Actually, vice does pay

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 2:27 PM - 1 Comment

Suroosh Alvi, who along with two buddies founded the hipster how-to guide Vice magazine back in the mid-1990s, recently paid $2,125,000 for a 2,319-square-foot East Village apartment, reports The New York Observer. As the Observer’s Max Abelson points out, Vice, a startup launched in Montreal using government subsidies, became successful pioneering a “trailer-park aesthetic;” it has since moved to New York and now has a lucrative deal with Viacom, numerous foreign editions and an advertising arm. In a few days, the magazine will throw a $250,000 Halloween party. “At a certain point I stopped eating beans and started eating steak,” Mr. Alvi said a few years ago, “but that doesn’t matter.” Meanwhile, Gavin McInnes, a Vice co-founder and the staunchly obnoxious brains behind the magazine’s sensibility, split with the magazine, reportedly over the Viacom deal.

The New York Observer

New TV Fad: Character Teams Named After Old Actors

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 2:25 PM - 5 Comments

A slow connection is my newest excuse for not having a long post today, but for a quick TV-related observation, how’s this: There are two popular comedies that have two-character teams named for beloved character actors of the past. First there was Sheldon and Leonard, named after Sheldon Leonard, the great tough-guy actor who became a successful TV producer. And now Modern Family has Cameron and Mitchell, named for Cameron Mitchell, an actor who was in absolutely everything ever made.

Is this a trend that has replaced the old joke of naming one character after an actor or musician, like Michael Bolton in Office Space or the character named “Mario Lanza” on the old Tony Randall Show? (This was a favourite joke of writer/creators Jay Tarses and Tom Patchett, who did another show with characters named “Steve and Edie.”) If so, I think I approve. It guarantees that the team will have names that sound good together, and it’s a cute shout-out to the three people in the audience who get the reference. Any other actors — actors whose first and last name could both be first names, I mean — you’d nominate for this treatment? I personally think I want to see a husband and wife couple named “Frank and Morgan.”

And to make this post seem longer than it is, here’s the original Sheldon Leonard doing the voice of a lazy cat in a Warner Brothers cartoon.

Top 5 spooky places

By Bruce Parkinson, Takeoffeh.com - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 2:04 PM - 2 Comments

Every experienced traveller has stories of places or experiences that left them feeling strangely unsettled. Memories like these provide an illuminating counterpoint to the pure pleasures of many travel experiences. Here are my five personal travel recollections that return frequently, always accompanied by a shiver.

1. The Riverside Hotel, Clarksdale, Mississippi
   “Y’all will wanna stay in the room where Bessie died,” was the greeting from the octogenarian proprietor Mrs. Hill as we entered the modest building that was once an African-American hospital in the Mississippi Delta. It was here that the Empress of the Blues, Bessie Smith, died after a car accident in 1937. A story that Smith died at this hospital after being turned away from a ‘white’ hospital was later debunked, but our experience in Clarksdale that day in the late 80s suggested that the wounds of slavery were still raw. After closing the extra-wide door to our roach-killer scented room (and former hospital operating room), there was little sleep to be had.

Continue…

Growing up bin Laden

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:55 PM - 0 Comments

An excerpt from Omar bin Laden’s book, Growing Up bin Laden: Osama’s Wife and Son Take Us Inside Their Secret World, offers a unique window into the personal life of the world’s most notorious terrorist. Osama bin Laden, Omar reveals, was an unusually devout child, known in his wealthy Saudi family for his uncanny ability to recite lengthy verses from the Koran. Still, says Omar, “like most children of divorced parents, [Osama] felt a loss.” That sense of loss apparently carried into adulthood. Though “composed” in public, and allegedly respectful to women, Osama was prone to beating his sons and insistent that his four wives and 20 children be kept as “virtual prisoners” in their Jeddah home. Firm in his belief that “Islamic beliefs are corrupted by modernization,” he forbid his wife from using a refrigerator (although gas stoves, it seems, were permitted) and required his sons to observe strict cycles of prayer. Omar’s own reflections on his father’s legacy reveal deeply conflicted feelings about the al Qaeda leader. “Although I cannot simply order my heart to stop loving my father, I do not agree with his behavior. There are times that I feel my heart swell with anger at his actions.” But things weren’t always that way, Omar adds. “My father was not always a man who hated. My father was not always a man hated by others. There was a time when many people spoke of my father with the highest accolades. History shows that he was once loved by many people.”

Vanity Fair

What if you could see them?

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:31 PM - 52 Comments

The Sun’s Elizabeth Thompson raises a probably pertinent question about yesterday’s heckling of Carolyn Bennett.

