Newsmakers: Sept. 22-29

By Colby Cosh, Jaime J. Weinman, and Richard Warnica - Monday, October 3, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Jason DeCrow/AP

No, they didn’t walk home

Two American hikers convicted of espionage in Iran were released after the sultan of Oman posted US$930,000 bail for them. Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, 29-year-old pro-Palestine activists and former Berkeley classmates, were seized along with a female friend while on holiday in 2009; Iran claims they illegally crossed their border on foot. The woman, Sarah Shourd, Bauer’s fiancée, was freed last fall on medical grounds. Bauer and Fattal’s release, with both in apparent good health, is seen as a political victory for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad over hardline clerics in the Islamic republic.

Burqa fine

Only in France is having it and not flaunting it a crime. Last week, a court outside Paris fined two women for refusing to show their faces in public. Hind Ahmas and Najate Nait Ali were the first Frenchwomen charged under a law that bans full facial coverings outside the home. Passed last spring, the ban was aimed, rather transparently, at France’s substantial Muslim minority. It may also have been an attempt by President Nicolas Sarkozy to shore up his vulnerable right flank. But if anything, the law has galvanized supporters of the niqab. Ahmas told reporters she intends to challenge her fine in the European Court of Human Rights—while Kenza Drider, who also wears the niqab, now says she intends to run against Sarkozy in the presidential election. “When a woman wants to maintain her freedom she must be bold,” Drider told the Associated Press.

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Steppin’ out with Tony Bennett

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, August 18, 2011 at 10:15 AM - 4 Comments

Photograph by Jessica Darmanin

“Bap! . . . Bap!” Tony Bennett’s unamplified voice, loud as a snare drum, bounces off the back wall of Place des Arts as he tests the acoustics at an afternoon sound check. Standing next to him at centre stage, looking out at the 3,000 seats that will be packed for his evening performance at Montreal’s jazz festival, I ask if some audiences are warmer than others. “The audience is never cold,” he says. “If they’re cold, that means you’re cold. You gotta walk out there energized. Sinatra taught me that years ago.” Energy? It’s not the word that comes to mind when you think of an old master crooning The Shadow of Your Smile or I’ve Got You Under My Skin. But when I gently broach that notion, Bennett gives me a puzzled look. Obviously I’ve never seen him perform.

That night, from the standing ovation that greets him as he bounds onto the stage to the one that bids him farewell, Bennett’s energy is miraculous. This, after all, is a man who would soon celebrate his 85th birthday on Aug. 3. His scuffed velvet voice seems enriched, not diminished, by age. Still muscular and elastic, it ranges from intimate jazz detours to flights of operatic grandeur—reminiscent of Sinatra, but infinitely warmer. Bennett works the microphone like a musical instrument, pulling it close for a confidential aside, but holding it just above his waist much of the time. At one point, he has the soundman turn off the mikes, then sings Fly Me to the Moon a cappella and unplugged, beaming his voice to the upper balcony. Near the end of the song, he opens the throttle. He hits a note, holds it, and his voice fills the hall like a floodlight, with a power that seems to come out of nowhere.

Oh, and he also dances. Occasionally, he’ll finesse a phrase with a pirouette, a switchblade flash of Vegas that draws a roar from the crowd. When his 37-year-old daughter Antonia comes onstage for a duet, Bennett joins her in a nimble soft-shoe. Throughout the show, he almost never stops smiling. And why not? His music, plucked from the Great American Songbook, summons up a golden age, when jazz and pop were happily married. Spanning Gershwin, Cole Porter and classic strains of Hollywood and Broadway, it exists in an emotional utopia—a wonderful world with skies of blue, where love comes just in time, little cable cars climb halfway to the stars on the sunny side of the street and the best is yet to come. It’s how America was meant to be.

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Newsmakers: June 9 – 16, 2011

By Nicholas Köhler and Ken MacQueen - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Isaac Brekken/Getty Images

Done in by the velluvial matrix

Grads from the University of Alberta’s faculty of medicine were enjoying an after-dinner speech at their banquet last week when the words of Dr. Philip Baker, dean of the medical school, sounded vaguely familiar. “A couple of students recognized the term ‘velluvial matrix,’ ” class president Brittany Barber told the Edmonton Sun. “They googled it on their phones.” It showed Baker has borrowed heavily from a speech delivered last year at Stanford by Dr. Atul Gawande, a Boston surgeon and a writer for the New Yorker magazine. Accusations of plagiarism prompted an apology from Baker, who said he was inspired by Gawande’s speech, which “resonated with my experiences.” Baker added that he’s since spoken to Gawande, who “was flattered by my use of his text, took no offence and readily accepted my apology.” The university is investigating.

