He's a Dowbboy who lives in a bubble

You sort of have to admire what Bruce Dowbiggin has done with the place since he moved into William Houston's former digs as sports media critic.

Dowbboy has done a reno. The place has been converted to one part bully pulpit to use on people who didn't graduate from his school of journalism. The other half is an echo chamber for people who want reassurance they are not living through a media revolution.

• Erin Andrews calling 911 because a couple paparazzi were skulking around her home after dark "demonstrates that the ESPN star ... clearly has no idea how people in her business chase a story." (July 31)


• The Score tweaking its format to focus on "the chatter, the personalities" means that the network "has in mind what TMZ and Deadspin and a raft of social websites have done to redefine the relationship between those being covered and those doing the covering," (Aug. 5) since those sites are so, so evil for giving people what they want to see. Plus there are all those stupid young people who want to know whom Reggie Bush is dating.
  


• Most recently, Chicago Blackhawks hockey star Patrick Kane being arrested and charged with assault last weekend "was not exactly a shining moment for the integrity of bloggers" (Aug. 12) because people joked, passed judgment and gossiped about it on blogs, Twitter, Facebook and the like, just like they have always joked, passed judgment and gossiped.

It's pretty clear: Dowbiggin's generation has a monopoly on good taste and substance. We get it.

Sorry to pop that secure little bubble of boomer conceit, but that is hogwash. Next to no one is prattling on about the "blogosphere" in 2009, really. The two sides came together. They locked swords. No one really got anywhere. They called a truce. Eventually, they realized they actually had a lot in common, kind of like Canada and the U.S. since the end of the War of 1812.

One should be grateful for the good sports journalists who share the experience extends to their audience. It might have been best to let this slide for that reason alone. Besides, who knows what if any overlap there is between who reads this and who reads a sports media column on globesports.com. Nevertheless, batter up:

"While Usual Suspects commiserates with Andrews' fragile state of mind after being spied upon, the tape demonstrates that the ESPN star, who has struggled to overcome the reputation as a sideline cupcake, clearly has no idea how people in her business chase a story. Gated community or not, reporters are supposed to go and knock on doors of celebrities, relatives of car-crash victims, defrauded investors, fraud artists and, yes, people who’ve had their privacy violated. It’s called getting the other side of the story."

Erin Andrews calling 911 to get rid of some paparazzi could have had more to do with only wanting the good stuff which comes with being famous during a period when she was also feeling vulnerable.

"Levy has in mind what TMZ and Deadspin and a raft of social websites have done to redefine the relationship between those being covered and those doing the covering. With Twitter and camera phones, fans can engage their heroes in new and - sometimes - frightening ways for traditionalists ... It also means putting younger people on the air who may not have experience but do connect with the target audience.

"... And having both Cabbie (Cabral Richards) and Al Strachan working in the same format is often too jarring a concept to contemplate for Usual Suspects."

Frightening for traditionalists? Too jarring? That's not an M.P., that's a Y.P, your problem. There also seems to be an assumption that everyone in that 18-34 demographic is interested in whom is dating whom and what Chris Bosh Tweeted. Personal experience suggests the contrary.

There are many sports writers born after 1970 who can go in depth about a topic with humour and wit, and without putting themselves above the audience. Just to a name a few, there are Jeff Pearlman, Jonah Keri, Kurtenblog, Jerry Brewer at the Seattle Times , and so on. The same goes for the writers in their 20s, like those at cisblog.ca (present company excluded).

Then there's those bad, bad bloggers unleashing a "torrent of abuse" on poor Patrick Kane:

"The question of whether independent bloggers should have equal status with mainstream media is a hot topic in the industry. But the alleged Patrick Kane robbery and battery of a cabby was not exactly a shining moment for the integrity of bloggers. The release of the police charges Monday morning (actually, it was Sunday) brought an immediate torrent of abuse in the blogosphere for Kane, who was accused of beating a hapless Buffalo cabby for a 20-cent tip. Before Kane could explain his side, sites were saying 'How could Kane be this stupid?...

"Patrick Kane is a stuck-up, rich, spoiled, bratty punk... this punk kid needs a ass beating... The best possible light for Kane is that he is a mean drunk, a guy who is not above physically abusing a 62 year old man after a stupid prank went awry.' You get the flavour."

