Actually, the answer is complicated. Or maybe it's not… ...
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Sometimes The Dragon Wins
Back when I used to shadow Homicide Squads for a TV show, there were two items you found pinned to every squad room bulletin board. One was a cartoon, so over photocopied it was barely legible, depicting a half swallowed frog strangling the stork that was eating him under the slogan "Don't Ever Give Up". It was a reminder to every exasperated/frustrated detective that if they ever lost the will to fight for their victims,...
Hockey Pool Pt.2 "The Finals Props"
There's an old actor's adage to describe the shortness of the average Thespian's career, "One day you're standing in the wings -- and the next you're wearing them!" Likewise, it feels like mere days ago we had 16 teams in the Stanley Cup hunt and now we're down to two. A lot of people predicted Chicago would be the best of the West. But nobody expected the East would be represented by Philadelphia. For all the...
Lazy Sunday #120: "Victoria, 'toria!"
"Long ago life was clean Sex was bad and obscene And the rich were so mean Stately homes for the Lords Croquet lawns, village greens Victoria was my queen Victoria, Victoria, Victoria, 'toria" While the rest of Northern Hemisphere has to tough it out for another month, this weekend marks the official beginning of Summer in Canada. Think of it as a kind of seasonally adjusted rate for...
Pool Standings Wk5: At Least Somebody's Having Fun
As Uncle Willis correctly assessed the situation a few days ago, this year's pool has kinda slid sideways. And the fact that I'm in 3rd place is proof positive that the Hockey Gods have been tinkering with the Laws of Probability as well as Karma. And yet, I don't get the sense anybody is losing interest in how this weird post-season is playing itself out. Even though almost every game in the final conference rounds has been...
Connecting With An Audience
One night about a year ago, I fished the remainder bin at my local Blockbuster and came up with two films I’d meant to see but hadn’t --- “Bottle Shock” and “Battle in Seattle”. I ended up liking both --- a lot, recommending them to biz associates in the “This is the kind of stuff we should be making” conversations I get into from time to time. I even wrote a post intended to encourage you to check them...
Lazy Sunday # 119: The Hunt For Gollum
If there’s one thing that rankles most writers of film or Television, it’s fan fiction; that process by which people who liked the world you created decide to make it their own with new stories and characters they concoct to usurp it. If these are done by those with limited talent or imagination, it’s like watching one of your kids being torn apart and sewn back together by an amateur Dr. Frankenstein....
Pool Standings Wk4: The Mighty Smurfs Strike Back
I’m torn between jumping on the bandwagon and asking somebody in Montreal to pick me up a free pair of Reeboks if the Canadiens get through the next round. The media here are calling the surprising Montreal Canadiens Giant Killers and Smurfs (because of how small most of them are) and if the Cinderella run continues we know we’ll be treated to endless essays about how nobody thought to measure the size of their hearts. On...
The Code of the West
There were cowboys where I grew up. And the landscape wasn’t much different from the scrub brush Roy and Gene and Hoppy rode through nightly on my TV set. You could forgive a kid for blurring the lines between what was real and what only happened in Western movies. And maybe that was a good thing. In 1959, I was nine and already addicted to television. That was also the year when Westerns reached their peak of popularity...
Lazy Sunday # 118: I, The Jury
We’re coming into “Festival Season” in the film and TV industries. New movies are debuted in the former, while the latter coat-tails to sell internationally what played well at home last year. A lot of these films and programs will be entered into competitions, hoping to win the kind of recognition that attracts a wider audience. Sometimes, those awards are chosen by the festival audience, like...
The Nashville Flood
It’s been a busy week in the news. Used SUV bombers. Fat fingered brokers. Oil spills. Greeks lighting up more than a Saganaki cheese. And, of course British “Hung” Parliaments. And does it not reveal something about our national self-esteem issues that Canadians feel they’re saddled with a “minority” government while the British refer to the same thing as being “Hung”? Anyway, with all that going on, you can be forgiven for...
Pool Standings Wk3: Franzen The Talking Mule
For the first time in this year’s playoffs the first tee at the golf course is empty this morning. No freshly shaved hockey players to disturb the soft “Fut-fut” of the sprinklers. No heart-broken poolies taking a sharp crayon to the list that looked so promising mere days ago. And a whole lot of Detroit Red Wing fans heaving a huge sigh of relief. Man, there I am, almost hockey’d out by that amazing Montreal victory over...
