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Running Up the Score

Posted by :James Howden On : February 12, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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Welcome to the Olympics, Italian pucksters! The Canadian women whacked ‘em 16-0 yesterday, and no doubt there will be accusations of running up the score. (Disclosure: I was the goaltender on the receiving end of a 22-0 shellacking when I was 11 or so, and rather enjoyed it; made some of my best saves and learned a lot about being a goalie and about how hard I could focus and try. My team was awful, my coach made a terrible error in scheduling, and I couldn’t lose. Bliss.) The red and white are on a mission, though, and the goal differential as a tie-breaker is a big part of the problem.

But this wasn’t necessarily the worst humiliation for the Italians. Sometimes you can shame a team worse by obviously going through the motions; it may not be so obvious to TV viewers, but the players always know. Hey, it’s the Olympics, kids. You embarrass people all the more by laughing and chuckling while you beat them by 6, and you sure as skatin’ don’t get yourself ready to play the USA.

"Poor Poor Pitiful Me"

Posted by :James Howden On : February 12, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Is there anything worse than the desire for sympathy on the part of someone with little apparent reason to receive it? Well, actually, there are lots of things worse than that, but I must say that the whining of pretty comfortable people drives me NUTS. The victim mentality, the “look at what I have to put up with!” schtick.

Which makes me shudder, In turn, when I consider the psychological truism that what most irritates us in others tells us a great deal about ourselves. (Oh-oh.) And I definitely don’t like it when others just don’t seem to realize how hard poor li’l me has it. And I hate it when I realize that I’m dipping into self-pity. (And then I really start feeling sorry for myself…)

What is the best possible light in which to regard this? Hmm. It’s quite simple, really. If life is suffering – and a focus on material things always brings, late or soon, some kind of challenge or difficulty, just like the Buddha and His Buddies have always said – then it is somewhat natural to want another person to be aware of our troubles. We want to be known, and the guiltifying fact that “others have it worse” doesn’t help with that at all. Sympathizing with the others, though, is a great start, and all part of acting as if other people (all six point whatever billion of ‘em) are real. The other half, it seems to me, is what loving and being loved are for. (And what prayer is for: Big Friend, Creator of All, You see me, You know me, You are my haven and my refuge…) The greatest consolation is to know that someone (Someone?) else, fallible or Infallible, knows our secrets and cherishes our single little lives anyway.

To all the whiners out there (and in here!), my slippery thesis is saved for the end: Tell the Maker, not me! Prayer is the cure for self-pity. (And probably a few other things, too.)

Skaters and Skiers and Flair, Oh My!

Posted by :James Howden On : February 11, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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Well, the Mighty Winter Olympics began yesterday with the usual herd of underemployed dancers getting their Big Gig in the Sun (along with 5000 of their closest colleagues), and despite my being not that into it, it was pretty and occasionally spectacular. I always get most jazzed, oddly enough, by the parade of the athletes. What a tremendous thing it was when the athletes from the two Koreas entered as one body in Sydney in 2000! Naturally, I loved to watch the Canadians enter, to hear the Italians get the roars of their people as they closed the deal. But I find it wonder FULL to see, for example, the lone Kenyan, a cross-country skier, enter to a warm and supportive cheer.

Canada may not “Own the Podium”, but our girl Jennifer Heil bumped and shimmied and flipped her way to gold, straight off. 30 seconds to gold. Like a lot of the new sports, it seems too contrived, too made-for-television, and too brief. It was just a sight bite. All the same, I am a jockhead Canuck and I enjoyed the view. And what a smile on Ms. Heil!

PopCult Quiz o’the Day

Posted by :James Howden On : February 9, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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Do you know that witchy girls repeatedly adorn the grave of a J. Dawson – it’s in a Halifax graveyard – because they believe it to be Jack Dawson, the character played by Leo DiCaprio in Titanic? The only problem is that the dashing Mr. Leo plays a fictional Dawson, a James Cameron invention. The man in the Atlantic Canadian grave is Joseph, a coal shoveller on the Titanic. So, this gives us today’s multiple choice quiz.

Are people in general, and young women in particular, a) fatuous idiots b) natural believers c) eager lovers or d) watching too many movies? (You don’t have to log on anywhere to take the quiz. But be nice to people.)

Leonard Cohen and Five Good Songs

Posted by :James Howden On : February 7, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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“You should never throw anything away, including people and ideas. It’s really true that we should never give up on anyone.”  That was Leonard Cohen, in my radio today.

