mean assessment despite being uncomfortably close to the truth even for those of us who grew up reading On the Road, Doctor Sax, and The Dharma Bums—naïve works of literature that barely hold together and yet are nevertheless capable of rare lyricism. Kerouac was a strangely Canadian writer for an American—a kid of French Canadian stock whose parents fled rural Quebec for the factories of Lowell, Mass., where he grew up the high school football star before turning his hand to outsider fiction. Next year, as Barnett notes, a film version of On the Road is slated for release with Sam Riley, the actor who played Ian Curtis in the cheerless Joy Division pic Control, cast as Sal Paradise, the roman à clef’s Kerouac.

The Guardian

At the lonely end of the rink (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 4:09 PM - 33 Comments

The Globe does its own analysis of stimulus spending on ice rinks, playgrounds and such.

A high-profile Harper government stimulus program created to build hockey rinks and other recreation projects has funnelled about 33 per cent per cent more money to Conservative seats than to opposition ridings in the battleground province of Ontario.

An analysis by The Globe and Mail shows Tory ridings received an average of $2.1-million, compared to $1.5-million on average for opposition ridings.

"No-spin Joe" is an asset

By John Parisella - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 4:06 PM - 20 Comments

Late night comics have had a field day with Vice-President Joe Biden, making fun of his penchant for verbosity. In the early weeks of the Obama presidency, Biden occasionally proved to be exactly what some feared he would be—accident-prone. But it seems Biden is a fast learner, as his stock around the Obama people appears to be rising daily. The man that this blog once characterized as providing gravitas to a young up-and-comer’s candidacy is doing just that. In the final moments of the debates over healthcare reform and the mission in Afghanistan, expect Biden to be the last man in the room with Obama when decision time comes.

According to latest issue of Newsweek, the vice-president is playing a dual role as devil’s advocate and troubleshooter for the White House, thanks to his tendency to tell it like it is even if it is uncomfortable to hear. This is “No-spin Joe” at his best, counterbalancing the impression left by presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs of a White House that may be too reliant on slick spin operations. Singling out Fox News, for instance, may score points with the left, but it also makes the White House press operation appear over-sensitive to criticism and all too eager to manage the media. Biden, on the other hand, was more candid than usual a few days ago when discussing unemployment and its effect on families, paraphrasing the old cliché that “when your neighbour loses his job, it’s a recession. But when you lose your job, it is a depression.” Not terribly elegant and certainly not on message, but this has much greater resonance with voters who find little comfort in statistics proclaiming the end of the recession while jobs are disappearing. The working class roots and the simplicity of the former Delaware senator contrast nicely with a White House that may feature some of the brightest minds to serve in government in recent years, but is prone to smugness. Good common sense coupled with a team spirit that discourages silos and backbiting are essential to an effective White House operation. Biden understands this.

Continue…

"Am human now. Next life: dog"

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 3:57 PM - 30 Comments

McGill University invites members of its community to post their stories — in precisely six words — on an extremely twee website.

GG vs PMO: The Slovenian Theatre

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 3:55 PM - 21 Comments

The Governor General is in Slovenia today, and she weighed in on Canada’s immigration troubles. Help me out here — is this appropriate subject matter for the GG? The second quotation in particular seems to get a bit too close to policy. At any rate, I don’t imagine the PMO will be too happy with this.

“The (immigration) system is right now almost overloaded and requires that we look at it carefully because we want to keep our good ways of doing things,” Michaelle told a joint news conference with Slovenian President Danilo Turk at the start of a two day visit to EU member Slovenia.

The European Union warned Tuesday that it would take retaliatory action against Canada unless its authorities lifted visa requirements by the end of the year for citizens from the Czech Republic imposed after refugee claims soared.

“This specific issue of the visa is, I would say, something that we are looking at carefully because it is a matter also of putting in place the right administrative measures in order to make sure we can manage large flow of demands,” Jean said.

