This is a follow-up to the post below. So go read that one first if you haven’t already.
The opening game of the Stanley Cup final averaged 2,608,000 viewers on CBC in Canada. In the US, only 523,000 households watched the same game on the skanky, crotchular region of cable known as Versus.
It just occurred to me that if those estimates are correct, when Don Cherry goes to the US (see below), it may turn out that fewer people see him there than in Canada!
Hah.
With apologies to the good folks at Zamboni, these are dark days for the NHL.
First, the marketing wizards at the NHL are enjoying piss-poor ratings (that’s a link from a blog named Lion in Oil … I have no idea what that means).
Second, and perhaps because of the first, Don Cherry is coming to the US.
Don Cherry is a half-senile nitwit (if such a phrase isn’t redundant), fond of racist generalizations. To (nit)wit:
Over his career on television, Cherry has been described as “racially insensitive and nonsensical”, and a “xenophobic clown.”
Cherry has a strong dislike of the “European style” of hockey, and has often insulted French Canadian hockey players on his show, blaming them for bringing diving, high-sticking and the introduction of visors into the league, while taking the jobs of “good-old Canadian boys.” On the subject of visors, Cherry is particularly outspoken. In January, 2004, he said on-air: “Most of the guys that wear them are Europeans and French guys.” This statement triggered an investigation by the federal Official Languages Commissioner, and protests by French-Canadians. CBC consequently imposed a seven-second delay on Hockey Night in Canada. He was somewhat vindicated when a study was published that showed the majority of visor users in the NHL were indeed French-Canadians and Europeans.
Don Cherry has also had a habit of mispronouncing player names. The alleged mispronunciation occurs when it comes to players of European or French-Canadian origin, indicating that these “mishaps” may be intended on his part. Famous examples are “Yammie Yagger” for Jaromir Jagr and “Pat Roy” for goaltending legend, Patrick Roy (the word “Roy” being pronounced as “boy” instead of the French pronunciation, “Roo-ah”).
After questionable gestures on the part of Atlanta Thrashers’ star winger Ilya Kovalchuk, Cherry fumed: “Someone should have broken [Kovalchuk's arm], but they didn’t.” (Thanks, Wikipedia)
“A lot of people have written that what I say up here I would never get away with it down in the States,” Cherry said in a Toronto Star story. I disagree. This is, after all, America in the Post-Imus Era, so the lumpenproletariat are ripe for his brand of xenophobic clownery.
On the upside (if there is an upside), any controversy he generates will only help the sickly NHL. Maybe he could punch out Gary Bettmann (from Wiki: “During [Bettman's] tenure, the NHL lost 1.8 billion dollars in 10 years. Four teams have gone bankrupt (Ottawa, Buffalo, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles), and as a commissioner or assisant, he oversaw lockouts in 1992, 1994, and 2004.”)
Also, for those of you wondering about the origins of Barry Melrose’s wardrobe, these photos of Cherry’s pimped-out duds will give you some idea of what will be assaulting you via your television on NBC.
Ray of sunshine: Playoff Beard Comparisons at my new favorite blog, Barry Melrose Rocks.
Three items of interest in the news this week:
1) In AlterNet, there’s a great story called Why Working Less is Better for the Globe.
The gist of it:
Americans work more hours than anyone else in the industrialized world. According to the United Nations’ International Labor Organization, we work 250 hours, or five weeks, more than the Brits, and a whopping 500 hours, or 12 and a half weeks, more than the Germans. So how does ecological damage figure in to the 40-plus workweek?
Do the math: Longer hours plus labor-saving technology equals ever-increasing productivity. Without high annual growth to match productivity, there’s unemployment. Maintaining growth means using more energy and resources, both in manpower and raw materials, which results in increased waste and pollution.
Unsurprisingly, the United States is the world’s largest polluter. Housing a mere 5 percent of the world’s population, it accounts for 22 percent of its fossil fuel consumption, 50 percent of its solid waste, and, on average, each citizen consumes 53 times more goods than a person in China, according to the environmental nonprofit, Sierra Club.
The rest of it’s definitely worth a look. Either in that article or somewhere else I recently read that George Bush took five weeks off last year — even though worker bees like me only get two. I’m thinkin’ if the leader of the free world should set the example. If he needs five weeks off, I sure as hell do too. Make him walk the walk on this one.
2) In Reading Toronto is an interesting rerun of a piece they posted long ago that the mainstream press is just now getting wind of. It’s about Greening Toronto’s Concrete Slab Towers.
Toronto is littered with apartment buildings kinda like these, which make parts of the city look alarmingly like failed socialist states (the one above is actually among the better ones). The blog post notes that with the interest in greening Toronto, people are looking at a number of ideas.