Dementia’s painful toll

It’s only been a few weeks since Ralph Klein and his wife, Colleen, revealed that the former Alberta premier is suffering from progressive dementia. Although the couple is said to be heartened by the good wishes they’ve received from across the country since then, Ralph’s decline, at age 68, has been rapid and devastating. “He’s starting to get a little bit worse,” Colleen told Calgary Herald columnist Don Braid. “I’m not sure he always recognizes me anymore. He never says my name.”

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Newsmakers: May 19-26

By Nancy Macdonald - Friday, June 3, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Kevin Mazur/Wireimage/Getty

Laying it down with Beantown

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson’s Twitter plea for help in coming up with a friendly wager with Boston Mayor Thomas Menino prompted some great ideas. “There’s a good one: sushi versus clam chowder, and swapping our best beers from two great beer-drinking cities,” Robertson told reporters in Stanley Park, a few steps from the iron statue of Lord Stanley—which currently sports a Canucks jersey. “One that I really like, that I’m going to campaign for with the mayor of Boston, is that the loser buys season’s tickets for a couple of inner-city kids in the winning city,” he said. Another favourite, he joked, would see the loser “swimming with an Orca” or “wrestling a bear.”

Ending the IMF boys’ club?

The bid by France’s Finance Minister Christine Lagarde to become the first female head of the International Monetary Fund was pushed forward at the G8 meet-up in Deauville. She once famously complained there is “too much testosterone” in high-powered circles, a comment that now looks prescient. French President Nicolas Sarkozy talked her up to Barack Obama; Hillary Clinton hailed her candidacy. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev called her the near-consensus choice, though China and India want a non-European from a developing country.

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Lady Gaga isn't PM's happy place

By Rick Mercer - Friday, April 8, 2011 at 10:38 AM - 96 Comments

Chris Wattie/Reuters

Michael Ignatieff’s campaign is a magnificent triumph! Canadians are seeing a side of the man that they did not know existed and they are excited about what they see. This is according to the people who work for Mr. Ignatieff and whose future employment prospects are tied directly to his success or failure.

The joy permeating out of the Liberal camp in week two reminds me of the joy my parents experienced when my final Grade 8 report card came in. Eyes darted past the C’s and B’s, the F in gym, past the multiple “needs improvement,” past the “still owes $60 to the chocolate almond fund,” and finally settled on the most reassuring words any parents could read: “advance to Grade 9.” They could not have been happier. After a year of lowered expectations, it seemed like a miracle. He doesn’t have to go to summer school! Clearly the boy is a genius. Likewise the Liberal refrain: “Iggy is on fire.”

Low expectations are your friend. I learned that lesson in junior high; Ignatieff is just figuring this out now, but it is working for him. So far he has held his own, hasn’t fallen off the podium or wandered down any strange roads pondering in public about “anticipatory hypotheticals.” While this is good news for Liberals, low expectations will only take you so far. It may be a good strategy if you are trying to avoid being grounded, but it’s a hell of a way to become prime minister.

On the Prime Minister’s tour the word is that the Harper campaign is a disaster! The Prime Minister’s photo ops are coming across as stiff and scripted. This according to people who, I am guessing, haven’t watched a Harper campaign before, because this one is no different than his others and oh would you look at that—he keeps getting elected Prime Minister.

Sure, he doesn’t look comfortable sitting at a piano listening to a child serenade him with Lady Gaga’s Born This Way. Can you blame him? Who put that together? “Prime Minister, are you familiar with Ms. Gaga? Good news: turns out she is not a hermaphrodite, that was a wooden phallus she was wearing… anyway she has written a gay anthem and this little girl is going to sing it to you. Some of the lyrics are about transsexuals and drag queens, but she might skip those.”

And putting the Prime Minister on a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle? He doesn’t drive one of those. It’s not fair. That’s almost as ridiculous as putting him on a stage surrounded by guys doing exercises and having him announce that in five years you might get a tax cut if you join a gym, golf club or bathhouse. Oh wait, he did that too.

Personally, I would ditch these awkward staged moments. Harper’s happy place is on stage, talking to the party faithful about all the horrible things that will befall the nation if he is not elected. There he shines and there he connects with Canadians who are sitting at home watching TV and I guess being afraid. Ignatieff, on the other hand, is standing on his stage but has yet to connect. The polls reflect that.