That is what people do when hit with bits of uncomfortable news. They make jokes. The cracks people post on Twitter are in the same ballpark with the sick jokes people told after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, when I was nine. It is the culture, for good or ill.

With respect to sports discussion, what Dowbiggin seems unwilling to reconcile is that the barriers have come down. That's TS for anyone who feels threatened (note that the good ones do not).

With regard to only bloggers looking bad on the Kane story, please. Some would say the thrust of the headlines on James Mirtle's post on Monday and Steve Simmons' Sun Media column on Tuesday were virtually identical: "Patrick Kane: A reputation ruined in an instant" and "No doubt Kane will pay; In court of public opinion, young star's reputation is tarnished by cabbie incident."

That is not to disagree with either Mr. Mirtle or Mr. Simmons. The younger cross-platformer and the older columnist (who does some TV) each said his piece very well and anyone is free to agree or disagree. It's simply that there is no us and them, and it's tiresome to have the "blogosphere" being treated as a bogeyman.

Mirtle also linked to a piece from Second City Hockey which cut to the heart of how "the Kane story ... could be useful in shattering some stories and myths we tell ourselves":

"The big one is 'hockey players are different.' No, they're not. Sorry. You know why you don't see as many athlete/criminal stories about hockey? Because there's less attention. There's less people following them to clubs, recognizing them, flashing pictures on their phones. The gossip pages tend to stay away, because no one cares about hockey players. But to suggest these guys are a different breed, that's asinine. They're rich, young kids, and those can add up to be bad combinations ... These guys are not angels, they're just people. People with freakish DNA and more money than you or I. Sure, maybe there are less of these stories in the NHL than other sports, but it's percentage points, not a wide chasm."

That might come closer to the truth than anything else published on the subjuct of "20 Cent." Hey, guess what? It was on a blog. If anyone had that kind of nuanced take in a newspaper, it passed by like a warm summer day.

Perhaps Kane and the Senators' situation with Dany Heatley each belie the culture of exceptionalism that is part of Canada's Hockey Reflex.

One would think Dowbiggin, having written a really well-received book called The Meaning of Puck, might take this into account instead of playing shoot-the-messenger. It's like what a film critic (this came across the ol' Google Reader during the process of putting this together) said about the tendency of veteran film critics, even Roger Ebert, to indulge in get-off-my-lawn techniques: "Often, the old guard sees the new guard as suspect, their tastes as lacking, and culture waning, no matter what the reality is. In the end, the thing that disappoints me most is that Roger used this moment to take what I consider a profoundly cheap shot."

Meantime, it is understood that perhaps a younger writer should not worry about Dowbiggin. The people on the blogs should just forget what's in the paper. The excellent Toronto Sun Family recently stated "aging baby boomers who grew up with print newspapers in their hands should be considered the demographics of choice ... Canada's 10 million or so baby boomers should be sufficient to carry print newspapers that are adequately staffed and focused on community affairs."

That reasoning is not entirely off. One might wonder about the argument that you should only be paid for your work if you pander to a certain demographic. What happens to anyone who wants to stay current and with it? Do they just get left with the scraps?

Point being, if Bruce Dowbiggin wants to pander to the older audience which still gets the paper, fine. He can do it without cheap shots and condescension. It would be a riot.

Mike Toth needs a message-polisher

Reading this line from Mike Toth in Bruce Dowbiggin's column calls to mind the time back in the day broadcasting Queen's football games when there was a analyst who, during his first game, had an unfortunate tendency of uttering a drawn-out, "Wow," after almost every play.

Really, wow is about all one can say:

"On The Fan 590, Rogers Sportsnet host Mike Toth suggested that young women including Sportsnet co-workers Martine Gaillard and Evanka Osmak get by with less than perfect knowledge of sports.

" 'This is going to sound harsh,' Toth said. 'But be that as it may, here it comes: There are no female sportscasters that I can think of that have more knowledge than their male counterparts.' "

One comes not to bury Toth. He is entertaining on The FAN 590's late-morning show The Bullpen, with Mike Hogan, and he was very accommodating to my good friend Tyler King when he hosted Kingston's most-listened-to hour-long sports show on CFRC 101.9 FM.

However, in the manner of that Weekend Update gag, "Really? I mean, really?"

