Alex Rodriguezdating actress Kate Hudson. The Almost Famous actress is just like the Yankees: She hasn't been part of a winner since 2000.
TSN being small-town cheap by hyping TSN2's coverage of the Blue Jays-Red Sox series, and then turning on the TV at 7 p.m. to find out it was the NESN broadcast, the same as a Rogers Cable customer gets when you have to watch a game on the Extra Innings feed.
Quoth The Tao of Stieb: "All of this scrapping over carriage on the Rogers cable system, and the CTVgm folks can't even see to it that a Canadian crew is employed to broadcast the game? How was this different than Rogers just giving the free MLB Extra Innings Preview? (Our guess is that TSN2 didn't have an HD production truck at its disposal, given TSN's hockey duties, so they decided to take the easier simulcasting route.)
"... We were actually happy to watch the NESN broadcast, which probably has the best production quality of any local MLB broadcast. However, spending close to three hours listening to Dennis Eckersley's ridiculous meanderings just about drove us batty. Really, can we have another five minute discussion of 'sneaky cheese?' " Not to make a mountain out of a molehill, but what really pointed out how shortsighted the decision was that the Red Sox had two Canadians (Jason Bay in left field and George Kottaras, who is Tim Wakefield's personal catcher). People might have appreciated that being pointed out, but it didn't matter to American announcers.
Trying to figure out the whereabouts of Brian Campbell on the Detroit Red Wings' overtime goal in the Stanley Cup playoffs last night. It's all part of the great plan, the Red Wings making good on any number of gutless "Detroit in six" form picks.
Alex Rios getting thrown out stealing last night with a knuckleball pitcher on the mound.
NBC's announced fall lineup not including Friday Night Lights, which won't air on the network until summer 2010. Summer is not for football, unless it's three downs.
Now you know the rest of the story about why you give less and less a flying fadoo about the Academy Awards (Slumdog Millionaire's big night notwithstanding).
Just as popular music has been on the wane since 1974, the year of the first Bad Company release (Mark McKinney said it once in a Kids In The Hall sketch, ergo it is true), so too have the Oscars ever since Norton from The Honeymooners beat out Dustin Hoffman, Jack Nicholson and Albert Finney.
Cripes, for someone who wasn't alive in 1974, it's mind-blowing enough to find out that the actor who played Ed Norton has won an Oscar, unlike the actor named Ed Norton (two nominations in the late '90s, but no dice). Full credit goes to a Gelf Magazine writer named Joe Horton for pinpointing the exact moment, April 2, 1974:
"As the winner is announced — back when presenters said 'and the winner is…' before that was deemed too emotionally damaging for insecure actors to hear that they were losers and was changed to 'and the Oscar goes to…' — an audible gasp runs through the Chandler crowd when Carney's name is called and he literally jumps and skips up to the stage to accept his prize. At this moment, Carney becomes the first link of an irrevocable chain of events that will forever influence the Academy Awards.
The other men in this category would go on to collect 33 nominations and seven wins. Hoffman and Nicholson would become two of the eight male actors to ever win two Best Actor statuettes. But in 1974, the playing field was level — none of these acting luminaries had yet tasted Oscar gold — and after Carney scored the stunning upset in his only nomination, the Academy was forced to play catch-up.
Small wonder that 35 years later, it seems like you could not even have a telecast, since everyone can armchair-quarterback and ballpark-figure who's going to win, even if they haven't seen many of the movies. Last night,Penélope Cruz, who wait for it, was born in 1974, seemed like a good example: She's glamourous, she hasn't won yet, so why not her?
(Frankly, it would have been good karma if it had gone to Marisa Tomei for The Wrestler, considering the urban legend that Jack Palance read the wrong name in 1993. However, please keep in mind an actress can only win for a role that involves nudity if she is European or a person of a colour, because otherwise it's just titillation.)
Anyway, the Carney Consquence brings it all home, along with Jamie Lee Curtis' searing denunciation of the whole exercise. Horton notes it is pretty much foreordained that Robert Downey Jr. will win one of those handsome statues sooner rather than later, probably sooner thanMickey Rourke ("a pretty decent, albeit mildly f---ed-up guy," at least according to Deus Ex Malcontent, who crossed his path once upon a time).