But these men, Iggy and Harper, are the superstars. They are used to seeing their pictures in the newspaper. They are used to the highs and lows of being on the national stage. But there are many races happening in this country, and for those who toil in the backbenches this is their moment.

It’s not very often that you find all members of Parliament and all candidates in agreement, but they agree on this. They view the job of MP as a great public service and they like to remind us it is a noble one. They also agree that campaigns are a tough slog, but it is a sacrifice they are willing to make.

Personally, it’s the families and friends of politicians I feel bad for because God forbid you are related to one, or friends with one, or happened to go to school with one, or even made eye contact with one. They are a needy bunch. It’s like having a drug addict in the family.

They want money from you constantly. And on top of that, they demand your time and energy.

A politician’s hand is always out, especially during, before and after a campaign, and also before the next one.

Imagine if in order to keep your job, every so often you had to call everyone in your family, every friend, your in-laws, everyone in your yearbook and say, “I’m reapplying for my job again, can I have $500? Also, can you take time out of your busy schedule to show up at some long-forgotten Knights of Columbus hall and chant my name over and over again? And when I speak, can you cheer like you are witnessing Martin Luther King recite ‘I have a dream’ even though we both know I don’t have a clue?”

Most of us go through life trying to avoid hitting up our friends and family for money, and while sure, there are times when it may be inevitable, we try to avoid it becoming a habit.

Politicians are that rare breed. This doesn’t bother them. They are missing the dignity chip. A career politician like John Baird has, in his lifetime, asked more strangers for more money than all the squeegee kids in Canada combined. This is a sacrifice he and so many others are willing to make.

So what is it that allows these men and women to swallow their pride and say: yes, I will do this, I will stand for public office? I do not know.

Everywhere they go they have to stare at billboards and posters with their faces emblazoned across them as if they were suddenly transformed into Hollywood stars. They have to do media, sometimes many interviews a day; which, for an MP used to begging to get on local radio, can be exhausting. And then there is the constant barrage of volunteers to be managed, the old and experienced hands who do the heavy lifting mixed in with the young and impressionable keeners—the ones who wear tight T-shirts with your name across the front who never get tired of listening. And yes, there is the chanting and the applause.

Politicians may very well believe in public service, but for the vast majority it is the campaigns they live and die for; it is why they are put on Earth.

It is why, when you hear Stephen Harper saying he wishes there wasn’t an election, that’s like a dog saying he has grown tired of licking himself. It’s not true, not now, not ever.

In conversation: David Furnish

By Elio Iannacci - Thursday, February 24, 2011 at 4:35 AM - 9 Comments

Michael Tran/Film Magic/Getty Images

Producer David Furnish and Elton John became parents of a new baby on Christmas Day. Furnish’s latest movie is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet featuring garden gnomes.

Q: Your producing portfolio is quite diverse. In 1999 you produced Women Talking Dirty, in 2005 you produced the Broadway version of Billy Elliot and, most recently, you produced your first animated feature Gnomeo & Juliet. What common thread runs through all your projects?

A: I hope a thread that promotes inclusiveness. When Elton and I work on things, we want to invest our time, creativity and energy in things that hopefully bring the world closer together, not further apart. If you look at Gnomeo & Juliet, the movie’s message essentially says it doesn’t matter if you’re a “red” or a “blue,” at the end of the day, parents should love their children and want what’s best for them. Elton and I try not to be judgmental people. We are not advocates in the placard-carrying way, we just try to live our life by example.

Q: Do you think Gnomeo & Juliet‘s anti-war message is something children should learn about at an early age?

A: I do. We live in a confused world at the moment. It’s a world that seems to be less about tolerance and less about togetherness. People seem to be more and more divided. There is such [debate] over civil rights for all couples and [laws surrounding] people just wanting to have marriage or some form of civil union to ratify their relationship. Many seem to be tarring a lot of Muslims with the same brush. What’s happening in terms of terrorism has been such a tiny sect of extreme people within a religion. I think people get fearful of things they don’t know or understand. Out of ignorance and fear comes judgment and division.