Wonder if the Conservative MPs in question would have behaved the same way if the archaic rules of the House of Commons didn’t prevent cameras from showing anyone other than the person speaking and their constituents could have seen them in action.

Remembering the Chrétien PMO: will that be Donolo's way?

By John Geddes - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:18 PM - 23 Comments

Peter Donolo returns to Ottawa enjoying high standing among the media and political insiders. That’s justified. Donolo was undeniably an effective communications director under Jean Chrétien, and he also happens to be a likeable guy.

Yet I can’t help but think that something central is being missed in the way his return is being cast. One of the main things I remember from having covered the Chrétien Prime Minister’s Office—especially in, say, its first five years—was having to get used to its obsessively tight control over both the government and the Liberal caucus.

Continue…

Michael Jackson is redeemed by a movie

By Brian D. Johnson - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:05 PM - 9 Comments

He always fancied himself a movie star.  Now, finally, he is. Last night, as I arrived at a press screening for Michael Jackson’s This Is It, the posthumous film of Jacko rehearsing the show he never gave, I had reason to be deeply skeptical. How could it  be any good? If it was, why would Sony Pictures release it for only a two-week limited engagement? And why was it holding off the press screening until 9:30 p.m. of the day the movie would be commercially premiered at midnight? It all had the whiff of damage control, and I expected a frustrating glimpse of a performance that was only half there, a lurid cash grab to capitalize on the biggest showbiz event  of Michael Jackson’s career: his death.

Boy, was I wrong. This Is It is quite amazing. Directed by Kenny Ortega, who also directed the show that never opened, it offers far more than a glimpse. Out of the rehearsals, Ortega has constructed what amounts to a full-blown concert movie, framed with a smattering of candid backstage moments that are both amusing and touching. And the end of it you feel you’ve seen pretty well the whole show—which is spectacular—as well as getting some gems of unprecedented insight into the artist behind it. And here’s the real news: the movie refutes once and for all the glut of media reports after his death claiming that he was washed up as a performer, and was in no shape to put on a show. Yes, he does look frail, and with all that make-up, we’ll never know how pale. But he never appears stoned, unfocused or incapable. The movie could serve as evidence in the trial of the man accused of his murder. Executing intricate choreography, Jackson dances with the same semaphore precision and fluid virtuosity that made him a legend. And although he lacks power, his dreamy falsetto is still in tact, and he’s clearly trying to hold back. “Don’t make me sing out,” he begs at one point in a scene that’s both funny and freighted with sad irony. “I gotta save my voice.” Continue…

The public option is in

By John Parisella - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 17 Comments

Progressive Democrats seemed happy with Nevada Senator and Majority Leader Harry Reid’s decision to include a public option in the Senate’s health care reform bill. Coupled with a House of Representatives’ bill that will no doubt also include a public option, it seems to indicate Barack Obama stands a good chance of passing a meaningful reform package before the end of his first year in power. And while it is hard to predict the final outcome, it seems reasonable to assume that a public option will be in the final bill Obama will sign.

This will not happen without some uncertainty and acrimony in the next few weeks. The left remains skeptical that a watered-down public option will not sufficiently reduce costs and may not be available to enough Americans for it to make a difference. It is a legitimate argument, but key Senate liberals like Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Chuck Schumer from New York are already in push-back mode. As for the Republicans, GOP senator Olympia Snowe has expressed her dissatisfaction with Reid’s proposal, stating that she is opposed to a public option in the final bill. Snowe would rather include a trigger for a public option, which would come into being if health insurers fail to reduce costs. If she maintains that position, it would eradicate any hope for nominal bipartisanship. The symbolism of having Snowe on side may explain why stories circulated over the weekend suggesting the Obama White House prefers a trigger.

Continue…

The John Cusack of Canadian politics

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 22 Comments

Michael Ignatieff on 22 Minutes last night.

Liveblogging the new Michael Jackson movie

By Scott Feschuk - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:56 PM - 10 Comments

Think of it as like how Kady O’Malley would liveblog parliamentary committees here, but this time with literal instead of figurative crotch-yanking.

12:58 A film featuring documentary footage of Michael Jackson rehearsing for his big comeback performances in London. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t end well.

1:02 Dear Scotiabank: No, I’m not. Stop telling me that I am.

1:05 Still not sold on Avatar, but the new trailer is a big improvement in that it doesn’t make me want to invent my own futuristic world in which the movie doesn’t exist.

1:08 What’s this? A movie featuring both Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant. What a  shame I’m only going to be able to not see it once.

1:11 I’ve been keeping track and I’m pretty sure the only global icons not to be destroyed in trailers for 2012 are the Louvre and Scarlett Johansson’s cleavage.