Cohen is 71 now. Five of his songs were inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on the weekend. (Did you know there was one? Not the weekend, I mean the Hall. Although, actually, there is no actual hall for the Hall. Someday.) He was on Sounds Like Canada this morning, a taped interview he’d done with Shelagh Rogers. I missed the first 15 minutes or so of a warm, intelligent conversation of the type that CBC Radio occasionally pulls off so wonderfully well. (The “Mother Corp” takes a lot of hits from people who don’t listen to it. The TV side has its highs, even beyond Hockey Night in Canada, but I don’t watch it much; it’s so-so, even before you account for having to watch commercials. But the radio side is brilliant, commercial-free, and getting better, getting a little younger. Superb.) It was an hour-long conversation, followed by an hour of highlights from the HoF awards show. (How’s a guy supposed to get any work done?)

“Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in…” This is an example of the songwriter as Writer, as Poet, a designation Cohen once refused, feeling that it was too early in his career to apply to himself such an exalted title; I take it upon myself to confer it now). It comes from “Anthem”, which enters the Canuck Songster Pantheon along with “Bird on a Wire” (Willie Nelson was there to sing it, and that’s the version I hear), “Ain’t No Cure For Love” (I hear Jennifer Warnes), “Hallelujah” (kd lang did a glorious version at the ceremony, but I like Bono’s, too) and “Everybody Knows” (Don Henley does a terrific rendition on the tribute album Tower of Song, but Cohen’s own is one I find more listenable than some of the others, gritty and morose).

I’m hoping that the whole interview, as well as the awards package, will be available. I looked on the CBC site tonight for it tonight, and instead went wandering through their archives of 1950s radio interviews and 1960s television chats – Adrienne Clarkson, in all her youthful bouffant glory! – and on into the more recent past. And in case there’d been any doubt, I found an extraordinary man. Even in his youth, Leonard Cohen was profoundly articulate, gently contrarian, an artist and a seer who sounded and looked as contemporary as his interviewers looked and often sounded quaint. Now, his intelligence, insight and deep humility are beautiful to hear. I hope to hear today’s interview again. (Apparently it was filmed for eventual airing on television. I’ll let you know.)

Super Bowl Forty

Posted by :James Howden On : February 5, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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Well, as almost appears inevitable, The Big Game was a letdown after all the hype. Super Bowl XL (“Extra Large”, as the marketing grads predictably and unerringly labelled it) in scenic Detroit was a 7-3 dud at halftime, and not that the defences were Steel Curtains or particularly ‘hawkish. Mainly, we were treated to dropped balls and nervous-Nelly penalties, whether incurred by hypertastic players or anxiously hankied by jittery officials (like the Seattle touchdown that was called back).

I feel for the players, though. No, really! Huge contracts and unhealthy levels of fame aside, they’re still athletes and have to work under some serious handicaps. The build-up to the game is a Monster. For all their “We shocked the world!” bravado – which is an even more narrow definition of the planet than baseball’s “World” Series – the athletes are overwhelmed when the larger world (well, of entertainment and fashion and Corporate America) pays its most greedy attention.

The pre-game festivities are sombre and endless. (Football gets socially relevant: Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King are remembered, for a minute or so.) Aging legends are trotted out. My son couldn’t stop laughing during the anthems, Dr. John and Aaron Neville and Aretha Franklin having been so accurately sent up the night before on Saturday Night Live. (But it was, after all, the Detroit-remembers-New-Orleans-not-only-for-its-musical-heritage-but-also-for-its-tragic-hurricane angle.) Of course, more aging stars at halftime made the break about twice as long as the normal one, so coaches can think and talk more and the players can get more antsy and more stiff. (Obligatory Rolling Stones take: they are definitely old, and it’s a bit like seeing your grandmother shaking her booty-licious charms, but they can play. It was just a bit creepy, but so much better than the Black-Eyed Peas at the Grey Cup.)