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Sounds like a hot investment

By Michelle Magnan - Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 2:48 PM - 0 Comments

David Becker/Getty Images;

In case you haven’t heard, headphones are hot right now. Skullcandy, the U.S. headphone maker with a posse of musician, athlete and DJ endorsers, has kick-started the process to go public. Rapper 50 Cent recently used Twitter to pump penny stocks for H&H Imports, a company in which he’s not only invested, but has partnered with to create his own line of headphones, called Sleek by 50 Cent. Can’t wait till 50′s headphones hit store shelves? Then consider throwing on a pair of Beats by Dr. Dre Headphones from Monster Cable, a company that’s created headphones bearing the names of rapper Dr. Dre, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and NBA star LeBron James. Big names, for sure. Big business? Time will tell.

Skullcandy’s prospectus, filed on Jan. 28, argues that the growing demand for portable media and music devices, like smartphones and Apple’s iPod, is driving a massive demand for accessories such as headphones. The document points to IDC Research, which estimates that, from 2010 through 2014, the number of smartphones available worldwide will grow at an annual rate of 24 per cent. Not everyone sees the connection being quite as clear. Or as guaranteed. “The market for consumer electronics is massive, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the market for rapper-branded headphones is hot,” says Jack Plunkett, CEO of Houston-based Plunkett Research, Ltd. and author of the new book The Next Boom. “The question is: how long will revenues hold up until demand from fans has been filled?”

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Bright idea: Billboard's top-tweeted bands

By Michael Barclay - Monday, February 14, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

The recorded music industry continues to tank. Last month, Soundscan reported sales were down nine per cent in 2010—bringing the industry’s collapse to 50 per cent of its 1999 levels. But even if people aren’t buying music in the numbers they used to, we’re all still listening to it—and talking about it. Which is why Billboard magazine, the bible for music industry insiders, launched a new chart in December: the Social 50. The rankings are based on a variety of online factors: YouTube views, number of tracks streamed from MySpace, Facebook fans, and even Twitter mentions. (None of which, it should be noted, will pay the bills for musicians.)

So far, the Social 50 closely mirrors the actual Top 50 singles, with Justin Bieber, Rihanna and Lady Gaga topping the chart since its inception. And no matter how notorious Kanye West’s tweets might be, he has yet to crack the Social 50’s Top 10.

Year in pictures – January

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 23, 2010 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

The new normal

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, December 9, 2010 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

AP; CP; Getty Images; Istock; Illustration by Adam Cholewa | Banner year: (from left) Lynch; Smitherman and husband; Gaga

It’s hard to believe that a year marked by the heartbreaking suicides of a number of gay U.S. teens, including 13-year-old Asher Brown and Rutgers University freshman Tyler Clementi, could also be a banner year for gay rights. But their tragic deaths spurred an outpouring of public sympathy, hope and help for gay youth, including It Gets Better—a popular project featuring gay adults talking about overcoming bullies and hurt.

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, September 17, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Is the Lady a mere copycat?
In its way, Lady Gaga’s tireless hunt for ways to shock us is nothing if not ambitious. Last week, it was her pals at PETA who were outraged after she appeared on Vogue Japan’s cover wearing only slabs of meat. Her Warholian shtick is now under fire as not being as original as we think. Yana Morgana claims Gaga stole her late daughter Lina’s flair for theatrics after the two recorded a dozen songs together in 2008. “Every other word she says is from Lina,” she told the New York Post.

Painting the town white
François Croteau, the mayor of Rosemont-La Petite-Patrie, Que., hopes to cool his corner of Earth one white roof at a time. He’s proposed a bylaw making white roofs mandatory on all new buildings in the Montreal borough so they generate less heat. Roofs under repair would also have to be painted white, though residential peaked roofs are exempt. The plan is endorsed by Concordia University engineering professor Hashem Akbari, who is campaigning to get 100 of the world’s largest cities to go white. Changing all the roofs in the world would be equal to parking the world’s cars for 20 years, he says. Councillors vote in October.

Newspapers: the next big thing
Prince, the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince, is having a boffo summer since he famously declared the Internet “completely over”—as “outdated” as MTV. He’s playing last-minute stadium shows and occasional small gigs, maintaining his reputation as a musical rebel. He gave away for free his new CD, 20TEN, in four European newspapers, including London’s Mirror. Fed up with Internet abuses, he’s banned YouTube and iTunes from using his songs. “I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music,” he told the Mirror, which, incidentally, was founded in 1903.

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, August 6, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Silvio Berlusconi’s very bad week
Italy’s PM is on thin ice after a party revolt led by long-time ally Gianfranco Fini, and now come fresh allegations of scandal. “In the bed there was me, two girls from Rome, and Berlusconi,” Maria Teresa De Nicolo, an escort, told prosecutors in a corruption inquiry, according to the daily La Repubblica. Could it end with a snap fall election?