Mr. Congeniality

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 3:51 PM - 5 Comments

Joe Biden travels to Warsaw and has the government there — which had been furious at the Obama government for amending (not cancelling) the Bush missile-defence plan without properly notifying its Polish and Czech allies — eating out of his hand. The U.S. vice-president even spent two hours chatting with Lech Kaczynski, the Polish president and a political opponent of the country’s parliamentary government. This kind of laying-on-of-hands shows, not for the first time, why Biden was a good veep pick; the fact that he had to travel to the region to address growing uncertainty there over American intentions for the region shows clumsiness at the White House. Still, a problem that can be fixed this easily is a rare luxury for any government.

H1N1 flu shot approved

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 3:30 PM - 2 Comments

After months of studies and sickness, the H1N1 pandemic flu vaccine has beenapproved by Health Canada. Now it’s up to the provinces and territories to begin offering the shots to people of all ages across the country. Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq announced, “This is the best way to protect our health and the health of our loved ones. It’s also the best way to
prevent spread (of the virus) in our communities.”

Healthzone.ca

Where the pandering is

By John Geddes - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 3:08 PM - 14 Comments

Andrew Coyne’s heartfelt review of “Where the Wild Things Are” is a lovely read.

But my colleague’s premise—”Most films ‘for’ children are dispensed to them like candy…”—got me thinking.

Isn’t it the adult films that are designed to give you the cinematic equivalent of a cheap sugar rush?

The two top-grossing kids’ movies this year so far are “Up” and “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” The first is subtle storytelling on every level; the second assumes the audience comes armed with vast background knowledge of the tale.

Very different films that are both enormously respectful of the children who flocked to them.

By contrast, the top two 2009 films to date that are ostensibly aimed at adults (ignoring outright teen fare based on comic books and such) have been “The Hangover” and “The Proposal.”

Now, who’s getting the empty calories here?

Lest you imagine that “Up” and “Half-Blood Prince” are exceptions that don’t signify anything, consider this: Pixar and the “Potter” franchise dominate and define the current era of children’s movies. No recent body of work of comparable quality approaches their commercial clout in the world of adult motion pictures.

George W. Bush's tips for business success

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 2:09 PM - 28 Comments

New York magazine reports that George W. Bush will give a speech next week at a “Get Motivated!” business seminar – an event that promises to pack “more into a single, life-changing day than any other event in America.” (Think of it as Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but with a complimentary tote bag.)

Tickets for the seminar? Nineteen bucks apiece – which, if nothing else, makes it the cheapest way to change your life forever short of buying Lindsay Lohan a drink.

What kind of advicery will the former President have for the people of Fort Worth, Texas?

George W. Bush’s 10 tips for business success:

1. “Just do what Mr. Cheney says.”

2. “Nicknames: very important. Every employee needs one. If they’re taller than 5-foot-10 – call ’em Stretch. If they’re shorter than 5-foot-6 – call ’em Stretch, but in a way that’s ironical. Might help to Continue…

NAFTA is "working very well"

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 2:07 PM - 3 Comments

David Jacobson, the new U.S. ambassador to Canada, told a business audience on Wednesday that American officials have no intention of re-opening NAFTA. Though Washington may be inclined to add side deals on labour and the environment, “Fundamentally our view of NAFTA is that it is working very well,” he said. Jacobson also touched on the furor on this side of the border over “Buy American” provisions included in stimulus bills, saying “There have been a number of discussions as recently as Monday at very high levels between our government and your government in an effort to resolve these issues.”

The Canadian Press

Alberta Liberals grow cojones

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 1:34 PM - 18 Comments

Sleek, hard-hitting and from an unlikely source—the Alberta Liberals, whose leader David Swann frowns upon heckling in the legislature—this campaign-style attack ad arrives just days after Danielle Smith captured the leadership of the right-wing Wildrose Alliance Party. If Smith’s ascendancy appears to have caught the Stelmach Tories flatfooted—as though they couldn’t see that one coming—it has energized the provincial Liberals, who are now employing exaggeration (does Alberta really have a $10 billion deficit?) and cloak-and-daggerisms (what is the albertaliberalcaucus, really?) with abandon.

Capital Notebook (Edmonton Journal)

Hostage-taker in Edmonton surrenders to police (Updated)

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 12:30 PM - 4 Comments

An armed man may have taken as many as nine people hostage on the 8th floor of the WCB building in downtown Edmonton. According to local news reports, the man entered the building early Wednesday morning wearing a camouflage jacket and carrying a backpack. Radio station News 880 reported he told police he is “mad at the world” and blames a WCB doctor for most of his trouble.