Apparently our man never noticed Lesley Visser or Pam Oliver on NFL broadcasts. ESPN's Robin Roberts comes to mind. Former Score correspondent Patricia Boal, she always came across very well. Canadian Stacey Dales always got very good reviews when she was at ESPN. No doubt there are plenty of talented, intelligent women in broadcasting programs across Canada, who don't mind looking good for themselves but who also want to show they have the chops. Toth should spend one day job-shadowing Alison Sandor, the recent Carleton graduate whom this old cowboy

Visser's name would have immediately shot to mind even if she had not just been named the No. 1 female sportcasters and Jeff Pearlman had written about her for Sports Illustrated. As Pearlman pointed out, a decade ago she was replaced on Monday Night Football when the highers-up decided the show needed to get younger and hipper. They replaced her with Melissa Stark and put comedian Dennis Miller in the booth (Miller is older than Visser, how's that for irony). Visser is still going strong and Stark, quoth Pearlman, is "somewhere."

The other sticking point with that statement is that it assumes male sportscasters need a perfect knowledge of sports, which we know is not true.

There's no personal animus here toward Toth. He is heart-on-his-sleeve and he's willing to flip over a few rocks that the Canadian media usually stroll by, from the lack of widespread coverage for junior hockey, to the apparent lack of diversity in a CFL crowd. Sometimes he just makes a blanket statement that leaves some of us small-l liberals wincing.

The rub is that if you hear anything about it, it's usually from a male columnist such as Dowbiggin, not an interest group. That might say something about how people look at talk radio, as something that's for quote-unquote angry white males, not for anyone else. They're not listening. That should be of concern to programmers, since you can't kiss off a large portion of the potential audience.

Anyway, it just needed to be pointed out. Give Toth credit. Anyone who's ever thought The FAN 590 was sophomoric knows that still puts them several years ahead of their brethren in Ottawa and Vancouver. As far as we know, no one's stormed out of the studio in Toronto lately because someone had the nerve to disagree with them:

"Pratt had just finished airing an editorial shortly after 4 p.m. Monday about how a couple of gladiators like golfer Tom Watson and world champion poker player Doyle Brunson were able to continue to perform despite their age.

"Taylor made light of the comparison and chastised Pratt for even suggesting that poker was a sport.

"Game on. The high-pitched yelling and screaming maxed out the decibel levels of the station's control board. After a brief interlude of dead air, roughly 12 continuous minutes of taped commercials were followed by a repeat of a previous interview. Pratt eventually returned to finish the last hour of the show, making no reference to his spat with Taylor.

"When eager listeners tuned in Tuesday for round two they heard Rick Ball announcing he would be sitting in for Pratt with Matt Sekeres subbing for Taylor."

Some would say David Pratt should be chastised for even suggesting golf is a sport ... just kidding, not really.

Related:
Andrews debate revealing; Unwanted internet exposure of ESPN reporter pits the ugly side of sports broadcasting's old boys club versus privacy rights

Blue Jays: One comes not to bury Jamie Campbell ...

A reasonable person makes do.

That might explain why it has been four months since last dropping a jamiecampbell. The Blue Jays' radio voices, Jerry Howarth, Alan Ashby and Mike Wilner are among the best in the majors (speaking as a XM Radio subscriber who has access to every team's broadcast). Besides, it would be tough to top Bruce Dowbiggin's denunciation of the team's TV flagship, which puts more on the corporation than the commenter.

"The word that springs to mind when listening to play-by-play guy Jamie Campbell and his rota of analysts would be unsatisfying ... a significant part of the hollow feeling springs from the anodyne tone of the crew.

"Now in his third season, Campbell has staked no claim to the team with either a flair for language or his keen insight into baseball. The genius of Vin Scully is that he tells you from the first pitch that he is the pilot, you are the passenger, and you are to sit back while he guides the ship. Even the lugubrious Chuck Swirsky grabbed the Toronto Raptors' mike like a thirsty man throttling a pump handle."

"... After this many games, (Campbell) still has mighty trouble judging fly balls (watch the outfielders) and a propensity for reading the daily statistical notes as if it were Finnegans Wake. His monotone delivery suits the subway (“Next stop Spadina, Spadina next stop”) more than a pennant race.

"The mark of a pro such as Jon Miller is his ability to bring out more than just inside baseball from his co-workers. Campbell's patter with his analysts is painful, leaving Rance Mulliniks or Darrin Fletcher to grind along unmercifully about arcane points of strategy.