Not yet part of the discussion however is the opportunity inherent within Toronto’s extensive stock of hundreds of bulky concrete residential slabs. Typically viewed with skepticism as ‘mistakes’ from the 60’s and 70’s, they may in fact be one of our greatest opportunities for creating a sustainable region.
These buildings are energy pigs. Counterintuitive to the accepted theory that density aids sustainability, our stock of again modern slab apartments demands more energy per square meter than any other housing type; a full thirty percent more than a contemporary single detached house.
Holy sh*t, Batman, they are pigs! And I just thought they were ugly and depressing.
3) Last — and least, it’s Malaysia to fight movie piracy with DVD-sniffing canine unit.
Yup, disc-sniffing dogs.
Malaysia hopes to obtain special dogs trained in Ireland to sniff out bootlegged DVDs as part of growing efforts to combat movie piracy in a country accused of being among the world’s top producers of illegal discs, officials said Wednesday.
Unfortunately, the story doesn’t say what “that bootleg smell” actually is.
Categories: Canada · Sustainability
The two national teams played tonight here in Portland, and I took my son.
That’s in the hitting lines. My digital camera isn’t the greatest at high-speed telephoto, as you can tell. While we were hanging out from this vantage point, I watched a couple of the US subs peppering. Peppering is a one-on-one warm-up: A sets to B; B hits at A; A digs it to B; B sets to A; A hits at B; B digs to A; repeat.
It was interesting that one of them was mucking up the drill, going through a hard time of hitting where he wanted–considering that he’s standing and hitting at half speed and he’s a pro, this shouldn’t be hard. I was close enough to hear him grumble about it, and I had to laugh, because I remember struggling with that exact thing once when I played in college. But that and my height were about the only two similarities we shared.
(The US in transition.)
The match was excellent. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the international men go at it–it was before a bunch of rules changes. When I played (back in the last century), it was in the Good Old Days, when every serve had to clear the net, and every pass and dig had to be a pure “bump.” I once got called for a lift on a clean, one-armed pass off my forearm. They were a wee bit starchy, those rules.
My friend (and former teammate) Rob summarized it nicely: “Not that I recognize the game anymore. Serves off the net? What is that little defensive guy called? Limbero? Umbro? Limbo? Overhand passes off the serve? Blasphemy. Back in my day we played with a rock in knee-deep snow uphill in July and we liked it.”
Back in the “before the first touch era,” the men’s international game was a bomb-fest, since the hitters are so powerful that the rallies rarely lasted very long. Basically, serve, pass, set, BOMB, end of point (block, kill, touch, etc.).
However, now they’ve changed the rules to “lighten up calls on faults for carries and double-touches, such as allowing multiple contacts by a single player (“double-hits”) on a team’s first contact” (tip o’ the hat to Wikipedia there). For you non-volleyballers, that means that on the first ball over, especially if it’s been hit, you can mangle it. Do whatcha like, just keep it airborne.
Lo and behold, the players make digs! And those digs transition to a scrambling offense, which allows the other team to make digs and transition, too! MUCH more exciting and involving.
France and the US are 7th and 8th in the world respectively (I thought I read), so neither team is slouchy. In fact, the volleyball was great. Great ball control, great hitting, blocking, defense … it was a treat. Having played for 10 years, I might have been one of the few people to really appreciate just how incredibly well they play.
For example, even at the NCAA championships, you see positional errors, bad ball control, and some gawky play. After all, these are great athletes, but some of them are 19 years old. At the national level, every player is a well-coached, elite professional, so if they gack a couple of passes (that means you, Bojidar Slavev), their butt lands on the pine. The rest of the time, it’s freakin’ superhuman(Reid Priddy is a beast). It’s frankly too bad the place wasn’t full. If I had been coaching volleyball, I would have dragged my entire team out to see them play, just to give them a taste of what world-class volleyball is like.
My son didn’t quite catch all of it, but when I explained some of it he liked it. And at the end he wanted a volleyball. Good sign, I thought.
(A good look at the US offense. The three blurry guys are the potential attackers. The one all wound up in the middle ended up hitting.)
Categories: Uncategorized
Ever since I got through puberty and hormones stopped controlling my life, I haven’t been very interested in beauty pageants. It was all so tacky: the greasy, lecherous emcee, the schmaltzy orchestra music, the contestants standing on a tiered stage in bikinis or evening gowns, in crooked Barbie poses (one knee forward, one leg straight, hand on hip, or something like that) with lacquered permasmiles. Dippy “save the baby seals” speeches. Yodeling as a talent.