And as someone who played a high school season at quarterback before Coach Woody sighed and gave the reins to the grade 10 kid, I see the balls as the ultimate symbol that the game itself doesn’t much matter anymore. They bring in a new (read: shiny, slippery) loaf for every play, so they can give away a hundred footballs that were Actually Used In The Super Bowl! I’d like to think that they go for charitable causes, but I’ll bet they end up in fat-cat living rooms and boardrooms. (Things baseball does right: they don’t let Spiderman movie ads on their bases, their bats are made of wood, and they have every game ball rubbed up with dirt so they are game-ready.) Weird stuff happens to a game when the needs of its most skilled performers, in this case the QBs, are given such obvious disregard. Imagine if the NHL required the fastest game on earth to be confined to an archaically small ice surface where relatively unskilled players can dictate the pace! (Oh, wait, that’s what they do. My bad. Mind you, they are actually calling many of the penalties in the rulebook this year, but will they in the playoffs? Not counting on it. Hope I’m wrong.)

Clearly, I did not consume enough beer during the match, but I watched it all. Surely that counts for something. And the football did get better in the second half, but once again, the Game Itself was pale compared to the Grey Cup game for Canadian football. “Perhaps too much of everything is as bad as too little,” said the American writer Edna Ferber, and she never even saw a Super Bowl. (And looky there! A literary quote from a dead chick! And you never even saw it comin’…)

The Athletic is Political

Posted by :James Howden On : February 3, 2006
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Category: All About Sports

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I wonder if you’ve heard of Dave Zirin. I hadn’t until a couple of months ago, though I pay absurd levels of attention to life in the lucrative sandbox of professional sport. This guy is on fire. Apparently, he’s written on pro basketball for quite a while — I guess Slam is a bit too hiphophappenin’ for me — but what I’ve come across is his weekly email column “The Edge of Sports”, in which he writes on marginalized issues beyond the scores and the winning streaks and the all-star teams: racism, social justice, athletic fame and influence, the meaning of these gladiatorial entertainments. (He loves the games and many of the athletes, the more contrarian and individualistic the better.)

He’s written a book – it awaits me on my bedside table – called What’s My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States. For those of you with good memories and long-ago birthdates, you might recognize the title as Muhammad Ali’s early insistence on having his abandonment of his “slave name” respected. Zirin is sometimes a bit strident for my taste, but he’s definitely every radical activist’s favourite sportswriter. He has the Michael Jordans of the world in his sights; MJ’s famous “Hey, Republicans buy shoes, too!” as his reason to avoid political involvement is a target of considerable contempt.

Dave Zirini has been powerfully angry on the Tookie Williams execution, wistful about Carlos Delgado’s on-again, off-again protest of the war in Iraq, and insistent about applying the simple standards of the common good to the uncommon world of big-money athletics. Today, his rant on the cosmetics of a Super Bowl hosted by Detroit, by most accounts a smoking hulk of a city, is RIGHT ON. He picks on the way in which sports have come to embody and emphasize one of the greatest obstacles to justice that we face. He zooms in on the extremes of wealth and poverty, as they are seen amid the glitz of the biggest single sporting event in the world. The Super Bowl has long been an example of gleeful and sometimes cringe-worthy excess, and here’s another take. Zirin quotes some sports writers, especially the great Mitch Albom (yes, he’s also the guy who wrote Tuesdays with Morrie, a wonderful book, and The Seven People You Meet in Heaven, which I’m not so sure about, but he’s probably the best sports columnist in North America), who are also not afraid to bite the hand the feeds them. And aware enough. And outraged enough. Leonard Cohen wrote it this way: “Everybody knows the fight was fixed / The poor stay poor, and the rich get rich / That’s how it goes…”

Dave Zirin’s column is called “Detroit: Super Bowl City on the Brink” and it can be found here.  And yes, I will be watching the SB. It’s research. I’m a Man of the People. (And Troy Polamalu rocks.)

Of Groundhogs and Heroes

Posted by :James Howden On : February 2, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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We have such mixed feelings about rodents. Hate rats, revere bunnies. Kill mice, make them movie stars. Laugh at lemmings, make beavers a national symbol. But will someone explain to me why the news leads with groundhog sightings? Wiarton Willie says early spring, I’m told, but the American pet hog-caster (Piskaquatty Phil, or some such) says six more weeks of winter. More continental discord. Oh, my. February 2 makes me curmudgeonly. Hey, let’s celebrate ignorance! Let’s pretend that furry critters are news! Sigh. Lighten up, buddy. There go your “Man of the People” credentials. You’ll lose your drive-through status. “Man refused Canadian Maple doughnut – called unpatriotic snob.”