The camera doesn’t lie
France’s stunning first lady should be used to the lure of cameras. And yet, during filming for Woody Allen’s new movie, Midnight in Paris, in which Carla Bruni plays a bit part as a museum curator, the former model and pop songstress couldn’t nail the simplest of scenes. Bruni needed a whopping 35 takes to film a dialogue-free scene that required her to walk in and out of a grocery store, clutching a baguette. In fairness, it had probably been a while since she’d done her own groceries.

Easy, rider
One moment Gregor Robertson was Vancouver’s clean, green mayor; the next he was a scofflaw on wheels. The avid cyclist—he’s pumping $25 million into new bike infrastructure in Vancouver—was caught blowing a red light on his bike on July 22. He didn’t even slow down to check for traffic, bus driver Michele MacDonald told the Vancouver Province, after nearly flattening him. Only a quick, hard stomp on the brakes saved him, she said. “When he looked up and said he was sorry, I thought ‘Oh my God: it’s Mr. Gregor Robertson.’ ” The near miss was a “good lesson—and a reminder to everyone to use caution and follow the rules when out on the road,” said Robertson, whose poster-boy image took an another drubbing earlier this summer when a mike was accidentally left on at a council meeting, revealing a raunchier, more partisan, F-bomb-dropping mayor.

And he knows from silly
Long after the World Cup, the fallout continues. Argentina’s soccer association has dropped superstar Diego Maradona as coach of the national team, after it was sent packing in the quarter finals in a humiliating 4-0 defeat to Germany. Maradona was greeted by cheering fans on his return from South Africa and President Cristina Fernandez urged him to stay on, but the soccer association concluded his best days were behind him. Meantime, Paul the psychic octopus was roasted by Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The eight-legged sea creature (no risk of a hand ball there) is credited with predicting the outcome of all seven German World Cup matches—a silly bit of decadent Western nonsense and superstition, Ahmadinejad thundered in a recent speech in Tehran. “Those who believe in this type of thing cannot be the leaders of the global nations that aspire, like Iran, to human perfection,” he said.

The Mel Gibson of the left?
It’s one thing to blame Adolf Hitler for the Holocaust, Oliver Stone said in an interview last month, but whom do we blame for Hitler? “German industrialists, the Americans and the British,” the film director told the Sunday Times of London. “He had a lot of support. Hitler did far more damage to the Russians than the Jewish people.” Stone went on to lament “the Jewish domination of the media” and the way Israel has distorted U.S. foreign policy “for years.” He did apologize, calling his comments “glib” and “clumsy,” adding “Jews obviously do not control media or any other industry.”

Now comes the tough part
“From strippers to ministers,” blared the Russian headline that propelled Georgia’s new economy minister, Vera Kobalia, to the heart of an international scandal. Russian media—who love a chance to needle Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and seldom let the facts get in the way—based the accusation on a racy Facebook photo of Kobalia in what they call a Vancouver strip club, but turned out to be a nightclub. Kobalia grew up in B.C.; she met Saakashvili at the Vancouver Olympics, is all of 28, and has no political experience. It’s not the only challenge she’ll face in her new job: running an economy that shrank a whopping seven per cent last year.

It’s a black thing, and I understand
In a big week for racial politics in America, Essence, the bible of black fashion, caused a sensation for hiring Ellianna Placas, a white woman, as fashion director. “It’s a dark day,” said former editor Michaela Angela Davis, who noted the industry has long been a tough place for black women. Not everyone objected. “Kudos—for having the . . . courage to elevate a qualified and talented white woman, in a time of such racial tension,” said Sophia Nelson, a black lawyer. Andrew Breitbart, ever mindful of reverse racism, could perhaps get behind it too. The conservative activist, who posted a video clip edited to make fired black civil servant Shirley Sherrod look like a racist, will “definitely” be sued, Sherrod declared last week. Breitbart reacted to the news saying, “As difficult as it probably was for her, it’s been difficult for me as well.”

They get around
Utah’s predominantly Mormon Brigham Young University has added a new prohibition to its long list: no motorized couches. Students Nick Homer and Stewart Clyde spent months combining an old couch with a motorized wheelchair as a comfy means of transportation around campus. It was a sensation, until administrators instituted a law banning couch-based transportation systems. When campus police pulled them over, Homer says, they “basically congratulated us on being awesome.” Yes, if awesomeness is a crime, Neil Rideout of New Waterford, N.S., must also plead guilty. He was stopped by cops last week while driving his motorized drink cooler to a convenience store. He was fined $222 for driving on the sidewalk after police said the street was off-limits. The cooler, in addition to being cool, has jacks for an MP3 player, a 5.5 hp motor, a radio and, naturally, cup holders.