"Part of this is not Campbell's fault. Sportsnet likes to grow its own timber and has thrust several people into key announcing spots before they are ready. The results are mixed. When it doesn't work, the outcome is like a travelling company of High School Musical – you know, 'Just wait till they grow up and move to Broadway.' Except they don't grow up. Campbell still seems stranded on first base. If he's being coached it doesn't show.

" ... When Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers legend Duke Snider broke in on Montreal Expos' telecasts with Dave Van Horne, he was raw and almost impossible to listen to. But Van Horne – a pro's pro – shaped Snider's contributions, drew out the man, not the baseball player, and they soon were a perfect team."

There is a honest reticence to comment on Campbell. He does work hard. Broadcasting baseball is a job where someone is expected to be perfect on Day 1 and then get better, although the mass of people watching really do not care too much who's doing the announcing.

The risk in writing this is someone will take it to as a way to act on frustrations over the Jays or what's going on in one's personal life. It isn't. Everyone knew going in this was clearly a sub-.500 team.

Dowbiggin, almost at long last, is pointing out national broadcasters have the wrong idea when it comes to picking the on-air talent for sports beyond hockey. They create their own mistakes, as previously noted:

"Please don't make this into a Jamie Campbell vs. Rod Black kvetchfest. It's tiresome, for one. It's not about them. It's on the highers-up in Canadian broadcasting who don't invest in bringing along bona fide baseball play-by-play people and just expect to get lucky ... The rest of us are just supposed to believe that there isn't a man or woman in a country of 33 million people who can commentate baseball. That's hard to believe." — March 31, 2008

That post, by the way, led to an e-mail from someone who had worked at one of the national networks. It seemed worth hanging on to and releasing at an appropriate time.

"The top executives of the networks don't mind putting people in positions who will 'learn the on the job' while doing play-by-play for fringe sports such as baseball. If it were hockey, you better damn well have years and years of play-by-play experience and know your stuff before they dare put you in front of a camera or on a microphone."

One can try to make do by following the Jays via radio, investing in Delay Play Radio (a device which syncs up the radio play-by-play with digital cable, which is about eight seconds behind). You can snark off that it's ironic The Score, not Sportsnet, is having a contest where the winner gets a job as a sportscaster. However, at the end of the day, just making sport of Jamie Campbell is useless.

The failure of a country of 33 million people to develop a good baseball broadcaster since Dan Shulman joined ESPN is borderline embarrassing. The Hockey Reflex does not mean it's OK to set the bar lower for other sports; look at how TSN broadcasts the CFL.

The definition of crazy is doing something the exact same way and expecting a different result, and that has happened too often with Sportsnet and baseball. One hopes it is going to change in Canada, for the sake of young broadcasters, people such as Tyler King and Mark Masters, to name a couple personal acquaintances. Jamie Campbell is not a bad guy or necessarily bad at broadcasting, he's just someone who was on the right side of a wrongheaded idea. At the end of the day, baseball fans in Canada honestly deserve better. Raptors fans got it with Swirsky and Matt Devlin; soccer fans get it with Gerry Dobson, even CIS nuts do with The Score's Tim Micallef. Why not for baseball, Sportsnet?

Related:
Something amiss from Blue Jays broadcasts?; Baseball play-by-play requires a raconteur's touch, a statistician's zeal and a sense of which plays matter most but Sportsnet yet to find right mix

Don Sanderson, 1987-2009, hockey player

Don Sanderson is dead. The 21-year-old defenseman for the Whitby Dunlops died last night from the injuries he received in a hockey fight Dec. 12.

At the heart of hockey's Code of Intimidation there has always been the silence. What happens in hockey stays in hockey. The shroud of silence blanketed those who got hurt and those that did the hurting. It was insurance, a guarantee that the outside world would never disrupt the comfortable culture of intimidation within the sport. The silence meant outsiders could never make a case against on-ice violence." -- Bruce Dowbiggin, The Meaning of Puck

Silence. Throughout the heartland of hockey violence is met with indifference and silence. If you never played the game, you can't understand.

Todd Bertuzzi was misunderstood by those liberal, urban sissies. He paid his price. Steve Moore was a whiny little punk. He should have known better than to hit a star with an open ice check. Clean or not, there had to be a price to pay. It was the code. A code that had been followed in hockey for generations and the same code Don Sanderson was following when he fought Brantford's Corey Fulton last month.

And now he's dead. What happens in hockey stays in hockey.