UPDATE: Police have confirmed an armed man is indeed holding hostages at the Workers’ Compensation Board building and that they have been in contact with him. An eyewitness who escaped the building told CBC News that a tall bald man entered the building with a gun, and one shot was fired, but no one was injured.

UPDATE (2): Alleged hostage taker Patrick Clayton, a 38-year-old unemployed carpenter, surrendered peacefully to police Wednesday evening and release all eight hostages unharmed. According to CBC News, Clayton had been living off compensation board payments that were cut off just over a week ago.

Edmonton Journal

Canadian Press

CBC News

Calgary Herald

Who can open Guantanamo's doors?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 12:28 PM - 2 Comments

The latest legal battle over Guanatamo Bay centers around the fate of 13 men from China’s Muslim Uighur region who continue to be held there as “enemy combatants” even though the Pentagon admitted five years ago that they were not a threat to the country. On Tuesday, the U.S Supreme Court announced that it will rule on whether or not the executive branch has the power to hold a prisoner even after the person was cleared in court. On his first day in office, Barack Obama promised to close the controversial prison within a year. But since then, efforts to release prisoners have stalled – in part because judges have not been explicitly granted full power to release wrongly-held prisoners. “I never thought we would be arguing in court whether the government can lawfully imprison someone who was found to be innocent,” said Susan Baker Manning, a lawyer representing the Uighurs. “And I never thought I would be arguing against the Obama administration.”

L.A. Times

The oldest young man

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 11:55 AM - 43 Comments

Rick Mercer celebrates Pierre Poilievre.

Fiscal conservative

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 11:52 AM - 31 Comments

The Finance Minister talks to Canadian Business.

OK, you say you’re a fiscal conservative, but I know you’ve heard a lot of criticism from the conservative base. People are starting to say that when the country is running $55-billion deficits, that term “fiscal conservative” has lost its meaning. Does it have any meaning anymore?

It does. I think the key is to have a commitment to a balanced budget and to always be moving in that direction, to have a plan to be there, and to have the discipline to do it. And we will show that discipline. I’ve certainly exercised that kind of discipline before at the provincial level in order to balance budgets, and we’ll do it again federally. But in the past year, we’ve faced the most serious economic crisis globally since the Second World War. The meetings we had in the middle of October last year in Washington were in a time of deep crisis. We weren’t even sure that the markets were going to open on Monday morning. I think there’s a tendency for people to forget very quickly, because we’re out of the time of crisis right now, how deep and dangerous this crisis was for the world economy. And when we made the decision to run large deficits in Canada, we made the decision to save General Motors and Chrysler in Canada at large expense. These decisions were made because of the seriousness of the crisis. That, to me, is being a good conservative economic manager.

The vast left-wing conspiracy

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 11:39 AM - 79 Comments

Conservative MP Larry Miller tells us what’s really going on here with all these stories about giant novelty cheques.

“This is about the national media trying to help the Liberals deflect the attention off their problems right now,” said Miller. “Anybody that has seen Mr. Ignatieff and his crew in the House of Commons in the previous two or three weeks, it has looked as bad as when (Stephane) Dion was there and the media knows it, the Liberals know it and they are just trying to make an issue out of something.”

Still crazy after all these years

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 11:37 AM - 0 Comments

As a North Korean envoy heads to the U.S. for negotiations about his country’s nuclear program, U.S. officials are warning that the rogue nation is still a severe military threat. U.S. defence secretary Robert Gates says North Korea is encouraging nuclear proliferation by selling weapons to anyone willing to buy them, and it’s believed that the country has the capability to build at least six of its own atomic bombs. However, both sides are stressing the importance of a diplomatic resolution, and North Korea has recently softened some of its more hard-line positions. The country has recently released American and South Korean detainees and expressed a willingness to restart six-nation nuclear talks.