Spoken like a Lady
When you’re Lady Gaga, it must be hell deciding what to wear. So, for her cover shoot for September’s Vanity Fair, she threw in the towel, and every other bit of clothing, save for a floral tattoo and a tasteful choker necklace. Art is a cruel taskmaster, she said in an interview; she’s perpetually lonely, even in relationships. Of course that may also have something to do with celibacy. “I have this weird thing that if I sleep with someone they’re going to take my creativity from me through my vagina.” She credits her mom and grandmother with getting her mostly free of drugs, but for the occasional toot of cocaine. If the Lady is overexposed now, wait until the MTV Video Music Awards on Sept. 12. She has a record-breaking 13 nominations. God put her on Earth for three reasons, she says: “To make loud music, gay videos, and cause a damn raucous [sic].”

Careful what you wish for
It’s gotten so one almost feels sorry for Tony Hayward, the ousted CEO of BP—almost. It’s now clear that Hayward, recently replaced by Bob Dudley, failed miserably at containing the public-relations fallout from BP’s massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico—smug and indifferent before Congress, appearing at a yacht race in England and telling reporters he “wanted his life back”—but he may have done as well as could be expected when it came to stopping the leak from the Deepwater Horizon rig. “I understand that people find it easier to vilify an individual more than a company,” the career oilman recently told the Wall Street Journal. Perhaps. But CEOs are paid big bucks to take responsibility during times of crisis and expected to know when they’re in over their heads. Or at least when to hire image consultants.

Spreading the good word
Asked how he’ll protect constituents from the Muslim “threat,” Tennessee gubernatorial hopeful Ron Ramsey questioned whether religious freedoms should even apply to Islam. It’s arguable, he told a Chattanooga crowd, if the world’s second-largest religion is actually a religion—or “a nationality, a way of life, cult.” In nearby Florida, pastor Terry Jones announced plans for “International Burn a Quran Day,” on the anniversary of Sept. 11. His church, the Dove World Outreach Center, will host.

It’s what Uncle Earl would want
A man peddling Ansel Adams photos purchased at a Fresno, Calif., garage sale may in fact be selling pictures taken by 87-year-old Oakland resident Miriam Walton’s Uncle Earl. When Richard Norsigian announced experts had authenticated the negatives he bought for $45 and valued them at US$200 million, Walton recognized a photo of the famous Jeffrey Pine at Yosemite National Park from the news footage. “I keep thinking that perhaps that box of negatives belongs to Uncle Earl,” she told a local TV station. Undeterred, Norsigian is selling copies at a hefty markup: $7,500 for darkroom prints, $1,500 for digital reproductions.

A bit too N-Sync
Rumours dogged punk singer Plastic Bertrand for decades that the voice on his 1977 hit Ça plane pour moi isn’t his, but producer Lou Deprijck’s. Late last month, the singer (real name Roger Jouret) admitted the ruse to a newspaper after a linguistics expert told a Belgian court the vocals are indeed Deprijck’s. Plastic says he was promised a small share of the rights to the song if he agreed to “keep his mouth shut.” According to Deprijck, the reasoning for the Milli Vanilli-esque bait-and-switch was simple marketing. “I was even prepared to shave my moustache,” he told the Guardian, “but the record label preferred this guy with his punk look.”

Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 5, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

The never-ending story
It took John Isner of the U.S. from Tuesday until Thursday—a record 11 hours, five minutes—to post a first-round victory at Wimbledon over France’s Nicolas Mahut. An exhausted Isner lost in the second round Friday to Thiemo De Bakker of the Netherlands. “I was just low on fuel out there,” Isner said.

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How news-savvy are you?

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 4:11 PM - 5 Comments

Click here to take the Newsmakers Quiz

The sporting case for the Grammy Awards

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, February 1, 2010 at 1:01 PM - 6 Comments

It is perhaps possible to take the Grammy Awards seriously. But only if you stop worrying about them.

Consider, for a moment, the National Football League.