Meantime, now that we've been brought to speed, this does bode well for Ed Norton and William H. Macy one of these years. Both were up for Best Supporting Actor in 1997 (Norton for Primal Fear, Macy for Fargo) when Cuba Gooding Jr. won for Jerry Maguire, a fact which has the air of you had to be there, but should be glad if you weren't. Remember, that movie made Renée Zellweger bankable, and she eventually got an Oscar (thank you, Tao), just because, well, you know.
You should all find Joe Horton and thank him for giving us a chilling vision of things to come.
(Incidentally, if time travel is invented, Kinger and myself will be travelling back to 1974.
Sagsy: "Now I know what a TV dinner feels like." Kinger: "What?" Sagsy: "It's a line from Die Hard. Hasn't been written yet. We could write it, Tyler. We could write it.")
Reducing a sporting issue to a spitting contest between Toronto media personalities is an easy way out, even when it is Mike Toth and Steve Simmons.
Junior hockey players get the rock-star treatment for two weeks during the world juniors and are afterthoughts 24 hours later, especially in the GTA. Toth, of Rogers Sportsnet and the FAN 590, had his say a week ago today. Sun Media's Simmons, on the following day, had a column headlined, "Apathy greets juniors," which began, "It is Thursday night at the Powerade Centre and for every seat that is occupied at least five are left empty."
(You can almost picture Rainn Wilson as a Rolling Stone editor in Almost Famous -- "Mmmmm, dark. Lively.")
Simmons' column was referred to as a "disgrace" during a rather pointed editorial reply during a subsequent Rogers OHL broadcast. Please leave personalities out of this, since it's a good topic (and our own Duane Rollins made a point to go see for himself when the Brampton Battalion and Mississauga St. Michael's Majors played at 12 noon on a weekday so classes of schoolchildren could witness major junior hockey in all its splendour).
Simmons was blasted a bit. Presumably some people would not mind hearing him accused of ripping the attendance when he had "never been in the Brampton Centre prior to that game."
That being said, Toth at least dared to run his hand along the fourth wall of every story about low attendance at OHL games in Toronto -- namely, how well these franchises do to turn first- and second-generation Canadians on to hockey? Simmons, no disrespect, goes on about "tak(ing) the easy highway drive for the least expensive entertainment you'll find everywhere," which seems to gloss over the fact that most Toronto sports fans, especially younger ones, rely on public transit when they're going to see the Raptors, Leafs, Blue Jays or TFC. It also assumes people who live close by Brampton's arena, which is located in a huge South Asian enclave, won't.
It's not even apparent that those transit options are handy for either the Battalion or Majors. Toth, who granted has come on a little strong on the subject in the past, at least waves hello to the elephant in the room, the question of growing the fanbase:
"Toronto is completely multi-cultural and sporting allegiances include everything from soccer to cricket. Brampton and Mississauga also have huge ethnic populations and many people from the two communities have never been inside a hockey rink.
"To their credit, both the Battalion and Majors are reaching out to new Canadians. For example, the two teams staged a special game for school kids earlier this year, featuring a 12.00 p.m. face-off on a Wednesday afternoon."
It is something of a common opinion among younger media types that stepping into an OHL arena often feels like a time warp. The crowd skews older and more homogenous. Between the incessant playing of Jock Jams '95 over the P.A. and the fact Larry Mavety is still GM of the Kingston Frontenacs, it is something straight out of another century.
There's no excuse simply accepting that it won't change. Look at it this way. It's not mandatory you should adopt the favourite sport when you're relatively new to a country. However, if you were a sports-mad Canadian who had relocated to England, what would you check out first: The local soccer team's game, even if it was down in League Two, or a game between the Coventry Blaze and Hull Stingrays?
People look to sports as a cultural touchstone and will turn to what's popular -- socially approved mass movements and such. People come to Canada, they do take to the NHL. It's only right to wonder why that doesn't carry over to the major junior teams in the country's largest city, instead of going on about the Battalion's "disturbingly ugly green uniforms" and inveighing against teenagers being traded in junior hockey (although it's hard argue the players are not pawns in the grand scheme).