For years the mantra of the sport's apologists was that no one ever got hurt in a hockey fight. Fighting was to be encouraged. It helped stop players from engaging in truly dangerous practices like slashing and high sticking. Let the boys play.

It was a fluke. It could have happened anywhere, any time. It wasn't the fight that killed him, it was his head hitting the ice. My buddy knew a guy that hit his head off the ice while coaching his boy's novice team. Could happen to anyone.

We can anticipate the arguments. There is no need to tune into Coach's Corner for Sanderson's two-minute eulogy. He was a good Canadian boy. He wouldn't want the fuss. He certainly wouldn't want to be a martyr used by enemies of the game to attack the code. They never played the game.

We'd ask him what he thinks about it. Except he's dead. From a hockey fight.

So instead, silence. The code lives on.

What happens in hockey stays in hockey.

Related:
A Hockey Tragedy (Damien Cox, The Spin)
Previous:
The horror, the horror... frankly, it's beyond our ken (Dec. 15, 2008)

CFL: West final preview

Today's Western final should also be a great one to watch, as the B.C. Lions take on the Calgary Stampeders (4:30 p.m. ET, TSN). There's plenty of storylines here, as demonstrated by the various previews floating around the interwebs. Some of the best include Wally Buono's return to face his old team [Matthew Sekeres, The Globe and Mail], the parallels to the 2000 West final between the teams [Lowell Ullrich, The Vancouver Province], Calgary all-star receiver Ken-Yon Rambo versus B.C.'s all-star corner Dante Marsh [Allan Maki, The Globe and Mail], the battle of quarterbacks Buck Pierce and Henry Burris [Ed Willes, The Vancouver Province] or B.C.'s league-leading pass rush against Burris, a quarterback searching for playoff success [Bruce Dowbiggin, The Calgary Herald]. There's probably enough different stories on this one for it to be a Friday Night Lights episode. None of these previews deliver the complete stats breakdown, though, so it's after the jump.


The records:

B.C.: 11-7 (third in West)

Calgary: 13-5 (first in West)

Passing leaders:

B.C.: Buck Pierce, 232 completions on 362 attempts (64.1 per cent) for 3018 yards (8.33 yards per attempt, 13.00 yards per completion), 19 touchdowns versus 9 interceptions, 97.3 QB rating in 15 games, five 300-yard games

Calgary: Henry Burris, 381 completions on 591 attempts (64.5 per cent) for 5094 yards (8.61 yards per attempt, 13.37 yards per completion), 39 touchdowns versus 14 interceptions, 103.8 QB rating in 18 games, ten 300-yard games

Advantage: Calgary. Burris has struggled in playoff games throughout his career, but his numbers are still tremendous. If he can survive the pressure from B.C.'s defensive line, he gives Calgary an edge here. However, Pierce comes in with only minimal expectations on his shoulders, and he won't be running for his life the way Burris might have to, so the quarterback edge could be closer than the pure numbers would suggest.

Receiving leaders:

B.C.: Slotback Geroy Simon, 82 receptions for 1418 yards (second in CFL, 17.3 yards per catch average) in 16 games (88.6 yards per game average), 10 touchdowns, eight 100-yard games

Calgary: Wide receiver Ken-Yon Rambo, 100 receptions for 1473 yards (14.7 yards per catch average) in 18 games (81.8 yards per game average), eight touchdowns, five 100-yard games

(Note: B.C. wide receiver Paris Jackson is ahead of Calgary's second receiver, wide out Nik Lewis in passing yardage with 76 receptions for 1180 yards (15.5 yards per catch average) in 17 games (69.4 yards per game average), eight touchdowns and four 100-yard games. Lewis has 1109 yards on 87 catches (12.7 yards per catch average) in 18 games (61.6 yards per game) with 10 TDs and three 100-yard games. B.C. slotback Jason Clermont has 50 receptions for 640 yards in 14 games as well.)

Advantage: B.C. Rambo's had a great year and led the league in yards, but that's on an awful lot of catches: his yards-per-catch are lower than both Simon and Jackson. I'd put Rambo up there with Simon, but B.C. has better depth in the receiving corps than Calgary.