“It is what it is,” I say with Jock Zen wisdom, and turn to the real news. Benjamin James is heading North, groundhogs be darned, for twelve more weeks of winter. He’s my hero today. A teaching job 200 light-years north of Churchill, Manitoba, and he has jumped on it instantly. He’ll teach ESL, some life-skills maths and sciences to the largely Inuit residents of Arviat, Nunavut. He’ll be able to keep working on his novel and other writing. He’ll cut into student debts. He’ll be a service pioneer in the tiny Bahá’í community there. He’ll play trombone to the caribou. How exciting is that? My kid is going to beat me to the Arctic. Lay on, McBen!

And Who is Akaash Maharaj…

Posted by :James Howden On : February 1, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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…and why is he speaking so eloquently on my radio these days? Turns out he’s a former policy chief for the Liberals, perhaps shoved aside during the Martin years but making up for it now. It’s so rare to hear someone speaking of politics with not only elegance (a rich, quite British tone and vocabulary and actual sentences) but idealism and principle. His watchwords appear to be “practical idealism”. He’s death on rule by polls, and on Paul Martin’s institution of “regicide” as a matter of Liberal operating fact. Yikes. I’m sure he’s too intellectual, too soft-spoken (and, likely, too brown) to be Prime Minister, but a look at his website suggests that he is certainly ambitious and very capable. Perhaps by the time he can speak to the Tim Horton’s Every(Wo)man – if he ever acquires that knack and loses that Oxbridge lilt – his ethnicity will no longer be a barrier. (Or perhaps he’s in line to be our Henry Kissinger.) He’s a political animal, but I am still impressed.

KV Junior, I Miss You Already and You Haven’t Quite Left

Posted by :James Howden On : February 1, 2006
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Category: At First Glance

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I happened to pick up my hero, Kurt Vonnegut, on CBC Radio’s The Current this morning. He’s 83, and his combination of profound pessimism and dogged goodness continues to knock me out. He’s so appalled by all the dastardly things humans have done that he figures it’s about time we were done.

“Done?”

“Over! We’ve had our chance; we screwed it up. The dinosaurs are finished and I suspect they did a lot less to screw up the planet than we have.” He imagines a great voice from “the bottom of the Grand Canyon or someplace, saying ‘It is finished. These beings did not like it here. They were not happy.’” He advocates a “War on Petroleum” instead of the failed war on drugs (or war on terrorism, bien sûr), and ridicules the wealthy and powerful for their residence in the 51st state (“the state of Denial”). In one of his characteristic KV Junior  flights of bitter fun, he offers that driving a car is perhaps the happiest thing humans have ever found to do, and now we’ll keep on driving blissfully until there’s no fossil fuel left and the system falls for those who follow us. “And what do I care? I’ll be dead! What does a CEO care, ‘just fuel up my jet today ‘cause I’m going to be dead anyway.’”

I saw Mr. Vonnegut give a public talk years ago in Stratford, Ontario. We were all so delighted to laugh with him, so ready to rumble. He got talking about smoking, his status as an “old fart with his Pall Malls”, and laughed at the warnings on packages. “These warnings are ridiculous. ’Smoking can kill you,’ they say. So what? That’s the whole point?” Strangest thing I ever heard in a theatre: the audience rolled instantly into a good laugh, and halfway through it collectively realized the nihilistic point he’d just made. In midstream, the laughter morphed into a sudden groan. “Ha, ha-ooohh.” When Anna Maria asked him today about his smoking, he said he was planning to sue Pall Mall. “Their packages promise they’re going to kill me. But I’ve been chain-smoking unfiltered Pall Malls since I was 12 and I’m still alive! They owe me.”

He was on the radio, of course, to comment on the war in Iraq, to compare it with his Second World War experience as an American soldier in Germany, and the imprisonment that became so well-known with his classic novel Slaughterhouse Five. He has sworn off novels, but has a new book out called A Man Without a Country. As pessimistic as he so volubly is, he continues to stand and to write and fight for what he has called the greatest thing we can have, “a little human decency”. This dogged use of his despair is terrifyingly good, painfully inspiring.

“You’re awfully pessimistic,” the interviewer says with some surprise.

“That’s what my wife says. Imagine what my marriage is like!”

“If you were to speak on behalf of your generation to young people today, what would your message be?” I’m sure Ms. Tremonti expected some warm and emphatic clichés, but I didn’t. Without fail, he breaks my heart with his sadness and courage.

“I apologize.” There was a pause. “And love one another, what the hell.”

“Thank you for talking to us, Kurt Vonnegut.”

“Go jump in the lake!” He chuckled and coughed. What a voice we will lose when he is gone.