At least Toth tried to move the debate forward. It is also worth asking if how the OHL's a keep-your-helmet-on rule, which will probably reduce fighting, might affect attendance. There might short-term pain. It might also change some impressions of the sport among people who are missing the hoser gene that makes you stand up and cheer when two 19-year-olds start whaling on each other at centre ice, although granted, fighting has not been banned.
Point being, the whole low attendance issue is worth getting into. It happens to involve two media personalities who have sizable jeering sections, so there's a little something for the haters, plus knowing that Rainn Wilson was in Almost Famous will win you drinks at bars and cocktail parties.
When Mendes says he's never seenSlap Shot, you don't go on the attack. This might seem like some sports nut equivalent to admitting you did not care for The Godfather, but Mendes is on to something and it's only right to try to capture the spirit of the thing.
Perhaps this could even work as a gift-buying guide -- five so-called sport movie classics that you should not buy on DVD or Blu-Ray for anyone, under any circumstances. Every time a media outlet such as Entertainment Weekly puts together a list of best sports movies, they pop up like distant relatives at Christmastime, but they are not worth seeing any more than 10-15 times.
A nice piece of popular schlock such as Major League, or Remember The Titans, cannot be on this list. Their shortcomings are more obvious, and it would be hypocritical to list them. Whenever one of those movies comes on AMC or City TV at 1 a.m. in the morning, I'm there, even the latter doesn't hold a candle to Varsity Blues. There's a difference between overrated and being both overrated and bad.
All five of these are ranked in Randy Williams' excellent book Sports Cinema. Rankings are in parentheses.
FIELD OF DREAMS (24)
Baseball lets us to indulge our inner pretentious poet (guilty as charged), but Field of Dreams takes it too far. W.P. Kinsella's novel, the source material, was a wonderful piece of fluff, but the film adaptation basically imparts that any obstacle can be overcome with a bunch of easy cliches and that Boomers know what's best for everyone, just ask them. The scene where Annie (Amy Madigan) silences a bunch of townfolk at a meeting is a dead giveaway of the latter; she does it way too easily, because anyone from a small town is obviously too stupid to come up with a counter-argument.
What else? How about depicting Shoeless Joe Jackson as a lefty-throwing, righty-hitting ballplayer? How about the fact that none of the dead baseball greats mentioned in the movie include Josh Gibson or any of the Negro Leagues stars who were denied a chance to play in the maors? Besides, the Black Sox story was told much better in Eight Men Out, which came out one year earlier, and you can't have too many Kevin Costner movies in your library. Someone's going to miss the cut after you squeeze in JFK, The Untouchables, Bull Durham and Tin Cup.
CINDERELLA MAN (53) / SEABISCUIT (23)
They might as well be listed together, since (a) they're both Great Depression movies that came from the same studio (Universal), about a year apart; (b) they couldn't possibly be worse than Field of Dreams and (c) their stars of each movie are actors whose signature performances came in other movies.
Thankfully, the second count relieves you of any any obligation to see either film, which means I am off the hook. Russell Crowe? Gladiator or Master & Commander. Tobey Maguire? Wonder Boys, Pleasantville. Jeff Bridges? The Big Lebowski, Fat City. Elizabeth Banks? Zack & Miri Make A Porno. Scratch these both off your to-see list.
BAD NEWS BEARS (57)
This classic, so-called, came out during Hollywood's second golden age, the 1970s. What's your point? Anyone not enough to remember those days is allowed to invoke the "I wasn't there" clause, although all bets are off if a more recent movie set in the '70s is on TV.
The movie revolves around a Little League team with a female pitcher and players of mixed racial backgrounds. That might have been grist for some sharp social commentary in the mid-1970s, but to anyone born after Bad New Bears came out, it just seemed dated, especially if you grew up playing boys hockey and always having at least one girl on your team, and having friends of mixed races. Not only that, but in modern eyes, Walter Matthau's character drinking beer in front of his young players isn't funny. It's child abuse, and it reminds us that political correctness isn't all bad.
Stick this back in the time capsule.
JERRY MAGUIRE (45)
The movie that sent the American male -- thankfully not the Canadian one, us and our demons are just fine -- into a downward spiral that's now at a dozen years and counting.