You know.
But I’m thinking of changing my policy for the Miss Universe pageant, since reading an AP story about it. First, Miss Sweden has dropped out because the Swedes says the competition is “degrading to women and weighed down by scandals” (They’re figuring this out now?)
Miss Sweden is a bit different than Miss Texas. First, there’s no longer a swimsuit competition, and women can apply for the position like any other job after heavy criticism from feminists. Plus, while Isabel Lestapier Winqvist is some kinda modeled out on her website, in the photo above, the only people getting hard-ons for her are orthodontists. Go Sweden, crooked teeth and all! Oh yeah, right. Dropped out. Bummer.
But Miss Jamaica is the contest’s first Rastafarian, dreadlocks and all. However, in Miss Universe context, her Rastafarian message “promoting the message of peace, love and unity throughout mankind” sounds just as dippy as anything to escape the vacuous lips of Miss Texas.
But fear not, Miss Tanzania, Flaviana Matata, is an electrical technician and has a shaved head.
Then there’s the contest’s rep: “risque photos and public drunkenness have increasingly landed Miss USA and Miss Universe contestants in the tabloids.” Now see, I thought all pageants were the same. Turns out they’re ranked on a continuum of tawdriness that I knew nothing about!
However, the Miss USA girls are where the real action is.
Call me a contrarian, but if those girls can out-Britney Britney, don’t they deserve the title?
Despite the disappointing lack of depravity in the Universe (heh heh), I just might turn in for the costuming alone:
Miss Mexico Rosa Maria Ojeda was forced to change her gown to a fruit-and-vegetables motif after Mexicans were outraged by the bullet-studded belt and images of hanging bodies and firing squads in her skirt’s original design, which referred to the bloody Cristero war, a Roman Catholic rebellion in the 1920s. Miss Jamaica donned a Bob Marley T-shirt to honor her country’s culture, while Miss Ecuador, Lugina Cabezas, appeared holding a fake, bloodstained banderilla, a colorful barbed stick stuck in the back of bulls during bullfighting, outraging animal rights groups.
Far as I’m concerned, the pageant is going about this all wrong. Don’t emphasize that Miss Universe 2000, Mpule Kwelagobe ($5 if you can type that one without a gaffe) helped build a pediatric AIDS hospital, or that Miss Universe 1981 Irene Saez was a mayor in her native Venezuela.
No. Go the other direction. Degrading? Sure! Let ‘em wear bullet-studded belts and images of hanging bodies and firing squads. Let ‘em hold bloodstained sticks. Hell, let them bring heads on pikes!
And scandal? If the Tour de France has taught us anything, it’s that guys like Floyd Landis are tedious as hell. Better to run the pageant like the SNL All-Drug Olympics, and let the ruthless wheels of social Darwinism turn as they will.
This is the championships of the UNIVERSE!! I say, let it rip.
Categories: Uncategorized
As a recovering research editor, I’m always fascinated with neato ways to present information. A case in point is a graphic on obesity I just found, where some clever graphistician figured out a way to present, in porky detail, just how overweight the U.S. actually is compared to the rest of the world. I’m sure Edward Tufte would be very proud.
So without further ado, it’s The percentage of the population older than 15 with a body-mass index greater than 30.
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Would you like some butter for those rolls?
Categories: Uncategorized
Despite competing etymological claims from Clark the Hockey Goalie, the august institution that is the CBC has given us the last word on the word “hoser.”
According to my friend Craig, who (good Canuck that he is) sat through the Bob & Doug 2-4 Anniversary Special,
The term “hoser” was cited as part of the unique Canadian lexicon with dictionary references cited. Credit for the birth of the term was implied to be the brothers themselves — probably Dave Thomas, as he was arguably the most gifted writer on Second City (ok “gifted” may be generous!).
Craig even helpfully offered to check a recent Canadian dictionary, but I haven’t the heart to tell him that it’s just an American dictionary with a few “u”s added (favour, flavour, savour, etc.), the “e-r”s flipped to “r-e”s (centre, theatre, etc.), and a few gratuitous entries (eh, homo milk, permafrost, grey instead of gray, cheque, poutine, Celine Dion, etc.) added for verisimilitude.
I am, of course, just kidding. Actually, here’s a good page that explains what makes Canadian Canadian.
And when in doubt, it’s good to follow the rule of thumb of another good Canuck:
“In Canada we have enough to do keeping up with two spoken languages without trying to invent slang, so we just go right ahead and use English for literature, Scotch for sermons and American for conversation.” — Stephen Leacock
(It’s a bit easier than Charles V’s method: “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”)
So good day, eh?