1:14 Michael Jackson’s This Is It opens with a montage of teary-eyed dancers staring into the camera during a rehearsal break and thanking Michael for the opportunity to dance with him. It’s kind of touching, actually. Kind of makes you think Michael might not have been the raving megalomaniac who — whoa! They just showed the video footage that would have opened his concert and it juxtaposes him with Princess Diana, Nelson Mandela and Mother Teresa. Abort posthumous re-evaluation of character!

1:20 Michael in rehearsal. Kinda mumbling the words to some song or other. It must be early in the process because he’s clearly still working on new dance steps. They’re not fully formed. At least, I hope they’re not, because if they are I think Continue…

U.S. government not prepared for H1N1-related Internet crash

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:45 PM - 0 Comments

The U.S. government is not prepared for an H1N1-related Internet crash, the Washington Post reports. The federal Government Accountability Office announced earlier this week that if the flu reached pandemic proportions, a surge in flu-wary telecommuter and children accessing video files and games at home could bog down local networks. Currently, the Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of communications networks during times of national emergency, doesn’t have a strategy to deal with overloaded networks, a major problem given that the Internet is an essential resource to keep the economy humming, and residents informed and connected during a pandemic, the GAO said. Nor has it coordinated with the FCC to create guidelines for how telecom, cable and satellite providers can minimize congestion. Such confusion “would increase the risk that the federal government will not be able to respond rapidly or effectively if a pandemic quickly emerges,” the GAO reported. The Office for Homeland Security didn’t offer much reassurance in its response, saying “it didn’t know which agency had clear or specific authority to allow telecom, cable and satellite companies to block or slow traffic to cope with congestion.”

Washington Post

Sarkozy’s $436,000 shower

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:19 PM - 0 Comments

France’s National Audit Office has slammed President Nicolas Sarkozy for his spendthrift ways—including $436,000 for a personal shower he never even used. The country spent $279 million during Sarkozy’s six month stint as head of the European Union, and it seems the staggering bill was vastly inflated by the little man’s imperial pretensions. For one three-day event, he sanctioned an elaborate upgrade of the Grand Palace in Paris for an EU-Mediterranean summit, requiring hundreds of workmen and millions of dollars. Nearly $330,000 was spent building a podium, and $220,000 on upgrading the gardens. But the shower, built to Sarkozy’s specifications was the real doozy. He chose to go back to his residence, the Élysée palace during the summit to freshen up. The shower has since been dismantled.

The Guardian

Earl Jones’ wife wants a divorce

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 12:07 PM - 1 Comment

Maxine Pamela Heayberd, the wife of accused fraudster Earl Jones, has filed for divorce. Jones is alleged to have stolen at least $50 million from more than 100 clients in an elaborate Ponzi scheme and Heayberd’s divorce filing has victims worried their cash could go to her in a settlement. Trustees working on Jones’s bankruptcy case say Heayberd, along with Jones, withdrew millions from company accounts for personal expenses. That she could be in line for a share of whatever’s left adds insult to injury. Quebec couples usually split assets down the middle when they divorce, meaning half of whatever assets remain in Jones’ bankrupt company could go to his ex-wife before any alleged victims see a dime.

CBC.ca

Can curry kill cancer cells?

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 11:54 AM - 1 Comment

A molecule found in turmeric, the spice that gives curry its bright yellow colour, can kill esophageal cancer cells in the lab, and might make for a powerful anti-cancer treatment. Scientists at the Cork Cancer Research Center in Ireland treated the cells with curcumin, a chemical found in turmeric, and found they started to kill cancer cells within 24 hours. The cells began to digest themselves, too. It isn’t the first study to suggest curcumin could be a powerful cancer-fighting agent; others have found it can suppress tumors, and that people who eat lots of curry might be less prone to cancer (once ingested, however, curcumin loses its cancer-fighting abilities). Esophageal cancers kill more than half a million people worldwide each year.

Reuters.com

Peter Donolo and the Curse of the Mummy's Hand

By Paul Wells - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 11:34 AM - 171 Comments

It is always interesting (well, to geeks anyway) to see how a prime minister’s communications director decorates his office. They spend so much time shaping someone else’s identity that it’s instructive to see how they express their own. Kory Teneycke had three laminated political posters — a vintage Reagan Morning In America; a PM for PM poster from Preston Manning’s unsuccessful run for leader of the Canadian Alliance; and a Libranos parody poster (Chrétien and Gagliano photoshopped into a Sopranos family shot) from the Ezra days of the Western Standard — along with a World War II morale poster with the slogan, Attack on Every Front! Francie Ducros had only a huge map of riding-by-riding results from the 1995 Quebec secession referendum. Peter Donolo, famously, decorated his office with huge posters from classic Hollywood movies. (Even older Ottawa veterans than I will be needed to remember what the movies were.)