It all started with Jerry Maguire. Somehow, the average guy got duped into liking -- and quoting ad nauseam -- a movie where the hero dumps Kelly Preston for a single mother played by the actress who later played Bridget Jones. Not only that, but he jilted Kelly Preston with red hair, at a time when comedy chedderheads were in -- Julianne Moore, Heather Graham, Lauren Holly.
Brutal. It's clear now that what happened. Someone put a bug in Cameron Crowe's ear and told him he had to make an even-up call after getting carried away with the male fantasy in Fast Times at Ridgemont High and in Say Anything. Thank god for Almost Famous.
Honestly, the only funny part is when the kid in the airport stops Rod Tidwell/Cuba Gooding Jr. (who never did anything worthwhile after this) in the airport and asks, "Are you Hootie?" It was the mid- to late '90s.You had to be there.
HOOSIERS (20)
EW picked it as the best sports movie of all time, but come on. Bill Simmons no doubt covered this off years ago, but the subplot with Dennis Hopper as the alcoholic assistant coach is tacked on. Gene Hackman's propensity for being a one-note actor is omnipresent. The killjoy female character (played by Barbara Hershey, who was probably right when she refused to do any publicity for the movie) is a sexist stereotype. It works, all right, and you'll get the chill bumps when the Hickory Huskers knock off South Bend Central, but it's a paint-by-numbers movie that's saved by its uplifting musical score and cinematography.
It has its authentic moments, all right, especially coach Norman Dale's line that, "My practices aren't for your enjoyment." Some time this winter, a few weeks before March Madness, it will be on and you will watch and you'll hate yourself.
Anyway, you have been warned, and here's hoping you don't end up with one of these as a holiday gift.
Larry Mavety: Great general manager or greatest general manager?
His Royal Mavesty now has more players from his 2005 draft playing for the Brantford Golden Eagles Junior B team than for the Kingston Frontenacs, the team he works for, at least nominally. Daryl Borden, who was the first goalie taken that year, has signed to play with his hometown Junior B club, where his new teammates include Matt Reis, Mavety's fifth-round selection.
This is being written apologetically as possible. For starters, it is running over the same old ground. As well, one has to be balanced and owner Doug Springer's declaration that "Larry Mavety is a great hockey man," and that the Frontenacs are looking to the future should get the full consideration that it deserves.
Come on, people. Springer said they were looking to the future. No one should have needed any more convincing to slug back the Killer Kool-Aid (Save The Fronts' phrase, not mine) and just forget the past 10 seasons. It is just nitpicking to point out that, if it takes three years to properly get the measure of a draft, Kingston made five picks from the second through the fifth rounds that year. None of them are playing major junior hockey.
Please don't be a smartass by saying, "Well, how many are playing for the Frontenacs?" The answer to that is also none.
Editor's note: This probably would have gone by uncommented upon, were it not for that fact that Borden is displacing an 18-year-old goalie named Thomas Shelley.
Thomas Shelley, no word of a lie, might have saved my life one day.
December 2004 it was. A stranger in a strange town, the sports editor at the local paper decided that rather than go to the office he would walk the two blocks from his apartment over a computer store to cover a high school hockey game. Ostensibly, it was to get an early story for the next day's paper, but really, four months into a new job in a town where he didn't know anyone outside of the other people at the paper and local coaches, he just was not quite ready to face the world that day.
Standing for a hour in a nearly empty arena on a Wednesday afternoon, watching high school boys glide around on skates, that symphony of blades cutting the ice that Canadians hear in their sleep, letting loose that primordial roar when they scored, well, that was a way to ease back into life piecemeal.
High school hockey, in most of Ontario, basically comes down to who goes to your school. The game, Waterford vs. Holy Trinity was a mismatch. Trinity was the county's spanking-new Catholic high school in town that had opened within the past five years, and whose success in sports was much resented among the town's old guard. Families who prized education and status as much as their faith sent their daughters and sons to Trinity. They had a lot more boys with competitive hockey experience to choose from. Waterford was smaller and rural, full of boys who played hockey more for fun.
Most of Trinity's skaters wore gloves and hockey socks that corresponded with the local rep teams -- it was almost a game to count them up, the St. Louis blue and gold (Delhi), the Leafs' triple white stripes (Simcoe) or the pre-Ovechkin Washington Capitals blue and black (Port Dover).