The NFL is presently the premier professional sports league in North America: a multi-billion-dollar cultural institution that can claim, in the Super Bowl, the biggest single sporting event on the planet. Its athletes are among the world’s most exceptional and most beloved. But success in the NFL is not the ultimate standard of sporting achievement. The NFL does not define the concept of sport. In fact, no league, tournament or event—not even the Olympics—does. And it is generally understood that it is impossible to compare athletes of different leagues and disciplines—any discussion of “the world’s greatest athlete” generally defined by he or she who dominates their particular competition most spectacularly. (Tiger Woods, for instance, wasn’t ever as fast or as strong as any number of Olympians, football players or basketball players. But he was, by virtue of his unique excellence in golf, in the conversation as the best athlete in the world.)

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Newsmakers '09: Winners

By Nicholas Köhler - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 6:40 PM - 0 Comments

Usain Bolt
From afar, the six-foot-five sprinter towers above his rivals as though his real trick is to cheat perspective—he looms larger because he’s already closer to the finish. At 23 he has won 25 consecutive races in two years. In August at the Berlin world championships he broke his own records in the 100- and 200-m races, a repeat of his dual golds at the Beijing Games; his part in winning a third for Jamaica in the 4 x 100-m sprint relay made it a hat trick.

Susan Boyle
Surely, when Stephen Harper crooned a little Ringo this fall, he was channelling the spirit of a frumpy Scottish lady—too old and too unkissed to be called a lass—whose appearance on Britain’s Got Talent cast us all in the role of hidden understudy or unpolished diva, capable of reducing a mob to tears. Boyle’s careening rise, with its uncertain makeovers and tantrums, has yet to eclipse that first magic shock.

Sidney Crosby
Partway through the second period of game seven, Crosby finds himself crumpled against the boards after a hit from Detroit Red Wings forward Johan Franzen. In pain, he hobbles into the Pittsburgh Penguins’ dressing room, but is back before the night’s done to lift the Stanley Cup above his head—at 21 the youngest NHL captain ever to do so, and just four years after arriving as the No. 1 selection in the draft. Nuff said.

Senior citizens
Despite its oddly adult opening sequence—which follows Carl and Ellie Fredricksen from kiddie courtship to dotage and on to death—the animated film Up did gangbusters at the box office, making it Pixar’s 10th consecutive film to break US$100 million. Off-screen, too, it was good to be a geezer. The over-60 set learned it needn’t worry about H1N1 due to a youthful exposure to something similar. Paul Anka awoke at 68 to hear This is It, a tune he’d written with Michael Jackson years ago, on the radio, and earned a mint for his troubles. Willard Boyle of Halifax won a Nobel for physics at 85, for work put to bed 40 years ago, and McGill neuroscientist Brenda Milner a $1-million prize for her work on memory—at 91. Dame Vera Lynn, whose WWII anthem We’ll Meet Again we know from Dr. Strangelove, hit No. 1 in the U.K. with a greatest hits CD.

Michael Bublé
It wasn’t just that his new CD, Crazy Love, shot to No. 1 within days of its release; at 34, Bublé suddenly seemed comfortable being Bublé. The crooner had tired of being the big-band throwback mums and daughters love: the squeaky-clean routine didn’t fit with a lady-killer who likes a drink and may well Bublé your joint (to coin a phrase). He admits to the illicit fun-making now, and fans seem to love him no less.

Japan’s Democratic party
After nearly 54 years of rule by the Liberal Democratic Party, the notoriously cautious Japanese voter decided in August to try something different and cast a ballot for the Democratic party. The landslide made Yukio Hatoyama PM, a moment Barack Obama recently called a “political earthquake,” even if it did little to fix a Japanese economy still burdened by a recession that took hold in the 1990s.

Lady Gaga
In the early 1970s, Bette Midler emerged from the bathhouses of New York with a stage show in which the outrageous costumes and setpieces were as important as the music. Strip away Midler’s irony and sense of fun and you get Gaga, a 23-year-old Yonkers gal who’s sold over four million copies of her debut, The Fame, and 20 million digital singles. If she wears bits of fly screen on her fingernails, she still sounds refreshingly expert singing solo from behind a piano.

Anthony Calvillo
At 37, he’s a little longue dans le dent to be up for his second straight MVP nod. Quarterback Calvillo, a 14-year CFL vet, was also among nine Montreal Alouettes named to the league’s all-star squad, and his 26 touchdown passes were tops. In July he let fly the 335th scoring pass of his career, shifting him into second. He came in third in passing and only tossed out six interceptions in 550 attempts.

Jerry Mitchell
Even as cost-cutting continues to gut investigative journalism, Jerry Mitchell, a reporter with the Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., is a wonderful anomaly. Over 20 years, his work to probe civil-rights era killings has put four Klansmen in prison, including Byron De La Beckwith, convicted in the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers. This fall he won a US$500,000 MacArthur Foundation “genius grant”; he plans to continue his reporting.