I don’t know whether Donolo has seen The Mummy’s Hand, a jaunty little Universal horror flick from 1940, but I’m going to bet he did. I have been thinking a lot about that movie’s opening sequence lately, as I contemplate the mess the Liberal Party of Canada — not only Michael Ignatieff, but the whole organization — has gotten into. The Mummy’s Hand opens with a long vignette about erased memory. So, lately, has the Liberal Party.

Continue…

Before the yelling

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 11:15 AM - 16 Comments

As noted, the government is quite concerned that about a meeting between Jack Layton and a group of environmental activists that took place before Monday’s protest in Question Period. For the record, the NDP counters that Mr. Layton’s office had no knowledge of any intent to disrupt QP, that the meeting with Layton was open to media and that, to their understanding, some of the activists were to meet with representatives of other parties as well.

For whatever it is worth, Environment Minister Jim Prentice met with 25 members of the “Canadian Youth Delegation” on October 22. Pictures from that meeting are available on the ministry’s climate change website. Seated to Mr. Prentice’s right is the protester who we now know as Jeh.

Let us settle this virtually

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 10:47 AM - 30 Comments

To Twitter we go.

mpjamesmoore I see Lib MP Carolyn Bennett, one of the loudest, nastiest & most frequent hecklers in Parliament complains about heckling in the Star today

Carolyn_Bennett James Moore nds 2 understand difference between heckling at WHOPPERS&insensitvity.Here’s my takehttp://www.thestar.com/News…

Mr. Moore was similarly scolding of Gilles Duceppe’s behaviour last week. And for sure Mr. Moore comes by his understanding of inappropriate heckling quite honestly.

(To his misfortune, that one is preserved in Hansard for all eternity. To his credit, when a complaint was filed with the Speaker, Mr. Moore stood, apologized and withdrew the remark. Two days later, Dean Del Mastro was caught using the same word and refused to do likewise.)

Star Trek and Eden

By Brian Bethune - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 10:47 AM - 19 Comments

You don’t have to be Christian or Jewish to know the story of Adam and Eve; in fact, you can hardly have escaped it if you lived within reach of Western media over the past 2,000 years. Everyone has a store of expressions alluding to the first humans (whether actual or mythic), from fig leaves to forbidden fruit. We know what that fruit was—an apple—and what it signified: choice, knowledge, sexual temptation. And we all know that Adam and Eve lived in immortal innocence in a paradise called the Garden of Eden. Until, that is, they were tempted by a snake (Satan’s mouthpiece) and “fell,” out of grace and into human life as it’s been ever since—nasty, brutish and short.

We are far less aware that most of the above is unsupported by the brief Biblical narrative (Genesis 2:4 to 4:1), and some of it isn’t there at all. But it hardly matters, as Theresa Sanders notes in Approaching Eden: Adam and Eve in Popular Culture. The story of Adam and Eve—including its centuries of embellishments—is embedded in our deepest cultural DNA. For Sanders, a theologian at Washington’s Georgetown University, “It’s as if the story holds the same allure that the forbidden fruit held for the first couple.” Continue…

John Manley says he wasn't a player in the Donolo move

By John Geddes - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 10:26 AM - 18 Comments

Among some versions swirling around Parliament Hill of how Peter Donolo was recruited as Michael Ignatieff’s new chief of staff, John Manley’s name figures prominently.

But Manley categorically denies reports that Ignatieff asked for his advice, or that he offered it. And he says he is mystified by a related rumour that he circulated word that Donolo was returning to Ottawa.

I have not spoken to Manley directly on this (he’s not in Ottawa today). But through staff at the Canadian Council of Chief Executives, he told me he has not talked to Ignatieff since August, when he briefed him on the situation in Afghanistan. Manley said he was not in the loop in any way on the Liberal leader’s deliberations about shaking up his staff.

In fact, Manley, who held a series of senior cabinet positions in Jean Chretien’s government, has generally been keeping his distance from Liberal party matters since June, when he was appointed as the next president of the CCCE. His term there begins officially on Jan. 1, 2010, but he’s already moved into an office at the umbrella group for Canada’s top corporations.

'This isn't funny'

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 10:17 AM - 81 Comments

Susan Delacourt notes the scene yesterday as Carolyn Bennett attempted to ask her second question of the Health Minister.

A question about pregnant women and the H1N1 vaccine provoked a bizarre bout of heckling and laughter on the Tory benches in the Commons on Tuesday.

Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett, a physician and former public health minister, was shouted down when she tried to raise the issue of confusion surrounding what kind of vaccinations pregnant women should be getting.

For whatever reason, Ms. Bennett regularly draws enthusiastic heckling from the Conservative side. But given government house leader Jay Hill’s stated concern yesterday about anyone who would “intimidate, or attempt to intimidate, members of this House,” he will no doubt be instructing his charges to show Ms. Bennett greater respect in the future.

The Liberals have uploaded video of her question. Here’s that. Continue…

How to write memos

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 20 Comments

Schwarzenegger shows the way.

Lots for EC to investigate, maybe

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 9:54 AM - 45 Comments

In today’s Ottawa Citizen, UofO prof Errol Mendes has a good column arguing that the ethics commissioner has ample jurisdiction to investigate and pronounce on checkgate. While he’s kind enough not to denounce me personally, it’s a pretty straightforward rebuttal of my column from Monday

The core of Mendes’ argument is to foreground section 8 of the code, which forbids MPs from using their office to further their “private interests,” and then asserts that the Conservative party is a private entity, and should not be confused with the government. Thus, there’s a clear conflict.

I don’t agree with all of it, and I think the real question is how far we want to stretch the definition of “private interests”, given section five of the code, which reads: “A Member does not breach this code if the Member’s activity is one in which Members normally and properly engage on behalf of constituents.”

The fact is, most of what an MP does on behalf of constituents is aimed, ultimately, at getting re-elected. And in getting re-elected, the MP benefits his or her party. Which is a private interest. Hence, an MP should not do anything that could help him or her get elected. Right?

The larger issue then is whether we want to criminalize (or quasi-criminalize) behaviour that all politicians have done since the dawn of time. In many ways, it is the parallel to the argument that David Mitchell and David Paciocco advanced during Ottawa mayor Larry O’Brien’s trial last summer: That if what O’Brien did was illegal, then every politician in the history of Canada is equally guilty.

That isn’t to say that anything goes; just that what is permissible is open to reasonable debate, and what the public or the opposition will tolerate is highly context-driven — which  means it might be properly dealt with in the political realm. The alternative is the inevitable politicization of Mary Dawson’s office, which is exactly what happened to Bernard Shapiro, and we all know how well that went.

All of that said, on the more narrow question of the Tory logo on the cheques, I think Mendes is right, that it probably does violate the Code of Ethics. I hope Dawson’s decision to investigate doesn’t lead to a flood of complaints from all sides of the House, in an attempt to turn her into Parliament’s scold.

Banking on his reputation

By Martin Patriquin - Wednesday, October 28, 2009 at 9:40 AM - 1 Comment

For years, disgraced financier Earl Jones kept his alleged scam operating on little but the force of his reputation. He knew nearly all of his clients personally, rarely missing a birthday or a funeral, and was pleasant and reassuring even as he allegedly bilked them out of their life savings. Many of his former clients are still discovering the extent of the damage. “It’s absolutely incredible that he didn’t get caught,” says Susan Brown, a six-year Jones investor who lost $300,000. His clients included his brother and godson, among many others, as well as his son-in-law, from whom Jones coaxed $150,000 earlier this year—and, as Maclean’s recently learned, legendary hockey writer Red Fisher, who often wove tales of Jones’s prowess into his columns. Jones, he wrote, was a “matchless money manager” and a “superstar investment guru” who “always has been blessed with a talent of knowing a sure-thing investment when he sees one.” (Fisher won’t discuss the matter, but records show he lost a sizable amount of money.)

Jones’s personal and business assets, seized by bankruptcy trustees in August, won’t come close to covering the losses of his alleged victims, thought to be upward of $86 million. So his former clients are parsing the mountains of what they allege are forged cheques, falsified documents and fudged powers-of-attorney, and have found another target: the banks with whom Jones did business over the years. By not paying heed to numerous irregularities in Jones’s financial activities, say lawyers for the former clients, the banks essentially allowed the fraud to continue. “His bankers seemed to trust him as his clients trusted him,” says Ginny Nelles, one of the more outspoken former clients. Continue…

Political genius defined, more or less

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, October 27, 2009 at 11:38 PM - 39 Comments

A profound or important, or possibly just amusing sentence, from a bulletin announcing the addition of Peter Donolo to Michael Ignatieff’s office.

Among other things, Donolo helped persuade Chrétien, then 59, to pose in a blue denim shirt for the 1993 Liberal campaign poster, which Chrétien won in a landslide.

Mr. Ignatieff wore a blue button-up shirt in his most recent television ads, so he is perhaps already halfway there.