Waterford had fewer players, probably not enough for three forward lines and two defence pairs and seemed to move with a little less zip. He might not have been there that day, but one of their star football and rugby players was on the team, and the assessment of him was, "He hits like a ton of bricks ... skates like one, too."
In goal, was this Grade 9, barely standing above the crossbar, clearly way past his team in talent. It should have been a blowout, but Trinity was slow to get into it, giving Waterford an opening to score on a completely random play. After that, it got ridiculous. The rest of the afternoon was Thomas Shelley standing up to a unrelenting tsunami of vulcanized rubber. He played every minute of this ridiculous game like it was the third period, tie game, Game 7 of Earthlings vs. the Klingons. He stoned Trinity's swiftest players on breakaways. The high, hard shots that he couldn't catch, he would juggle for just an extra beat, almost like he was teasing the forwards going to the net before they went careening past empty-handed.
There was no Penny Lane in Almost Famous to snatch the pen away from the stooge who was dutifully keeping his own shots-on-goal tally at rinkside, so he could stand back and listen and watch with his eyes. Starting the second (and final) period, down a goal, Trinity took 16 unanswered shots. The question became how much longer Shelley could keep this up? With about three minutes left, Trinity finally got one, not a cheapie, but a good goal, and the game ended in a 1-1 tie. Final shots on goal, according to the stooge's tally: 49-9. The second total might have been a bit generous.
Shelley, of course, wished he could have had that one back, but a tie game seemed more symbolic. The Waterford coaches laughed the laugh of someone who had got away from something: "There's no I in team, but there is a T and it stands for Thomas," one of them said.
It was just a high school game in a small town. Hockey-wise, it was not evidence of anything other than a 14-year-old having a very good game. It was also proof that life was not all black. Thanks, Tom.
The blog-reading portion of Leafland has picked up their blue-and-white pitchforks.
Long story short, the FAN 590 hockey beat reporter Howard Berger from time to time taken the occasional, often well-placed poke at Toronto proper's year-in, year-out support of a team that has been left out of every Stanley Cup final across the past 40 years. It was all good. Berger does a good job, so let him have his enthusiasms. A man's got to have his enthusiasms. Then on Thursday, when he went one poke over the line by calling Toronto Maple Leafs fans "losers" in a HockeyBuzz column.
In response, the Barilkosphere has banded together, much like the '67 Leafs did (please don't point out the irony one has to go back that far to find an example of the Leafs displaying Hemingwayesque grace under pressure). Pension Plan Puppets has posted an open letter to Leafs fans asking them to turn away from the traditional media sources in favour of the blogeteriat. The full letter, after the jump.
Dear Most Valuable Losers,
Yesterday, continuing a long-standing trend, another Toronto reporter took his shot at Leaf fans. This time it was Howard Berger calling us "losers" (screenshot: one two) but we've seem the same cookie-cutter article before from virtually everyone who covers the team.
Quite frankly, we've had enough.
As fans, we believe that those most deserving of our praise and our scorn are directly involved in the game, whether it's on the ice, in the press box or in the executive corridors. Fans don't pencil in the starting five, make bad trades, or write the headlines of the day and shouldn't be blamed (or praised) for the totals in the wins and loss column.
Hockey may be just a game but it's also a passion. If you're looking for passionate hockey coverage that offers insight and humour and you're sick of being blamed for supporting a team you're passionate about, you have a better option.
It's time to leave the media superstars behind. There's compelling, timely, wide-ranging content waiting just for you online in the Barilkosphere.
Many have found this better way of following the Leafs, but not every Leafs fan has been so lucky. Please send this message to your fellow Leaf fans via e-mail or postings on message boards and let them know that they do have a choice.
We hope you'll join us here in the Barilkosphere and become regular readers, writers, and commenters.
Go forth and click through. Referrring to Leafs fans as losers, when your livelihood rests on their insatiable hunger for information, calls to mind the scene in Almost Famous when William Miller tells off the members of Stillwater: "She was your biggest fan! And you used her! You used her and you threw her away! And if you can't see that, that's your biggest problem!"
Like raisins off an Oldsmobile, people ...
Reducing a sporting issue to a spitting contest between Toronto media personalities is an easy way out, even when it is 
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