Jon Hamm
In a series of Vanity Fair photographs featuring Hamm with his so-beautiful-it-hurts Mad Men co-star January Jones, Annie Leibovitz presented a fairy-tale creature whose veins run with ink from the Harlequin presses. But it was his turn on 30 Rock as Tina Fey’s fling, Dr. Drew Baird, that convinced the hitherto unimpressed. That self-deprecating take on a man so handsome he’s oblivious to his shortcomings led to one of two Emmy nominations—the other was for Mad Men.

Privacy commissioner
The social networking site Facebook changed the way it handles personal data provided by users all over the world, in part due to a report issued by federal privacy commissioner Jennifer Stoddart blasting Facebook for violating Canadian privacy law. Among other things, it will make it clearer how to delete accounts and to choose what personal info is sent to third parties.

Beyoncé
Though released late last year, Beyoncé’s video for Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It), settled into being the secret heart of 2009. It was the one Kanye West felt should have won over Taylor Swift’s You Belong to Me. It became the subject of countless YouTube homages, creating the first dance craze of the 21st century. Greeting Beyoncé in January, Barack Obama flapped his hand in glorious Ring on It mimicry. With the grace of a balletic giraffe, Beyoncé demonstrated her infinite self-possession.

Moammar Gadhafi
In flowing golden robes and trademark sunglasses, flanked by seven “traditional kings of Africa,” Gadhafi arrived in Addis Ababa in February to assume the leadership of the African Union. His ascendency was not without controversy. Gadhafi waited until 2003 to renounce terrorism and appeared to want the leadership merely to help propel Libya from the shadows of international isolation. Next stop . . . Mugabe?

Alec Baldwin
Who said there are no second acts in American lives? F. Scott, meet Alec Baldwin, the leading man-turned-celebrity-divorcé-turned-awful-voice-mail-dad, whose role on 30 Rock spawned a comeback. This year he’s earned an Emmy, starred alongside Meryl Streep in It’s Complicated as a man cheating on a trophy wife with his aging ex, and was named co-host (with Steve Martin) of the 2010 Oscars. Alec, grab that winning streak and start marketing Schweddy Balls—now.

Week in Pictures: June 19th – June 25th, 2009

By macleans.ca - Friday, June 26, 2009 at 1:02 PM - 0 Comments

Going Gaga

By Lianne George - Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 3 Comments

“Stardate 2009: Lady Gaga has been sent to earth to infiltrate human culture one sequin at a time. Activate camera probe.” So begins every kitschy, pulsating episode of Transmission Gagavision, the online video log of Lady Gaga, the planet’s newest pop sensation, who could well be described as Ziggy Stardust’s overindulged Gen Y spawn. Ever since last fall, when she launched her debut album, The Fame, Gaga’s chart-topping dance singles Poker Face, Just Dance and Love Game have been perpetually in the ether. While other pop stars are blogging about feelings, erroneous tabloid rumours, and half-baked political views, Lady Gaga’s “transmissions” are a multimedia orgy of fashion, performance, and free-floating commentary about how thoroughly she plans to astound the public with her art. “I don’t like blogging,” she said recently in an interview. “I think it ruins the mystery of the artist. I don’t really want people to care too much what I think about anything other than art and fashion and music.”

Another thing Lady Gaga doesn’t much care for: pants. Even those who have never heard her music—futuristic, disco-influenced dance tracks—may have come across media reports about her aversion to pants. More often than not, she’d rather appear at red carpet events, on TV interviews and on stage in lavishly adorned PVC bodysuits. “I think no pants is sexy,” she told MSN. “I love the naked human body.” Earlier this year in Chicago, she was stopped by police after venturing out in what could fairly be called underwear. “It was really funny,” she later said, “because all you saw was this half-naked girl on the street yelling at some cop, ‘It’s fashion! I’m an artist!’ It was fun.” More recently, being photographed outside St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow, she was mistaken for a prostitute by Russian cops and shooed away. “It’s very strange, to be completely honest. There are a lot of pop stars that don’t wear pants,” she told TheStyleSpy.com, adding, “It’s very ’70s and it’s very freeing. Here’s the thing. For me, it’s not stage clothes and then outside clothes. I have always been this way.” On June 21, when she appears in Toronto at the MuchMusic Video Awards, Canada can expect enormous crowds and scant pants.

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