Rushing leaders:

B.C.: Running back Stefan Logan, 889 yards on 122 carries (7.3 yards per carry) in 12 games (74.1 yards per game), zero touchdowns, three 100-yard games

Calgary: Running back Joffrey Reynolds, 1310 yards on 227 carries (5.8 yards per carry) in 18 games (72.8 yards per game), 10 touchdowns, five 100-yard games

Advantage: Calgary This one is close, as both teams have excellent ground games. Logan picks up more yards per carry, but Reynolds is a consistently dangerous running back and one of the CFL's best. Slight edge to Calgary here, but there isn't that much of a gap between the two. A key battle to watch will be Reynolds versus the Lions' run defence, which has been good all year.

Sack leaders:

B.C.: Defensive lineman Cameron Wake leads the team with an incredible 23 sacks (only three less than the entire Hamilton Tiger-Cats team).

Calgary: Lineman Miguel Robede (a Laval product) and linebackers Mike Labingo and Charleston Hughes are tied for the team lead with five sacks.

(Note: B.C. has three other players with more sacks then anyone on Calgary's roster: linemen Aaron Hunt (11) and Brent Johnson (10) and linebacker Jamall Johnson (six).)

Advantage: B.C. Huge advantage to the Lions here. Their defensive front is the best I've ever seen in the CFL, and really doesn't get nearly enough coverage. What makes it so great is that it's not just Wake: the threat from Hunt and Johnson (a Kingston native, by the way) makes it almost impossible to double-team anyone. Burris' mobility will help him a bit against the rush, but the Lions did a tremendous job of knocking Michael Bishop off his game last week, and he's pretty mobile as well.

Interception leaders:

B.C.: Safety Barron Miles, who has nine picks (tied for the league lead) in 16 games and a total of 113 resulting yards off them.

Calgary: Safety Wes Lysack, who has four picks in 15 games and 101 resulting yards with one return for a touchdown.

(Note: B.C. defensive back Korey Banks also has more interceptions than Lysack, with six in 18 games (third in the league).)

Advantage: B.C. This is another area the Lions win handily. The pressure their defensive front brings forces opposing quarterbacks into poor decisions, and the talented secondary is often able to take advantage.

Overall notes:

This should be an excellent matchup, with some of the best talent in the CFL on display. Burris, Reynolds, Logan, Rambo and Simon are near the top of the league offensively, while Wake, Hunt, both Johnsons and Miles are some of the elite defenders in the game. There's a good rivalry between the teams and between their cities, so expect some fireworks.

Prediction: B.C. victory
For me, the key battle of the game is the Lions' pass rush against the Stamps' O-line and Burris: if they can pull off a few sacks and force Burris into bad throws, the Lions should take this game. B.C. has just too many incredible individual talents. In fact, Stampeders' head coach John Hufnagel called the Lions an "all-star team" heading into this week's game [Dan Ralph, The Canadian Press via Yahoo! Sports]. That wasn't just flattery either: B.C. had 13 players named to the West all-star team, while Calgary had six despite winning the division. It took the Lions a while to pull it together this year, but they looked in fine form with that 33-12 stomping of Saskatchewan on the road last week. If they put out another performance like that one, they should win this game.

FOLLOWUPS: ROGUE AGENTS, DOOKIE 'POETRY'

We don't forget about a story once we've had our initial fun with it:

• Just another weird twist in the saga of Rogue Agent David Frost; he was charged with fraud after using a credit card registered to another person to pay for gas in Kingston.
  
  The card was registered to... Mike Danton. Frost, still facing several sex charges, did hint to a reporter that he's thinking of leaving the Kingston area, but he would say that just to get my hometown's hopes up, wouldn't he?
• Speaking of rogue agents, remember news of the disgraced Alan Eagleson's memorabilia auction, which even got mentioned on Sportsnet Connected? His old pals in the working press, Bruce Dowbiggin and Russ Conway, have proven that he's selling a fake Bobby Orr sweater.
• In our Mariners preview, we took note of pitcher Miguel Batista's wordsmithing, adding, "No one's literary ambitions should ever be mocked. (Except for this guy's.)."
  
  That may have to be reconsidered after friend and reader Julian Dickinson forwarded a link to former Duke basketballer/current NBA benchwarmer J.J. Redick's poetry, so-called, which Sports Illustrated actually published two years ago:
  
  No bandage can cover my scars
  It's hard living a life behind invisible bars
  Searching for the face of God
  I'm only inspired by the poems of Nas
  
  Anyone else think that finding out that a Dookie was name-dropping him in poems inspired Nas to write Hip-Hop Is Dead?

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.