Categories: Canada
Depending on where you are, there’s a good chance that sometime this week it’s Bike to Work Day.
In honor of BtWD, I’m going to reuse the sustainability tip I did for work this week and unleash it on the masses for their autoedification and autogratification. FYI, them links be your sources, in case you think I’m making all this up.
The bicycle is the most energy-efficient form of travel ever devised. A human walking spends about three times as much energy per pound.
Bicycling is a safe, low-impact, aerobic activity. A 150-pound cyclist burns 410 calories while pedaling 12 miles in an hour.
In one study, bikers expressed the highest levels of satisfaction, and least dissatisfaction, with their morning and afternoon commutes.
A Rodale Press survey found that Americans want to have the opportunity to bike to work instead of driving, with 40 percent of those surveyed saying they would commute by bike if safe facilities were available.
The energy and resources needed to build one medium-sized car could produce 100 bicycles.
Bicycles also cause little, if any, wear and tear on roadways.
Factoid of the Week:
Americans lead the world in parking lots, providing between 3 and 4 spaces for every car in the country (between 705 million and 940 million spaces total). Combined, parking takes up as much space as the state of Connecticut.
Categories: Cycling · Sustainability · Uncategorized
I’ve been banging on from time to time about how Portand drivers are too nice. Seems a survey from AutoVantage backs that up.
Here’s the road-ragiest to road-mellowest list (technically, the ranked list of cities reporting the most incidents of road rage to the fewest):
1. Miami
2. New York
3. Boston
4. Los Angeles
5. Washington, D.C.
6. Phoenix
7. Chicago
8. Sacramento, Calif.
9. Philadelphia
10. San Francisco
11. Houston
12. Atlanta
13. Detroit
14. Minneapolis-St. Paul
15. Baltimore
16. Tampa, Fla.
17. San Diego
18. Cincinnati
19. Cleveland
20. Denver
21. Dallas-Fort Worth
22. St. Louis
23. Seattle-Tacoma
24. Pittsburgh
25. Portland, Ore.
“Portland drivers were the least likely on the list to see other motorists tailgating on the roadways, and St. Louis motorists were the least likely to swear at another driver, according to the survey.” Given that choice, I’ll take the non-tailgaters over the non-swearers any day.
Come to think of it, maybe Portland’s maddening “No, I insist you go first, Alphonse” attitude isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I’ll just have to be patient when waiting for haplessly kind motorists, content that at least they’re not using their cars at battering rams and mobile extensions of their rage.
Categories: Uncategorized
I keep noticing that I ride differently than the Hispanic guys on their bikes. I’m your fairly typical white cyclist, wearing neon lemon clothing and using reflectors, helmets and blinkies in the hope of improving my odds of being seen and noticed.
I ride in the bike lane, along with traffic, make turn signals, direct traffic when I need to, so on, so forth. I should also add that I ride quickly, being a perpetually time-crunched North American working parent, thus attempting to exercise while commuting, not to mention trying to get to work to put in another seemingly productive day.
Yet the other day, and not for the first time, a Hispanic guy came cruising down my side of the bike lane. Slowly. No helmet, no reflective velcro strap around his pant cuff. No helmet, no neon lemon. An utterly normal fellow, riding slowly.
As I gyro-ed toward him, unwilling to swerve into the street, he merely rode on the sidewalk to make way for him. I had the sense he was meandering down the road, and if he’d rolled by something that caught his eye, he might have stopped and spent a moment with it. (Whereas I was your basic trotter with blinders on, going in one direction–straight.)
He’s not the only one who rides that like that either. Seems like the white guys ride like me (gear! bike lanes! blinking lights!), and yet there’s a whole other culture who don’t ride at some optimal cadence, and who weave across streets and sidewalks and driveways and wherever.
I’m tempted to push this humble observation even further (probably off a cliff of speculation), but I’d venture to say that my tribe is time-oriented (make that train), and his is task oriented (we’ll get there when we get there).
I dunno. I don’t have a whiz-bang conclusion to this hypothesis, and unfortunately, I don’t have the time or the Spanish language ability to explore the ethnography of the “other” way of cycling.
However, it does make me wonder if my clothes and panniers and blinkies aren’t also some sort of cultural signal, saying “I’m not a poor guy on a bike … I choose to ride. See all this expensive gear?”
It was warm today, and as I sat for two minutes waiting for a green light to cross Mega Boulevard, I have to say the prospect of wandering down the sidewalk instead of sitting like a horse in the starting gate before going shoulder-to-quarterpanel with cars was pretty darned tempting.
Categories: Cycling · Uncategorized