CBC News

How safe are marathons?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 11:12 AM - 2 Comments

People looking to get fit use marathons as a goal to kickstart their exercise program, but a series of deaths during marathons has some wondering if they’re really so beneficial. Two runners in their 30s recently died during a half-marathon in California; and this weekend, three men aged 26, 36 and 65 died during the Detroit marathon (they were all competing in the half-marathon event). Still, the cause of death isn’t known for any of the runners and deaths during marathons are rare. A study presented at a conference of the American College of Cardiology, for instance, reported the risk of sudden death during a marathon is 0.8 per 100,000 people. The risk during a triathlon, which includes running, swimming and cycling, is 1.5 in 100,000. In childbirth, the risk of dying is 13 per 100,000 births, and the risk of dying in a car accident is 1 in 6,700. In a Canadian study, 129 non-elite runners received blood tests before running a full or half marathon. Prior to the run, their blood markers for heart injury were normal, but when they’d finished, most of the half-marathoners and more of the marathoners had elevated troponin and other markers of heart damage. After an hour, even more did. Even so, while several studies have found short-term heart damage among marathon runners, the benefits of regular exercise seem to outweigh the risks. “There’s no doubt the marathon is a very hard, stressful event,” says Dr. Paul Thompson, director of cardiology at Hartford Hospital. “We’re confident that exercisers have lower heart risks than non-exercisers, but the truth is we don’t know this for sure about marathoners.”

New York Times Blogs

Cancer screening contributes to false sense of security: American Cancer Society

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 11:00 AM - 1 Comment

The American Cancer Society has long supported most cancer screening, but is now warning that screening for breast, prostate and some other cancers can create a risk of overtreating smaller cancers, while missing others that are deadly. “I’m admitting that American medicine has overpromised when it comes to screening. The advantages to screening have been exaggerated,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, chief medical officer of the cancer society, adding that he doesn’t “want people to panic.” The cancer society, one of the largest voluntary health agencies in the U.S., doesn’t advocate prostate testing for all men; researchers point out the test hasn’t been shown to prevent prostate cancer deaths. But there’s been less debate around mammograms, which have been shown in many studies to reduce the death rate from breast cancer by up to 20 per cent. In an analysis published Wednesday, researchers report a 40 per cent increase in breast cancer diagnoses and a near doubling of early stage cancers, but just a 10 per cent decline in cancers that spread from the breast to the lymph nodes or elsewhere. The situation with prostate cancer is similar, according to researchers, who say that, if screening for breast and prostate cancer lived up to their claims, cancers that were once found late would now be found early, and could be cured. Some worry the research could confuse the public and turn them away from screening. “I am concerned that the complex view of a changing landscape will be distilled by the public into yet another ‘screening does not work’ headline,” Dr. Begg said. “The fact that population screening is no panacea does not mean that it is useless,” Colin Begg, a biostatistician at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, told the Times.

New York Times

Words, words, words

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 60 Comments

UPDATED: John Ralston Saul is the new head of PEN International

****

As usual, I have far more books sitting unread than read.

Last night I finished Age of Persuasion, the new book from Terry O’Reilly and Mike Tennant, the creators of the CBC radio series. I hope to interview Terry and Mike soon; meanwhile, it’s the sort of book where if you like the show, you’ll like the book.

I’m halfway through Joseph Heath’s Following the Rules: Practical Reasoning and Deontic Constraint. It’s his new book of serious philosophy; to a large extent, it’s an answer to the perennial undergraduate question of whether morality reduces to self-interest. It’s the hardest book I’ve read in a long time, and I’m very out of practice in this kind of philosophy.

A few weeks ago, I read the first few chapters of Diego Gambetta’s Codes of the Underworld: How criminals communicate. It’s excellent — all about status signalling amongst lowlifes.

I got 45 pages into Inside the Stalin Archives, by Jonathan Brent. I put it down when I realized I couldn’t give it the attention it needs at the moment. It looks great so far.

I bought The Anti-Communist Manifestos, by John Fleming. Not sure if I’ll get around to reading it.

Frans de Waal’s The Age of Empathy is on my desk. I love monkeys and monkey politics, but I still haven’t finished his last one. For some reason I think I already have the gist of it.

I can’t wait to dig into Transition, the new novel from Iain M. Banks, as soon as I finish re-reading Neuromancer. It’s not as good as I remember; I realize now that when I think of the classic William Gibson book, it’s Count Zero.

What are you reading, or not?